Defunct

[amberfocus]

A/N:  I got bit by an angst bunny.  Really, really hard.  This is the result.  The word defunct in this instance means no longer in effect or use; no longer functioning or operating.  Post JE adjustment fic.  Ten 2/Rose.

Defunct

He’s left-handed which he finds inconvenient and frustrating and she finds disconcerting because it’s just another little thing about him that is different from how she thinks he should be, though she ought to have given up on should a long time ago. He should not even be here after all. There should be no happily ever after, though she’s still not quite sure there will be on the bad days. It’s the good days that tell her that it’s worth it, the good days that keep her trying when it would be so much easier just to admit defeat, give up and let him go, though go to what or to where neither of them is ever quite sure of.

He fixates on being left-handed, finding it ridiculous being as he grew out of a right hand to begin with. All she can think of is that he holds her hand differently than he did before, differently than he did when he was all Time Lord and not so very human. She doesn’t care which hand is dominant, she only knows that there is a level of desperation in it when he holds hers, as though he is sinking into quicksand and he expects her to save him, but she’s already drowning and she wonders just where he expects her to find the strength to perform this miracle. That’s all there is, this hand-holding, all there has ever been since that day on the beach.

She spends a lot of time just watching him. They don’t talk, not in words that actually say anything, but she studies him. It isn’t the first time she’s done this. When they first met, in those early stages, the getting to know each other bit of their relationship, she’d often had her eyes on him in the between times, trying to figure him out, this alien who was so different from her and yet already such a kindred spirit, one that had matched and meshed with her almost from the start. Certainly from their second meeting when she had time to do more than just run, when she’d had time to think and absorb and challenge him and be fantastic. He holds onto this when he’s not sure what she sees anymore.

 

He tries not to mind her looking at him the way she does, completely unselfconscious and open as she is about it. When he asks her what she sees in these long moments she smiles wistfully and shrugs and says, “You,” and she keeps on watching him with rapt attention until she gets bored or figures out what she particularly wants to know this time around. He’s still not entirely sure that when she says you she doesn’t actually mean him. It makes him twitch and his single, lonely heart ache.

 

Yet when she stops watching him he finds he misses having her eyes on him until the next time she is curious about something else he’s done. Then he feels that gaze against his back and he turns and those warm amber eyes are sure enough regarding him again with an almost horrified fascination.  He should not be able to both live for and resent these moments, but he does.

 

She is careful not to judge him, even more careful not to compare him even in the privacy of her own mind. He is the one who told her he loved her. He is the one who stayed. He is the one she has left. She expects more than she has been given, and is left to cope with the something less he offers. He is different and it isn’t the fact that he is half human and half Time Lord that bothers her. It is the fact that he’s only half there, stuck between two worlds.  Somehow, he lost part of himself and he cannot seem to find it buried here beneath the rubble that is now his life. All she can do is keep trying to understand and to be there.

 

It frightens him when he figures out what she is looking for, that spark in him that somehow failed to reignite when he was left behind without his TARDIS, his last piece of home that somehow held together who and what he was. A man he can no longer be, a home he can no longer have. He wishes Rose alone could be home for him, but it’s not that easy. He’s not sure it ever will be. He loves her. He still loves her, but he is so very afraid it will never be enough.

She is trying to understand something deeper than what’s on the surface. She is trying to figure out her place in this new life he is slowly carving out, if you can call existing, breathing, never moving forward living. And how can she do that when he is only just discovering for himself how deeply his world was rooted in another universe?

 

He forgets sometimes that this is not where she comes from, that she, too, had to forge a new life in a foreign reality, but she never had to change the reality of who she herself was and that’s the key difference in his failure to acclimatize.

 

It angers her that he dismisses her struggle to adapt without him as being less than his struggle to survive being who he is now. At least they have each other, she thinks. That’s more than she ever had away from him. But they don’t, not really, when he keeps holding back, when he won’t let them be who they once were or find something new, something better to be. He had promised her a life, a forever, to grow old together that day on the beach. But this isn’t together, this is simply growing older. It’s breaking her heart.

It is three months before she leaves one morning without telling him good-bye and three days before she returns to the little flat they have been sharing, platonically, all this while. She is afraid that he won’t have noticed she was even gone. He starts weeping when he sees her face and he launches himself fiercely from the arm chair, wrapping his arms about her so tightly she cannot breathe and she pushes him back a little too harshly.

