Non Autem Memoria (Far to Go Mix)

by Shaye
snortgirl @ earthlink . net

RATING: PG-13
SUMMARY: Wednesday's child is full of woe, Thursday's child has far to go.
TIMELINE: After "Age of Steel" (2.06) Rose+Ten
NOTES: This story was written for the Bordello Remix, in which we rewrote someone else's story in a different fandom. The original was Full of Woe by cgb. A huge thanks to fialka for all of her help with this story.

+++

Time flies, but not memory.
(Tempus fugit, non autem memoria.)

+++

She opened the door of the TARDIS on an unseasonably warm May morning that made even the Powell Estates look cheery. The Doctor shrugged out of his overcoat, grinning at her, and they walked into the world hand-in-hand.

Rose didn't know it, but she'd just left the TARDIS for the last time.

Mum's flat was empty and still; wrong, so wrong. It felt strange enough that they left in search of further anomalies, evidence of aliens or paradoxes or even an unusually long queue at the benefits office, but they found nothing in the city at large that seemed out of the ordinary.

The Doctor insisted they stop in at a chip shop on their way back to the flat. Rose paid little attention, eyes darting everywhere and seeing nothing out of place.

The flat still felt stale and off-kilter, but Rose was shocked to discover her hunger when they spread out the meal. The entire day had slipped by while she was looking elsewhere. Rose squinted out the window and wished Mickey was still here.

"We came back to the right universe, didn't we?" she asked.

The Doctor nodded tersely. "Pass the mushy peas," he said.

"No, it's, you're right, she's got to be fine. Maybe she chucked Howard, got a posh new boyfriend she spends all her time with."

The Doctor thought: I didn't say that. Later, when the neighbor heard the telly and came to scold Rose for staying away when her mum was in hospital, he pocketed his specs and ushered Rose out into the deepening dark. She walked beside him in a daze, pliant and blank as a posable doll.

In the lift on the way to Jackie's room, Rose looked up at him, her eyes wide and utterly unfathomable. "She could have phoned," she said, and clutched her mobile like it might save her life.

The Doctor stuffed his hands in his pockets and said, "I reckon she could."

He thought: so this is when it ends.

+++

The Doctor sat Rose in a chair at her mother's bedside and snuck a look at Jackie's chart. He wasn't actually that sort of doctor, of course, but he was a genius, which he'd always found to be far more useful. Reading the chart brought him up to date on the diagnosis, prognosis, and assorted other terms ending in -osis, the most salient of which would have to be explained to Rose, but not by him. Not this time.

"What does it say?" Rose asked, but he merely shook his head. He denied his body's first compulsion toward flight, but he could draw away from her in other ways, slowly releasing the tethers that held them together.

The Doctor turned abruptly from the room. He couldn't bear the bleak look on her face. There were vending machines at the end of the corridor; he stood before them and contemplated his choices.

It seemed to Rose a long time before the Doctor returned. Long enough for the physician on duty to come in and talk to her about Mum. There was a pamphlet that was probably meant to be comforting, which she read half a dozen times before the Doctor thrust a bag of crisps under her nose and asked, "Want one?"

Rose chewed slowly, frowning at the pamphlet that steadfastly refused to use words that normal people knew the meanings of. "They told me Mum can't walk right now, some sort of sudden-onset thing. But I think this says she's going to get better. That's what 'remitting' means, yeah?" She looked up for confirmation. He was standing across the room and eating crisps like he had a grudge against them.

She remembered earlier, in the lift, he'd kept his hands in his pockets rather than clasped in her own.

He shrugged and said, "Don't ask me," through a mouthful of crumbs.

Rose walked over to him and demanded another crisp. It was salty and sour but did not reveal the secrets of the universe.

She didn't want to know what she would do if he made her choose between them again, but it didn't have to come to that. She had the superphone, after all. "I'll let you know," she said. He raised a quizzical brow and she added, "When I'm ready to come back. S'just, Mum can't even bathe herself right now. She shouldn't be--"

"Rose," he said sharply. The next words were softer. "I understand."

She threw her arms around his neck and squeezed, determined not to think of it as any real sort of goodbye. He walked out of the hospital and back to the TARDIS, and Rose went into the ladies' toilets to cry. Someone had written a bloke's number on the stall door, someone else a warning that this was actually the number for a porn shop in Islington.

She thought about finding a pen and writing something important, but then considered that the back of a stall door wasn't the place to get profound. Besides, she couldn't think of anything to say.

+++

Mum was asleep in her room and Rose had taken to fantasizing about getting away. There was nothing else to break up the crushing torpor of her routine; baths, bottles, bills, bedpans.

