Guilt (2/2)

[amberfocus]

A/N:  Recognizable dialog is from the episode The Christmas Invasion.  Tissue warning may be in effect.

                                                                Chapter Two: Uncertainty

The Doctor stares at Rose with large, dark eyes and then rises abruptly from the table. His jaw is set as if she has said something distasteful and her heart sinks in her chest. “Not here, Rose,” he says gesturing at her mum and Mickey. It’s not talking to her that’s distasteful; it’s doing it in front of an audience. She closes her eyes in relief and then stands up.

“Oi, where you going?” Jackie asks. “This is Christmas dinner, this is.”
 

“Back in a moment, Jackie. Rose and I just…need to talk.”

Jackie looks like she’s about to say something else, but Rose shakes her head no and shoots her a desperate look and meaningfully rubs her hand down her belly. Jackie subsides. “I’ll have dessert ready in ten minutes. I expect you back here by then.”

Rose shrugs. She’ll make no guarantees. She retrieves her thick black jacket and puts it on and then follows him out into the cold night. “Roof?” he asks and she nods silently.

Her stomach clenches a bit as she thinks about the last time she sat on the estate roof with the other him as he whinged about her mum slapping him and they watched the fake Slitheen space ship crash. It seems a lifetime ago. She follows him up the stairs feeling slightly winded at the climb. It must be the baby and the few extra pounds she’s carrying now.

Or maybe it’s just the fact that she’s fighting back tears. This isn’t how she pictured telling the Doctor he was going to be a father. She’s not even sure she can tell him. But she has to. Doesn’t she? She tells herself that waiting a bit longer can’t hurt, that waiting until she’s sure things are going to work out is better, but she’s not convinced of that truth.

Still, if things do fall apart between them, well then he can go off without ever knowing, without feeling saddled with some young girl he knocked up in another life, and she can…she can do this on her own if she has to. She’s got Jackie and…Mickey. He’s a good bloke, loves her enough still, and he made it clear that things imploded with Tricia almost the minute she’d arrived back on Earth with this new Doctor and saw her uncertainty. She is sure that he’d step in and take care of her. It wouldn’t be fair to him, but then again, life isn’t fair. If life was fair she’d be following a leather and denim clad man up to the roof right now.

They step out onto the roof and go and sit on the same concrete structure they had sat on the last time they were up here. She sits on his left side, the regenerated right hand still giving her the creeps. Nothing good can ever come of that hand being cut off, she’s sure. Exchangeable bodies, rapid-grow body parts; it’s a bit too much like a horror movie for her liking, really.

Rose shivers and instinctively moves closer to the Doctor. He looks at her in surprise. “Cold?” he asks her. She nods and he moves to put his arm around her slowly, as if he thinks she’ll fling herself away from him. Instead she leans into his chest and his nervous hand grips her shoulder a bit tighter, almost possessively. It doesn’t feel quite right but it doesn’t feel wrong, either.

She tells herself to stop letting her mind make crazy leaps ahead. She hasn’t even spoken to the Doctor yet, hasn’t even tried to make things make some kind of sense between them. And she wants things to make sense again between them. It’s just so hard when it doesn’t seem like it possibly can. She misses him so much. How can she miss him this much when he’s standing right here?

“Rose, I am me.”

“Are you?” she asks in a little girl lost voice.

“What do I have to do to convince you?” he bursts out angrily and she flinches and pulls away from him, her body tensing as her flight instinct is triggered. She has to fight down the desire to run from him. She digs her fingernails into her palms and focuses on the pain instead. She puts several feet between them.

“Would you rather I had just died?” he asks and his tone is surprisingly harsh.

“What?” Rose is stunned.

“You heard me,” he says bitterly. “Would you rather I had died instead of regenerating?”

She can’t help herself. She walks back to him and punches him in the arm, hard. “Don’t you ever say that to me!”

He doesn’t even look the least bit apologetic. “You’re keeping me at arms length, Rose. Like I’m a stranger. Like you can’t stand to be near me, can’t stand my touch!”

“I took your hand at the table,” she tells him. “I’m trying.”

