Remix Title: I Know (The Maybe Later Remix)
Remix Author: _thirty2flavors
Remixed fic: I Know
Remixed author: melnay13
Characters/Pairings: Ten/Rose
Rating: G
Summary: The Doctor isn't the only one who waited until the last possible second. Set mid-season 2, sometime before The Impossible Planet.
Author's note: Betaed by the lovely wild_sibyl. Written for chips_remixed! This was a lot of fun, though the further I got with this fic, the less it began to resemble the original when it came to plot specifics. We were using the word "plot" loosely, right?


The Doctor was babbling.

That, Rose had learned quickly enough, was not particularly unusual, especially for this Doctor. She took it in stride by now, more than happy to let him chatter away. Most of the time, she even listened.

“They started remodeling the ruins about twenty year ago,” he was saying. “’Course, remodeling ruins, seems a bit contradictory, doesn’t it? It’s not even restoring, not really – it’s a bit like saying, ‘oh, history’s a bit rubbish, let’s just change it!’”

Rose smirked, staring over at the crumbling building. “You’d know all about that, wouldn’t you?”

“Oi!” He scowled at her and lifted his head higher, doing his best to look serious and pompous. “As a Time Lord it is my duty and obligation to the universe to maintain history as best I can.”

“Right,” Rose agreed, nodding along seriously. “’Course. Whatever you say, Mr. I-Invented-The-Banana-Daiquiri.”

At that he spun around to face her, walking backwards with the sole purpose of pointing at her defiantly. “I like to think of that as a great service to the people of France.” And then all at once he was distracted again, looking back at the ruins. “They’re not even accurate, is the thing. They’ve guessed all wrong. Well, almost all wrong. Well, they’re a little bit off.” He wrinkled his nose and sniffed, indignant and condescending. “Archaeologists. Pah.”

It was rude and arrogant and a touch too critical, but Rose only laughed and shook her head, trudging further up the mountain path past him, shielding her eyes from the sun. Behind her, the Doctor carried on, still talking loudly of all the mistakes that had been made during the remodeling. With an affectionate roll of her eyes, Rose surveyed the landscape around her.

Ecuador in the fortieth century. It was beautiful, not that Rose had been to Ecuador in any other century for a proper comparison – yet. Peeking over her shoulder at the Doctor, she grinned. Such was the glory of time travel, she supposed; “remodeled” ancient ruins one minute, brand-new temples the next. Maybe the Doctor would take her here again, back before the word “ruin” was even remotely appropriate. The gravel crunched beneath her feet, and Rose, in spite of the altitude and steep incline, felt a spring in her step.

Sometimes, rare times, she worried she was getting too used to this. It was true she was growing used to the danger and the running and the occasional anachronistic remark, and for the most part she didn’t mind being a bit more of a weathered traveler. But she was desperately afraid she might come to take it all for granted, might wake up one morning and forget how lucky she was to be here and now, whether “here and now” meant fortieth century Ecuador or New Earth or Platform One. She didn’t want to be complacent, but already she could feel it creeping in at the edges, a comfortable familiarity that might one day mute into something worse. What if she lost that thrill in her stomach, that tingle that shot up and down her spine every time she stepped outside the TARDIS doors?

“You’re not even listening,” she heard the Doctor whine, suddenly at her side. For a brief second he pouted, then stopped and bumped her shoulder with his. “Something wrong?”

“Nah,” she said reflexively. She kicked some of the gravel under her feet and then shrugged. “Just thinking.” When he widened his eyes expectantly, she sighed and barreled on. “Do you ever get used to it? This, I mean. Traveling and things. Does it ever become sort of...”

“Routine?” He stood straighter and tilted his head to one side, contemplating the question with the same expression he used to contemplate minor alien threats and complex maths problems. “Hasn’t for me.” He looked back at her and shrugged. “Why d’you suppose I keep doing it?”

She didn’t tell him how the answer heartened her – how maybe, she thought, if he could hold onto that for nine hundred years, she could do the same for a fraction of that time. Instead she widened her eyes, a teasing smile on her lips. “Oh, is that why? Thought it was just an excuse to bundle young women into a police box.”

He scowled at her, and Rose beamed back at him merrily. “I do not bundle anyone, thank you.” The stare he sent her turned smug. “If I recall correctly, you came running.”

“Yeah, well.” She reached down and grabbed his hand that swung between them, the teasing grin still twisting her lips. “You asked twice. Thought I should humour you.” She strayed from his side but held his hand, their arms stretching taut between them.

“Oh, you missed me the second I was gone,” the Doctor countered, though for all his bravado he held her hand tighter and tugged her back towards him.

Recalling it later, Rose would never be able to pinpoint what it was about that particular moment that struck her. It certainly wasn’t unusual, having his hand in hers, and neither was the giddiness that accompanied such a relatively simple action. He looked happy and relaxed in the dusky sunlight, but no better or worse than he normally did. As far as days in the lives of time travelers went, there was nothing special about this one.

