Chapter Text
The Doctor couldn’t sleep.
Every time he closed his eyes, all he could see were flashes of pink and gold, the angry mauve of central column signaling danger, Rose’s body flailing as she struggled to find anything to grab onto, her head slamming against the coral strut as their TARDIS was blasted through space.
He scrubbed at his eyelids with his fingertips. Wishing he could erase everything about today. Wishing they had just stayed home in their flat where they were safe and warm in bed, tangled up in each other and their disheveled sheets.
Stupid. He was so stupid.
He hadn’t seen the explosion coming. He should have. He should have known the Trrryr would want revenge for their stolen weapons research. That they wouldn’t accept the peace agreement he and Rose had negotiated.
That they would instead blow up the network of laboratories and the entire university along with it.
He and Rose had been celebrating their victory as they danced around the console, readying their young time and space ship to return home. Joking about ice cream flavors. Flirting as always, even though they’d been married too long to still call themselves newlyweds. He had just begun the sequence to leave this wretched, arrogant planet when the first bombs went off.
The young TARDIS didn’t yet have the capability to protect them like her mother would have. Instead, she was shaken and vulnerable. They might as well have been standing in a normal police box.
Sparks rained down around him as the TARDIS screamed. By some miracle, he hit the right levers and buttons to force them into space. They floated as a safe distance from anything, adrift in the void of utter nothingness.
That’s when he realized Rose still hadn’t gotten up. Hadn’t come to him with her injuries, insisting she was fine when she really wasn’t. He should be examining her for a concussion by now while she brushed him away with a good-natured sigh about him being overprotective.
Instead, she was crumpled against the grating.
He called out her name, over and over, trying to examine her without moving her in case she had damaged her neck or spine. Then, she stirred. She whimpered and turned toward him, blinking but having trouble maintaining eye contact.
That and a scan from the sonic were enough. He scooped her up in his arms and took off for the fledgling infirmary.
His scans seemed to take an eternity. The technology in the TARDIS was beyond their Earth-time, but still not fast enough for him. He waited, sitting near the hospital-style bed he had laid her on. She didn’t move much but fought to stay awake. When she groaned in pain again, he had had all he could take. He stood over her and placed his hands on her temples.
Even the slightest brush of his mind against hers was enough to make her sigh in relief. He soothed the pain and soreness, even as the TARDIS worked to diagnose her exact injuries. He settled back in his chair by her bedside and tried to get some rest, to regain the presence of mind to care for her properly, but it was no use. Finally, the computer beeped with its completed report.
He ran a hand through his wild hair, taking in the information. Mild brain trauma, just as he suspected. The computer went further, popping out specific pills for her to take. One he recognized as a pain reliever. The other, he couldn’t identify. The TARDIS was confident, however. She shoved at his mind to give them to Rose.
He licked his lips, steeling himself against his trepidation.
“Rose? Rose, love, I need you to sit up.”
She struggled, but with the help of several pillows he placed behind her, she was able to manage it. She still squinted in pain and wasn’t meeting his eyes. He got her to take the medicine, but she still hadn’t said anything yet.
“It’ll kick in soon,” he promised, hardly knowing what he was saying. “Just you wait. Everything’s going to be fine, it’s fine, oh god…” He recognized he was hyperventilating as she sank back down into the pillows. Her eyelids drooped heavily.
Panicked, he did the fastest thing he could think of. He placed his hands at her temples again.
Sleep. Her exhausted body just needed sleep. And he needed to get ahold of himself.
He reinforced her rest with a telepathic nudge toward dreamless, peaceful slumber.
As soon as he was sure he was successful and that she was out, he ran.
He didn’t know where he was going. He just wandered down corridors past door after door. Few opened to anything more interesting than storage cupboards anyway, but finally a familiar one came into view. Their bedroom.
He threw himself on the bed and gripped tightly to her pillow until he was consumed with her scent, just as he had done when they had been separated oh so long ago across dimensions.
He heard a male voice very nearby swearing and weeping.
He realized it was himself.
The TARDIS hum lulled him into his own restorative sleep, and as shattered as his mind and body were from the trauma of the day, he gladly accepted its invitation.
Many hours later, the TARDIS woke him. He tried to snooze the alarm before realizing the beeping was coming from inside his mind. He reached over to cuddle with Rose and tell the TARDIS to get lost, but when he didn’t feel his wife’s warm body next to his, the events of the previous day flooded back.
Rose was in the infirmary. Injured. He had slept here all night (or, well, what functioned as night on the TARDIS).
He jumped out of bed, only to find the TARDIS had moved the door to the infirmary to connect with the bedroom. He thanked her in his mind and rushed in to check on Rose. Her vitals were holding strong, and she still slept. His entire body sagged in relief.
A ding sounded from a cabinet and, when opened, revealed two breakfast sandwiches and two steaming cups of tea. He took that as a sign that Rose would need to eat soon to regain her strength.
The smell and noise made her stir, and she whimpered as she turned over to face him. She blinked open her eyes and stared at him, meeting his gaze for the first time since the explosion.
He sucked in a breath at the emotion her amber eyes displayed clearly for him to read: Fear.