My Midnight
"I've traveled to all sorts of places. Done things you couldn't even imagine, but... you two... street corner. Two in the morning. Getting a taxi home. I've never had a life like that."
PART TWO- SHE WAS SOMEONE'S DAUGHTER
Rose did not watch the TARDIS vanish. She ran instead- ran down the road and then stopped. She had done it.
She had gone home to see if she could live.
She wondered who to go to first- there were three people on her list. In the end, though, it was really no contest. She would go and see her mother, reassure her, tell her it was over and no-one was dead. Except of course...it wasn't over.
She turned around and stared at the space where the TARDIS had been. Then she remembered, impossibly, stupidly, that she'd left a few things on board. A toothbrush from the fifty-first century- she was quite sure she'd left it in the bathroom. A green necklace from a market in eighteenth-century India: she didn't remember packing that.
Her life was scattered about the galaxy, her footprints in time and space. And she was here, by choice.
She started to cry.
She had stopped crying by the time she reached her mother's flat- her flat. She should have called for a lift, called Mickey, maybe, but she hadn't. She would have felt guilty doing so. So she had walked for about half a mile carrying all her bags and suitcases. She had recieved some funny looks.
She knocked on the door. It was flung open almost instantly, and her mother stood there, face flushed and in her dressing gown. Rose was pulled into a hug- and then released again.
"You've been gone three months," Jackie demanded. "Three months. Longer than usual. I was worried sick, Rose!" She was angry now, dragging Rose in and closing the door. "Do you know what it takes out of me, Rose?" That last bit was said in a different tone: a sad and exhausted one. Rose sat down, and it felt strange- sitting down on her own sofa in her own home. Like she should have asked permission.
Do you know what it takes out of me?
"Where's the Doctor, then?" Jackie asked. "He just coming, is he?"
Rose felt like crying again. "No," she said. "He isn't."
Jackie stared, and understanding passed across her face. "Oh, sweetheart."
"I said I wanted to try...living here again. For a year." A tear ran down her face. "In a year he'll come back and see how I'm doing, if I want to stay or go."
Jackie looked sad and confused and cross all at once. She sat down right next to Rose, and said,
"It's dangerous out there, love."
"I think I might have noticed that, Mum."
"I...want you here, Rose. If you..." But she swallowed and shook her head. "I'll help you unpack."
Rose was glad of the offer- she figured that unpacking would be extremely hard. Having to put her pink hoodie -the thing she'd worn when she first met the Doctor- back in the wardrobe again, and shutting the door...
She wanted a different subject. "How's Mickey?"
Jackie froze. "Ah," she said. "Rose, about that..."
Announcements: M. Smith and T. Delaney...
Rose read the engagement notice in the paper at least twenty times. There was no loophole. It was pointless looking for one: she had lost him. She had lost Mickey. Again.
She sat still on the sofa for hours, and let it all wash over her.
"I made some shepherd's pie," Jackie said quietly, as night began to fall. "D'ya want some, Rose?"
Rose shook her head.
"You can try ringing Mickey," Jackie said, putting an arm around her. "He'd...be glad to hear from you."
Rose didn't care. How stupid she had been. "Is he only marrying Trisha," she asked, "because I left?"
Jackie shrugged. "I don't know, sweetheart. Now come and eat."
But she didn't. She couldn't. She had ruined her whole life in one moment of stupidity.
The next day she woke up in her own room and missed her room in the TARDIS. She had a feeling all a sudden that she would never be properly happy: she would always be caught between two worlds.
She heard Mickey's voice from the next room. Shocked, she got out of bed and went to meet him, still in her pyjamas.
Mickey looked older. Older and different. He had been through a lot while travelling with them, but this was something different. He looked at her and smiled, and suddenly she was hit with a jealous rage: he was fine living back on Earth. He could handle it, and she could not.
"Hello," she said to him frostily, and the smile slid off his face.
"Rose," Jackie warned.
Rose ignored her. "How could you do that?" she said.
Mickey looked at the ground. "I...I didn't even know if you were coming back." he said, half guiltily and half accusingly.
"So that makes it alright, does it? 'Oh, Rose must be dead, I'll just get it together with the girl from the chip shop, then?'"
"It wasn't like that." Mickey said.
"You bastard!" She was screaming, not knowing what to do. All she knew at the moment was that this was not hate: she knew what hate felt like. Mickey stood his ground.
"You left, Rose, and I waited. Waited for months." His voice was low and angry. "And you were in love with him. Don't deny it, you were. And I was in love with you and now I'm in love with Trisha and you can't...just because you've left him now, we can't pick up where we've left off!"
Rose started to cry, furious. It was that bit in the middle that cut her the most, the now I'm in love with Trisha.
