Foundations | Part 8/10

“That song you sang for her, you were singing it in your head, Doctor, along with our heartbeats. It’s beautiful. Would you sing it for us again?”

“I was hoping you might tell me what it all means, Doctor,” Rose sighed into the Doctor’s bare shoulder. Her urge to taste the freckles on this little patch of skin was growing stronger than her need to keep her distance. (Being honest, she’d already let that slip anyway). His open gasp against her neck in response to her giving in was enough for a shiver to rocket down to her core.

“I plan to. It doesn’t.. it doesn’t translate well. But I will, Rose,” the Doctor pulled back and told her. His eyes widened and fixed on hers, completely still with sincerity that gave her just a bit of a chill.

He never said he had anything planned. He never planned anything. It wasn’t his style. Fly to some far off destination in the TARDIS by the seat of his pants, that was the Doctor’s way. Then again, he hadn’t really been her conventional Doctor for months. Was the potential of being a daddy really changing him? Rose Tyler, you know better than that, she told herself. She’d seen better than that, in his mind.

All Rose had wanted was to hear her baby girl’s heartbeat. But she got so much more than she could have ever thought up late at night in her private TARDIS bedroom. The Doctor’s mind felt like a bonfire, entrancing to look at but would burn you if you got too close. Except, the deeper she delved, it didn’t get darker or scarier, just busier. It was as though there was a gate in his mind separating her from the parts of him that he didn’t want her to see, the parts of him that he worried would scare her away. There were thoughts of her beyond that mind gate, unbidden images of her that she caught a brief glimpse of before he threw up the block. At least they seemed innocent enough compared to the thoughts of hers that she didn’t share with him.

You’re Not Alone | Part 3/16

Rose pictured the detective inspector planted on a shore, standing stone still even before the crest of a wave threatened to engulf him. She didn't believe in the term expressionless. There were too many muscles in a face. It's just that most of the DI's were fixed to a frown, as if invisible pins were tugging down at the corners of his lips. She wondered what weighed so heavily on his brow? It couldn't be his casework, Rose concluded as she watched him look over the old woman for a third time to study her. His eyes moved in slow, measured movements like birds of prey hunting. Patient, but quick. Waiting to dive. She rather liked this image of him as a bird, maybe an owl with a temper. Only in place of feathers he had an untamed lawn of scruff beneath a freckled nose for the beak. The only aspect of his appearance that took away from his gruff exterior was his hair, falling in front of his face in feathery wisps that Rose just knew her mum would be itching to get a hold of.

He was single. That much was easy to work out, even without looking at his left hand. Rose figured that any woman this man might find himself with would be of the meddlesome variety. She would make him wear at least one color, even if it would be a cloudy blue. She wondered if he'd ever had someone. He could easily be a tumbleweed dressed in a dreary windbreaker, drifting on by, nobody to hold him down. Except he had that same glint in his eyes that her mum did when she let herself talk about Rose's dad. It wouldn't do to just assume that he was missing somebody. But Rose trusted her instincts enough to think that something was weighing on his shoulders.

“Tell me again, you were inside, Miss Tyler?” the DI drilled, for the third time.