"So why did you really bring me here?" she asked him after breakfast was finished, taking another sip of mimosa. It was fizzier than she expected, but pleasantly so. Like everything else about this day so far, it was light and sweet.
Naturally, she couldn't help but be a little uneasy.
He laughed. "I really brought you here just because I could. I haven't been here in many years myself, and it's a beautiful day. I suppose the sunshine put me in a good mood. I'll be sure to carefully monitor that in the future," he said wryly.
"No, sorry, I didn't mean it like that. It's just...well, you know. This is all so...different. Y'know, from laying out ground rules and drunken shagging in the library and baking mary jane cakes and...yeah," she faltered, suddenly having difficulty finding the words she needed. "I...I've really enjoyed this. Getting to know you. Getting closer to you. Thank you for bringing me here...I love it."
She felt the flush creep across her chest and face again as she said this, realising how her proclamation must've sounded out loud to him. When she mustered the courage to lift her gaze to meet his, he was gazing at her with a fierce intensity and yet another inscrutable expression.
"Doctor, what is it?" she asked him uneasily.
"I have a confession to make," he said softly.
"Another one?" she couldn't help but ask.
To his credit, he chuckled softly. "Yes well...this morning I woke up with a sort of resolve. I don't sleep much...I just think. My mind, it races, it never stops moving, and I'm always thinking. A lot of those thoughts were about my past...how I cocked it up, mostly. But like you said...you can learn from those experiences, or not. And I decided something. About us...or about you, rather. And…" he stopped, his breath suddenly hitching in his chest. Whatever resolve he'd mentioned having, it looked like he was about to lose it now. His lips were trembling.
She thought he might be on the verge of crying, but she didn't dare ask him for fear of harming his ego.
"Doctor...what is it?" she repeated her question, her uncertainty growing. "You can tell me."
"Rose...Alba...I...I never…oh bollocks. I don't even know where to start. I don't want to say what I'm about to say, that's why it's so hard. I'm afraid of what you'll do, that you might walk away once I say it, and I don't honestly know if I could bear that," he said bitterly.
She peered back at him curiously. "Now what's this, you afraid of me? I told you last night...we're in this together now. You don't have to go at it alone, because I'm going to help you. So no worries about me walking away, because I won't. So say what you need to say," she said, unsure of herself even as the words left her lips. Where had all this sympathy and loyalty to a mad man come from? She was almost afraid to look inward and examine the answer there. Somewhere along the line, her own feelings about him had started to change. As hot and cold as he was, she couldn't help but think that he was just broken, in need of someone with the patience to help him fix himself. One way or another, it looked like it was going to be her. Rather than fight against it, she would do what was her nature-try to help him. And who knew? Maybe along the way, he'd even help fix her.
He reached out and took her hand, twining his fingers through her own before he began speaking softly. "Never in a million years did I imagine things turning out this way. When I went to the slave exchange, I was desperate to find a woman I could mold into a passable wife, figuring I'd have to use money as a motivator. I didn't want her to have to know the why or how or any of that. When I started the process, everything with Harry and Rani wasn't as complicated.. I didn't think it'd take more than a year to carry the whole thing off. And then things changed. Lots of things. For instance...I never anticipated I'd start falling for the girl."
Alba nearly dropped her champagne glass. "Wait, what?" she stammered, sure she couldn't have heard him right.
"Last night, you told me you'd do whatever you had to to help stop Harry and Rani from taking the company and commercially producing the vortex manipulator. And I told you then that I didn't deserve you and you hushed me up. But the thing is...I don't deserve you, I really don't, and I know that, even if you don't. And after I spent the rest of the night thinking about it, and about how I felt about you, I realised that I couldn't do it to you. Force you into a sham marriage, into mothering or having a baby you'd have to leave behind, into throwing away years of your life on another planet, against your will...with someone you don't love. I'm a thousand times worse than Jimmy Stone, maybe for different reasons, but still...you deserve better. So if you want to walk away from this all right now...I'll make sure you get home to your mother, and that the two of you are taken care of regardless. I just want you to have a good life. I think you deserve that, even if you don't believe it yourself. There's a kindness in your heart...I don't want to be the monster that takes that away from you," he whispered, cupping her face in his hand.
A dozen different feelings welled up inside of her at the conclusion of his 'confession'. Confession. Fuck, talk about an understatement. She felt like she'd been run over by a lorry full of lead weights!
"Why did you do all this then...bring me here to this place...if you were just going to set me free?" she asked him, at a loss for anything else to say. She still couldn't believe that he was just letting her go. There was absolutely no way it was that simple, and not with saying he'd take care of her and her mum, either.
"To show you what it could be like if you decided to stay. On your own accord, of course. But I won't force you to stay any longer, or be a part of this business regarding my family's stupid legacy. Of course I want you to stay, however you can go home whenever you like. But if you decided to stay, Rose...I promise I would spend every day showing you how wonderful you are. I could show you the stars, take you to visit that romantic old Earth you longed to see. If you stayed with me, you'd never had to want for anything, and I wouldn't let you."
"My mum," she answered almost immediately. "I'd want for my mum. She's on another world. Even if I wanted to stay...how could I?" she asked him sadly.
"If your mum weren't a part of the equation...what would you say then?" he asked her.
She felt her stomach go cold. 'What are you implying?"
He sighed, pulling at his face. "Allow me to...rephrase. Because I'm not implying anything, I promise. I said that rather poorly. Take your mum out of the equation-pretend, I mean. If she weren't a factor, if Harry and Rani weren't a concern, if this was only about us...would you want to stay here? With me? Cards on the table, girl."
