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A Place for Everything by hotelmontana [Reviews - 11]  Author's Notes: Listen, I don’t really get the whole “Gallifrey got burned right out of time, but 394839084230243 Daleks made it out OK” thing. So, the canon authenticity of this? Pretty weak. Don’t think about it too much. | |
“...and everything in its place,” the Doctor finished as they stepped out of the TARDIS.
“London?” Rose scarcely dared to breathe. “My London?”
“Your London.” The Doctor nodded. “Just where you belong. Can’t have you running around in other universes, mucking with the continuum.”
In Rose’s London, the sky was gray and thick. A cold wind was blowing in, bringing with it a freezing drizzle, spitting down on the estate. And, to be sure, it was that same old estate. Same old crumbling ironwork and same old peeling, chipping paint. Same old alley with its scuffling rats and fading graffiti--she could just make out a pink and white Bad Wolf underneath a more recent tag and a poster for some dreadful band at a seedy pub--and same old buildings with their tiny, stacked-up flats. It was dirty and poor, and not at all to what she’d grown accustomed.
Rose wanted to kiss it, it was all so beautiful.
“And the date?” she asked. “What’s the date?”
“November 23, 2006,” the Doctor replied, nodding positively.
“2007,” Romana corrected, shoving his bulk out of the TARDIS doorway and stepping out into the open air.
“Is it?” The Doctor blinked. “Oh, well. Close enough, I suppose.”
“Typical of you.” Romana turned around in a circle. She cocked her head and squinted up at the clouded sky. “Thinking close enough is as good as just right.”
Rose crossed her arms, hugging herself tightly, and squashed down an overwhelming urge to laugh herself sick. “Oh, it is, though. Close enough really is just as good. I mean, if you think about it, close enough is just fantastic.”
Romana stopped examining the estate in favor of examining Rose and asking if she needed to have a bit of a lie-down.
The Doctor dug into his pocket for jelly babies.
“Mollification?” he offered, holding the bag out to each of the woman. Rose popped one into her mouth and wiped the dust off on her trousers, leaving a faint, white smear on the black fabric. Romana rolled her eyes.
“So, this is where you wanted to go?” she asked.
“This is it,” Rose replied, grinning.
“It’s,” Romana said, carefully poking at a discarded paper cup with the toe of her shoe, “very nice.”
Rose shrugged. “It’s home.”
“Just where you belong, if, possibly, not exactly when.” The Doctor straightened his scarf. “And now that the proper balance has been restored, we’ll be on our way.”
“Doctor,” Rose chirped. “One more thing, before you go. How good is your memory?”
The Doctor puffed himself up, his eyes bulging. “My memory is excellent.”
Beside him, Romana smirked and made a comme-ci-comme-ça gesture with her hand. The Doctor looked down at her, dismayed.
“Well, I know a great many things,” he said.
Romana conceded the point, but added, “It’s just that sometimes you don’t remember you know them until well after the knowing would have been quite helpful.”
“Oh, but that’s perfect,” Rose said, interrupting the squabble before it really began. “Because I don’t need you remember this for a long time.”
She gestured him down to her level, making apologetic eyes at Romana, who narrowed her own in return. When the Doctor leaned down to her, Rose cupped her hand over his ear and whispered to him for not very long at all.
When he straightened up again, the Doctor was looking at Rose with a tenacious puzzlement that she recognized even in this different face.
“Are you sure you’ve got that right?” he asked.
Rose gave a vigorous nod.
“And it’s for...”
She nodded again, with even more vehemence.
“But not for...”
Rose nearly gave herself whiplash with the nodding.
“Right then,” the Doctor said, and then, turning to Romana: “We’re off. All done here. Nothing more to do.”
He looked at Rose one last time, opened his mouth to say something, but shut it again, still silent. Without another word, he escaped into the TARDIS, the door slamming behind him.
Instead of following him inside, Romana leaned back against the TARDIS, her small hands pressed flat on its deceptive wooden sides. She regarded Rose with neither appraisal nor curiosity, and Rose got the distinct impression that it never took Romana long to comprehend anything.
“We’re going to Paris, on a bit of a lark,” she said, tapping her fingers on the call box. “I don’t suppose you’d like to come along.”
For a moment, Rose was tempted. She thought of Romana and her Doctor. Of how, in the short time Rose had been with them, she’d grown to love watching them, the way they squabbled and smiled. She thought of seeing Paris with them, seeing sixteenth century Spain, and thirty-second century Africa, and probably last week in Cardiff, too.
She thought of Gallifrey. Of how it must still exist for them. Of how if Rose could see it only just once, just once for a moment, then there would be two in the universe who remembered what the planet looked like, instead of only one. She wished she could do that for her Doctor.
But in the end, she smiled, and she sighed, and she said, “Oh, I would. I really, really would. But...”
“But you can’t,” Romana finished, jamming her hat down hard on her head. “Of course you can’t. I understand, even if he doesn’t. I’m the clever one, you know,” she said with significance.
“I know,” Rose said with equal gravity.
Romana smiled then, fleeting and sunny. “Ah-hah,” she said. “I think you’re probably the clever one, too.”
Later, after the noise of the TARDIS engines had faded and gone, Rose walked to the park. She took her time, inspecting the estate, as she went. Was this rubbish bin here before? Had that door always been brown? When was this rail broken? She catalogued the changes, each one a marker in the history of her absence.
Her meandering took twenty minutes, but when she reached the park, there was no one in sight.
Rose breathed deeply, opening her arms and welcoming in the good, London air. She turned in circles, as Romana had earlier, lifting her face up to the sky. When she was nearly too dizzy to stand straight, she took a tilting, running start and leapt onto the roundabout. She hung off the rail--her hair, damp and lank from the rain, flying all around her--and, spinning and spinning, she laughed and laughed until her sides hurt and her eyes ran.
It was hours later, when she was sitting on a swing, idly kicking her legs, that the key that hung around her neck, tucked snugly between her breasts, began to glow hot again. Rose watched the TARDIS materialize just meters away and held her breath.
They sat there regarding each other, she and the TARDIS, until the door creaked open and out stuck a head. The Doctor’s head, to be precise. And much to Rose’s glee, and the intense satisfaction of a job well-done, instead of wild curls and a stripey scarf, this Doctor had flopsy hair and glasses that rested crookedly at the end of his nose.
Upon seeing Rose, sitting damply on the swing, the Doctor straightened up. He crossed his arms and leaned casually against the doorframe, hooking one leg over the other. He squinted at her, cleared his throat, and said, “Look at you, sitting there all smug. I’ll have you know, I hit my head on the console when I finally remembered.”
Rose hummed. “That all? I was hoping you’d fall down in the shower, or snarf tea out of your nose, or something really sketch comedy.”
He squeaked, incensed. “What, a concussion isn’t comedy enough for you? That’s real slapstick, getting hit in the face. Very Larry and Moe.”
“And Curly,” Rose reminded. “Can’t forget Curly.”
“No,” the Doctor replied, suddenly serious. “You can’t.”
Unsure what to say, Rose turned her face from him, looking back toward the estate. The Doctor watched her, waited for her, each remembering the same events, though from the different distances in their differing times. Their histories were still, would always be, grossly uneven. Rose thought of how, for all she’d experienced, she was still just a sprinter in the Doctor’s marathon.
“I liked Romana,” she said abruptly. “Very much.”
The Doctor nodded, and, when he spoke, his voice was rough. “Yes. I did, too. Very much.”
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