Title: Moments

Author: TardisIsTheOnlyWayToTravel

Story Summary: Six times Rose kissed the Doctor and didn't know it, and one time she did. Oneshot.

Setting: After series two of New Who.

Author notes:

After the Support Stacie Author Auction ended, I offered everyone who had bid the chance to have a small drabble written. Catyuy's prompt was '13 times Rose and the Doctor kissed.' I didn't quite go with that, going for the summary above instead. And somehow, because I liked it, it went from a drabble to a full-blown fic. So here it is. For Catyuy, because they bid in the author auction, and because they just generally rock.

*edit* whoops, forgot a bit. Added it in.

MOMENTS

One.

She was lost, and alone, and didn't know where her Mummy had gone. Noisy strangers barrelled past everywhere, frightening and huge.

Rose tried desperately not to cry, to be brave like her Daddy, like Mummy always said she was.

Suddenly a bright, open face appeared in front of her.

"Hello," said the crouching girl, so friendly and cheerful that Rose instantly felt comforted. "What are you doing out here by yourself?"

"Lost Mummy," Rose sniffled in explanation.

The girl stood and turned to call to someone.

"Grandfather! Ian! Barbara! Look what I found? Isn't she adorable?"

A trio of adult strangers walked over. Rose found herself being critically surveyed by an old man with an intimidating stare.

"I wonder what she's doing here on her own?" asked the woman in concerned tones.

"I don't know, I just found her standing here," said the girl. "She said that she's lost her mother."

The younger of the two men crouched down and gave her a carefully reassuring smile.

"Hello there." He had kind, warm eyes. "What's your name?"

"Wose," Rose told him.

"That's a nice name," said the man. "Rose, can you tell me what your mother was doing today?"

"Shopping," said Rose.

"Do you remember where?" the kind man persevered.

Rose shook her head.

"Out of the way, this is getting us nowhere," ordered the old man, prodding the younger man with his foot. The kind man stood reluctantly and moved back.

Rose was subjected to the gimlet stare again as the old man looked down at her.

"Now, young lady," the old man commanded, "think very carefully and try to recall. Where did you last see your mother?"

As his pale eyes stared into hers it was as though memory drifted to the surface, suddenly clear.

"Phat way," Rose said, brightening, pointing.

"Then let us go that way and find her, hmm?"

Rose led the way, staying close to the old man's legs.

"Rose!"

And here was Mummy, panicked and relieved and so glad Rose was safe that she wasn't listening to a word Rose said.

So Rose tugged on the old man's pants until he bent right down, and gave hi ma soft kiss on his chin.

"Fank 'ou," she said, and smiled at him, and for a moment his own expression softened in return.

-

Two.

It was her eighteenth birthday, so it should have been a day of fun and frivolity. Instead there had been a colossal fight with her Mum until Rose stormed out without even a jacket and only her purse with her.

Rose spent the day wandering about London, fuming, spending her meagre funds sparingly. It was her birthday, for crying out loud, so why had it turned into a fight about her Mum's latest boyfriend? Why did her Mum even have it bring him into it? He shouldn't have been invited. It was her party…

Late that afternoon Rose wandered into a club. It had just opened for the evening; early, for those kinds of places, but already beginning to fill with young people who'd finished work for the day.

Rose went to the bar and sat on a stool next to a girl about her own age.

"Gimme a whiskey, thanks," she told the barman.

"I.D.?" he asked suspiciously. Rose flashed it at him and he nodded, putting a glass down in front of her a moment later.

Rose took a gulp

…and finished coughing and spluttering a moment later. It was so strong!

The girl sitting next to her gave Rose a grin.

"It's got a bit of a kick, doesn't it?" she said, almost conspirationally.

Rose grinned back, liking the girl instinctively.

"A bit, yeah."

"A girl your age shouldn't be drinking such things," said a disapproving voice behind them.

Rose turned to see a small man in a hat and green jacket and a vest with question marks embroidered all over it, while the other girl made a face.

"C'mon, Professor," she complained.

"I'm of age," Rose told the man belligerently. "Turned eighteen today."

"Happy birthday to you," grinned the girl.

"And yet you're alone in a club on your own, instead of with your friends and family?" the man questioned.

The other girl frowned at the man, a hint of anger in her eyes, while Rose looked down into her drink.

"Had a bit of a fight," she mumbled.

"And is that worth spending your eighteenth birthday alone?"

Rose was ready to get aggressive if need be, but his eyes weren't judgemental, just rather quizzical.

Rose deflated with a sigh.

"It's my life," she said, instead of something angry.

"True," the strange man agreed, "but on the other hand they're probably rather used to running it. Give them a chance. They'll adapt eventually."

Rose knew, deep down, that he was probably right. She downed her drink, ignoring the explosion of alcohol in her senses, and in a fit of bravado leaned forward and snogged the older man.

