#queenofthecastle77

Use this list of Doctor♡Rose Multichapter we’ve recced or reviewed in the past. Click on the title of the fic to learn more about it.

#PoppyAlexander (AO3) I Shall Wake and, but the Waking, Nothing Shall Repent Something Borrowed Something Blue

@professorspork (#•TS•FF) Feeling Electric

#PurplePanic (AO3) Bug a Boo

#QueenOfTheCastle77 (AO3) QueenOfTheCastle (TS) JessicaQueen (LJ) At the Beginning of the End Emotionally Impeded Display of Admiration From the Sky to the Ground Speedbumps on the way to Forever Standing Still in a Kaleidoscope That Home I Find Outside Your Door Training in Covert Manoeuvres

#Rabid1st (AO3) Disheveled

@doctor-who-hears-a-horton (#) RachelLu (AO3) So We Play the Long Game The Lesson that Needs Learning The Man on the Sea The Monk’s Altar The Princess and Him

@bendingsignpost (#•AO3) Rallalon (TS•FF•LJ) In Human Hands NonLinear Love Story

#RamblingRose (TS) IrishLullaby (LJ) Miraculously Their Own

#Fidgin (AO3•TS) By any other Name Just another Doctor Lust and Monsters What Happens in Vegas

@randomscribbler (#•TS) RandomScribblings (FF) As it Must Be

@redthreads (#•AO3) Daeloki (TS) Silence in the Garden

@rishidiams (#•AO3•TS) Evolution of a Scandal Heirs and Graces Mine

To see more of our awesome recs, check out our full reading list (x)

“Come with me,” [the Doctor] called after her, obviously allowing himself one last-ditch effort to change her mind. “Please.”

Rose paused, just for a moment, and her smile was suddenly just a smidgen more genuine. She doubted he’d ever asked anyone to travel with him as many times as he’d asked her now. It gave her a bit of real hope that he might, just this once, break his long-standing rule of never looking where he’d been.

“Come back for me,” she countered without turning back around. “And for god’s sake, ask Mickey.”»

After all his talk about having to beg her, and how much that had hurt, Rose knew what that request cost him to say out loud yet again.

“Yeah,” she said. “All right. I’d love to come.” As if there’d been a question from the moment he’d admitted he’d missed her.

She pulled him into a hug, which turned out to be incredibly awkward with them still sitting with the grating digging into their backsides and their legs suddenly tangled together oddly in front of them. But all the same, she couldn’t think of anywhere she’d rather be, and anything she’d rather be doing.

She found his mouth with hers and breathed in his sharply exhaled breath as their lips and their tongues met. She mapped out every inch of his mouth as efficiently as she could. She thought it was a good place to start in the quest to get to know the Doctor, physically and otherwise, more intimately than she’d been allowed the last time he’d been with her.

He wasn’t anything like as aggressive in the kiss as she was, but he was far from pushing her away. His tongue traced hers with more caution than she showed, but the contact was no less sweet for that. She shuddered at the feel of him both accepting and returning the kiss.

When they pulled apart so she could breathe — damn him and his respiratory bypass, she thought — he looked dazed. His hair stood straight up, spikier than usual from where her fingers had run their way through it. He looked so thoroughly snogged and rumpled that Rose would have sworn he’d just gone several rounds in bed if she hadn’t known better.»

“Yeah,” Rose agreed.

“She was wonderful, and beautiful, and clever, and I missed you the whole damn time I was with her.”

“Huh?” Rose asked.

The Doctor turned his body more towards her and reached his free hand — the one not still caught up in hers — towards her face. He cupped her cheek, and her heart raced.

“I begged you not to leave. I never even ask normally, and there I was pleading over and over again, and you still left. Why did you leave?”

“I had to,” Rose breathed.

“Because you thought you were second choice, right? But you never were, Rose. Never. I did try to tell you that, but you wouldn’t believe it then. Please believe it now.”»

“I missed you,” Rose whispered, and knew she’d been missed in return by at least one of the most recent occupants of the TARDIS. Mickey might have grown up a lot in recent years, but it seemed that they’d sort of managed to grow in the same direction, because he was even more of an open book to her than he’d been back when they were still dating.

Mickey pulled back and smiled at her. “Still at the Estate, then? Thought you’d have taken over the world by now. I know you’ve got plans.”

“Oh, they’re in progress. I put complete world domination at about the year 2020. Just give me time,” Rose teased, returning the smile. “And I’m just here for Mum. My flat’s across town now. Closer to work. Nicer area.”

“Rose Tyler, movin’ up in the world.”

“Better believe it,” she said.

“You don’t need [the Doctor] to be a force to be reckoned with, then, do you?”»

“I live here,” Rose said, keeping her tone as even as possible.

“Here?” Reinette repeatedly, shocked. She looked around again and then cleared her throat. “Oh. Well, it’s … charming. Do all homes look like this in your time? I must begin getting used to the differences, I think. It’s hardly diplomatic of me to comment on a future I know nothing about.”

Well, at least she knew she’d been rude, Rose thought. That was a start.

“Rose’s mother lives here,” the Doctor corrected. “Rose’s home is on the TARDIS.”

Rose frowned. “No, really,” she said to Reinette. “I live here. Still. Have done for twenty years now, and nearly a year of that since I saw you last. This is home. If it’s good enough for Mum, it’s good enough for me, isn’t it?”

“Oh, of course. That’s not what I meant. It’s home still, when you’re visiting,” the Doctor agreed. “But I’m back now. All of the universe to see, starting right here right now. What d’you say?”

“No.”

“Brilliant! Right then! Where d’you want to — what? Hang on, what?”

“No, Doctor. I’m not coming. This is home, for now.”»

“No. No sign.”

Rose didn’t think that in all the history of the universe any three words, not even ‘I love you’, had ever held such weighted implication. With them, she was conveying a number of other three-word sentences. ‘He’s not coming,’ she was saying. ‘He’s left us.’ ‘We can’t escape.’ ‘We’ll die here.’»

A year, the Doctor had said. A year since the ship had last moved. Those poor souls had been torn apart and left to decompose, and in a whole year the repair droids had just ignored them.

And they clearly hadn’t been able to send out a distress signal either, though not for lack of knowledge of the systems. The attack from the droids must have happened so unexpectedly, for them to be caught off guard like that.

It didn’t look like it had been a particularly fast death for any of them, all the same.

She leaned away from Mickey and heaved again until her stomach gave up on its rebellion, seeming to realise it wasn’t doing any good. There was nothing left inside her right then.

Nothing at all.

Mickey closed the door to the room again. Maybe he wanted to leave those people there to rest, with that room as their undisturbed tomb. Or possibly it was just to keep the smell or the insects contained. Rose didn’t want to question it too deeply.

She’d let herself be led back to the TARDIS without protest, but without doing much to help Mickey out either.

“That could’ve been us,” Mickey said a long time later. “Those clock things were going to do that to us, and then the Doctor saved us. If he’d got back any later … But Rose, the Doctor isn’t here to save us anymore, so what happens now? If somethin’ tries to kill us now, what happens?”»