amberfocus | Change (1/3)

Change

Jealousy is an emotion the Doctor hates in himself. He finds it far too human and thinks it should be beneath him. Yet all it takes is one look at Rose with that stupid ex-boyfriend who doesn’t yet know he is really an ex-boyfriend and it is rearing up in him. He watches from the top of the ladder as Rose greets Mickey and he wants to yank her out of his welcoming hug. He’s happy at least to hear Jack making a sarcastic comment about the saccharine nature of the pair. Not pair, he tells himself. Of the two of them.

Jack flirts with him and he responds out of habit, but the minute Rose and Mickey start talking again his expression changes, the smile falls off his face and his eyes focus on Rose and the boy who most definitely is not his romantic rival. His eyes drift back and forth between them as Rose makes her silly excuse of needing a passport, when what she really needs is an excuse to see Mickey so she can tell him it’s over. At least, that is the plan. Now he sees the not couple together and he feels anxiety rising in the pit of his stomach.

It’s just familiarity, a friendship of years, that makes Rose respond so happily in the boy’s presence and yet, for one brief moment Mickey’s face falls, like he knows everything is about to change and the Doctor can’t help feeling a twinge of satisfaction when it becomes clear that Rose is going to continue her travels with the Doctor.

The boy has the nerve to insult his looks, and he comes down the ladder about to take umbrage, but Rose quickly changes the subject and as he comes to stand beside her she shifts her body closer to him, away from Mickey. It’s barely half an inch, but he recognizes it and it calms him slightly. When they leave the TARDIS, he gets to insult humanity to Mickey and then it is his hand Rose takes and not Mickey’s and he can’t help but look over at the boy and see that the knowledge is heavy on Mickey’s face. He won’t say anything to Rose or the Doctor, but it’s clear he knows. The Doctor smiles, hides it from Mickey by turning it on Rose, and he starts to feel better.

He feels even better later on when Rose uses her learning to say the word Raxicoricophallipatorius as an excuse to give him a full body hug that he can’t help but respond to or linger in. Still, he knows what’s coming and it fills him with dread, because if she changes her mind, decides that a life with a man who can’t give her a child isn’t the life she wants after all…well, Mickey can give her children in the future when she wants them.

When Rose goes out to speak with Mickey that crushing doubt rises up in him again. What good is he to Rose? She has no future with him. If the TARDIS had enough power, he could just slip off, leave her behind, leave her where she could be happy and go back to her old life. Jack would keep him from going insane, but he’s a poor substitute for Rose.

He’s grateful a moment later that he can’t act on that impulse. He doesn’t want her going back to her old life, he wants her here, where he can love her, hold her, touch her, push himself into her body and forget for a while that life isn’t only heartache, pain, disappointment and aching loneliness when she’s in his arms.

But when he watches her walk away on the view screen to tell Mickey the truth that they’re over, Mickey reaches out and takes her hand and she doesn’t shake him off. It hurts him, like a punch in the gut, because that’s his hand to hold. Mickey Smith has no business touching Rose anymore and he wants to go out there and tell him so, no matter that he’s agreed to let Rose handle it. If it weren’t for Jack and the evil Slitheen they’d captured keeping him in the TARDIS he’d have charged right after them, pulled Rose away from Mickey and claimed her as his own. As it is, the distraction of the other two allows him to let that impulse go as well.

The evening drags on as he takes Blon for a last meal and then all hell breaks loose as an earthquake shakes Cardiff and they make for the TARDIS only to find it the source of the disaster. His eyes take a moment to scour the area for Rose, hopes she’s safe inside, is doubly frightened when she’s not.

As he and Jack attempt to stop the Rift from opening his mind is badly distracted, the word Rose, Rose, Rose, pulses over and over again in his mind, and he knows it will remain there until he sees her again. And then she’s there in the doorway and he spares her one quick glance of relief and in that second he’s taken his eyes off Blon and she’s started stripping out of her human costume and she’s grabbed Rose and his world comes crashing to a shuddering halt at the fear in the eyes of his precious girl.