She heard laughter and a "go professor!" from the other girl.

"That's for being too right for your own good," Rose said flippantly, and left them at the bar, thr man astonished and the girl hooting with laughter.

So Rose went to her party. And she had a lot of fun, and while the boyfriend was there for a while he was peripheral, really.

Rose was glad she'd listened.

-

Three.

Rose sprinted as fast as she could, the thugs hot on her heels. Even if they hadn't been unpleasant bastards, the only alien she'd ever go for was a cranky big-eared bloke whose only admission that she might be at all attractive was that he'd once observed she looked nice 'for a human.'

Where was the Doctor when you needed him, anyway? she thought testily. A little help right now would really be handy.

A long-limbed figure stepped swiftly out of a nearby alley.

The next few moments were pure confusion as the figure moved with tigerish grace and ferocity among Rose's pursuers.

Then he was standing with several unconscious aliens at his feet.

He stepped away from them and beamed at Rose. The moonlight reflected off the buttons on his black trenchcoat.

"Good evening, miss," he said merrily, blue eyes full of fire and humour. "Couldn't help spotting you were in a bit of trouble."

"That was really, brilliant timing," Rose puffed, out of breath. She was used to running a lot, the way she and the Doctor lived, but the aliens had been unusually fast. On impulse she stepped forward and kissed the man on the cheek. She stepped back and grinned at him.

"Thanks."

"Glad to have been of service," he said grandly, raising his top hat to her, so that the moonlight glinted on his ginger hair. "Toodle-oo."

He stepped away into the darkness of the alley again with that strangely fluid grace.

"Show off, you are," said a female voice near where he had vanished, close but moving further away. The accent was a startling 21st-century cockney, as out of place as Rose's own.

Rose was left wondering why the merry blue eyes of her rescuer and the voice of his unseen companion seemed so familiar

-

Four.

Rose had always loved shopping, which was possibly why the Doctor had brought her here. This new Doctor was a lot more interested in a shop, grabbing at things and gabbling away at a hundred words a minute, like a five year old on drugs. She'd lost him for the moment; he'd exclaimed at something and run after it.

She was still getting used to him, yeah, but Rose was already very fond of this Doctor.

As she browsed the stalls, Rose caught sight of a man in a peculiar beige-and-red outfit, wandering aimlessly. He had an air of subdued dejection, and didn't really seem to care what he looked at. Rose felt a twinge of sympathy.

"Interesting place, innit?" she asked the man brightly. He started and turned to regard her with mildly surprised blue eyes.

"I suppose so," he agreed in a restrained way. "No doubt more so when there is a companion to share it with."

So that was why he was so downcast, Rose thought.

She patted his arm.

"Know what you mean. I'm here with a friend ,actually, but he's got the attention span of, like, a two year old, and I dunno where he's run off to." She watched him kindly. "Have your friends run off somewhere?"

His shoulders tensed and hunched slightly.

"More or less. One friend."

His expression didn't give much away, but Rose could practically feel the hurt and abandonment radiating off him. So she dragged him around to look at things, and eventually got him to tell her a little bit more about what was troubling him.

"Someone I cared for very much," he explained in his reserved way, "recently decided that she no longer wished to continue our friendship. She never wants to see me again."

"Did you love her?"

He stopped and turned to eye Rose consideringly.

"I suppose so," he said carefully. His shoulders slumped. "It doesn't really matter now, does it?"

He was about to keep walking, the subject closed, but Rose held his face in her hands and when her looked at her in surprised query, leaned in and kissed him.

She'd taken him by surprise, but after a moment he responded, as carefully and gently as he talked.

Rose pulled back.

"You're good-looking and thoughtful and kind," she told him, "and one day you'll find someone who loves you back."

"I think not," he said, a little sadly, but with acceptance. "Death tends to follow me, you see."

Rose held his eyes.

"It doesn't matter. When you find the right person, they won't care. They'll weather the storm with you and be there at the end of it."

While his eyes widened in shock, Rose heard a familiar voice calling her name impatiently.

"I'd better go, my friend's calling me. It was nice to meet you." She smiled at him, and went to find the Doctor.

He was scowling in annoyance, and opened his mouth to complain and ask where she'd been, but widened his eyes and stared at her instead, mouth agape.

"What's that face for?" Rose asked. "I'm sorry I didn't find you sooner, but I was talking to a bloke."

He blinked a few times and shut his mouth. Then he grinned blindingly.

"Rose Tyler, you are brilliant," he said proudly, but wouldn't say any more than that even when she pressed him.

-

Five.

She could see everything that was, had been, and could be, all at once, and the enormity of it was killing her.

But she destroyed the False God and his minions who would have harmed to love, turning them to dust.

She raised the dead, bringing them back into the tapestry of golden threads spread out before her.

