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Penelope’s always looking at Rose like she’s the eighth wonder of the world, the most amazing thing in the universe. Like she just can’t believe Rose is there.
Rose will be in the kitchen, ruining a batch of muffins, and Penelope will walk in and just watch her until Rose makes her help. Or they’ll be walking down the street, and suddenly Penelope will stop and turn to face Rose and grab both of her hands, and she’ll say something like, “I’m so glad I get to do this with you, Rose Tyler.” Or else Rose will wake up in the morning and see Penelope lying on her side, her head resting on her arm, staring at Rose.
Rose loves it, the way Penelope’s eyes light up, the intensity with which she says Rose’s name. Rose loves everything about Penelope, actually; loves her so much that she feels like her heart can’t take it sometimes.
And she knows Penelope loves her back. Loves her so much that she gave up all of time and space for her. Sometimes she wonders if she’s really enough, really as great as all that, but then Penelope looks at her, and she knows: somehow, she’s worth it for Penelope.
They’ve been living together for a couple of years now. It took some time at the beginning to get used to things-- Penelope needed to work out exactly who she was, and Rose needed to get used to having an almost-Doctor in her life. But both of them were figuring things out with the knowledge that they already loved each other, no matter who Penelope turned out to be, and that made things a little easier.
Even so, they’d been awkward at the very beginning, Rose trying to make her flat comfortable for Penelope, Penelope trying to get used to the idea of living in a flat, staying in the same place all the time.
“I had to adjust to all this, too,” Rose used to remind her, at the very beginning. “Got spoiled, traveling with you.”
But now, two years later, they’ve gotten used to living together, and gotten used to each other-- Rose knows that Penelope can never stay in bed past eight in the morning (sometimes nine if Rose plays her cards right), and Penelope knows that Rose talks in her sleep, and not to bother her no matter how interesting whatever she was saying is (although it was sort of cute the way she’d woken Rose up way at the beginning to ask about her dreams. Cute in a tired, annoyed, just-want-to-go-back-to-sleep kind of way). Penelope knows which of Rose’s clothes she can borrow without asking, and Rose knows just by sight which clothes would be difficult for Penelope, who doesn’t like any fuss when it comes to her outfit, to wear.
They work together for the parallel universe Torchwood, which basically means that they get to do whatever they want with the alien technology that’s washed up on Earth. They’ve learned all sorts of new things and made every kind of strange device. Rose loves her job; it’s so much better than working in a shop, and she loves getting to work with Penelope, who always has a new idea. Their work takes them all over the world, too, helping people in all sorts of countries learn how to use alien technology.They’ve talked about settling down, having kids. It’s not quite legal yet for them to be married, but Penelope says it’s coming soon.
She’s only said this in the most theoretical of ways, of course. There’s no engagement, no serious discussion, even. Just a casual comment when they’re teasing each other over dinner and Penelope thinks they’re acting “like a married couple, or what I’m pretty sure married couples act like, anyway,” or when they’re in line at the airport traveling together and the agent looks surprised to see that they have different last names.
“I’m pretty sure he thinks we’re sisters,” Rose says as they shuffle through to the metal detectors.
“We don’t look like sisters, do we?” Penelope asks, and Rose just shrugs.
They go all sorts of places together, hunting down alien technology, helping people around the world work with the alien species that are becoming more and more common around the planet. It’s a little like being in the TARDIS, except it takes
way
too long to get anywhere, and there’s no time travel. So nothing like being in the TARDIS, but somehow Rose has settled into it.
“Never thought I’d settle down,” she says one night, lying back against the Doctor’s chest at the top of the Grand Canyon. They’ve figured out the whole alien thing already-- it was actually a few miles north, but they figured if they were so close to the Grand Canyon they had to check it out. It’s well worth it, even if it
has
become a bit of a tourist trap.
“You think this is settling?” Penelope asks. “I mean, I knew
I
thought this was settling, but you were human to begin with.”
“Yeah, but I was nineteen,” Rose said. “Thought I was going to travel the stars my whole life.”
They’re looking up at the stars now-- not the same ones they used to travel.
“Can I tell you something, Rose?” Penelope says. “I like this almost as much.”
Rose smiles.
“I know,” she says, and she leans up for a kiss, draping herself completely over Penelope in the process.
