Chapter 2 is here! I am very excited :D I don't know why I ever write the Doctor crying, it just makes me cry - and there is more crying in chapter 3, I assure you.
Just for a second Rose hesitated, not sure whether she wanted to intrude on this moment. She had expected behaviour like this from the very beginning of course, she had been surprised that it hadn't manifested earlier. The Doctor, a traveller for most of his life, now stuck here on Earth only able to stare at the stars, never again able to walk among them as he loved to do. As they loved to do.
Rose still missed their life on the TARDIS – she wondered if she should tell the Doctor that. It could help him, but it might make him worse. She had loved that life, but she would not give up having him here, with her, forever, for all the space travel and adventures in the world. She supposed, almost sheepishly, that she should have assured him of this right from the start –although she had hoped that the kiss on the beach would have alerted him to this fact.
But the last few weeks had just been Rose and the Doctor, as they'd always been – laughing and joking and holding hands, Rose taking the Doctor to Torchwood and being quite amused as he shocked all the staff with his space knowledge and made more progress in 10 seconds on some of their projects than they'd made in 3 years. They had eaten food and gone for walks and bought the Doctor clothes and shoes and a new pair of glasses. But they hadn't talked yet. Not really talked. If Rose had chosen a time and place for them to do this, it wouldn't have been on a freezing cold balcony at 2 in the morning – but when had the Doctor ever made this sort of stuff easy?
Rose was suddenly aware that she had been standing just outside the door for slightly too long without doing or saying anything. She took a deep breath and stepped forward, sitting down next to the Doctor but with her back to the railings, so that she was looking straight at him. She had considered just sitting next to him and holding his hand, but years working at Torchwood had taught her to be direct, and she would much rather be able to see the Doctor's face if they were going to do the "talking thing," as Mickey had once so charmingly put it. But looking straight at the Doctor's face bought Rose more than she bargained for, as she looked at his faraway eyes and saw the tears that were trapped there, being forced not to fall, she suspected, by the sheer determination of the half-human half-alien who did not want her to see him cry.
At that moment Rose knew that the Doctor knew that she had seen the tears in his eyes, but neither of them said anything. Well that's just like us Rose thought, why address an obvious problem when you can ignore it, just say I'm fine and be really awkward about it? It wasn't until one tear broke free and began to trickle down the Doctor's cheek that Rose could not hold it in any longer.
"What is it?" she just about whispered, almost afraid to hear the answer, trying not to put too much pressure on him to answer straight away. The Time Lord needs time, she thought to herself, as he opened his mouth to speak but no sound came out. "It's OK," she murmured, reaching forward and placing a hand on his pyjama clad leg, softly stroking the smooth material as she watched him flounder for an answer that just didn't seem to be there, "it's alright, I'm not going anywhere."
It took a few minutes of silence and comforting smiles from Rose before the Doctor attempted to answer again. When he spoke his voice was slightly hoarse, as though the words were having trouble emerging from his throat - "Just a bit overwhelmed, new human emotions and everything." His attempt at a smile was ridiculously unsuccessful, and Rose knew right this second that there was no way he was going to get out of this that easily. The only time she had ever seen him cry before was on Bad Wolf Bay, the first time around, and even then the tears had not had chance to fall before he had faded away. Before the Doctor could even trying for another sentence Rose had removed her hand from his leg and was staring at him, trying to catch his eyes which were still fixed on the night sky over her left shoulder.
"You know that's not gonna work on me, don't you? You do know that I'm not gonna accept that you, sitting out here on the balcony in the middle of the night, in the freezing cold, cryi-." Rose stopped herself, she was getting louder and louder and she forced herself to calm down before carrying on – "You do know that I'm not gonna accept that there is not something drastically wrong with you, and I'm willing to bet that you also know that I'm not gonna go until you tell me what's wrong with you. We never talk anyway, and I don't care if my hands and feet are getting frostbite, we are damn well going to talk now."
Rose fell silent after this speech, still staring at the Doctor – the ball was in his court now, he knew she wasn't leaving and he knew she wasn't accepting his typical Time Lord "I'm always alright" crap. For the first time his eyes seemed to focus. He dragged them away from the night sky and looked down at his own knees – it seemed that he was not ready to make eye contact with her yet. Well, it's a start, she thought as she watched him study his stripy pyjama trousers as though they were hiding an enormous secret – sort of the way that Rose must be studying him, she realised.
Yet again they lapsed into silence, not exactly awkward but a bit apprehensive, as though they were both waiting for something to happen, but were not sure what it was going to be.
"It's nothing that we can do anything about" – the Doctor spoke quietly, unfolding his arms and placing his ice-cold hands in his lap, studying them intently. For a moment Rose thought about reiterating what she had just said – that she wasn't going to buy that crap – but something in his tone stopped her. He really believed that there was nothing that either of them could do to make him feel better. Now Rose had never been the type to give up easily, she knew the Doctor knew this, and when she replied to his statement with "well we're just gonna have to try," she was pleased to see him glance up at her for the first time and, to her immense happiness, to see the traces of a smile at the corners of his mouth as he saw the determined expression on her face.
Don't panic, it's going to get worse before it gets better but you have my word that this fic will end reasonably happily - I think if I split up the Doctor and Rose I would never let myself write again. Hope you enjoyed!