Damaged

Rose floated on her back in the TARDIS swimming pool, absently studying the the way the marble columns and arches blended into the soft glow that passed for a ceiling in the cavernous room that the Doctor had called the "bathroom". A rubber duck bobbed merrily off to her right.

She'd come for a swim after leaving Adam happily ensconced at a computer terminal in the library. Upon leaving the underground museum, the Doctor had immediately started muttering something about recalibrating the sensors, and begun tinkering around in an access hatch on the console. So, Rose took it on herself to give their new guest the guided tour, after the obligatory "bigger on the inside" exchange was completed.

Smiling, she remembered the way Adam's eyes, already big as saucers, had lit up with glee upon seeing the library. It was obvious that she couldn't have pried him away with a crowbar, so she wished him a good night and left him to it. Between the growing aches from the unaccustomed dead run up seven flights of stairs and down miles of corridor, and her mind playing over and over the days events, sleep was not going to be an option, so she wandered the hallways aimlessly, eventually ending up here.

Obliging as always, the TARDIS had a one piece swimsuit and a big fluffy towel waiting for her in the first changing cubicle. Hoping to loosen the knots in her muscles as well as her mind, she eased gingerly into the blood-warm water and stroked out toward the center before leaning back in the water's embrace. It was soothing- her abused muscles relaxed slowly, except for the nagging ache in her left calf. But her mind continued to worry at the day's memories like a terrier with a mouse, circling 'round and 'round and always coming back to the moment when she had ordered the Dalek to kill itself.

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"Do it." Could handing out a death sentence really be so simple?

The harsh, painful voice of the Dalek somehow expressed a note of empathy.

"Are... you... frigh-tened... Rose... Ty-ler...?"

"Yeah..." she finally forced out past her closed-off throat.

"So... am... I...

"Ex-ter-mi-nate..."

She stumbled to the Doctor's side as the gleaming machine began a final danse macabre, imploding in on itself until no trace remained that it had ever existed. The two of them gazed at the empty space for several long moments, then Rose heard a metallic thump as the Doctor's gun hit the ground between them. Looking over, she watched as he began to tremble minutely, his face deathly pale in the Utah sunlight. His eyes met hers with that look that seemed to hold all the pain in the universe, and it's possible that she might have been crying just a bit, because her vision began to blur.

They reached out at the same moment, and then they were holding each other... practically holding each other up. Rose struggled to get control of her emotions, worried that the man shaking silently in her arms was about to break down completely. But the Doctor seemed to gain strength from her proximity, and after a few minutes he appeared to regain a delicate equilibrium.

His hand, almost steady now, brushed her hair back from her face gently, and she looked up.

"Let's get out of here," she pleaded softly.

He nodded, silently picking up the gun with one hand, and grasping her hand with the other as they walked slowly back toward the lift.

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In the pool, Rose gasped as the ache in her calf suddenly seized in a full blown cramp. Jerking instinctively, she slipped under the surface, swallowing water as her arms flailed for purchase and found none.

Before she could work up a proper panic, though, the water around her shifted as the TARDIS increased the buoyancy of the liquid, popping her back up to the surface like a piece of cork. Coughing and sputtering, she grabbed the leg with both hands, tilting her head to the side to keep her face above water. The pain was shocking, and she awkwardly tried to massage the cramp whilst simultaneously running through every curse word she knew. Twice.

She was gearing up for a third recitation when the muscle began to loosen. Sighing in relief, she lay exhausted for a moment on top of the unnaturally supportive water before carefully paddling to the stairs and hauling herself out. The leg protested with every step, radiating pain. Gritting her teeth, she retrieved her towel, wrapped it around her waist, and hobbled off toward the infirmary.

Down the stairs (accomplished with a sort of undignified hopping), leftmost corridor (more cursing), past the greenhouse (greenhouse?), third room on the right.

Finally getting the hang of this place, she thought, pushing through the double doors marked with a large red cross.

Inside, the Doctor sat on the edge of an exam table, shirtless, craning his head around to look in a mirror as he awkwardly tried to aim a small medical device at the angry, red, grid shaped burns covering his back and shoulders. He looked up as she entered.

"Oh my god! What happened!" she exclaimed, gimping across the room to his side. He turned to her, his expression neutral.

"Just a little souvenir of my brief stint as Van Statten's 'Exhibit A'."

Rose's eyes widened. "He tortured you?"

The Doctor shook his head dismissively. "No... hardly. He wanted a peek at alien anatomy. Unfortunately, my physiology is sensitive to the type of radiation used by his imaging system- a fact which did not seem to concern him overly." He looked pointedly at her left leg. "What about you?"

Rose looked down at the floor, feeling more humiliated than ever at the nature of her injury. "I had a leg cramp. Think I pulled my calf muscle."

"In the pool?" Concern colored his voice and she looked up, meeting his eyes again. "Good thing you were in the TARDIS."

"You're telling me, " she agreed. "Three cheers for telepathic time machines with redundant safety systems. I'll never complain about the ship getting inside my head again."

He snorted, then cringed as the pain in his back flared.

