amberfocus | Doubt (5/6)

A/N: All recognizable dialog is from the episode School Reunion.

Chapter Five: Revelation

Once they are firmly established at the high school a few days later, it is Rose’s idea to sneak in after dark and see what they can discover. She’s less than thrilled that her undercover assignment has been that of a dinner lady, but with her lack of a completed education there isn’t much else she’s qualified to do. She’s not old enough to pass herself off as a parental volunteer and not quite young enough to pretend to be a student either.

The only benefit she’s seen so far is access to the gorgeous chips the cafeteria serves. She’s craving them, more so than she normally craves chips and she wonders if it has anything to do with pregnancy food cravings finally kicking in. She gets the sample of oil from the kitchen that she needs and wonders how Mickey is getting on in the Math’s department. Poor man’s probably got himself turned completely around and lost despite her directions. She ought to go and see.

A scream, likely from Mickey, sends her running only to bump into the Doctor and…some woman. She wonders if their cover’s been blown but then she sees the way the Doctor is looking at her and something in her rises up. He’s picked up another stray, another woman to flirt with who isn’t Rose. No. She forces that back down again. It’s a stupid, jealous thought and he’s promised to work things out with her. She gives the stranger a critical appraisal. This woman is beautiful but quite a bit older looking; so not his type.

Yet she’s looking at the Doctor with some kind of devotion and…what the hell is going on? “Did you hear that? Who’s she?” she asks.

The Doctor has a beaming smile on his face. “Rose, Sarah Jane. Sarah Jane, Rose,” he says excitedly. Far too excitedly for her liking.

“Hiiiii, nice to meet you,” Sarah Jane says in an entirely too smooth and drawn out manner that feels like it means exactly the opposite of what she’s saying. She extends her hand and Rose shakes it as briefly as she can. Why is this woman arousing such jealousy in her?

Sarah Jane turns back to the Doctor. “You can tell you’re getting older. You’re assistants are getting younger.”

“I’m not his assistant,” Rose says disparagingly. If the Doctor won’t say something she definitely will. “I’m—.”

But the woman has already turned back to the Doctor, ignoring Rose. “No? Look at you, tiger.” The Doctor is looking sheepish, embarrassed even, and Rose has a sinking feeling it’s because everyone but him has just established that she’s his lover, but he doesn’t appear to want to admit it to the other woman.

As they meet back up with Mickey the woman starts snarking at Rose about her youth and bringing up every single doubt she’s ever had about her relationship with the Doctor due to it. Rose is ready to explode, but she keeps it all in trying desperately hard not to be jealous. Her only consolation is that the Doctor is behaving childishly himself, berating Mickey for screaming like a little girl in pigtails. Despite the truth coming out that Rose had not slept with Mickey, there are still a lot of sore feelings directed at her ex by the Doctor.

“I don’t mean to be rude or anything, but who exactly are you?” Rose asks fed up.

“Sarah Jane Smith. I used to travel with the Doctor.”

“Oh,” she says as if it is a revelation. “He’s never mentioned you.”

“Oh, I must have done. Sarah Jane. I mention her all the time,” the Doctor says finally realizing he might need to step in and make peace, but Rose is having none of it.

“Hold on,” says Rose pretending to think. “Sorry. Never.”

“Not even once? He didn’t mention me once?” Sarah Jane sounds very hurt and Rose almost feels sorry for her. She can’t imagine some time in the future not being important enough for the Doctor to have mentioned to… Oh. What if they’d been lovers, too? Something painful twists inside her.

“Oh, ho, ho, mate. The missus and the ex, welcome to every man’s worst nightmare!” Mickey says with entirely too much relish.

“Who told you?” the Doctor snaps out and Rose realizes her worst fear. It is stupid of her to think that the Doctor has never sought love before her, but did fate have to rearrange her life so she could meet a past lover? Nausea roils in her stomach. With several deep breaths she forces it back under control.