“I’m your lover,” he says coldly. “Your lover. You haven’t touched me properly since I changed. Holding hands is nothing!” he snaps at her. “And who did you hug and celebrate with when we survived this last adventure? Mickey, that’s who! Mickey who’s free again. Mickey, same old solid, reliable, dependable, idiot Mickey! Because he didn’t change his face, did he? He didn’t turn into someone you can’t even bear to look at!”

A sob billows up from her chest and she chokes on it, the lump of repressed tears painful in her throat as she swallows it back down. She tries to keep her voice even and calm. “I can so look at you.” She meets his eyes to prove her point. “You’re beautiful, but… You should have told me this could happen,” she tells him. “You should have told me so I could have prepared myself. So it wouldn’t be so hard now--.”

“I’m an alien, Rose. You know I’m different. You know that life with me is--.”

“Yeah, I know,” she interrupts bitterly, long-felt hurts bubbling up from where she’s tried so hard to bury them deep. “It’s a whole different morality. Get used to it, Rose, you stupid little ape, or go home. I know the drill, Doctor.”

“Is that what you want?” he snaps at her. “To go home?”

“The TARDIS is my home,” she says without thinking.

“Is it?” His eyes narrow. “The TARDIS is my home. Were you ever doing more than just…visiting?”

“Do you think that I was just visiting your bed, too?” she snaps back.

“Were you?” he grates out.

A million emotions war across her face as she stares at him. His words cut through her like a knife and tears come into her eyes. She forces them back. Angry words die on her lips. Fighting with him is just making things worse. She doesn’t want to fight with him, she just…she wants time to get to know him again, to accept him as the same man. And maybe she sees a bit of him there in this hurt, protective raging. She was wrong with her earlier thoughts. This version of the man is quick to anger, too, and quick to anger isn’t such a good thing when it’s directed at her.

“NO!” Her cry is like that of a wounded animal as she turns her back on his vicious words. She forces control back into her voice. “You know that I wasn’t. And if you think that I was…then you don’t know me at all and you really aren’t the man you claim to be, because he would never have doubted me in that.”

The Doctor recoils from her words, suddenly seems to realize how harsh he’s being. “I…Rose, I’m sorry, I…I know that. I know it. I do.”

“Do you?” She swipes angrily at her eyes and turns to face him.

“Sometimes…sometimes after regenerations my personality is unstable the first few days. I…the things I say and do…they may not be…I might be…I don’t always mean them,” he tells her.

“After regenerations? You mean this has happened before?” she asks him.

“I’m 900 years old, Rose. This is my tenth body.”

“Tenth?” she whispers, shocked.

“Tenth. And if you don’t want it--.”

“I want to be with the man I…” She stops herself from completing the sentence.

“The man you what?” His voice is gentler, but his eyes are still hard.

“Love,” she says softly.

“Still love?” he asks her.

“I need time, Doctor. Please. This isn’t easy. I…I don’t want to lose you. I don’t. But…I’m having a hard time, okay? You almost died. Then you changed. And I don’t know why. And you won’t tell me why.”

His face, which had softened, closes off again. “You can’t handle the why.”

“Because I’m just a stupid, stupid child.”

“No,” he says softly. “No. Because it would break your heart.”

“And this isn’t? This space between us?” she wails.

“You’re the one that put it there.”

She is stricken by his accusation and turns away from him. “Oh, because I’m the one who went and changed!”

“Yes, you have, Rose! You used to accept everything we came up against and now, one little thing that you saw happen in front of your very own eyes, and you still can’t believe that I’m me! It’s really very simple. It shouldn’t be too much for you to comprehend.”

“I’m trying!” she cries out. “I’m trying so hard! I want, I need, for this to be all right, for us to be all right,” she tells him.

“Well, we’re not,” he says bluntly. “And I’m not sure we will be.”

“You were wrong,” she shoots out angrily.

“What?”

“When you said you were still you. You were wrong. At least he’d have tried!”

“I am him!”

“Not in the ways that matter!” she shouts.

It’s the Doctor’s turn to look stricken. “Rose.”

“No,” she says. “You know what? I’ve spent the last year being afraid that I wasn’t good enough for you. Stupid ape, stupid human, jeopardy friendly, trouble magnet, stray collecting, too domestic Rose! But I never once thought you didn’t love me. Not once. Until today.”

She turns on her heel and stomps to the edge of the roof. The harsh glare of London’s lights shine up at her. She doesn’t hear him when he comes up behind her. “It was for you,” he says so softly she almost doesn’t hear him.

