The Green Soul

Chapter 14

Rose awoke to someone gently shaking her shoulder.  Her eyelids fluttered open and she was met with the Doctor's gaze.  He'd apparently crouched by the bed so that he was eye level with her when she awoke. 

She studied him for a moment, floating up from sleep, and for just a brief moment, she wanted to reach out and touch his cheek.  It took her a moment before she remembered that wasn't something that was allowed.

"We've half an hour left," he told her, "Are you ready?"

She blinked slowly, taking a moment for pause.  She lifted the shoulder that wasn't pressed to the bed and looked him in the eye again.  "Are you ever ready for something like this?"

"It's never really happened," the Doctor admitted, "You said that you were cold, and felt lonely, and that didn't happen with Cassandra, for either of us."

Rose felt a glaze go over her eyes at the mention of feeling cold and alone.  When he'd rejected her.  She didn't want to think of it.  It was too painful, so she closed off.  "That's right," she said shortly.  "Don't worry, I'm sure I'll be fine."

"You're afraid." the Doctor said simply.  It wasn't a question.

Rose heaved a heavy sigh through her nose and moved to a sitting position.  "It's not easy to not be afraid all the time, and sometimes I think you forget that.  All I know is I want to help, and this is how I can do it, how I can save the Glassers.  Don't you get that?"

"Of course I do," the Doctor replied, his voice sharp.  "Of course I understand the need to do something, the need to save someone.  But you're a lot more-"

"Fragile?" Rose offered, "Needy?  Human?"

"Don't say that like it's a bad thing," the Doctor snapped at her.

Rose pretended to look startled.  "Isn't it?  Sorry, I guess sometimes I forget when I've got a best mate who doesn't think I can do anything helpful for the universe."

Quick as a whip the Doctor was on the bed with her, kneeling in front of her, his hands firmly gripping her shoulders.  "Is that what you think?  That after all this you truly believe I don't find you helpful or that I need you? That the universe needs you?"

"Well, it doesn't!" Rose nearly shouted before remembering they were supposed to be quiet.  "I do what I can, I save who I can, and if this is what I have to do, than that's it, then.  And if I die doing it-"

"Don't say that."

"If I die doing it," she repeated, glaring at him, "At least I'll have died doing something good.  Better than living a long life of not doing anything, don't you think?  So you can quit all your high and mighty Time Lord rubbish because frankly, I'm sick of it.  This is something I'm going to do."

"I didn't say I was going to stop you," the Doctor said slowly, his grip not loosening from her shoulders.  "That was never the intention.  I know by now that when you have your mind set to something, that's what you're going to do.  But that doesn't mean I don't feel... Anxious, when I think about you putting yourself in danger."

Rose studied him for a moment, watching the near panic in his eyes that she hadn't really noticed through her own haze of anger.  "Just have them get me extra blankets for when I get cold tonight."

He dropped his hands from her as though she'd stung him, and in a way, she had.  She'd blatantly told him, for the second time, what her issue with him was, and he was still too much of a coward to fix it.  So he sat on his knees on the bed before her, his brows drawn together and dimple forming in his left cheek. 

"Fine, if that's how you want it," he said, sliding off the bed.  "I'll have Matthew fetch blankets."

"I didn't say it was how I wanted it," Rose muttered to herself, combing her fingers through her hair. 

"What did you say?" The Doctor asked.

"Nothing," Rose lied casually, following him off of the bed.

They were acting like children and she knew it.  She could tell they were dancing around the issue, because it was what they did best, after all.  They glared at each other across empty rooms, avoiding the elephant in it at all costs, because it hurt too much.

Rose adjusted her dress and slipped her shoes back on, giving the Doctor another stern look.  "Are you ready?"

"Twenty minutes," he replied.  "Come here?"

"Why?"

She wasn't sure why she was behaving as though she were wary of him, because she wasn't, she still trusted him with her life, but in some part of her mind, she wanted him to be sorry, to feel nothing but remorse for rejecting her. 

He gave her a look, a look there was no way he could know she couldn't resist.  His head was cocked to the side, almost in defeat, his eyes wide and eyebrows drawn together.  She huffed quietly and walked to where he stood, looking up into his face. 

Cautiously, he held his arms out for her, anxiously awaiting her response to the gesture.  And there was no way he could know she couldn't deny him this.  She stepped closer to him and wrapped her arms around his waist, her cheek against his chest. 

She heard his shuddering sigh of relief as he pulled her closer, his hands splayed across her back and chin resting on the top of her head.  She couldn't tell if this was an apology or something else, and she couldn't bring herself to ask about it.  Instead, she just burrowed close to him, saving up the memory of his warmth for when cold would seep through all the way to her bones.  The closer she got to him the closer he held her, almost preventing her ribs from expanding so she could breathe.

He didn't seem to want to let her go, but eventually she started to pull away, because there was still so much wrong between them, and she didn't want this to be something that was brushed under the rug.  This wasn't going to be another thing that he pretended never happened, gone out of his mind by the next adventure, nearly erased from history by the next planet.

If he pretended that, she'd remember more vividly than ever, every piece of her straining to fix what had been wrong.  But he'd move on and she'd hold on, and they'd grow apart.  She'd speak to him about it, when they finished what they were doing here, when all of it was sorted, but right now, she didn't need anything clouding her judgment.

But the Doctor did a fine job of distracting her all by himself.

She ignored the odd look that passed through his eyes as she pulled away from him.  "You should've let me sleep longer," She said, her tone gently chiding.

"No, I think it was a fine time for you to get up," the Doctor replied.

Rose didn't want to mention that now they had twenty minutes of awkward silence to sit through, which was worse than her getting a bit too much sleep.  "Well," she said, "We don't know how much sleep I'm going to get tonight."

"You'll get enough."

Rose furrowed her brows at him.  "You're not going to sonic me to sleep," she snapped.  "It doesn't work like that, I'm not a machine you can just shut off when I get to be too much work."

The Doctor lunged forward and cupped her face in his hands, inspecting her eyes. "What's wrong with you?" He demanded, "Did it do something to you?"

Murmurings outside their door stopped Rose from replying and drew both their attention.  A tentative knock sounded at the door.  "Doctor and Mrs. Smith?  Are you ready?  We heard you speaking?" Marie's voice came through the door. 

"Yes," Rose said lightly, pulling away from the Doctor's touch, but he wouldn't let her this time.  She looked up into his face.  "We're ready."