Enjoy! This sort of veered from what I originally had planned... *shakes fist at plot bunnies* Long chapter!
Also: Billie has been seen filming for the DW 50th special, with David. Ahahaha... my inner fangirl is dying with happiness overload.
One particular scene here is a reference to a film in which Steve Carell stars (as main lead) ...because it was funny and I felt like it. xD
Rose let her keys clatter to the glass-topped sideboard with a sigh. She felt tired,and bone-weary - as if not even weeks of sleep could do her good. And as for immersing herself in work...well it wasn't the mindless 9-to-5 she had short of two years ago, but it didn't help.
She dropped her heavy, book-laden bag to the floor and slumped on the large sofa. Her mother had been wrong. Her mother didn't know what it was like to be with the Doctor. No, scratch that. What is what like to live with the Doctor. And to live in general. Not the endless day-to-day life everybody else had. How did they cope? Rise, work or school, eat, sleep and repeat. Like some twisted rinse cycle.
Goodness, now she was even beginning to sound like him.
She dragged one hand down her face in an emulation of just being damn tired of it all, probably smudging her make-up in the process. She didn't care any more. She just wanted to lay down her weary head and her battered heart and sleep for a very long time.
Just as her eyelids were drooping, her phone trilled in her bag, and the vibrations tickled her leg muscles. Was probably her mother. Ever since she'd been very clingy. Rose could kind of understand her reasoning and had even tried to sympathise with Jackie's maternal instincts, but after while she had grown irritated. Which, in all honesty, surprised her. Beforehand -when she was a naive young woman with empty hopes- she had lavished that.
Now she had got to that age. The age when children -that are no longer such- move on. Forget their childhood heroes. Or so some of her friends had said.
Her mobile ceased and the room became silent once it wasn't just your ordinary silence. It was silence that almost spoke of how she felt, inside. Not just empty, but bottomless. The walls were white, had been since she'd moved into this tiny flat and it was if she could lose herself in them. And she had done this quite a few times. And more noticeably now, she felt something unearthly when she looked at that wall. It wan't just the object so much, it was more like the colour affected her directly. Of course colour affected everybody and she remembered reading about it being so powerful that some people had colour synaesthesia as a result. It was also the colour of mourning in some areas.
The steady buzz of her phone once more made her roll her eyes. Rummaged through her bigger-on-the-inside bag, she found it and huffed when the screen showed her mum's beaming face. She might as well concede defeat now.
"Rose, where are you?" Her mum's voice was chipper as ever.
"M' at home. Just got in actually..."
"You don't sound happy, sweetheart. I said you shouldn't have moved out-"
"Mum-"
"Well, at least not so soon. I mean, what with- Anyway. I wish you'd come on over."
"To be honest, I'm really tired, Mum, I dunno..."
"Well I'm not surprised what with your job, sweetheart. I understand it's what you want."
"There was quite a bit of commotion today...Couple passed away."
There was a moment of awful silence and Jackie let out a nasal, weary sigh.
"Then just come over for a tea." Pause. "Please?"
And there it was. Defeat.
"Okay. Just lemme get changed and I'll be over at 6, okay?"
Rose got up and stretched. Maybe defeat was a good thing after all.
And if the Doctor came back, so what?
"Oh, bollocks!" Small flares bloomed and white-hot sparks spat at the Doctor as he made the wrong connection. Again.
He'd been trying to convince himself for the past day that the real reason he was just finding things to mend was so he didn't thing of her. Oh, and his furry little problem. Which actually hadn't been too bad.
Another reflex later and the Doctor had drawn back from the dusty console underside, wringing his burned fingers and hissing some more expletives, ones the TARDIS refused to translate. Not that anyone was actually here to listen to them or anything. Of course that didn't bother him.
More sparks, and in the back of his head, niggling.
Liar.
He protested indignantly. "I most certainly am not!"
Faint colours and shapes and concentric circles brushed his mind. Dark, worried purple blinded him in thick stripes, mixed in with an even darker orange radiating her distrust of him. And in the middle of it all, pure gold.
"I can't." The penny dropped. It had ever since he'd been attacked by that wretched creature. The TARDIS grumbled at him lowly, purple merging into red, creating a sickly, bright composition that hurt behind his eyes.