“What was?” she asks refusing to turn and look at him.

“The reason I died. The reason I regenerated. It was for you, Rose. You took in the Vortex energy and no one’s meant to do that. You couldn’t let go of it. It was killing you, destroying every single cell in your body.” Rose gasps, fear coursing through her at the thought of what it might have done to her baby. “I took it out of you, drew out the energy into myself and repaired the damage to you.” Relief courses through her at that statement. The baby should be fine then. “But it killed me, that me, the man you loved, the man you miss so much. That’s why.”

He was right, she thought as she stared down at her feet. It broke her heart. “I killed you?”

“You saved me,” he corrected her. “Every day since I met you, you’ve saved me. That day you used your life to do it. I couldn’t…Rose, I couldn’t let that stand. I couldn’t let you die. Not for me. I was never worth the sacrifice.”

“Yes, you are!” she bursts out. She wants to bury her face in his chest, aches to feel his arms around her, but she holds back, afraid his earlier hostility will return.

“Not at the cost of your life. Not when I had another to spare. Not when I’d willingly give it up again for you,” he says fervently.

Rose turns to him then and she sees something in his eyes before his mask of protection drops into place. “Promise me you won’t do it again,” she tells him. “I’m not that important. I’m just a girl. The universe needs you.”

“But Rose, don’t you understand? I can’t promise you that. It’s my job to take care of you. And you were never just a girl. You were my girl.”

Were? “Oh.” And that’s all she can say to that. Past tense. All past tense. He’s already given up. He’s not going to give her the time she needs. He’s not going to wait for her to sort this all out in her head. Rose closes her eyes tightly and when she opens them she lets the tears fall freely. She turns away from him and walks back the way they came. There’s no way she can tell him about the baby now. No way at all.




The Doctor frowns to himself as Rose walks away from him. “Rose?” he calls after her. “Where are you going?”

“Dessert, remember?” she says and he can hear the emotion in her voice, far more than there should be after what he’s just said to her. “Mum said not to be late.”

“But we’re not done talking!”

“I think you’ve made it pretty clear that we’re done,” she says in a voice that clenches his hearts in his chest.

“What?”

She turns back at the door that leads down from the roof and the look on her face is full of such anguish and pain, anguish and pain that he’s put there, that he wants to run. But this is Rose and he can’t run from her because if he does he’ll lose her. He thinks back desperately over what he’s just said. He’d called her his girl. Maybe she just doesn’t want that anymore, to be his girl.

“You said were.” Her voice is so tiny, so quiet when she speaks he almost misses the words.

“What?”

“You were my girl. Not are. Were.”

“No, no, no, no, no,” he says frantically striding across to her. “Rose, no.”

“I know. I get it. I’m not anymore because you don’t want me. You don’t want to wait for me to sort out my head. You don’t want, you don’t want m-m-me, ‘cause I can’t, ‘cause I can’t just, just accept--.” She can’t stop it now and the sobs burst from her.

The Doctor can’t stand to see her cry and these are such deep and gut wrenching sounds of agony, as if her entire world has come to an end and she can’t bear it anymore, that it shreds him. He forces down his own anxieties and doubts and fears. It’s Rose and he loves her. And if she’s hurting this much, despite his change of body, she still loves him, too. He pulls her against him, buries her face in his chest and puts his arms around her. She is stiff at first, but it is clear that she needs the comfort he’s offering as her body softens into his and her arms creep around his waist and clutch at him as if she is drowning.

One arm holds her firmly at the small of her back, tight against his body and the other reaches up to pet her hair. He’s murmuring nonsense now, but one thing he keeps repeating finally seems to reach her. “Are, Rose. You are. You are my girl. If you still want me.”

She stays against him for a long time, only breaking away when the door opens and Mickey stands in the opening. “Your mum’s on the warpath,” he tells Rose when she turns to look at him. He ignores the Doctor completely. “It’s been twenty minutes and you said ten.”

“Mick,” Rose hiccups and she has to start again. “Mickey, tell mum we’ll be right there.” Mickey looks reluctant to go, but Rose shoos him away with a gesture from her hand.

“We should get back,” Rose says reluctantly.

