Title: Starting Over

Fandom: Doctor Who

Rating: K+

Genre: Romance

Characters/Pairings: Ten.5/Rose, mentions of Ten and the Tylers

Spoilers: Up to 'Journey's End'

Summary: In their first months together, Rose and Ten.5 can't seem to break the ice.

A/N: I don't know where this came from… I promise it wasn't supposed to be so angsty. There will (hopefully) be one or two chapters after this, but because I'm really bad at finishing works-in-progress, this is a standalone for now. Thanks to Wikkid.X for BETA-ing this!

Rose Tyler always tried to be a positive person.

She didn't complain to her mum when the guys on the estate made a racket on a Saturday night - she told herself that one day she'd have that much fun too. She didn't whine about her job at Henrick's, even though she'd never planned to work as a shop girl for the rest of her life - she decided that if it was good enough for her mum, it was good enough for her.

In time, she even came to see her temporary (because she'd never let herself believe that it was eternal) separation from the Doctor as a good thing, because God knew she would never have had the determination or the confidence or the intelligence to build a Dimension Cannon had she stayed the Doctor's loyal companion, standing in his shadow.

But now, standing on Bad Wolf Bay, on the spot where her life had felt like it was ending all those years ago, she couldn't find a positive. Even though, technically, everything she'd ever wanted was standing by her side: the Doctor, human, in love with her, and willing and able to attempt a normal life.

She turned to look at him, sensing him doing the same, looking at her with those beautiful eyes, and she could almost have laughed at the irony of it.

Because this wasn't her Doctor: this Doctor was blue and human and seemed almost shallower than the one she remembered. When she looked in his eyes, she didn't see the Universe burning. Instead she saw the old chocolate brown, with nothing but emotion within.

Emotion she'd wanted to see the whole time she'd travelled with him, and that he'd kept well hidden behind that Universe.

When she kissed him, it was instinct, and a little bit of madness, and a little bit of hope, and a whole lot of goodbye. She'd intended to kiss him, as she'd kissed Mickey goodbye all those years ago, on the Estate, when the Universe was at her feet and her old, Northern, leather-and-jeans Doctor was waiting for her to come along. One last farewell, before she left him in Pete's World and ran off into the TARDIS.

But the Doctor - the real, Time Lord, Oncoming Storm Doctor - had seen only her making her choice, choosing humanity over Time Lord glamour, and had acted accordingly.

"Are you alright?" He asked, when she didn't say anything. Why did he have to do that? Why did he have to sound exactly like him? Why did his hair have to have that gorgeous messy volume, exactly as she remembered? Why did he have to represent everything she needed in the world, without being it?

"Yeah," she gave a weak grin, "I'm always alright."

He nodded, frowning a little, as if he really didn't believe her at all, but knew not to push it. He took her hand, his grip warm and tentative, not cool and steady as she remembered.

And she hoped beyond hope that, sooner or later, this horrible mess of love and resentment and pain that that double-hearted git had left behind would sort itself out.

She was trying, she really, really was. When he kissed her, she kissed him back. When he made a bad joke, she laughed and swatted his arm. When he held her hand, she didn't let go.

But she knew he could tell something was wrong. And before long, he stopped kissing her, stopped making jokes about her mum and playing with Tony, and stopped holding her hand.

He started to go for long walks, sometimes all day, and a tiny part (okay, a large part) of her was afraid he'd never come back. That she'd wake up one morning and find a note on the table, saying he wasn't coming back.

Things couldn't be the way they were before - they both knew that. There was very little positive about this situation, the Doctor and Rose Tyler, without the TARDIS, knocking about in her suddenly cavernous flat, neither of them knowing how to set things right, the ghost of him, the old him, standing between them like a brick wall.

Then, one night, he wasn't home for dinner. It was nine in the evening, Saturday night, and he was always home by six. Saturdays were the best nights for them, as it was a tradition they could maintain from the old days, when she had been tired or sick or needing some downtime in the TV room. They could curl up comfortably on the sofa in their pyjamas and watch a bad movie or a DVD marathon, eating popcorn, and cuddle up, breaking the touch-barrier that was present between them the rest of the time. They could forget that they only had the releases from Earth, 2008, that the DVD player didn't change discs automatically. They could pretend they didn't miss the hum of the TARDIS engines in the background, or the knowledge that they could literally stay there forever, if they wanted.

He wouldn't miss Saturday night - it was the one time they could be as close as they both wanted to be, without all the other stuff getting in the way.

Rose distracted herself by cleaning the living room, hovering in her trackies and scruffy t-shirt, organising the DVDs, scrubbing the surfaces. She tried to get engaged with the Simpsons repeats on telly, but she couldn't keep her mind off him, his whereabouts, his plans. Her stomach was in a knot, her palms freezing and sweaty with worry, not for his safety, but for what he might do. She wanted to trust him.

