Kinds of Day

By: Doctorrosetyler

Disclaimer: I do not own Doctor Who. Sad day.

Summary: Rose finds the power inside herself to conquer her past and live her future. 10/Rose

Some days are normal. You go through them, just like any other day. They are unremarkable and completely unmemorable. This is what makes up most people's lives. Not Rose Tyler's. She remembers every day with her Doctor. Now, anyway.

Some days are wonderful. You remember them forever because of the events that happened. They don't change anything, don't alter life in any way, but they make you smile as you think of them.

Some days are horrible, so awful that the memories bring nightmares and fear. Some people have years of these days stored in their memories. Rose Tyler is one such girl, but she is lucky. She has a Doctor to heal her wounds, though he doesn't know they are there.

Some days change your life forever. For Rose Tyler, this is one of those days.

In order to understand the story, we must start at the beginning. Before Rose met the Doctor. Before Rose became the Bad Wolf. When she had yet to find the strength inside of herself.

She was sixteen. Young, beautiful, and completely naïve. She had fallen in love with a boy by the name of Jimmy Stone. Or at least, what she thought was love at the time. He worked at the frozen yogurt shop down the street from school. He was one of those kids always sulking about in black clothes with music blasting in his ears. She had talked to him a few times. Thought he was just misunderstood.

He asked her out. They dated for three months before she left school for him. She got a job at a shop. Her mother wouldn't speak to her, said that she was ruining her life for this boy she barely knew. Said that he gave her a bad feeling. She shouted at her mum, saying hurtful things to her. She couldn't possibly understand their love. He needed her, and she wouldn't leave him.

Her mum was right.

After she moved into his flat down the street, she found out what he was really like. The sweet boy who had praised her and told her she was beautiful was now hateful and mean. Nothing she did was right in his eyes, though she tried her hardest to be a good "wife" for him, even though he wouldn't marry her. One day she was walking back from the store and dropped a bag. A man picked up for her, and she thanked him before moving on her way. Jimmy saw her. When she got back to the flat, he ripped the bags from her hand and slammed the door behind her. He screamed at her for speaking to another man, called her a whore. She cried and he left. When he returned, he smelled like cheap perfume and cigarettes.

Such was her life for the next few months. Wake up, cook him breakfast, go to work, come home, cook dinner, clean, get yelled at, let him use her body, go to sleep. It wasn't much of a life. She found herself getting more depressed, but she still loved him. How could she leave him?

Things got worse on her birthday. He bought her lingerie, and she didn't want to wear it. She told him that she wanted a few days off from sex, that she was a bit sore. That was when he got rougher. He slapped her on the face and knocked her to the ground. He left the flat, leaving her bruised and afraid on the stained carpet of their cheap 'home'. She had gone to bed and cried herself to sleep, praying he would not return until long after she was gone to work. She got her wish, but just that once.

He began to beat her regularly. She gave him everything he asked, but she was afraid. Her best friend, Shareen, was worried about her bruises. Said she could only fall down the stairs so many times a week.

Six months later, after two hospital visits and four broken ribs, Shareen asked her boyfriend to intervene for Rose. She didn't know what would happen that night. Roy came to the apartment that night as Rose was serving dinner. He burst in the front door and began beating Jimmy for the things he was doing to her.

If Rose had known Jimmy had a gun, she would have hidden it from him long ago.

The fight ended quickly, and Jimmy walked out of the flat. Roy lay dead in a pool of blood.

That was how Rose got out. The police arrested him for murder and abuse and he was sent to jail. Rose moved back in with her mum and tried to live a normal life again. It was years before the image of Roy's empty eyes stopped haunting her in her dreams.

Her injuries healed, she went back to work, and she tried to make the best of the life she had chosen for herself. After all, she had started to believe the things Jimmy had said to her. She was far too stupid to go back to school, anyway.

