![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rabid1stHere you go...not even a warning shot...just FIC!
Let me make it all up to you...make it all better...make the bitter pill of endless regeneration a tad easier to swallow.
Okay, let me confuse you just a little more...and then I will explain, I promise.
DISHEVELED
by Rabid1st
Doctor Who
Rose/Ten
Rating: Mature +
Beta Babes: Keswindhover, Caia and TheWinterQueen
Spoilers: All of S2 and S3 to VotD...chapters are linked to canon events in chronological fashion.
CLICK HERE FOR ALL PREVIOUS PARTS
Summary: This is the story of the Doctor and Rose falling in love and learning to find a personal “forever.” It is filled with angst and alien sex and lots of misunderstandings and trauma but overall, I think of it as the love story behind the television canon through S3. My story goes AU from S4 and this is not what I expect to happen in canon.
Disclaimer: I have no rights to any of the characters or situations in this story. I created it for my own amusement and the amusement of my friends and I neither expect nor accept financial or other substantive gain from this work.
PART TWENTY-SEVEN
SOME TIME FURTHER ON...
“Oh, my head,” Rose moaned.
Her ears rang and...
She was sticky...in all the wrong places...hot and cramped.
She sniffed, something smelled musty. Her nose wrinkled in disgust. Where was she?
Her eyelids felt welded shut. She tried to lift her hand to her head but a fleshy weight seemed to be holding her arm down. She pried her eyes open and immediately wished she hadn't. Her view was limited to what she quickly realized was a masculine armpit. She grunted in alarm, flopping around and squirming backward as she struggled to free herself from a tangle of smelly nudity in what appeared to be a very crowded bed. Surfacing from the mound of nakedness to open air, she took her bearings and covered her nose. Even beyond the armpit the room had the reek of rent-by-the-hour motel. Crouching against the headboard of the bed, she examined the humanoid wreckage around her. They weren't exactly people. What were they?
As the room dipped and swayed, Rose groaned, “What was I drinking last night?”
“Qwarsh,” said a voice from the chair by the door. “It's called Qwarsh. It removes all inhibition. And I did warn you not to sample it.”
Rose breathed a sigh of relief and strained to focus on the figure in the chair. The Doctor. She barely recognized his voice but she did remember his new look. The room settled into an even wobble around her. She waited for it to completely stabilize, clinging to the headboard for dear life. When it did, she put a hand to the back of her neck and adjusted the manual override on her vision circuits. Her eyes focused and she got her first full view of the naked Time Lord sprawled in the chair. He had three equally nude humanoids draped over him. All of the people...drones, she remembered, they were called drones...pleasure drones. All of the drones on the floor and chairs and in the bed appeared to be sleeping the sleep of the utterly exhausted. The Doctor looked as fresh as a daisy might in a field of dead grass.
“Did I lose some sort of bet?” Rose asked.
“You won one,” he answered, grinning. “Don't you remember?
“I remember you regenerated,” Rose said.
“That was two months ago,” the Doctor told her. “Anything more recent?”
“There was a game of cards and...lights. Lots of glittery little lights.”
“And a band,” he said, “several bands, as I remember it. Several clubs, quite a few pleasure drones and a bottle of...”
“Qwarsh,” Rose said with him. She glanced up at the ceiling. “That's a really big mirror,” she said.
"The better to see yourself with?" The Doctor admired the lean cut of his relatively new figure. “I do like this new look, raffish, swashbuckling.”
Rose chewed her lower lip as she gave him a predatory once over. “Very Captain Jack,” she purred. “Not our Captain Jack...the other one. Sparrow. Johnny Depp, I mean.” A sudden snicker tickled her nose. Index finger pressed to her upper lip, hand tenting her mouth, she said, "Oh, no, it's the next title in our Hamster and Otter Are Friends series...something like, I don't know...The Terminator versus the Pirate King.
The Doctor raised an eyebrow as he considered this and his twenty-second regeneration. "Versus? Not very friendly, that. Sounds more like a summer blockbuster than a children's book...T36: Back to the Caribbean.
His reflected image showed a deadly handsome man in his early thirties. The virility of the figure pleased him. He seemed and, indeed, was remarkably fit. He'd matched Rose drone for drone for several hours before she'd finally won their wager. And she had gantaluvium gears and dilithium power cells. Yes, all in all, he liked his newest body.
It had magnificent thighs and taut biceps and a six-pack. His wavy, jet black hair fell to well-defined shoulders. A full, bow-shaped mouth softened his stronger features, like the piercing blue eyes which gave him a commanding air. Well, eye really, as one side of his face hadn't quite regenerated properly. But, no doubt the patch was what gave him his roguish appeal. And Rose seemed to be overlooking his scars. She was also overlooking the orgy. Since this wasn't like her, he tore his attention away from the mirror and watched her warily as she tumbled out of the bed.
“Careful of the ones on the floor,” he said. “Most of those are yours.”
“It's good to have hormones,” she said, doing a mental count of the pleasure drones she could see, “even if they are synthetic.”
“That's what you said last night,” he remarked. He yawned and stretched again. “That is, once the Qwarsh moved you past your initial trepidation.”
Noticing a foot near her own, Rose bent to look under the bed for the rest of the alien sex worker. “How many are there, exactly?”
“Twenty-two,” he said, smirking, “Coincidentally.”
“And you are absolutely certain they, the...Apocritians,” she frowned, struggling to get her tired tongue around the name, “are fine with this arrangement? Nothing exploitative about it?”
“It would be cruel to wake them up to ask,” he said, “But we can, if you don't remember. Or,” he bobbed his chin toward a table, “You collected a stack of brochures about the Apisreoth System. Over there. Though you know I wouldn't ask you to take part in anything degrading to the people of this planet. I don't even like sex that much.” Rose snorted and he shrugged. “They're like Earth bees, hence the name of the system and species. Every individual is completely committed to breeding and service. And yet, there can only be one viable breeding pair per generation. All of our friends here were surplus, spares, literally nothing to live for but drudgery until we came along.”
“The perfect sex workers,” Rose mused, as she glanced around hoping to spot her clothes. “No chance of them wanting commitment or getting pregnant.”
“Not from me,” he said. “I don't have the right pheromones to trigger an ovipositor transformation.”
Rose made a derisive noise and said, “I mean because the queen is giving off those suppressor hormones. Nobody can reproduce but her.” She gave him a saucy wink, and then tapped her temple and added, “It's all coming back to me from the brochures.”
While hunting for a bra to go with the knickers she'd located, she found the Doctor's discarded trousers and one of his boots. She carried the items to him.
“Oh, and your people had a field day with that,” he said, “when they first discovered this planet. No responsibility nothing but fun, fun, fun.”
“Oi, they're not my people,” Rose said, standing over him. “I came here with you.”