She shook her head slowly. "God, look at us- what a pair. We'd better get ourselves sorted before Adam realizes what he's signed up for and runs screaming in the other direction."

The Doctor's raised eyebrow and the slight twist of his lip clearly conveyed how devastated he would be if that happened.

She responded with the severest frown she could muster. "Be nice, you. Now hand me that magic wand thingie and tell me how to use it," she said, waggling her fingers until he relinquished it.

"Dermal regenerator," he corrected, turning to allow her access to his back, "and you flip the switch to turn it on, then play the beam over the injured area at a distance of four inches or so until the burns fade and are replaced by new skin."

She followed his instructions, hissing as she got a better view of the damage. He must've been in shock when she embraced him in the bunker, she thought, or else the pressure of her hands would surely have been excruciating. Ugly blisters peppered the red marks across his shoulders, and in the center of his back the burns were openly weeping.

"Blimey, what a mess! Why didn't you say something about this earlier?"

The Doctor sighed tiredly. "Honestly? It didn't work it's way up to the top of the priority list until twenty minutes ago."

"And calibrating the sensors did?"

"Sensors are very important!" he replied defensively.

"Treating weeping radiation burns is 'very important'!" she said, matching his tone as she steadied him with a hand on the unburned part of his shoulder. New skin began to appear over the injured areas as she played the beam back and forth slowly.

He twitched, moving restlessly under her hand.

"What?" she asked.

"It itches."

"Yeah, I guess it would do. Almost done..."

A few moments later she leaned back to inspect her handiwork. He stretched cautiously, cords of tension still evident in the muscles of his shoulders and neck. Idly, she wondered if he was always wound this tightly, or only after confronting the last survivor of the army that destroyed his world. Probably always- she couldn't really remember ever seeing him relaxed- but the Dalek surely didn't help matters.

He hopped down from the table and flashed her a quick grin.

"Much better. Your turn- up you go, then."

She awkwardly climbed up as he grabbed his jumper, tossing it in a nearby bin when he noticed the stains on the back where the burns had wept. Crossing to a small cupboard, he opened it and rummaged around, pulling out a clean shirt and gingerly shrugging into it, then donning his jacket and coming back to her.

She swung her legs up on the table, and he gently probed her calf until he hit the spot that made her jerk in discomfort.

"Sorry."

Selecting a device from the tray next to the exam table, he set it next to her and attached the electrode leads to the skin over the top and bottom of the torn muscle, then entered some settings into the machine and turned it on. A strange tingly sensation enveloped her lower leg, a bit like it had fallen asleep, and the throbbing ache receded.

She closed her eyes in relief, only to snap them open again as a pressure hypo hissed against her neck.

"Electrolytes- you've got a mild imbalance," he said in response to her questioning look. "Analgesic?"

"Is the Pope catholic?" she answered. "And don't skimp, either- I want the good stuff."

She was rewarded with a soft huff of laughter and another hypo, then the Doctor checked the readings on the machine attached to her leg and turned it off, removing the electrodes and stowing it back on the tray. Swinging her legs back over the edge of the table, she flexed her foot experimentally, finding the calf muscle to be stiff but no longer painful in the least.

The Doctor turned back from the tray, and Rose caught his arm.

"Hey," she said softly, and guided him close enough that she could lean forward and kiss his cheek. Startled green eyes met hers as she pulled back- apparently she'd managed to surprise him.

"The analgesic wasn't that good... what was that for?"

Screwing up her courage, she made herself hold his gaze.

"That was for listening to me in the bunker when I asked you not to kill the Dalek... for putting down the gun. And now I need you to listen to me again. I should have said this after the Slitheen, but I didn't know how. So now I'm just going to say it straight...

"In London, you seemed so surprised that I wanted you to use the missile even though it might have killed us. But you've got to think it through. Do you honestly think that I would want to live knowing that innocent people had died unnecessarily so that I would be safe?"

The Doctor had drawn back, a look of ages-old pain returning to his face. She'd seen that look too often already, but she knew she had to say her piece on this.

"It was bad enough today. I touched the Dalek, and people died because of me-"

"Because of us," the Doctor interrupted, unconsciously echoing the Dalek's words to her in the Vault, "and you had no way of knowing what it was you were trying to help."

She didn't argue either point, knowing intellectually that it was true. Just as she knew that it was still going to be fodder for nightmares yet to come.

"But how much worse, if it were a conscious decision to trade other people's lives for mine?" she shuddered. "I-I couldn't live with myself. I don't think I could live with you, if you made that decision. I think that's why, today, I was more frightened when you opened the Vault... than I was when you closed it. If it had all gone wrong..."

She gestured helplessly.

"So, please, don't ever do anything like that again, okay?" she reached out, cradling his cheek with her hand. "Because there's no place else in the universe that I'd rather be than right here."

The Doctor covered her hand with one of his, pressing tightly for a moment before allowing her to slip away. As she pushed through the doors and disappeared, he braced both hands on the table before him and closed his eyes, bowing his head as a single tear escaped to track down his cheek.

He wondered if he had the strength left to make those kind of decisions at all, after today.

He wondered if Rose had realized yet that he was damaged goods.

FIN