She was eighteen when she met Mickey Smith. He was so different from any guy she had ever known. He was sweet, if not a bit cowardly. He brought her flowers, though she insisted that she couldn't date again. She never told anyone about Jimmy. It was too painful to remember. Mickey stuck around, even after countless denials. He helped her heal. She still flinched when a man came close to her, and the nightmares continued. But Mickey never touched her unless she initiated the contact. He knew somehow that she didn't like to be touched. She loved that about him. He was respectful.

He was a fraidy-cat.

They had gone to the movies one night and a man tried to mug them. She beat him to a pulp while Mickey cowered behind a dumpster.

She felt secure with him. Not that he could protect her, but that he would never hurt her. He asked her out on a real date. She accepted. Soon he was her boyfriend, and her mum was more than ecstatic. Mickey, after all, had a job, prospects, and he was completely in love with Rose.

Rose didn't quite feel that way, though. She had always felt like she was waiting for someone to come into her life. She needed someone else, someone braver and smarter. It was exactly a year later that a man in a leather jacket came bursting into her workplace, telling her to run.

She never stopped running.

She broke Mickey's heart, and for that she was sorry, but she knew that this was the man she had been searching for. With a newfound courage and a sense of adventure, she leapt into the man's blue box and let him whisk her away through time and space.

Slowly but surely, she fell in love with him. Not the way that she had loved Jimmy, because now she saw that that wasn't real love. Not the way she loved Mickey, either. She didn't ever really love Mickey, but the kindness he showed her. But the Doctor, he was different. She fell completely in love with him. She loved him so much that he became part of who she was.

For the Doctor, she became the Bad Wolf. She found the strength and peace inside of herself. She learned who she was and that she was fantastic and brilliant and she was the Doctor's companion. She promised to stay with him forever, and she intended to keep that promise. He was never mean to her, he would never hurt her on purpose, and he would protect her with his very life. They fought sometimes, but he never raised a hand to her. He wouldn't wuss out of an argument either.

The nightmares continued, but whenever she woke in a cold sweat, all she had to do was walk down the hall and he was there for her. He never pried about her dreams, he just held her close to him. The nightmares became less frequent as her time with the Doctor passed. She was beginning to move past all that had happened to her with Jimmy. She was becoming her own person again, with the help of her best friend (that she was completely in love with). Even so, she still had a twinge of fear when she walked around a street corner and saw some kid in a black sweatshirt. Her heart still clenched in her chest when she passed the block of flats she used to live in with him. She wasn't healed yet, but the Doctor was helping without even knowing.

They were nearly separated many times; the worst of these was with the void. They had survived, though, and now she had a father. Pete had come from the other universe to live with her mum in this one. They were happy, and Rose was glad to have a father again. Rose and the Doctor visited them often, in that same little flat they had always lived in.

It was on one such visit that her life changed. Her past came back to haunt her.

The TARDIS landed roughly on the pavement outside the Powell Estate. Rose and the Doctor hopped out of it, laughing lightly, hands tightly clenched together. There was something exhilarating about a rough landing. It was almost required now, though she knew the Doctor could land the TARDIS gently if he wanted. He was brilliant like that.

He caught her gaze with his and they both grinned widely, leaping up the stairs to the flat where her mum now lived with Pete. Rose was excited to see her parents, though all she really wanted was a bath. The TARDIS water heater had broken, and after a long trek in the Sahara desert, she wanted a bit of a soak. So, she was glad when the Doctor chose to go with Jackie and Pete to find a new car (she confiscated his sonic screwdriver, lest he break something). She stayed behind to have her bath.

If she had only thought to lock the front door. Her mum and Pete had a key, and the Doctor could easily take the TARDIS in here. There was no point in leaving it unlocked. But she didn't think of that. She just walked into the bathroom to have her shower, followed by a relaxing and long-anticipated bath.

As she began to undress, she noticed some dirty dishes on the bathroom counter. She put her clothes back on, annoyed with Pete's slightly disturbing habit of eating breakfast in the bathroom. Deciding that she couldn't shower until those dishes were done, she went to the kitchen to wash them.