She scattered her words across all of time and space, and stretched out her hand across eternity to protect the thread that was her love's, reweaving where she must.

And all the while he cried that she had to let go, that the power was killing her.

Bald Wolf knew it, but how could she let go? She could bring life. She could right injustice.

She could protect the one who was her world and life.

Oh, it hurt so much! she burned!

"I think you need a Doctor," said her love, and drawing her close, put his mouth over hers.

It was a gesture of love, of concern, of purpose.

She could feel him pulling the power into himself, could feel the beautiful bright golden eternity transferring to him in insidious little tendrils. She almost panicked, but she knew that he would survive.

He'd change, but he would survive.

So she let him pull the power from her, and as the last of the Vortex leached away her vision was crowded with blackness, and the last thing she saw before she fell away into darkness were two golden eyes, burning, totally immersed in Time.

…she found herself lying on the TARDIS floor, head throbbing, and asked blearily,

"What happened?"

-

Six.

Rose had been in Pete's World for two years, three months and four days (not that she was counting, or anything) and was on her lunch break when she saw the blue boxy shape.

Her eyes went huge and she moved towards it, hesitantly at first, then broke into a run.

When she was a few feet away, a man in a green velvet coat and with unruly wavy hair stepped out. Rose skidded to a stop.

"Well, hello," he greeted her, "can I help you?"

Rose found that somehow she couldn't get the words out.

"Is that – TARDIS?" she managed.

The man looked intrigued rather than surprised.

"Why, yes," he said. "I'm sure you have a very interesting story to tell me about how you knew that. Would you care for a cup of tea?"

So Rose found herself shown into a TARDIS console room very different to the one she'd known, while the stranger expertly arranged tea things on an elegant little wooden trolley nearby.

"Now," he said as he sat down, having poured them each tea, "I'm rather curious as to how you recognise a TARDIS when you see one especially as there shouldn't be any in this universe. Although the Time Lords don't seem to care what things they do these days. It's rather distressing."

Rose's eyes widened at the reference to Time Lords in the present tense. Things clicked into place.

"I'm not meant to be in this universe," she explained, hoping she wouldn't accidentally tell him anything of the future. She wasn't sure whether he was just a Time Lord from before the war, or the Doctor in a younger incarnation. It didn't make that much difference, right now. "I ended up here by accident. Could you take me home, please?"

When he gazed at her it felt as though he saw a lot more than he ought to, but he said,

"Certainly. If you don't belong here, then it's not doing you or the universe any good for you to be stuck here."

He stood.

"I can finish my business later. I'll take you home now –before anything distracting happens," he added with a sudden, rueful grin.

The moment they arrived back in her native universe, Rose felt it, before the Time Lord said "here we are." It felt as though an immense pressure was suddenly removed.

Rose ran to the door and threw it open; a busy world with a blimp-less sky that felt absolutely right.

Rose ran back to the Time Lord and in a burst of joy threw her arms around him and snogged the life out of him.

Rose stepped back, leaving him blinking and a little dazed and considerably surprised.

"Are you the Doctor?" Rose was fairly certain now.

He nodded.

"Yes. I am."

Rose ran her tongue over her teeth and sent him a cheeky, happy grin.

"See you in a few years," she told him, and ran into her world to wait for his future.

-

One – or at least, the first.

Jack had been overjoyed and astounded when Rose came waltzing into the Hub, bold as brass, and called out his name. She was instantly surrounded by hostile, suspicious people with guns, but there was a shout of "Rose!" and she was being twirled around and around in the air by a figure in a long coat, both of them laughing from the sheer happiness of it.

There'd been a lot of explaining to do, on both sides, but they'd sorted it out, and Rose had settled into life as part of Torchwood Cardiff.

She knew that they others were a bit jealous of her closeness with Jack, but there wasn't anything she could do about that. They hadn't been there, they couldn't understand why she and Jack were the way they were. Oddly enough, Ianto, who could probably be called Jack's boyfriend (strange though it seemed to pin that label to a single person) accepted her quite happily. Rose supposed that he simply understood Jack better than the others.

Together she and Jack waited, until one day a tall skinny shape in a long coat strolled in yelling for Jack.

Rose and Jack leapt up at the same time, running for the door. Jack reached it first.

"Hey, Doc."

Rose was there an instant later, slower, and stopped in the doorway, watching for his reaction.

The Doctor's jaw dropped.

There was a moment of silent, mutual staring. Then –

"Rose?!" the Doctor almost screamed. They ran for each other at the same time, cannoning into each other.

Then the Doctor's arms were wrapped tightly around her and he was kissing her for all he was worth, with a desperate needy fervour that Rose matched.

Finally they came up for air, and stared into each others faces, wonderingly.

"Rose Tyler," the Doctor said softly, "I love you."

And she couldn't help but laugh.

"Quite right, too," she said.

-

FIN