7: The Doctor draws a picture
"What have you done to her!"
Every time Jackie passes, the Doctor recieves a slap.
"My little girl..."
Slap.
"I always knew you were up to no good!"
Slap.
"Bloody 'doctor'!"
Slap.
"Where did I leave the... oh, here it is."
Slap.
He doesn't mind. He deserves it. What he can't help flinching at is the sight of the hollow-eyed girl he brought to the door and who is now sitting quietly in the livingroom while her mother hovers around her. He wonders between abuses if all the fussing is ever going to come to an end and some actual comforting begin. He needs for someone to do what he apparently can't, he needs to turn this over, needs Jackie to fix what he's... Slap.
Finally the woman settles down with the tea and biscuits and leans in to put her arms around Rose, cooing nonsensical words.
Rose gives in to the embrace. It's comforting; the hand stroking her, the familiar voice, the feeling of home. She can breathe.
"Rose, darlin', tell me what happened. Hm?"
Maybe she can speak. She tries.
"I got... sort of... stranded, on... in this place."
"What do you mean, stranded? How? Where?" Jackie withdraws a bit to look Rose in the face, smoothing her hair. "For how long?"
"A while... about... a couple of months", Rose mumbles and winces.
Jackie slowly freezes, inside and out. The hand that pats her daughter's head stills as she turns to stare at the despicable man who keeps sweeping her girl away on dangerous alien journeys and now returns her looking like hardship incarnate – she's tired, she's broken, she's sad and it was obvious from the moment they showed up at the door something terrible's happened. She wasn't prepared to imagine this, though – he always gave the impression to have at least the intention of keeping Rose safe. With each word Jackie's voice pitches up until it's a loosely restrained shriek.
"Do you mean to tell me, that you left my daughter all alone on some horrible planet, for months?"
The hairs in the back of the Doctor's neck stand up.
'No I didn't.'
'It wasn't some horrible planet, it was Earth.'
'On the brink of civil war, yeah. She did really well.'
'It wasn't me! It was her alter ego's fault!'
'I didn't mean to...'
'Yes.'
"Yes."
The mother bear flashes in Jackie's eyes. "Get out." She stands up and starts ushering him towards the front door with randomly directed slaps. "Get out of my house!" He awkwardly moves sideways, trying to not walk into things while keeping his eyes on Her, slipping out of view as he is violently removed from her presence. The moment before the architecture finally cuts them off she suddenly looks up, at him, and he can't read the expression on her face. With a final push from Jackie he is out the door with words like "And don't you dare show your face around here ever again!" ringing in his ears as the door slams shut.
Jackie returns to the sofa, bracing herself for the story she knows she must now drag out of her little girl. She sinks down carefully, replaces her arms around Rose and pulls her into her embrace. After a beat of silence she can't help asking, since she is fundamentally curious of all things: "What do you reckon he'll do now?"
Rose weakly shrugs. "Suppose he'll go back to the Tardis, roam around for a bit... Run off to the far side of the galaxy."
"Well, he's going to have to find someone else's daughter to haul off into god-knows-where 'cause I ain't never letting him near you again."
"It's what he does." The tears welling in Rose's eyes have an unclear origin. "He'll disappear, and he'll find someone else."
The Doctor will, uncharacteristically and most certainly, do nothing of the sort. Leaning back on the door of the Tardis he knows as much. The box is parked out of sight but close to the Tyler residence and this is where it will stay for as long as it takes – he will not risk miscalculating and miss time, return too late, or in the wrong place, having her think he's done it again. He'll sit around, stalk the streets, find some latent potential for patience. He's never had any, that he can think of, but he'll dig some up from the depths of forgotten parts of his soul if he must because waiting for Rose is not optional.
He does a slow lap around the room, fingers sliding along the walls. It's empty here. Silent. More so than usual when not having a companion aboard – as if the current one has been making more noise, taking up more space, leaving a deeper impression. Words jumble in his head, something about a house not being a home without a cat. It would be unfair to compare Rose to a cat – well, depending on the typ of cat, of course, it could be an Earth Housecat of no use to anyone but old ladies, or a Sprinter-cat, they run a very efficient mail delivery system on Erythrocythea; there are Morphing-cats in certain parts of the universe, incredibly graceful and intelligent, Rose would probably be one of those... Where was he? Oh yes, the piercing absence of his travel companion. His friend. His best pal, his- Well, his Reason, really, if one must be painfully honest and now she's missing and despairing and he doesn't know what to do with the helplessness. For a brief moment he considers wallowing in self-pity, but decides against such an honest acknowledgement of his feelings. He takes to occupy himself best he can instead, filling his head with trivial murmur that keeps being broken through by icy thoughts.
Wait and see, wait and see, wait and see.
(He broke her.)
Mend this circuit, mend this circuit, mend this circuit.