Her colours threw questions at him. Ones he'd asked him over and over now -and knew the answers to.
Why?
He opened his mouth to make an excuse. Then she reminded him what happened last time they played around with colour, so to speak.
All words and no talk.
The hues and everything else, his damnation and ninth self's nagging tone-it was too much.
"Alright!" He snapped at her, and was loud, but she was louder and brighter. "Ok. I'll go and see her." He hadn't admitted that he would talk to her, however. Somehow he felt he wasn't getting out of this easily, though.
The Doctor spun on his heel to get his coat when she grumbled at him, a mauve alert. "Oh, what now?"
After all these years of being bonded with his TARDIS, she was still very much her own being. And he couldn't always understand her. (And he had to stop blaming his blunders on that).
He frowned. The emotions she seemed to be evoking were not new to him. But he couldn't quite place it-
Ah. Self. Wait, as in him?
"What?"
The screen nearest to him twitched with a slight whir. He walked over to it and stared. The screen was blank.
"I-"
Ohhh. Did he really look that that? Apparently the Doctor had let his appearance go a little more than he thought. He didn't need a spotless mirror to see that he looked a state. His mop of hair really was a mop. Well, it was always a mop in the sense of it being a mess but it was unkempt in the 'just-got-out-of-bed' way. And not the sexy way. His skin was paler than normal and his facial hair -Rassilon, how did it get like that? He refrained from keeping a near-beard because of the pretence it could have - it could be next to godly on some planets but the lowest of the low on others. With the scraggly whiskers sprouting everywhere and lightly coloured with a hint of ginger, he looked a wreck.
But about nineteen minutes later he was freshly washed and shaved. His step was once of confidence as a jacket was put on and tie adjusted. He didn't feel ready, per se. But he did feel better.
"Allons-y..."
Jackie grimaced at her dish-pan hands as she finished drying the last tea-mug. Well, it was worth it for her daughter. The Doctor had offered to put some kind of newfangled machine that did her washing-up for her but she politely rejected.
She wiped down the sides and then walked in the living-room, where Rose was curled up on the sofa. A sudden thought struck her.
"Um, Rose?"
"Mmmm?"
The doorbell buzzed.
"I -oh, I'll just get that. Be with you in a tic."
"'K."
Jackie gingerly opened the door (now battered from various encounters that always seemed to happen in her flat) to a very familiar man.
"Hello, Jackie. Is Rose in?"
Jackie took the sight of him in. Suit and trousers, no fashion sense as usual. And there was something else.
"Well, yes, my daughter is here. But you're damned if you think you're gonna come in here lookin' like a hobo."
"I-what?" The look of pure confusion and his scrunched-up brow was almost cute.
"I mean, you, you numpty. I know this is London but even us lot look after our face."
The Doctor opened his mouth to talk, and then his frown deepened. His hand came up to cup his chin and met, not the smooth skin or even slight stubble that he would expect, but feathery hairs and bristle.
Hadn't he shaved all but of twenty minutes ago?
"Oh, I don't know. I'm sure Rose is used to things like this now." The Doctor was still gaping a bit. "Well, in you come then, you daft plum!" Stumped, the Doctor numbly followed Jackie into the airy flat.
Something in the air changed and Rose frowned a little as her mum and another figure came into the room. She didn't look up but stared ahead as not just the atmosphere, but almost time seemed to shimmer.
Well, that could only mean one thing.
"Well, his nibs is here." (Oh yes, of course not using his name would make it better.) A moment passed. "I'll leave you to. Be in my room."
Once the door had shut, the Doctor took swallowed and took a deep breath through his nose. Rose lowered her gaze to her lap where a heavy tome rested. She felt the sofa dip as the Time Lord sat down next to her. He wasn't even that far from her -was giving her respectful space- but they normally sat so close together, and not casually. Other day she was practically nestled in the cradle of his crossed legs as he read to her. His double heartbeat against her back had lulled her off to sleep in the end.
She looked at her book, the pages just blurred grey-scale now. The sofa creaked and the Doctor cool breath tickled her shoulder and neck as he leaned over to nose at her choice of reading.