The Doctor reaches into his cavernous pockets and pulls out a handkerchief. “You’ve made rather a mess of your face,” he says and starts to gently rub at the tear-streaked mascara trails. “Why do you always wear so much of this stuff?” he asks her. “You’re loveliest in nothing at all.”

Rose blushes deeply and he realizes the innuendo in his statement. She stands still under his ministrations. “Least it’s cold,” Rose mumbles when he finishes. “Mum’ll think I’m red from the wind, not from bawling.”

He doesn’t tell her that her swollen eyes will be a dead giveaway. “Rose, I’m sorry,” he tells her. “I shouldn’t expect you to just be able to pick up where we left off. I just…it’s us, Rose. I don’t want to start over. I want to keep going.”

She bites the edge of her thumb. “I know,” she tells him. “But it’s hard for me. Do you think you can give me just a little bit of time to adjust?” she asks.

“I’ll try, Rose. It’s just…when I’m with you, Rose, I want you. All the time. You know that.”

She reaches out for his hand then, but pulls hers back abruptly before they can make contact, stuffing both hands into her pockets. “Rose?”

“It means nothing,” she mumbles under her breath.

“What?”

“The hand-holding? Does it really mean nothing to you?” she asks him in a sad little voice. He stares at her, remembering what he’d said in anger. He swallows hard, because truthfully holding Rose’s hand has always meant far, far more to him than it should have even before they became lovers.

“No, Rose,” he manages. “It doesn’t mean nothing.” She nods then but doesn’t take her hands back out of her pockets. He didn’t realize how that comment had hurt her, but he can tell it did, and badly.

“We should go,” she says. “Mum’s waiting and the last thing you want from her right now is another slap.”

He shudders. “We will be okay, though,” he says uncertainly. He’s not sure who he’s trying to convince now.

She doesn’t answer him, just looks at him wordlessly. He holds open the door and she walks in front of him. His hand aches at the absence of hers in it. He wonders how long it’ll be before she lets him back in enough to hold her hand.

Jackie is not as furious as he expects her to be. In fact, she doesn’t seem mad at all, only concerned. He doesn’t miss the way she tilts her head at him while looking at Rose for some kind of confirmation, doesn’t miss the tiny little negative shake Rose gives her mum, either. He wonders what it’s about, this silent form of mother/daughter communication, if it means that Rose doesn’t think it’s going to work out, but then Jackie is putting more food down on the table and it smells divine.

If he had ever had any idea before that Jackie was such an excellent cook, maybe he wouldn’t have avoided the flat like the plague so much in his previous incarnation. Of course, Jackie’s food would still come with Jackie, so maybe… Yet the woman had cared for him when he was ill, right alongside Rose, and it had been her tea that had restored him. It is possible he has misjudged the woman based on the mighty Tyler slap. Or the fact that she’d wanted to keep her daughter away from him so desperately. That feeling seems to have disappeared entirely. She seems happy that he is here.

His mind is rambling and he tries anxiously to turn it back towards Rose without allowing distractions. She looks tired, her expression closed, her face drawn. She must have been going non-stop since she came back for him on the game station. He’ll have to insist when they leave here that she gets some real rest before they go on any adventures. There was a luxury spa on the planet Presidio that just might be the thing. He’ll suggest it to her when they get ready to leave--. His thoughts break off abruptly. Will she want to leave with him?

She has been begging him for time to adjust, but what if that means space, too? What if she decides to stay home while she adjusts? Panic rises up inside him. If she stays home, if they aren’t together, he won’t be able to convince her once and for all that they should be. He might lose her if she stays behind.

But she won’t leave him, will she? What kind of life is there her for her to come back to? A new job in the shops will never make her happy after she’s seen so much. A life in the stars and travelling through time with him is enough of a lure, isn’t it, to keep her with him? It had been enough for her to come the first time he’d asked, weeell, second, and surely she hasn’t lost her thirst for adventure.

He sighs and Rose turns to look at him unsteadily, like she's scared of him.  He is really going to have to keep a check on his temper.  Rose is already far too skittish.   Rose looks away from him and notices Harriet Jones on the television and the Doctor gets up to watch, pulling spectacles out of his pocket as he appears to be a bit nearsighted this time around. Good thing he shoved so many things into his new coat. He watches as the woman’s career seems to dissolve right in front of his eyes and feels only the slightest twinge of guilt. She is a good woman, this Harriet Jones, but she made the wrong choice in killing the Sycorax, of that he is convinced.