(She's never coming back.)
Watch the sharp edge, watch the sharp edge, watch the sharp edge.
(She doesn't like him anymore.)
Fetch a band-aid, fetch a band-aid, fetch a band-aid.
(Her hand holding his hand. Her eyes smiling at his eyes. Her lips softly blowing at the little cut on the side of his palm before her fingers gently curve the adhesive around it. A shiver.)
He stands in the small infirmary, staring at the droplet of blood making its way down his hand, towards his wrist, as if he's forgotten how to treat himself for this injury.
Not as icy, that last one. More...
The Doctor draws a shaky breath and starts rummaging through a drawer, fishes out a piece of material that does for dabbing the cut and tries hard to return to the trivial murmur.
He wanders around his ship for the remainder of the day, and there is a tangible absence of something wherever he goes. Console room – too still. Kitchen – too empty. Library – too quiet. Anywhere Rose has set her foot screams of want. The only place where he cannot possibly miss her, where her presence hasn't made an imprint, where his mind shouldn't be able to place the image of her, is his own bedroom. So that's where he goes, once he's been everywhere else and it's all the same; glimpses of how she walks down the hallway, sits on that chair painting her toenails, calls about tea from the dining room, pushes him off the sofa.
He doesn't come in here much. No need. He hasn't got many things to poke around with and when he does sleep it may as well be in the lounge chair in the den. The room is small and dark, air cooler than outside. He asks for the light to be turned up, and it rises to a warm glow cast over walls, shelf, chair, bed.
Oh. Bugger.
On the neatly made, colourless and simple bed – Rose's blue pillow. He threw it in there when he was too rattled after waking Other Rose up to return it, and hasn't thought of it since. Plump, embellished and colourful it stands out vibrantly to the pale surface of his sheets, like an exotic bird, malplacé in a mundane house, flown in through a window. Silly bird, gets in everywhere... Every nook and cranny. Waits for no invitation. Settles wherever it feels like and makes you all used to it and then it goes away and leaves you hanging for the chirpy singing that you didn't even know you needed and you never asked to form any attachments to birds and it's really being completely unfair.
The Doctor finds himself testing how much blue pillow he can ball up in his hands and realises it's crumpling the stiches of the embroidery in a reckless manner; he smooths it out and holds it thoughtfully to his chest instead. There is no one around and nothing better to do – he might as well lay down and be pathetic, so he does, curled up on his side, pillow in firm embrace. It smells a little bit of her.
He gives the wallowing in a fetal position a few minutes, but the projectile notebook he caught earlier and pocketed is digging into his ribs; he sits and sets the pillow aside to pull out the offending stationery.
It's a simple, spiral-bound, A5 unlined notebook, seventy pages of ninety grams chlorine-free. He flicks through it and it's empty, waiting in vain for shopping lists and diary entrances and doodles and whatever it is that Roses put in notebooks. Drawings maybe. Like the one he found crumpled up on the floor in her room a week and a half ago. It was quite good (he knows for sure because he's studied it in minute detail several times since); confident lines, in proportion, expressive. He was surprised that she hasn't been doing more of the sorts. She should. She should draw more pictures of things. Of herself. And him. And him and herself. Him and her, hand in hand, walking through a grassy meadow with a happy bunny skipping ahead of them because that's the sort of thing that would place that particular giggly squint on her face that's a little bit... who knows, it's sort of... Oh, good, he knew he had a pencil in here somewhere. Like this, it makes her eyebrows shoot up like that, while her mouth just seems ready to break out into laughter at any moment.
The hair comes out looking a little ruffled. That's alright, it's never in much order anyway. It can be attributed to the breeze across the meadow.
For a walk in the sun she would probably wear her dungarees.
Feet are tricky. They can be obscured by the grass. And some daffodils.
Their hands are the important thing. They should be clasped together in a steady grip, keeping anyone from running too far ahead. He's not getting them right, the lines of the fingers seem to have a mind of their own and keep wandering off. He gives in and allows the fingers to intertwine, in a way he's pretty sure they usually don't do. But it's only a drawing. More a representation of wishful thinking than reality.
He thinks a while before choosing to draw himself in his current size and shape, long coat flapping behind. Free hand in pocket, outline of a head. He doesn't bother to put a face below the hair standing on end; leaves it void of the silly grin of giddy contentment he knows it would be sporting in this thought-up situation and finishes up with the bunny instead.
The bunny looks happy. Rose looks happy. The daffodils are swaying in the grass. The image places a very thin blanket of comfort over the cold, sharp thoughts that have been jabbing his mind over the last day, as if the embodiment of the idea of Rose feeling better is enough to raise hopes. He runs a light finger along the lenght of her arm, resting over the hands with the interlaced fingers, and stands to find a good spot to hang it up.