One thing that Rose had always enjoyed was doing the dishes. It made no sense, but she loved it. It wasn't surprising that she got rather caught up in doing them. Singing to herself, she started on the dishes that had piled up in the past few days. She felt more relaxed than she had in weeks. The nightmares were getting worse. She didn't understand why, though she was okay with ending up in the Doctor's bed every night, even if it was just so that he could hold her until she stopped crying. Inevitably she fell asleep in his bed and woke up with his scent around her.

He asked her what they were about, and she told him old monsters. She didn't want to tell him that when she closed her eyes, she saw Jimmy behind them. Sometimes he beat her, others he raped her. All of the dreams were actual memories. She didn't even want to sleep anymore. She sighed as she put another dish away, knowing that she would soon have to tell the Doctor what her nightmares were really about.

She knew he loved her, that he wouldn't think less of her for being beaten and raped. He might, however, be surprised by her weakness in letting it happen to herself. She was a new person now, and she wouldn't let things like that happen again. The Doctor held her heart, and she would protect it and her body for him. It was his to take, but not to abuse. And he wouldn't. That's why she saved it for him, until he came to claim it.

Even if he never did. Sure, they had kissed a few times. Those kisses had been beyond passionate and amazing, but they always avoided the issue and went back to the way things were before. They were both so afraid.

It was when she put the last dish in the cupboard that she heard the door click open.

"Doctor? Is that you?" she asked, peeking around the corner. The apartment remained silent. The door stood hanging open. "Mum? Dad?" she called quietly, inching into the living room. Deciding the wind must have opened it, she went to shut the door and turned back to go into the kitchen.

She was met with a gun barrel in her face. What truly frightened her, though, was the man that held the gun.

"Jimmy…" she shook, backing against the wall to the kitchen.

"Hello, Rosalily." He said. His voice was lower than she remembered; his eyes dark and angry. There was stubble on his face and he was taller than he had been. The old nickname he had for her shot fear and pain into her heart. She couldn't move, even as he stepped closer to her.

"What are you doing here?" she asked, ashamed of how her voice quivered with fear.

"What do you mean?" he answered, his smile sickeningly sweet. "You promised me forever, baby. I came here to collect. You're coming with me. I've got a nice place set aside for us in Norway. You'll like it there. It's out in the country."

She wanted to scream, run, do anything, but she was paralyzed. She would never escape him. He would always know where she was. Even if he was gone, he would haunt her dreams forever. She just shook her head and pressed herself further into the wall.

His face darkened and the angry scowl she had grown accustomed to crossed his face. "What do you mean no? You belong to me, you don't have a choice."

She found her voice briefly. "No. I…have someone else."

That was apparently a very wrong answer. He smacked her across the face, knocking her into the kitchen door. Memories taunted her as she fell to the ground. She was just as weak as she had been years ago. She couldn't fight him.

"You whore!" he shouted, waving his gun at her to emphasize his words. "I'm gone for a few years and you find someone else?"

She flinched at his words, still caught by her memories. She was powerless against this man. Her cheek stung and she could feel her skin bruising.

How had she lived like this? She couldn't do this again. She didn't love Jimmy anymore. She loved the Doctor.

The Doctor.

What would he do when they returned to find her gone? Would he search for her? Go back into the TARDIS and leave? He cared for her, she knew. Maybe he even loved her. Would he save her from him?

Why should she need saving? What had she done to deserve this? She gave her heart and body away too easily.

She was a whore. It was her fault that she was in this situation. If she hadn't chosen to be with Jimmy in the first place, this wouldn't be happening.

The tears began to stream down her face as she faced the man she was now sure would be her death.

"Pack your things." He spat. Without thinking, she obeyed. His gun remained on her the whole time. His comments as she packed her underwear were lewd and awful. Why had she ever given herself to him? He didn't love her like Mickey. He didn't respect her like the Doctor.

She froze when she heard the front door open again, followed by the Doctor's voice.

"Hey, Roo-oose! I hope you're done with that bath! Your mum wants you to come and look at the car they picked. It's brilliant! And blue!"

She could hear the smile in his voice and her heart clenched. He wasn't supposed to come back here. He wasn't ever supposed to know her greatest shame.

