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rabid1stLe Pant...Le Gasp...Le Faint...is done. Be gentle and encouraging if you can...off to work on Chapter 21.
DISHEVELED
by Rabid1st
Ten/Rose
Rating: Adult+
Beta Babes: Kes, Aibhinn, Ruth, Gina and Queenie.
Summary: Rose is changing, learning more about time and space and her place in the Doctor's life.
Disclaimer: I do not own Doctor Who, any characters or situations. RTD could swoop in here and kick my cyber-bottom, if he wanted. But I doubt he will. Not only because he has shinier cyber-bottoms to spank in RL, but also because he's a fangeek his ownself. Still, let's not tell him about this, okay?
LINKS for all previous parts…can be found HERE
PART TWENTY
The Crimson-Cycle on the Lor-Xin Spatial-Relevance Wheel – Eye of Harmony Variance: Apogee Gamma Frame 108 Sigma had a bad reputation. Over sixteen hundred wars had sparked at those temporal coordinates. Two hundred and thirty-nine civilizations crumbled into dust before the wobbly wheel turned again. Suns went nova. Planets withered and died. Suicide bombers, suicide pacts and suicide missions had flourished in the Crimson Cycle. Every young Time Lord studied the Variance, looking for loopholes in time. There'd even been a sort of parlor game based on containing random fluctuations of the myriad paradox loops.
Only pirates, lunatics and fools parked their TARDIS anywhere along the Crimson-Cycle of The Wobbly Wheel. The Doctor didn't see himself as a fool, or much of a pirate. The jury was still out on lunatic, he supposed. The fact was he was quite mad on that fateful October day, oh, so long ago, the day he'd first met Rose Tyler in a waterfront pub. He'd come to Barcelona to finish himself and ended up initiating a paradox loop of his very own. A loop he'd had no choice but to close one day.
At the moment, he could barely remember it. Regenerative spooling was blinding him to his former self. He could just about recall knowing of the man in the leather coat and purple jumper. Purple? Rose said it brought out his eyes, but was that really a look he'd fancied? Or was it only what they'd given him when he left the asylum? He couldn't say. That man, his former self, was a stranger to him. Regenerative spooling, a sort of temporary amnesia, created echoing holes in his memory. He'd watched a shaggy-haired, wild-eyed man exit the TARDIS with no sense of recognition. He wasn't that man. They were two separate people. He wasn't hanging onto sanity by an unraveling thread. His life had meaning, purpose.
But being a different man didn't stop the alarming images which continued to surface out of the amnesia-like fog delineating his contemporary self. There'd been a room...flesh on flesh, heated and slippery. Dewy lips slightly parted, gasping, moaning, pleading for release. He could almost taste that first kiss. Almost feel the drag on his arm as the man he'd once been pulled Rose into an alley, up a flight of stairs. Feet thumping heavily along a landing. Passing one, two, three doors, before propelling her into a stifling hot room. He could almost remember the heat, like a second skin, and the bed, a sagging tangle of iron and springs, squeaking and quivering. Her hair had shimmered, silken smooth strands catching between his calloused fingers.
He'd wanted her so intently. All of his longing for home, comfort and forgiveness had centered in her. There had been hunger and desperation, force and eventual peace. If there been tenderness or love, he couldn't recall it.
He couldn't recall. But he'd sent Rose anyway. He'd smiled at her and told her not to worry as he'd steered her into a madman's path. Setting aside his personal feelings, he'd done what was necessary. Because he was a Time Lord, first, before anything else. A Time Lord and a rat bastard. A temporal loop had been opened. The Time Lord in him knew it had to be closed or the universe as they'd known it would fracture. He had betrayed his people and the woman he loved for the best of reasons. Surely, Rose could never look at him the same way again. He'd put off facing her with this one escapable truth for as long as he could, but he could not put off going to her now. As soon as the TARDIS left, he dashed across the piazza.
It took him a few scattered minutes to locate the bar and attached hotel. He took the stairs three at a time and found Rose sleeping peacefully, curled up under a thread-bare sheet. Her mouth looked bruised, but a small smile played on her lips. The smell of sex lingered in the air. The scent and self-loathing made him retch. He clung to the door frame, letting the sea breeze in. It was cooler now that the sun had set. Fresh air cleaned the heat and the reek from the room. With some effort, he controlled the indulgent impulse to punish himself. Rose mattered more. After setting aside the duffel of clothes he'd brought for her, he removed his coat, tossing it toward the foot of the bed.
He went first to the window, opening it wide. Then, tugging at his tie, he turned back to the bed. He decided to wrap her in his shirt to protect her from further injury. The last thing she needed was a dose of neurotoxin on top of everything else. As he settled on the edge of the bed, his eye fixed on a scrap of paper on the side table. It took him a moment to understand what he was seeing. When he did, he dropped his tie and snatched at the evidence of his madness. His fingertips missed the paper.
He didn't get another chance to examine it. As he leaned forward, Rose's hand brushed his arm. She took him into her dreams, her mind like quicksand, pulling him under. He was powerless to resist. She shifted and held out her arms. His cnidocytes needed no further encouragement. Entering her dreams with a sense of reverence, he did not look for answers, did not seek to reassure himself, but only guided her down into deeper sleep.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The night passed quickly and the sun dawned beastly hot. Coastal humidity increased until the seedy motel room became a pressure cooker. Even in their dream, he could not escape his sense of passing hours, the planet's turning. It was time to go, time to face the consequences of his actions, of his lies. Slowly, reluctantly, the Doctor disengaged the dreaming bits and pieces of himself from the enveloping comfort of Rose Tyler’s mind. Like a dandelion seeding the wind, he let his consciousness fragment into helicoptering puffs of awareness. As he drew away, his sense of separate identity manifested. He was himself again, if insubstantial.
Hovering near the ceiling, in diffuse detachment, he stared down on his marriage bed and his wife. He’d married her. The bloody, bow-legged, big-eared buffoon had married Rose Tyler. On a whim. On the spot. In a pub near the waterfront. He’d handed her a plate and a fish. Not because he’d loved her on sight, but because that’s what he’d always done, married in haste, regretted at leisure. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, straight out of the asylum he'd still viewed himself as a temporal tourist, as if none of the social norms applied to him. If the local constabulary demanded a marriage license for a shag, then he married. Simple really.
Before Rose, it had never occurred to him to take such things seriously. Never occurred to him that marriage might mean anything, be anything, more than a quaint treaty between powers. Because he was a Time Lord and, he might as well face it, quite mad. There was no denying it. He was mad. And a bigamist besides.
He wondered idly if Rose and Melianea Klaxis would get along. Probably not. Not that it mattered. He had no intention of letting Melianea know he’d survived her last assassination attempt. God, he was rubbish at weddings.
But Rose was the perfect bride. Glossed by perspiration, lips slightly swollen, she looked beautiful, angelic. A fallen angel, he believed, but not a bitter or vindictive one. She would forgive him. He had to believe that. Judging by the discrepancies in their appearances, she'd forgiven much already. Physically, he was joke: a ferret-thin fellow, all elbows and knees. His hair clumped in erratic tufts like the grass on beach dunes. One of his trouser legs had crept up his calf. There was a dribble of saliva caked at the corner of his mouth. Having slept in his trousers and trainers, he looked comically disarrayed.
Rose, in contrast, was exquisite. Her hair had fanned in a champagne halo. Her mouth had a rosebud pout. She wore his blue and white striped shirt and his tie, but no knickers or shoes. The barely buttoned shirt gaped, revealing creamy curves. Though open to her navel, the shirt covered her as well as any plunging-neckline swimsuit might. Even when she arched, languidly bridging her back, she retained some semblance of modesty. Though she was wanton and he knew it all too well. He encouraged her to give in to desire, just as he'd abandoned any pretense of restraint. He had no shame and set no limits when it came to her appetite for him.
On the surface of it, they were a mismatched pair, the last Time Lord and a shop girl from some backwater planet. But they were not so far apart anymore. Rose had changed. And so had he. He’d become a different person because of her, a better person. And he loved her. Dearly. Completely. There, he’d said it, if only in his mind. Of course, she knew. She had to know. He was wholly transparent. And on some level it terrified him. But, for the most part, he accepted his fragile happiness. Rose Tyler had become the hub around which his life orbited. She had no idea what he would do for her, the sacrifices he would be willing to make.
Soothed by the mere sight of her, he floated above the bed for some time, perfectly content to watch over her. She slept blissfully on, dreaming of a world she’d never known. His world. Gallifrey. He seldom spoke the name, even when he shared his memories with her. But he often took her there. Her soft murmurings and delighted, if fleeting, smiles reflected how much the wonders of his home world astounded her. Via their shared visions, he’d taken her to nearly all of his childhood haunts. Places he had roamed alone, they had reclaimed as a couple.
This time they’d gone to the Senate for his first speech. A rabble-rousing effort on free will, it had driven Rose to her feet, cheering with the rest of the crowd. Afterward, they’d attended a reception at his family’s ancestral estate. Rose had listened intently as he'd gone through the litany of his clan. He'd given her the shilling tour of the rambling old house. But halfway through they'd been distracted by an open window. Beyond it was the sea where the TARDIS had spawned.
He'd taken her flying. Rose had been amazed by the concept, but had readily absorbed his description of the mechanism involved. Very quickly she was soaring on her own. Despite her novice status, she'd led him a merry chase. Of course, it was far easier to fly in dreams than in reality. But still, she'd impressed him, darting down to skim above the waves. It had taken some effort to catch her. When he did, when he'd driven her to ground, she'd opened her arms to welcome him, radiating joy as they kissed.
In their dreams, he was free to express himself fully, love her as a man. Free to tell her how much he cared. From the first tentative brush of their lips to the moment when Rose had sprawled gasping and naked across his chest, he’d thought of nothing but pleasing her. He’d guided the fantasy and there was no doubt she’d been satisfied. They'd been lovers for some time now. He knew what thrilled her. How rough to be. How tender. Under the surreal glow of Gallifrey's night sky, he’d surrendered to her every desire, made her keen in rapture.
But it had only been a dream. In reality, there was this hot Barcelona room. And what he'd done. He let his flesh inhale his will, his sense of self. And opened his eyes. Rose's breathing sounded labored. They had to get out of here. By midday they would start to stew. Yesterday’s scents, stale sweat and sex, still lingered. The minor irritants formed a sensual anchor for him as he breathed them in. They dragged the rest of his remote consciousness toward his body. Discomfort helped him focus. If he was hot, Rose must be roasting. She would need to eat, drink and deal with other calls of nature.
As he shunted into reality, his flesh absorbed his conscious awareness. He felt himself solidify, took a ragged breath and coughed. The cough expanded into wracking hacks. Sputtering, he struggled into a sitting position. Another anniversary had come and gone, been celebrated and recorded. Rose was twenty-four, a child when compared to his centuries. She’d be dust in one turn of the universe no matter what happened today. And he’d be alone again.
“How long?” She'd asked yesterday on their way to breakfast. “How long until the honeymoon ends?”
And a tiny part of him had whispered, 'Tomorrow. It ends tomorrow.'
That had been his fear talking. It spoke to him often. But he would never utter those words aloud. Never give them power. It would not end, not today, not ever, because he could not bear it. So, instead of answering her, he’d grinned and ricocheted into the nearest shop to buy her the dress in the window and whatever else she’d fancied. She picked out a jeweled bandanna and red shoes. Inspired by her choices, he’d taken her dancing. They’d danced until the early morning hour closed every club. Then, because he hadn’t wanted the day to end, they’d walked along the beach, hand-in-hand, her head pillowed against his shoulder.
But the day had ended. And the next day had come. And he’d told her a pack of lies about destiny and sent her off in her pretty new dress to seduce a madman. He’d sent her to an unknown fate, because he could not remember what kind of man he’d been. He didn’t even recognize the shaggy-haired stranger in the leather coat and jumper. Regeneration amnesia had claimed his past for a time. It was always this way for a Time Lord crossing his own path. No memory of his other selves. A sort of blind spot developed, making them separate men as soon as they came into close proximity. Only the TARDIS offered some protection against this effect, perhaps because it remembered him always.
He’d been clueless when he’d sent Rose on her mission. Worse, he hadn’t told her of his failing memory. He hadn’t warned her to be careful. A warning might have changed things, made her cautious when she should have been bold. But mostly, he didn't warn her because there was no path she could take to avoid meeting his Ninth-self on Barcelona. It had happened. They were caught in a predestination loop. The past dictated events. He’d sent his beloved to be wedded, bedded and abandoned in one night, because his wandering heart knew he must. Knew, in fact, he had already done it. This much he remembered, he'd met Rose before that night at Henrik's. And her mother had been perfectly right to slap him.
Time Lords didn’t cross their own path lightly. To do so was to go forward in temporal blindness, risking your own identity, past and future. One tiny mistake, the famous flap of a butterfly’s wings, could send you into a parallel universe or rewrite your DNA. He could, quite literally, have become another man while Rose was gone. She could have disappeared forever. But he’d had no choice.
The Time Lord in him insisted on bringing Rose Tyler to Barcelona on this, their sixth anniversary. She’d had to go from their present to his past. What had happened before must happen exactly the same way again. Only then, only when the loop closed would their past together be assured. Until that happened, they couldn’t move on into the future together. They had reached a chaos point, one he’d been dreading for a very long time. This was the moment when everything changed, the point where the future he desired could spiral away from him.
He couldn’t tell, yet, if something had gone wrong. He might never be able to tell. But if Rose had failed to seduce him or if he’d hurt her in some permanent way or if love had failed to bloom for him…so much of his existence would have unraveled. No Rose. No Susan. No hope. No him. And he was still here. Rose was still here. Yet, now, he was married. Had they been married all along? If so, why hadn’t he remembered it yesterday?
Seeking cooler skin, Rose kicked fretfully at the sheet wrapped around her legs. The sharp movements drew his attention. He rolled to his side to face her, his arm snaking under his shirt and across her belly. Glancing along her body, he smiled. Bare flesh left him unmoved, he was still a Time Lord and a doctor, but her feet entranced him. She'd given herself a pedicure this week. Her nails sparkled with tiny diamond flowers. He adored the whimsy of that. Loved her toes. Loved how they gripped when, in the heat of passion, she braced a foot against his shoulder or slid one down the back of his thigh. It was a primate thing, prehensile toes. Like hugging it was alien to his culture.
