bluesuit_handy

Who: Handy and Rose
Where: Hallway/Banquet Hall
When: Evening, after Handy's chat with Jack, and after he meets Temperance Brennan; also after Rose's conversation with Jack.
Summary: Troubled by what Jack said about Rose avoiding the Doctor and about her being from "after" Handy, said Handy decides to seek her out.

Handy left the library sometime in the late afternoon to take up wandering through the hallways of the hotel. He wasn't entirely sure whether or not he was looking for Rose - he both desperately wanted to talk to her after what Jack had told him and, at the same time (though he would never admit it to himself) he was at least a little bit afraid at what her reaction might be to seeing him again (not to mention that, as obvious as it was from what Jack had said, he didn't want to confirm the fact of his own death). He couldn't remember a time as the Doctor when he'd been so shy about anything, but then he wasn't really the Doctor. Not completely. A few speech patterns hadn't been the only thing he had inherited from Donna. For all that she was so brash and loud and brave on the outside, she (and thus Handy) didn't have that old self-assurance that had gotten the Doctor through so much of his life. They were both good at pretending, though, even to themselves, so Handy told himself that he hadn't immediately sought Rose out when he discovered her presence because he'd wanted to spend some time exploring by himself, not because he was afraid that the person on whom he'd come to rely for stability in his thus far very short life would turn him away.

It was good that he'd managed to convince himself of that, or else he might have turned right back around and gone back to hide in his room when he turned a corner and spotted her.

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Rose closed her eyes tight and took a deep breath. Remember, she thought to herself, how he used to be. He was always angry, always lonely, and she'd had to work even harder than before to make him better again. That's what was talking now, that innate anger, and not... She couldn't even begin to finish the argument, it sounded so poorly patched together, even to herself.

"You are my Doctor," she told him quietly, her voice full of tension and pain held together by a thread of her own anger. "He left me in that universe just like he left you." She'd never admitted even to Jack how much it had hurt that he'd left her there, and now it seemed she never would. Looking back at him, that anger was in her eyes now, the pain etched into her face. "And yeah, you left me. Why is that so hard to believe? He could do it, so why couldn't you?" She wouldn't admit to the tears in her eyes even if he asked. And she would do everything she could to avoid telling him the truth.

"He left us because he could tell himself that we had each other," said Handy. "But now I'm not so sure we do, if I'm just going to leave in four years. Is that it? Are we done with each other by then?"

He knew he was going too far - if he was right about his fate, Rose was determined not to tell him about it. Being angry was safe, though - as long as he was angry, he could pretend that he wasn't really scared. The part of him that still had some grasp of the situation told him that he would regret what he was saying very quickly (in the two weeks they'd been living together, there had already been several nights when he had driven Rose away), but for the moment he was swept up in the emotion.

His words were like a knife in her chest, twisting itself deep into the truth behind the words, the truth she refused to reveal to him. What good would it do? He'd worry about it and apologize and it would be of no benefit to anyone. It was so much better to lie... Perhaps she'd learned that from him as well.

"What does it matter to you?" she asked him with vehemence, nearly demanding an answer of him. "That person that leaves me isn't this you, it's the you you become. You can't change it, and it probably won't even happen to you now that you're here, and even if it does, you won't know any differently if you ever leave this place." She was rambling, more emotion seeping into her voice as the words spouted from her mouth. She was in pain and all he was doing was making it worse.

"It matters because I'm dead to you, and you won't even tell me the truth about it!" he snapped. Then, more softly, "It matters because I can't imagine doing that to you. I can't imagine doing that to myself."

Yep, here was that regret. The problem with giving in to his anger was that he always seemed to run out of it so quickly, left to deal with the aftermath of what he had said and done while he was still in the middle of saying and doing it.

"Don't we have a future together?" he asked, trying but not quite managing to make the question another angry demand.

His words really were killing her. How had she ever hoped to avoid this? She'd thought about it, too, had a plan for when she met the other him... but she'd never counted on her him ending up here. And suddenly everything in the past long year of her life was pressing in on her and it was all she could do to not fall over right then and there.

"Why are you doing this to me?" she whispered, her face crumbling before she could turn away. "You're so sure you know what's gonna happen, so why are you ASKING ME for the BLOODY DETAILS?!" Her voice had risen steadily until she was nearly screaming at him. Was he still so very dense that he couldn't see past himself? She'd remembered how self-centered they'd both been at the beginning, but had it really been this bad?

"I..." he stopped, looking away again, unable to meet her eyes. Because I don't want it to be my fault, he realized. She was hurting because of his future self (because of his current self, too), and he didn't want it to be because he had chosen to leave her. He didn't want to think that for all the hopes he'd had about starting a new life with her, it would come to nothing in four years because he chose to walk out. But then, neither did he want to die - and at the moment, it seemed that those were his only two options.

"It scares me," he said softly, though whether it was in reference to his death or to the idea that he had hurt her voluntarily, he couldn't have said.

Rose covered her face with her hands and took long, deep breaths, trying to calm down enough to help him. Because despite the agonizing emotional pain she was, all she really wanted was to make everything okay for him again. It was what she had always done, cared more about him than herself. It was the only way she knew how to live.

"Four years is a long time for humans," she told him quietly as her hands fell and she wrapped her arms around her stomach. "'s even longer when you have a TARDIS."

"It works?" he asked, still not looking at her. "We grow our own TARDIS?"

He hadn't been sure that something like an infant TARDIS could survive in the alternate universe without any of its own kind, without even a proper Time Lord to link with. But if it had, at least what life he'd had in Rose's timeline wasn't just four years of normal human life on Earth. He turned to look at her, eyes wet.

"Is it a good four years?"

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