She was weak. Jimmy still owned her.

The gun pressed against the back of her head and a voice dripped like venom into her hear. "Is that him? Your new lover? We can't have him alive, can we?"

Ice ran through her veins as the gun left her head and his footsteps went out of her room. He was going to kill her Doctor.

She ran from the room to the living room , where Jimmy stood pointing his gun at a very confused Doctor, who looked at her questioningly when she entered.

"Rose…what's going on? Are you alright?" he tried to come to her, but he was halted by Jimmy's angry voice.

"Get away from her! I'll shoot you!" He yelled.

Rose saw his finger twitch on the trigger and his hold on her broke.

She was no longer afraid of Jimmy Stone. He was threatening the man she loved. There was nothing worse he could do to her than to kill the Doctor.

She screamed and ran at Jimmy, knocking him to the ground and sending the gun skittering across the floor. His face looked up at her with anger and shock. He tried to hit her off of him, but she ducked and punched his face. She didn't' know what came over her after that. Years of anger and fear came out of her fists. She screamed and yelled and punched until she couldn't feel her hands anymore.

She found herself again at the Doctor's hands gently pulling her away from Jimmy's unconscious form. He didn't say anything, just pulled her to him and held her closely as she fell apart in his arms, the blood from Jimmy's face staining his pinstripes.

She barely noticed when he pulled her cell phone from her pocket and called the police. She remained silent in his arms as he recounted the events to her parents and the police. She looked away when the ambulance came and took Jimmy to the hospital.

She didn't speak as she washed the blood from her hands. Her parents came home and the Doctor told them what he had seen. Her mum was immediately livid and tried to get Rose to tell her what had happened.

Rose still stood in anger. She had beaten him to a pulp, but she wasn't finished with him yet. She looked up into her mother's eyes.

"Take me to that hospital."

Her mum nodded and they all piled into the new car they had bought. The Doctor tried to take her hand, but she kept them clenched together in her lap. This was something that she had to do on her own.

She was stronger than she gave herself credit for.

The police escorted her to the room that Jimmy had been placed in. It was heavily guarded. The Doctor refused to let her go in alone, so she let him follow her in.

Jimmy was lying in a bed, his face cleaned and stitched, but still in bad shape. He saw her come in. Where she had expected fear, anger appeared. She shouldn't have been surprised, but his anger made her angry. Where did he get the right to be angry? She walked up to the side of his bed so that he could see her face clearly. The Doctor remained by the door.

"Jimmy Stone." She said, feeling the fear in her heart again. She squelched it as quickly as it had come. He opened his mouth to speak and she wiggled his IV needle. His eyes squinted in pain and she felt a little satisfied.

"My name is Rose Tyler. Not Rosalily. I am 22 years old. Six years ago I gave you my heart and let you abuse me. I stayed with you because I thought I loved you. You beat me, you raped me, and you made me believe that I was weak. You made me believe I wasn't worthy of love."

He glared back at her.

"I am older now. I am stronger. And I will never let you do that to me again. " she pointed to her bruised cheek. "This is the last time you will ever hit me. Next time, I won't let anyone pull me off of you." She leaned close to his face and let the anger she felt drip through her voice. "I won't stop punching until you are dead."

His eyes widened and she saw a bit of fear behind them.

"I have found something worth living for. I have learned what it is really like to be in love. You threatened him." She pointed to the Doctor. "If you hadn't done that, you may have had me. You may have succeeded in taking me again." She smirked and continued. "But he is the person that gave me this strength. He showed me what I am worth. I am not a whore. I am Rose Tyler, defender of the earth."

Jimmy stared back at her, his eyebrows furrowed. She leaned in again.

"It's your turn to fear me now. When you go to bed, you will see me in your dreams, with golden eyes and endless power. You will fear the gold, and you'll never know why."

She whispered into his ear. "Who's afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?"

As she pulled away, she saw absolute fear in his eyes. Her heart calmed and she felt the last of his power over her slip away. She turned to the Doctor and walked away from Jimmy Stone forever. He took her hand and they left the room where Jimmy was shaking with fear.