As it turned out, he was a natural born hugger. He’d come to it late in life, but had, for lack of a better word, embraced it completely. He adored holding Rose, having her cling to him. Meld with him. Over the past TARDIS year, he'd taken great pains to encourage clinging. He could find the hugging opportunity in spilled paint. Any slight tragedy or triumph quite easily converted into a snuggle. He had made no attempt, indeed had no wish, to blunt Rose's desire to hold onto him. This was a marked change in him. She wasn't the first companion to crave physical reassurance. He had always held himself apart.
But asexuality had been, at least temporarily, set aside. He'd come to not only tolerate lust, but revel in it. He’d taken Rose in alleyways and doorways, on benches and beaches and bar tops. He’d been taken in turn in lavish motel rooms and tiny space-liner cupboards and once on the M-5 in the back of a lorry conveying chickens to market.
Rose had insisted they cover the cages with his coat. “Being gawked at by doomed poultry,” she’d told him, “isn’t my idea of romantic.”
“Oh, come on," he'd whined. "You’re far more interested in their breasts than they are in yours."
But he’d responded to her stern look, taking off his coat and obediently blocking the view. Afterward, in the afterglow, they’d been inspired to set the chickens free. He’d used his TARDIS, one of the most awe-inspiring and sophisticated pieces of technology in existence, to transport chickens to a better life. They’d taken the fryers to Coliaj Seven where birds of any description were rare enough to be worshiped. Weeks later he was still finding feathers in the console room.
The irony was palpable. Once upon a time he’d been a vagabond clown, the crazy, wandering uncle of his clan. Nobody had respected him. He’d been an embarrassment, something Gallifrey hushed up. And while he was not above foolishness, he’d never dreamed of rescuing chickens from an untimely death. Now, he was the last of his kind, overwhelmed by the magnitude of his responsibilities, respected by untold numbers of people. Yet, he found himself doing the maddest things. Truthfully, he did whatever Rose asked of him. Even if she only pleaded with her eyes, with a glance, he felt compelled to comply. To her credit she asked for very little. With all of time and space at his command, he could have built her a palace from emeralds or made her a planetary queen. Instead, he ended up ferrying chickens to a better life.
He didn't mind really. He wanted Rose to be happy. In some ways that was a greater challenge than he'd ever undertaken. Human satisfaction was fleeting. Mindful of their tendency to become jaded by familiarity, he varied his approach to lovemaking as often as he varied the venue. Luckily, he was nothing if not inventive.
It had been fun for him, liberating. Like Omega before him, he’d come to appreciate human sexuality for its mathematical progression. It scanned very much like music or poetry. The basic biology remained static but the act itself was, like humanity itself, chaotic and infinitely adaptable. It frightened him with its permutations. No one before Rose had ever adapted as well to him. Since their last visit to Barcelona, he'd made sex his personal instrument, and Rose an opus of self-expression, wringing both joyful and sorrowful music from her lips. She’d made him extravagant promises and he'd accepted them without question. She was his. He was hers.
She woke in slow stages. Watching her caused an ethereal pang at the center of his being. He swallowed against the ache as she stirred, turning toward him. Her lashes shivered, lifted and revealed wide, innocent eyes. Behind the veil of her heavy lids, her gaze remained glassy and unfocused. She was still in the grip of the dreaming seed. The world seemed, no doubt, as shadowed and meaningless for her as it had been for him on awaking. But she saw him and smiled mistily, her velvety lips parting just a bit.
Sweet kissable lips, he adored the fullness of them, moist and yielding. His hand skimmed up her side, over the swell of her breast and the along the curve of her throat. Cupping her cheek, he drew her mouth to his, tasting cinnamon and vanilla. She offered no resistance. She offered nothing. He took. Memory stirred at the front of his mind. She wore the same flavored lip-gloss she’d worn the day they’d met. His recollection of this one thing was clear, though all else remained indistinct. The recollections of the man he used to be were elusive, nothing but jagged images. But he thought he remembered savaging her mouth in desperate hunger. He thought he remembered his fury, the tumultuous anger within him, abating as she entered his mind. She'd entered his mind. It had startled him.
He’d been so raw, the day they’d met, straight out the asylum, half-mad and suicidal. The universe, a yawning maw at his back. Despair had threatened to swallow him whole. Wrestling with black rage and helplessness, he’d forced himself to put one foot in front of the other. Finally, no longer able to bear the empty universe, he’d decided to join his people in death. In the grip of a bottomless hunger…so alone, and ready to end it all, he’d come to Barcelona. But something had happened to change him. Rose Tyler, as yet unnamed, had been waiting in a bar. She’d found him, saved him. She’d satisfied his hunger, not just physically but spiritually. She’d given him reason to hope.
He’d called her Bella, the beautiful one. At least he thought he had. He remembered her piecemeal, now, so close to the tipping point of twin existences. There was…the spicy zeal of her lip balm…the yellow and pink dress...her bare shoulders...her kind eyes…her painted, sparkling toenails…the chemical scents, nail polish, hair dye and cheap cosmetics…and an all-enveloping slick heat, the slippery fever of rutting sex, sweaty skin. Dream-like still images were layered over with divergent possibilities. Anything could have happened. Something had.
“You look worried,” Rose rasped, her dry croak cutting into his reverie.
He blinked away his concerns, met her eye, and smiled. “I’m just…that is I was…,” he sighed, knowing he couldn’t tell her, “Thinking…” He rolled away from her and levered to an elbow to retrieve a glass of water from the bedside table. He saw the marriage license again but ignored it. “Are you thirsty?”
She murmured assent as she took the drink from him. Her hands trembled a little. Noticing, he dropped an arm around her shoulder and used his other hand to help her steady the glass, guiding it to her lips. After a few gulps, she sighed, flopping back down onto the pillows.
“Wow. You sure know how to show a girl a good time. What was that building with the spires?” She asked, sketching pointy shapes in the air with her free hand.
The question caught him off-guard. He peeped in confusion, a helpless note at the back of his throat. She took it as a request for more information.
“On your planet? The big white one with the five gold towers?”
“Oh,” he exclaimed, understanding dawning, “The Mojxliia Cathedral, a remnant of the Dark Times. It was designed by Callphaagiasun himself.”
Rose nodded as if she understood all about Gallifreyan architecture. Perhaps she did. “It was beautiful. And the colors, orange and silver…the sea…”
Remembering what they’d done overlooking the sea, he gurgled happily and gave her a tiny squeeze. The lift of his chin and a devilish glint in his eye invited her to grin back at him, but she seemed lost in thought and didn’t even look his way.
Undaunted, he snuffled her hair as he nosed his way to her ear to whisper, “You should rest, but it's too hot here.” Her brevity of encouragement left him rudderless. He shifted away from her to study her profile. Determined to steer the conversation toward cheerful banalities, after a long stretch of silence, he said, “You're wearing my shirt.”
“You gave it to me. And your tie.”
“In the dream,” he said, stressing the final word.
Rose shrugged. “I'm getting better at breaking free. I needed to use the ladies'.” She tugged playfully at his tie, treating it as if it were a crimson leash, before lifting the noose of it over her head. She held it out to him, but he made no move to take it from her hand. “Doctor?”
She'd broken free of the dreaming seed, asserted her will. She'd left him sleeping and he hadn't even stirred. That was an ability beyond any human. Just as embodying the Vortex was beyond Time Lords. What else could she do? What else had she done? For the first time, he wondered if she could manipulate him as easily as she had brought Jack back from the dead. He still shivered slightly when he thought of Jack. The spheres were shifting. He could feel the wobbly wheel turning under his feet.
“We should go,” he said, standing abruptly. With a slight dip of his head, he indicated the duffel by the door. “I brought you clothes. Dress and we'll get a spot of breakfast.”
“Breakfast? I can barely move.”
Fear for her chilled him, raising gooseflesh on his arms and overshadowing any concerns he harbored about her power. “Are you hurt?” He blurted. Resting a knee on the bed, he leaned toward her, solicitously brushing the hair from her brow. “Did he…did I…?”
“What? Ravage me?” Rose chuckled, rolling to her hip to face him. “A bit.” She took his hand in hers and, turning it, kissed his wrist. “Oh, you were very bad before. I had no idea you were so…ho…” she fanned herself with her free hand, indicating heat that had nothing to do with the sweltering room. Her evident delight helped quell his fears.
“I've always been creative,” he admitted. After a brief pause, he checked in with her, “It wasn’t…awful for you, then?”
“No,” she laughed. When he didn’t even crack a smile, she sobered and sat up straight, knees to her chest. Lifting his palm to her cheek, she leaned into it and asked, “Did you think it was? Is that why you left like that? Swanning off while I was sleeping? Did you think I hadn’t enjoyed it?”
He puffed out a ‘w’ as he rocked from side to side, a sure sign he was fumbling for the right thing to say. This was getting awkward and he felt off balance. His Swiss cheese memory had apparently been leading him astray. He tried to control his nervous ticks as his line of sight dropped again to his chucks. “I…didn’t…really consider…” The fingers of his free hand had locked around the nape of his neck. He was floundering, trying not to spaz. What could he say that wouldn't sound insensitive? He’d married her and abandoned her, but frankly had no idea why. A flash of memory gave him words. “You told me to go.”
Rose relaxed, satisfied. “Because of the paradox loop," she surmised, snapping her fingers, and then pointing one at him. He nodded. “I forgot about that. Didn't want you bumping into yourself.” She still held his hand, now cradled against her chest. As she wriggled back down under the sheets, she drew her thumb along his palm. His hand slid through hers. Smiling up at him, she said, “You were so...different. It was wonderful, though. Very good. Very…very…”
“Oh?” he puffed, relief having lasted all of ten seconds. “Three verys for the loon in the jumper. That's nice,” he remarked, brow arching as, once again, his attention drifted to the paper on the table. “So…it was good for you, then? You liked the rough madman and his…scruffy barbering and…and,” he crossed to the table and picked up the room and wedding receipt, “leather jacket.”
Rose frowned. “He’s you,” she reminded him, sounding confused. “I thought you said you couldn’t be jealous of yourself.”
“I’m not jealous,” he said, huffily. “I’m surprised. Perhaps a bit…perplexed. Chiefly, about this,” he said, waving the slip of paper at her. “You married him?”
Turning pink, Rose drew her knees up to her chin. She hugged them as she shrank in on herself. Her mouth opened but no sound came out. The fingers of one hand toyed with her bottom lip. She looked impossibly young, completely innocent. He waited for her to explain but she only ducked her head and said, “Oh, that. Yeah. Well…you said I should just go along with him…with anything…”
“Marriage?” he yelped, rattling the paper emphatically.
“We can have it annulled after breakfast,” Rose said losing interest as she swiveled around until her feet dangled over the side of the bed.
“What?” he said. And then, because she was staring out the window, apparently oblivious to him, he said it again, “What?”
“You don't do domestic. I get that.” Head bowed in contemplation, she swung her feet back and forth. “But its nothing. Just a piece of paper. It's not like it means anything. It can't mean anything, right? I haven't even been born, yet.”
“Of all the self-centered reasoning...” he began, starting around the end of the bed.
She stood, sidestepping his advance, and, with a few deft movements, shed his shirt. Then, covering her breasts with crossed arms, she scurried to the duffel. Surprised into silence, he watched her rummage for knickers, a bra and her blue jeans. She kept a cold shoulder to him as she dressed. He wondered at this sudden modesty, but didn't think to question her mood.
“You could have changed history,” he said, sharply. “Did you even consider that?”
“Of course, I considered it,” Rose countered, sounding angry. She shot him a scowl. “I may not be a Time Lord, but I'm not stupid.” Briefly shuffling through the tops he’d brought, she cast the lot of them back into the bag. “But what was I supposed to do? And why didn't you tell me we were married? All those times I was jealous…all those nights we spent together…you never thought to say, 'Oh, by the by...'”
“That’s because we aren't married...weren't married. It didn’t happen like that.” He didn’t want to suggest he might have forgotten it. “The universe as we know it could be unraveling and you'd like an apology?”
“Is that too much to ask?” Rose challenged him. “You send me off with a cheerful pat on the head and tell me just go along with everything. They wouldn't rent us a room without a proper license. And he...you insisted. I didn't even know what was happening, at first. Do you remember what you were like before? Arrogant and alien and drunk and mad and...you whipped out a handful of coins and told me to sign where indicated. And how do you always get a room here if we aren't married?”
“I lie. Dr. & Mrs. John Smith. Did neither of you think of lying to the landlord, Mrs....” he glanced at the paper in his hand, and read the name on a fading breath, “Foreman?” Foreman. Susan. And his former self. A dead man as far as Rose was concerned. Her see-sawing mood suddenly made perfect sense. How painful and odd this must all be for her.
He saw her impatiently brush away a tear and opened his mouth to apologize, but she was already striding back to the bed. “I thought of kicking a door in somewhere, just getting on with it. But you...he...needed it to be...special.” Her voice cracked and he understood how confused she must have been.
There were things for him to regret here. They just weren't the things he'd been expecting. He wanted desperately to say something consoling.
But instead, he asked, “How could that be wonderful?”
“It was still you,” she said, simply. “Hurting and lost...but...”
“I'm sorry...I...”
Her hands clenched, twisting his shirt collar. “It's a bit late for that, isn't it? All this time, you've been lying to me. You thought I was going to be ravaged or something…and you didn’t know about the marriage? So, when you sent me off...” Her teeth bit through the rest of her sentence. "Oh, what does it matter?" She gave his shirt a swift snap, cracking it through the air, before ramming her arms into the sleeves.
“It matters." He spoke to her as an equal, as if she were a Time Lord, too. "You had to go. We had to close the loop.”
“I know,” she said, giving him a very bleak stare. “I can feel the planet turning. This place. This time. It's making my skin itch."
"You can feel it?"
"I could leave your mind. And I put his head right. I'm not exactly human anymore. Am I?”
He bounced from foot to foot, trying to think of something to say, but nothing came to him and he finally settled on a confession. “All right. So, I don't know everything. I didn’t exactly remember what happened between us...not clearly. It's all a bit fuzzy...and complicated. Like you said, you're changing. And that's...not what I expected and I’d had a lot to drink. And…I'd been through the war, post-asylum stress syndrome...then there was the tree slug in my system. And there’s a sort of amnesia. When a Time Lord crosses his own…”
He was talking to thin air.
