InsaneJournal

Pretty Girls in Every Generation
Disclaimer: None of these characters are mine.

Title: Pretty Girls in Every Generation
Characters: Rose, Ten
Fandom: Doctor Who
Word Count: 1000
Rating: G
Summary: A shopping spree and a cup of tea.



There is no shortage, that’s for sure, of pretty girls in London. Rose is one of them, and it isn’t vain of her to think so - it’s fact - the kind of fact that gets reflected back at her from every mirror, every shiny toaster surface, every Christmas bauble.

She walks swiftly through the cold air, despite being weighted down with shopping bags, not slowing until she sees the familiar cobalt blue of the TARDIS, sitting like a tiny cottage under an oak tree where two streets intersect.

She doesn’t completely relax until she’s inside, with the door firmly shut and the reality of it solidly girt around her. She’s never quite gotten over the fear that he will leave her, suddenly, without warning or explanation. Oh, he won’t mean to, he’s not cruel that way, not when he was Nine, not when he is Ten, not, she’s sure, if he becomes One Hundred and Twenty-seven. But things happen when you’re running around these circles, don’t they, unforeseen and misunderstood occurrences, and he’s the Doctor, isn’t he, not a god.

She slips down the convoluted corridors until she finds the door to the place she calls the “Dressing Room”. It’s small, with mirrors, and a door that opens to a long, long closet. This wardrobe, which she’s never quite explored to its full limit, contains a jumble of other women’s clothing, different sizes, different eras, and she never knows whether to think of them as clothes or costumes. She’s made it a personal mission to get some items of her own in here. To leave her own mark, as it were.

It was kind of him, she reflects, to make a stop in the twenty-first century just so she can engage in a little retail therapy.

After all, she may be an interstellar traveler, but she’s still a pretty girl and she still likes to shop, though she keeps it all in perspective now. She unpacks the bags in a riot of crinkling plastic, remembering where she bought each one. She thinks about how the other women had looked at her in the store, assessing, cooling, jealous, as if they assumed she thought herself better because she was more beautiful than they, and decided to snub her before she snubbed them. Nothing, of course, could be further from the truth.

The first outfit she tries on is random, or to be more precise, it’s carefully selected to be random. The first jacket from the new pile that comes to hand and the first dress she grabs out of the closet. She rather likes the juxtaposition of hardscrabble denim and prom pink satin. Creatures of two different worlds, blended imperfectly, but blended all the same.

Who knows, maybe there’ll be another companion some day her size.

It’s her only shot at regeneration, she supposes, though she’ll never know about it. He’ll continue on, changing, as his companion will go on changing. He’ll find a pretty girl in every generation, someone as smart, someone as wide-eyed-with-wonderment, someone as adventurous as she. And he’ll remember all of them, but she’ll be new each time.

She puts all the new clothes away, carefully, in this strange long wardrobe in the TARDIS that seems to go on for miles. She always half expects to come out in a forest with a lamppost like that story her mother read to her when she was a little girl.

She’d never liked that story, the way it ended with the sudden return to the mundane world. Cast out of the magic land, it had seemed to her. The thought sends a chill through her, and she climbs back out, and seeks the comforting heart of the TARDIS.

“Doctor?” she calls out softly. “Are you here?”

At first there is only the hum of their cocoon that rolls back to her, but then there is a slightly grumpy voice, dear to her in its familiarity.

“Where else would I be?” He sounds like he’s been interrupted from a particularly engaging crossword puzzle or something.

“I dunno. Anywhere, really.”

“Touché.” He looks up from whatever gadget he’s installing and smiles. “How was your shopping trip?”

It was lonely, actually. “Fine,” she lies. She guesses that if she’s sometimes perceived as condescending by less beautiful women, he’s probably been perceived as an arrogant swot many a time by less intelligent beings. Maybe that’s why they get on, she’s allowed to be almost indecently sexy and he can be a complete dork about science, but if you flip them around, well, she’s no slouch in the brains department and he’s fairly easy on the eyes.

He’s very easy on the eyes.

“Didn’t you buy anything?” he asks, glancing around her for signs of baggage.

“I did.” She runs her hands over the holes in her jeans. “They’re in the wardrobe.”

“Ah. Well. That was fast. Didn’t expect you back til later. Much, much later.”

She wonders if this means he was engaged with something else and hoping for some peace and quiet. “I could go out again, if you’re busy,” she begins reluctantly.

“No, I only wondered if you didn’t have a good time.”

“Oh.”

Sometimes they still get their wires crossed. It seems to happen more often now, with Ten.

Sometimes she wants to look through his eyes and find Nine, and she wants to call through and tell him “I remember you” but he wouldn’t understand that, would he, because he’s right here and all, and besides, it might make him think she didn’t understand things as well as she wanted him to think she understood. Even if she didn’t. Understand. Not as much as he probably wanted her to.

“You know, there’s a certain precious herb that’s very good for this sort of thing,” he mentions suddenly, and like the Mad Hatter he’s gone from holding a sonic screwdriver to a teapot from God Knows Where.

“What sort of thing?” she asks.

He hands her a cup of the most delicate Limoges. “Just about every sort of thing.”

She sniffs at it cautiously, wondering what exotic plant from what exotic world he’s about to feed her. “That’s ginseng!” she says, amused, and triumphant, as if she’d answered a riddle on a quiz show. And he grins at her as if she has indeed, and gives her a biscuit for a prize.

“You are right, and it’s still true. Earth has its own treasures, you know. Don’t have to go to Arthoovia IV for everything.”

It’s that she loves both of them, she thinks, that’s what’s playing havoc with her mind and heart. She misses the one in the past, and knows she’ll miss the other in the future. And he’ll miss her, no matter how many other companions come along.

“You look nice,” he says suddenly, out of the clear blue.

She smiles that he noticed. He may find pretty girls in every generation, it’s true, but only one of them will be named Rose Tyler.

Only one of them will be her.