6: Rose breaks a bowl
When the Tardis finally calms down back in Universe Proper, Rose leans back on a column, looking lost and tired. The Doctor watches her from his station, with an annoying twitch of worry polluting his relief. And a hint of deja vu.
"Are you alright?"
Rose shrugs.
He steps closer, waiting for words.
"I feel bad, about... the other me." Rose looks at a spot on the wall. "It's hard out there, she'll probably get hurt, or..."
"Ah, Rose..." the Doctor starts, but then frowns when he realises he's had this conversation before. Nevertheless, he closes in and reaches out to gently hold her shoulders, because it felt right the last time. But this time, instead of trying to comfort her he simply states the fact.
"I don't care."
"How can you not care?" Her eyes shoot up at him, flashing offense. "She's me!"
He shuts his eyes for a second to subdue the frustration. "That's the thing – she's not! If she was I could've just left you there and kept her, wouldn't have made a difference! But you make all the difference, Rose-"
Rose looks past him. "Yeah, well. Maybe you should've left me." She closes her fingers around her left wrist, rubbing it absently. "All those people... I hope she can cope. It's a lot of work."
A crooked smile escapes him. "Just like you to go off and start a revolution. Can't leave you alone for two seconds."
"It wasn't two seconds", she mumbles. She stops herself then, holding her breath, only letting it go once she's turned around and is walking off, leaving his falling spirit and empty arms behind.
...
Sometimes the Doctor wishes he wasn't such an observant and empathic creature.
Floating through the cosmos that didn't go to hell in the ship that wasn't torn to shreds he takes to mopping up in the kitchen. And he observes, keenly, that Rose isn't around. Which is fine, except for how the observation keeps emphasising the vacancy until the kitchen feels like a cathedral. He also empathises, strongly, with her need to be alone for a while. But the empathising is also tying tight knots around all of his inner organs and it's really kind of hurtful.
He left Rose and disappeared for three months.
He left Rose, unconscious, in a heap of rubble, and disappeared for three months.
He left Rose, unconscious, in a heap of rubble, in the wrong sodding world, and when she woke up he was gone, flown off with another version of her, leaving no sign of ever returning.
How frightened she must have been. How lonely. And how very, very angry with him...
Although, to his defense, he did have absolutely no way of knowing. No way of telling. Not within those defining seconds of departure. All he saw was everything important running up to him and joining him in the Tardis, and off they were, just like normal.
It didn't take him all that long to figure it out. To feel that something was off, not right, not... her. But it still kills him that it took any time at all, that he made a mistake, that he didn't just know. Not knowing lost him five days, but it cost her ninety, roughly – ninety days of being stranded in a bit of a warzone, with all that entails. And then some, apparently.
But he couldn't have known. Could he?
If only they hadn't pulled that prank, making those subtle changes to their hair to look the same. Or called each other to synchronise their outfits that morning. Thoughtless chickens.
Or if only she hadn't wandered into that particular part of town and run into her other self. Such bad luck that was.
Better yet, if only he hadn't allowed them outside the Tardis at all, once he realised they had shifted realities. Stupid. Simply stupid.
Actually, if only he hadn't flown them so close to that damned singularity while that radiation wave was passing starboard-wise and the optical array-circuit felt a little stuck, from the start. Typical beginner's mistake! What did he think was going to happen, a normal everyday time-and-space trip? Obviously not! Cor, he can't believe he did that. He caused this, he made this happen.
The Doctor has been staring at the puddle of blue liquid on the floor for a while, knuckles white around the mop shaft, when the simmering in his head is interrupted by the ring of a crash.
...
Standing in her old room, feet in firm contact with the floor, Rose is still not sure it's real. There it is, her bed, her bag, her things, her mess. Except she hasn't slept in that bed since the dawn of time, and she hasn't had her things in forever.
It should feel as though nothing has changed since the last time she saw this place. It should be familiar, comfortable, and yet she feels a stranger. She remembers exactly how she left it, the image revoked in her mind a thousand times, and there are small differences – her bed in another kind of disarray, little things rearranged. But that's not it.
There is something alien about this place.
It's so quiet.
