Fic for "Come As You're Not" Halloween Party

[filthgoblin]

 

The wonderful karaokegal holds an annual fic costume party where people have the opportunity to do something totally out of character for them, fictionally speaking. And ever one to challenge the status quo, I decided to get involved. So here's my contribution.

Title: Differences
Fandom: Dr Who
Characters or Pairing: Ten/Rose
Rating: PG, possibly less
Word Count: 899
Summary: Rose wants something the Doctor just can't give
Author's Notes: This is very heavy on the angst, but other than that it's fun for all the family. It's also un-beta'd so any glaring idiocy is all my own work.
Why it's a costume: There's a range of things that I don't do in my fic. I don't write gen. I am not known as a writer of het. And I rarely write angst. Also, my fic tends to take ages for me to write as I'm a pedantic, perfectionist pain-in-the-arse. So bring that together into an angsty het-gen fic that I bashed out in less than an hour and you've got pretty much a unique combination for me. Oh, and I hate and detest this pairing with a vile seething passion.

 

 

Rose focused on the floor and drew a breath. She had so much she wanted to tell the Doctor, but didn’t know where to begin. She dared not look at him, or else she might start to cry, so instead stared between her knees at the ground.

 

“Come on, Rose. What is it? What’s the matter? Is it… is it home? Has something happened to Jackie?”

 

Rose swallowed hard. “It’s you, Doctor.”

 

“Me? What have I done?”

 

She sighed and twisted her fingers into her hair. She paused, stuttered, then started.

 

“You see… erm… all this time we’ve spent together. I’ve given up my life for you. And I’ve loved it! Don’t get me wrong, I’ve loved every second of it: the places you’ve taken me; the things that we’ve seen together…”

 

“Me too” said the Doctor, grinning. “We’ve had some adventures, haven’t we?” He glanced across at Rose, his brow furrowing as he struggled to find the words to appease the girl sat next to him, so lost.

 

Rose looked up from the floor suddenly and to the side, fixing the Doctor with a steely, determined, hopeful gaze. “I love you”. She watched the Doctor’s eyes, dark pupils dilating then narrowing again, his eyes shifting away from her, looking anywhere but at her face.

 

“I… I care about you.”

 

Rose screwed her eyes shut against the rising tide of tears and held her breath before exhaling a long, tremulous sigh.  “Thanks very much Doctor, but it’s not quite the same is it? I love you. I love you!”

 

The Doctor shifted uncomfortably. “But it could never work. Of course I care for you. I would never want you to come to any harm of my causing. But…”

 

He heard her draw in breath and waited, his hands clenching and unclenching as he anticipated her next statement.

 

“But you could never love me..?”

 

The Doctor bit his lip and contemplated. Bloody human emotions, he thought with some irritation. Why did it always have to happen this way?

He took a deep breath and, gaining his composure, steeling himself to explain again why this could never be.

 

“Rose, I’m not human. I know I look just like any other man, but I’m not. I’m so much different. When you’re old and grey I’ll still be, well, pretty much as I am now. I’ve lived a hundred thousand lives already, and I could never make you understand how that has made me who I am. I don’t even know where to start explaining who I am!”

 

“But I don’t care about any of that!” Rose started, swinging around on the bench to look the Doctor squarely in the face. “I know all I need to know about you to understand how much I want you, how much I want to spend the rest of my life at your side”.

 

“But that’s just it, don’t you see? The rest of your life is a blink of an eye to me. Of course I care about you and it’s great having you with me here, Rose Tyler taking on the universe in all its glory, but it can’t be how you want it. It can never work” he sighed. “Never.”

 

Tears welled up in Rose’s eyes. She chewed her lip hard and cursed inwardly: she’d promised herself she wouldn’t do this. Drawing in a long, shaky breath, she turned away from the Doctor and started to speak, low and monotonous. “Everything you’ve said? It’s all excuses. I know you feel it and I don’t know why you deny it. I know you feel what’s between us and you’re scared that I might just pierce a hole in that armour of yours and let a tiny chink of light into your lonely world.” The tears welling at her lids broke free and tumbled over her cheeks, spotting onto her jeans, her emotions raging, breaking through into her voice. “You say you don’t want me, and yet you still keep me here with you. I don’t understand it! You say that we can never be together, but we are together! What do I need to do?” She looked back to him, eyes wide and desperate, reddened cheeks streaked with tears.

 

The Doctor regarded her with a puzzled look. In all my time around humans, I’ll never understand their crazy endocrine system and how their hormones make them act so irrationally, he thought, perplexed. How on earth could he explain this to her? It was perfectly clear to him but she didn’t seem to be able to understand reason.

 

“Humans need to be with humans” he started, falteringly. “You need to be together because you’re the same. You understand each other. You need to stick together for the future of your species!” The cheeky smile on his lips cracked and faltered under her lachrymose stare. “I’m different to you. We’re just not compatible. We never will be. There’s nothing neither you nor I can ever do to change that.”

 

Rose took a deep, sobbing breath and pushed herself to her feet. “Then that’s it, isn’t it. Things can’t ever be right between us now, can they?” She looked at the Doctors confused face and felt the tears start to form once again. “I have to go” she sobbed, and set off at a jog into the labyrinthine corridors of the TARDIS leaving the Doctor alone and perplexed.