amberfocus | Frustration (1/2) (Reply)

A/N: Next in the Moments in Darkness series, so named because most of it takes place in the dark, follows Need and Want. This one is going to be two chapters and is set immediately following The Long Game. And somehow a pesky bit of plot managed to slip into it. Sorry. I try to save plot for the epics. *grins* Nine/Rose and Angst.

Frustration

Rose is relieved as the doors shut behind her, locking Adam Mitchell out of her life, their life, forever. And although she is happy that the Doctor referred to her as the best to Adam she knows that she is in for trouble as she slowly drags herself back up the ramp to face him. She’s made so many mistakes in the past week since they picked Adam up and she knows he will not hold his tongue in regards to this. She stops within arms reach of him but she does not reach out for his hand as she normally would, she simply stands and waits for the boom to fall.

He doesn’t look at her and she realizes it’s going to be one of those times, one of those broody, silent treatment moments that nearly tear her heart in two whenever they are directed at her. Bad enough to watch one without it being her fault that one’s been brought on. She wonders if she should apologize, wonders if it would even do any good, do anything for the tension in his shoulders as he finishes the program and triggers the dematerialization circuit.

The silence stretches between them for agonizing seconds that turn into minutes and still he does not look at her. She wants to touch him so badly, to be reassured that he still wants her here and finally she breaks and speaks to him. “Are you taking me home, too, then?” she asks him.

“Don’t be stupid,” he says disparagingly.

“Can’t seem to help it,” she mutters darkly and he does meet her eyes.

“Rose, I’m not taking you home because you made one mistake.”

“I didn’t know he’d cause so much trouble,” she bursts out.

“Nor did I, or I wouldn’t have let you bring him,” he admits.

“But I shouldn’t have asked. This is supposed to be you and me, just you and me,” Rose says allowing her feelings for the Doctor to show both on her face and in her voice.

He stiffens and turns away from her. “I’ve got things to do. You should go to bed.”

“Alone?” Her voice hitches in the middle of the word despite her best efforts to keep it firm. She desperately wants him to come with her; to be sure he’s forgiven her for this whole debacle. He has gone to sleep with her every night since Adam came on board and now he’s not answering her question and trying to send her off by herself. She blinks hard and swallows her uncertainty down.

He doesn’t say anything and she realizes he’s back to brooding again, a scowl on his face. No need for him to mark her as his anymore, now Adam’s gone. She has her answer and tries to bury her frustration. “Will you--” she stops, clears her throat, starts again hesitantly, “Will you be in later?”

“No,” he says shortly and she feels the word hit her chest painfully.

“Doctor,” she begins, but he cuts her off.

“No,” he repeats sharply.

“Doctor, I--.”

“You gave him your key, Rose!” he bursts out and brooding has been replaced by full-fledged anger. “Your key!”

“I know. I’m sorry. I just thought…well, I was with you. I didn’t need mine and he might have needed to go back, it was all so much for him and they could have gotten the TARDIS and it would have been all my fault.” The words come out in a rush and she hangs her head and she can feel the tears start to form. His TARDIS, the only thing he has left of his people, and she could have lost it for him forever.

“Yeah, it would have been,” he spits out. “It would have been your fault. Because you gave him your key. Now. Go. To. Bed.”

She turns sharply on her heel and stalks out of the control room, vacillating between anger and frustration. She wants to talk to him, needs to, but there is no use in trying when he doesn’t want to sort things out. She makes her way to her room and yanks the little red and black jacket off over her head. She hisses in sudden agony and glances down at her arms in shock and disbelief at the angry red welts that have risen up on her skin.

How has this happened? How could she not notice something so painful? The adrenaline has been high since defeating the Jagrafess, dumping Adam home, fighting or not exactly fighting with the Doctor. It isn’t like she’s even had time to feel pain, but this? She should be feeling this more than when she drags material over it. She frowns as the pain dissipates, only returning when she pokes her finger into her arm.

It takes her a moment of thinking over the day’s events to realize when it had happened. When she’d been manacled next to the Doctor in some sort of futuristic standing set of stocks, the metal locked around her wrists and ankles, and the Editor had sent a tremendous volt of electricity through her body. That has to be it. It looks like electrical burns. She makes an ironic little moue with her mouth in reaction to the fact that she has become enough of an expert on various types of burns since joining her life to the Doctor’s that she can tell they are electrical by looking.

Slowly she eases off her jeans, fearing that her legs may be in the same shape and they are. There is no pain until she pushes on her skin. Carefully she lifts her shirt but there are no welts on her torso. She wonders if she should go back to the Doctor and show him the burns, but she knows he’s in no mood to see her right now. She sighs and settles down on her bed and turns off the light. They don’t hurt unless she moves wrong. She’ll be okay until morning and maybe he’ll be willing to talk to her then, help her with her injuries.