“Humans, I mean,” he said, waving a dismissive hand. “You lot will have sex with anything bees, trees...appliances, whatever.”
“And mighty thankful you are for it, too,” Rose told him, dropping his shoe and trousers on the floor at his feet. “The things I've had to overlook,” she said, primly. Her fond glance took the sting from her complaint.
“I am nothing if not absurdly grateful for your unnatural appetites,” he said, beaming at her. Nodding, he went on with his explanations. “So, comes a few generations and the queen decides she could turn a profit via the sex trade and keep her people happy as well. No more honey gathering.”
“Did they gather honey before?”
“Figure of speech, early human settlers called the sex trade that though.”
Rose chortled. “Seriously? Honey gathering?”
“You are a people with a knack for euphemism. And I must say, you, personally, used to get a bit sticky.”
“Ha,” Rose said, mouth lolling open in a wolfish grin.
“I think, before the Apisreoth system was discovered, the drones mostly tended the queen's children. Turning eggs. Feeding infants. Changing a hundred million nappies. They've got technology now and the queen doesn't need as many workers for that sort of thing. Speaking of what you've had to put up with, how long has it been since we...?”
She stoked a thumb under her chin, head turning as she surveyed the crowded room. “Apparently, it was last night,” she said, blushing prettily.
“Not counting pleasure drones,” he countered. “No matter how uninhibited we all were. It's not the same as you and I...alone, is it? Give us a hand with her,” he said, gently tipping one of his partners toward Rose.
She held the woman at the elbows to keep her upright while the Doctor squirmed out of the chair. Twisting his hips, the Doctor eased free of the two redheads, one male and one female, still embracing him and stood.
“Do you think she looks like me?” Rose said, her eyes narrowing as she studied the blond in her grip. “Like I used to look, I mean?”
“I suppose,” he said, covering a yawn as he cast a cursory glance at the surrogate body he'd used so freely last night. She meant nothing to him this morning. He ruffled both hands through his hair and then scratched at his scraggly beard. “Superficially. The lips. The hair.”
“She's not a blonde.”
“Neither were you.”
“And if she's the one with blue eyes, they're fake, too.” She assessed the female drone as they settled her back into the chair. “Not the only augmented thing on her, either.”
“Jealousy chip working properly, I see.”
“Shut up,” Rose said, playfully slapping at his arm.
He laughed as he captured her in a tight embrace. Pressing their hips together, he ran his hands up and down her silky back. She felt so pliable, so human. His lips found her ear and he nibbled gently along the perfectly-sculpted shell of it. Almost immediately, her metallic skin lost its initial coolness. She turned molten in his arms. Within seconds she was ready for him, lithe and heated and wet.
“She dreamed of swans,” he said in a ragged whisper, his whole body prickling into arousal.
“Liar,” she snorted, pushing and squirming in a half-hearted attempt to escape. Her stuggling only made him hold on tighter, want her more. “I bet she's never even seen a swan.”
“I swear,” he said, hitting a falsetto note. “Or honking great waterfowl of some description. Purple instead of white or black,” he conceded with a wry tilt of the head. “Maybe they weren't technically swans, but...six of one.”
"Half a dozen of another," she replied.
He gave her a resounding kiss, and then released her so he could dress. She watched him wriggle into his trousers. “She isn't you, Rose,” he said. Craning his neck, he looked for an unoccupied place to sit. “You've ruined me for other women.”
“Yeah, you look like a ruin,” she said, admiring his denim-clad backside as he bound over drones to reach a clear corner of the bed.
He sat with care. Then, flashed a grin at her, as he stomped a foot into a boot. The other boot was close at hand and he recovered it. His offhand ease didn't make his words any less true. The pleasure drones might help him connect with Rose. They might look a little like she once had. But he didn't care about any of that. Not the sex or the look. He wanted his wife, needed her touch to keep him sane.
None of the very talented, extremely enthusiastic surrogates in this room had satisfied him. He'd penetrated them, pleasured them, but only to get to Rose's mind. He'd needed a living body to hold, someone to squirm against him and take his arousal drug. But flesh held no allure for him while his wife was entombed in metal. She had synthetic flesh, a metal alloy with a neural network. It felt real enough but there was no nervous system, no synaptic links for his cnidocytes to connect with when they fired. Firing into nothing was agony for him.
Knowing this, Rose sighed and crossed to settled next to him, cuddling close. “I want it, too,” she said. “Touch.”
“When was the last time?” he asked again. “Just us?”
“Not since that ion storm...eighty years? Ninety? I can't remember.” She pressed the heel of one hand to her brow, but shook her head. “I think the memory circuits in this thing are failing.”
“Time for an upgrade,” he said. “Just like me?”
“You know we can't use the storms,” she said with all seriousness. “The TARDIS took a beating last time. We can't keep doing that to her. The interface is falling apart as it is.”
“She's old. Nearly as old as I am.”
“You're not old,” Rose said, shifting around to slide across his leg into his lap. “Look at how fit you are.”
He snuggled into her, matching his breathing to the artificial rhythm of hers. Their lips met and they both gave contented hums. But after stroking his tongue along hers, he pulled back and said, “It's not as pleasurable for you, is it? Not like it was when you were alive?” She stared beyond his shoulder, silent for a moment. He twirled a ringlet of her hair around one finger. “It doesn't satisfy you.”
“Don't worry about me.”
He levered her away from him a little. Let her see the dark disappointment in his blue eyes. “But I do. You're my wife. More...you complete me.” His grip on her clenched tight. “You're...Rose. And I did this to you. If it hadn't been for me coming into your life, you'd be...”
“I'd be long dead,” Rose said. “Never forget that. I'd have married Mickey and lived a short, unfulfilled life. Is that what you think I deserve?”
“No, of course not.” He smiled crookedly. “Nobody 'deserves' Mickey.”
“Now, who's pointlessly jealous,” she laughed, poking his chest with a finger. His cnidocytes bristled and glowed. The sight of the display, made Rose want him intently. If only he could fire into her, link with her nervous system. She ran her tongue along the sharp edges of her teeth. “Oh, you could go again, couldn't you?”
He really couldn't, not with a surrogate sex drone, not so soon. “I'm fine,” he said, getting a grip on his instinctive response to her closeness. Rising, he sat Rose on her feet. “I just want to find that damned elusive Isolus, so you can feel again...really live.” Jaw clenching, he paced off his frustrations as well as he could while skirting sleeping pleasure drones. After a few stumbles, he halted and sighed. “But, I want to thank you for this.” He fanned a hand though the air to indicate the evidence of their night of debauchery. “And I thought I would never use a surrogate.”