Rose is always telling Penelope she loves her, and Penelope never repeats it. Rose is worried at first, but then she notices all the little things Penelope does for her, like putting the coffee pot on in the mornings even though she doesn’t drink coffee so that it’s warm when Rose gets up, or bringing her an extra biscuit at work, or even upgrading Rose’s iPod so that it creates a psychic link and will play whatever Rose most needs to hear in the moment (no matter whether or not Rose has actually
downloaded
it). She knows Penelope spent a thousand years outliving everyone she loved-- she thinks she understands how hard it must be for Penelope to express love when all of her instincts are telling her it won’t last. So Rose just makes sure to show Penelope how much she loves her, and she never doubts that Penelope loves her back.
They’ve been living together for a while before Penelope proposes. Rose isn’t expecting it at all-- they’re out on a date, walking by the river after dinner, and suddenly Penelope gets down on one knee with a ring box popped open.
“I’m pretty sure this is how this works,” she says earnestly. “I asked the lady at the store and she said usually the man proposes, but we don’t have a man, but I figured since I was a man before, I could do it. Hold on, I prepared a speech.”
Rose, in contrast, is completely speechless. She stands above Penelope, one hand pressed to her mouth, looking down at the absolutely perfect ring, a pale pink stone set in a gold band.
“Rose,” Penelope is saying, looking up at Rose with her wide eager eyes, “I owe so much to you, and I’ve really loved every moment I’ve spent with you, both as the Doctor and as myself. The Doctor part of me got to go on so many adventures, but she never would have dared to imagine having this with you, and the human part of me is
thrilled
to go on this new adventure, if you’re willing. So, I suppose what I’m saying is, Rose Tyler--”
“Yes!” Rose says, pulling Penelope to her feet and kissing her, hard. “You knew it’d be a yes, Penny.” She frowned. “Except-- it’s not legal yet, is it? Two women?”
“Oh, no!” Penelope says, turning away. “I’ve got my timelines wrong again!”
“That’s all right,” Rose says, and she pulls Penelope back to face her. “I’ll take the ring, and we’ll just have to wait.”
“That’s right,” Penelope says. “In our universe, same-sex marriage is legalized in the UK in 2013, and this universe is ahead of that one.”
“So we don’t have long to wait,” Rose says. She kisses Penelope again, slow and sweet, and then she holds out her hand. “Put the ring on me?”
Rose loves the ring. It’s just the right size for her finger, and later Penelope admits she made it herself by melting down one of her own ear cuffs and taking a crystal from an alien spaceship. Rose can’t condone the destruction of either object, but she has to admit that the ring is gorgeous, and she can’t stop admiring it on her hand, tilting her fingers this way and that with her head leaned against Penelope’s chest. It’s a promise, and it’s a promise that Rose feels so unbelievably lucky to have made.The day that same-sex marriage is legalized in England, Penelope buys a pair of rainbow suspenders and puts in an order for a tuxedo at a local shop.
“We’ve got to be proud, right, Rose?” she asks, showing off her new suspenders. “I’m proud of you, anyway.”
“I haven’t done anything!” protests Rose, smiling.
“Well, you haven’t told me off for buying these,” Penelope says, “and I really thought you would.”
“They look good,” Rose tells her.
“Anyway,” Penelope says, “this means we’re getting married now, right? You have to tell your mum.”
“She already knows,” Rose says. “Did you think I wasn’t going to show her the ring?”
“Good point,” Penelope says. “Well, we have to tell someone.”
“We can call Lina from work,” Rose says.
“Oh, yes!” Penelope exclaimes. “Love Lina from work! Excellent. Let’s call her.”
She’s already halfway to the phone. Rose leans against the wall and watches as Penelope picks up the phone, waving her free arm in the air as she gives Lina the good news. When she puts down the phone, she says, “I get the sense Lina doesn’t care
nearly
as much as I want her to.”
Laughing, Rose grabs Penelope’s new suspenders and pulls her in for a kiss.
“Good thing I care,” she says as Penelope’s arms wrap around her back and pull her close.
(But Rose makes a note to try and reach out to the London LGBT community anyway.)
They like to dance together-- it started as Rose reminiscing about the night she, the Doctor, and Jack all danced in the TARDIS console room after the whole gas mask situation, and morphed into Penelope pointing her sonic at Rose’s iPod and holding out her hand as a slow song began to play. Rose accepted Penelope’s hand and swayed with her, pressed close, her head on Penelope’s shoulder.
