amberfocus | Doubt (2/6)

A/N: The Doctor lays down an ultimatum, continuing to act with righteous indignation. Only he's wrong. So wrong. Rose reacts with stoicism, making up her mind to do what she thinks she has to do. Then she falls apart. You will need tissues. I cried.

Chapter Two: Confusion

“If you end this, Rose, I’ll take you back. I’ll let you stay with me,” he says. “But you have to promise me that you’re going to end it. And that it’ll never happen again. No exceptions, ever. With time I can get past this, but it’s going to take a lot of work.”

She nods mechanically and is gone. She only makes it a few steps down the corridor before he hears her burst into sobs. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” She runs down the hall away from him, her footsteps echoing loudly as she goes.

At least she feels remorse, he thinks, as her cries claw at his heart. Every instinct within him is telling him to go to her, to wrap her in his arms and comfort her, to hold her and tell her that everything will be all right because they have each other. Because they are together and nothing is stronger than the Doctor and Rose together. But he can’t, because they’re not together. Not when she’s been with another man instead of him.

Pain wracks his guts at the thought and he pushes it viciously away. He will not think about Mickey’s dark hand against the pale flesh of Rose’s stomach, his lips trailing down her body. He will not think about that man touching places that belong to him and no one else. It is bad enough that Mickey came before him, but he has no right to ever have touched Rose again. And Rose? How could she have ever let Mickey back in? She’d promised the Doctor that was over forever. Once upon a time she had promised him forever. Is that promise dead now?

No, he won’t let himself believe that. He’ll take Rose back to Earth and she’ll tell Mickey that it’s ended for good, and then he and Rose can get on with fixing whatever is so horribly broken that she turned to Mickey again in the first place. He thinks, just, that he’ll be able to forgive her for her betrayal.

He heads to the console room to check on the flight path, see how much longer it’ll be until they reach Earth. It’s only a few more hours. A few more hours and Rose can talk to Mickey and tell him she’s never going to see him again and this whole mess will be sorted. He sighs and drops down into the jumpseat and runs his hands over his face.

This hurts more than he would have believed possible considering just how much he has lost in his life. He can’t lose Rose, too, even though it means swallowing his pride and forgiving her and taking her back. He’ll do it because he…needs her.

He drops his hands from his face and his eyes stray across the room. He frowns as he notes his overcoat laying over the banister. He’d searched all over the place for it that morning and it hadn’t been there. He has a clear and distinct memory of it not being precisely there. He stands up and walks over to it and picks it up. He can smell it from that distance but brings it up to his face anyway. It smells like Rose.

He can smell the scent of her jasmine shampoo and her mango body wash, the slight sweat of her body and the presence of sleep chemicals. Did she sleep in his coat last night? He unfolds it and notes the wrinkles in it. It has definitely been slept in. He puzzles through this bit of information wondering why she’d done it. Guilt maybe? Or had she actually been missing him that much?

It had been agony not to go to her. He’d wanted to. He’d thought about just forgetting this mess between them last night and taking her up on what she was so clearly offering him. He’d let his pride get in the way, of course he had! What man wouldn’t? But he’d had a physical ache within him to be with her and he’d wanted to reclaim her as his. He had been afraid though. Not even afraid of rejection but afraid of what he might have done in bed. That the sex, if it had happened, would have been somewhat punishing and he never wants to do that to her no matter how angry he becomes. That isn’t the kind of man he is.

No, it had been necessary to stay away last night. Just as it is necessary now for him to lay down these ground rules about never seeing Mickey again. At least she is willing to comply. He hates ordering her to do anything, and not just because she usually immediately disregards it anyway, but because he wants her to do what is right on her own. Up until now she always has but this time it is fully necessary for him to put his foot down.

He realizes that he’s buried his face in the coat and that his respiratory bypass system has taken over. He pulls his face back away from the fabric and tosses it back over the rail, the heady scents that add up to Rose leaving his olfactory system surprisingly bereft. Even after all of this he still wants her. He still aches to be inside her. But he thinks it’s going to be a long time before his mind is ready to fully forgive her for what she’s done and let him.

Rose looks like hell when she walks into the kitchen at lunchtime. He wonders if this is what it looks like when you’re guilty of betraying your lover with another man. Her hair is wet and she smells freshly washed. Her eyes are rimmed with red as if she has been crying, her face is devoid of makeup and her hair is pulled back into a sloppy pony tail that it is obvious she did not brush first. She’s dressed in an ugly, shapeless gray set of joggers and thick gray socks. She walks past him like a zombie, ignoring the tea steeping on the stove and rummaging inside the fridge until she finds a bottle of orange juice.

Without a word to him or even a glance in his direction she trudges back out of the kitchen. “Aren’t you going to eat?” he calls after her recalling that she didn’t actually have breakfast. There’s no response. He tries to hold his resolve firm, he is the betrayed party after all, but seeing her like that, so torn apart…it still hurts him to see her so miserable. Obviously she’s suffering from what she’s done. He gets up and goes in search of her.