“We both wanted this,” Rose reminded him. “I won the bet. It was wonderful to see you enjoy someone again. And the dreaming, it went beyond anything this metal flesh can feel. So fantastic," she sighed, "To be on Gallifrey, again. And then on Earth. To walk through the grass and see my mum. I was alive and whole and with you.”
He had his shirt in his hands. He twisted the collar. “You were with him,” he said, softly. “It's always him.”
Rose couldn't blush for real but she did turn pinkish and she felt the sting of shame in her cybernetic cheeks. Every Doctor tended to be jealous of her relationship with earlier incarnations. And it didn't help matters that she couldn't seem to let go of one particular face and form.
“I know, I'm sorry. I...it'll be you, next time, I promise.” Her throat closed, catching her words. She cleared it and went on, “It's just that, he's the last one who really touched me. I know him so well. I know what he feels like under my hands. What his mouth can do. His...I just remember everything about him so clearly.”
“I wish I could go back to that for you. Be him again.”
“And I wish I could be her for you. Rose Tyler, shop girl.”
“We can try again with cybernetics,” he suggested.
“If I got one of the new chameleon model, I could look human again, look like my old self.”
He could tell her heart wasn't in it. “Or we can search the Dark Stars, again.” Rose opened her mouth to protest, but he rushed on before she could deny him. “There's a map.” He cringed a little, ducking from an expected Rose-explosion. “It's here, in the Maritime Museum. No space pirates. No con games.” She didn't blow and her silence inspired him to press his advantage. “I heard one of the gamblers talking about it yesterday when I was scouting the hotels. I would have mentioned it sooner if you hadn't become so...uninhibited.”
“You want us to go back there? Follow another map?” she asked, an icy edge to her voice.
“This one is different,” he insisted. “It's from a research vessel.” He came over to stand before her. Gently he cradled her face and kissed her brow. Easing back, he met her eye. “It's been seen, Rose: the Isolus Swarm. Near Kasterborous.”
Rose jerked away from him. “Gallifrey?” she barked, one hand ripping down in a karate chop of the air. Her mercurial irises swirled as she confronted him. “No! Absolutely not.”
“All we have to do is find a way to navigate without instruments.”
“Oh, is that all,” Rose stormed, waving her arms around like she was swatting away flies. “And what about the TARDIS? You expect her to go back into that war zone. She can't tolerate it. You can't tolerate it. We barely made it out alive the last time. What if we lose her? Have you thought of that? Have you thought of where you and I will be if...”
“She's dying,” he blurted, gruffly cutting short her tirade. Rose checked her stride, nearly stumbling over a sleeping drone as she turned to face the Doctor. She was panting hard. Her eyes were wide and staring.“You know it as well as I do,” he continued in a patient voice. “You probably knew it first.”
Slowly, Rose nodded. “When did you...?”
“Does it matter? The TARIDS is dying, going to seed around us. And your life is linked to hers.”
“Your life is linked to her, too.”
He shook his head. “I could go on. But you die when she dies.”
“She can't die. She's not...flesh.”
“When her systems fail, then. When the mechanical interface stops working and the Heart is free to leave. You will die, unless we find you a body before then. With no spare parts, no shop to fix her, we can't expect her to last much longer. And then, where will we be?”
“Lost,” Rose whispered. The word seemed to echo in the stuffy air as the Doctor nodded.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Lost,” the Doctor mouthed. The word was little more than a slight sigh. Rose had to crawl closer to hear him.
“Hold on,” she croaked, her metallic fingers clutching for his hand as she collapsed. It had taken most of her remaining strength to reach his side. “If we die here...”
“If...?” He would have laughed, but he couldn't draw in enough air.
“...I love you,” she finished.
“You know...I do, too,” he gasped, “love you...even if...if we...live.”
Her head lolled, nearly slipping from his shoulder. “You're joking?” She couldn't believe it. “At a time like this?”
He smiled the thinnest of smiles and her spirits lifted just a bit. If she had to die, this is where she wanted to be. They lay side by side for a few minutes, neither able to move. Noxious black smoke billowed from the remains of the console. Mauve light strobed across the ceiling. Sirens sounded. There was a hissing noise as the breathable atmosphere bled slowly into space. The leak wasn't slow enough for any hope of rescue. The hiss grew fainter by the second.
They'd been flying blind through Kasterborous, navigating around the temporal whirlpools of the Dark Stars, when something collided with them. The Doctor was sure he hadn't miscalculated their position. Either their map was wrong or something spatially transcendental—planetary debris, a warhead or another ship from the Time War had smashed into them. It hardly mattered where they placed the blame. They were doomed. This was how their story ended, in the cold vacuum of space.
The TARDIS was dying and so was her Time Lord. The Cloister Bell had already tolled his passing. Rose could feel him slipping away into the dark as she struggled to sit up and help him. She tried to staunch the flow of blood. He couldn't die. She wasn't ready to let go of him. But then, she would never be ready. And it wasn't as if she would outlive him by more than a few minutes. With no power to sustain her, once the TARDIS died, so would Rose. There had to be a heaven for her Doctor, a place where he could rest. He deserved that and living without the hope of it, even for those few minutes, would be hell for her. An irritating series of beeps sounded and Rose glanced toward the inner door, wondering what the noise signified.
“Rose?” the Doctor gurgled, drawing her attention back to their personal tragedy. The wound in his chest bubbled dark blood when he spoke. “I...I...can't...regenerate.”
She knew already. There would be no new body for him this time. He was too weak, barely out of his last regeneration cycle. They'd been running and fighting every minute since then. He didn't have the strength to change again so soon. With the exception of Rassilon, the Doctor had lived longer than any of his kind, almost two thousand years. He didn't have the strength to go on any more. And he couldn't go on without the TARDIS in any case. Not if there was no hope of rescue, eventually he would die without air or heat. They were a lost cause, all three of them--an ancient wreck of a TARDIS, an obsolete Time Lord and a woman who by all rights should have died nine hundred years ago.
“Save your strength,” she told him, gathering him into her arms. “I've sent the signal. Maybe this time it will come.”
“Too late.”
“We should never have come here,” Rose growled. “It was too great a risk.”
“Tired,” he gasped. “I'm so, so tired.”
“You can rest soon,” she said. “We can both rest.” She glanced toward the monitors. “Do you think it's out there? Assuming it even heard us, how long will it take to get here? An hour? A day?” Too late.
“The coordinates...”
“That computer was a relic. Every second line of data was corrupted. Even if those scientists did see something...we don't know what it was. We don't know if you programmed the right coordinates.”
“Faith,” he managed to croak. She looked into his eyes and he held her hand. For once, they didn't need flesh to be mind-to-mind, both of them apologized, regretting they'd waited so long to call for help. He lifted a hand to her metallic cheek. “Let me see...her,” he said.