Damn.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Damn.
She'd used the blue. It had taken most of the morning to position the Hoix perfectly. They'd outflanked it twice only to have it slip away. But they'd finally cornered it, three strides short of its recon-ship. And now it was after her again. Yelling at Rose to hold on, the Doctor slammed the door on the only exit and raced off along a divergent corridor. If he'd judged the route correctly, he should be able to intercept the Hoix before it took off Rose's head. If he'd judged incorrectly, he'd be running around in circles again.
He sprinted past a fork in the way, not sure bearing left was the right choice. All of the intersecting corridors were beginning to look alike. Of course, one hardly expected original décor in a meat processing plant. But they might have added a few yellow lines on the floor to guide visitors. Inconsiderate, he'd say.
Pausing at the next junction to catch his breath and take his bearings, he listened and heard Rose coming. The beast growled and snarled, close behind her. Its lower tones were almost lost against the background noise of machinery, but Rose's screaming reverberated in the labyrinth like a siren's wail. They'd established the bellowing as a signal. It was the best way to keep track of one another in the maze of corridors. The noise helped the Doctor orient. Once he'd fixed on Rose's relative position, he readied himself like a relay-race sprinter awaiting a baton hand-off.
Rose appeared out of the mist on his right. She rocketed by him, screaming for all she was worth. He fell into stride just behind her and they ran together for a few meters. They passed through the exit hall again, both of them bellowing. This was getting as monotonous as it was ridiculous.
“Take the next two lefts,” he barked at Rose. “Get to the TARDIS and fetch the other bucket.”
“Right,” she said, nodding.
“Not right,” he corrected, irritably, “Left. Twice. And not blue.”
Salient points stressed, he dropped back until the Hoix was breathing down his neck. The beast clawed at him, but missed. Despite the burden of a flaring coat, and the need to duck around frozen sides of beef, the Doctor was quick on his feet. He needed to stay a few strides ahead of his fearsome pursuer. He didn't want to risk losing an arm. But he also couldn't afford to lose the predator's interest. If they allowed it to report in with data, the Hoixania would know it had found a habitable planet. Better it was never heard from again. If only they'd managed to corral it.
The creature slashed at him again, just as Rose broke away from them. The Doctor pivoted to the left as if to follow her. Then, at the last second, zigged right again. The sudden change in direction spared him a nasty cut, but unfortunately, it also sent him careening out of control. Sensing weakness the Hoix charged. Fantastic. The Doctor whirled. Skidding along the wall, he narrowly avoided a killing blow to the head.
Too close. That was too close, he thought, turning on a bit of speed. His yelling took on a more desperate edge. They'd been running for what seemed like an eternity. Up and down the same narrow ways. Where the hell was Rose with that bucket? The stress was starting to take a toll on him, and his trainers. As he bolted around a corner, one of his shoe laces broke. He trod on the loose end, staggered and the beast caught up. It slammed into his shoulder, talons closing around his arm. There was nothing to check their momentum. The Doctor tried to turn his fall into a dive, but off balance, he splayed forward. Struggling to keep his feet, he flailed his arms as gravity got the better of him.
He and the Hoix collapsed in a heap. Staring into the teeth of fate, he readied himself for the regenerative fire. The monster bellowed its triumph. It had breath like an open sewer. It rose to its feet, towering over him. And Rose arrived. She rushed from the right, red bucket in hand.
“About bloody time,” he snapped. And then, because the beast had smelled its doom and turned tail, he added, “After it.”
With a war whoop, Rose took off on the heels of the Hoix. Exhaling stress in a rush, he scrambled up to follow. They crossed the central corridor again, three in a line. Trailing behind, the Doctor was momentarily distracted by the sight of the boy who had come upon them earlier. The one he'd told to run. A factory worker, he'd assumed, but now he noticed something familiar in the wide-eyed stare. He’d seen that face somewhere before. He backpedaled to stare.
“Do I know you?” he asked. The boy didn't answer, just gurgled moronically before bolting. Humans, they were an unpredictable lot.
By the time the Doctor caught up to Rose, she'd already dispatched the Hoix. Case in point, he thought. Breathing hard, they both stared down at the puddle of goo that had been chasing them around all morning. The silence was like a raised wall between them. It felt strange not to be yelling.
Rose blew a strand of crimped hair out of her eyes. Then, she shot him an 'are you mad?” look and said, “Who says 'not blue' when they mean 'red'? It's like saying, 'When you're out in the kitchen, don't pour me a glass of milk.' What does that tell me?”
“That I'm lactose intolerant,” he joked, nudging his shoulder into hers.
Refusing to grant him even the suggestion of a smile, Rose stared silently at him for a beat too long. Then, huffing rudely, she spun about and, bucket in hand, started for the TARDIS. His grin evaporated and he groaned. This cold shoulder business was killing him. It had been three weeks since he'd stepped into it with both feet, three whole weeks without a touch or a kiss. He'd imagined she would forgive him over breakfast. But they'd hit an impasse over the annulment issue and she showed no sign of relenting.
And what did she have to be angry about? Nothing. Being married wasn't something to complain about. It was something to endure. As he'd told her repeatedly. She should look on the bright side. Time hadn't unraveled.
“Or maybe,” he went on, jovially as he caught up to her and did a sort of twirl in her path, “I don't fancy milk. Maybe I crave a grapefruit juice or a beer or a blumberry smoothie. Now there's an idea. Nice blumberry smoothie, touch of rum in it. Whadya say?” He gave her another gentle prod.
“Not wanting blue isn't the same thing as wanting red,” Rose sniffed.
“Big toothy monster choking the life out of me,” he said, pointing over his shoulder as if pointing might clear things up for her. “I could barely get the words out.”
“Red is shorter than 'Not blue,'” Rose countered, fumbling for her key. “One syllable. Much easier to say when the life is being choked out of you. Red. See?” He stepped around her, his key in hand. “And you've got respiratory bypass,” she added. Chilled, she hugged herself as she waited for him to unlock the door. Time was he would be hugging her. Instead, he stood aside to let her enter the warmth of their home. She brushed by him brusquely, but halted just inside the door. “Some people say what they mean.”
“Humans?” he inquired, bending to whisper into her ear. “Humans do things differently, you mean?”
She rolled her eyes and stalked away from him. “That's not what I said.”
“But you’re implying it,” he insisted as he stripped off his coat and hurled it blindly toward a support beam. “Implying that some species, say…humans, for example, ask for exactly what they want, ask someone to marry them, for example, instead of just…I don't know…refusing to go along with an annulment.”
“I was talking about buckets,” Rose said, primly. Carefully removing her jean jacket, she folded it over the railing, and then settled into their chair for two. Her body language easily conveyed it was now a chair for one. Feet braced on the edge of the console, arms crossed over her chest, she stared into the middle distance. “But now we're on your favorite subject. The way I see it we don't need an annulment. You died. It's 'til death do us part. So, we're not married.”
“Fine by me. If that was how it worked. But it doesn't work that way, does it? Because I'm not dead. Also, time didn't unravel. So we were married. Are married. Have always been married. And we're going to stay married.”
“What about my right to free will?”
“Nobody forced you to take my ruddy fish,” he snapped. “And so you'll know, respiratory bypass doesn't mean I can chat about the weather while a big nasty beastie throttles me senseless. It just means I can go without oxygen for a...Fulham,” He announced brightly, jerking to a standstill as he interrupted himself. He seized a fistful of his hair and tugged at it. “I knew I'd seen that boy somewhere before. Fulham, 1979.”
“The one I ran past?” Rose asked. She was used to his mercurial topic changes, but a bit puzzled by this one. “Doctor?” she inquired when he failed to respond.
“The Elemental Shade,” he hummed, absently, his eyes misty and unfocused. “What are the odds?”
“I don't even know what you're talking about."
“The Elemental Shade,” he repeated, gesturing impatiently as if he believed she was being intentionally obtuse. “We chased it to Earth just before we...” He broke off, not wanting to mention Barcelona. After fiddling with his ear, he steeled himself against dithering, and pretended to concentrate on the TARDIS flight controls. His fingers danced over buttons and keys, programming Vortex variables without much guidance from his distracted mind.
“I know about Shades. The shadow beings,” Rose said, catching on, but still confused. “From the Howling.”
“Insubstantial in their true form. They feed on any element in suspension...potassium, magnesium, iron.”
“Human blood,” Rose cut in, hopping out of her chair. “I remember. You said a shade loose in human habitation could decimate the population. Without potassium our heart stops. No iron and we can't breathe.”
“Yes, and they're difficult to kill. Well, I say I kill,” he waggled his head from side to side, to indicate he wasn't satisfied with such an imprecise term, “but they can't really be killed, can they? Because they aren't really alive. Transmuted, maybe, same difference.” He peered at her from beneath lowered lashes, but quickly returned his attention to his dials and switches.
“And that bloke I just ran by is infected?” Rose surmised, suddenly all business. “Come on. There's still time to catch him.”
Darting by him on her way to the door, she was already halfway up the ramp when he caught her. No thought of her own safety, he realized with a surge of pride. Swooping an arm around her waist, he steered her through a u-turn as he said, “He's not infected. He never was. He's the boy we took to the orphanage. I saved him.” His voice took on the resonance of regret as he added, “But I was too late to save her.”
“His mother,” Rose breathed. Still in the shelter of his embrace, she looked up as she clasped his forearm, all animosity forgotten. ”I remember. She was so young.”
He glanced at her hand, gently stroking him. This was his Rose. His wife. She empathized with strangers and consoled gods. She had no awe of him. He was the last line of temporal authority. No one else in the galaxy thought of him as fragile, in need of comfort. He wanted to kiss her as he met her eye, but only held her gaze steadily for a long moment, drinking in her loving care the way a desert flower absorbed morning dew.
Releasing a shuddering little sigh, she recalled her anger and shifted a short distance away from him. She was still very close. He gathered the hair from her neck and let it cascade through his fingers. Her fingers toyed with a venting coil on the console. She knew better than to tug on it like that, but he knew better than to scold her just now. Trying not to overreact to her proximity, or read too much into her continued silence, he turned his attention to the mundane.
He rerouted the overloads to another vent and went on readying the ship for flight. Selecting a launch sequence, he punched in re-entry coordinates and leveled the pressure readings. The TARDIS beeped her understanding. After tapping a wonky dial with a knuckle, he started spinning the paperweight he used for temporal navigation. Where to go? Where to go? Barcelona was out. He could take her to a concert. Or the signing of the Magna Carta.
“I don't want to do this anymore,” Rose said, softly.
An electric shock seemed to pulse through him and he froze, one hand hovering near the hand brake. “You want t-t-to...leave?”
The room had a surreal haze about it. He couldn't sense the floor beneath his feet. His injured tone and stricken expression bought him a moment of her interest. She lifted her gaze and he saw tears glossing her eyes. They stared at one another for a heartbeat or two. Then, the horror on his face cut through her preoccupation. She gave a quick dismissive shake of her head and moved very close to him again. She smelled like warm tea, astringent with a hint of honey and peppermint.
“Oh...no, I don't mean...I just...I don't want to fight. All this bickering...like my mum and dad.”
The monitor screen flashed bright green, drawing his attention to suggested destinations along their proposed flight path. One planet caught his eye. Suddenly, he had an idea.
“No more,” he whispered and slapped the hand brake off. As soon as the rotor started moving, he cocked his head to peer at her and said, “Fancy a wedding?”
Rose actually flinched. Of all the tactless things to say, “Fancy a wedding,” had to take the gilded biscuit.
“No,” she said, flatly. Shoulders hunched to her ears, hands burrowed into her jeans' pockets, she scuffed back to the chair and collapsed into it.
Acutely aware of those unshed tears, he kept his chin down, but peered up at her from beneath lowered lashes. At times like this, it was hard to believe she tolerated him at all.
“Can't say I blame you. I'm rubbish at weddings, myself. As you've learned. Remember what happened at the last one we attended?” He realized his mistake before she could correct him. “Prior to our own, I mean?”
“Food poisoning,” Rose sighed. “I spent a week in hospital.”
“And the one before that?”
“Is that the one where the bride ran off with her bridesmaid?”
“Could be,” He chewed his lip as he thought it over, then said, “No, wasn't that Jack’s wedding in Kyoto? The one I meant was the one with the fiery serpent. Armageddon,” he waggled his eyebrows at her as he said, “Uh-huh, that’s about it for me and weddings. End of the world as we know it. I spent my very first wedding in tears. But this one is different. This is the one that goes right. You’ll love it.”
“I don't want to go to a wedding. Not even if the world ends after...not even if it's Princess Diana's.”
“Diana? Please,” he snorted, wafting a dismissive hand as he jigged about checking readings. “You call that a wedding?”
“She had a Cinderella carriage and a gown covered in diamonds and a bridal train as long as the church aisle. Yeah, I'd call that a wedding. Beats a cold fish on a plate.”
“Well, just about anything would,” he admitted. “But veils and carriages don't put you in the Michelin Guide to Weddings of Note. Diana was a blip in the expanse of history. Her little shindig can’t compare to the finest tourist weddings in the galaxy. Not by a long shot. Melianea Klaxis Hgotepteq Postlewaite-Wiggins, Empress of Sol and Andromeda, Protectorate of the United Colonies of Orion and Splee, Queen of Gorgon's Arch 6 and Divine and Undisputed Ruler of the Rim Satellite Fleet married on Earth. She had the moon done over in pink crystal.” Warming to his theme, he used both hands to frame the scenario in the air as he expounded. “I don't mean gilded or...bedazzled...I mean replaced. Blew up the old one cleared it off and put in something shinier.”
“She replaced the moon?” Though he could tell she fought to contain it, Rose couldn't help smiling just a little. “Wouldn't that cause earthquakes and flooding?”
“Oh, yes. Earthquakes, hurricanes, flooding, drought. One or two extinctions.” He beamed in cheery counterpoint to this list of disasters, inordinately encouraged by her smile. “Not to mention, a really nasty meteor shower. I told her it was a bad idea, but she never listened. Clouds of moon dust blocked out the sun for a week. Luckily they managed to Hoover it all up before guests started pouring in. But repositioning the crystal threw the tides off. Fixing that caused a slight realignment of the Earth’s axis. Kept the weather wardens busy for decades after. And reflected pink light beaming down meant nobody got a good night's sleep for over a year. Nearly resulted in economic ruin. Productivity plummeted.”
