What You're Not
by Camilla Sandman

Disclaimer: BBC's characters. My words.

Author's Note: Vague references to a particular discussion in "The Impossible Planet". Set sometime after "The Satan Pit", but only vaguely alludes to it.

II

"Rose?"

Rose is imagining things again.

She can't help it, really, and she's not sure she'd want to. The mind imagines, considers, fantasises, dreams, thinks. Stopping it would be trying to halt a deluge with a leaf and be swept up instead.

Rose is being swept up a little, and a part of her even knows it.

It used to be Mickey and a mortgage that was the imagined future. She'd let go of Mickey - not without regret and not without shame, but more easily than she ever figured - but the other part is proving harder. The TARDIS is much better than any house, of course, but it's his - and she's imagining theirs.

A house.

She can see it in her mind. Blue doors, for familiarity. A hallway that is barely passable from all the things he's taken home because they interest him. A living room that is mostly a room for tinkering with things that interest him and partly a library for both of them. A carpet she's picked just to tease him. A kitchen where she's learning to cook very badly and he's worse, because he can never keep attention long enough. A bathroom she hogs and he fights for, at least in her mind. A closet with a lot of shirts and ties, and only one suit. A bedroom.

A bedroom.

There's always just one.

"Rose?" the Doctor asks again, and she looks up at him. He's beaming, and they're both happy to have escaped another danger, yes, but he might just be that little extra happy.

She might be a little angry about that.

"Just thinking about carpets," she says, which isn't quite a truth without being a lie.

"Carpets," he repeats, and something passes over his face. "Oh! We could go to 16th century Persia, get mixed up in some alien carpet invasion and bring back a few rugs after sorting it all out, how about that?"

"Alien carpet invasion?"

"It could happen," he says defensively, sticking his hands in his pockets.

She considers everything she's seen so far, and she finds she rather has to agree. "Anything can happen travelling with you."

"I know! Isn't it great?" he says, taking a light dash around the TARDIS console. She watches him from the comfort of the chair, wondering if it's even possible to contain all his energy on one planet, let alone in one house.

"Oh, brilliant," she assures him. "Nothing beats it."

"Certainly not a house," he remarks, and her smile hurts a little to maintain. "So stationary, can't even visit last week."

"Can't have that!" she says brightly, and she has to wince at her own tone. He stops, going very still, just looking at her.

"I thought you came with me not to have that life," he says quietly.

"Yeah," she admits, drawing her tongue across her lips a little nervously. "But I also came with you to come with you."

She wonders if this is the part where he breaks her heart again. She can't look at him, but she does feel his hand take hers.

"Rose," he says gently, "you know what I'm not."

She nods, a little breathlessly, but the mind isn't really listening at all.

"I'm not human," he says and she imagines...

Bumping into him at a party, a mad young scientist friend of Shareen's, being all energy and enthusiasm and eccentricity, and liking him despite herself. Coming across him again at another party, this time daring flirting and thinking maybe he flirts back in a very him way. Seeing him again at a date of sorts, listening to all his mad ideas about time and injecting a few comments he laughs at. Meeting him again on a definite date and kissing him up against a street lamp, London roaring around them. Dating him for weeks, feeling silliness and attraction become affection. Sleeping with him, awkward and fumbling at first, possessively and greedily later. And loving him, loving him until he leaves her for a trip into space...

"I'm not a husband," he goes on, voice still so gentle, but she's thinking it...

Getting very silly on the planet of New-Old Las Vegas, a chapel and his hand dragging her along and hardly hearing the words spoken by the priestess of the faith of Virtuous Gambling. Just feeling the warmth of him next to her, the slight chill in the wind ruffling her hair and his too, the skin of his thumb as he strokes hers, the texture of his lips as he kisses her and the taste of the alcohol they've both had on his tongue. And afterwards, shagging in a seedy motel room, his touch so gentle and hers not, feeling the urge to be seedy with it all. Mr and Mrs Tyler, because he jokes her name sounds better, but leaving her feeling it's all on her side, and waking up to him looking out the window and knowing it didn't mean to him what it meant to her...

"I'm not a father," he says, and sounds almost bitter, and she sees herself change that...

Smiling at him as he holds the baby, their baby, watching his smile and his pride. A son. Their son. Her eyes, his nose, her birthmark, his affinity for never shutting up. She has to smile, even as she feels tired and unattractive and a little left out, because father and son are bonding silently, and their child will have some Time Lord blood in him, and she will never and thus always be a little outside, but she still loves both...

"I'm not a lover," he says, and this she thinks must be a lie, because it's so easy to disbelieve...

Feeling his hands brush across her skin and he lifts her top off, watching him as he bends his head and brushes his tongue across her skin too, hearing her own sighs as he kisses his way down further and being not quite in her own body as all she can feel is his tongue and his mouth and his breath. Remembering to breathe again after, and trapping him under her, lowering herself on him and watching his eyelids flicker. Loving the way he groans when she moves a particular way, loving the way his hands on her hips holds her to him, loving his little whimpers and the warmth in her cheeks, loving him, him, him and always wondering if he loves her a little too...

"I'm not normal," he says, voice almost a whisper now, and her mind's whispering too...

Blue doors. Hallway, living room, carpet, kitchen, bathroom, bedroom. The Doctor and Rose Tyler, settled down. The Doctor and Rose Tyler, together. The Doctor and Rose Tyler, domestic. The Doctor and Rose Tyler, normal. Until the Universe needs saving and he goes, always goes, but she's not sure she always will...

"I know," she manages, even if she's not sure she does. She dares a look at him finally, and sees only relief in his face. "Too dull and predictable. Can't live with that."

"Nope!" he agrees easily, because he can't. Not him. But she just might, even knowing this life and a part of her is worried.

He lets go of her hand, moment passed, already moving on. Sometimes, it's almost as if he never considers what has been at all even for all he travels in the past.

She's not him. And he, he's not...

'You're not mine,' she thinks, and imagines him to be.

Hers, her hand the only his ever holds. Hers, a smile he has for her and never anyone else. Hers, the TARDIS too, shared and home. Hers, his body to be touched and felt. Hers, his little jokes and laughter, always so easy. Hers, his gaze, seeking her and holding her too. Hers, his life, always ready to be given. Hers, him. Ever hers.

Rose is imagining things again.

She can't help it.

It's who she is.

FIN