Why had she wanted to feel again? “I can't,” she said, weeping. The tears she shed were as artificial as the eyes that produced them. “There's not enough power for my chameleon circuits.” It twisted into her soul that she couldn't let him look on her human face one last time. “I'm sorry.”
“No...we had to try,” he said, sounding stronger. “Keep going, keep fighting to the end. Everything ends. All things...come to dust.” Pulling on his last reserves of strength, he sat up to face her, his fingertips traced over her cheek. “No regrets, Rose. No...” His breath rattled and he slumped to the floor. The TARDIS screamed.
Rose screamed, too. Denial raw in her throat. It wasn't fair. It wasn't. It couldn't end this way. The final regeneration fire started to consume him even as she felt for his pulse. Maybe he could come back to her one more time. Hope and despair warred in her breast. The strange alarm sounded again.
The monitors flashed a warning: IMMINENT COLLISION.
beep
beep
beep
beep
beep
beep
Not again. They couldn't handle another hit. They needed to get out of the way. Rose stood, staggering toward the console. Something was headed straight for them. The backup power failed as she reached the controls, casting the room into absolute blackness. Rose switched to infrared vision and started flipping switches. The sensors were dead, every monitor, every light. The TARDIS had no idea what was about to hit them. Something massive grated against the outer door. The impact bucked Rose off her feet.
“What the hell was that?” she demanded of the TARDIS via their mental link. “Let me see it. Damn it, patch me through to the outer links.”
The TARDIS tried to comply. She fed Rose a scramble of fuzzy images via their connection. Rose got an impression of a living entity, mass and power. Whatever was outside seemed to be opening a great maw to swallow them whole. It dwarfed the police box, like the whale that swallowed Jonah.
“It looks like her. It has to be. Is it...? Is it her? Let me see. We have to ask her the question. We have to...”
The ship quaked, tossing Rose sideways. Via the door in her mind, Rose felt reality lose relevance for the Heart of the TARDIS. It had no more to give to time or space. The alien soul slipped free of the mooring line holding it anchored to the Doctor's ship. Rose felt the living mind of the TARDIS glide away from corporeal constraints. The door in her mind, shrank to the size of a window, a pea, a pinprick. The Heart was eternal, not subject to the rules of reality. Rose knew the Heart would continue to exist between realities, but this really was the end of the TARDIS.
The interface, grown not built by the long dead Time Lords, was a husk. It had no life force left, no internal power and no Heart at its core. There was nothing to sustain the coral shell. The ship tumbled, losing its center of gravity. Rose tried to claw her way back to the Doctor, but lost her grip and fell a very long way before she cracked her head on a piece of the metal safety railing.
Her sensors went dark.
10 MINUTES LATER
The proximity alarm sounded again. Words flashed neon pink on the inside of Rose's eyelids.
IMMINENT COLLISION!
IMMINENT COLLISION!
IMMINENT COLLISION!
beep
beep
beep
“Alright, alright,” she grumbled, slamming a hand down on the snooze button. “I'm awake. I'm up.”
She pushed covers from her face and yawned, stretching as she sat up. Cold air swept along her back. Prying her eyes open, she blinked as morning sunlight contracted her pupils. She cast aside rosebud-printed, flannel sheets and mounds of fluffy comforters and swung her feet to the floor. The cold wood underfoot made her wince. Mornings were getting frigid. It would be worth it if they could have snow for Christmas. She arched her back in another stretch, feeling languidly satisfied with the world.
Noting her slippers, peeking out at her from the beneath the bed, she leaned over to retrieve them. Once her toes were cozy, she stood and shuffled to the end of the bed for her robe. She drew the wrap from the foot board and snuggled into its warmth. Toasty again, she padded over to the window and looked out. No snow. No frost. Pale sunlight filtered through the gauzy curtains. Dewdrop diamonds sparkled in the grass outside. It was a lovely brisk September day out.
But something nagged at the back of Rose's mind. It felt like she was forgetting an important appointment. Or maybe there was something off about the view. Had something been moved? The lawn furniture? She combed a hand through her hair and leaned against the window frame. Her eyes swept the yard again. She couldn't quite place what it was that was bothering her. Something missing, maybe?
She looked toward the Doctor's workshop. Everything seemed secure there. He'd left the hoe out again. It was sure to rust if they had another rain. But a rusty hoe was no cause for alarm. She examined the fence that constrained her herb garden. Nothing amiss. Nothing obviously wrong with the bird feeders or the birdbath. Beyond the back gate, the woods seemed much the same, silver leaves catching the morning sun. Nothing seemed to be out of place. Shaking her head, Rose turned back to survey the room, admiring its cheerful country cottage ambiance as if seeing it for the first time.
She loved this room. It was her second favorite in the house. The Doctor's library was her absolute favorite, but only because he was so often there. She'd picked out the furniture for this room and the rose-patterned curtains and bed linens. Rose's could be overdone and she had made sure they were tastefully discrete. She loved the carved cherry wood of the wardrobe. All of her dress clothes, suits and blouses, were lined up on one side and his were on the other. She crossed to the wardrobe, opened the door and ran her fingers down the sleeve of his brown suit jacket. The worn cotton felt wonderfully soothing to her. Suddenly daring and needing to feel closer to him, she shed her robe and pajamas. Stripped to her knickers, she slipped on his jacket. It caressed her skin, reminding her of his hands, his mouth.
Her nipples squeezed into rigid sensitivity as she stepped back to admire herself in the dresser mirror. The jacket fit snuggly across her chest and shoulders. She stroked her hands down the front of it, smoothing it over her belly and hips. Her hips were too wide. The white lace of her knickers flashed when she rocked from foot to foot. She cocked her head, turning this way and that to see how she looked from all angles. Her hair was a rat's nest and wrinkles from the sheets creased her cheeks. But she felt sexy in his clothes and wanted to show off for him. The very idea of parading before him like this made her ache between her legs. She grimaced as she grew slippery wet. Too many teeth, she thought, baring them again in a broad smile. She caught the reflection of movement behind her and turned. A robin settled on a feeder outside the window. It pecked at the suet she'd put out fresh yesterday.
No, that was wrong. Yesterday, there'd been...none of this. There'd been blood and smoke and...twisted metal. Yesterday...she'd had metal skin and...something had swallowed them.
IMMINENT COLLISION!
beep
beep
beep
“Rose?” the pile of comforters and blankets whined. “Make it stop beeping. It's not fair to let it go on beeping after you're already up. I don't get to sleep very often and...”
That voice, she hadn't heard that voice in a thousand years. “Doctor?” she gasped, staggering to the side.
The floor tilted under her feet as a rush of fear and hope and wonder made her dizzy. She put a hand out to the dresser edge to keep from falling over. This was wrong. Impossible. It couldn't be him. He was dead. Centuries dead. She glanced over her shoulder. That woman in the mirror...blond hair, dark brows, generous mouth...she was dead, too.