“Bet the people who manufactured those little black sleep masks made a killing.”
“Not to mention the caterers. Oh, and the ice sculptors. She had the Arctic ice flows carved up...into doves and pirate ships and such. Gorgeous really, sparkling under the Aurora Borealis.”
“You were there? Giving her advice?”
“Ah…yes…” So much for their returning camaraderie. “I was there. Not so much advising as protesting,” he admitted, his attention momentarily distracted by a blinking light. He pushed buttons at random until the light went out. “By the time I heard about the moon, they were lighting the fuse. The groom is seldom consulted about decorating decisions. One of the many things I loathe about weddings.”
“The groom?” Rose peeped. “You married...? Loved this...?” She struggled to find a more appropriate slur than ignorant slag. “Hang on, you mean you're taking me to your wedding?”
He cut a glance at her from the corner of his eye, wondering if she would storm out of the room before he could explain. “Yes,” he said, carefully. “But let's be clear. I never claimed to love Melianea Klaxis. There was a treaty. To end a war. I represented one side. She represented the other. And she had no intention of honoring her pledges. She tried to assassinate me on our wedding night. You'd be surprised how common that reaction is.” He winked at her. “Or maybe you wouldn't. But you and Emma Louise are the only two who didn't at one time or other order my execution. And Emma barely knew me. So we can't really judge by her, perhaps she would have killed me if given the full brunt of my personality. Anyway, the pink moon fiasco was my seventh wedding.”
“You’re…?” She was glaring at him again. “Just how many wedding have you had?”
“Oh, a fair number,” he said, shrugging. “I’m not blindly prejudiced. Did you think it just came to me one day that I don't do domestic? That would be a tad shallow.”
“I thought you just hated commitments.”
“No, my antipathy is based on hard won experience. I've had…let’s see…counting ours…twenty-seven…” He chewed his lip, considering and then said, “No...wait...wait...twenty-eight weddings. I always forget about the Aztec princess. She’s like the Spanish Inquisition.”
“It’s no one expects the Spanish Inquisition,” Rose corrected, absently. “And you're telling me I'm your...twenty-eighth...?”
Frowning, she pressed the heel of her hand to her temple, obviously floored by the destructive magnitude of this latest bombshell. He did tend to be secretive about his past. On the other hand, he'd lived a very long time. If he sat down and started relating every head cold and heart break he'd experienced they'd never go anywhere.
“Twenty-eight is hardly a harem. But as it happens, I've only had five wives.”
“Twenty-eight weddings but only five wives? What happened to the other ones? Or do you just keep marrying the same people like…like Elizabeth Taylor?” A thought struck and she pieced things together in a way that made sense to her. “Or is it because you regenerate? You keep marrying the same people over and over again, every time you change?”
He shook his head. “It’s not about regeneration,” he said, with sympathetic tenderness. “The other weddings just didn’t take. I never seem to get it right, do I? It's sort of how your people can’t make toast.”
The rotor stopped moving. They’d arrived. He drew in a deep breath, and then swept his arm in a wide arc of invitation.
“After you,” he said.
Rose paled. “I believe you,” she said, backing away from him. “I don’t want to see this.”
“Rose? There's no escaping it. We should have come here long ago. I need you to understand this.”
She shook her head. “It doesn't matter,” she said. “We can just go back to traveling and...”
“It matters,” he insisted. “If you want to stop bickering this is the only way.”
She didn't look convinced. Sighing, he said, “I didn't tell you about the others, Melianea Klaxis and Romana and the Rani and Emma because they were part of my life before you. Painful memories, every one of them.” Rose stared at him. Hurt again, and confused. All those times in his head and she'd never pressed for a commitment, never poked through his mind for reassurances. He didn't think he would ever understand her. He went for his coat, shrugged into it and spent a few moments adjusting his collar, before looking back to her. “This won't hurt a bit. Come on.” He held out his hand, fingers spread wide. After a moment, she crept forward and reluctantly took it.
Their fingers interlocked, smoothly, like puzzle pieces designed for one another. He pulled her up the ramp toward the door, and then through it. Rose gasped. And he grinned down at her. She’d been expecting the glitter of a futuristic city, the glow of a pink moon. Instead, they stood on a rocky coastline. The sun was rising. Huge pterodactyl-like creatures swooped overhead.
“Welcome to the Crucible,” he said. “The origin planet of all life.”
“It's cold.”
“Go,” he tilted his head toward the open TARDIS door. “Fetch a jacket. I'll wait here.”
She left and he waited, not sure if she'd return. Glancing down, he noticed his tie. It was the same one he'd worn on Barcelona. A fighting tie, he thought and decided on the spur of the moment that it was unlucky. Not that he believed in luck, but there was no sense taking chances. He popped into the TARDIS to change. Rose was waiting for him when he got back. 'Free will at work,' he silently told the cosmos. Her curiosity rivaled his own. It was one of the many things he loved about her. She couldn't help wanting to know more, even if it got her into trouble.
When he went to stand beside her, she asked, “Why are we here? And isn't this dangerous?" She lifted one foot and glanced at the sole of her boot. "Couldn't we crush some algae or insect and put an end to life as we know it?”
“Time Lord,” he reminded her, archly touching fingertips to his chest. “The TARDIS scanned for DNA traces and any irreplaceable lifeforms before we landed. Nothing underfoot but some random fluff. And I told you, we're here for a wedding.”
Rose put her boot back on the ground and considered him intently for a moment. "You changed your shirt," she said.
"The other one didn't go with this tie," he told her. They studied the view, looking out past rocky arches to the sea. The sunrise sent golden and crimson threads of light across the sky. There wasn't another soul in sight, save the flying reptiles.
“Fairly intimate affair, this," Rose said, sounding pleased by their growing sense of accord. "Not too crowded.”
He shot her a playful glance. “Very exclusive,” he agreed. He weighed his next words carefully before he spoke. “I don't know what's happening to you, Rose. It seems impossible. But you are changing.”
“Into what?”
He studied her impassively for a time, but did not answer directly. Then, looking, again, to the sea, he said, “For my people, this is the only sacred place beyond Gallifrey. Before we gave up everything having to do with unions, we used to pledge our troth by the Crucible. Time Lords are...were...a shifty lot. We considered ourselves above most of the trivial legalities. Conventional pledges don't apply when you can shed your identity as easily as we can.”
“How can a vow to the death mean anything if you never die,” Rose remarked.
“Exactly. And like you've said, contracts, marriage license, are just paper. Annulments are much the same. Meaningless. Eternity is a grand equalizer. All things fade to dust in time. Civilizations rise and fall. Their laws can hardly be applied universally. We needed something enduring, some binding symbolism.”
“The origin of all life,” Rose murmured her understanding. “You swore all of your oaths on existence itself.”
“The only abstract concept we all honored, yes.” He drew in a deep breath and slowly released it. “This is the only promise that has meaning, for as long as I exist,” he said. Did she understand? Hands clenched in his pockets, he slowly turned his head to face her as he asked, “How long are you going to stay with me?”
He sensed her relaxing. A luminous peace flooded her face. But she granted him only the ghost of a smile as she answered, “Forever.”
She held his gaze for a second or two cementing the oath, before returning her attention to the horizon. After a moment of reverent silence, she soberly asked, “How long do you want me to stay?”
He took a giant step to his right. Then, leaning into her shoulder, he scooped her hand into his and whispered gleefully into her ear, “Oh, a bit longer than that, I should think. A bit longer than forever.”
END THIS PART
DISHEVELED
by Rabid1st
Ten/Rose
Rating: Adult+
Beta Babes: Kes, Aibhinn, Ruth, Gina and Queenie.
Summary: Rose is changing, learning more about time and space and her place in the Doctor's life.
Disclaimer: I do not own Doctor Who, any characters or situations. RTD could swoop in here and kick my cyber-bottom, if he wanted. But I doubt he will. Not only because he has shinier cyber-bottoms to spank in RL, but also because he's a fangeek his ownself. Still, let's not tell him about this, okay?
LINKS for all previous parts…can be found HERE
PART TWENTY
The Crimson-Cycle on the Lor-Xin Spatial-Relevance Wheel – Eye of Harmony Variance: Apogee Gamma Frame 108 Sigma had a bad reputation. Over sixteen hundred wars had sparked at those temporal coordinates. Two hundred and thirty-nine civilizations crumbled into dust before the wobbly wheel turned again. Suns went nova. Planets withered and died. Suicide bombers, suicide pacts and suicide missions had flourished in the Crimson Cycle. Every young Time Lord studied the Variance, looking for loopholes in time. There'd even been a sort of parlor game based on containing random fluctuations of the myriad paradox loops.
Only pirates, lunatics and fools parked their TARDIS anywhere along the Crimson-Cycle of The Wobbly Wheel. The Doctor didn't see himself as a fool, or much of a pirate. The jury was still out on lunatic, he supposed. The fact was he was quite mad on that fateful October day, oh, so long ago, the day he'd first met Rose Tyler in a waterfront pub. He'd come to Barcelona to finish himself and ended up initiating a paradox loop of his very own. A loop he'd had no choice but to close one day.
At the moment, he could barely remember it. Regenerative spooling was blinding him to his former self. He could just about recall knowing of the man in the leather coat and purple jumper. Purple? Rose said it brought out his eyes, but was that really a look he'd fancied? Or was it only what they'd given him when he left the asylum? He couldn't say. That man, his former self, was a stranger to him. Regenerative spooling, a sort of temporary amnesia, created echoing holes in his memory. He'd watched a shaggy-haired, wild-eyed man exit the TARDIS with no sense of recognition. He wasn't that man. They were two separate people. He wasn't hanging onto sanity by an unraveling thread. His life had meaning, purpose.
But being a different man didn't stop the alarming images which continued to surface out of the amnesia-like fog delineating his contemporary self. There'd been a room...flesh on flesh, heated and slippery. Dewy lips slightly parted, gasping, moaning, pleading for release. He could almost taste that first kiss. Almost feel the drag on his arm as the man he'd once been pulled Rose into an alley, up a flight of stairs. Feet thumping heavily along a landing. Passing one, two, three doors, before propelling her into a stifling hot room. He could almost remember the heat, like a second skin, and the bed, a sagging tangle of iron and springs, squeaking and quivering. Her hair had shimmered, silken smooth strands catching between his calloused fingers.
He'd wanted her so intently. All of his longing for home, comfort and forgiveness had centered in her. There had been hunger and desperation, force and eventual peace. If there been tenderness or love, he couldn't recall it.
He couldn't recall. But he'd sent Rose anyway. He'd smiled at her and told her not to worry as he'd steered her into a madman's path. Setting aside his personal feelings, he'd done what was necessary. Because he was a Time Lord, first, before anything else. A Time Lord and a rat bastard. A temporal loop had been opened. The Time Lord in him knew it had to be closed or the universe as they'd known it would fracture. He had betrayed his people and the woman he loved for the best of reasons. Surely, Rose could never look at him the same way again. He'd put off facing her with this one escapable truth for as long as he could, but he could not put off going to her now. As soon as the TARDIS left, he dashed across the piazza.
It took him a few scattered minutes to locate the bar and attached hotel. He took the stairs three at a time and found Rose sleeping peacefully, curled up under a thread-bare sheet. Her mouth looked bruised, but a small smile played on her lips. The smell of sex lingered in the air. The scent and self-loathing made him retch. He clung to the door frame, letting the sea breeze in. It was cooler now that the sun had set. Fresh air cleaned the heat and the reek from the room. With some effort, he controlled the indulgent impulse to punish himself. Rose mattered more. After setting aside the duffel of clothes he'd brought for her, he removed his coat, tossing it toward the foot of the bed.
He went first to the window, opening it wide. Then, tugging at his tie, he turned back to the bed. He decided to wrap her in his shirt to protect her from further injury. The last thing she needed was a dose of neurotoxin on top of everything else. As he settled on the edge of the bed, his eye fixed on a scrap of paper on the side table. It took him a moment to understand what he was seeing. When he did, he dropped his tie and snatched at the evidence of his madness. His fingertips missed the paper.
He didn't get another chance to examine it. As he leaned forward, Rose's hand brushed his arm. She took him into her dreams, her mind like quicksand, pulling him under. He was powerless to resist. She shifted and held out her arms. His cnidocytes needed no further encouragement. Entering her dreams with a sense of reverence, he did not look for answers, did not seek to reassure himself, but only guided her down into deeper sleep.
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The night passed quickly and the sun dawned beastly hot. Coastal humidity increased until the seedy motel room became a pressure cooker. Even in their dream, he could not escape his sense of passing hours, the planet's turning. It was time to go, time to face the consequences of his actions, of his lies. Slowly, reluctantly, the Doctor disengaged the dreaming bits and pieces of himself from the enveloping comfort of Rose Tyler’s mind. Like a dandelion seeding the wind, he let his consciousness fragment into helicoptering puffs of awareness. As he drew away, his sense of separate identity manifested. He was himself again, if insubstantial.
Hovering near the ceiling, in diffuse detachment, he stared down on his marriage bed and his wife. He’d married her. The bloody, bow-legged, big-eared buffoon had married Rose Tyler. On a whim. On the spot. In a pub near the waterfront. He’d handed her a plate and a fish. Not because he’d loved her on sight, but because that’s what he’d always done, married in haste, regretted at leisure. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, straight out of the asylum he'd still viewed himself as a temporal tourist, as if none of the social norms applied to him. If the local constabulary demanded a marriage license for a shag, then he married. Simple really.
Before Rose, it had never occurred to him to take such things seriously. Never occurred to him that marriage might mean anything, be anything, more than a quaint treaty between powers. Because he was a Time Lord and, he might as well face it, quite mad. There was no denying it. He was mad. And a bigamist besides.
He wondered idly if Rose and Melianea Klaxis would get along. Probably not. Not that it mattered. He had no intention of letting Melianea know he’d survived her last assassination attempt. God, he was rubbish at weddings.
But Rose was the perfect bride. Glossed by perspiration, lips slightly swollen, she looked beautiful, angelic. A fallen angel, he believed, but not a bitter or vindictive one. She would forgive him. He had to believe that. Judging by the discrepancies in their appearances, she'd forgiven much already. Physically, he was joke: a ferret-thin fellow, all elbows and knees. His hair clumped in erratic tufts like the grass on beach dunes. One of his trouser legs had crept up his calf. There was a dribble of saliva caked at the corner of his mouth. Having slept in his trousers and trainers, he looked comically disarrayed.