 

His eyes are filled with hurt and rejection and he mutters something about leaving, finding his own way in the world, not needing a baby-sitter anymore to hold his hand.

She breaks. She has tried for so long to be strong and in this moment she cannot be. She flees the room, throws herself down on her bed and sobs like she has not done since the day she lost her first Doctor, like the day she lost her second. She cannot stand the thought of losing this third man who was supposed to give her everything and cannot even bring himself to give her his heart.

 

She wishes she had somehow managed to save the universe without finding him, any him, because everything now is so much worse than it ever was before. Before she had hope, hope that she’d get back to him; hope that they’d have some kind of future, hope that it would be better. But this limbo is so much worse than anything else she has ever gone through because he is here but he isn’t here and she can no longer bear it.

He is unsure of what to do. His words spoken in haste and hurt have lanced through her heart and as he watches from the doorway of her room he has never seen her so devastated. Eventually she calms, takes deep shuddering breaths and seems to pull in upon herself. She curls her body tightly into a fetal ball, her back to him, her eyes against the far wall if they are even open. He isn’t sure she knows he’s there.

 

But she does. “If you want to go,” she says, “I won’t stop you.”

 

“Please,” he whispers. “Please. Stop me.” 

 

And that’s always what it’s been about, needing someone to stop him, usually from destroying worlds or races, but not this time. This time he needs help to stop him from destroying her, destroying himself, destroying what could be between them if only he could wake up.

She sits up and turns to look at him. Her eyes are rimmed with red and oh, so sad. She wipes fiercely at her face and says, “I can’t. It’s time you learned how to stop yourself.”

 

His brow furrows as he considers her words, wonders if this is what it’s supposed to be to be human, or mostly human, anyway. “How?” he asks her.

 

“One step at a time, same way as the rest of us. The human way.”

 

He nods slowly, thinks about taking steps and then he is, different steps, steps towards Rose. He settles himself down on the bed beside her and reaches shakily for her hand, unsure of what her reaction will be.

 

She takes it, she always takes it, she probably always will. “I don’t want to lose you,” he says softly.

 

“Then don’t lose me. Choose not to,” she replies. He wonders if it can really be that simple, this act of not losing Rose, simply by choosing not to lose her. 

 

He is silent for so long that she says the one thing she had promised herself she would not say. Ever. “Don’t you love me anymore?”

 

“I will always love you.” There is no hesitation in his words, but there is in his actions. He leans in slowly, so afraid that she will bolt, but she does not, she turns to him and when his lips brush against hers for the first time since that day on the beach he feels something settle inside of him. Her lips are warm, like his, but softer. The kiss is sweet, little more than chaste, and when he breaks it there is something in her eyes that he can’t quite identify. 

 

But she is Rose and she tells him exactly what it means. “Do not start this,” she says, “unless you mean it. Because I cannot let you break my heart again.”

 

“I mean it,” he tells her, moves back towards her and presses his mouth to hers again.  

 

She is still at first then finds herself responding as she allows emotions she has shut down for months to come back online. Her hands rise to fist in his jumper, pulling him closer to her body and she feels his hands tangle in her long blond hair.

 

The kiss is passionate, intense, and it is the Doctor that deepens it, the Doctor that pushes forward into her mouth and his tongue that is gliding desperately against hers. She is overwhelmed by sensations as desire wells up fiercely within her. For so long he has denied her this, to the point she’d nearly forgotten that she’d wanted it that day on the beach.

 

His desperation begins to die down and his pace slows as he realizes she is not going anywhere, that she will allow this to continue, so he languidly begins to explore and as his tongue brushes across the sensitive roof of her mouth she lets out a moan that he’s quite sure the neighbors can hear if anyone is home. He finds he does not care.

 

Eventually Rose pulls away from him, her hands letting go of his jumper, and she takes a few long, shaky breaths. His hands fall to his lap and they just look at each other. It is only a step forward and neither one of them is really aware of just how big a step it is. In his old life, the Doctor would have noticed time lines reordering themselves around him. In this one, he only knows that it’s time to start living, really living, the one adventure he can truly have.