The phone rings and Jackie rises to answer it. She hangs up quickly and grabs her coat. “It’s Beth,” Jackie says. “She says go and look outside.”

“Why?” Rose asks, not keen on going back out into the cold again.

“I don’t know. Just go outside and look. Come on. Shift.” They all put on their jackets and head for the door. Rose is first and as she steps outside she looks up at the snow and the fireballs shooting across the sky in amazement. Beth and her husband meet them on the ground and there are various exclamations and the first bubble of happiness Rose has felt since the Doctor changed wells up from inside her. She laughs and the Doctor feels his heart jump. He has desperately missed the sound of her laughter. “It’s beautiful,” Rose says. “What are they? Meteors?”

“It’s the space ship breaking up in the atmosphere,” the Doctor says soberly, hands shoved in his pockets. Rose edges closer to him without thought. He’s not sure if she’s seeking comfort or trying to offer it to him. “This isn’t snow; it’s ash.”

“Okay, not so beautiful.”

“This is a brand new planet Earth. No denying the existence of aliens now. Everyone saw it. Everything’s new.”

“And what about you? What are you going to do next?” Rose says quickly, rushing out the words desperately while she plays with her gloves, glances up at him and then back at her hands. She brushes snow off her arm.

“Weeell,” he says and she looks up uncertainly and catches his gaze. She raises her thumb to her mouth and bites it. “Back to the TARDIS. Same old life.”

“On your own?” she asks, as if she doesn’t know any longer if she’s still welcome or not.

“Why? Don’t you want to come?” he asks praying desperately to gods he doesn’t believe in or perhaps to an unfeeling universe that her answer will be the one he wants to hear.

“Well, yeah,” she blurts.

He gives her a deadly serious look. “Do you?”

“Yeah.” There is no hesitation at all. Still he pushes.

“Well, I just thought ‘cause I’d changed...”

“Yeah, I thought ‘cause you changed,” she says shaking just a little, “you might not want me anymore.”

“Oh, I’d love you to come.” His face breaks out into a smile as he tells her the truth, hopes she can see on his face just how much he means it, and she gives a nervous laugh, her own beautiful, sunny smile bursting onto her face. The first true smile he’s seen since…since he rescued her from the middle of the Dalek fleet.

“Okay.” Her relief is tangible in the air, almost as visible as the falling ash.

“You’re never going to stay, are you?” Mickey asks. Rose turns around quickly to see her friend with a miserable look on his face, but she doesn’t step away from the Doctor.

“There’s just so much out there. So much to see. And I’ve got to…” The look she gives Mickey must be a strange one because a look of acceptance passes over Mickey’s face. He wonders what exactly it’s about. Something is going on that is being kept from him, first by Jackie and now by Mickey, something concerning Rose. He’ll have to ask her later. She’s never been able to keep things from him before, not for long.

“Yeah,” Mickey finally says.

“Well, I reckon you’re mad. The pair of you,” Jackie says clutching her arms close to her body in the cold. “It’s like you go looking for trouble.”

“Trouble’s just the bits in between!” the Doctor says bounding over enthusiastically and giving Jackie a one-armed hug. “It’s all waiting out there, Jackie. And it’s brand new to me. All those planets, creatures and horizons and I haven’t seen ‘em yet. Not with these eyes.” He walks back to Rose and gives her a very boyish, charming smile. “And it is gonna be…fantastic.” Rose can’t help but smile at the familiar word coming from unfamiliar lips.

He takes his right hand out of his pocket then and holds it out to her. She hesitates, pointing to it. “It still gives me the creeps.” He waggles it at her again anyway. She takes it, and in that moment he feels like she’s finally accepting him and he beams.

“So, where we going to go first?” she asks and the last of the physical space between them is filled, her hip bumping his thigh, her shoulder pressing into his.

“Um…” He points at the sky. “That one.” Then he changes his mind, remembering his promise to himself to take her somewhere safe and restful. He moves his arm just a bit, looks at her face with total love and devotion. “No, that one.”

“Yeah, all right,” she says with a smile. And for once he allows himself to believe that maybe everything really will be all right.  

~To be continued in Fragile~ http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/164488.html