Rose, in contrast, was exquisite. Her hair had fanned in a champagne halo. Her mouth had a rosebud pout. She wore his blue and white striped shirt and his tie, but no knickers or shoes. The barely buttoned shirt gaped, revealing creamy curves. Though open to her navel, the shirt covered her as well as any plunging-neckline swimsuit might. Even when she arched, languidly bridging her back, she retained some semblance of modesty. Though she was wanton and he knew it all too well. He encouraged her to give in to desire, just as he'd abandoned any pretense of restraint. He had no shame and set no limits when it came to her appetite for him.
On the surface of it, they were a mismatched pair, the last Time Lord and a shop girl from some backwater planet. But they were not so far apart anymore. Rose had changed. And so had he. He’d become a different person because of her, a better person. And he loved her. Dearly. Completely. There, he’d said it, if only in his mind. Of course, she knew. She had to know. He was wholly transparent. And on some level it terrified him. But, for the most part, he accepted his fragile happiness. Rose Tyler had become the hub around which his life orbited. She had no idea what he would do for her, the sacrifices he would be willing to make.
Soothed by the mere sight of her, he floated above the bed for some time, perfectly content to watch over her. She slept blissfully on, dreaming of a world she’d never known. His world. Gallifrey. He seldom spoke the name, even when he shared his memories with her. But he often took her there. Her soft murmurings and delighted, if fleeting, smiles reflected how much the wonders of his home world astounded her. Via their shared visions, he’d taken her to nearly all of his childhood haunts. Places he had roamed alone, they had reclaimed as a couple.
This time they’d gone to the Senate for his first speech. A rabble-rousing effort on free will, it had driven Rose to her feet, cheering with the rest of the crowd. Afterward, they’d attended a reception at his family’s ancestral estate. Rose had listened intently as he'd gone through the litany of his clan. He'd given her the shilling tour of the rambling old house. But halfway through they'd been distracted by an open window. Beyond it was the sea where the TARDIS had spawned.
He'd taken her flying. Rose had been amazed by the concept, but had readily absorbed his description of the mechanism involved. Very quickly she was soaring on her own. Despite her novice status, she'd led him a merry chase. Of course, it was far easier to fly in dreams than in reality. But still, she'd impressed him, darting down to skim above the waves. It had taken some effort to catch her. When he did, when he'd driven her to ground, she'd opened her arms to welcome him, radiating joy as they kissed.
In their dreams, he was free to express himself fully, love her as a man. Free to tell her how much he cared. From the first tentative brush of their lips to the moment when Rose had sprawled gasping and naked across his chest, he’d thought of nothing but pleasing her. He’d guided the fantasy and there was no doubt she’d been satisfied. They'd been lovers for some time now. He knew what thrilled her. How rough to be. How tender. Under the surreal glow of Gallifrey's night sky, he’d surrendered to her every desire, made her keen in rapture.
But it had only been a dream. In reality, there was this hot Barcelona room. And what he'd done. He let his flesh inhale his will, his sense of self. And opened his eyes. Rose's breathing sounded labored. They had to get out of here. By midday they would start to stew. Yesterday’s scents, stale sweat and sex, still lingered. The minor irritants formed a sensual anchor for him as he breathed them in. They dragged the rest of his remote consciousness toward his body. Discomfort helped him focus. If he was hot, Rose must be roasting. She would need to eat, drink and deal with other calls of nature.
As he shunted into reality, his flesh absorbed his conscious awareness. He felt himself solidify, took a ragged breath and coughed. The cough expanded into wracking hacks. Sputtering, he struggled into a sitting position. Another anniversary had come and gone, been celebrated and recorded. Rose was twenty-four, a child when compared to his centuries. She’d be dust in one turn of the universe no matter what happened today. And he’d be alone again.
“How long?” She'd asked yesterday on their way to breakfast. “How long until the honeymoon ends?”
And a tiny part of him had whispered, 'Tomorrow. It ends tomorrow.'
That had been his fear talking. It spoke to him often. But he would never utter those words aloud. Never give them power. It would not end, not today, not ever, because he could not bear it. So, instead of answering her, he’d grinned and ricocheted into the nearest shop to buy her the dress in the window and whatever else she’d fancied. She picked out a jeweled bandanna and red shoes. Inspired by her choices, he’d taken her dancing. They’d danced until the early morning hour closed every club. Then, because he hadn’t wanted the day to end, they’d walked along the beach, hand-in-hand, her head pillowed against his shoulder.
But the day had ended. And the next day had come. And he’d told her a pack of lies about destiny and sent her off in her pretty new dress to seduce a madman. He’d sent her to an unknown fate, because he could not remember what kind of man he’d been. He didn’t even recognize the shaggy-haired stranger in the leather coat and jumper. Regeneration amnesia had claimed his past for a time. It was always this way for a Time Lord crossing his own path. No memory of his other selves. A sort of blind spot developed, making them separate men as soon as they came into close proximity. Only the TARDIS offered some protection against this effect, perhaps because it remembered him always.
He’d been clueless when he’d sent Rose on her mission. Worse, he hadn’t told her of his failing memory. He hadn’t warned her to be careful. A warning might have changed things, made her cautious when she should have been bold. But mostly, he didn't warn her because there was no path she could take to avoid meeting his Ninth-self on Barcelona. It had happened. They were caught in a predestination loop. The past dictated events. He’d sent his beloved to be wedded, bedded and abandoned in one night, because his wandering heart knew he must. Knew, in fact, he had already done it. This much he remembered, he'd met Rose before that night at Henrik's. And her mother had been perfectly right to slap him.
Time Lords didn’t cross their own path lightly. To do so was to go forward in temporal blindness, risking your own identity, past and future. One tiny mistake, the famous flap of a butterfly’s wings, could send you into a parallel universe or rewrite your DNA. He could, quite literally, have become another man while Rose was gone. She could have disappeared forever. But he’d had no choice.
The Time Lord in him insisted on bringing Rose Tyler to Barcelona on this, their sixth anniversary. She’d had to go from their present to his past. What had happened before must happen exactly the same way again. Only then, only when the loop closed would their past together be assured. Until that happened, they couldn’t move on into the future together. They had reached a chaos point, one he’d been dreading for a very long time. This was the moment when everything changed, the point where the future he desired could spiral away from him.
He couldn’t tell, yet, if something had gone wrong. He might never be able to tell. But if Rose had failed to seduce him or if he’d hurt her in some permanent way or if love had failed to bloom for him…so much of his existence would have unraveled. No Rose. No Susan. No hope. No him. And he was still here. Rose was still here. Yet, now, he was married. Had they been married all along? If so, why hadn’t he remembered it yesterday?
Seeking cooler skin, Rose kicked fretfully at the sheet wrapped around her legs. The sharp movements drew his attention. He rolled to his side to face her, his arm snaking under his shirt and across her belly. Glancing along her body, he smiled. Bare flesh left him unmoved, he was still a Time Lord and a doctor, but her feet entranced him. She'd given herself a pedicure this week. Her nails sparkled with tiny diamond flowers. He adored the whimsy of that. Loved her toes. Loved how they gripped when, in the heat of passion, she braced a foot against his shoulder or slid one down the back of his thigh. It was a primate thing, prehensile toes. Like hugging it was alien to his culture.
As it turned out, he was a natural born hugger. He’d come to it late in life, but had, for lack of a better word, embraced it completely. He adored holding Rose, having her cling to him. Meld with him. Over the past TARDIS year, he'd taken great pains to encourage clinging. He could find the hugging opportunity in spilled paint. Any slight tragedy or triumph quite easily converted into a snuggle. He had made no attempt, indeed had no wish, to blunt Rose's desire to hold onto him. This was a marked change in him. She wasn't the first companion to crave physical reassurance. He had always held himself apart.
But asexuality had been, at least temporarily, set aside. He'd come to not only tolerate lust, but revel in it. He’d taken Rose in alleyways and doorways, on benches and beaches and bar tops. He’d been taken in turn in lavish motel rooms and tiny space-liner cupboards and once on the M-5 in the back of a lorry conveying chickens to market.
Rose had insisted they cover the cages with his coat. “Being gawked at by doomed poultry,” she’d told him, “isn’t my idea of romantic.”
“Oh, come on," he'd whined. "You’re far more interested in their breasts than they are in yours."
But he’d responded to her stern look, taking off his coat and obediently blocking the view. Afterward, in the afterglow, they’d been inspired to set the chickens free. He’d used his TARDIS, one of the most awe-inspiring and sophisticated pieces of technology in existence, to transport chickens to a better life. They’d taken the fryers to Coliaj Seven where birds of any description were rare enough to be worshiped. Weeks later he was still finding feathers in the console room.
The irony was palpable. Once upon a time he’d been a vagabond clown, the crazy, wandering uncle of his clan. Nobody had respected him. He’d been an embarrassment, something Gallifrey hushed up. And while he was not above foolishness, he’d never dreamed of rescuing chickens from an untimely death. Now, he was the last of his kind, overwhelmed by the magnitude of his responsibilities, respected by untold numbers of people. Yet, he found himself doing the maddest things. Truthfully, he did whatever Rose asked of him. Even if she only pleaded with her eyes, with a glance, he felt compelled to comply. To her credit she asked for very little. With all of time and space at his command, he could have built her a palace from emeralds or made her a planetary queen. Instead, he ended up ferrying chickens to a better life.
He didn't mind really. He wanted Rose to be happy. In some ways that was a greater challenge than he'd ever undertaken. Human satisfaction was fleeting. Mindful of their tendency to become jaded by familiarity, he varied his approach to lovemaking as often as he varied the venue. Luckily, he was nothing if not inventive.
It had been fun for him, liberating. Like Omega before him, he’d come to appreciate human sexuality for its mathematical progression. It scanned very much like music or poetry. The basic biology remained static but the act itself was, like humanity itself, chaotic and infinitely adaptable. It frightened him with its permutations. No one before Rose had ever adapted as well to him. Since their last visit to Barcelona, he'd made sex his personal instrument, and Rose an opus of self-expression, wringing both joyful and sorrowful music from her lips. She’d made him extravagant promises and he'd accepted them without question. She was his. He was hers.
She woke in slow stages. Watching her caused an ethereal pang at the center of his being. He swallowed against the ache as she stirred, turning toward him. Her lashes shivered, lifted and revealed wide, innocent eyes. Behind the veil of her heavy lids, her gaze remained glassy and unfocused. She was still in the grip of the dreaming seed. The world seemed, no doubt, as shadowed and meaningless for her as it had been for him on awaking. But she saw him and smiled mistily, her velvety lips parting just a bit.
Sweet kissable lips, he adored the fullness of them, moist and yielding. His hand skimmed up her side, over the swell of her breast and the along the curve of her throat. Cupping her cheek, he drew her mouth to his, tasting cinnamon and vanilla. She offered no resistance. She offered nothing. He took. Memory stirred at the front of his mind. She wore the same flavored lip-gloss she’d worn the day they’d met. His recollection of this one thing was clear, though all else remained indistinct. The recollections of the man he used to be were elusive, nothing but jagged images. But he thought he remembered savaging her mouth in desperate hunger. He thought he remembered his fury, the tumultuous anger within him, abating as she entered his mind. She'd entered his mind. It had startled him.
He’d been so raw, the day they’d met, straight out the asylum, half-mad and suicidal. The universe, a yawning maw at his back. Despair had threatened to swallow him whole. Wrestling with black rage and helplessness, he’d forced himself to put one foot in front of the other. Finally, no longer able to bear the empty universe, he’d decided to join his people in death. In the grip of a bottomless hunger…so alone, and ready to end it all, he’d come to Barcelona. But something had happened to change him. Rose Tyler, as yet unnamed, had been waiting in a bar. She’d found him, saved him. She’d satisfied his hunger, not just physically but spiritually. She’d given him reason to hope.
He’d called her Bella, the beautiful one. At least he thought he had. He remembered her piecemeal, now, so close to the tipping point of twin existences. There was…the spicy zeal of her lip balm…the yellow and pink dress...her bare shoulders...her kind eyes…her painted, sparkling toenails…the chemical scents, nail polish, hair dye and cheap cosmetics…and an all-enveloping slick heat, the slippery fever of rutting sex, sweaty skin. Dream-like still images were layered over with divergent possibilities. Anything could have happened. Something had.
“You look worried,” Rose rasped, her dry croak cutting into his reverie.
He blinked away his concerns, met her eye, and smiled. “I’m just…that is I was…,” he sighed, knowing he couldn’t tell her, “Thinking…” He rolled away from her and levered to an elbow to retrieve a glass of water from the bedside table. He saw the marriage license again but ignored it. “Are you thirsty?”
She murmured assent as she took the drink from him. Her hands trembled a little. Noticing, he dropped an arm around her shoulder and used his other hand to help her steady the glass, guiding it to her lips. After a few gulps, she sighed, flopping back down onto the pillows.
“Wow. You sure know how to show a girl a good time. What was that building with the spires?” She asked, sketching pointy shapes in the air with her free hand.
The question caught him off-guard. He peeped in confusion, a helpless note at the back of his throat. She took it as a request for more information.
“On your planet? The big white one with the five gold towers?”
“Oh,” he exclaimed, understanding dawning, “The Mojxliia Cathedral, a remnant of the Dark Times. It was designed by Callphaagiasun himself.”
Rose nodded as if she understood all about Gallifreyan architecture. Perhaps she did. “It was beautiful. And the colors, orange and silver…the sea…”
Remembering what they’d done overlooking the sea, he gurgled happily and gave her a tiny squeeze. The lift of his chin and a devilish glint in his eye invited her to grin back at him, but she seemed lost in thought and didn’t even look his way.
Undaunted, he snuffled her hair as he nosed his way to her ear to whisper, “You should rest, but it's too hot here.” Her brevity of encouragement left him rudderless. He shifted away from her to study her profile. Determined to steer the conversation toward cheerful banalities, after a long stretch of silence, he said, “You're wearing my shirt.”
“You gave it to me. And your tie.”
“In the dream,” he said, stressing the final word.