He finds her sitting in the middle of her bed drinking the juice and staring off into space. Literally, not figuratively. The TARDIS has provided a window that shows starscapes. He coughs to get her attention. She doesn’t turn towards him but her body tenses telling him she is aware of his presence. “You took my coat last night didn’t you?” he asks her. “I couldn’t find it this morning and then it was there later on and it smelled like you.” She shrugs. “I asked you a question,” he says sternly a little fed up with her feeling sorry for herself.

“I needed you last night,” she says so quietly he almost doesn’t hear her. “Couldn’t find you. Found that instead.” Her voice is broken. “Don’t worry. It won’t happen again. Taking the coat, I mean.” Her voice shakes. “Or needing you.”

“Rose,” he begins.

“Just don’t. I get it okay? I do. Don’t make me talk about it. I don’t want to cry anymore. My eyes hurt, my nose hurts, my throat hurts. And this…this decision… I'll have to live with it for the rest of my life and it’s killing me, but I’ll do it. Don’t you know that for you I’ll do anything?”

He stiffens. “I don’t see why it’s so hard for you,” he mutters.

She looks stricken. “You…you don’t see…?” Her voice shakes and she lurches from the bed and runs to her bathroom. The sounds of retching follow and then the impact of vomit hitting the water in the toilet bowl. Fresh crying begins again a moment later.

“Rose?”

“Get out. Get out and leave me the hell alone,” she cries out. “You stupid, stupid man.”

He backs away. So. Maybe not as remorseful as he thought.

Damn him, damn him, damn him to hell. How can he be so damn callous and cold? Does he think getting an abortion is something that is easy for her? Maybe this child has come at the worst time possible but that doesn’t mean she wouldn’t have loved him or her. She sits on the cold tiles of the bathroom floor and leans her head back against the wall.

She has been so careful not to imagine what their child would look like, yet an image of a small blonde girl appears in her mind without warning. The child’s head is covered in wispy gold curls that hang loose to the nape of her neck and her eyes are the same startling blue as her father’s used to be. When she smiles she has the dimples of her father’s newest face.

Tiny little hands raise themselves up and she sees a rough cut figure in a dark leather jacket pick the child up in his arms and slowly back away from them. Together they disappear in a puff of smoke. She wonders if he’ll be there to watch over her child when it’s gone. She stops the fanciful notion before it has a chance to run away from her. She knows it’s not true, that they’ll both just be…gone. She wonders how it’s possible to love and hate someone so much all at the same time.

“Come on, Rose, pull yourself together.” She yanks herself up on the sink and leans over it, running cold water into the basin. She splashes it on her face and then cups her hands under it, taking a few sips as she swallows her sobs back down. “You can do this. You have to.”

With as much resolve as she can muster she returns to her bedroom and closes and locks the door. She knows that the lock means nothing on a ship where the Doctor can open anything with a flick of the sonic screwdriver, but it’ll give her warning if he comes back and the knob rattles. She finds her phone still in the jeans she was wearing last night and switches it on, dialing the number she’s known from heart since she was three years old.

“Hello, Mum?”

“Rose? What’s wrong?” The familiar worry in Jackie’s voice is almost enough to start her tears again.

“I’m going to be home soon,” she manages to say.

“Oh, coming for Mickey’s aliens are you?” her mother asks.

“Not exactly. I mean, I’m sure the Doctor,” her voice breaks on his name, “will take care of that while he’s here, but…no. I’m coming home for…for a…for…”

“Rose, what is it? What’s wrong?”

“Mummy,” she says trying to swallow down a sob, but she knows her mother is anything but fooled as she falls apart. “I…I need a-a-a-an a-a-abor-tion.”

There is dead silence on the other end of the line. “Mum?” Her voice cracks the word into two syllables.

“I’m here, sweetheart. I’ll call Dr. Stuart for you; see if I can get you in tomorrow. Okay?” she says softly. “But it’s going to take time. Least three weeks from your initial appointment.”

“Three weeks?” Rose wailed.

“It’s standard. Don’t you remember, we took Shareen…?”

“Yeah…”

“You can always have himself pop you ahead three weeks in his box. Or take you to America for that matter. Three days and a bit o’ counseling and you’re done. If he’ll spring for the cost.” Jackie’s voice is slightly bitter.

“It’s my choice, Mum.”

“Is it? Or is he making it for you? I thought he wanted this baby,” her mother says.

“I did, too. I was wrong. Or…maybe it’s ‘cause he’s changed. The old him did, but this one doesn’t. He doesn’t and if I’m gonna stay with him then—then—then—I have to.”

“I knew it! He’s making you, isn’t he?”

“Mum, please! This is hard enough as it is. Don’t make it any worse,” she begs.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart. I just want you to know that you don’t have to. I’ll be here for you if you want to come home and raise him or her here. And I’ll be here for you if you go through with it, too. I’m your mum and I love you unconditionally.”

Rose burst into tears. “Oh, please don’t cry, love.”

“Can—can’t help it.”

“I’m gonna kill that git when I get my hands on ‘em. Maybe his next regeneration won’t be such a bleeding idiot. Never thought I’d miss ears and leather but damn it, Rose. He can’t do this to you! You deserve better.”

Rose looks down at the floor. Once upon a time she used to think so, too.

Ch. 3: http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/170869.html