Two Steps Forward, One Back (5/11?)

Title: Two Steps Forward, One Back (5/11?)

Author: Gail R. Delaney

Series: The Unseen and In Between

Setting: During and after New Earth, through Age of Steel, this particular story during School Reunion

Genre: Angst, Romance

Rating: I'm giving this chapter PG-13 because Rose uses a bad word.

Disclaimer: Not mine. If I owned Doctor Who, Christopher Eccleston and David Tennant would be my own private little playmates.

Summary: Rose is mourning Her Doctor, and yet… he’s right in front of her. She put on a good face for her mother, for Mickey… even for the Doctor; but, inside, she’s struggling desperately for a balance.

A/N: Some of the memories, references and flashbacks are from other stories in the Unseen and In Between series.



Nine hundred years.

Nine regenerations. Ten new faces.

Three-dozen or more companions had come and gone through the TARDIS in his roughly eight centuries of traveling.

And no one, not one of those many faces had held the power that Rose Tyler — a young woman from 21-Century-London-England-UK-Earth — had over him. She devastated him, she lifted him up, she crushed him…

And she made him breathe.

On some level, he had cared for each of his companions. Some, he regretted bringing on board almost immediately. Adam Mitchell came quickly to mind as a recent error in judgment. And Turlough, although he managed to redeem himself eventually.

Some, he had cared for more than others and had missed them immensely when they left. Their memory would come back to him at the strangest times, for the strangest reasons. When he needed a name in 1879 Scotland, he didn’t fall back on his usual ‘John Smith’, but James McCrimmon… just being in Scotland had made him think of young Jamie, who had been one of the first companions to join him after Susan was gone.

Yet, somehow, for the most part he had managed not to ‘bump into’ past companions once they’d left him. It was better that way. He had always told himself it was for their better good, but in truth, it was for him. If he never saw them again, he didn’t have to explain himself. Blon Fel Fotch Passameer-Day Slitheen had hit the nail on the head when she told him he was “Always moving on because you dare not look back.”

Then there was Sarah Jane Smith.

Perhaps of them all, excluding Susan for obvious reasons, he had cared the most about Sarah Jane. She had been with him for longer than most companions, nearly four linear years. And when he left her, he had only done it because he had been summoned to Gallifrey – a place where no human was allowed. They only tolerated him because of his father’s name.

He never promised he’d be back for her, and yet, he never told her he wouldn’t be. Which only drove home Rose’s point. No, he hadn’t lied because she hadn’t asked him about regenerative energy depletion. But, he’d withheld the truth… a lie of omission.

Seeing Sarah Jane, alive and well and pursuing her dreams, had been more wonderful than he ever imagined. She took him by surprise, and when she spoke of him — not knowing that he had a new face and stood right in front of her — made him think that perhaps not everything was left in ruin in his wake.

“I thought of you on Christmas Day,” Sarah Jane said, pulling him out of his ponderings as he fiddled with K-9’s aged interior. “This Christmas just gone? Great big spaceship overhead — I thought ‘Oh, yeah. Bet he’s up there’.”

“Right on top of it, yeah. Well, eventually. I was mid-regeneration.”

“And Rose?”

He smiled, just a little, remembering. “Oh, yes. She was there, too.”

Sarah Jane fell quiet, and he felt her watching him as he played with K-9’s wires. He could hear the muffled sound of Mickey’s and Rose’s conversation, Rose’s voice just slightly louder than Mickey’s, and the Doctor recognized the tone. She wasn’t happy, and it took all he had to keep himself focused on K-9 and not go find out what was wrong.

“She’s very young.”

“Twenty,” he answered, glancing briefly at Sarah Jane. “She’s twenty.”

Sarah Jane nodded. “Like I said, very young.”

“Don’t let her age fool you. She’s clever.” He dug deep into K-9’s innards, finding a faulty recoil unit, zapping it with setting 113.

“And very pretty, I suppose.”

“She’s beautiful,” he said absently, but his hand stilled when he realized what he’d said. He cautiously slid his gaze to Sarah Jane. There was no surprise on her face, just acceptance, as if she’d known what he would say. The Doctor swallowed, and hitched one corner of his lips up in a half-smile. “She’s wonderful.”

“So, she really isn’t just an assistant. Or a companion.”

He shook his head, swallowing hard. “No.” It was the first time he had admitted to anyone — other than Rose, and he readily acknowledged he hadn’t admitted it enough to Rose — that she was more to him. Sarah Jane drew it effortlessly out of him. “She saved me, Sarah Jane. I told you everyone died, Galifrey is gone. And Rose… she… “ He lost the words, clearing his throat before focusing again on K-9.