Rose shrugged. “I'm getting better at breaking free. I needed to use the ladies'.” She tugged playfully at his tie, treating it as if it were a crimson leash, before lifting the noose of it over her head. She held it out to him, but he made no move to take it from her hand. “Doctor?”
She'd broken free of the dreaming seed, asserted her will. She'd left him sleeping and he hadn't even stirred. That was an ability beyond any human. Just as embodying the Vortex was beyond Time Lords. What else could she do? What else had she done? For the first time, he wondered if she could manipulate him as easily as she had brought Jack back from the dead. He still shivered slightly when he thought of Jack. The spheres were shifting. He could feel the wobbly wheel turning under his feet.
“We should go,” he said, standing abruptly. With a slight dip of his head, he indicated the duffel by the door. “I brought you clothes. Dress and we'll get a spot of breakfast.”
“Breakfast? I can barely move.”
Fear for her chilled him, raising gooseflesh on his arms and overshadowing any concerns he harbored about her power. “Are you hurt?” He blurted. Resting a knee on the bed, he leaned toward her, solicitously brushing the hair from her brow. “Did he…did I…?”
“What? Ravage me?” Rose chuckled, rolling to her hip to face him. “A bit.” She took his hand in hers and, turning it, kissed his wrist. “Oh, you were very bad before. I had no idea you were so…ho…” she fanned herself with her free hand, indicating heat that had nothing to do with the sweltering room. Her evident delight helped quell his fears.
“I've always been creative,” he admitted. After a brief pause, he checked in with her, “It wasn’t…awful for you, then?”
“No,” she laughed. When he didn’t even crack a smile, she sobered and sat up straight, knees to her chest. Lifting his palm to her cheek, she leaned into it and asked, “Did you think it was? Is that why you left like that? Swanning off while I was sleeping? Did you think I hadn’t enjoyed it?”
He puffed out a ‘w’ as he rocked from side to side, a sure sign he was fumbling for the right thing to say. This was getting awkward and he felt off balance. His Swiss cheese memory had apparently been leading him astray. He tried to control his nervous ticks as his line of sight dropped again to his chucks. “I…didn’t…really consider…” The fingers of his free hand had locked around the nape of his neck. He was floundering, trying not to spaz. What could he say that wouldn't sound insensitive? He’d married her and abandoned her, but frankly had no idea why. A flash of memory gave him words. “You told me to go.”
Rose relaxed, satisfied. “Because of the paradox loop," she surmised, snapping her fingers, and then pointing one at him. He nodded. “I forgot about that. Didn't want you bumping into yourself.” She still held his hand, now cradled against her chest. As she wriggled back down under the sheets, she drew her thumb along his palm. His hand slid through hers. Smiling up at him, she said, “You were so...different. It was wonderful, though. Very good. Very…very…”
“Oh?” he puffed, relief having lasted all of ten seconds. “Three verys for the loon in the jumper. That's nice,” he remarked, brow arching as, once again, his attention drifted to the paper on the table. “So…it was good for you, then? You liked the rough madman and his…scruffy barbering and…and,” he crossed to the table and picked up the room and wedding receipt, “leather jacket.”
Rose frowned. “He’s you,” she reminded him, sounding confused. “I thought you said you couldn’t be jealous of yourself.”
“I’m not jealous,” he said, huffily. “I’m surprised. Perhaps a bit…perplexed. Chiefly, about this,” he said, waving the slip of paper at her. “You married him?”
Turning pink, Rose drew her knees up to her chin. She hugged them as she shrank in on herself. Her mouth opened but no sound came out. The fingers of one hand toyed with her bottom lip. She looked impossibly young, completely innocent. He waited for her to explain but she only ducked her head and said, “Oh, that. Yeah. Well…you said I should just go along with him…with anything…”
“Marriage?” he yelped, rattling the paper emphatically.
“We can have it annulled after breakfast,” Rose said losing interest as she swiveled around until her feet dangled over the side of the bed.
“What?” he said. And then, because she was staring out the window, apparently oblivious to him, he said it again, “What?”
“You don't do domestic. I get that.” Head bowed in contemplation, she swung her feet back and forth. “But its nothing. Just a piece of paper. It's not like it means anything. It can't mean anything, right? I haven't even been born, yet.”
“Of all the self-centered reasoning...” he began, starting around the end of the bed.
She stood, sidestepping his advance, and, with a few deft movements, shed his shirt. Then, covering her breasts with crossed arms, she scurried to the duffel. Surprised into silence, he watched her rummage for knickers, a bra and her blue jeans. She kept a cold shoulder to him as she dressed. He wondered at this sudden modesty, but didn't think to question her mood.
“You could have changed history,” he said, sharply. “Did you even consider that?”
“Of course, I considered it,” Rose countered, sounding angry. She shot him a scowl. “I may not be a Time Lord, but I'm not stupid.” Briefly shuffling through the tops he’d brought, she cast the lot of them back into the bag. “But what was I supposed to do? And why didn't you tell me we were married? All those times I was jealous…all those nights we spent together…you never thought to say, 'Oh, by the by...'”
“That’s because we aren't married...weren't married. It didn’t happen like that.” He didn’t want to suggest he might have forgotten it. “The universe as we know it could be unraveling and you'd like an apology?”
“Is that too much to ask?” Rose challenged him. “You send me off with a cheerful pat on the head and tell me just go along with everything. They wouldn't rent us a room without a proper license. And he...you insisted. I didn't even know what was happening, at first. Do you remember what you were like before? Arrogant and alien and drunk and mad and...you whipped out a handful of coins and told me to sign where indicated. And how do you always get a room here if we aren't married?”
“I lie. Dr. & Mrs. John Smith. Did neither of you think of lying to the landlord, Mrs....” he glanced at the paper in his hand, and read the name on a fading breath, “Foreman?” Foreman. Susan. And his former self. A dead man as far as Rose was concerned. Her see-sawing mood suddenly made perfect sense. How painful and odd this must all be for her.
He saw her impatiently brush away a tear and opened his mouth to apologize, but she was already striding back to the bed. “I thought of kicking a door in somewhere, just getting on with it. But you...he...needed it to be...special.” Her voice cracked and he understood how confused she must have been.
There were things for him to regret here. They just weren't the things he'd been expecting. He wanted desperately to say something consoling.
But instead, he asked, “How could that be wonderful?”
“It was still you,” she said, simply. “Hurting and lost...but...”
“I'm sorry...I...”
Her hands clenched, twisting his shirt collar. “It's a bit late for that, isn't it? All this time, you've been lying to me. You thought I was going to be ravaged or something…and you didn’t know about the marriage? So, when you sent me off...” Her teeth bit through the rest of her sentence. "Oh, what does it matter?" She gave his shirt a swift snap, cracking it through the air, before ramming her arms into the sleeves.
“It matters." He spoke to her as an equal, as if she were a Time Lord, too. "You had to go. We had to close the loop.”
“I know,” she said, giving him a very bleak stare. “I can feel the planet turning. This place. This time. It's making my skin itch."
"You can feel it?"
"I could leave your mind. And I put his head right. I'm not exactly human anymore. Am I?”
He bounced from foot to foot, trying to think of something to say, but nothing came to him and he finally settled on a confession. “All right. So, I don't know everything. I didn’t exactly remember what happened between us...not clearly. It's all a bit fuzzy...and complicated. Like you said, you're changing. And that's...not what I expected and I’d had a lot to drink. And…I'd been through the war, post-asylum stress syndrome...then there was the tree slug in my system. And there’s a sort of amnesia. When a Time Lord crosses his own…”
He was talking to thin air.
Damn.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Damn.
She'd used the blue. It had taken most of the morning to position the Hoix perfectly. They'd outflanked it twice only to have it slip away. But they'd finally cornered it, three strides short of its recon-ship. And now it was after her again. Yelling at Rose to hold on, the Doctor slammed the door on the only exit and raced off along a divergent corridor. If he'd judged the route correctly, he should be able to intercept the Hoix before it took off Rose's head. If he'd judged incorrectly, he'd be running around in circles again.
He sprinted past a fork in the way, not sure bearing left was the right choice. All of the intersecting corridors were beginning to look alike. Of course, one hardly expected original décor in a meat processing plant. But they might have added a few yellow lines on the floor to guide visitors. Inconsiderate, he'd say.
Pausing at the next junction to catch his breath and take his bearings, he listened and heard Rose coming. The beast growled and snarled, close behind her. Its lower tones were almost lost against the background noise of machinery, but Rose's screaming reverberated in the labyrinth like a siren's wail. They'd established the bellowing as a signal. It was the best way to keep track of one another in the maze of corridors. The noise helped the Doctor orient. Once he'd fixed on Rose's relative position, he readied himself like a relay-race sprinter awaiting a baton hand-off.
Rose appeared out of the mist on his right. She rocketed by him, screaming for all she was worth. He fell into stride just behind her and they ran together for a few meters. They passed through the exit hall again, both of them bellowing. This was getting as monotonous as it was ridiculous.
“Take the next two lefts,” he barked at Rose. “Get to the TARDIS and fetch the other bucket.”
“Right,” she said, nodding.
“Not right,” he corrected, irritably, “Left. Twice. And not blue.”
Salient points stressed, he dropped back until the Hoix was breathing down his neck. The beast clawed at him, but missed. Despite the burden of a flaring coat, and the need to duck around frozen sides of beef, the Doctor was quick on his feet. He needed to stay a few strides ahead of his fearsome pursuer. He didn't want to risk losing an arm. But he also couldn't afford to lose the predator's interest. If they allowed it to report in with data, the Hoixania would know it had found a habitable planet. Better it was never heard from again. If only they'd managed to corral it.
The creature slashed at him again, just as Rose broke away from them. The Doctor pivoted to the left as if to follow her. Then, at the last second, zigged right again. The sudden change in direction spared him a nasty cut, but unfortunately, it also sent him careening out of control. Sensing weakness the Hoix charged. Fantastic. The Doctor whirled. Skidding along the wall, he narrowly avoided a killing blow to the head.
Too close. That was too close, he thought, turning on a bit of speed. His yelling took on a more desperate edge. They'd been running for what seemed like an eternity. Up and down the same narrow ways. Where the hell was Rose with that bucket? The stress was starting to take a toll on him, and his trainers. As he bolted around a corner, one of his shoe laces broke. He trod on the loose end, staggered and the beast caught up. It slammed into his shoulder, talons closing around his arm. There was nothing to check their momentum. The Doctor tried to turn his fall into a dive, but off balance, he splayed forward. Struggling to keep his feet, he flailed his arms as gravity got the better of him.
He and the Hoix collapsed in a heap. Staring into the teeth of fate, he readied himself for the regenerative fire. The monster bellowed its triumph. It had breath like an open sewer. It rose to its feet, towering over him. And Rose arrived. She rushed from the right, red bucket in hand.
“About bloody time,” he snapped. And then, because the beast had smelled its doom and turned tail, he added, “After it.”
With a war whoop, Rose took off on the heels of the Hoix. Exhaling stress in a rush, he scrambled up to follow. They crossed the central corridor again, three in a line. Trailing behind, the Doctor was momentarily distracted by the sight of the boy who had come upon them earlier. The one he'd told to run. A factory worker, he'd assumed, but now he noticed something familiar in the wide-eyed stare. He’d seen that face somewhere before. He backpedaled to stare.
“Do I know you?” he asked. The boy didn't answer, just gurgled moronically before bolting. Humans, they were an unpredictable lot.
By the time the Doctor caught up to Rose, she'd already dispatched the Hoix. Case in point, he thought. Breathing hard, they both stared down at the puddle of goo that had been chasing them around all morning. The silence was like a raised wall between them. It felt strange not to be yelling.
Rose blew a strand of crimped hair out of her eyes. Then, she shot him an 'are you mad?” look and said, “Who says 'not blue' when they mean 'red'? It's like saying, 'When you're out in the kitchen, don't pour me a glass of milk.' What does that tell me?”
“That I'm lactose intolerant,” he joked, nudging his shoulder into hers.
Refusing to grant him even the suggestion of a smile, Rose stared silently at him for a beat too long. Then, huffing rudely, she spun about and, bucket in hand, started for the TARDIS. His grin evaporated and he groaned. This cold shoulder business was killing him. It had been three weeks since he'd stepped into it with both feet, three whole weeks without a touch or a kiss. He'd imagined she would forgive him over breakfast. But they'd hit an impasse over the annulment issue and she showed no sign of relenting.
And what did she have to be angry about? Nothing. Being married wasn't something to complain about. It was something to endure. As he'd told her repeatedly. She should look on the bright side. Time hadn't unraveled.
“Or maybe,” he went on, jovially as he caught up to her and did a sort of twirl in her path, “I don't fancy milk. Maybe I crave a grapefruit juice or a beer or a blumberry smoothie. Now there's an idea. Nice blumberry smoothie, touch of rum in it. Whadya say?” He gave her another gentle prod.
“Not wanting blue isn't the same thing as wanting red,” Rose sniffed.
“Big toothy monster choking the life out of me,” he said, pointing over his shoulder as if pointing might clear things up for her. “I could barely get the words out.”
“Red is shorter than 'Not blue,'” Rose countered, fumbling for her key. “One syllable. Much easier to say when the life is being choked out of you. Red. See?” He stepped around her, his key in hand. “And you've got respiratory bypass,” she added. Chilled, she hugged herself as she waited for him to unlock the door. Time was he would be hugging her. Instead, he stood aside to let her enter the warmth of their home. She brushed by him brusquely, but halted just inside the door. “Some people say what they mean.”
“Humans?” he inquired, bending to whisper into her ear. “Humans do things differently, you mean?”
She rolled her eyes and stalked away from him. “That's not what I said.”
“But you’re implying it,” he insisted as he stripped off his coat and hurled it blindly toward a support beam. “Implying that some species, say…humans, for example, ask for exactly what they want, ask someone to marry them, for example, instead of just…I don't know…refusing to go along with an annulment.”
“I was talking about buckets,” Rose said, primly. Carefully removing her jean jacket, she folded it over the railing, and then settled into their chair for two. Her body language easily conveyed it was now a chair for one. Feet braced on the edge of the console, arms crossed over her chest, she stared into the middle distance. “But now we're on your favorite subject. The way I see it we don't need an annulment. You died. It's 'til death do us part. So, we're not married.”