"Ooh, old Stubbs? Rassilon, that was a scene when Georgey was working on 'Whistlejacket'. The old boy kicked up quite a scene with him in his stables. All snorting and that. I'm surprised he even finished the portrait actually."
"Doctor." When he turned to look at Rose, he cringed -not for the first time- at his stupid, stupid blathering. Her brows were drawn down in faint disbelief and her eyes welled with some emotion he couldn't work out.
"Somehow I don't think you've come here to talk about a book." Her voice was soft and made guilt rise like bile in his throat as she quietly shut the tome and pushed it to one side.
"No," she simply said as he went to speak -at which he shut it with an audible clack. She tucked her hands into her lap and seemed to fold in on herself, away from him.
"When we were outside that chip shop that night, I didn't know what to think. But I knew -for some, daft idea, " her voice wavered, "that I could trust you. I didn't really understand. I still don't. And I thought you made sense. I thought you meant it."
The Doctor's mouth opened and closed, brain working overtime. "So, tell me...was that a lie?"
"I..." The words had dried up for him. He knew what to say, and his very blood was burning with his need to say. But he couldn't.
"'Cos...I need to know, Doctor.
She watched as he hunched over and palmed his face with his hands. The messy facial hair should have struck a note with her, but it didn't.
"Rose...Come with me."
She sat up, rod-straight, and her eyes blazed. "I didn't say I was-"
The Doctor put his palms out in supplication, terrified she would leave him again. "No, no, no. I didn't mean- Please. Just to talk."
"But why- never mind. Fine. Long as we're not gone ages."
Rose felt the TARDIS groan deep in her heart and touch her mind eagerly as she stepped up the ramp, behind the Doctor. It was like an over-friendly dog greeting her. She steeled her mind against it, squirming a little with a unspoken apology and settling comfortably against a coral strut.
"Rose, you don't have to stay all the way over there." The Doctor looked vulnerable, leaning over the console.
She huffed and crossed her arms, moving to the next nearest strut. "Happy? I'm not exactly plannin' on staying (not yet, anyway).
He continued to stare at her, and she felt like one of his specimens being examined. "Go on then, you brought me in here. Spill."
The Doctor looked concerned -no, upset- at her words. "Rose, you are more than welcome in the TARDIS. Why are you behaving like this?"
When his companion's jaw set and her eyes blackened a little, he more than knew he had phrased that wrong.
"Excuse me?" The TARDIS grumbled at him.
Okay, more like said it wrong entirely.
"I'm the one playing up? What about you? I'm blond, not stupid! What's so wrong with you that you can't even tell me, Doctor? Am I just a warm body? Please tell me I'm more than that. Because that's what you seemed to hint at Deffrey Vale. And what about Christmas? Second chances? Do I, Doctor? Do I bloody well get a second chance?"
Rose had advanced on him, and if he was honest -he was scared. Scared because he'd messed up more times than he could count on one hand. Scared because he didn't know what to say.
Scared because he loved her.
"Well?" Rose demanded. The timelines around her blazed and warped and they were beautiful. No mere human could overwhelm him with speech -it was all emotion and he could steel his defences against them- but Rose was no mere human. The Wolf in her growled and sang. The hairs on his nape stood erect and her very being aroused all his senses.
"Oh, Rose. I-"
And then everything exploded. The TARDIS roared to life and her ancient engines spun, sparks spurting everywhere. They both looked around, equal part alarm and titillation as they moved clumsily into the Vortex.
"What are you doing?" Her plea was almost a screech more than reminiscent of Jackie Tyler. He jumped to action, gripping into the console, white-knuckled.
"I'm not doing anything!"
"Oh no. You're not doing this to me!" Rose looked genuinely fearful. She was trying to conceal it as panic, moving around and trying to avoid any pending bumps and crashes -but it there under the surface.
"I'm not!" With a crackle and snap, the circuit-board nearest to the Doctor's face exploded in smoke and fire and he leapt back, coughing.
"You take me back, Doctor! Take me back!
As the TARDIS careened out of control and they were left clinging for dear life, the Doctor tried to, he really did. But it was as if the TARDIS was in this. Working against him. Against them both.
He only hoped the old girl knew what she was doing.