She inhales, slowly. The scent of home that lies just outside conscious grasp is still there, but distant, barely touching her. She closes her eyes and tries to listen to the quiet murmur of the Tardis, tries to open up to the possibility of being there and to the silence. She hears a soft creaking in the wall from its settling. There is the low whirr of a machine, from somewhere deep within the ship. But the sounds are so untangible, the absence of noise seems to swell until her own breathing is a loud rasping in her head. There are no helicopters here, the ever-present helicopters, there is no engine roar passing by every other minute, no crackling radio systems like white noise in the background. No whining and moaning, no crying, no singing. No banging on pipes that are only randomly distributing water.
It should be peaceful. It's not.
The silence is so heavy now, weighing down on her, filling her head with a soundless ringing together with the memories of the sounds that occupied it constantly up until a mere hour ago. She puts her hands to her ears as if that could shut the feeling out, but it rather closes it in. She looks at her things, clothes and books and trinkets, sitting around as if nothing has changed, as if everything is fine and dandy and before it has time to escape she steps up to the crockery bowl from the farmer's market at Erythrocythea, snatches it up and hurls it at the floor.
...
Before the echo of the first shattering dies out the Doctor is in the doorway. He finds Rose with one hand in her hair and the other grasping for anything that can be thrown, preferably anything that would break but pillows and pencils aren't discriminated against. He evaluates the situation hanging on to the doorframe, then continues into the room and catches a notebook heading for his face.
"Rose?" he starts carefully, but isn't heard over the racket and Rose's angry growls so he repeats himself, louder, and grasps for her arm. "Rose! Stop it!"
The sudden touch makes her look at him as if for the first time, and for a moment she looks as unbelieving as at their encounter in Wrong London. Then she jerks loose.
"Leave me alone!"
The words stab at him and he slowly retracts his hand. There is a momentary standoff and the Doctor doesn't know if it means winning or losing or if it's the right or wrong thing to do, but after a few silent seconds he turns, and leaves.
Rose doesn't want to be left alone. Alone is the last thing of all things she wants to be right now. But she doesn't know what else to scream when the sight of him, right there, in the flesh, when so many nights and days have been pierced by the flickering wish for it, when that sight feels less real than those imagined.
And he leaves, and it's quiet again, and deflated she walks over to the bed, sits down and cries.
...
The Doctor is rubbish at forcing himself to do things he doesn't want to do. Rose said to leave her alone and he tries very hard for several minutes, walking up and down the hallway outside her room (leaving her alone is one thing, leaving her proximity is another and just out of the question), restlessly snapping his fingers, but finally his feet stop in front of her door and won't continue moving. He knocks lightly, symbolically waits for an answer and enters.
Rose is sitting on the bed, unabashedly crying into a blanket and the sight wrings his insides. He comes over to gently sink down next to her, scooting as close as possible since there is obviously no other space worth occupying and lightly places his arm around her shoulders.
She doesn't pull away. For a while he's afraid to move, should it alert her to his presence and make her. But then she leans into him and he's washed over with relief, just barely restraining himself from violently throwing both arms around her and opting for discreetly inhaling the scent of her hair instead. Yes, it's been a while since it mingled with the flowery shampoos she likes, but it still holds very much of her and he starts to realise that five days of being nowhere near Rose is five days he's been without small but vital things like the scent of her hair and the sound of her breathing and that five days is enough to miss someone more than he would care to think about.
Rose lets her hands fall into her lap with the blanket and fights to get words out in between sobs.
"I... thought I'd... never... see you again", she croaks and the Doctor feels a bit like crying himself.
"I'm sorry", he whispers.
"I hate you", she continues, mumbling into the lapel of his jacket, and to this he doesn't have an answer.
They stay unmoving until the tears subside. When Rose sits up, scratches at the salt on her cheeks and speaks again she sounds weak and defeated.
"I want to go home."
She doesn't motion to get up. A part of her – a big part, an intense and loudly screaming part wants to stay here, with the Doctor so close she can feel the air around her face swirl from his breaths. The other part – the part that spoke just then, however is convinced that the only place where she will not go completely round the bend right now is home. She wants to get away, she wants to be somewhere familiar, somewhere safe. Frankly, she wants her mum.
"Of course." The Doctor echoes her tone. He doesn't motion to get up, either, until he realises that fulfilling her wish means he'll have to, and then his arm reluctantly slides off, brushing down her back before he stands and leaves for the control room.