preserved_ginger

Title: Are You My Daddy?
Rating: PG-13
Setting: The parallel universe
Character(s): Rose. Mickey. OC. Some mention of Ten.
Pairing(s): Ten/Rose
Beta(s):

rebelsaint
Spoilers: So long as you know about Doomsday, you're golden.
Author's Note: This takes place in my You're Not? universe. The title is amended from a line of dialogue in the Season One episode The Empty Child.
Disclaimer: I am not the BBC
Summary: Unruly chestnut-brown hair, eyes the colour of good cognac, and almost limitless energy?

As Alice grows, she amazes her pædiatrician by how quickly she develops, how soon she starts to walk and talk; her family, knowing whose daughter she is, remains totally unsurprised. And the older she gets, the more pronounced her resemblance to her father becomes, and she could never have been mistaken for anybody else's child. Unruly chestnut-brown hair, eyes the colour of good cognac, and almost limitless energy? No; she's the Doctor's daughter, all right.

"Are you my daddy?" she asks Mickey, once, on one of the rare occasions when he's actually in the house when she and Rose return from her nursery. He sees Rose flinch bodily at that, sees her eyes fill with tears, and he has to swallow past the sudden resurging jealousy of the Doctor to answer the child in his usual calm, measured manner.

"Why do you ask, Alice?"

"'Cause everybody has a daddy. Mary and Stacey said so. Are you my daddy?" Alice's tone is plaintive, and Mickey is tempted to say that yes, he is, and deal with the consequences later; but he hears a shuddering sigh from behind him and when he turns and looks he sees the tears streaming down Rose's face.

Still, after all this time, it hurts her.

He wishes he could do something to make her feel better, but he can't. The only person capable of doing that isn't here. Can't ever be here (although Mickey is still unsure he's willing to bet against that), and he's fairly sure that the Doctor is suffering at least as much as Rose. (He isn't an idiot; he knows what a man head-over-heels in love looks like as well as the next bloke, and he'd seen that expression on the Doctor's face more times than he could count. No, there had been no mistaking what he and Rose had been to each other.) He feels ashamed of what he has tried to do, in the face of Rose's obvious distress, and so he tells Alice the truth.

"No, Alice. No, I'm not your daddy. But I couldn't be prouder of you if I were." Mollified, now she has the answer to her question, Alice trots off to play with her toys, leaving Mickey and Rose standing there in the hall.

He crosses the small space between them in a matter of seconds to enfold her in a hug, wanting to give her any comfort he could, however small. He feels her slump against him, and begin to weep in earnest, as he runs his hands in soothing patterns over her back.

"I miss him, Mickey; I miss him so much. He should be here, dammit; should be here to help me raise Alice. What the hell do I know about raising part-Gallifreyan children?"

Mickey bites back the impulse to blurt his first instinctive response - you should have been more careful, then, shouldn't you? - because however truthful it is, he knows it's petty and jealous of him and not particularly helpful. He takes a deep breath instead before telling Rose what he thinks she needs to hear.

"He'll come back for you, Rose, when he can. I'm certain of it. I've never seen a man as far gone on a girl as he was with you. He'll come back."

That's not quite what she wants to hear because she starts crying even harder; Mickey just stands there and hugs her more tightly to him, having to deal yet again with the knowledge that he isn't the man she wants to be holding her and yet pitying her from the bottom of his heart. If the Doctor knows what's good for him, he'll make it back soon, he thinks, knowing that it can never be too soon for Rose.