Chapter Text
The worst part—aside from the secrecy, and the endless brushes with danger, and the burden of the gun at her back, and the fear that she will someday jump too far—is that sometimes…
He's just a complete arsehole.
-
"No, I insist that you tell me," the Doctor says rather pompously. "I've let this go on long enough and I won't allow it to go any further, you shiftless vagabond. You must tell me who you are if you intend to seek refuge on my ship."
With her back to the door, she can feel the vibration of pulse weapons firing on the wooden shell of the TARDIS. It rattles her ribcage, making her heart beat faster. "I told you! I'm a time traveler," she cries, "just like you!"
Even after all these months, that's all the backstory she's managed to work out, short of lying entirely—something she's not at all comfortable with. (Not with him, at least.)
But the Doctor is unimpressed by her story. With a tight frown, he strides around the console, his coattails fanning out behind him in a technicolor blur, headed for a button that will—she guesses—unlock the ship's doors and send her tumbling out into space.
"If you do that," she shouts, "we'll both die! And you may not understand it now, but we'll take two universes down with us!" That catches his attention, and if she weren't so afraid—and angry, damn him—she'd laugh. "Possibly more," she adds, because it's the truth.
It's not an unintentional slip so much as a judicious offering: Understand the stakes, Doctor. Understand why I'm here without me saying.
He cocks his curly head, brows heavily furrowed in a familiar way. Considering. Calculating. She decides immediately that this incarnation is dangerous in a way that the others haven't been. Not strictly unkind—but unyielding. Stubborn.
"You're just trying to save your own life."
At that, Rose does laugh, a sound both brutal and brittle. "Oh, yes. That's why I launch myself through time and space, over and over—without a ship—without coordinates—with only myself and my gun." The Doctor sneers at the reminder of the weapon strapped to her back, like a cat threatened with a pail of water. "Because I value my own life so highly."
Glaring, the Doctor fires back. "If you didn't value it, you wouldn't bring the gun."
She remembers, suddenly, that she hasn't saved him with it yet. That's not happened for him. And she feels herself tremblingly split—between the threat of laughter and the threat of tears. She can't explain that she's saved him from annihilation with this very weapon.
That she carries it with her everywhere—sleeps with it by her bedside—because of him.
-
The first time she meets him out of sequence, the world is burning. Or, at least, it feels that way. The surface of the planet she's landed on is pock-marked by bullets, riddled with brutal craters. She has to pick her way through the rubble to even see him—and at first, she can't tell. If it’s him, or if it’s anyone else who has been through too much, who has lost people, and who carries the same haunted look in his eyes that the Doctor always did.
But, of course, it’s him.
There is a crackle of static coming from some sort of handheld transceiver—it sounds like a distress call—and she can make out one word. Just one. “Doctor!”
“You gonna get that?” she asks, not giving herself time to think better of it. His eyes have been so pinned to the burning horizon that it’s clear he hasn’t noticed her, and when he does, he shows no startlement. His eyes slide her way—a pale, piercing blue. They remind her of someone. (They remind her of him.)
“No,” he says flatly.
“Why not?” She steps closer, makes to sit beside him. They’re at the very edge of a sheer rock face, looking down over a valley that eventually turns into a golden, shining city under the fierce red sky. It’s beautiful, in a grim, despairing sort of way. Expansive. She imagines it might be his home world.
“Because it’ll be the end of me.”
Rose’s flinch is instinctual. Somehow, she hopes this isn’t true, but she can’t be sure. It’s not as if she can ask him which body he’s on. Surely, she thinks desperately, he’d know me if this was after. If this was the end.
And if his world is still in existence...
This must be before.
Which is a unique sort of torture; she can’t tell him anything that will damage the future. She’s not even sure she can provide him the comfort he so clearly needs.
Her eyes slide over him—over the unkempt, harshly-shorn curls and the battered jacket. He looks as if he’s come a very long way. The only thing she can think to say is a useless platitude, but she says it anyway. “You know, every end is just a new beginning. For Time Lords, at least,” she adds, smiling faintly.
The Doctor finally looks at her, eyes sharp and inquisitive. She can see that he’s trying to work her out—to decide who or what she is. She can’t let him.
Rose reaches over and takes his hand in hers. “I know you hate endings. This will be the worst one, I think,” she admits. “But it’ll get better, after. You won’t be alone.” It’s a promise, she thinks. A vow. She’s always making those, when it comes to him. Commitments.