"I never..." she began, but she couldn't carry on because he was right. She had left him.
She tried to dry her eyes.
"You don't love me anymore," she tried.
"You don't love me anymore."
Rose could only cry again. "I do! I mean...I think..."
Jackie was back, watching her daughter. "He's getting married, Rose," she said gently. A statement of fact. For all Rose knew, it was established history, unchangable.
She had a choice. She decided to try and do the right thing, as huge and horrible a task it was.
"Good luck, then," she said, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.
"What?" Mickey asked.
She tried to smile. She couldn't. "I said when you were dating her, Trisha's nice, yeah? And she won't...run off." She bit her lip. "So, yeah, I hope...you're happy."
There was a pause, then Mickey hugged her fiercely.
"Thank you," he said. "Thank you, Rose. You're still my friend, you know. You'll always be my friend. Thank you."
Rose hugged back. But she was still crying, and she half hated herself for it.
The wedding was not for another month. Rose was welcome to come, of course- Mickey told her she was. But she wasn't sure, wasn't sure if she could handle it.
Mickey came round to the flat frequently. He would talk to Jackie and keep an eye on her. He would sit with her on the sofa, watch TV with her, try to make her laugh. Sometimes it even worked.
"You're my best mate, alright?" he told her desperately, one night when it wasn't working. She nodded, and she was grateful, she honestly was, but she wanted to escape and hide in her own little world where none of them could find her. Except her own little world had never been her own- the Doctor had taken her there.
Trisha came round one night, as well, and sat between her future husband and Rose.
"Are you all right, Rose?" she asked gently.
"Yeah...thanks," Rose said. She wished Mickey wanted to marry an utter bitch: that would make things easier. But Trisha wasn't, and things would not be easier for a very long time. Why were there no women in her life who she could hate- who she could blame things on?
They watched TV for a bit. Rose tried to cheer up.
A few days later and she finally did what she had stupidly put off since coming home, prefering to wallow in her misery: she went to see Sarah Jane. Mickey knew her address. Rose did not ask why.
It was a nice house- roses on the wall, milk bottles on the doorstep. Rose rang the doorbell and Sarah Jane opened the door in a matter of seconds- perhaps someone had phoned her to explain she was getting a visitor.
"Rose," she said, and she gave her a hug. "Welcome."
Rose half smiled while keeping herself from crying, and followed the older woman into the house. It was just as pleasant inside as it was outside: neat and tidy but filled with things. Things that looked like everyday household objects, but Rose knew otherwise.
"Mars," she said softly, picking up an ornament from the mantlepiece. "Mars in the twenty-ninth century."
"Yes," Sarah Jane said. "It was a present from the Doctor. He bought it for me."
Rose put it back gently.
"Would you like some tea?" Sarah Jane asked.
"Yes please." Rose said.
"I'll get us some. You take a seat and make yourself comfortable, Rose."
Rose sat down on a pink sofa, and something came out from around the side of it. It was metal, and it brushed her foot.
"My God," she said in surprise. "You've still got the tin dog...K9, I mean."
"I have indeed," Sarah Jane said from the kitchen. "Nice to see you remember him, Rose."
"Good morning," the robot dog said to her.
"Good morning," Rose answered. She spoke to Sarah Jane again. "I thought...something happened to him, though."
"It did," Sarah Jane said, "but I got him back again." She stuck her head round the door. "Sometimes you get things back, Rose...and sometimes you don't. Mickey's explained it all to me. Which one is it for you?"
"I don't know," Rose answered gloomily. "I just don't know."
"Are you happy here?"
"No, not really."
"Were you happy there?"
"I...was."
"Would you like biscuits with your tea?"
"Yeah, thanks."
Sarah Jane brought out two cups and a plate on biscuits, on a tray. Rose took her cup gratefully. Sarah Jane sat down on the opposite sofa.
"I don't know if you want to talk about Mickey," she said guardedly.
Rose shook her head, and then nodded, and then looked down. "You mates with him? Now? Like, proper mates?"
"In a way. It was inevitable, really...we should start a club, Rose. The three of us. A club for ex-companions."
"Seriously?" Rose said. The idea held equal amounts of hope and hopelessness for her. She would like to meet others like Sarah Jane, talk to them, swap stories. As long as they were people she could get along with, and...as much as she hated to admit it...as long as none of them had been as close to the Doctor as she had been. But she couldn't face it now, or anytime soon. "How many other people are there?"
"Many. I've even been in touch with a few."
Rose gulped her tea. "I dunno," she said. "It might not work. We'd all just fight, or summat." She balanced the cup on the arm of the sofa and changed the subject. "Did Mickey invite you to his wedding?"
"He did. I've met his fiancee. A very nice young woman."
"Yeah," Rose said glumly. "Are you going?"