Honestly.

But who knew what a confused former-alien could do if he was restless? He could be at the airport right now, off on a new adventure, having decided that this new, new, new Doctor just wasn't a good fit with old, old, old Rose.

A tear slid down her cheek as Rose hugged her knees to her chest, rocking backwards and forwards like a child. Finally, she cried in earnest, allowing herself to focus, for once, on the negatives; to stop trying to smile for him, and keep her guard up; to stop pretending like she was so brave, like she didn't need this him.

She missed him. The realisation bright a tiny, tearful smile to her face. She missed the Doctor, the human Doctor, the Doctor who lived with her in this flat and answered calls from her mum and only had a single heartbeat, that always sped up when she was around. The Doctor whose hand was warm in hers, rather than cool and dry. The Doctor who honestly seemed to want the domestic life, with a steady job and an address and one girl for the rest of his now-short life.

Things couldn't be the way they were, but maybe that would have been true anyway, even if she had run off into the TARDIS with him, back on Bad Wolf Bay. She was older, and harder, and more independent than she had been when they met. She was a girl when she ran away with him, into the night, and swore to never stop running. She was a woman now, more mature, more responsible, far smarter than she had been, and perhaps that meant it was time to give in to the slow path.

Perhaps that meant it was time to start over.

Except now it was too late. He was gone, and looking at how broken and distant she'd been in the months since the beach, she couldn't blame him for leaving. :'(

She closed her eyes, and settled on his part of the couch, smoothing her hair from her face and breathing in the smell of him, so warm and human, like tea and peppermint. She fell asleep to that smell, her knees hunched to her chest, her face tearstained.

She was awoken by a knock on the door. She checked the timer on the DVD player: ten-thirty pm. She sat up, and rubbed the tear-tracks from her face, smoothing out her t-shirt in an attempt to look slightly less unkempt. She padded across the living room, through the hall and to the door, all the while hoping she didn't look like she'd just cried herself to sleep on the sofa.

She opened the door, and her face fell slack with astonishment.

For there, standing at the door, in a tuxedo and dress shoes, not Converse high-tops, stood her Doctor, with the most beautiful grin she'd ever seen on his pale face, a bunch of yellow roses in his hand.

"Rose Tyler?" he asked, the grin never wavering, a glint of rare mischief in his eyes.

"Yeah, of course, who else would it be?" She was, of course, desperately glad to see him, but confusion made her voice impatient, and relief prevented her mind from working as fast as it could have.

"Hi, I'm the Doctor, I'm here to pick you up."

"Pick me up? For what?"

"For our date, silly. Please don't tell me you forgot!"

"Date? What? Doctor, what's going on?"

The grin and mischievous smile never faded as he leaned in and stage-whispered conspiratorially in her ear, "Pretend you've never seen me before."

"But why?" she couldn't help but giggle, the impatience and, she had to admit, slight anxiety fading now that it appeared that he hadn't gone completely mad… not that he had ever been sane to begin with.

"Because," he whispered, "I'm going to take you out on the best first date ever, so for that to work we have to be strangers."

"Right." She nodded, pretending to understand. He nodded back, very seriously, and then with a wink he pulled away again, back to the doorway.

"So, Doctor, how did we meet again? Remind me, my memory's all over the place these days." She improvised, standing now with her hand on her hip, in her old flirting stance. She was a little rusty, having not used it since before arriving in this Universe, but she was aware of how it accentuated her figure, and that gave her a little more confidence.

That, and having finally, possibly, cracked his scheme. Maybe, just maybe, he had come to the same realisation that she had that evening, that they needed a fresh start. So, with that in mind, she put the evening's woes and worries from her mind, and focused on enjoying the sight of the Doctor, all spruced-up, in that tuxedo that made her and every other woman in a ten-block radius drool.

Looking at her like she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, a look that, she realised, he wore a lot these days.

"Ah, well, we met through a mutual friend, Mickey Smith, at a party your father held for his foreign investors. We got chatting, and I asked if you wanted to go out sometime, and you suggested tonight."

"Right, and what's with the late hour?"

"Ah, now that's a surprise." He held out his hand to her, and she took it, squeezing his fingers and delighting in the look of pure bliss that crossed his face. They realised, in unison, that this was the first time she'd properly gripped his hand since the beach.

She grinned, and his answering beam lit up her world.

But then she broke free, a horrible thought occurring.

"What?" he looked alarmed, and reflexively glanced around for danger.

"Look at me! You're all fancy and gorgeous and I'm in my scuzzy tracksuit!"

He laughed, "You look beautiful, I promise. Let's go!"

"No, no, I've got to go and get changed. I swear I'll be ten minutes, tops!" she called, already sprinting for her bedroom.

It wasn't until she was stood in front of her wardrobe, and she caught her breath, that she realised she was still grinning.