They had promised each other no more secrets and the fact that he’s had companions before her isn’t technically a secret, it is just something else, like regeneration, that he’s never bothered to tell her. He is over 900 years old, he makes friends, particularly female friends, wherever he goes and he is an extraordinarily lonely man if left to his own devices. It makes sense he’d travel with other people and Rose should have put that together a long time ago. Somehow, though, she hasn’t until now and Sarah Jane, staring at him with some kind of open adoration, is driving Rose right up the wall and he knows it.

The thing is he is sure Rose would like her if they’d met under different circumstances. Circumstances that did not involve the Doctor in any way, shape, or form. But Rose likes to think she’s special, and of course she is. He’s never fallen in love with a companion before. He stops himself in his tracks. It is so rare for him to allow himself to even think that word. The only time he’d even said it out loud was when he sent the ship back from the game station with Rose safely inside and he thought he’d never see her again. He’s certainly never said it to her. This time it comes completely unbidden into his thoughts. It scares him to death.

He knows the right thing to do right now is to reassure Rose that nothing and no one can ever take her place. Not even Sarah Jane. But as he looks at his old friend he can’t tear himself away from her. So very many years have passed him by and yet she’s the one that shows signs of aging. She’s still beautiful with one of the loveliest voices he’s ever heard, but seeing how much life has gone by her hurts. One day he’ll be looking at Rose like he’s looking at Sarah, except he’ll have seen each of those days put on Rose’s face because he’s never going to go away and leave her behind. That doesn’t mean it won’t hurt to see her short human life span running out.

He sighs and glances away from trying to repair K-9 for a moment and over to where Rose is sitting with Mickey eating chips. Despite knowing that their relationship is innocent it still raises something in him. He’d thought earlier that Mickey was heckling him with his missus and the ex line, thought he had meant Rose and her ex, Mickey himself. It would have killed him if Rose had mentioned that fiasco to Mickey. It had taken a few moments to calm down his racing thoughts enough to figure out he’d meant Rose as his own missus and Sarah Jane as his ex. Either way he’d still wanted to resort to violence when he’d seen the man’s smug grin.

“Did I do something wrong? Because you never came back for me. You just dumped me,” Sarah says bringing his attention fully back on her.

“I told you, I was called back home and in those days humans weren’t allowed.”

“I waited for you. I missed you.” The naked vulnerability on Sarah’s face is too much for him to look at. He focuses firmly on K-9.

“Oh, you didn’t need me. You were getting on with your life.”

“You were my life.” The lost, sad expression on her face destroys him. “You know what the most difficult thing was? Coping with what happens next. No, what doesn’t happen next.” There is anger in her voice now, held back but still there. “You took me to the furthest reaches of the galaxy. You showed me super novas, intergalactic battles, and then you just dropped me back on Earth. How can anything compare to that?”

He is confused. “All those things you saw, you want me to apologize for that?”

“No! But…we get a taste of that splendor and then we have to go back.”

“But look at you. You’re investigating. You found that school. You’re doing what we always did,” he tells her happily because she hasn’t let life stop her.

“You could have come back,” she accuses.

His face loses all animation. “I couldn’t.”

“Why not?” He can’t answer her and looks away. “It wasn’t Croydon, where you dropped me off, it wasn’t Croydon,” she says with a half laugh.

“Where was it?”

“Aberdeen,” she says sharply.

“Right,” he says thinking hard. “That’s next to Croydon, isn’t it?”

Sarah Jane shakes her head no and then K-9 comes to life at last and they are able to analyze the oil, identify the species they are up against and prepare for what comes next, the painful awkwardness forgotten. Only he can’t prepare for what comes next because Rose insists on talking, right now. And since he’s agreed to that, to talk things through with her, he can’t exactly squirm his way out of it now.

“How many of us have there been, travelling with you?” she asks.

“Does it matter?”

“Yeah, it does if I’m just the latest in a long line,” she says.

He turns to face her locking his gaze with her own. “As opposed to what?” he asks. She blanches, takes a step back. He sees her starting to shut down, girding herself against the coming pain and it kills him that he did that to her yet again.