He opens his mouth like he’s going to say something—
But he doesn’t get the chance.
There is a sound like something unzipping, only sharp and popping in her ears like a gunshot. Rose is on her feet in an instant; her Torchwood training kicks in automatically, so quickly that she’d be horrified if she wasn’t entirely focused on the source of the noise: a Dalek.
The metal exterior—the round, golden globes and the rigid panels—reflect the violent light. At the end of the eyestalk, there is a familiar blue glow, changing in time with the Dalek’s enunciations: “EX-TER-MI-NA—”
Rose fires faster than she’s ever done before, in all of her training sessions at the rifle range. Faster than she’s ever done anything, probably in the whole of her life. Sliding the gun off her back—bracing it against her midsection—pulling the trigger. It’s the work of a moment. And she doesn’t miss. The top blows off the giant pepper pot, leaving behind a steaming heap of molten metal and colorful sparks.
When she turns to the Doctor, she sees that he is unarmed—hands up, as always, in a signal of surrender. He doesn’t seem surprised to see it, exactly. Though his expression is one of resignation, his eyes go wide when he sees what she’s done. They turn on her, sparkling blue and bright.
Another day, she might preen under his attention, but she already knows there’s no time. “This isn’t the end,” she says, unshakeable in her belief.
Rose wonders if she should give him her gun; it’s clear that he needs it more than she does.
She’s actually on the point of sliding the strap over her shoulder when she feels the tug behind her navel. It’s a familiar, sickening sensation, and she doesn’t have time to brace for it—to say goodbye, to wish him luck, to tell him everything she wants to say.
She is already gone.
-
After that, it gets easier to work out which of him is from before her and which of him seem to be coming after. The oldest of him—the man with slicked white hair and a firm frown set upon his face—appears to her a number of times, always on the periphery. She doesn’t speak to him much: only ever a few words in passing. There’s a man who seems nearly as old, only his hair is curled and his accent is rolling, and he always seems to be in a hurry.
But there are versions of him with light in his eyes, and those are the ones she tries to hang on to. The ones that came before the sad man, sitting at the edge of the world.
The man with question marks all over his lapels bumps into her outside a bar and tells her a joke, and she wants so badly to tell him everything. Instead, they save a city together without so much as drawing a weapon. When his companion—a wicked, clever teenager with a patch-covered jacket—asks her to come along, “just for a trip or two,” it takes everything Rose has to refuse.
“You can show me how to use that gun,” the girl says, rather impishly.
“Sorry, I can’t,” she says, and she really means it. “I’ve got a schedule to keep.”
And miles to go before she sleeps.
-
“God, you really are an arsehole!” she shouts. He’s standing with his arms crossed, leaning against the console like he’s got all the time in the world—only she knows he hasn’t got all the time in the world, and that the planet they’re on will be vaporized if they don’t get moving. “So stubborn. Even after all these years, you refuse to listen to me, even when I know something you don’t.”
“If you know something,” he drawls, “perhaps you could just tell me.” There’s a petulant pout about his chin and the edges of his mouth, as if he hadn’t expected her to hold up this long under his scrutiny. She takes a bit of pleasure in that, at least.
“I’m not exactly willing to risk the multiverse to satisfy your curiosity, Doctor.”
“Ah. Pity.”
She’s beginning to think that he likes making her mental.
The smug look on his face takes her back—a matter of months, or years at this point, she can’t tell either way—to a different Doctor. A different face making that same expression.
If she closes her eyes, she can see the self-satisfied half-smile blooming into a wider, more manic grin. Every time her voice had ticked higher, grown louder—every time her expletives got more direct—he would smile harder until she wanted to take that ridiculous scarf around his neck and strangle him with it.
He’d been one of her favourites, in the end.
Like he’d known she needed a good shout, and was more than willing to stand there pleasantly and absorb it. On occasions like that, she could almost forget that she was a stranger to him; it felt like it used to.
Those moments were why, after all this time, she still loved him. The daft alien.
The reminder of which makes her pause, softened a little by the memories of all the times he’s infuriated her and she’s gone on loving him. The Doctor is stubborn, and though he doesn’t remember her in this incarnation—even if she’s certain he’s not the earliest she’s met—she knows she won’t win this argument unless she tries another tactic.