"Are you?"
"I dunno."
Sarah Jane didn't give her opinion, although undoubtably she had one. "Take a biscuit, Rose," she said.
Rose wasn't really listening anymore, though. "Three months," she said thoughtfully.
"What?"
"I was only away for three months- it'd been three months since I saw Mickey last. And I get back, yeah, and he's engaged. That was so quick," She was stepping carefully; she honestly didn't want to hurt anyone. "I mean, it's just..." But she didn't know what it was. "I thought...I didn't think...I didn't think he'd ever be in love with anybody else. I didn't want him to."
"You expected time to have frozen," Sarah Jane said.
"Yeah. Again, I mean. I know I was...a cow to him..." She was struggling somewhat. "But it's just, three months- I know they were dating before, yeah, but...he loves her. He said so." The words tasted bitter in her mouth. "He loves her," she repeated.
"Oh Rose- you know you can fall in love in a very short time."
Rose drank some more tea. "Let's not talk about him any more," she said glumly. "I know it might help, or whatever, but I don't want to talk about him. Or the Doctor."
"Seriously, Rose?"
"Seriously. All I know is-" She put her tea on the floor. "-is that he's back in a year. A year. And I don't know what to say- I don't know whether to say yes or no. I just have no idea. And I hate that." She was about to cry again, she knew it.
"Say no," Sarah Jane said, quietly. "That's what I did. And I haven't regretted it."
Rose tried to take her tea and stand up, but accidentally managed to spill the tea all over the carpet. Both women looked at it.
"Shit," Rose said. "I just split tea all over your nice carpet."
"It's all right," Sarah Jane said.
"No it's not. It's never gonna be all right," Rose said firmly. "It is." Sarah Jane said. "Look at me, Rose. You're young. You've barely lived your life and you've done so much already. You have to come home eventually- come home and grow up and never forget. Everything ends- you remember that, don't you?"
Rose nodded.
"Yeah," she said. "Thank you."
The month dragged by slowly- but it wouldn't have gone any other way. Rose gradually unpacked everything- all the jewellery bought from markets centuries ago, all the beautiful dresses from years gone by, all the gadgets from space stations and shiny things from planets she barely even remembered now: everything. She wished she'd left something for the Doctor- she cursed herself for that. But he was coming back, wasn't he? She could give him something then.
She put aside some other things as presents, too- her mother certainly deserved something. A reminder of the fact that-
-well, that what? I nearly died a thousand times?
Mickey and Trisha should have something for a wedding present. If they wanted it. She'd offer Sarah Jane something too, although she already had plenty of things, and might not want one more. She spent almost an entire day shifting things around: dresses went in the wardrobe and CDs (one or two of them from the thirty-third century) went on the bedside table, and all the weird contraptions went on the shelves. She was rather pleased with the result. It looked like her room in the TARDIS.
Wedding preparations went on- Jackie bought a dress for the occasion, and bought Rose one too. Rose felt virtually nothing as she looked at it in the mirror.
And the evening before the wedding, she felt sick.
"I might not go," she mumbled.
"Oh no," Jackie replied. "You have to, Rose."
"I don't think I can, though."
"For me, Rose?"
Rose shrugged listlessy. "It's just a wedding," she said.
"It is not just a bloody wedding!"
Rose picked up the TV remote and turned the box on. "I'll think about it, then," she said.
"You ain't gonna stay here and watch TV all day!"
"I'll think about it, alright?"
Night started to fall.
It was almost midnight when she found herself in front of the wardrobe in the spare room. Vague echoes floated through her mind.
That's who I am. Now forget me, Rose Tyler. Go home.
She never had. Not then. Had she done so now? Was that why she was standing in front a wardrobe, looking for something that probably wasn't there anymore?
She opened the doors quietly, and poked about amongst the clothes. Everything smelled of dust, of days long gone, of other midnights long ago. She found what she was looking for right at the back, and although she knew how stupid she was being, she dragged it out of the wardrobe.
She closed the wardrobe doors, and sat down on the bed with her precious item in her hands, trying not to cry. Then she heard footsteps, and Jackie came in in her dressing gown.
"Rose?" she asked.
"It's his leather jacket," Rose said quietly. "The Doctor's leather jacket." She held it close to her, as if it was her last connection to him. Which it very probably was. Jackie shook her head.
"That's not his one," she murmured. "That one belonged to your father."
Jackie went looking for the Doctor's leather jacket first thing in the morning. Rose badly hoped she found it- if it turned out it'd been thrown away, she didn't think she'd be able to control her anger. But Jackie found it stuffed away in a drawer, and gave it to Rose. Rose picked it up and took it to the spare room wardrobe and hung it up next to her father's jacket.
Then she closed the door.