Title: Something Better Than Forever.
Spoilers: A post-ep to Journey's End.
Genre: Angst, romance, hurt/comfort and a dash of hope. Stir well to combine and serve hot.
Characters and Pairings; The Tenth Doctor, Rose; Rose/Ten.
Rating: PG.13.
Author's Note: Another in my quest to make myself feel better. Is this unhealthy? A lot of my flist is dealing with their confusion, I'm just rolling fic out like cupcakes.
Summary: Rose had always been brave, and now she can be brave for them both.



“You’re a coward,” she spits the words out at him and he reels in shock at both what she’s saying and the fact that it’s her that’s saying it. He had been certain that he would never hear her say anything to him ever again, and a tiny part of him relishes even words that slap.

“You couldn’t let me live with you because you were weak. Too afraid to watch me grow old.”

He can’t find it within himself to be angry, to be ashamed, to be indignant. “You don’t know what it’s like,” he whispers softly, half-heartsedly.

She laughs and the noise cuts through him. It isn’t a joyful sound, it’s painful and slightly hysterical.

“Yes I do! Yes I do!” She clenches her fists, whether to combat the stress that’s roiling around inside of her or in preparation for testing her knuckles against his jaw. “Did you know?”

He tries to raise his gaze from her hands but only manages to rest it on her left shoulder. “Know what?”

Her whole body seems to collapse in on itself, as if it’s too tired to hold everything in, to stand any longer, but she manages to gather herself at the last second. “I understand why you did what you did, but...I've a mind of my own. He spent the rest of his life with me, but I couldn’t spend the rest of my life with him.”

Something sickly rises in his throat as he understands what she’s saying. His hearts feels life they’re wrapped up in barbed wire. “You don’t…” he can’t finish the sentence, both horrified and…yes, he’s ashamed to admit, hopeful at the prospects.

“Age?” she says the word with false joviality. “No, I don’t, or at least I haven’t yet. That didn’t stop me for a second, not for one single second, from loving him. Do you know why?”

Normally, he’d fiddle with the TARDIS console under the weight of such a conversation, but this is too important, too painful, and he is filled with a guilt that blossoms both from forcing her to do what she’s done and from hoping, hoping, hoping, hoping that she’ll stay with him now.

She doesn’t wait any longer for an answer from him. “Because I’m brave. I’m braver than you could ever hope to be.”

He nods and almost raises his eyes to meet hers; again he is unsuccessful, so he stands transfixed by the sight of her jaw. “I’m s-”

She angrily interrupts him, pushing off forcefully from the wall of the TARDIS against which she’d been leaning. “If you dare…if you dare tell me you’re sorry, I’ll never speak to you again. I loved him!” She pokes fingers against his chest violently and he stumbles back a little. “I’m not sorry that I lived a life with him. It was brilliant! It was fantastic and even though all I’ve got are memories of him, I wouldn’t trade them for anything you could give me.”

He nods, swiftly, and the action makes a few tears slip from where they’d been pooling. As gravity catches them, they roll down his cheeks.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, and then shakes himself. “I mean, I’m sorry for almost saying that I was sor…I’m not saying, because you told me not to and…”

She laughs a laugh that isn’t deeply laced with pain and anger. “You’re still a dork, I see.”

He nods in agreement, because he always felt - no, always feels like something of an idiot around her.

“Where do we go from here?” she asks, and she sounds so small, so fragile, in a way that she hasn’t since he’d walked into the TARDIS and found her sitting on the Captain’s Chair. Even the strongest, bravest of creatures must lay down their heavy shield at some point.

. . . .

It isn’t easy. It isn’t anything resembling easy. Sometimes it is so hard, it hurts so much that it feels like an impossible weight on their shoulders that they can never hope to carry. There are more tears than laughs and he knows that a lot of their friends can’t see why they’re even bothering.

Martha had been shocked to see how horrible they could be to each other. She’d come to think of Rose as some magical being that made the Doctor happy, so to see him with her and not be so was confusing. Rose wasn’t interested in living up to the myth that had been built around her name.

Jack had been saddened, remembering how they’d once been; when they’d danced and been jealous and always protective. When they’d been so caught up in touching each other and looking at each other that they hadn’t even realized they’d been teleported.

When he suggests that perhaps some time apart might be best, they merely shake their heads and laugh softly. “No, Jack,” they say together, “that’s not how it works.”

It’s the moments that hurt that measure the strength of a relationship. They both know that they will come out on the other side, someday, somewhere, somewhen. There will be a time when there are more laughs than tears, there will be a time when there are more kisses than clenched fists. It is their unfaltering belief in this that tells them that they’re meant for each other, that they’re worth fighting for. Even when they are each other’s darkness, they know they are each other’s light.

. . . .

“I promise,” he whispers against her shoulder. He rests his forehead on the pillow beside her ear as he catches his breath, slipping his hands beneath her shoulder blades.

“I promise,” she whispers against his neck. She moves her hands in broad sweeps across the plain of his back and relaxes under the warm weight of him, now soft and smooth in the aftermath instead of hard and angular in the moment.

He does not clench his fists, he kisses her ear, full to the brim with satiation and affection. She does not cry, she laughs happily, the sound belly deep.

“What do you promise me?” they both ask.

They do not promise each other forever, because they both have it. Forever is not an impressive and impossible and romantic feat for two beings with long life spans.

“If you only had seventy years,” she whispers to him, “and I had forever, then I promise we would spend them together.”

He knows this; she’s done it before. It is up to him to be brave now, brave like her, brave for her where she had been for him.

“If you only had seventy years,” he whispers into her ear, “and I had forever, I promise I would spend them with you.”

. . . .

Well...there we go. I honestly don't know how I feel about this fic. It seems a bit of an easy way out, but...oh, I don't know. I'm so confused these days. I'm also testing out a symmetrical writing style.

*hugs*