“Fine by me. If that was how it worked. But it doesn't work that way, does it? Because I'm not dead. Also, time didn't unravel. So we were married. Are married. Have always been married. And we're going to stay married.”
“What about my right to free will?”
“Nobody forced you to take my ruddy fish,” he snapped. “And so you'll know, respiratory bypass doesn't mean I can chat about the weather while a big nasty beastie throttles me senseless. It just means I can go without oxygen for a...Fulham,” He announced brightly, jerking to a standstill as he interrupted himself. He seized a fistful of his hair and tugged at it. “I knew I'd seen that boy somewhere before. Fulham, 1979.”
“The one I ran past?” Rose asked. She was used to his mercurial topic changes, but a bit puzzled by this one. “Doctor?” she inquired when he failed to respond.
“The Elemental Shade,” he hummed, absently, his eyes misty and unfocused. “What are the odds?”
“I don't even know what you're talking about."
“The Elemental Shade,” he repeated, gesturing impatiently as if he believed she was being intentionally obtuse. “We chased it to Earth just before we...” He broke off, not wanting to mention Barcelona. After fiddling with his ear, he steeled himself against dithering, and pretended to concentrate on the TARDIS flight controls. His fingers danced over buttons and keys, programming Vortex variables without much guidance from his distracted mind.
“I know about Shades. The shadow beings,” Rose said, catching on, but still confused. “From the Howling.”
“Insubstantial in their true form. They feed on any element in suspension...potassium, magnesium, iron.”
“Human blood,” Rose cut in, hopping out of her chair. “I remember. You said a shade loose in human habitation could decimate the population. Without potassium our heart stops. No iron and we can't breathe.”
“Yes, and they're difficult to kill. Well, I say I kill,” he waggled his head from side to side, to indicate he wasn't satisfied with such an imprecise term, “but they can't really be killed, can they? Because they aren't really alive. Transmuted, maybe, same difference.” He peered at her from beneath lowered lashes, but quickly returned his attention to his dials and switches.
“And that bloke I just ran by is infected?” Rose surmised, suddenly all business. “Come on. There's still time to catch him.”
Darting by him on her way to the door, she was already halfway up the ramp when he caught her. No thought of her own safety, he realized with a surge of pride. Swooping an arm around her waist, he steered her through a u-turn as he said, “He's not infected. He never was. He's the boy we took to the orphanage. I saved him.” His voice took on the resonance of regret as he added, “But I was too late to save her.”
“His mother,” Rose breathed. Still in the shelter of his embrace, she looked up as she clasped his forearm, all animosity forgotten. ”I remember. She was so young.”
He glanced at her hand, gently stroking him. This was his Rose. His wife. She empathized with strangers and consoled gods. She had no awe of him. He was the last line of temporal authority. No one else in the galaxy thought of him as fragile, in need of comfort. He wanted to kiss her as he met her eye, but only held her gaze steadily for a long moment, drinking in her loving care the way a desert flower absorbed morning dew.
Releasing a shuddering little sigh, she recalled her anger and shifted a short distance away from him. She was still very close. He gathered the hair from her neck and let it cascade through his fingers. Her fingers toyed with a venting coil on the console. She knew better than to tug on it like that, but he knew better than to scold her just now. Trying not to overreact to her proximity, or read too much into her continued silence, he turned his attention to the mundane.
He rerouted the overloads to another vent and went on readying the ship for flight. Selecting a launch sequence, he punched in re-entry coordinates and leveled the pressure readings. The TARDIS beeped her understanding. After tapping a wonky dial with a knuckle, he started spinning the paperweight he used for temporal navigation. Where to go? Where to go? Barcelona was out. He could take her to a concert. Or the signing of the Magna Carta.
“I don't want to do this anymore,” Rose said, softly.
An electric shock seemed to pulse through him and he froze, one hand hovering near the hand brake. “You want t-t-to...leave?”
The room had a surreal haze about it. He couldn't sense the floor beneath his feet. His injured tone and stricken expression bought him a moment of her interest. She lifted her gaze and he saw tears glossing her eyes. They stared at one another for a heartbeat or two. Then, the horror on his face cut through her preoccupation. She gave a quick dismissive shake of her head and moved very close to him again. She smelled like warm tea, astringent with a hint of honey and peppermint.
“Oh...no, I don't mean...I just...I don't want to fight. All this bickering...like my mum and dad.”
The monitor screen flashed bright green, drawing his attention to suggested destinations along their proposed flight path. One planet caught his eye. Suddenly, he had an idea.
“No more,” he whispered and slapped the hand brake off. As soon as the rotor started moving, he cocked his head to peer at her and said, “Fancy a wedding?”
Rose actually flinched. Of all the tactless things to say, “Fancy a wedding,” had to take the gilded biscuit.
“No,” she said, flatly. Shoulders hunched to her ears, hands burrowed into her jeans' pockets, she scuffed back to the chair and collapsed into it.
Acutely aware of those unshed tears, he kept his chin down, but peered up at her from beneath lowered lashes. At times like this, it was hard to believe she tolerated him at all.
“Can't say I blame you. I'm rubbish at weddings, myself. As you've learned. Remember what happened at the last one we attended?” He realized his mistake before she could correct him. “Prior to our own, I mean?”
“Food poisoning,” Rose sighed. “I spent a week in hospital.”
“And the one before that?”
“Is that the one where the bride ran off with her bridesmaid?”
“Could be,” He chewed his lip as he thought it over, then said, “No, wasn't that Jack’s wedding in Kyoto? The one I meant was the one with the fiery serpent. Armageddon,” he waggled his eyebrows at her as he said, “Uh-huh, that’s about it for me and weddings. End of the world as we know it. I spent my very first wedding in tears. But this one is different. This is the one that goes right. You’ll love it.”
“I don't want to go to a wedding. Not even if the world ends after...not even if it's Princess Diana's.”
“Diana? Please,” he snorted, wafting a dismissive hand as he jigged about checking readings. “You call that a wedding?”
“She had a Cinderella carriage and a gown covered in diamonds and a bridal train as long as the church aisle. Yeah, I'd call that a wedding. Beats a cold fish on a plate.”
“Well, just about anything would,” he admitted. “But veils and carriages don't put you in the Michelin Guide to Weddings of Note. Diana was a blip in the expanse of history. Her little shindig can’t compare to the finest tourist weddings in the galaxy. Not by a long shot. Melianea Klaxis Hgotepteq Postlewaite-Wiggins, Empress of Sol and Andromeda, Protectorate of the United Colonies of Orion and Splee, Queen of Gorgon's Arch 6 and Divine and Undisputed Ruler of the Rim Satellite Fleet married on Earth. She had the moon done over in pink crystal.” Warming to his theme, he used both hands to frame the scenario in the air as he expounded. “I don't mean gilded or...bedazzled...I mean replaced. Blew up the old one cleared it off and put in something shinier.”
“She replaced the moon?” Though he could tell she fought to contain it, Rose couldn't help smiling just a little. “Wouldn't that cause earthquakes and flooding?”
“Oh, yes. Earthquakes, hurricanes, flooding, drought. One or two extinctions.” He beamed in cheery counterpoint to this list of disasters, inordinately encouraged by her smile. “Not to mention, a really nasty meteor shower. I told her it was a bad idea, but she never listened. Clouds of moon dust blocked out the sun for a week. Luckily they managed to Hoover it all up before guests started pouring in. But repositioning the crystal threw the tides off. Fixing that caused a slight realignment of the Earth’s axis. Kept the weather wardens busy for decades after. And reflected pink light beaming down meant nobody got a good night's sleep for over a year. Nearly resulted in economic ruin. Productivity plummeted.”
“Bet the people who manufactured those little black sleep masks made a killing.”
“Not to mention the caterers. Oh, and the ice sculptors. She had the Arctic ice flows carved up...into doves and pirate ships and such. Gorgeous really, sparkling under the Aurora Borealis.”
“You were there? Giving her advice?”
“Ah…yes…” So much for their returning camaraderie. “I was there. Not so much advising as protesting,” he admitted, his attention momentarily distracted by a blinking light. He pushed buttons at random until the light went out. “By the time I heard about the moon, they were lighting the fuse. The groom is seldom consulted about decorating decisions. One of the many things I loathe about weddings.”
“The groom?” Rose peeped. “You married...? Loved this...?” She struggled to find a more appropriate slur than ignorant slag. “Hang on, you mean you're taking me to your wedding?”
He cut a glance at her from the corner of his eye, wondering if she would storm out of the room before he could explain. “Yes,” he said, carefully. “But let's be clear. I never claimed to love Melianea Klaxis. There was a treaty. To end a war. I represented one side. She represented the other. And she had no intention of honoring her pledges. She tried to assassinate me on our wedding night. You'd be surprised how common that reaction is.” He winked at her. “Or maybe you wouldn't. But you and Emma Louise are the only two who didn't at one time or other order my execution. And Emma barely knew me. So we can't really judge by her, perhaps she would have killed me if given the full brunt of my personality. Anyway, the pink moon fiasco was my seventh wedding.”
“You’re…?” She was glaring at him again. “Just how many wedding have you had?”
“Oh, a fair number,” he said, shrugging. “I’m not blindly prejudiced. Did you think it just came to me one day that I don't do domestic? That would be a tad shallow.”
“I thought you just hated commitments.”
“No, my antipathy is based on hard won experience. I've had…let’s see…counting ours…twenty-seven…” He chewed his lip, considering and then said, “No...wait...wait...twenty-eight weddings. I always forget about the Aztec princess. She’s like the Spanish Inquisition.”
“It’s no one expects the Spanish Inquisition,” Rose corrected, absently. “And you're telling me I'm your...twenty-eighth...?”
Frowning, she pressed the heel of her hand to her temple, obviously floored by the destructive magnitude of this latest bombshell. He did tend to be secretive about his past. On the other hand, he'd lived a very long time. If he sat down and started relating every head cold and heart break he'd experienced they'd never go anywhere.
“Twenty-eight is hardly a harem. But as it happens, I've only had five wives.”
“Twenty-eight weddings but only five wives? What happened to the other ones? Or do you just keep marrying the same people like…like Elizabeth Taylor?” A thought struck and she pieced things together in a way that made sense to her. “Or is it because you regenerate? You keep marrying the same people over and over again, every time you change?”
He shook his head. “It’s not about regeneration,” he said, with sympathetic tenderness. “The other weddings just didn’t take. I never seem to get it right, do I? It's sort of how your people can’t make toast.”
The rotor stopped moving. They’d arrived. He drew in a deep breath, and then swept his arm in a wide arc of invitation.
“After you,” he said.
Rose paled. “I believe you,” she said, backing away from him. “I don’t want to see this.”
“Rose? There's no escaping it. We should have come here long ago. I need you to understand this.”
She shook her head. “It doesn't matter,” she said. “We can just go back to traveling and...”
“It matters,” he insisted. “If you want to stop bickering this is the only way.”
She didn't look convinced. Sighing, he said, “I didn't tell you about the others, Melianea Klaxis and Romana and the Rani and Emma because they were part of my life before you. Painful memories, every one of them.” Rose stared at him. Hurt again, and confused. All those times in his head and she'd never pressed for a commitment, never poked through his mind for reassurances. He didn't think he would ever understand her. He went for his coat, shrugged into it and spent a few moments adjusting his collar, before looking back to her. “This won't hurt a bit. Come on.” He held out his hand, fingers spread wide. After a moment, she crept forward and reluctantly took it.
Their fingers interlocked, smoothly, like puzzle pieces designed for one another. He pulled her up the ramp toward the door, and then through it. Rose gasped. And he grinned down at her. She’d been expecting the glitter of a futuristic city, the glow of a pink moon. Instead, they stood on a rocky coastline. The sun was rising. Huge pterodactyl-like creatures swooped overhead.
“Welcome to the Crucible,” he said. “The origin planet of all life.”
“It's cold.”
“Go,” he tilted his head toward the open TARDIS door. “Fetch a jacket. I'll wait here.”
She left and he waited, not sure if she'd return. Glancing down, he noticed his tie. It was the same one he'd worn on Barcelona. A fighting tie, he thought and decided on the spur of the moment that it was unlucky. Not that he believed in luck, but there was no sense taking chances. He popped into the TARDIS to change. Rose was waiting for him when he got back. 'Free will at work,' he silently told the cosmos. Her curiosity rivaled his own. It was one of the many things he loved about her. She couldn't help wanting to know more, even if it got her into trouble.
When he went to stand beside her, she asked, “Why are we here? And isn't this dangerous?" She lifted one foot and glanced at the sole of her boot. "Couldn't we crush some algae or insect and put an end to life as we know it?”
“Time Lord,” he reminded her, archly touching fingertips to his chest. “The TARDIS scanned for DNA traces and any irreplaceable lifeforms before we landed. Nothing underfoot but some random fluff. And I told you, we're here for a wedding.”
Rose put her boot back on the ground and considered him intently for a moment. "You changed your shirt," she said.
"The other one didn't go with this tie," he told her. They studied the view, looking out past rocky arches to the sea. The sunrise sent golden and crimson threads of light across the sky. There wasn't another soul in sight, save the flying reptiles.
“Fairly intimate affair, this," Rose said, sounding pleased by their growing sense of accord. "Not too crowded.”
He shot her a playful glance. “Very exclusive,” he agreed. He weighed his next words carefully before he spoke. “I don't know what's happening to you, Rose. It seems impossible. But you are changing.”
“Into what?”
He studied her impassively for a time, but did not answer directly. Then, looking, again, to the sea, he said, “For my people, this is the only sacred place beyond Gallifrey. Before we gave up everything having to do with unions, we used to pledge our troth by the Crucible. Time Lords are...were...a shifty lot. We considered ourselves above most of the trivial legalities. Conventional pledges don't apply when you can shed your identity as easily as we can.”
“How can a vow to the death mean anything if you never die,” Rose remarked.
“Exactly. And like you've said, contracts, marriage license, are just paper. Annulments are much the same. Meaningless. Eternity is a grand equalizer. All things fade to dust in time. Civilizations rise and fall. Their laws can hardly be applied universally. We needed something enduring, some binding symbolism.”
“The origin of all life,” Rose murmured her understanding. “You swore all of your oaths on existence itself.”
