Conversation #3

Rose wanted to scream. She'd bribed Cordelia, the head of Torchwood Two, to arrange the Doctor's schedule so that he would be home today, probably trying to produce his orime, a hybrid between an orange and a lime, instead of accompanying them on their mission. So far, the orime was just a branch of limes grafted on an orange tree, but he was hopeful. Cordelia had tried to explain once how Torchwood existed in the universe where the Doctor had not existed until recently, but Rose had stopped following when paradoxes entered into the explanation. Then he had tried to explain it again, using his limes as props, and she thought she grasped it, in that vague way she understood things when she didn't think too hard about them.

Cordelia had held up her end of the bargain, for which Rose promised to trudge through a month's worth of build-up paperwork, but that stupid Mohindar just couldn't keep his mouth shut, going on about all the poison darts and crossbows he would be bringing on their expedition to track the Veshian. He'd even asked the Doctor about his favorite alien tranquilizer, ignoring Rose's frantic gestures that he shut up right this instant.

At home, she had tried to downplay the expedition to the Doctor, making it out like they did this sort of thing all the time and would probably have the whole thing wrapped up in a quarter of an hour and wasn't it prime growing season for oranges right now? She thought he had taken the bait when he started babbling about DNA and RNA and other assorted letters, but here he was, armed with his cobbled-together sonic screwdriver and a pail containing a sloshing, foul-smelling goo.

"Brilliant!" Mohindar exclaimed when the Doctor showed up, pail upraised in one hand like an offering. "Is this it, then? The Deluxe Three C Captivator?" He rubbed his hands together and gazed intently at the pail.

"Yep!" the Doctor replied happily, "seasoned just this morning with a dead herring. It's the third C, you know, in the original Entinese. The effects of dead herring on alien physiology is quite amazing. It-"

"Doctor!" Rose interrupted. "Is that a rotting fish you're carrying around? In my office??" She glared.

"Er, well…" He cast a sidelong glance at Mohindar, but no help was to come from that quarter. The other man backed away slowly, hands help up in the air in a gesture of surrender.

"Mate, you're on your own here. Rose has a thing about her office. Last time I brought in a leaky alien brain, she…" His mahogany skin turned ashen as his voice trailed off. "Right. I'll be out. Somewhere else."

The Doctor put on his winningest face and widened his eyes. "Rose, it's just part of a herring, and it's not rotting." He took a peek into the pail. "Much."

For half a second, she considered scolding him for the herring; she could be a right bitch on the subject of her office, too, as Mohindar knew all too well. But she changed her mind and came around to perch at the edge of her desk. "The herring's fine," she said with a sigh.

He brightened.

"Well, it's not, but… just leave it with Mohindar on your way out. I'll see you at home, yeah?" She forced her voice to stay light and prayed that he would catch on. Please don't make me explain, she thought fervently. Please. I can't do this, not here.

The smile slid from his face. "Leave it with…?" His eyebrows were furrowed beneath his glasses. "But I'm coming with you." He sat down beside her and prodded her gently with his elbow. "You can't keep all the fun for yourself, Rose. I haven't seen a Veshian in ages, and I've never tried homemade Deluxe Triple C Captivator before. I really think I nailed it with the dead herring."

Rose winced. "Listen, you're still adjusting to this place…" She nodded. "To your new body and everything. Why don't you sit this one out, and we'll tell you all about it when we're done?" Her attempt at cheeriness faded quickly under his puzzled expression.

"Are you saying," he began slowly, "that you don't want me to come along? Is it the sonic screwdriver? I've only programmed a thousand of its functions so far, but I've got all the basics."

She shook her head. "No, it's not that. It's…" She cast about, creating and rejecting a dozen lies in her head, trying to think of anything, anything, that would keep him here. But looking at his downcast face, brown just peeping out under his lowered eyelids, her brain failed her, and her heart foundered. She steeled her voice and looked away. "I just, I don't want you to go, okay? Nothing personal. But you're new here, and we don't take rookies out on missions."

He blinked. "Rookies?" He barked a half-hearted laugh. "Rose, I'm the one who first took you alien-tracking. I'm pretty sure I haven't been a rookie for, oooh, seven hundred years or so."