Even as she denied his existence and her own, the snooze alarm beeped again and the Doctor exploded from the bed. Sheets and comforter went flying as he sprang from within them. His navy blue pajamas had a gold pocket-watch print on them. An unruly mass of brown hair stood straight up in spikes on his head. His dark eyes flashed as he grinned and cocked a brow at her.
“Hello?” he said, beaming ear to ear.
Before she could respond, he skipped around the bed to her side of it and yanked the alarm from the wall. He tossed the clock into the wastebasket, dusted off his hands, and then stiffened. Very slowly he turned to squint at her.
“It's you!”
“Me?” she said, accusingly. “It's you!”
He took a half-step forward, and then, apparently as dizzy as she'd been, grabbed at his temples and sat down on the edge of the bed.
“Oh, no, no, no! It's you...you,” he said, focusing on her. He pointed emphatically at the mirror behind her, shaking his finger. “Look at you.” Then, he shifted his perspective and stared open-mouthed at his own reflection. He hopped up onto his knees. Kneeling on the bed, he leaned forward to clutch the footboard with both hands “No, look at me.” Wonder flooded his face. “Look at us.”
Rose watched him pat his face, and then tug at his hair. He grimaced at the mirror, mugging as he touched two fingers to his lips. He curled his upper lip to expose his teeth and appeared to count them with the tip of his tongue.
“I was sleeping,” he said, twisting at the waist to assess the rumbled bedding. “No! I was dead. Dying, at any rate. Rose?”
“Yes,” she confirmed, nodding as she moved closer to him. “I remember, too. The blood and smoke.”
“We took a direct hit. The console exploded and something,” he pantomimed the spike driving into his chest. His mouth dropped open again as his eyes lost focus. “I was slipping away...so cold...holding your hand.”
“I tried to save you.”
“But you couldn't. You didn't have the power. Even the TARDIS was dying.” Rose nodded mutely. The Doctor's mind returned to the present and his gaze swept the room. “And now, we're here.”
“Are we dead?”
His bottom lip pouted into fullness as he considered the notion. “I don't feel dead. Do you?”
“What does dead feel like?” Rose asked, closing the remaining distance between them. “We must be. How could we survive? Maybe...maybe we're dreaming.”
“Maybe we are,” he agreed, meeting her eye. “If this is our last shared dream, we might only have a few seconds left.”
As the grim reality of it sank in, they launched themselves at one another. Rose gave a mewling cry of alarm as she seized his face in both hands and brought her mouth to his. His lips felt warm and soft under hers. She forced them apart, eager to taste him. He groaned, yielding to her tongue. His hands clawed their way to her skin, sliding up under his jacket. Once they were flesh on flesh, he wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her down into the warm nest of bed covers.
His fingers found the waistband of her knickers and peeled the lacy cloth from her as they skimmed under it. Gripping the curves of her bare bottom with both hands, he encouraged Rose to plunder his mouth by teasing her tongue with his own. She stroked her fingers through his hair and squirmed and he broke from her lips to whimper her name. Rolling her to her back, he straddled her hips and began frantically unbuttoning his pajama top. Rose struggled to free herself from the tangle of his jacket.
“Not dead,” she gasped. “Not yet. Oh, god...this...can't be happening...it's just so....oh, Doctor.”
Tiny darts fired into her bared skin as he returned to her arms. She arched under him, clawing at his shoulders, reveling in the exquisite mix of pain and pleasure. This was living. She hadn't felt this alive, this hungry, in centuries. There were tears of joy on her cheeks. Real tears. She tasted salt as they reached her lips. The mating drug filled her vision with pastel colors. A dreamlike lassitude relaxed her limbs. Her Doctor entered her mind. He was here with her and everything—the joy, the drug in her system, his tender kisses—all of it felt so real. He was at her throat, sucking on it like she was hard candy, when the knock came at the window. Lost in each other, they ignored the noise, but it came again, louder.
The latch was thrown on the window and a voice said, “Oh, I say, this is hardly the time for that. Not just now, if you don't mind. In case you haven't noticed, we've got a rather nasty problem on our hands.”
END THIS PART
Let me make it all up to you...make it all better...make the bitter pill of endless regeneration a tad easier to swallow.
Okay, let me confuse you just a little more...and then I will explain, I promise.
DISHEVELED
by Rabid1st
Doctor Who
Rose/Ten
Rating: Mature +
Beta Babes: Keswindhover, Caia and TheWinterQueen
Spoilers: All of S2 and S3 to VotD...chapters are linked to canon events in chronological fashion.
CLICK HERE FOR ALL PREVIOUS PARTS
Summary: This is the story of the Doctor and Rose falling in love and learning to find a personal “forever.” It is filled with angst and alien sex and lots of misunderstandings and trauma but overall, I think of it as the love story behind the television canon through S3. My story goes AU from S4 and this is not what I expect to happen in canon.
Disclaimer: I have no rights to any of the characters or situations in this story. I created it for my own amusement and the amusement of my friends and I neither expect nor accept financial or other substantive gain from this work.
PART TWENTY-SEVEN
SOME TIME FURTHER ON...
“Oh, my head,” Rose moaned.
Her ears rang and...
She was sticky...in all the wrong places...hot and cramped.
She sniffed, something smelled musty. Her nose wrinkled in disgust. Where was she?
Her eyelids felt welded shut. She tried to lift her hand to her head but a fleshy weight seemed to be holding her arm down. She pried her eyes open and immediately wished she hadn't. Her view was limited to what she quickly realized was a masculine armpit. She grunted in alarm, flopping around and squirming backward as she struggled to free herself from a tangle of smelly nudity in what appeared to be a very crowded bed. Surfacing from the mound of nakedness to open air, she took her bearings and covered her nose. Even beyond the armpit the room had the reek of rent-by-the-hour motel. Crouching against the headboard of the bed, she examined the humanoid wreckage around her. They weren't exactly people. What were they?
As the room dipped and swayed, Rose groaned, “What was I drinking last night?”
“Qwarsh,” said a voice from the chair by the door. “It's called Qwarsh. It removes all inhibition. And I did warn you not to sample it.”
Rose breathed a sigh of relief and strained to focus on the figure in the chair. The Doctor. She barely recognized his voice but she did remember his new look. The room settled into an even wobble around her. She waited for it to completely stabilize, clinging to the headboard for dear life. When it did, she put a hand to the back of her neck and adjusted the manual override on her vision circuits. Her eyes focused and she got her first full view of the naked Time Lord sprawled in the chair. He had three equally nude humanoids draped over him. All of the people...drones, she remembered, they were called drones...pleasure drones. All of the drones on the floor and chairs and in the bed appeared to be sleeping the sleep of the utterly exhausted. The Doctor looked as fresh as a daisy might in a field of dead grass.