“I thought you and me were…” She can’t even finish the thought and her eyes are starting to fill with too much moisture. “I obviously got it wrong.” He can’t keep looking at her and glances away. “I’ve been to the year five billion,” she continues, “but this… Now this is really seeing the future. You just leave us behind.” He meets her gaze again and she covers her flat belly with one hand and asks, “Is that what you’re going to do to me? To us?”

“No. Not to you,” he says quietly.

“But Sarah Jane. You were that close to her once and now…you never even mention her.” There is so much pain in Rose’s voice as if she thinks her fate will be the same when there is no comparison at all. He could never, ever leave her. “Why not?”

“I don’t age,” he says earnestly. “I regenerate. But humans decay. You wither and you die. Imagine watching that happen to someone that you…” He can’t continue, the emotion welling up so strongly within him that it overwhelms him. He never wants to see that happen to Rose, but he knows he will because he cannot ever let her go.

“What, Doctor?” she asks.

He hesitates for a long time. “Love,” he finally says.

“You loved her?” The confusion on her face is too much for him.

“No. She was just my friend. She wasn’t you. No one has ever been like you, Rose.” He takes a deep breath as it dawns on her what he means. “You can spend the rest of your life with me, but I can’t spend the rest of mine with you. I have to live on. Alone. That’s the curse of the Time Lords.”

Despite his admission the night before that he loves her, which he of course managed to say without actually saying, Rose is still hurt at his continued adoration of Sarah Jane. It isn’t that he’s had other companions. If she’d stopped to think about it she’d have realized that of course he would have. He likes people too much and needs someone to listen to him talk. No, it’s this particular person that bothers her, like if anyone had tempted him before Rose it would have been this woman.

She tries not to let her anxiety show but when he hands over his sonic screwdriver to Sarah Jane instead of Rose something very small breaks inside her. It is his most trusted possession, one he never even let tech savvy Jack touch without one hundred different directions, one that he’s only ever put into her hands before without comment. And he just…gives it to Sarah Jane.

He seems to be back pedaling furiously from his declaration and she wonders if things will ever be the same for them again. He actually has the nerve to send the two women off together. And then Sarah Jane can’t even get the sonic screwdriver to work right and with far more satisfaction than she should feel over it, Rose takes the device and gets it right first go.

“Rose, can I give you a bit of advice?”

“I’ve got a feeling you’re about to,” she says on an annoyed sigh.

“I know how intense a relationship with the Doctor can be and I don’t want you to feel I’m intruding--.”

“I don’t feel threatened by you if that’s what you mean,” she lies.

“Right. Good. Because I’m not interested in picking up where we left off,” Sarah says.

“No? With the big, sad eyes and the robot dog? What else where you doing last night?” she demanded.

“I was just talking about how hard it was adjusting to life back on Earth,” she explains.

Rose can’t help it. Everything she’s been holding back rises to the surface. Apparently Sarah Jane is feeling the same way and the two women go into a back and forth that leaves them both breathless and surprisingly, laughing. Even when the Doctor walks in on them they can’t stop. It is a relief to Rose to finally let go of all the jealousy she has been feeling. The Doctor moves off to the other end of the room pouting because they laughed at him and ignoring them in turn as the two women continue to talk quietly as they do their work.

Sarah Jane admits to Rose that though she was a little bit in love with the Doctor as a young woman, they were never lovers, that the Doctor had told her he never had that type of relationship with his companions and admits that she'd immediately seen what Rose is to the Doctor and it had made her unreasonably jealous of Rose. Rose admits and apologizes for her own jealousy then very shyly tells Sarah Jane that she’s pregnant with the Doctor’s child and the woman hugs her tightly. “That’s wonderful. He needs that after losing everything. And Rose, he needs you. Even I can see how much.”

“I can see why he liked having you around. Your compassion is something else.”

“Plus, I’m really a lot of fun when you get to know me.”

The women fall into a comfortable working relationship after that that reminds Rose of the one she had with Jack, without the innuendo of course, and as the rest of the day progresses she finds her jealousy completely gone and her admiration for the other woman growing by leaps and bounds.

Ch. 6: http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/173312.html