She tangled her fingers in a knot on her lap and avoided meeting his eyes. "But we have procedure here, Doctor. Rules. You remember them?"

His laugh was shocked this time, incredulous. "Rose Tyler is lecturing me about rules? Guess we really are in a parallel universe." Out of the corner of her eye, she could see him waiting expectantly for her to respond to his quip. "Come on, really, what is it? You can tell me anything, you know that."

"You're not going, and that's final," she muttered. She got up to leave, to return to her desk, but he caught her by the wrist.

"If I didn't know better, I'd say you were being stupid," he said. She opened her mouth to protest angrily, but he continued. "But I do know better. Rose, you've been doing this ever since I started working with Torchwood." He grimaced, like the words had a bad taste. She had convinced him it was for the good of humanity, but the very name set off a bad series of recollections for both of them. "I can't do much good from the sidelines. That's not who I am."

She tugged her hand, but he held tight. "What more do you want me to say? You're not going." She bit off each word and tugged again. "Now go home, I have work to do."

He shook his head. "I'm not leaving here until you tell me what's wrong!" Anyone else would have wilted beneath that iron gaze, but Rose had been on the receiving end of it too many times. To the contrary, it just incited her to fight back.

"Oh, so now you stay?!" she exclaimed. "Can't get you to talk about anything for ages, and suddenly you won't let go?"

"That's right, I was wrong!" His eyes were blazing. "You were right, I was wrong. Yeah, I was scared, but you helped me through it, Rose. Now please let me do the same for you!"

She could have gone on shouting for ages, but his unrelenting compassion broke her. The man wielded his decency like a weapon, sometimes. Worst of all, he was right, and they both knew it. "There's nothing you can do." Her voice cracked. "It's bad enough around the house. I see you holding a chef's knife, and it's all I can do not to run in and snatch it away. You're all out of regenerations, Doctor. The aging I can handle because it's far away, but…" She shook her head, defeated.

He laid a warm hand on her shoulder. "Rose," he said gently. "Rose, look at me."

Reluctantly, she turned her head up. The expression on his face almost broke her heart, so brimming was it with understanding and sympathy. "I know what you're feeling." He took his hand from her shoulder and stroked her hair. She bit her lip to keep from crying. "You humans live like mayflies, all buzzing and zipping around and a lot of talk about mating. You buzz and you zip… and then you're gone. No matter how many people I've saved, I can never forget how many have also died because of what I've done. Their faces, their names, all up here." With his other hand, he tapped his temple.

"How do you do it?" she whispered. "I can't even take you on a routine tracking mission without envisioning your body, torn and bleeding…" Her voice didn't just crack, it shattered into a million pieces as silent tears coursed down her face. "It's all we have, this one chance."

"And you're going to leave me at home with the cleaning?"

She looked up and through her tears saw a faint grin dancing around the corners of his lips. "Not you," she muttered, "last time you did the wash, everything came out pink. Don't know how you did that; there wasn't any red in the pile." She sighed. "I know, I know. Last time, you were trying to protect me from all the bad things, and now I'm doing the same to you. Am I a filthy hypocrite or what?"

He grinned lopsidedly. "Course you're not." He paused. "Well, maybe a little."

"Just a bit."

"But hardly at all."

She mustered up a smile of her own, and he beamed. "There we are!" A long, silent look passed between them. "You're my savior, Rose," he said softly. "I was right to leave me with you. All that buzzing and zipping when I regenerated, it would have ripped me apart inside if not for you."

She turned her head slightly to kiss the palm of his hand. "All right, fine," she relented. How was she supposed to argue with someone who called her his savior? It wasn't fair fighting. "But you have to be careful, okay?" She scooted over a bit and wrapped her arms around his waist, then buried her face in chest. "Because you're my mayfly, and I want you zipping and buzzing around until you're a shriveled old man. You got that?"

"Yes ma'am," he said softly into her hair.

They snuggled for a moment. Then Rose lifted her head away and sniffed the air. "Guess you can come along, as long as you get that rotting fish out of my office, now."

He jumped down and grabbed the pail by its hand. "Aye-aye!" he chirped, flashing a crisp salute. He was gone in a second, leaving Rose to sigh and shake her head and wipe the dampness from her cheeks. If he died out there, she promised silently, she was going to kill him.