She smiled weakly, almost nervously. “Does she know this?”

“Not nearly well enough.”

They fell into silence again, and he split his attention between fixing K-9 and straining to possibly hear what Rose and Mickey were talking about. But, they were purposefully keeping their voices down.

“Did I do something wrong?”

Sarah Jane’s question surprised him, and he looked back to her. “What? No.”

“Because you never came back for me. You just… dumped me.”

“I told you. I was called back home and in those days humans weren’t allowed.”

“I waited for you,” she said softly. “I missed you.”

The cold fingers of guilt, a touch he had grown accustomed to, gripped the back of his neck. He smiled, trying to ignore it. “Oh, you didn’t need me. You were getting on with your life.”

“You were my life.”

He looked her in the eyes, knowing she deserved at least that much, but had no rebuttal, no answer.

*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***

Rose had reached her breaking point.

For weeks, she had tried to find a balance, some level ground. But, just when she thought she had her feet firmly under her, something ripped the rug out and she was on her arse again, staring into new brown eyes and wondering how the hell she got to this point.

Now, everything she thought she knew about them had been tossed in a blender and poured out on a table for her to try and scoop up.

She wasn’t so naïve to think that the Doctor hadn’t ever been involved with someone. He was nine hundred years old, and had been to every part of the galaxy. And if his last two ‘faces’ were any indication of how he might have looked in the past, she was sure he hadn’t had any trouble sparking interest.

But, she never really considered the possibility that she’d come face to face with anyone. Yet, here she was… plopped down in the middle of the mystery… Ms. Sarah Jane Smith. And since the Doctor had seen her, the change in him was painfully obvious. He laughed with Sarah Jane, he smiled at her, he watched her when she spoke, and when they ran from the school it was Sarah Jane’s hand he held.

She was pretty. Obviously, it had been a long time since she’d been with the Doctor, and Rose could imagine the woman being beautiful in her youth.

Even now, he and Sarah Jane sat together across the chippy, talking with their heads tilted toward each other, leaving Rose to sit with Mickey several tables away as Mickey made no attempt to hide his smug look.

“You see, what’s impressive is that it’s been nearly an hour since we met her and I still haven’t said ‘I told you so’.”

“I’m not listening to this.” Rose forced herself to look away from the Doctor and Sarah Jane, ignoring the tense knot in her gut.

“Although, I have prepared a little ‘I was right’ dance that I can show you later.”

Rose paid the shop-keeper and took her chips.

“All this time you’ve been claimin’ ‘he’s different!’ — when the truth is, he’s just like any other bloke!”

“You don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.”

“Maybe not, but if I were you… I’d go easy on the chips.”

Rose nearly choked on the chip in her mouth, her stomach twisting. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“I mean, she’s pretty now. Which means she was probably prettier when she was his ‘companion’, ain’t that the word he likes? Companion?” Mickey made invisible quote marks in the air when he used the word. “So, maybe he likes his companions young and pretty.”

“You can be such a bastard,” she snarled, tossing the container of chips on the table. Mickey just grinned and started eating them himself.

Rose sat against the wall, and drew her legs up to her chest, hugging them, trying not to eavesdrop on the Doctor and Sarah Jane, but her heart hurt and she had been walking a razor’s edge since before Mickey arrived. The fight with the Doctor had taken a lot out of her, and she wanted to be back in the Vortex, back on some abandoned moon, back in the TARDIS.

“Because you never came back for me. You just… dumped me.”

Sarah Jane’s voice was shaky, whispering across the mostly-deserted chippy. It was just the four of them and one other man over in the corner who kept looking at K-9 with curiosity.

The Doctor said something back, but he was turned away from Rose and she couldn’t hear him.

“I waited for you. I missed you.”

Again the Doctor answered, but his response came with a small shrug and shake of his head.

“You were my life.”

Rose folded her arms on her bent knees and rested her forehead on her arms. She didn’t want to hear any more, and focused instead on something he had told her a lifetime ago.

"In all the years I've done this, and all the companions I've traveled with, I've never, ever —"

The little robot dog came to life after that, and things went into fast forward again. Their enemy had a name, and the Doctor knew their plan.

Rose waited until Sarah Jane and Mickey went outside with K-9, lingering behind while the Doctor collected his tools. He didn’t look up, didn’t make eye contact with her, just cleaned up the table and glanced through the window to the car outside.

