8: The doctor takes an inventory
It takes four days.
Four excruciatingly long days, filled with wandering around, reading the papers (all of them, including the Sun in some flagillant gesture of self-punishment), cleaning hard-to-reach spots in the Tardis, and... other things. In the heart of night, when darkness falls over the streets and silence becomes more profound: tearing through sheet after sheet of paper, wearing down his no. 2 to a stump, filling the walls around his bed with faces, places, memories, wishes. Always the same face, always the same wish for nice, happy, cheery, exciting things that lit the face up and make it smile at the vacant spot representing his own irrelevant mug.
Four days of killing time and staving off thinking before his phone rings.
He rips it out of his pocket so fast it flies out of his hand and bounces off his fingers a few times before he reels it in, only to miss the answer button and press auto-destruct by mistake. He lets out a panicked squeek and jabs the buttons until the impending phone-doom is neutralized and he can pick up. Straightening, holding the phone to his ear and putting the other hand casually on his hip he manages to recompose but forgets to actually say something. There are a few seconds of silence on each end before a voice breaks through.
"Hello? Doctor?"
Not the voice he was expecting. Eyebrows shoot up, he blurts: "Jackie?"
"No, it's Father Christmas. Listen..."
Another few seconds of silence, during which he holds his breath to keep from saying anything stupid. On the other end Jackie sighs heavily before continuing.
"You need to come."
"Really?" Blurting again. "I mean, yes! Of course. Now?" His feet are already on their way out, he pivots in his track, then staggers forward again. "Should I... bring anything?"
He can practically hear Jackie rolling her eyes. "How about a shovel for yourself?" Then she resigns. "I don't know what to do. She won't go to the doctor..."
"You didn't send her to the right o-"
"Shut up! Like I said, I don't know what to do. I'm not getting through. God knows I try... But she won't talk to me and I think she needs something other than her mum, hard as that might sound, I know. But you got to know when it's time to give up and let someone else handle the problem, don't you, Doctor. My point is, before she wakes up screaming in the middle of the night she calls for someone, and it ain't me."
She's reluctant to say it, but has to.
"It's you."
Something distracts her. "Hold on, there's someone at the door."
When Jackie opens to the frantic knocker it's the Doctor panting on her doorstep. She rolls her eyes again, lifting the phone back to her ear. "Never mind." She clicks it off meaningly and lets him in. "Where you just standing out there all along?"
"No, I... Whe... Jus..."
She doesn't bother to listen. "Rose! He's here."
Rose peeks out of the bedroom, mutters something about that being quick and withdraws. She comes out with a bag slung over her shoulder, glides past them blowing a kiss in her mother's general direction and exits without further ceremony.
Jackie may be blonde but she ain't blind. Watching the man watching the girl, as she breezes past him and out the door without so much as a word, a glance or a kick in the groin, most of the agitation towards the world's worst doctor melts away in favour of a deep pang of sympathy. Because that look on any face, human or alien, can only mean a heart breaking.
She wonders if it's worse when you've got two.
...
Rose hangs back in the console room. She fidgets with the hem of her shirt, shifts her weight between her feet. The Doctor closes the door after himself and wonders what he's supposed to do now. Chit-chat? ...No, probably not.
"So." He claps his hands together. "I finally got that wrench out of the ventilation shaft in the cupboard."
Oh. There he goes anyway.
"Still not sure how it got in there in the first place. I think at some point in time there might have been a rat."
It's as if he can't stop himself.
"I'll have you know rats are very intelligent creatures. But one can't help but wonder what they would do with a wrench. Especially if it's just the one little beastie. I mean, they don't have thumbs..."
Why? For the love of Tellus, why are these words leaving his mouth?
"Thumbs mostly prove to be useful", and at this he takes an interest in his thumbs, "but every once in a while you come across a situation where a sixth parallel phalange would have-"
Rose, in the spirit of mercy or boredom or something, interjects.
"So, er... What have you been doing?"
His eyebrows soar while his lips search for the proper formation of 'w'.
"W... Well... I've... been... reading the paper... And-umm..." He frowns and thinks about it. "Ooh! I took a stroll through Camden-"
Rose shakes her head, scrunching her face up. "Wait, what?" She stares at him for a disbelieving second. "You've been staying here? Here-here?" Her finger pointing to the ground, the street, the Earth, defines 'here'.
The Doctor looks at her, and she nearly buckles under the intensity of his expression. His eyes rarely stop smiling to become the bottomless wells now directed at her, looking into her, searching to swallow her and for a dizzying second she doesn't recognize him. His voice, breathless: "I wouldn't leave you, Rose."
