Some Go Mad

Rose wasn’t asking where they were going next. But that wasn’t what was important to the Doctor. The most important thing in his mind was that Rose wasn’t asking when she was going home.

The thought had come to Rose’s mind. But if she was at all honest with herself, Rose knew the idea of actually pushing the Doctor to take her home had never been an option to her. For some odd reason, she had convinced herself that she had seen enough facets in the gem to identify it. She had watched the Doctor sparkle in the light of an alien world, had seen the marks he left when dragged across the rough surface of whatever lay behind him. That was enough for her and she was ready to leave the choice up to him.

So the Doctor stood, slightly paralyzed, as Rose watched him carefully from her perch on the bench by the mountain of controls. He knew what she was silently asking him. His thin fingers worked endlessly with a smooth nob on the controls. One sharp spin and they could be standing on a hill overlooking Rome in all her adolescent glory.

Rose was asking a worse question than when she would get to go home. She was asking him to decide if she would go home. And that was one question that was stabbing sharply in the Doctor’s side. One that he felt, one hundred and fifty percent, that he was not ready to make.

“Rose…” The Doctor started hesitantly. He forced his hand to move itself from the dial it still fumbled with and rest heavily on the console’s edge. “Do you need to go home?”

“I’ve got my bag if that’s what you’re asking.” Rose answered evenly. She folded her legs and sank her front teeth into the nail of her thumb.

The Doctor moved to the rail where he had thrown his jacket and roughly shoved his arms into the sleeves.

“I can take you to Rome, Paris, the moon, any sun you want to see. I can take you to see the birth of any planet or the death of any star.” His fingers twitched over the buttons attached to his cuffs. “You can sail on the Titanic or watch it being built in one day. You could solve every mystery you humans stumble around, or discover a million others on a billion other planets.”

When he stood in front of Rose, the Doctor let himself lean heavily on the console. She watched him silently, sensing a “but” in the coming statement.

“I can promise you every single one of these things, Rose,” the Doctor said confidently. “And you can ask me to stop at any moment you wish. But there’s one thing you need to know.”

Rose wanted to ask what it was, but the look in his eyes stopped her, told her any word on her part might just shatter the resolve he had tenderly put up in his mind. So she watched him and chewed her nail to dust.

“I can’t promise I’ll be able to oblige.”

---

Matty was sound asleep. Rose could only guess and hope that the rest of her family was the same. She had gone straight to her youngest brother without another thought.

Rose didn’t dare brush any stray hairs from his forehead or press a kiss to his cheek. But she waited in his room for a handful of minutes.

The Doctor had told her that she could take as much time as she liked. He had all of it, after all. There was no such thing as wasting time with the Doctor. It was a concept Rose was fully prepared to grow accustomed to.

When Rose thought she had spent enough time by her brother's bed, she returned to her own room and glanced around the walls and shelves. Her bag lay discarded on top of her slightly wrinkled comforter.

A sudden thought forced her on top of that same blanket and had her reaching to the top shelf above her bed. Rose tugged down two relatively thick volumes and ran a hand over the cover of each. A smile split a thin line in her lips and she wondered briefly if she should wish a good night to her father. He was probably already asleep. Then again, she could probably wish him good night before she was even born. She had, after all, suddenly become best friends with a Time Lord.

Jennifer.

The thought hit Rose so hard that she plopped down on the bed in silence.

The Doctor’s words ran through her head again. A large part of her believed that he was lying to her, or at least exaggerating the situation in his own attempt to warn her.

Every part of Rose agreed that she would make it home, possibly by tomorrow, and Jennifer would never know the difference.

Rose shoved both of the math textbooks from the shelf into her bag and hefted it onto her shoulder. One hand dug through the contents to check for all of her security blankets. The two books she had just added, a crumbling copy of Pride and Prejudice, the perfume her mother used to use, and a bottle.

Rose paused when her fingers brushed the surprisingly cool glass of the bottle. She had forgotten about it, but it didn’t seem worth the effort to throw it out of the bag.

As Rose descended from her window again, she wondered about time. Mainly, she thought about what time would do while she was gone. It felt a bit arrogant to assume that all of time would pause while she was mucking about with an alien man come to Earth, but what else would it do She made a note to ask the Doctor exactly how time travel worked when she got the chance.

That plan alone almost made her laugh. When had she become so curious and demanding? When the strangest man in history showed up, she decided when that same man came into her line of sight.

The Doctor was waiting on the same corner as he always was.

“Are you ready?” he asked when Rose stopped in front of him.

She let one eyebrow rise up. “Are you?”

The Doctor grinned and pushed open the doors of the TARDIS. It wasn’t an answer, but Rose decided in that moment that she wasn’t going to push just yet. So she stepped forward and through the impossible doors that she was never going to be used to.

“So,” The Doctor started as he moved swiftly past Rose and jumped the small steps to land on the platform. “Any questions?”

“Just one,” Rose started. “Can I push one?” She asked, biting her lip. It felt like a childish question, but all of the buttons peppering the console were far beyond tempting.

Going by the grin on the Doctor’s face, it looked to be exactly the question he wanted.

“Depends which one,” He answered.

Rose slowly stepped up to the platform and dropped her bag carefully on a seat. Her eyes moved over the panels in front of her.

“That one.” She pointed to a green and blue button picked at random from the hundreds of others.

The Doctor’s grin grew even more. “Depends how you feel about polar bears.”