“Did I lose some sort of bet?” Rose asked.
“You won one,” he answered, grinning. “Don't you remember?
“I remember you regenerated,” Rose said.
“That was two months ago,” the Doctor told her. “Anything more recent?”
“There was a game of cards and...lights. Lots of glittery little lights.”
“And a band,” he said, “several bands, as I remember it. Several clubs, quite a few pleasure drones and a bottle of...”
“Qwarsh,” Rose said with him. She glanced up at the ceiling. “That's a really big mirror,” she said.
"The better to see yourself with?" The Doctor admired the lean cut of his relatively new figure. “I do like this new look, raffish, swashbuckling.”
Rose chewed her lower lip as she gave him a predatory once over. “Very Captain Jack,” she purred. “Not our Captain Jack...the other one. Sparrow. Johnny Depp, I mean.” A sudden snicker tickled her nose. Index finger pressed to her upper lip, hand tenting her mouth, she said, "Oh, no, it's the next title in our Hamster and Otter Are Friends series...something like, I don't know...The Terminator versus the Pirate King.
The Doctor raised an eyebrow as he considered this and his twenty-second regeneration. "Versus? Not very friendly, that. Sounds more like a summer blockbuster than a children's book...T36: Back to the Caribbean.
His reflected image showed a deadly handsome man in his early thirties. The virility of the figure pleased him. He seemed and, indeed, was remarkably fit. He'd matched Rose drone for drone for several hours before she'd finally won their wager. And she had gantaluvium gears and dilithium power cells. Yes, all in all, he liked his newest body.
It had magnificent thighs and taut biceps and a six-pack. His wavy, jet black hair fell to well-defined shoulders. A full, bow-shaped mouth softened his stronger features, like the piercing blue eyes which gave him a commanding air. Well, eye really, as one side of his face hadn't quite regenerated properly. But, no doubt the patch was what gave him his roguish appeal. And Rose seemed to be overlooking his scars. She was also overlooking the orgy. Since this wasn't like her, he tore his attention away from the mirror and watched her warily as she tumbled out of the bed.
“Careful of the ones on the floor,” he said. “Most of those are yours.”
“It's good to have hormones,” she said, doing a mental count of the pleasure drones she could see, “even if they are synthetic.”
“That's what you said last night,” he remarked. He yawned and stretched again. “That is, once the Qwarsh moved you past your initial trepidation.”
Noticing a foot near her own, Rose bent to look under the bed for the rest of the alien sex worker. “How many are there, exactly?”
“Twenty-two,” he said, smirking, “Coincidentally.”
“And you are absolutely certain they, the...Apocritians,” she frowned, struggling to get her tired tongue around the name, “are fine with this arrangement? Nothing exploitative about it?”
“It would be cruel to wake them up to ask,” he said, “But we can, if you don't remember. Or,” he bobbed his chin toward a table, “You collected a stack of brochures about the Apisreoth System. Over there. Though you know I wouldn't ask you to take part in anything degrading to the people of this planet. I don't even like sex that much.” Rose snorted and he shrugged. “They're like Earth bees, hence the name of the system and species. Every individual is completely committed to breeding and service. And yet, there can only be one viable breeding pair per generation. All of our friends here were surplus, spares, literally nothing to live for but drudgery until we came along.”
“The perfect sex workers,” Rose mused, as she glanced around hoping to spot her clothes. “No chance of them wanting commitment or getting pregnant.”
“Not from me,” he said. “I don't have the right pheromones to trigger an ovipositor transformation.”
Rose made a derisive noise and said, “I mean because the queen is giving off those suppressor hormones. Nobody can reproduce but her.” She gave him a saucy wink, and then tapped her temple and added, “It's all coming back to me from the brochures.”
While hunting for a bra to go with the knickers she'd located, she found the Doctor's discarded trousers and one of his boots. She carried the items to him.
“Oh, and your people had a field day with that,” he said, “when they first discovered this planet. No responsibility nothing but fun, fun, fun.”
“Oi, they're not my people,” Rose said, standing over him. “I came here with you.”
“Humans, I mean,” he said, waving a dismissive hand. “You lot will have sex with anything bees, trees...appliances, whatever.”
“And mighty thankful you are for it, too,” Rose told him, dropping his shoe and trousers on the floor at his feet. “The things I've had to overlook,” she said, primly. Her fond glance took the sting from her complaint.
“I am nothing if not absurdly grateful for your unnatural appetites,” he said, beaming at her. Nodding, he went on with his explanations. “So, comes a few generations and the queen decides she could turn a profit via the sex trade and keep her people happy as well. No more honey gathering.”
“Did they gather honey before?”
“Figure of speech, early human settlers called the sex trade that though.”
Rose chortled. “Seriously? Honey gathering?”
“You are a people with a knack for euphemism. And I must say, you, personally, used to get a bit sticky.”
“Ha,” Rose said, mouth lolling open in a wolfish grin.
“I think, before the Apisreoth system was discovered, the drones mostly tended the queen's children. Turning eggs. Feeding infants. Changing a hundred million nappies. They've got technology now and the queen doesn't need as many workers for that sort of thing. Speaking of what you've had to put up with, how long has it been since we...?”
She stoked a thumb under her chin, head turning as she surveyed the crowded room. “Apparently, it was last night,” she said, blushing prettily.
“Not counting pleasure drones,” he countered. “No matter how uninhibited we all were. It's not the same as you and I...alone, is it? Give us a hand with her,” he said, gently tipping one of his partners toward Rose.
She held the woman at the elbows to keep her upright while the Doctor squirmed out of the chair. Twisting his hips, the Doctor eased free of the two redheads, one male and one female, still embracing him and stood.
“Do you think she looks like me?” Rose said, her eyes narrowing as she studied the blond in her grip. “Like I used to look, I mean?”
“I suppose,” he said, covering a yawn as he cast a cursory glance at the surrogate body he'd used so freely last night. She meant nothing to him this morning. He ruffled both hands through his hair and then scratched at his scraggly beard. “Superficially. The lips. The hair.”
“She's not a blonde.”
“Neither were you.”
“And if she's the one with blue eyes, they're fake, too.” She assessed the female drone as they settled her back into the chair. “Not the only augmented thing on her, either.”
“Jealousy chip working properly, I see.”
“Shut up,” Rose said, playfully slapping at his arm.
He laughed as he captured her in a tight embrace. Pressing their hips together, he ran his hands up and down her silky back. She felt so pliable, so human. His lips found her ear and he nibbled gently along the perfectly-sculpted shell of it. Almost immediately, her metallic skin lost its initial coolness. She turned molten in his arms. Within seconds she was ready for him, lithe and heated and wet.