“Doctor…” she said softly.

“Yep,” he answered, looking over his shoulder at her, but he didn’t linger on her, turning to leave. Before he turned away, Rose saw the tight lines around his eyes and the slight down curve of his mouth. She didn’t know this face as well, but she could still read him and had learned to read him better and better over the last few weeks.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Everything is fine.”

“Doctor!” This time she called after his retreating back, and when he spun around to face her, she actually saw annoyance. And it immediately set her on edge, defensive. She followed him out the door of the chippy. “How many have there been of us traveling with you?”

“Does it matter?”

“Yeah, it does if I’m just the latest in a long line.”

“As opposed to what?”

He spun around to face her, his coat fanning out away from his body, the anger in his face making her physically pull back. He’d never looked at her like that before. Angry, yeah… but… hurt? “I thought you and me were…” She couldn’t finish the thought. We were different? We were something important and special. We were something more. “I obviously got it wrong.” His gaze shifted away, as if he couldn’t look her in the eyes and answer her questions. Which hurt… hurt more than anything had hurt in a long time. Hurt almost as much as losing him. “I’ve been to the year five billion, right? But this, this is really seeing the future. You just leave us behind. Is that what you’re going to do to me?”

“No,” he answered abruptly, his eyes snapping up to meet her gaze before he answered. “Not to you.”

She wanted to believe him, but she heard what he said to Sarah Jane. She heard how he’d just dropped her off and never, ever gone back for her. For Sarah Jane it may have been thirty years, but for the Doctor it had been hundreds. “But Sarah Jane… you were that close to her once—“

“No!” He closed the space between them in one long step, his hand gripping her arm, hard enough to steal her breath and make her flinch. Not in fear, never in fear of him. “There is no comparison,” he said slowly, his voice metered and raw. “Sarah Jane was important to me, yes, but—“

“But, you cared so much that you just left her?”

“I don’t age,” he cut her off before she could finish the question, and his expression had shifted from anger to… what?... sadness? “I regenerate. But humans decay. You wither and you die.” His voice wavered, just slightly, and Rose felt the sting of tears behind her eyes. “Imagine watching that happen to someone that you —“ His tone broke and he faltered.

“What, Doctor?”

“I cared about her, but…” He swallowed hard, his brown eyes staring at her face with an intensity she hadn’t seen since they were blue. “You can spend the rest of your life with me.”

The Doctor paused, forming his words carefully. Through tight control that tensed his features.

“But I can’t spend the rest of mine with you. I have to live on. Alone.” He paused, and now she knew she had asked too much, and pushed too hard, because the old familiar pain etched his face and more than ever before in that moment she knew he was the same man. “That’s the curse of the Time Lord.”

Rose blinked hard, raw and thick emotion choking her. His hand still gripped her arm, and with gentleness, she pulled it away and held it between both her own. His fingers curled around her hand, and she kissed his knuckles, tears sliding free to wet his skin. She heard his breath catch, and moved to him.

His arms wrapped fiercely around her, and he pulled her against him, so tight she had to stand on her tiptoes, his face pressed to her neck. Rose laced her fingers into his hair, holding him as hard as she could. She turned her face into him, kissing whatever skin her lips came into contact with.

The Doctor took a step forward, forcing her to move backward, toward the darker shadows against the building. Then a screeching howl, like nothing Rose had ever heard, echoed through the night. They both looked to the sky over the school as the massive form of one of the Krilitaine swooped down at them, screeching again.

“Doctor!” Rose screamed, yanking at the front of his jacket to tug him closer to the building wall.

The Doctor pulled her against him and brought them closer to the ground, his body between her and the Krillitane. Rose felt the gush of air as the creature flapped its wings, its talons so close she could reach out and touch them before it flew back into the night sky.

“Was that a Krillitane?” Sarah Jane asked, she and Mickey suddenly with them.

Rose gripped the Doctor’s arm and hand as he stepped into the street to watch it fly away. “It didn’t even touch you. It just flew off. What it do that for?”

He stared into the sky, watching the massive bat-thing fly away. When it was out of sight, he spun around to her. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah. Fine.”

“You sure?” He didn’t wait for the answer before he wrapped his arm around her shoulder and pulled her against his side, making her turn with him when he asked the same of Sarah Jane and Mickey.

Rose followed his stare as he looked up again, and saw Mr. Finch — the school principal — standing on the roof ledge, looking down at them. “I don’t think it was out for blood,” he finally answered to Rose’s question. “I think that was a warning… or an invitation.”