“The only abstract concept we all honored, yes.” He drew in a deep breath and slowly released it. “This is the only promise that has meaning, for as long as I exist,” he said. Did she understand? Hands clenched in his pockets, he slowly turned his head to face her as he asked, “How long are you going to stay with me?”
He sensed her relaxing. A luminous peace flooded her face. But she granted him only the ghost of a smile as she answered, “Forever.”
She held his gaze for a second or two cementing the oath, before returning her attention to the horizon. After a moment of reverent silence, she soberly asked, “How long do you want me to stay?”
He took a giant step to his right. Then, leaning into her shoulder, he scooped her hand into his and whispered gleefully into her ear, “Oh, a bit longer than that, I should think. A bit longer than forever.”
END THIS PART
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-18 04:31 am (UTC)Of course this means we're getting closer to the inevitable and that's a depressing thought. Give us a bit more fluff before that happens, please!
Fluff...check!
Date: 2007-10-18 11:47 am (UTC)The real problem with Rose and the Doctor is that they are deeply connected to one another and so little misunderstandings are magnified. We never see them having long heart to heart talks about issues, I think, because they quickly sorted things out. This is indicative of their relationship, but it also leads to some of the less than perfect moments we see...like Reinette or his calling her a stupid ape...or the little puppy dog pouts he would get when she snapped at him.
Anyway...fights are very hard to write believably. Time to go back to the slappy happy stuff.
Rae
Re: Fluff...check!
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-18 04:31 am (UTC)This takes "rubbish at weddings - especially my own" to a whole new level. The last one wasn't half bad, though, as I hope the Doctor and Rose agree. 29th time's the charm, maybe?
This story = love. Can't wait for more. :)
Glad you liked the chapter...
Date: 2007-10-18 04:53 am (UTC)Yes, oddly enough...even before he said that rubbish at weddings line I had him rubbish at weddings. I've always felt that the "How long are you going to stay with me, again?" question was their wedding. And my feelings about his other wives...other loves even...was they were very transient. As a matter of fact, I would say...the Doctor is telling us the literal truth in canon about having a lover...that he's never had one before. Which is not to say that he wasn't married, didn't have sex or didn't father children. None of those things are the same as being completely in love.
Rae
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-18 04:34 am (UTC)Oh the hardship! ;)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-18 11:50 am (UTC);->
I do hope you find it all hangs together. Sometimes I think about giving the whole thing a massive beta and clearing up any places where I temporarily went mad and looped my storyline or whatever. I'm sure there are a few boners in there somewhere. But I press on...valiently.
Nice to see you are still hear, reading, after all these many months. It warms my heart. :hug:
Rae
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-18 04:53 am (UTC)Oh, that was beautiful. It hurt, but it was gorgeous and heart-breaking and hopeful - and he really is an idiot. But he's a beautiful idiot, so it's all good.
Oh - and this is so far above rubbish (as you termed it) that they haven't invented a word for it. More?
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-18 11:54 am (UTC)Thanks so very much for the feedback. I feel like I've run a marathon with this chapter...we are both reeling with exhaustion and I've lost all perspective about it...but I'm happy to know you don't regarded as rubbish. And are, in fact, pleased by it.
Rae
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-18 04:53 am (UTC)*scoots off to read*
I will comment AFTER I read.
L
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-18 06:10 am (UTC)..........
I do believe you have rendered me speechless.
GOOD FOR YOU!!!
*hands you a cookie*
L
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-18 06:26 am (UTC)It's wonderful to have you writing again!
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-18 06:46 am (UTC)The pain and the argument gave me most of my hard time with this. I kept restarting it because it is very difficult to have them fight about something like this in a believable way. The Doctor is especially difficult to write grumpy. But in Love & Monsters they have that little snarky exchange over the "not blue" bucket and I thought...okay, this is where they are fighting.
Rae
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-18 07:00 am (UTC)The perfect amount of angst and fluff. Beautiful, can't wait for more!!
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-18 07:13 am (UTC)Rae
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-18 07:45 am (UTC)Okay I haven't gotten to read it yet since it is literally the middle of the night for me and I have to work tommorrow but I just wanted to say how completely happy I am that you posted another chapter and I will be totally looking foward to reading this all day tommorrow(darn work).
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-21 01:28 am (UTC)I also hope you enjoyed the chapter when you got to it. Thanks for letting me know how excited you were to see the update.
Rae
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-18 08:18 am (UTC)I have to admit that after all this time. I love the fight scene. I love it when they fight. It probably sounds completely daft... but you can only fight with those you truly love, because in the end, only they will still be there. As stressful as arguments can be I think this one only seeks to solidify a (their) relationship.
Beautiful, amazing and stunning work. I love seeing it carry on in each chapter. I wait with baited breath for the next!
There is nothing wrong with enjoying a fight scene...
Date: 2007-10-21 01:33 am (UTC):grin:
But still...he's sticking it out and Rose...when he asks if she wants to leave him...is only talking about how much she hates bickering with him. They really do love one another in my opinion and so they work things out.
Thanks again for leaving me the lovely feedback. I do appreciate it.
Rae
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-18 08:37 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-21 11:36 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-18 09:58 am (UTC)I must say, you really should be honoured, this being the first Ten/Rose fic i have read in months. Not because I don't still ship them like crazy but I'm sick to death of the same old story. It says something about what a fantastic writer you are when it doesn't feel like the same old thing but somethng new and shiny and exciting.
Have I made your head big enough yet? It should be!
I am very honored...truly!
Date: 2007-10-18 12:00 pm (UTC)And it is very gratifying to know that my story isn't the same old thing...after such a long time living with it...I've lost my perspective on it. And yes, I think my head is now sufficiently fluffed. Thank you so much for the encouragement.
On to chapter 21...and the finish.
Rae
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-18 12:30 pm (UTC)Hello, Det! Good to see you!
Date: 2007-10-21 01:36 am (UTC)And now...people are either being very kind...or it is okay. I'm amazed by that. Thanks for amazing me.
Rae
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-18 01:38 pm (UTC)It's always painful to read the Doctor and Rose in the heat of an argument - but you always seem to pull it off without making it out of character or forced. Finding the balance between too angry and too calm had to be difficult, but I must say you found a way to do it beautifully.
I was happy to see that a certain segment of this story remained - you had sent me a snippet quite a while back, with the Doctor looking down on himself and Rose.
Now that this chapter is over, I have a feeling that those opening scenes in AoG will be viewed with just a bit more meaning from now on.
Hello, my artistic pal
Date: 2007-10-19 01:14 pm (UTC)As for the argument...that was part of my problem with this chapter. I also had a few terrible blows to the creative flow (chiefly, learning via word of mouth that at least one other person has done exactly the same story, I'm doing...and it was considered extrememly silly)...but beyond that...there was making them fight.
They don't communicate clearly when they fight. And every time I would take a run at it...I would end up having one or the other of them either a) go schmoopy or b) go too angry or c) simply wander out of character. The Doctor was particularly troublesome in this...and even now...I had to explain to one of my betas that he wasn't trying to get out of the marriage.
He is appalled by the marriage because he doesn't remember it happening. He's afraid this means the end of his relationship with Rose because he is used to marriages signifying the end of things, not the beginning. The signing of a treaty, for example. He won't get an annulment because...as he says at the end...that would just be another piece of paper. What matters to Time Lords is how the wheel shifts, how existence is changed from an action.
Anyway...you didn't want to know all that...sorry. ;=D I'm hoping this leads more people to feel the "vow" vibe I got off of that scene in AoG. I do believe RTD meant for us to understand it as such. The Doctor's air of contentment...and the mere fact that he asked her that question...is monumental in the history of Doctor Who.
Thanks for the feedback. And the loving care you've lavished on illustrating my story. You are one of the most inspiring people I've met online. :hugs:
Rae
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-18 01:54 pm (UTC)Love the Crucible. Fear the next chapter b/c I know what comes next.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-21 01:53 pm (UTC)I can't tell you how much it means to see you still reading after all this time. Thanks for letting me know you're still out there with the lovely feedback
Rae
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-18 03:40 pm (UTC)I'd actually reread all the other parts not that long ago so I was very happy to see this, even if it is rather heart breaking to watch them struggle like this. I love how/where you ended this chapter.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-21 02:02 pm (UTC)I'm glad to hear you enjoyed the end of the chapter. I've said elsewhere that I feel Russell T. Davies was making the same statement as I am here. That was a pledge of commitment from Rose. And the Doctor was very happy to receive it. Thanks again for leaving me feedback. I'm so happy to know my chapers are still relevant to people.
Rae
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-18 04:21 pm (UTC)I have to be the mean one and point out a few grammar mistakes, but they are really simple, and a quick reread and you should able to catch them.
That's okay...I should have sent it back to the betas
Date: 2007-10-18 04:45 pm (UTC)Still, I'm happy it's up and semi-readable, after this long struggle. And I'm glad you missed it. Thanks for your comments.
Rae
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-18 07:10 pm (UTC)It's like they went through their lives somewhat normally pre-Vortex, but now post-Vortex, their lives and original events are changed by Bad Wolf. It modifies the past to suit it. It's as if Bad Wolf had to have a foundation to work on, but now it exists, it erases what was. The Bad Wolf creates itself, eh? Separates them from their previous linear existences, like Nine kinda did to Rose and her old life when he took her for 12 months. I always thought that was subconsciously on purpose, rather than a mistake.
It amuses me that he refused to go through an annulment despite his supposed objection to marriage. And then he goes and 'marries' her for what in his mind is for real. It was nearly odd to read the Doctor think with a hint of disappointment, "All those times in his head and she'd never pressed for a commitment, never poked through his mind for reassurances." He gives every sign that he doesn't want those domestics, but truly wants it desperately. Wants Rose to stake her claim. Must be a basic human/gallifreyan mindset differences. She's taking him on trust and he wants her to confirm, and not just trust. With that in mind, no wonder he is so nervous about his position in her good graces.
You are, as always, amazingly insightful.
Date: 2007-10-18 08:15 pm (UTC)As for the Doctor's refusal to go through with the annulment despite his objection to the marriage...well...that was a two-fold situation. On the one hand, as Rose stated and as the Doctor tells us, the formality of paperwork isn't going to change anything. All he is worried about with the marriage is that it seems like a betrayal to him. Rose messed up the time stream...and he was confident she wouldn't. Or maybe, more sinisterly, she is keeping him from knowing important things. On the other hand...once he accepts that nothing much has fundamentally changed...he sees no reason to start rocking the boat.
As far as the Doctor is concerned, any wedding he's gotten through in one piece, without any bloodshed or wildfires, is a success. He considers Rose's attempt to "set things right" both ill-advised and a bit hurtful, but not because he puts stock in the sanctity of their union...rather because time itself is making the union a given and a piece of paper wouldn't change anything.
Oh...it is so nice to discuss process with you once again. :squee: Thanks for continuing to read and comment. You make all the hair-pulling and cursing worthwhile.
Rae
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-18 08:32 pm (UTC)This chapter is so lovely, in a sad sort of way. It's not nice to see anyone fighting, but you do it with such verisimilitude that it's beautiful and real, even when it's strange and fantastic.
to be honest, I didn't really understand the whole Crimson-Cycle bit at the beginning, but I did gather having to close a temporal loop to stop things from going wrong. (Is that correct?) But it didn't deter any from my enjoyment of the chapter. I loved it all.
Oh, and thewhole thing about the weddings and how they never seem to take. That must have hurt, to feel like she's again being treated like one of the others. The ending was absolutely perfect.
Great job!
YAY! You commented...another voice from the past...
Date: 2007-10-19 03:26 am (UTC)As for the Crimson Cycle...I thought that I should have a logical explanation for things going wrong, so the Doctor can move on smoothly. I thought...if I was a Time Lord and I wanted to kill myself...how would I go about it...the burrowing tree slugs were my first line of suicide...but then I thought...maybe I'd go to some historical spot where I was bound to run into trouble. The Crimson Cycle is that sort of space/time coordinate. Sort of like an old West saloon...things are more likely to go bad there than any other place and time.
Rose is hurt by the weddings. But I think the Doctor is hurt as well. He seems, in canon, to believe he CAN'T have that sort of life. I know in Family of Blood, he makes Joan the offer...but we immediately see that she isn't going to be there for her either. BTW, there's another example of a wedding without a bride...he married Joan in a vision of a possible future. Part of the reason he reacts so strongly to Rose and Nine marrying is that he sees it as a sure sign things are about to go pear-shaped for them.
Hope that is clearer now. Thanks for your comments and qustions. I am thrilled to be back with some fic for you.
Rae
Re: YAY! You commented...another voice from the past...
From:Re: YAY! You commented...another voice from the past...
From:(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-18 08:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-19 03:33 am (UTC)It's a small thing...maybe I will fix it...maybe not. Maybe it will just be our little secret.
Thanks so much for taking the time to comment. I really needed the comments this time...just to remind me I still have readers out there waiting for chapters.
Rae
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-18 09:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-19 03:30 am (UTC)Rae
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-18 10:46 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-19 03:28 am (UTC)Thanks for taking the time to leave me some encouragement.
Rae
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-19 03:36 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-21 02:14 pm (UTC)Rae
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-19 04:26 am (UTC)I loved the ending here. It's long been my assertion that the bit at the beginning of "Army of Ghosts" while they were watching those manta-bat things was a textual wedding, and I'm thrilled to see I'm not the only one who thinks so. I look forward to the final parts of this story.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-20 02:34 am (UTC)I'm glad you enjoyed the ending. It was the way it ended all along but getting them to that point was like running a team of cats in the Iditarod. There was a total lack of cooperation from my brain, my schedule, my health, S3 and my imaginary Doctor/Rose team. Sheesh! So, it is beyond gratifying to have people actually enjoy this chapter. I look at it and see the pain and surgical staples and such that went into it.
Thanks for the pick-me-up of your comments.
Rae
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-19 03:06 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-20 02:37 am (UTC)No, seriously...if I was drunk with anything it was my sense of loss over my vanished writing skills. I was blocked for so long I thought I'd been sealed in forever.
Thanks for giving me the encouragement to keep plugging away in the face of my own feelings of failure.
Rae
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-19 06:46 pm (UTC)And OUCH, but very, very good.
\(^o^)/
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-20 02:39 am (UTC)Thanks for the wild Kermit the Frog YAY!
It means a lot to the Doctor that you used Kermie...who, we all agree, is 100% not gay. ;-D
Rae