It was an ordinary day, and suddenly Rose wondered what he’d do if she kissed him.

Flop and flail like a headless chicken, she imagined, and then once she let go of him he’d chatter away nervously about some inane subject or another, never give her a word in edgewise and shove as much distance between them as he could manage. It wasn’t even hard for her to picture.

What she couldn’t work out was why. Embarrassment because he wanted it, or embarrassment because he didn’t? Most of the time she was sure he did – he certainly acted the part, didn’t he? – but sometimes…

Well, sometimes she wondered if dancing was really just dancing.

“It never gets old,” he said suddenly, pulling her out of her ruminations, “but when it does… well, that’s when you change something.”

She thought of Jack, dead-or-maybe-not on Satellite Five. She thought of Mickey, brave enough and selfish enough to change universes just for a fresh start. She thought of Sarah Jane, stuck in Aberdeen.

“Like leaving someone behind,” she said, before she could stop herself.

He gave her hand a firm squeeze, and she looked up to find him watching her earnestly. “Like inviting someone along.”

Something in his tone made her flustered, and she found she was thankful that the sun had already turned her cheeks red.

He looked away from her, then, and kept walking. Rose followed, her hand in his, her heart beating just a touch faster than it had been before. She knew what he would do if she kissed him, could practically hear his perplexed, awkward stutter.

She had no idea what he’d do if she just told him outright.

Jimmy Stone had said it first. Of course, he’d used it as emotional blackmail and a bargaining chip more than any real declaration of emotion, but Rose had been younger, then, easily thrown off balance by tokens of affection, no matter how meager. Mickey, too, had beaten her to owning up to those three little words, and it was only now that she could fully appreciate how sincerely he’d meant them.

With the Doctor, though, Rose was certain she’d have to take that first step. Maybe that was all he needed – for her to break the ice.

She took a breath and set her shoulders. She’d faced Daleks, Slitheen, werewolves and Cybermen; she’d seen the Earth burn, she’d had her face sucked off by an evil television and she’d ripped open the heart of the TARDIS.

Surely, she could do this.

“Doctor?”

The expression he turned on her was calm and curious, that bizarrely attentive stare that made her feel far more important than she knew she was, in the grand scheme of things. “Hmmm?”

Just say it, something in her mind demanded, that pesky, reckless little something that so often had her wandering away and off into trouble. And she wanted to, she really did. Some small part of her wanted the certainty, the confirmation, the assurance that she wasn’t misreading the hand-holding and the hugging and the secret, exclusive grins that were just for the two of them, the Doctor and Rose, the sorts of grins that had driven Mickey from the TARDIS long before the parallel universe had lured him away --

She wasn’t imagining all that. She couldn’t be.

But what if there was a reason things had never progressed beyond that? What if that was simply how he acted with everyone he traveled with, Sarah Jane and the nameless, countless others before her? What if he avoided the subject not out of shyness or embarrassed hesitation but out of careful, practiced caution, an unwillingness to risk the hurt that came with such a confession? What if he was trying to save her the embarrassment and the hurt, knowing he couldn’t – or maybe just didn’t -- reciprocate?

What if she was just a silly, human girl with silly, human feelings?

“You were saying?” he asked, and Rose realized abruptly that she’d stopped walking and stood with her mouth hanging open, right there in the middle of the mountain trail. He gave her hand an experimental tug. “Rose?”

“Sorry,” she muttered hastily, blinking and shaking her head to clear it. “I was just..." She gazed down at their hands, fascinated by the way they linked together. “I was gonna say...” His thumb traced circles over hers and she watched it, fascinated. She wondered if it was a conscious decision or a muscle memory. If she mentioned it, if she pointed it out to him, would he even know he was doing it, or was it a habit ingrained by months of repetition?

Maybe pointing it out would ruin the magic of it, shatter that wonderful Schrödinger sensation of not knowing.

She took a deep breath, and let it out.

“I’m hungry,” she said, quick and chipper. “Exactly how much further is this mountain-top café of yours, exactly?”

She watched the surprise flicker across his face, and then he straightened. “Not that far,” he insisted, in a tone that told Rose she’d be walking for quite some time, yet. He turned and started up the path again, jerking her hand impatiently. “Come on, then!” He looked back over his shoulder. “Honestly, though, this place, you’ll love it, they do an absolutely brilliant caldo de manguera.”

She grinned and quickened her pace, ignoring the rumble in her stomach and the protest in her legs, focusing instead on the sound of his voice as he babbled and the feel of his cool hand in her hand, his thumb sweeping up and down along hers.

Maybe sometimes, some things were better off unsaid. And anyway, she thought, he was a genius, a Time Lord.

He knew. Of course he knew.