Some Go Mad

The intended destination of the two girls was only a short drive from the younger’s house. With everyone at work or in school, the trip went smoothly.

Rose, bolstered by the number of rather unconvincing excuses she fed her mind, kept her eyes on the streets outside, scanning every street corner for a box similar to the one from last night. It was silly, she knew. Police boxes simply weren’t made any longer. It would be hard to find one on a London street that didn’t look extremely suspicious. But that logic was far from winning the conflicting war in Rose’s mind.

Jenny, being the more outgoing and chatty of the two, hardly even noticed her friend’s distant behavior through the buzz of her own monologue.

There were only a few scattered customers occupying the café when the two girls arrived. To Rose, it only made the small and warm building more appealing. The restaurant’s cream walls were lined evenly with booths able to fit four people at a time. The rest of the floor space played host to small tables with varying numbers of chairs surrounding them in a pattern that only the employees would recognize. The main counter was sitting a few brisk strides from the entrance that happily greeted its two new customers with a tinkling bell.

Jenny went straight for that counter, waving her hand as signal for Rose to find them a seat. She obliged, her feet carrying her to the closest booth as not to draw more attention from the already seated people.

Jenny joined her friend not long after with two steaming cups of hot chocolate. Rose thanked her with a smile as her hands wrapped around one of the warm cups.

It was the usual lunch for Rose and Jenny. The latter did most of the talking, telling stories about university and her latest pen pal from Germany, while Rose, an expert in the craft of looking interested, pretended to listen with great enthusiasm.

“He’s really quite charming,” the older girl was saying, delicate fingers wrapped around a second drink, this one being a tea that smelled strongly of honey and mint. “The only thing is that all he ever wants to know about is London. Apparently he’s got family here, but he never gets to visit.”

It wasn’t that Rose didn’t find Jennifer’s stories interesting. In fact, she found some of them to be worth the tedious attention to detail. It also wasn’t that she didn’t like Jenny the person; the girl was an absolute joy on a rainy day. The problem, though she didn’t at all like to admit it, was that Rose was jealous of her friend. Though they were only a year apart in age, Jenny seemed to have accomplished a lot more in her days than Rose had.

Rose’s teeth ground up another crisp as her mind chewed on its own meal.

What did she do all day? She woke up, helped her brothers to school, maybe did the shopping, waited for bed, and then repeated it all over again. These afternoons out with Jenny were the thrill of her dull life. Well, except for last night…

“Do me a favor, Rose, and order me another cup if that waiter comes round again,” Rose came back to the current conversation just in time to hear her friend’s request, and see her nod in the direction of the young man who had helped them and who was now occupied with an older couple. “I have to make a run to the toilet,” Jenny explained as she grabbed her purse from the empty place next to her. Rose said she would and sat back in her seat.

Rose never liked being alone in public. Every look that came near her seemed to brim with a secret threat. It would have helped if she had been a bit more social in school, she supposed. Or if she had gone off on her own like Jenny or some of her other friends.

Instead, she had chosen to stay at home for as long as possible. And when that time had started to run out, it weighed on her shoulders like a whole other planet.

Of course, her parents hadn’t minded that she stayed and they were, by no means, the ones to be pushing her out now. That was her own choice. Rose had been their extra hand in raising the boys when he mother started her extensive business trips and when her father’s company had started to lose profits faster than they could earn them.

Now that Rose was moving out, she was hoping it would make her feel better, make her feel more independent. That was the whole reason for her sudden urge to move out.

But it wasn’t working at all.

It was starting to dawn on Rose that she would need a lot more than her friends in order to claw a way out of her shell.

“Hello!”

Rose jolted, her knee jerking and slamming into the underside of the table. She cringed, screwing her face up in pain and trying not to let any screams of surprise leave her mouth. Her watering eyes landed on the man that was now seated across from her. So wrapped up in her thoughts, Rose hadn’t even noticed the familiar blonde slip into the place previously occupied by Jennifer.

“What are you doing here?” she snapped as soon as the pain in her knee had subsided enough to allow her a steady voice.

“That’s a rather rude greeting,” the Doctor commented in a voice that stated he truly didn’t care.

Rose eyed him suspiciously as if expecting him to drag her into the same blue box she now felt guilty for searching for earlier. But he did no such thing. He simply sat across from her calmly, a fizzing drink in front of him, the top of its straw stuck between his smiling lips as the bottom half stayed submerged in the dark drink he had obviously brought with him to the table. From what Rose could see, the man wore similar clothes to the ones she had last seen him in. Though, most of it was covered by a dark grey jacket that he had not been wearing before.

“Your friend is quite the talker,” the Doctor stated plainly. He took his mouth from the bendy straw in his drink. “I thought she would never leave and, therefore, singlehandedly render my entire trip useless.” He went back to the task of sipping his drink, eyes fixated on Rose’s face. They seemed content with tracing her every feature.

“What are you doing here?” Rose asked again.

It wasn’t until his straw had sucked up the last of his soda and was emitting an annoying slurping noise that the Doctor gave any sort of answer.

“I have a theory about you, Rose Jackson.” He sat back in a more comfortable position, crossing his arms so that the bronze buttons of his jacket glinted in the low light of the café. For the briefest of moments, Rose’s attention was held by those buttons. It seemed silly, she knew, but they appeared to be adding their own light the space around them. Pushing away the preposterous idea, Rose forced her attention back to the man wearing the coat.

“What would that theory be?”

“Well…” the Doctor’s eyes settled on the half empty cup that held Jenny’s tea. His fingers wrapped around the slowly cooling drink. “You’re special, aren’t you, Rose?”

“Special?”

“You’re important.”

He brought the cup to his lips. Rose made a move to stop him, but he was already pouring the drink into his mouth. And in seconds, the table was covered with the tea.