Now, it’s a common occurrence-- Penelope or Rose will find the other and turn on a slow song, and they’ll move through whatever room they’re in, melting into each other completely. Rose loves it; to her, it’s better than any date they could go on. It’s just her, and it’s Penelope, and their love, pressed between them like wine.
It’s taken Rose time to come to terms with living with a woman. She always thought she was all right with it-- after all, she had traveled with the Doctor for months as a woman, and she had been in love with her all the while. But back then, there had always been the chance that the Doctor would turn back to a man, and Rose’s world would return to what some part of her subconscious still thought was its natural state; Penelope was permanent in a way the Doctor had never been.
There was a point, after she and Penelope came home to her flat, when Rose second-guessed her attraction to women, to Penelope. She didn’t mention it to Penelope, but she retreated a little into herself, and Penelope picked up on it, giving her just a little more space than usual. Rose moped like that for a couple weeks, a little lonely, a little scared, before her mum caught her at it and talked some sense into her.
“You’ve been given this perfect opportunity,” her mum told her, “with someone who is
literally
the woman of your dreams, and you’re not going to waste that, all right?”
Rose agreed, and went home to see Penelope waiting for her at the door, the universe spinning in her eyes. Without a word, Rose kissed her, and that was how she knew for sure. She loved Penelope. Not just the Doctor;
Penelope
. And she held Penelope tighter, almost crying into her shoulder, while the confused Penny told her all about the new blog post she was writing about sofa repairs.
Rose loves Penelope. Still and always.
Their wedding is going to be small. Rose’s mum wants to make it a whole publicity event, Pete Tyler’s daughter getting married, and to a woman, no less, and then she’s talking about a destination wedding on Bad Wolf Bay (which is possibly
the
most depressing destination for a wedding, given its history), but Rose talks her down from that to a quiet affair under the trees in a nearby park.
“You can come with me to pick out my dress, though,” she says. There’s a not-so-small part of Rose that has always dreamed of walking down the aisle in a white dress, but more importantly, there’s a part of Rose that remembers her mum showing her wedding pictures and telling the story of how her mum picked out her dress, saying maybe that’d be Rose someday. If she ever found anyone she loved enough.
“Don’t think you can get away that easily,” her mum says, but Rose sees her smile.
Rose loves her dress. The veil floats over her hair, which she’s curling for the occasion; the dress itself looks like something a fairy tale princess would wear, with layers of tulle and silk. It’s probably a little over-the-top, but Rose is all right with that. This is her wedding, after all.
Penelope doesn’t tell Rose what she’s planning to wear. Rose mentioned once in passing that an Earth tradition dictates the parties to be wed not see each other before the wedding, and Penelope’s grabbed on to that idea, saying that she wants to both surprise and be surprised by Rose.
Rose doesn’t mind. She and Penelope are doing every other aspect of the wedding planning together. She’s excited to have a surprise.
The night before the wedding, Rose goes over to her mum’s. A couple of her friends come, too, and they sit around and drink wine and joke about Rose’s impending marriage. Penelope’s got some friends with her back at the flat, people she’s met through their work and her various clubs (at different points, she’s joined a community theater, a bowling league, and at least three different groups for amateur inventors), but neither of them really went for the big bachelorette party bash.
Their friends from work know where they came from; many of them were there when Rose was shooting the dimension cannon everywhere, desperately looking for a way to get back to the Doctor. They know what this moment means to her, and to Penelope. They know what they’ve both been through to get here. Penelope’s club friends don’t necessarily know (although a few of them are deep enough in conspiracy theories that they might; Penelope, enamored with the human mind, joined a cryptid hunter club, and the day she discovered social media was a strange one for Rose), but Rose knows they love her, and at that point the details don’t really matter.
Either way, it means a lot to Rose that they both have people. She remembers how lonely she was when she first showed up in the parallel universe, with only her parents and Mickey. She made friends, but then when she came back, it was with Penelope, who was used to having the entire universe to talk to, and who was now confined to London, England, Earth.