“She dreamed of swans,” he said in a ragged whisper, his whole body prickling into arousal.
“Liar,” she snorted, pushing and squirming in a half-hearted attempt to escape. Her stuggling only made him hold on tighter, want her more. “I bet she's never even seen a swan.”
“I swear,” he said, hitting a falsetto note. “Or honking great waterfowl of some description. Purple instead of white or black,” he conceded with a wry tilt of the head. “Maybe they weren't technically swans, but...six of one.”
"Half a dozen of another," she replied.
He gave her a resounding kiss, and then released her so he could dress. She watched him wriggle into his trousers. “She isn't you, Rose,” he said. Craning his neck, he looked for an unoccupied place to sit. “You've ruined me for other women.”
“Yeah, you look like a ruin,” she said, admiring his denim-clad backside as he bound over drones to reach a clear corner of the bed.
He sat with care. Then, flashed a grin at her, as he stomped a foot into a boot. The other boot was close at hand and he recovered it. His offhand ease didn't make his words any less true. The pleasure drones might help him connect with Rose. They might look a little like she once had. But he didn't care about any of that. Not the sex or the look. He wanted his wife, needed her touch to keep him sane.
None of the very talented, extremely enthusiastic surrogates in this room had satisfied him. He'd penetrated them, pleasured them, but only to get to Rose's mind. He'd needed a living body to hold, someone to squirm against him and take his arousal drug. But flesh held no allure for him while his wife was entombed in metal. She had synthetic flesh, a metal alloy with a neural network. It felt real enough but there was no nervous system, no synaptic links for his cnidocytes to connect with when they fired. Firing into nothing was agony for him.
Knowing this, Rose sighed and crossed to settled next to him, cuddling close. “I want it, too,” she said. “Touch.”
“When was the last time?” he asked again. “Just us?”
“Not since that ion storm...eighty years? Ninety? I can't remember.” She pressed the heel of one hand to her brow, but shook her head. “I think the memory circuits in this thing are failing.”
“Time for an upgrade,” he said. “Just like me?”
“You know we can't use the storms,” she said with all seriousness. “The TARDIS took a beating last time. We can't keep doing that to her. The interface is falling apart as it is.”
“She's old. Nearly as old as I am.”
“You're not old,” Rose said, shifting around to slide across his leg into his lap. “Look at how fit you are.”
He snuggled into her, matching his breathing to the artificial rhythm of hers. Their lips met and they both gave contented hums. But after stroking his tongue along hers, he pulled back and said, “It's not as pleasurable for you, is it? Not like it was when you were alive?” She stared beyond his shoulder, silent for a moment. He twirled a ringlet of her hair around one finger. “It doesn't satisfy you.”
“Don't worry about me.”
He levered her away from him a little. Let her see the dark disappointment in his blue eyes. “But I do. You're my wife. More...you complete me.” His grip on her clenched tight. “You're...Rose. And I did this to you. If it hadn't been for me coming into your life, you'd be...”
“I'd be long dead,” Rose said. “Never forget that. I'd have married Mickey and lived a short, unfulfilled life. Is that what you think I deserve?”
“No, of course not.” He smiled crookedly. “Nobody 'deserves' Mickey.”
“Now, who's pointlessly jealous,” she laughed, poking his chest with a finger. His cnidocytes bristled and glowed. The sight of the display, made Rose want him intently. If only he could fire into her, link with her nervous system. She ran her tongue along the sharp edges of her teeth. “Oh, you could go again, couldn't you?”
He really couldn't, not with a surrogate sex drone, not so soon. “I'm fine,” he said, getting a grip on his instinctive response to her closeness. Rising, he sat Rose on her feet. “I just want to find that damned elusive Isolus, so you can feel again...really live.” Jaw clenching, he paced off his frustrations as well as he could while skirting sleeping pleasure drones. After a few stumbles, he halted and sighed. “But, I want to thank you for this.” He fanned a hand though the air to indicate the evidence of their night of debauchery. “And I thought I would never use a surrogate.”
“We both wanted this,” Rose reminded him. “I won the bet. It was wonderful to see you enjoy someone again. And the dreaming, it went beyond anything this metal flesh can feel. So fantastic," she sighed, "To be on Gallifrey, again. And then on Earth. To walk through the grass and see my mum. I was alive and whole and with you.”
He had his shirt in his hands. He twisted the collar. “You were with him,” he said, softly. “It's always him.”
Rose couldn't blush for real but she did turn pinkish and she felt the sting of shame in her cybernetic cheeks. Every Doctor tended to be jealous of her relationship with earlier incarnations. And it didn't help matters that she couldn't seem to let go of one particular face and form.
“I know, I'm sorry. I...it'll be you, next time, I promise.” Her throat closed, catching her words. She cleared it and went on, “It's just that, he's the last one who really touched me. I know him so well. I know what he feels like under my hands. What his mouth can do. His...I just remember everything about him so clearly.”
“I wish I could go back to that for you. Be him again.”
“And I wish I could be her for you. Rose Tyler, shop girl.”
“We can try again with cybernetics,” he suggested.
“If I got one of the new chameleon model, I could look human again, look like my old self.”
He could tell her heart wasn't in it. “Or we can search the Dark Stars, again.” Rose opened her mouth to protest, but he rushed on before she could deny him. “There's a map.” He cringed a little, ducking from an expected Rose-explosion. “It's here, in the Maritime Museum. No space pirates. No con games.” She didn't blow and her silence inspired him to press his advantage. “I heard one of the gamblers talking about it yesterday when I was scouting the hotels. I would have mentioned it sooner if you hadn't become so...uninhibited.”
“You want us to go back there? Follow another map?” she asked, an icy edge to her voice.
“This one is different,” he insisted. “It's from a research vessel.” He came over to stand before her. Gently he cradled her face and kissed her brow. Easing back, he met her eye. “It's been seen, Rose: the Isolus Swarm. Near Kasterborous.”
Rose jerked away from him. “Gallifrey?” she barked, one hand ripping down in a karate chop of the air. Her mercurial irises swirled as she confronted him. “No! Absolutely not.”
“All we have to do is find a way to navigate without instruments.”
“Oh, is that all,” Rose stormed, waving her arms around like she was swatting away flies. “And what about the TARDIS? You expect her to go back into that war zone. She can't tolerate it. You can't tolerate it. We barely made it out alive the last time. What if we lose her? Have you thought of that? Have you thought of where you and I will be if...”
“She's dying,” he blurted, gruffly cutting short her tirade. Rose checked her stride, nearly stumbling over a sleeping drone as she turned to face the Doctor. She was panting hard. Her eyes were wide and staring.“You know it as well as I do,” he continued in a patient voice. “You probably knew it first.”
