Loss
Four days later, the Doctor had still not cheered up. They had pottered around the whole of time and space, from planets with two suns and six moons to Earth in the Far past and distant future. Mickey was fascinated, and a more attentive learner then both Rose and the Doctor had expected – no longer could he be called Mickey the Idiot – but still the Doctor had not cheered up.Rose didn’t dare bring it up, but it stung her. He had met Madame de Pompadour only four times, and had missed her death – So like him, Rose thought – and yet he still mourned her so deeply.
She finally found the courage to broach the subject two days later.
“Doctor –?” she said quietly, peering her head around a door frame. The Doctor had taken to hiding away in quiet, rarely used rooms of the TARDIS in the past days but Rose always found him.
“Hmm?” came the slightly disgruntled reply from behind the towering back of a chair that was placed in front of the room’s fire. She looked about, trying to remember if she had been here before, in this expansive room of books and dark with its pool of firelight, but it was yet another ‘new’ room.
“Are you alright?” came the question, even though she knew the answer. It was the same answer he’d been giving for almost a week.
“I’m always alright.” Came the flat-tone reply.
“Oh knock it off. That the biggest load of bollocks since Mickey started to pretend he understood the temporal physics you were telling him the other day.”
The Doctor’s head peeked round the edge of the chair back, his face set in to a slightly disbelieving frown.
“What do you want me to say? Really?” he stood and walked towards Rose, his arms wide spread and his manner ever so slightly threatening. She knew she’d said the wrongest thing she could have, and it made her panic slightly.
“That… I … That you’re fine and you actually are fine. That you’re not pining for the Madame any more. You’ve got me.” It came out far more awkward and conceited than she wanted it to, and as soon as the words left her mouth the Doctor looked like she had just slapped him.
“You what?”
“I…” Rose stuttered, but the Doctor interrupted her, his fury boiling over.
“She DIED Rose, she died and I didn’t age a moment. I CAN’T age a moment. And that’s why I’ll have to drop you off one day, just like Sarah-Jane. Because you’ll get old, you’ll wither and you’ll die and I won’t have aged a day. Because in the end I’d always end up alone, and just for once, FOR ONCE, I would like to wallow in self pity.
Don’t look so shocked. You had to have known you weren’t the first. You might have guessed you wouldn’t be the last.”
By this point Rose’s eyes were wide, her mouth open slightly and her weight safely planted on her back foot just in case he got any angrier.
“I have a granddaughter you know.” He said it in such an offhand manner, even though it was obviously meant to wound.
And that was the biggest slap. Rose burst in to tears then, big fat tears that rolled down her face and streaked her make-up, only to drip off her jaw.
“Take me home. Now”
“Fine. Pack your bags.”
Back?