“I’ll tell you something,” she says, urgency making her voice pitchy and tense. “I’ll tell you why I carry this gun if you just—get us out of here.”
Once again, the Doctor’s expression is thoughtful. Calculating. His hand rises to cradle his chin, and she thinks briefly about punching him in the jaw. It might convince him, but there’s an equal chance that she’ll just bruise her knuckles. She’s never punched a Time Lord before and probably shouldn’t start now.
(In four weeks, when she comes through the void and meets a man called Narvin, she will finally punch a Time Lord. One of her knuckles will swell to nearly the size of a £1 coin and turn a faint violet. He will have her thrown in prison, which the Doctor will help her escape.)
Rose is holding her breath. She wonders if he’s really going to let them both die here, atomized and with so much life unlived. It would be just like him; she’s met some versions that were dangerous, devastated enough to do incalculable damage. She’s only managed to stop him in the past by the skin of her teeth, and with the help of other—she thinks, better—companions.
Come on, you arsehole.
Take the bait.
He turns his back to her and hits a series of buttons—she can’t tell which, because every console seems different and she can never get the hang of them without the TARDIS’s help. But she feels distinctly that they are moving. The familiar noises of the ship in flight make her feel, abruptly, excited. It’s been so long since she’s had more than a moment in the ship, more than sneaking through or creeping past on her way to somewhere else.
Rose feels the breath leave her lungs, and she smiles. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me,” the Doctor snarks. “Tell me why you’ve brought this ridiculous weapon onto my ship.”
“I’m thanking you for the sake of the planet,” she shoots back. “It would’ve been blown to bits if we’d stayed any longer. Thank you,” she reiterates, “for showing a bit of decency.” Rose suppresses a smile when his brow furrows and his glare turns on her. “I carry this gun with me, because someday—I’m not sure when it’ll happen for you—I’ll need it.”
“Oh, that’s no—”
She rolls her eyes. “To save your life. From a Dalek.”
The Doctor pales. “That isn’t—”
“And if I don’t save your life then—and probably a few other times…” Rose pauses, chewing her bottom lip. “I’ll never get to tell you.”
“Tell me what?” She can’t tell if he’s more interested or exasperated, or perhaps suspicious. His eyes track her as she walks across the console room. She thinks they’re blue, but can’t make them out from this far away. Still, she steps closer.
“That I—”
The tug. The wrench. The sick feeling in her stomach. She wonders if this is some sort of sick, inverted payback for what he hadn’t said on the beach.
And she’s gone again.
-
She lands in the middle of a military base. In a corn field. She lands in Aberdeen, of all places. She lands on distant planets, on parallel earths. She lands a few feet away from the TARDIS, only to find it locked. She lands outside a brick building that seems to be burning down. She lands in the middle of a coliseum. She lands in a graveyard where the earth is being overturned, punched through by metal fists. She lands on a university campus. She lands in a swamp.
Through the years, she gets cleverer. Better at hiding her identity, disguising herself. She tells him to throw that wilted celery out before he attracts grubs. She wonders if she should kiss the man with the bowtie. She is running, always running.
The gun is heavy at her back, and the Doctor always seems to look at it like she’s carrying a festering wound. But she refuses to put it down, because she remembers the man who needed her help.
To be saved from a Dalek, so he could save so many others.
When she lands and the world is ending, there he is. Brown hair, brown suit. He takes off running, but she feels something heavy in her feet. A sense of foreboding, almost.
To save your life, she’d said.
From a Dalek, she’d said.
She almost doesn’t see it coming.
“EX-TER—”
Rose stops in the street.
She turns, and she shoots.
She hasn’t fired her gun in such a long time that she almost misses—but she doesn’t. The Dalek that would’ve killed the Doctor—perhaps for good—is a smoldering lump of metal and wiring and bitter, withered organic material. Like an eager child, he skids to a halt, his plimsolls slippery in the damp evening, barely inches from her drawn weapon. “You saved my life,” he says. Marveling. Perhaps, she thinks, realizing. “From a Dalek.”
She drops the gun, and it clatters heavily to the ground. Her arms feel light without the weight of it. Rose drags him close, pulling him against her. She feels instinctively that her job is done—that now they can find a way through everything else, together.
“Yes,” she exhales. “I did. I love you, you arsehole.”