Have (3/3)

[amberfocus]

 
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Chapter Three:  Hold

“One hundred?” Rose asks. She gulps audibly and buries her face in the Doctor’s chest. “You mean…”

 

“Yeah, I mean. There’s a chance we could have a child, Rose. But I…I wouldn’t ask you to,” he tells her.

 

“Ask me, wait, what?” she sputters.

 

“I wouldn’t…I know the idea of it would be…horrifying for you. Having an alien kid, raising it with me. I’d never ask it of you, never expect it,” he told her.

 

“You mean you’d want to?”

 

The arm that isn’t cradled around her rises up and he strokes her hair back from her face. His fingers linger on her cheekbone then move down across her lips. “I know you don’t want to tie yourself to the likes of me forever and a kid…a kid just would. And at your age…you should be having fun and exploring and adventuring. Not raising my babe in the TARDIS gardens.”

 

“The TARDIS has gardens?” she asks distractedly commenting on the one little fact in his words that doesn’t mean anything important. The much larger fact that he hasn’t said he didn’t want it is ricocheting around in her mind.

 

“Yeah.” His hand moves down to stroke her hair and then her shoulder. “If, well if, I can end it easily enough.”

 

Rose tenses. “What if I didn’t want to? What if I had it?”

 

“Rose, I wouldn’t make you do that.”

 

“What if I chose to? You gonna be there for me?” she demands.

 

“Rose?”

 

“Well, are you? If I get pregnant from this, and I decide to have your baby, are you going to be there or are you going to drop me off with my mum and go about your life?”

 

“You mean you’d want to have my child?”

 

“Not by myself, I wouldn’t. But with you? I’d do it,” she says firmly. “I mean, if it happens. Not on…not on purpose, not now.” She took a deep breath. “Not this young, but on accident…like this…I would. I’d raise a child with you.”

 

“Rose, I can’t ask you to sacrifice your life like that,” he protests.

 

“You’re not asking. I’m telling you. Bit of a difference, there, isn’t it?” she tells him. “Besides, I’ve already chosen a life with you. If it goes a little bit differently than what I expected, then it does. As long as you’re here for me, then…I’d bear your children.”

 

“Children?” he asks barely daring to believe what she’s implying.

 

“I grew up an only child. It’s lonely enough at the best of times. In a time machine? He’ll need at least one sibling,” she says.

 

“We’d be a family?”

 

“Aren’t we already? I mean, I’d prefer to wait a few years before you get me pregnant, it’s not really the best time, but that’s life sometimes.”

 

“But, Rose.”

 

“What?”

 

He pushes a little bit of space between their bodies and tentatively reaches out and strokes her abdomen. “We’d be tied together forever.”

 

“Is that a bad thing?” she asks him.

 

The smile he turns on her tells her he doesn’t think it is.

 

 

 

The Doctor is staring at Rose in wonder. It has never occurred to him that she’d want to have a child with him, even if she doesn’t particularly want to have one now. His hearts are beating so quickly as he looks at her, lets his eyes drift back down her body. He can picture her pregnant, her stomach round and swollen with his child, her skin glowing and her eyes sparkling. It’s picturing her holding his baby, though, that breaks him.

 

He nudges her over onto her side and holds her flush against him, wraps his arm around her with his fingers splayed across her belly, so she can’t turn back and see that tears are leaking from his eyes. This is not the first time he has underestimated his Rose, but he hopes it will be the last. He finds himself wishing desperately that she does get pregnant from this, although a brief flash of horror washes through him at the idea of having to explain it to Jackie.

 

“Nine hundred years of time and space, all those alien species to choose from, and you decide to pick my Rose to knock up?” Jackie’s imaginary voice grates through his head. He’ll get a slap for that, he will, but it’ll be worth it, because yes, if he had to choose, it would be this feisty human lying naked with him now. She was beautiful, so utterly beautiful and she has given herself to him.

 

He wonders what a child conceived with her would look like. Blond, he hopes. A little girl with her mother’s smile. Not too much of his own looks, he wouldn’t wish that on a daughter. Maybe just the cheekbones. And his own blue eyes staring up at him from Rose’s face. A child. A family again. With Rose. Is it too much to ask for? Is it wrong of him to want this as desperately as he does, to have a tie to Rose, something that’ll keep her from leaving him, something to bind them together? It’s almost painful how much he suddenly wants this, ridiculous how much he lo--.

 

“Doctor?”

 

“Yes, Rose?”

 

“You said if I could get pregnant, it’s one hundred percent sure?”

 

“More like 99.9735842 percent,” he says absently.

 

“But if I can, it’s already set, right?” she asks.

 

“On the way to it, yeah.”

 

“No changing it without outside interference, yeah? So making love again, wouldn’t really cause any further harm, would it?” she asks.

 

“Again?”

