Magic

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Magic, by fannishliss, Nine/Rose, rated G, 500 words, for the Drabble Challenge: "Yes"

"Do you believe in magic?" Rose asks one day, seemingly out of the blue.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic," he answers carelessly.

She rolls her eyes.  "No," she says.  "I mean magic."

"I haven't the foggiest what you mean," he says superciliously.  He grabs the sonic spanner; the calibration he's working on is fighting him.

Rose sinks down cross-legged near the access hatch, distracting him from his work.  What is she on about?

He works a while.  She is thinking.

"You're a Time Lord," she says.  

He grunts an assent.  

"Like, of all time."

He doesn't even grunt.

"How can anything ever take you by surprise?"

She has no way of knowing how much her question stings.  So many, many things have taken him by surprise.  It's never good.  

"Surprise is overrated," he finally says.  

"So you know it all? You remember how everything is supposed to go? Or -- you predict it?"

"Bit of each I suppose," he says.

Rose frowns.  The Doctor keeps on tinkering.  She'll spit it out soon enough.

"How -- how do you live, knowing, like that?"

Most companions never ask this.  They don't really want to know.  But Rose wants to know everything.  

"It's complicated," he hedges.

"Try me," she says, and she is listening with rapt attention.

"There's something called the uncertainty principle," he begins.  

"Oh!" Rose exclaims.  "Mickey explained this to me once."

"Mickey!"  he scoffs.

"Yeah," she says defensively, and cuffs him lightly.  "You can observe momentum or location of a particle, but not both. Right?"

"Mm.  I'm observing you here and now.  Where you end up, I can't know.  Because my observation is of what's here, right now."

Rose frowns, but quickly gets it.  "Or, you could watch from more of a distance, to see where I go."

The Doctor grimaced, not liking the idea of Rose at a distance. "Pretty much."

"So, did you have any idea we would meet?"

"Why would I?"

"Because you don't believe in magic."

"You're not making sense."

"Magic," Rose says.  "The universe bringing you just what you need, just when you need it."

"And so modest too," he grins at her.

"Hush!" she laughs.  "It's a simple question."

"What question?"  he goads.

"Did you know you'd find me?"  she asks.  "Or were you flying blind?"

"Yes," he answers playfully.  

"Oh you!" she laughs.  

He tinkers a bit more, gathering his thoughts.

"Yes," he finally says.  

"Mm?" she says.

"I was flying blind -- but I knew.  I just knew.  Somehow."

Rose looks down at him.  He's looking up into the darkness underneath the console, tracing the wiring, listening to the symphony of the Tardis's various hummings.  

"I knew you knew," she says, with certainty. "But I don't think it's a Time Lord thing at all.  I think it's the way the universe works  sometimes: magic," she insists.    

The Doctor thinks about that moment, that precious moment when her hand first slipped into his.  He'd felt the pull, the draw of something, to that very time and place, and then, there she was, so quickly, so deeply a part of him.  Magic?  Maybe.  Maybe?  Yes.

"Yes."