Some Go Mad

For ten minutes, Rose and the Doctor walked. They walked the dark, quiet streets of London that were lined with homes. They walked the bright, noisy streets that were lined with people out for a late night drink. They talked about the weather and the city. They talked about everything but themselves. Rose was getting impatient. “So, what are we doing?”

The Doctor turned his head to look at Rose. His dark eyes were calculating. After a few seconds’ silence he spoke. “Where do you want to go, Rose?”

“I... I don’t know,” Rose said, a bit taken aback by being given such a choice as the one she knew the Doctor was giving her.

“There has to be somewhere you’ve always wanted to go.” He smiled at her.

Rose paused for a moment, trying to figure out what to say to the man. She sighed. “When I was a kid, I never knew what I wanted to be. All of our teachers would ask what we wanted to be when we grew up. They wanted to be princesses and astronauts and zookeepers. When the teachers got to me, I had nothing to say. I never enjoyed reading the silly stories they had us read. They were supposed to get us thinking about our futures, no matter how fictional they were. In year four, our teacher read us The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles. Everyone loved it, but I didn’t understand why.”

They’d stopped walking by then. Standing in the middle of the sidewalk, the Doctor cocked his head to the side. He knew the book she was talking about, loved it even. He found it to be incredibly funny and irresistible. “Why didn’t you like you, Rose?”

“It was stupid. It wasn’t real. Whangdoodles weren’t real. Whangdoodleland wasn’t real. There was no such thing as magic. Everything that happened in it was improbable.” Rose stared at the Doctor. “All of the other kids said they wanted to go to Whangdoodleland themselves. They wanted to go to Narnia and to Hogwarts and all of these other places and I wondered to myself how they could even begin to want to go somewhere that wasn’t real.”

Finally the Doctor had an idea of who this young girl was. She was just as impossible to him as he knew he was to her. She didn’t believe. She believed in nothing but the things that were right in front of her face. She never wanted to be a fairy princess or a spaceman. All she wanted was to be a real person, with a real life. A normal life. Because that’s all she knew the universe to contain. But really, what was normal? “And what about now?” he asked.

Rose stared ahead, sifting through the things in her mind until she came across a particular thought that had been bothering her the past couple days. “Doctor,” she started, causing a smile to grace the man’s face. “What is a TARDIS?”

A grin spread over the blonde man’s face. “Time and Relative Dimension in Space,” he said matter-of-factly.

Rose shook her head at him, uncomprehending.

“It’s a time machine,” the Doctor said, shrugging.

A quizzical look crossed Rose’s face, scrunching up her features. “I thought you said it was a ship.”

He nodded. “It is a ship.”

Again, Rose shook her head. “Sorry, I’m not following you.”

“It’s both a time machine and spaceship,” he explained.

“And it looks like a police box because?”

Doctor smiled sheepishly. “That’s a bit of a story. You see, the TARDIS has what’s called a chameleon circuit. Or, rather, all TARDISes do,” he trailed off, an intent expression on his face. He quickly collected himself after remembering that Rose was next to him. “Anyways, the interior of a TARDIS is quite a bit larger than its exterior, and so its exterior can blend in with its surroundings using the chameleon circuit.”

“So why doesn’t it change into something different? Something less conspicuous than a police box?”

“Oh, the chameleon circuit’s broken.”

“Broken? Since when?”

A thoughtful expression crossed the Doctor’s face. “1963, I believe.”

“1963! And what, you can’t fix it?”

“No, I can fix it. I just prefer it as a police box. It’s quite snazzy, don’t you think?”

Rose laughed. “This is so weird,” she said.

“What’s weird?” the man asked, joining in her laughter.

“You. Us. This. I’m standing here talking to some strange man, who claims to be a 1,439-year-old Time Lord, about his magic spaceship-time machine that can change to look like whatever it likes. As if it were alive. As if it were possible to live so long, or travel in space or time. It’s so silly.”

The Doctor fixed his eyes on Rose assuredly. “Yes, it is silly, Rose. But it’s real.”

She let out a puff of air. “I know it is.”

“Ha!” Along with the exclamation came a wisp of cold breath. “You’ve changed your mind so quickly.”

“What do you mean ‘so quickly?’”

“Only earlier today at the café I was certain you believed me to be a madman. Now you say you believe everything I’ve said.”

“Just because I believe you to be a madman doesn’t mean I can’t also believe everything you say. Though, I have to admit I probably won’t believe everything you say now that I’ve announced that.”

Doctor anchored the girl with his stare. “When did you truly believe what I’d told you and showed you to be true?”

“When I saw you at the café,” Rose answered. “I was toying with the idea that you’d only been some sort of figment of my imagination. When I saw you there, when you spoke about Alexander the Great and...Queen Elizabeth, and then when you left. You spoke so surely, as if you really did know them. As if you really cared about them! And when you left you seemed... Well, you reminded me of my younger brother Matty when he hadn’t started school yet. Every time my other brothers and I would leave he’d get this look on his face, as if we were breaking his heart.”

For the longest time, the Doctor said nothing. A crease formed between his brows and he simply stared at Rose. Thoughts danced through his mind and he threw this one and that over his shoulder, knowing already the boundaries he might find with this girl right now. From the moment he’d seen her back in that office he’d known what she would become to him. Now that he had her right where he knew he shouldn’t, he had no idea what to do or say. It had never been so hard. Finally, he said, “We could go anywhere, you know. Just you and me, Rose.”

An ache passed over the young girl’s features so suddenly that even she had no idea where it had come from. More than anything she knew she should accept his offer. Go off with him and see the world, the universe. More than anything she wanted a break.

He held his hand out for her. “What do you say?”

Matty’s face flashed through Rose’s mind, then Andrew’s and Daniel’s and Marshall’s and Elizabeth’s. Her family. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I can’t. Not now. It’s...it’s too much.” She turned from him then and started her way back to her home. She looked back at him, wondering if he’d follow to get to his TARDIS or to go after her. He only stood there, the hope he’d felt moments before melting away right before her eyes.