First it was all nice sunny places like Tenerife and Ibiza, but no place had ever stayed peaceful for long, in her experience. She sometimes found herself surfing the net looking up flights to Colombia, or tours of the Antarctic coast, or treks to Kilimanjaro. After awhile the destination just didn't interest her unless it guaranteed oppressive governments, desolate surroundings, or running for her life.

Rose picked up her mobile and thumbed at the buttons, considering.

When the phone on the TARDIS console rang, the Doctor stared at it for a moment before it occurred to him who might be calling. He brought the handset to his ear and said, "Hello?"

"It's me," Rose's voice said.

He didn't know how to respond, so he said nothing, and she wasn't there to tell him he was being rude.

"Me, Rose Tyler."

He smiled. "I know, Rose Tyler."

"You, you said I could phone."

He paused, remembering. "I suppose I did," he said, with some surprise. He wondered if he'd meant it that way all along.

"I think I'm going mad," she said, laughing. "I just wondered if maybe Mongolia was nice in the summer. And by 'nice' I meant 'terrifying.'"

Something loosened in his chest, and he laughed with her. "That sounds about right."

"So." She cleared her throat, but if she was expecting something from him, he didn't know what. "Been anywhere nice lately?"

"Oh, the usual," he said. "A few alien invasions, the occasional insurrection. Some of them a good deal nicer than anything you and I ever got up to."

"Doctor, you're not doing anything too dangerous, are you? I mean--"

The Doctor fidgeted. Idly flipped a switch on the TARDIS console, a miniscule adjustment that was likely unnecessary. "How's your mum?" he asked abruptly.

"Yeah, she's okay." Rose paused. For a moment he could hear nothing but the soft rhythm of her breathing, and he waited.

"Y'know," she continued, "a little worse, actually. She still can't leave the flat. I s'pose I should just be grateful she's not dying or anything."

"I'm sorry," he said, and tried not to think of it as a shame. He didn't add anything else, nothing like "I miss you." He didn't say things like that, no matter their truth.

"So tell me about these alien invasions," she said. He regaled her with a tale that he doubted she would believe the half of: flying robot backpacks, a harrowing sprint through rain-slicked streets, a plot to overthrow the Kralliaban government, a clever trap that involved a cleaning service and the alien equivalent of Marmite. It was the archetype of every Doctor-and-Rose adventure ever. Every Doctor-and-anyone adventure, come to think of it.

Rose laughed and asked for his promise to bring her some of this alien Marmite. He agreed, although he didn't like making promises he wouldn't be keeping. It was such a human trait, but he thought maybe, when all was said and done, that was how they got on with things.

After the call ended, Rose sat for a long time, staring at nothing. She thought: this is my life now. She must have known it in her gut for awhile. Dreaming of springtime in Kabul should've been her first indication. Phoning the Doctor was probably her second. She wondered if she should look up Sarah Jane.

It was nearly teatime. As she put the kettle on and made sandwiches, Rose spared a thought for the phone bill. Did they have long distance to outer space? Special charges for calling across time? She shook her head and took the tray in to Mum.

"I talked to the Doctor," she said, helping her mother struggle to sit up.

Mum sighed. "Did you, now?"

"He asked after you."

"I hope you didn't tell him I still can't walk. You'll have him thinking I'm at death's door. He's probably rubbing his hands in anticipation, he is."

"Don't say that! The Doctor's not like that."

"Oh, Rose," Mum said tiredly.

Rose almost wished, in that moment, that she could hate her mother for treating her like this was just another aftermath of a broken heart. But she could no more hate Mum than she could hate the Doctor. This was just the way Mum was, always prepared to think the worst of him.

Mum reached up to smooth the hair off Rose's forehead, but her hands were trembling so much it ended more like a caress.

"I always knew you'd be a pretty girl," Mum said, and Rose frowned. "Knew the day you were born."

"What d'you mean?"

"You weren't born on a Thursday, love. It was a Monday. What I can't figure out is where you got the itch for it."

"For what?"

"For travelling," Mum explained.

She obviously meant "for the Doctor," but Rose didn't need that said aloud.

Rose thought of all the things she hadn't said to him, things like:

I hate this.

I wasn't ready.

I'm afraid I'll never see you again.

She wondered if this was how the Doctor felt all the time, as an endless string of travelling companions passed through his life.

Rose did not think of other things, equally unsaid:

I would have stayed with you.

I never had it so good as with you.

I was always a little bit in love with you.

But neither of them needed those words said aloud.

--

end