amberfocus | Acceptance (1/1) (Reply)

Title: Acceptance (1/1)
Author: Amberfocus
Genre: Angst, Introspection, Hurt/comfort
Characters: Rose Tyler, implied Tenth Doctor, The Master
Rating: PG
Beta: amyo67
A/N: This actually started life as a piece of Moments in Darkness, but by the time I got to the point where it would have fit into the storyline, after Reinette, I'd actually gone in a different direction. And then I was going to change it into a Rose and Ten2 story, but I think her acceptance of him would have come much easier than this. Then when I hit upon the idea to change it into a Rose/Master fic, everything seemed to fall into place. I hope you'll give it a go even if it's outside your normal ship. Set in the same reality as A Better Man: http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/86565.html and A Lesser Woman: http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/86818.html, but you don't need to have read those for this to make sense. AU after Doomsday.

Acceptance

Rose wakes up screaming. It happens too often, too frequently now for her to ever consider that it doesn’t mean something. The closer she gets to him the more violent her dreams become. He is there as he always is, pulling her into his arms, holding her tight, offering her comfort. And she thinks that maybe this once she can let it all go, forget herself, forget him long enough to find some kind of hopefulness for her future.

But then the pain rushes in again, sears against her mind, tells her that it doesn’t matter because she will never be the same inside and the man that holds her now is not the man she burned for. Not the man she still burns for. She can tell herself he is what she needs and what she wants and in him she has forever, but she’s not sure she’ll ever quite believe it.

She has tried so hard, so very, very hard to accept that he is the man she is meant to be with. It has been months now and though sometimes she sees something that is almost like him in a gesture, in a manic smile, in a moody twisting moment, it’s not the same. It won’t ever be the same, because the man she wants, the man she has always wanted, is not here. Won’t ever be here again. And she’s tried being strong, she’s tried doing this on her own and she’s tried keeping him out. None of it is working.

Rose doesn’t want to be alone in this, but she has no idea where to go; how to get past the hurt and the betrayal and the fear and just tell him the truth. She doesn’t trust him. She’s never trusted the man who lays in the bed beside her. And it isn’t because of who he is at all. It’s because of who she is, who she became, when she was stranded in this universe forever.

She likes to think the Doctor never would have broken her heart on purpose. He never would have left her alone to live like this if he’d had any other choice. She likes to think that on her good days when she looks over and sees this stranger beside her. No matter what she feels for the Doctor, and no matter what she feels for this man, there is a part of her that knows this will never be right, but she has nothing left. She has only this and she’s got to learn to accept it.

She buries her face in his neck as the hot tears fall. She wonders if they burn against his skin the way they do against hers. She wishes she could let it go, let it all go and just tell him what she’s feeling. They haven’t been lovers for long. And yes, he’s said he loved her, said it the once, whispered it in her ear. But she couldn’t quite believe him. His actions since then have been…distancing, as if he’s afraid to get that close to her again.

She thinks about the kiss, the searing, single first kiss where she wasn’t in control at all. It’s burned on her mind despite that fact, something she will never forget. Because it cuts through her body and it moves her mind and every kiss since then has been like that, where he simply takes her mouth like it is his right. But every time he kisses her, she misses the Doctor so much. Too much.

But he’s gone. He’s gone now and he’s never coming back and there is no choice other than to just go on, go on with what she has left, with what she’s been given. She pulls back, looks at him then and meets the warm eyes looking at her so warily. Eyes that are just as afraid as her own, so afraid of rejection, and full of something else she can never quite quantify, an almost hidden rage. If she were to leave him now she thinks he might go mad. She thinks she might if she stays with him. She knows she will if she leaves.

His hand tightens around her wrist and in that moment it reminds her so much of the first night he came to her bed, the first night he used her body to hide from his own nightmares, for this man has nightmares that scream through him as loudly as any of hers, though not as often. She remembers the tension that had been in him when he’d feared she would send him away to fight his demons on his own. She hadn’t, she couldn’t; she’d always had this compassion for him and she doesn’t understand why. Yet, it still exists, half buried under a thousand other emotions.

Part of her wants to take the chance, to try to build this strange lust mixed up with need and possession and pain in too many horrible ways to be what she ever wanted, into something she can live with, something that is more real than anything she ever had in the past. She knows she can’t go back to what she’d been before her world had dissolved into this nightmare. He needs her and she thinks that maybe despite everything, she needs him, too. But first there’s something that she has to know.

“Why?” she asks him. “Why do you even want me?”

“Rose,” he says tiredly as if they’ve had this discussion many times before. They haven’t and it makes her just a little angry.

“Why?” she snaps at him.

“You know why.” There’s a certain level of coldness in his voice as he makes his remark. She recoils away from him and she sees something—regret?—surprise?—in his eyes. “Why do you care?”

“How could I not care?” she says furiously. Her hand clutches her stomach as nausea roils through her. “You’re you--.”

“And you sense it, don’t you? Even if I’m not him, I’m like him. Enough like him to almost, almost make you forget.”

Oh. Oh. And she realizes it then, at last, that he has been feeling this the entire time they’ve been together. She sees the hurt and the fear and the pain, pain she put there, and despite everything, everything that is wrong between them, she sees the love. He loves her. He loves her. And all this time she’s been concentrating on what it’s done to her, what all of this has meant only to her and her future.

Not once has she considered what it must be like to be him, so afraid of not being able to hold her attention, not being able to control the situation when he is always in control, because he wants her so much. He looks at her and sees the woman that he fell in love with when it was something he never wanted and that woman looks at him and sees someone else entirely. She has to let him know that she understands now and that what she’s been doing to him has been wrong, so wrong. Like it or not this is what she has, this is who she has, and she’s going to make the best of it, because she does feel things with him that she’s never felt before in her life.

Her hand is shaking when she raises it to his face and cradles his jaw. He leans into the touch as if he has been starving for it and she realizes he has been. He’s been waiting, trying to give her time, trying not to push. But now he pushes. “Say it, Rose,” and there is something of a command in his voice as his grip tightens against her arm. “Tell me that you love me.”

She looks at him and sees him for who and what he is. A Time Lord, but not her Time Lord. It’s enough. It has to be. He rolls on top of her and pushes himself into her body and she replies, “I love you, Harry,” but when she closes her eyes she doesn’t see Harry Saxon. She still sees the Doctor.