“Ugh!”

The Doctor’s face was a mask of disgust. He spat as much of the drink out as possible, hands wiping furiously at his tongue in a ridiculous attempt at getting rid of the taste that still clung to his taste buds. “What is that awful poison? Your friend drinks that willingly? Is she human?”

“Are you?” Rose shot back, her face twitching in slight amusement at the exaggerated reaction. Maybe it was her extended time with Jenny or the fact that she lived with a house full of men, but honey and mint wasn’t that revolting of a combination in her mind. She had witnessed things much more disgusting from her brothers at the supper table.

The Doctor was now attempting to fend off the taste by stuffing his face with the last of Jennifer’s chips. He mumbled something through the mouthful of food – Rose assumed it was an answer to her question but was no longer sure with this man – that was completely incoherent. Rose made a face, but chose to ignore the display of poor manners.

“Can I help with anything?” the young waiter that had helped Jenny and Rose had made his way over with a damp towel. He was beginning the cleanup of Doctor’s mess while his eyes silently questioned Rose. She smiled in an attempt at apologizing. Before he could repeat the question or leave, Doctor began waving his empty chip basket in front of the man’s face. The waiter eyed him with distaste, obviously not happy with his way of communicating but unable to deny his request. He took the basket and turned to leave.

“I don’t think that taste will ever leave me.”

Rose scowled. Her amusement at the look of horror etched into the blonde’s face evaporated almost immediately.

“You’re really rude,”

The Doctor looked up with surprise. “Am I really? Lizzy told me the same thing when she saw the new face,” he moved his hands to pinch the skin of his cheeks as if testing to make sure it was still there. “I can’t really tell. I suppose I’m too close to the situation. Rude!” He grinned at the last word, rolling the word around his tongue and mind like it was a new piece of candy.

“Lizzy?” Rose asked, her curiosity showing itself for a moment.

The Doctor slapped his hands over his mouth, his eyes going wide. Rose couldn’t help but let her eyebrows raise in question. He was acting as if he’d revealed some sort of secret.

“Oh! I’m supposed to call her Elizabeth in public.” His hands fell back to rest on the table between them. “It’s proper or something like that. You still have a queen, don’t you? You know how the royal family can be.”

Rose stared in open shock.

Determined to keep the conversation on some level of sane, Rose snapped her fallen jaw closed and fixed a serious look on the odd man sitting with her. He returned the look with a mirror image though this one was obviously meant to mock her. Rose frowned, her distaste for this man growing by the second.

“Why are you here?” Rose questioned for the third time.

“Like I said,” he smiled again, all mocking gone from him, “you’re important! Everyone is important, little flower.” He flicked Rose across the nose with the bottom of his straw he was using before. Rose swatted the stick of plastic out of her face.

“Don’t call me that – ”

But Rose’s words fell short of the threat that she wanted to put in them. A dizzying sense of déjà vu flooded her head as she tried to hold her glare on the brown-eyed man.

He seemed oblivious to her glazed look and continued, teeth still gnawing on the same straw he had used on Rose as he continued. “Of course, some people let that theory go to their heads. Take Alexander the Great for example. He was a great guy – really lived up to the name – but he was really a bit of a hypocrite. I couldn’t even finish traveling with him…”

“What did you say?”

Doctor stopped his high-speed story. His eyes followed her every feature once more in an attempt to find some sort of clue to her sudden change in attitude. “About Alex?”

“Before that,”

His teeth flattened the tip of the straw even more.

“Everyone is important?”

“Everyone is important…” Rose repeated the words. The feeling of déjà vu had ended, but the sensation was still stubbornly sticking in her mind.

“Care to disagree?”

“No,” Rose shook her head both to enforce her answer and in an attempt to clear her thoughts. “No, it’s just…someone said the same thing to me a long time ago.”

By now, the Doctor had put the straw aside and was leaning forward so that he was practically halfway across the table. A serious look painted his features, but there was no mocking undertone this time. Rose saw something foggy rising to create an eerie shield over his normally bright eyes as she met them.

“Want to tell me the story?”

Rose and the Doctor held gazes for a long moment. Rose found a lot more in those brown orbs than she would have expected. It was hard to discern everything. She couldn’t find the border between extreme excitement and worry. She had the sense that she couldn’t even see everything that was there. That he was hiding something more. Something that was off limits to her.

Along with the hurricane of strange, borderless emotions, Rose could just barely catch a glimpse of something that seemed like a long lost friend. But it was buried too deep for her to fully grasp.

“Look, Jenny will be back soon and I really don’t want to introduce you as the stranger with a magic box who took me to see outer space.”

Their eyes stayed connected, his searching and hers pleading. But what she was begging for, Rose didn’t know. There were too many possibilities fighting for their own say.

Who are you?

What do you want with me?

Take me with you…

Just leave me alone!

The Doctor could read that final thought all too clearly. How many times had he been faced with the same demand? This certainly wasn’t his first encounter with it and he knew – he just knew – it wouldn’t be the last.

But everyone else had ignored it.

Rose was different. Rose was listening to that thought. She wasn’t just going along with every other one.

Rose was fighting.

“Right…” he grabbed his straw again and placed it between his lips as he stood to take his leave. “I’ll just…I’ll leave you to it.” He turned to leave Rose alone once more, but hesitated for just a few more seconds, his eyes trying again to search hers. She avoided looking at him.

“I’ll pay for the chips. You enjoy your lunch.” He rapped his knuckles on the table’s wooden surface as a sort of goodbye, hesitated a moment longer, then turned to make his way towards the café’s front door.

Rose took the tinkling bell as a signal that it was safe to look up again.

The Doctor was nowhere in sight and Rose was left to her own thoughts once more.