“I’m glad you found her,” Rose’s work friend Faye says, sipping her wine. (Faye was one of the ones who saw Rose at the very beginning, when she was still devastated and raw and focused only on getting back to the Doctor. She spent weeks, back then, trying to distract Rose, to get her to think of anything else, even though she had no reason to care. After a while Rose mellowed out, got used to her grief and more patient in her efforts, and when she was ready she had found a close friend in Faye. So Faye means it more than most when she says this.) “I used to wonder, you know, who’d be so great you would do all that for them, but you two are clearly perfect together.”
Rose can’t hide her smile.
When Rose meets Penelope at the altar, it’s all she can do not to fling herself at her. Penelope’s wearing a full tuxedo in a deep blue, with golden star-shaped buttons, and more star-shaped pins adorning her shoulders and trailing down her back. Her smile is radiant, and Rose returns it.
They use a Time Lord ceremony. When they were planning, Rose had asked Penelope what she would do for a wedding, and Penelope had told her about the traditions of her people. Rose had thought the whole thing simple and beautiful, so they had kept it. They tie their hands together with a piece of violet ribbon, and they say their vows, and they sign the paper, and then they kiss, in front of everyone, Penelope’s hands resting softly at Rose’s waist.
There’s something about the way Penelope touches Rose. There have been times, in Rose’s life, when she has felt like an object, like a body that could get passed from person to person. There have been times when being touched-- where the mere
thought
of being touched-- has made her feel this way, even when the touch was welcome.
Penelope has never made Rose feel like that.
Penelope’s hands on Rose are always soft, always
reverent
, somehow. Rose can tell just by the light pressure and quiet warmth that Penelope loves her, that she’s trying to transfer her love through her hands, through her lips on Rose’s. Rose has one hand on Penelope’s cheek, the other on one of her shoulders, and she hopes that Penelope can feel the same reverence and love passed back to her.
They have the reception right there in the park. Their first dance is to one of Rose’s favorite songs, and she holds Penelope close, trying to wrap her head around the fact that they’re married now.Rose would never have dreamed of this as a kid. She once thought she was in love with Jimmy Stone, that they were going to live together forever, but he never made her smile like Penelope does. He touched her like an object, threw her around and expected her to stay where he put her. She didn’t smile very often, back then-- not like she smiles now, pulling back just to look at Penelope, whose hair is already falling all over her face.
“Can’t
believe
I got to marry you,” Penelope says, quietly enough that the watching friends and family can’t hear.
“Oh yeah?” Rose asks, a sly grin on her face. “‘Cause I can.” She kisses Penelope, not caring that everyone’s watching. It’s their wedding, after all.
Although she could do without her mum hooting at them from the sidelines.
Rose loves coming home to Penelope. It doesn’t happen often; they work together, and therefore it’s only logical that they travel to and from work together. But they do have different areas of expertise; despite her work on the dimension cannon, Rose tends to be better at the diplomacy side of things, while the Penelope is excellent at mechanics. They work together well, but sometimes they have to work separately and Penelope is sent abroad or Rose winds up working late. And sometimes, of course, they have separate social engagements. Rose has always liked a nice quiet evening with friends, the sort of thing with wine and gossip, and, while Penelope is far too restless for that sort of thing, her clubs, which sound completely overwhelming to Rose, tend to keep her busy.
Rose doesn’t mind being away from Penelope, of course. They do each have separate lives, which is good; Rose had worried at the beginning that they would have trouble making friends and fitting in in this universe, that they’d each be the other’s only friends, but they’ve both fit in well enough, and for that Rose is grateful.
But even so. When she comes home from a trip, or an evening event, or anything, Penelope is always waiting for her, usually sprawled across the sofa and waving her homemade sonic screwdriver at the television, or holding a book directly above her face, or else she’s cooking something that has a 50% chance of being something that a real human would actually eat, or maybe just sitting up in bed, fiddling with her cell phone. She always looks up the minute Rose comes in (or sometimes, depending on her position, she hangs her head upside down over the arm of the sofa) and grins, and Rose joins her on the sofa, or in the kitchen, or in bed, and Penelope wraps an arm around her waist and asks about her day, trying to one-handedly finish whatever she was doing.
Penelope’s a bit of a cook, too, it turns out. She likes to experiment, but, to be fair, she was an alien for a thousand years; she’s tried some things that Rose would consider truly ungodly.
“What’s comfort food for you?” Rose asks one day, after Penelope asks her to taste her squid-ink pasta sauce. “Do you even have comfort food?”