He feels the power of the storm awakening in him as he watches the evil creature hurt his beautiful Rose. She’s brave, makes only a mild whimper, but her eyes seek his and they are terrified. He hears the strangled noise coming from Rose’s throat as Blon chokes her and he’s ready to kill the Slitheen with his bare hands, something he would only ever be moved to do if it meant saving Rose’s life. For Rose he’ll do anything, even let this vile thing escape.

As Blon begins to strangle Rose and Rose cries out his eyes grow darker and he feels the welling of power, knows he can destroy her with a single thought if he has to, gathers his strength together and prepares to strike. Rose’s breath is becoming labored as she fights the hold around her throat and he can see her skin starting to change color as she gasps for air.

Power swells around him, crackles in the air and he’s just reaching out to use it, but the TARDIS intervenes, opens her heart and refuses to let him do it. She interferes, won’t let herself be used, not to destroy the Doctor with his use of a power he has not wielded since the Time War, not to destroy Earth, and not to destroy Rose. Never to destroy Rose, the girl who saved her beloved from himself.

Rose has never felt so close to death as she does in this moment and her life flashes before her eyes, not just her life up until now but the life she had hoped for with the Doctor. The TARDIS opens, the beautiful light coming out to bathe her and Blon in its beauty. She doesn’t know what Blon sees, only knows what she sees, possibilities stretching before her, the TARDIS beckoning to her to make a choice and in that moment she knows what choice she will make, a choice that will cause a difference in the future. It’s only there for a heartbeat, but she makes it.

The power washes over her body, she feels it stream through her and then hears the Doctor’s voice telling her to look away. Blon’s arm falls away from her neck and she stumbles towards Jack. Her eyes find the Doctor’s and he is calm, resolute, and then he smiles. The Slitheen seems to crumble to nothing before her eyes and the TARDIS closes her console.

In the echoing quiet that follows, the Doctor’s going on about how maybe the raw energy of the TARDIS can translate all sorts of thoughts into something real. Like altering reality, and the ship has certainly altered Blon’s reality, changed her physical structure, every single cell in her body, because she is now an egg. Rose grasps something huge and tiny has altered her own reality and then it slips from her mind completely, hidden in the shadows.

It’s over, it’s all over except--. “Mickey!” she cries out and runs from the TARDIS. She knows they were on the brink of it all coming out, they were over as they needed to be, but she is still worried for the safety of the man who has been one of her closest mates for years.

Rose doesn’t stop to think how the Doctor might feel about her tearing out after him; she just goes and desperately tries to find him. But he is nowhere, no one has seen him. She asks the police, the emergency crews, shows a picture from her phone, but he isn’t amongst the injured and she finally faces the fact that he’s scarpered.

And really, it is probably for the best. She’s wanted to let him down easy, but there is no ease to any of this. She’s handled everything badly, but at least it is over. There can be no mistaking that. He is dating Tricia and she is sleeping with the Doctor and has tied her life to his and there is no going back. And she doesn’t want to go back, except to the TARDIS. She turns and heads home.

Rose has tears on her face despite herself when she enters the TARDIS. The Doctor’s eyes lock on hers and there is such ineffable tenderness in them as he asks after Mickey. She lies and tells the Doctor he is fine, though she’s not sure Mickey will be fine for a very long time. She’s not even sure she will be and it’s been over in her heart for a lot longer, she’s been the Doctor’s since the Slitheen first came to London.

But it’s still a door closing and she still hurts a little when she shuts it. Partly for herself, mostly for what she has put Mickey through. He asks her if she wants to go and find him, but she says no, says he deserves better. The Doctor’s eyes soften even more, and then he’s all business talking about taking Blon back to Raxicoricophallipatorius for her second chance.

Rose thinks about second chances, knows she doesn’t want one with Mickey, wishes she had one with the Doctor, one that would give her the chance to give him a child. “Yeah,” she says, “That’d be nice.”

Ch. 2: http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/53355.html

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