And she knows this, she knows as much as she knows him that he wouldn't, not on purpose, not for his life would he intentionally leave her
(stranded in a strange place to fend for herself, alone in the middle of a raging storm, deserted surrounded by destruction-)
for very long while she was resting at Jackie's and she wants to tell him that's not it, that's not the thing, there is something else but the words won't come. There is something in the way of her even thinking, she feels so tired and so very stuck.
The silence isn't bad anymore. It has settled in her and stopped screaming, allowing her to hear the little sounds. First Jackie's voice in the other room, traffic. Then water running through the pipes in the building. Now, the whisper of air through the Doctor's nose when he breathes as if he's upset.
A sudden ball of yarn expands in her chest, just underneath her xiphoid (why certain meaningless pieces of knowledge just stick, she'll never know). It fills something out, warms something up. She knows that ball of yarn. It's what is supposed to be living in her, has been ever since she came aboard this strange place for the first time and what gives that soft feeling sometimes (oftentimes, all the time) and it's been compressed into something hard and gray for so long. She's missed it. Now it softens her enough to allow her to look the Doctor in those eyes of dark, and smile. Not widely, but sincerely. The yarn is rewarded with the light returning to the wells and expands a bit further. A slight feeling of relief that there is still something she recognises inside of her lifts Rose. That, and the assurance that the Doctor is there, has been there, still wants to be there.
Still wants her to be there.
"I should..." she mumbles, motioning limply towards the inside of the ship, tugging on her bag. The Doctor nods encouragingly. But she stays, searching to define the uncomfortable feeling the prospect of installing herself in her room is creating. It takes a few moments to find it, but then it's clear:
"I don't want to be alone."
...
The Doctor sits on Rose's bed and listens to the creation of a small rainforest in her bathroom. When monsoon season subsides she exits in a heavy mist, wrapped in towels and he does a double-take as he catches sight of her naked feet, which he then follows with great interest as she pitty-pats across the floor in search for different clothing items. With all the time that has passed, he still feels that need to count her fingers and toes. Preferably with her standing still, or rather sitting on the bed so he could hold her feet; it would make counting easier.
"Rose, could you just..."
"What?" She looks up at him from where she's bent over an odd number of socks, trying to find two that match. That's a big towel she's wearing. He supposes it's a good thing.
"Just stand still for a second, will you?" He jumps off the bed and approaches her, eyes still on her feet. She straightens and looks down, following his stare.
"What is it?" She begins to wonder if she should worry about something.
"Nothing." The Doctor waves dismissingly as he crouches down in front of her. She tenses when he places his hands lightly on her feet, sliding them down to align his fingers with her toes. It lasts only moments but his touch leaves warm traces on her skin, cooling from the moisture meeting air. He seems to contemplate his fingertips on the tips of her toes, then briefly looks up at her face before reaching for her hands. She drops the socks as he stands up with her hands in his, turning them up and regarding them intently. He carefully runs his thumbs along the hollow of her palms. As much as she doesn't want him to stop, she frowns. "Something wrong?" she asks, and with this he lets go and looks up, taking a step back and grinning widely, all solemnity forgotten.
"Nope. Just checking you've still got all fingers and toes. And you do. Ten fingers, ten toes. Perfect."
For a second the ball of yarn is swelling out of her chest, out of her mouth, but not being good with words it only states: "You're very weird."
Rose disappears into the fading mist, comes back out dressed in old sweatpants, t-shirt and mismatched socks and unceremoniously plops down on the bed. She's asleep on top of the covers before the Doctor has time to ask if she wants him to turn the lights down and he wonders if it would be considered creepy or considerate to stay and stare at her until she wakes up. He'd very much like to wallow in the feeling of calm contentment the sight of her passed-out figure brings, as a contrast to the wallowing in other feelings he's been doing so much of lately. It's not cold and sharp, it's warm. Nice and warm. Inside his chest, wadding him in something soft.
(It almost feels... fluffy.)
He opts for a compromise and stays until he's certain Rose is deep in slumber, soft breaths filling his ears in a soothing rythm.
(Fluffy like a happy bunny.)
Then, turning out the lights and hanging on to the doorframe, he considers the small things. The absence of a look, as opposed to the presence of one. The tone of a voice. And that tiny smile that told him she was still with him. Rose is not a small thing, but she makes all the difference, and sometimes (oftentimes, all the time) she does it with the small things.
He looks at his hands, running his thumbs across the tips of his fingers that still remember resting on Rose's charming toes. When he leaves, after sending her a last last look and a smile unconciously different from the toothy grins she gets when she's awake, he leaves the door open a crack.