amberfocus | Pride: Chapter One

Title: Pride (1/?)
Series: Moments in Darkness
Author: amberfocus
Characters/Pairings: Ten/Rose, Mickey Smith
Genre: Romance, Angst, Baby!fic
Rating: Teen
Beta: amyo67
Summary: Things still aren't right between the Doctor and Rose after his betrayal with Reinette and he fears they never will be. Rose wants to trust him again for the sake of the baby, but she's not sure she can. Tired of being a helpless observer in their love life, Mickey decides it's time to move on. Thirteenth in the Moments in Darkness series and follows on from Forgotten.
A/N: I'm not sure how many chapters this is going to be at the moment. At least three, probably closer to six. I'm notoriously bad at sticking to a chapter count when I put one down. Here's a link to the first story in the series: http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/36302.html. All stories are now linked to the following story in the series.

Chapter One: Something’s Got to Give

Things are wrong between the Doctor and Rose and he doesn’t know how to fix it. He isn’t sure he can fix it. Although outwardly she seems to have accepted his apology for…well, for everything really, there’s still this gap between them and no amount of post-danger hugging is eliminating that gap. He holds her so tightly sometimes, just trying to erase that space and even though her body is flush to his, he still feels the divide like a tangible thing. It hurts. Once upon a time he was the most important thing in the universe to Rose Tyler. He wants that back and he has the horrible, creeping feeling that it’s never going to happen.

It’s his own fault. Of course it is. He’s never been the best about planning for the future and ever since the Time War he feels like he’s been living on borrowed time, like he should have died with everyone else. Not that he wants to be dead, mind you. That’s the last thing he wants, but sometimes he feels like he deserves to be, like the weight of all he’s done means that he shouldn’t even be here. Before…before he changed, before Reinette, being with Rose made him let go of that, if only for small moments at a time. She made him feel like he had every right to still exist, that everything he’d done was the right thing, that as long as she was with him he had a future worth breathing in. Worth believing in.

He let her put him on a pedestal in the beginning and that was a mistake. He’d liked the hero worship, loved the way she looked at him like he had all the answers and could solve any problem. Bit by bit, he’d proven himself to be fallible, but she’d never seemed to see it. Even when she was hurting, even when he’d never told her about regeneration and had changed on her, she’d still seen him as so much more than a man. Then had come the misunderstanding over her pregnancy that had almost torn them apart, was still, probably in many ways, tearing them apart.

She’d been afraid to tell him the truth. Afraid of how he, as this new man, would accept the news. He is ashamed of how he’d acted, deeply ashamed that he’d ever thought the baby could be Mickey’s, that he’d ever thought Rose would have an affair just because he’d changed his face. It still kills him inside that she’d thought he wanted her to get an abortion. Even if the baby had been Mickey’s he’d never have wanted that and that Rose had lost that much faith in him to even think so…Well, he isn’t on any pedestal now, is he? Rebuilding trust is going to take time, so much time, and he has this unsettling feeling that if he doesn’t fix things soon, he never will.

Mickey is watching Rose with heavy eyes. He’s never been so tired in his life. Watching this relationship implode, watching all of this play out, is ruining his spirit. He never should have come along. He’d wanted to protect Rose, be by her side for the sake of the baby while she worked out her issues with the Doctor, but those issues are only becoming bigger since he’d come on board. Not that he blames himself. Oh, no. The Doctor can wreck his own life and Rose’s just fine on his own without any help from ol’ Mickey boy. It hadn’t been Mickey’s wandering lips that had caused any betrayal.

The sad thing is that he came because he thought Rose needed him, that she needed the support he could offer, but it’s become clear that Rose doesn’t need him. Indeed, she hasn’t needed him for a very long time. Playing third wheel in their relationship was never fun back on Earth, but he’d had a life separate from theirs that he could go back to whenever they were gone. Now he’s stuck in it, stuck in someone else’s life on a spaceship that for all its immensity has suddenly become very small, and he doesn’t want to be.