“Chips are good,” Penelope says, stirring her sauce. “Always love chips. You know, almost every planet has some version of chips?”
“Really?”
“Yeah,” Penelope says. “It’s brilliant. Didn’t have ‘em on Gallifrey, of course, but then again, they didn’t have much worth eating on Gallifrey. One of Gallifrey’s only shortcomings, if you ask me. Well, that and the fact that everyone at the Time Lord Academy was a stuck-up fool, I suppose.”
“What do they have, then?” Rose asks. “On Gallifrey?”
“Mostly various types of porridge,” Penelope says. “Couple good desserts. A few other options. All the good food is stolen from other planets.”
“Is
that
why you used to hang around Earth so much?” Rose asks. “Comfort food?”
“One of the reasons,” Penelope admits. She lifts her mixing spoon and looks at the sauce. It’s black, and dripping down into the pan. “I think it’s done, don’t you?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Rose says, laughing.
“Me, either,” Penelope admits.
They eat it anyway, poured over bowtie pasta (Penelope only buys pasta if it’s in a shape she considers to be “fun”). It’s better than Rose expected. To be fair, Penelope’s experiments usually are.
Penelope doesn’t understand Rose’s desire to connect with the local LGBT community.
“Don’t know why you’re all hung up on gender,” she says when Rose brings it up. “It’s all the same, really.”
“Yeah,” Rose says, “but remember when we were all excited about our marriage being legal and no one else cared?” She shrugs. “I don’t know. I don’t think it
is
all the same.”
“I suppose I wouldn’t know,” Penelope says. “I sort of just fall into whatever category my body puts me in. All feels the same.”
“I don’t know that it’s about the feelings,” Rose says. “Just-- the way people react to them. Might not be as big of a deal in space, but you have to have noticed.”
“I have,” Penelope admits. “I guess I didn’t really think much of it.”
“Yeah,” Rose said. “Still. Might be nice to have some sort of community, yeah?”
“Could be,” Penelope says. She gives Rose that earnest look Rose loves so much. “If it’s important to you, Rose, it’s important to me.”
Rose gives her a coy smile back.
“I know,” she says, and leans in for a kiss.
Being married isn’t all that different from the way life was before. Rose still falls asleep next to Penelope and wakes up to the sound of her clattering around the flat. They travel together and work together and live together, and Rose couldn’t be happier about it.
“I never really thought I’d get a happy ending,” she muses to Penelope one night. They’re lying in bed, Rose reading, Penelope playing some game on her phone.
Penelope looks up from her game.
“How do you mean?” she asks.
“I was just thinking,” Rose says. “This book’s based on a fairy tale, and it reminded me. I used to love fairy tales as a kid, but I never thought I’d have a happily ever after.”
“Happily ever after just means they stopped the story too soon,” Penelope says.
Rose looks at her quizzically.
“Everything ends,” Penelope says. “No one’s happy forever.”
“That’s all right,” Rose says. “I didn’t mean like that. I was more thinking-- I don’t know. This is sort of my happily ever after.”
“Really?” Penelope asks. “You don’t wish you were still traveling?”
“I suppose I miss it,” Rose says. “It’s not like it was sustainable, though. Traveling forever. Eventually I would’ve needed a home.”
“You’d think,” Penelope says, staring into the distance, and Rose knows she’s thinking of the Doctor, still wheeling around space in the other universe.
“Do you wish you were still traveling?” Rose asks. It’s an honest question, and she expects an honest answer.
“Sometimes,” Penelope says. “But I quite like having a home. Things I can rely on.”
“Did you want a home?” Rose asks. “Before?”
“Never had the option,” Penelope says. “It’s hard to want a home when home doesn’t want you.”
Rose looks at her, and Penelope reconsiders.
“Suppose I wouldn’t have said no,” she said. “If I had a place where I always belonged. Maybe that’s why I liked Earth so much. Always a friendly face.”
Rose moves closer to Penelope, resting her head on her wife’s shoulder.
“Bit different,” she says. “Being married.”
“Definitely different,” Penelope agrees, and she entangles her fingers with Rose’s. “You know, it
is
a bit happily-ever-after, isn’t it?”
“Now you get it,” Rose says with a smile. She turns her head for a kiss.