She realised then that he was trying to ask her how she felt about him without using certain words. This conversation had rapidly gone a direction she hadn't anticipated, and she realized that she wasn't really ready to confront her own growing feelings for him. She was also blushing so hard they could probably see it from space, she thought, but that was besides the point. If she stayed silent for too long, she'd risk offending him probably beyond repair. She was paralysed by fear: of her own feelings, of this strange mad man, of saying the wrong thing.
"I know you want an answer Doctor, and I wish I could give you one. But you haven't let me in enough to know yet if I could spend my forever with you. You drugged me-don't give me that look, it wasn't like it could've been anyone else besides you. You made me doubt myself...and I can't trust you," she said, and she saw his shoulders slump when she said this. Hastily, she forced him to look at her, tilting her face so that they were nearly touching. "I didn't tell you we were in it together for nothing, though. If you keep opening up to me like you have been, if you can earn my trust...well, I'm yours," she said softly, nuzzling against him. She hadn't realized the words were true until she'd spoken them out loud, but the realisation left her feeling slightly uncomfortable. He was a psychopath...but she still had some intense, unnameable feelings for him. Loving him meant potentially losing control to someone who was hardly in control himself. Given her past history, it hardly seemed like a good idea. "Besides...I suppose I literally have all the time in the world to make up my mind about it, yeah?"
"Does that...does that mean you want to stay?" he asked her, swallowing hard.
"I suppose so...for now," she said. "But if I stay, I'd have a few conditions. For instance...I'd want to see my mum. Sooner rather than later, so I could see that she's okay with my own eyes, and she could see me. I miss her so much...and there's so much I have to say to her."
"But you can't," he said flatly.
"What do you mean I can't? You just told me I could go free. You'll let me go free, but you won't let me go visit my mum?" she said, her voice rising with confusion and distress.
"No, it's not that...I mean you can't tell her. About any of this. Gallifrey, time travel, me...none of it. Besides the fact she'll think you're potty, we can't risk corrupting the timelines. You've traveled into the future, you have knowledge of it. You can bring that knowledge with you to the past...but you can't share it. You can't do anything that would possibly change the course of time. And well...that's the other thing. If you go...you'll have to forget me and Jack. Everything that's happened since we met in the slave exchange. I've shared too much with you...Jack shared too much. I couldn't knowingly send you back to your time with just a promise not to whisper of a thing you've seen. You're only human...you'd have to tell someone. And I can't risk that. So you are free to go...but I will have to wipe all your memories of the time we've spent together when you do."
She gaped at him. "You can't possibly be serious," she said, though she knew he absolutely was. Even as he had been saying the words, she realised the truth behind them. In a similar position, she probably would've felt the same way. Another thought occurred to her. "How far into the future are we, anyway?"
"Into your future?" he asked hesitantly. "A thousand years, give or take…"
"A thousand years?" she cried, incredulous. "A thousand years? Oh my God...my mum's already dead anyway. This whole time I've been here with you, and she's been dead..."
"You can't look at it like that," he told her gently. "In this time, our time...yes, she's gone. But she's living a perfectly happy life in her own time, in New London. I've seen to that-I had her moved from the Powell Estate. I arranged a means for her to anonymously come into a significant amount of money, so she wouldn't be suspicious. Your mother is taken care of, Rose, I've seen to that, as I promised I would. I know I've not always been forthcoming with you, but I am a man of my word. If I make a promise, I keep it."
"How can you say she's living a perfectly happy life? You think any parent at all could do that, not knowing what had happened to their only child, and believing probably the worst happened to them? she asked him angrily. "What is wrong with you?"
"You're right, I'm sorry...poor choice of words, again. I don't know that your mum is happy, she probably isn't really. I'd like to think she's as happy as she could be under the circumstances, though. She's in a better, safer place than she was before. She doesn't have to work-she can just garden and enjoy the flowers and relax and do whatever she likes. You can go be with her, and you'll both be safe and cared for and you'll never have to work again. But you can't remember me," he said, and she could see the pure agony in his eyes as he said it. Whatever his feelings for her were, they were genuine, and it hit her like a suckerpunch to the gut.
"You're really going to make me choose between the two of you?" she asked him again, unbelieving of what was happening. Now she almost wondered if she was stuck in some sort of surreal nightmare.
"If the choice were cut and dry, you would've made it already, the second I told you you were free to go. Yet you're still sitting here...holding my hand," he said softly. She looked down, and saw that he was right-their hands were still clasped tightly together, fingers entwined.
"So I am," she said softly, biting her lip and trying not to meet his gaze. "What if...couldn't we just visit her? I mean, you and I pulled a charade off for Harry and Rani pretty well and I don't even know them. Fooling my own mother would have to be easier, yeah? If I had a good plan...would you take me to see her?"
"I'm listening," he replied, indicating she should continue.
"Well, I'm assuming I just disappeared without a trace, so far as New Earth is concerned. My mum has no idea that I went through the slave exchange. All I'm saying is...I ran away for a boy once, don't think it'd be too hard to convince her that I'd done it again. We can show up, I'll act very surprised and contrite that I've worried her, and ask didn't she get my postcards? She'll be angry sure, but she'll be so relieved she'll get over it. Especially if I show up to announce my engagement to the rich, handsome foreign man who's gotten me pregnant. Andrea's always wanted grandchildren."
Now it was his turn to look shocked. "But you're not, you're not…" he stammered.
"No, I'm not. Not yet, anyway. But we can work on that," she said, tilting her head to kiss him. When his mouth met hers in the middle, it was with both passion and relief that he kissed her. Wrapped up in each other's arms, they sank back down against the blanket and stretched out, pressed tight against each other and still locked at the lips. Lost in the moment, neither one of them noticed that up the mountain, interested and curious eyes were watching.
Waiting.