He’s spent so much of his life tagging after Rose that he didn’t even think twice this time when the Doctor offered him a place on board. Maybe he should have, because Rose is never going to leave the Doctor of her own accord no matter how badly he treats her. She might not be aware of just how deeply she loves the Time Lord, or how deeply the Doctor loves Rose in return, but Mickey knows. After all, he’s watched it unfold from the start, watched as it tore his own life to pieces, and watched as it’s shredded their own life together.

He’s tired of watching. What was it he’d told Sarah Jane? He was tired of being the Tin Dog, the man in Havana, the back up support. He’d wanted excitement and adventure and all he gets is this. Watching the woman he couldn’t help but still be a little bit in love with for the rest of his life go through hell. Maybe it is selfish of him to want more for himself than that, but why shouldn’t he? Rose and the Doctor had certainly been selfish enough in finding their way into each other’s arms. Why doesn’t he have that same right to want something for himself, something that makes him better, special, the star of the show and not in the back row of the chorus? Damn right he deserves a better life than he is getting. It’s about time he stands up for himself and finds that life.

He stands up and turns away from Rose, who is busy at the martial arts target, boxing gloves on her hands, beating the thing up like there is no tomorrow. She’s crying, but that’s not something new. She’s always crying these days. He’s warned her to take it easy, that too much strenuous exercise probably isn’t safe for the baby, but Rose isn’t even showing yet and thinks he’s being ridiculous.

She stops and turns as he walks to the door. “You’re leaving?” she asks.

He pauses, one hand on the doorframe, and without turning around he says, “Yeah, I am.” And isn’t it about time that he does?

Rose slips the boxing gloves off and unwraps the tape from around her hands. Her workout has been hard, fierce, and the Doctor, the old Doctor, would be surprised at how far she’s come since that first lesson he’d given her. She tries not to think about how gently he’d taped up her hands and how he’d shown her how to throw proper punches, ones she could use to defend herself, should she ever be cornered by someone with bad intentions again. He hadn’t been big on violence, but he’d been fast enough to let his fists fly when it came to protecting her that long ago day. She can protect her body these days, but it’s her heart that’s been wounded.

She’d always felt protected when he was around. She’d always felt safe. She’d just been starting to really feel that again, to really believe it when the thing with Reinette had happened. She wishes she could just force herself to get past it. He hadn’t lied to her, not about any of it, but how is she supposed to forget that he’d kissed someone just an hour after he’d kissed her, just a few days after he’d said he loved her? She wants to trust him; she does, because it would make things so much easier for her. Unfortunately her hurt keeps getting in the way.

She’s not ready to give up. She doesn’t want to go home. She doesn’t want to keep going on like this either. She wants to be close to him again. She wants to forgive him, but it’s never been as easy as that. Trust is earned quickly the first time, but what had been granted the day he’d saved her from the Autons in five minutes time, had been shattered by one moment’s kiss, and it feels like it is going to take a very long time to find it again. It’s already been a month. A month of stilted adventures. A month of Mickey watching her fall apart and be miserable. None of this is fair to him. He deserves so much more. Why he’d ever come she doesn’t know.

No, that’s a lie and she isn’t going to lie to herself, not where Mickey is concerned. The man would do anything for her, but she can’t let him anymore. Mickey needs to find his own wings, his own way to fly, and it can’t be from the tail on Rose’s kite, or the string in the Doctor’s hands. It’s got to be on his own. She’d hoped coming with them might give him that, but it hasn’t. All he’s done is worry about Rose. It’s time to let Mickey go. And the only way he will be convinced that he can go, that he can leave her, is if he believes that she and the Doctor are going to be okay.

She steps into the shower, cleaning herself quickly, her hands taking note of the tiny swelling beginning to form in her belly. It’s not so much that her clothes aren’t still plenty roomy, but it’s the first time outside of the Doctor’s use of the scanner that she’s seen a real, physical sign of her condition. She closes her eyes and lets the water wash away the redness of her tears. This is her reality. The baby, the Doctor, the TARDIS. This is the life she has chosen. It’s time she starts working on it again. Shower finished, she dresses in clean clothes and combs her hair, and then with her shoulders squared resolutely, she swallows her pride and goes in search of the Doctor.

Ch. 2: http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/359795.html