She bites her lip in the dark, wishing that she hadn’t messed everything up quite so spectacularly and finally falls into a troubled sleep.

The Doctor paces the console room wearily trying to get the sound of Rose’s voice out of his head, the way it had broken on that one word, ‘alone.’ He knows he’s hurting her, but can’t seem to stop himself. It isn’t so much the debacle of bringing Adam with them that bothers him, he shares in that idiotic decision and he knows it. It isn’t even the boy’s foolish, selfish, and dangerous choices that could have upset the balance of human history. It’s the key.

The key that he’d given to her as proof that he was coming back to her, that he’d not leave her behind, that he’d never leave her behind. He didn’t hand out keys willy-nilly to companions and never so early in a relationship. But Rose has never been just a companion, never been just a fellow traveler, has always been…Rose. Best friend from almost the moment he met her, fighter of his demons, source of his strength, comfort for his pain.

When he’d given her that key, it wasn’t a simple act of convenience. It was his way of saying he wanted her as a permanent fixture on the TARDIS, that the ship was her home now, that she was his partner. Not his romantic partner, but… He put his head in his hands and ran them down his face. Who was he fooling? He didn’t go into her bed at night just to keep away the nightmares. Not anymore. He knew it.

The key wasn’t like giving her a ring, he knew that. It wasn’t like saying forever, he knew that, too. He knew that she hadn’t exactly broken things off completely with Mickey, but he hadn’t smelled the boy on her since Rose had started travelling with him. She’d not been sleeping with Mickey on any of their visits home. He liked to think that was because of him. And she hadn’t even had the scent of arousal on her when she’d been around Adam, even if she had flirted with the boy. No, that scent only lingered in their—in her—bed at night when he held her.

He thought she understood the import of the key, but obviously she didn’t or she would never have given it away so casually. It wasn’t about the fact that it was the key to his ship or even that the Jagrafess could have gotten a hold of his ship and used it for evil purposes. And it worried him that it wasn’t about that much at all because it should have been a little more important than the part he was fixating on. It was about what it represented. What it meant between him and Rose. For Rose it meant nothing. Nothing.

Why did she let him in her bed at night? If that meant nothing…but she wasn’t having sex with Mickey anymore. So it had to mean something. True she wasn’t having sex with the Doctor, either but that was his fault more than anything. Or at least, he thought it was. She’d offered the once in actions if not words, tried to undress him and he’s stopped her, too unsure then to even think of taking advantage of her that way, though she was the one trying to initiate things, so he wasn’t sure how much of an advantage it would be. But he hadn’t wanted to hurt her, make her think it was more than it would have been then.

He wanted to think their relationship was above sex, especially casual sex, that it had a purity to it, a feeling of want and need, yes, but on a spiritual level and…oh, bloody hell, who did he think he was fooling? Rose was everything he wanted and everything he needed and it damn well was physical and he was just too scared of messing things up with the girl to pursue it because if he did anything, anything at all to make her leave him then his life would fall back into what it had been before he met her and he didn’t ever want to be alone in that darkness again. He didn’t dare make her want to leave him.

Fine job he’d done of it tonight, too, chasing her away from him in one of his moody sulks and blaming her for almost losing his precious ship, when really he was in a snit because of the key itself! The TARDIS would have been near impossible to figure out to someone who didn’t have his knowledge and she had her own defenses against anyone non-Gallifreyan trying to abscond with her. So the ship had really been safe and he had made much more out of it than he’d needed to. The ship could have been held hostage for a long time, but that was really the extent of it. It would have made his life inconvenient until he’d found a way to rescue the ship, but it wouldn’t have been the end of his world because it was something he could fix. Not like Rose leaving him would be. He might never be able to fix that.

He needed to go talk to her. She’d be asleep now, he was sure, and maybe she wouldn’t even let him into her bed after his venomous outburst, but he could try, he could explain what had truly made him so upset about the situation. He swallowed nervously. It would be a big step for him. He knew Rose cared for him, had heard that much in her loudly broadcasted thoughts, knew she was aroused by him, but what he didn’t know was how she really felt about him, whether she might care enough about him to be his. Humans were such confusing creatures.

Resolved, he made his way down the corridor to Rose’s room and found her door shut but not locked. She had taken him at his word that he wouldn’t come by and hadn’t left it ajar, but hadn’t been angry enough to lock him out in case he changed his mind, either.

He entered her room and made his way to the bed. “Rose?” he asked softly. She didn’t answer him and he spoke a little louder. “Rose?” His hand reached out and shook her shoulder and she awoke with a sharp cry of pain.

“Lights, low,” he ordered the TARDIS and as they came up in the darkness he gasped at the vivid red welts marring her body. “Stay there,” he said. “I’ll be right back.” He ran to the infirmary.

Ch. 2: http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/39661.html