It wasn't until they were back in the TARDIS that she spoke to the Doctor. They weren't leaving; they still had to talk to her parents about what had happened, but now was the time that the Doctor learned what her nightmares were about, though she suspected he already knew.

She sat with him on the sofa in the library, playing with his fingers wrapped in hers.

"So that was Jimmy." He began.

She nodded, afraid of this conversation.

"Yeah. He was my first boyfriend."

Her statement was met with anger. "That was not a boyfriend!" he yelled, his anger clearly not directed at her. She flinched anyway.

"I thought he loved me. I left school for him. I didn't know what he was really like. I moved in with him, stopped talking to my mum. Then he started to hit me. Every night he made me sleep with him. I didn't know how to get out." She continued to stare at their hands, afraid to meet his eyes.

His voice was soft. "He killed your friend." He said.

She nodded. "Mum told you."

"Yeah. While we were waiting for the police."

There was silence for a moment.

"He made me believe that I was weak. I let him control me. I could have left whenever I wanted."

The Doctor lifted her to face him. His eyes, where she had been expecting shame, were sad and compassionate. "It's not your fault, Rose. You were so young back then."

She shook her head. "And now? I would have gone with him if you hadn't come back. I know I would!"

He pulled her into his embrace. "He had a gun held on you."

She felt tears slip from her eyes. "I didn't defend myself. It wasn't until he had the gun on you that I felt anything other than fear."

His answer was soft. "What did you feel when he held the gun on me?"

She closed her eyes against the memory. "Anger."

"He's what your nightmares are about."

"Yes."

There was silence for a few minutes. Her tears stopped and she relaxed against his chest. She broke the silence.

"I'm not the same person anymore."

He shook his head against her hair. "No, you're not."

"I'm not weak. I'm not worthless. I'm not a whore."

He tightened his hold on her. "You were never any of those things, not even when you were with him."

"I'm worthy of love." She said softly into his shirt. "For years I believed that love was only for certain people. I thought I was one of those that would never feel real love. He made me believe that no one would ever love me after he had had me. Made me believe he was doing me a favor by giving me a place to stay."

She pushed back from him. "I know now. He was wrong."

He cupped her bruised cheek gently with his hand. "He was very wrong, Rose. You are loved by everyone you meet. You deserve more than even I can give you."

She met his eyes and saw the love in them. "You've given me so much already. You've never hurt me, and you never will. You protect me and comfort me when I'm upset." She took a deep breath. "Because of you, I know what it feels like to be in love."

He was silent for a moment before he replied. "You gave me all of those things, too. For the first time in 900 years I have someone more precious to me than the universe itself."

She felt her heart soar at his words. There had always been an unspoken love between them. Now it was spoken. It was real.

She kissed him gently and he returned it, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her to him on the sofa. He held her tightly as they broke the kiss, both panting slightly.

"I don't think I can handle ignoring another kiss." Rose said, breathless.

He chuckled. "I don't intend to ignore it. I plan on doing it again, quite frequently."

She smiled at him. "Care to start now?"

He smiled. "Brilliant idea."

They emerged from the TARDIS to talk to her mum and dad several hours later, with rumpled hair. Jackie noticed immediately that they were wearing different clothes than they had been- and she was certain the TARDIS hadn't gone anywhere in time or space. She was about to comment, but she noticed the glowing happiness on their faces and closed her mouth. The Doctor was in love with her daughter and he would never hurt her, so if they wanted to shag like bunnies, they could. As long as they didn't do it in her flat.

They continued through time and space as always, but now the 'I love you's' were said and the kisses were given, not fantasized.

Jimmy Stone was committed to an insane asylum after his prison term, screaming every night about golden eyes and Bad Wolves.

A/N: So what did you think? I kept getting plot bunnies for it and couldn't stop myself writing it down. It's a bit different from my other stories, and I'll admit that I'm a bit nervous posting it. Oh well, if you spend time writing it, might as well post it! Please let me know what you think of it.

With love,

Doctorrosetyler