 

“Yeah. I mean, can you?” she asks as if it has just occurred to her that he might not be able to make love more than once in a night. His male pride leaps awake along with his male anatomy. “Ah, I’d say that’s a yes, then.”

 

She squirms around so she is facing him, frowns at the tear tracks on his face and reaches out to wipe them away with her thumb. “Yeah,” he whispers hoarsely. He rolls her onto her back and she opens her legs for him. If it’s possible, making love with her again will utterly erase the remaining .0264158 percent of a chance she wouldn’t get pregnant the first time. As he enters her again, he can’t bring himself to care.

 

 

 

It was a stupid dream, really, he tells himself as he stares moodily at the results of Rose’s blood work. It’s better my people die with me. What gets to him the most is just how close she is to being compatible with him. One infinitesimal quirk in her DNA separates them, one tiny receptor, that prevents a successful conception between them. If he could just tweak his own cells the tiniest bit it would work, because the tests he has run on his own blood show that he’s not sterile this regeneration.

 

He rises to his feet, knowing he has to tell her, dreading it because if he says it out loud it means there’s no denying it’s true. There won’t be a little girl to chase around the TARDIS console, to snuggle between them in bed at night when she has nightmares, to teach how to recalibrate the gravitational stabilizers by the time she turns four. There won’t be a little boy following in his big sister’s wake with adoring eyes, attempting to do everything that she does.

 

The Doctor finds Rose in the kitchen chatting with Jack. “Hey, Doc,” the man says with a wary smile. Rose turns and gives him a welcoming smile, but the warmth on her face fades as she takes in his expression.

 

“Am I?” Rose asks him her heart in her eyes.

 

“No,” he says and she looks almost sad.

 

“Can…can I?” she asks him biting her lip.

 

“No,” he says again and he can’t keep the grief out of his voice.

 

“Am I missing something here?” asks Jack suddenly very uncomfortable with the new vibe in the room.

 

“No,” says Rose after a long pause. “It’s the Doctor and me. We’re missing something.” She rises from the table and walks over to the Doctor, putting her arms around him and holding him tight. She gasps at the strength of his grip on her when he returns her hug.

 

“Jack, I need to take Rose somewhere. Alone. If I drop you off on Santaginis do you think you can find a Forashei capacitor in the markets?” he asks.

 

“Sure, of course.” Jack looks the man in the eyes for a long moment. The Doctor turns and with Rose tucked under his arm walks with her out of the kitchen.

 

 

They stand alone together under a hundred foot wave of frozen ice, marveling at the beauty in the rainbow of colors trapped inside. “It’s lovely,” Rose says, but she finds it hard to concentrate on the scenery when her heart is breaking for the man in front of her. The name of the planet, Woman Wept, is perfect for the way she feels. She wants to weep for him. He doesn’t say it, but she knows he feels this loss keenly, that he’d been hoping.

 

“I let myself get foolish,” he says. His hands are tucked deep into the pockets of his leather jacket and he has withdrawn into himself. Rose reaches out and tugs one hand free, wrapping her fingers tightly around his.

 

“You let yourself dream, that’s all,” she tells him. “It’s natural for you to want a family. You’ve lost everything.”

 

“I don’t deserve a family, Rose. I don’t deserve you,” he tells her bitterly.

 

“You’ve got me, whether you think you deserve me or not,” she tells him.

 

“Everything I love dies, Rose.” He tries to tug his hand away from her, but she’s not letting go.

 

“Everything dies eventually, Doctor. That doesn’t mean you stop living in the meanwhile.” She sighs when he finally does manage to free his hand and puts it back in his pocket. “I’m going to have to tell Mickey the next time we go visit Mum,” she says. “I can’t let him keep thinking there’s any hope.”

 

“Are you sure you want to do that?” the Doctor asks suddenly.

 

“Of course, I’m sure. I’m with you now.” When he doesn’t say anything a feeling of dread creeps into her stomach. “I am with you now. Aren’t I, Doctor?” she asks suddenly uncertain.

 

“Maybe it’d be better to end this now,” he says. “Before it goes any deeper.”

 

Pain shoots through her at his words, but she forces herself to stay strong. “Is that what you want?” she asks him.

 

He looks down at his feet for a long time and the silence stretches to uncomfortable lengths.  She will not be the first to break it. “No,” he finally manages. “But Rose--.”

 

“Shut up, Doctor,” she says gently and takes his face in her hands. She stands on tiptoes to reach his mouth and she kisses him. With her lips and her tongue she tries to tell him that she will be there for him no matter what, that it doesn’t matter that they can’t have children, that she is his family now through thick and thin. His hands come out of his pockets and he pulls her closer to him, holding her as if his life depends on it.

 

When he finally breaks away from her he takes her hand in his and he says, “Yeah, Rose. You’re with me now.”

To Be Continued in Change:   http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/52096.html