Slowly, Rose nodded. “When did you...?”
“Does it matter? The TARIDS is dying, going to seed around us. And your life is linked to hers.”
“Your life is linked to her, too.”
He shook his head. “I could go on. But you die when she dies.”
“She can't die. She's not...flesh.”
“When her systems fail, then. When the mechanical interface stops working and the Heart is free to leave. You will die, unless we find you a body before then. With no spare parts, no shop to fix her, we can't expect her to last much longer. And then, where will we be?”
“Lost,” Rose whispered. The word seemed to echo in the stuffy air as the Doctor nodded.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Lost,” the Doctor mouthed. The word was little more than a slight sigh. Rose had to crawl closer to hear him.
“Hold on,” she croaked, her metallic fingers clutching for his hand as she collapsed. It had taken most of her remaining strength to reach his side. “If we die here...”
“If...?” He would have laughed, but he couldn't draw in enough air.
“...I love you,” she finished.
“You know...I do, too,” he gasped, “love you...even if...if we...live.”
Her head lolled, nearly slipping from his shoulder. “You're joking?” She couldn't believe it. “At a time like this?”
He smiled the thinnest of smiles and her spirits lifted just a bit. If she had to die, this is where she wanted to be. They lay side by side for a few minutes, neither able to move. Noxious black smoke billowed from the remains of the console. Mauve light strobed across the ceiling. Sirens sounded. There was a hissing noise as the breathable atmosphere bled slowly into space. The leak wasn't slow enough for any hope of rescue. The hiss grew fainter by the second.
They'd been flying blind through Kasterborous, navigating around the temporal whirlpools of the Dark Stars, when something collided with them. The Doctor was sure he hadn't miscalculated their position. Either their map was wrong or something spatially transcendental—planetary debris, a warhead or another ship from the Time War had smashed into them. It hardly mattered where they placed the blame. They were doomed. This was how their story ended, in the cold vacuum of space.
The TARDIS was dying and so was her Time Lord. The Cloister Bell had already tolled his passing. Rose could feel him slipping away into the dark as she struggled to sit up and help him. She tried to staunch the flow of blood. He couldn't die. She wasn't ready to let go of him. But then, she would never be ready. And it wasn't as if she would outlive him by more than a few minutes. With no power to sustain her, once the TARDIS died, so would Rose. There had to be a heaven for her Doctor, a place where he could rest. He deserved that and living without the hope of it, even for those few minutes, would be hell for her. An irritating series of beeps sounded and Rose glanced toward the inner door, wondering what the noise signified.
“Rose?” the Doctor gurgled, drawing her attention back to their personal tragedy. The wound in his chest bubbled dark blood when he spoke. “I...I...can't...regenerate.”
She knew already. There would be no new body for him this time. He was too weak, barely out of his last regeneration cycle. They'd been running and fighting every minute since then. He didn't have the strength to change again so soon. With the exception of Rassilon, the Doctor had lived longer than any of his kind, almost two thousand years. He didn't have the strength to go on any more. And he couldn't go on without the TARDIS in any case. Not if there was no hope of rescue, eventually he would die without air or heat. They were a lost cause, all three of them--an ancient wreck of a TARDIS, an obsolete Time Lord and a woman who by all rights should have died nine hundred years ago.
“Save your strength,” she told him, gathering him into her arms. “I've sent the signal. Maybe this time it will come.”
“Too late.”
“We should never have come here,” Rose growled. “It was too great a risk.”
“Tired,” he gasped. “I'm so, so tired.”
“You can rest soon,” she said. “We can both rest.” She glanced toward the monitors. “Do you think it's out there? Assuming it even heard us, how long will it take to get here? An hour? A day?” Too late.
“The coordinates...”
“That computer was a relic. Every second line of data was corrupted. Even if those scientists did see something...we don't know what it was. We don't know if you programmed the right coordinates.”
“Faith,” he managed to croak. She looked into his eyes and he held her hand. For once, they didn't need flesh to be mind-to-mind, both of them apologized, regretting they'd waited so long to call for help. He lifted a hand to her metallic cheek. “Let me see...her,” he said.
Why had she wanted to feel again? “I can't,” she said, weeping. The tears she shed were as artificial as the eyes that produced them. “There's not enough power for my chameleon circuits.” It twisted into her soul that she couldn't let him look on her human face one last time. “I'm sorry.”
“No...we had to try,” he said, sounding stronger. “Keep going, keep fighting to the end. Everything ends. All things...come to dust.” Pulling on his last reserves of strength, he sat up to face her, his fingertips traced over her cheek. “No regrets, Rose. No...” His breath rattled and he slumped to the floor. The TARDIS screamed.
Rose screamed, too. Denial raw in her throat. It wasn't fair. It wasn't. It couldn't end this way. The final regeneration fire started to consume him even as she felt for his pulse. Maybe he could come back to her one more time. Hope and despair warred in her breast. The strange alarm sounded again.
The monitors flashed a warning: IMMINENT COLLISION.
beep
beep
beep
beep
beep
beep
Not again. They couldn't handle another hit. They needed to get out of the way. Rose stood, staggering toward the console. Something was headed straight for them. The backup power failed as she reached the controls, casting the room into absolute blackness. Rose switched to infrared vision and started flipping switches. The sensors were dead, every monitor, every light. The TARDIS had no idea what was about to hit them. Something massive grated against the outer door. The impact bucked Rose off her feet.
“What the hell was that?” she demanded of the TARDIS via their mental link. “Let me see it. Damn it, patch me through to the outer links.”
The TARDIS tried to comply. She fed Rose a scramble of fuzzy images via their connection. Rose got an impression of a living entity, mass and power. Whatever was outside seemed to be opening a great maw to swallow them whole. It dwarfed the police box, like the whale that swallowed Jonah.
“It looks like her. It has to be. Is it...? Is it her? Let me see. We have to ask her the question. We have to...”
The ship quaked, tossing Rose sideways. Via the door in her mind, Rose felt reality lose relevance for the Heart of the TARDIS. It had no more to give to time or space. The alien soul slipped free of the mooring line holding it anchored to the Doctor's ship. Rose felt the living mind of the TARDIS glide away from corporeal constraints. The door in her mind, shrank to the size of a window, a pea, a pinprick. The Heart was eternal, not subject to the rules of reality. Rose knew the Heart would continue to exist between realities, but this really was the end of the TARDIS.
The interface, grown not built by the long dead Time Lords, was a husk. It had no life force left, no internal power and no Heart at its core. There was nothing to sustain the coral shell. The ship tumbled, losing its center of gravity. Rose tried to claw her way back to the Doctor, but lost her grip and fell a very long way before she cracked her head on a piece of the metal safety railing.
Her sensors went dark.
10 MINUTES LATER
The proximity alarm sounded again. