rabid1st | New Fic: Dr. Who, Ten/Rose, minor S2 spoiler

The Problem with Roses
By Rabid1st
Ten/Rose Ficlet
Rating: PG
Length: Short and sweet, 3 pages
Beta Babes: None…please, excuse my comma splices.
Minor Spoiler for Age of Steel, S2, happens after it.
Summary: The Doctor is having a problem with seimantics. What is Rose...but Rose?
Disclaimer: They made me do it. I didn't even want to. Okay, I wanted to a little. The characters and situations in this ficlet are not mine. They belong to the BBC and others.

Three weeks.

Twenty-one days.

A score of diverse worlds and alternative times.

Two-dozen roses.

And everywhere, every time, every purchase, every day the same damned question.

It came so relentlessly, so remorselessly, he soon felt like a sinner consigned to Tartarus, rolling his boulder up the hill only to chase it back down again. He developed a slight tic. Sometimes the question came as he paid. Sometimes it came when he placed the order. More than once it had come, not from the proprietor but, from a fellow customer. And on three occasions it had come once he’d safely exited the shop and was on his way back to the TARDIS. It always, always came.

“Oh, those are pretty. Who are they for, then?”

There were alternatives in phrasing, of course. Some people suggested an answer with the question. "For your wife?"..."Your girl?"..."A special occasion?"

“A friend,” he’d said at first. But he quickly learned one didn’t buy a dozen roses, let alone two-dozen, for a friend. Not on any world or in any time, it seemed. Smiling faces fell into sterner lines with this admission. Eyebrows waggled. Tongues clicked. Knowing glances were exchanged.

Variations didn’t matter…dear friend, close friend, best friend. Special friend earned him a special lift of the brows and a suggestive hand gesture.

“My companion” and then “dear companion” caused a similar reaction.

“Assistant,” not only left him feeling strangely dissatisfied but also inspired one shopkeeper to snatch the bouquet back from his hand.

“Not the blush,” the small, neatly manicured man insisted, whisking the roses away before the Doctor could muster a protest. “Not this shade. The pink of the petals speaks of love just blooming. Trust me on this, sir. Women often misunderstand roses. White, perhaps. White is innocence. Or yellow. A deep, true pink for gratitude is best. I’ll have some in later today. I can make you a new bunch. Send them by your office. But roses are always risky. What about a nice plant for her desk or some Gerber daisies?”

“She likes this color,” the Doctor insisted. Stepping behind the counter he retrieved his purchase, tussling with the fellow for possession of the flowers. “And roses.” Though, if he was being honest, he’d wished more than once she’d been named Daisy or Lily or even Fern. No one ever troubled a man about ferns.

A lesser being, human perhaps, might have given up, stopped buying flowers he had no real call for. Flowers that pleased no one. They brought him no pleasure, only grief. Rose refused to smile and he’d turned stubborn and uncharacteristically short-tempered. But he persevered. Not just because his efforts might please her but because at the heart of each purchase was the question. And beyond the question an answer. He believed, every question could be answered with patience and time. This one was no exception.

But yesterday, 1880 on a rainy afternoon in Gerberoy, he’d reached a temporary end to his patience. He'd been wet and cross and fed to the back teeth with turning his relationship with Rose around and around in his mind, trying to fit it into some category, some niche. As he'd wandered down twisting streets, finding most of the shops closed for the up-coming festival, he'd come upon a cart filled with roses: none of them for sale. When he’d asked to buy two-dozen anyway, the question came.

He spoke without thinking. “Who are they for? They're for my thankless mistress,” he snarled in the temporally exact dialect. “She had another lover. A feckless boy. But he's broken her heart, run away in a van to Paris. Every day I bring her roses, my Rose. Every day she goes on crying.”

To his surprise the matronly woman tending the cart accepted this tale without visible qualms. The soul of sympathy, she selected two-dozen blooms for him. She even patted his hand. But the transaction drew a crowd and the ensuing conversation spiraled completely out of his control. He left with red ears, determined to never again enter into a frank discussion of his love life with a French street vendor.

Not, the Doctor mused, that he had a love life to discuss. And that sad fact went straight to the heart of his problem with roses. The problem with rose was tradition. Their universal symbolism. Roses were for lovers. They carried a certain expectation. You didn’t buy roses for your friends, your companions (other than the Dear ones) or your personal assistants. You bought roses for fiancées and girlfriends and mistresses and lovers. You bought them for occasions, anniversaries, proposals and weddings.

But he had no occasion beyond the dawning of a new day. And what was Rose…but Rose?

The infernal question had no answer. It gnawed at him, vexed him, as he climbed the stairs to the Tyler’s apartment. It was the twenty-first day of their extended stay. The longest he’d remained still since the war. At the third floor landing he passed a group of elderly ladies, sunning in chairs.

“Oh, how lovely,” one of them declared, targeting the bouquet in his right hand. “Who are they for?”

The Doctor sighed, pressing his eyes closed and gripping the bridge of his nose. He’d almost made it through the door.

He took a deep breath. But before he could speak, one of the other women said, “Don’t be silly, Maggie. They’re for Rose Tyler, of course. This is her doctor.”

Thankful to be spared another awkward response, he relaxed and opened his eyes again. The speaker smiled at him and said, “Good evening, Doctor.”

He gave her a saucy wink before moving on. As he climbed the final flight of stairs, behind him he heard the conversation start up again. The third woman remarked, “I didn’t know Rose needed a doctor. Is she sick the poor thing?”

“No, no, Lil,” the sensible one exclaimed. “For heaven’s sake, he’s been coming by here every afternoon this past month. Plodding up these stairs with those roses. I know you’re going deaf and, if you ask me, you’re half-blind besides but you’d think even you might notice what’s going on with him and Rose.” She told them anyway, pitching her voice to a carrying whisper and leaning in close. “She’s his sweetheart.”

Earth, even time itself and all its celestial spheres, seemed to still for a moment. The Doctor’s mouth dropped open. He stopped dead, one foot raised, hovering above a riser. He took a breath and cocked his head. His free hand cluthed the railing as he mentally tested the endearment for faults or flaws. His tongue worked it over, silently trying it on.

“Who are they for, then?”

“My sweetheart.”

It felt right, satisfying. He said it outloud. Yes. A laugh burst from his lips. Then, he was bounding back down the steps to the gathered ladies, presenting them each with a fistful of blushing blooms and a kiss on the cheek.

“Well, I never,” Maggie exclaimed as he dashed away again, taking the stairs two at a time and shouting for Rose to get up and get moving.

"We've got things to do, places to go," he called. His voice drifted down to the three ladies, listening below. They heard the Tyler's apartment door bang open, swinging wide under his enthusiastic push. It slammed shut in a moment, cutting the Doctor off mid-sentence.

Into the stillness that followed, Lil said, “I believe I am going a little deaf. Did he say they were going to visit ‘bars’ or ‘stars’?”

THE END

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bailunrui.livejournal.com

AWWWW! Lovely story. *hearts it and you*

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