Chapter Text
She wakes to the soft click of her bedroom door closing and blinks hard, trying to shrug off the last visages of her dreams. Still heavy with sleep, she only just manages to push herself up enough to look around.
He’s standing there glaring at the door; she can’t fathom how it could have offended him. “Doctor?” She calls, voice thick. Maybe he’s going to tell her the door is about to eat them, or it’s started talking and made an insulting quip about his bowtie. That’d make for a real exciting morning, wouldn’t it. He doesn’t though - he crumples to the floor.
She’s out of bed so fast her mother would have asked where the fire was; funny how someone you care for being in distress can snap your brain to attention.
He’s crying. Is he hurt? Is he dying? Oh, bugger, he’s not gonna regenerate again is he?
“What’s wrong?” It comes out breathy and demanding and panicked all at the same time. Her hands moving over him, trying to find the source of his pain, but really who is she kidding – her Time Lord first aid is shit! Even if she found the problem she’d have little idea what to do. Though, maybe it’ll be enough to jolt him into coherence. A blurting of direction. Hand signals. Charades. Anything!
What she gets for her worry is a sudden yank forward into his lap.
Held there against his chest, squished as she is between his head and shoulder, it takes her a minute to figure out he’s saying something even as he trembles. Murmuring into her hair that nothing, whatsoever, is wrong.
Yeah, right!
At a loss for what else to do, she winds her arms around him, holding tight. It seems to calm him the longer though, the longer they sit like this. Perhaps another dream again - the one where he loses her, maybe? A bit more of this and then maybe she can drag it out of him.
As he begins to relax, she pulls away looking at him properly, ready to ask what happened. He kisses her then - eyes, forehead, cheeks, hands, nose, even her chin!
What a nutter.
He barks a laugh then, yanking her up to her feet and into another lingering hug. Whatever terror had gripped him seems to have passed; she won’t get it out of him now. Best she can do is hope to keep him distracted. So she shakes her head and goes to change.
She can’t help but smile a little when he deliberately looks away as she dresses. Honestly, he’s seen her naked plenty of times, it’s not like he needs to worry about it anymore.
It takes three tries to pull him out of his babbling about an alien race obsessed with a bad children’s game - an adventure ought to get his head on straight again. Though, that look on his face says that’s not going to happen. Maybe he’s a lot more out of sorts than she thought. He rallies almost instantly behind a book, claiming he’d rather stay in.
Bloody hell, it is worse than she thought if the only thing he wants to do is have a good cuddle.
Well, if there is one thing she is an expert at it’s cuddling the hell out of the Doctor. And if that’s what he wants, she’s more than happy to give it to him. She’s defiantly going to tease him about it though, especially when the book he’s pulled out is the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, of all things.
‘Why, yes, Rose, it was inspired by me. Douglas was lovely; very whimsical. An improbability drive! Oh, oh! What fun!’
She’s pretty sure Douglas Adams depicted the insanity of the Doctor’s life more accurately than any other author so far. But then, most people don't get see just how barmy the universe really is; she wouldn’t have it any other way.
Listening to him read is always hypnotic - the gusto he dives in with always pulls her in too. She defiantly hasn’t had enough sleep though, because he’s barely a quarter of the way along before she just can’t seem to keep her eyes open any longer and drifts off.
She never noticed his face isn’t one she knows. Never wondered why he didn’t kiss her properly. Didn’t think about how she couldn't remember what happened yesterday.
She wasn’t supposed to. Because in the end, she's just the shadow of a woman long gone.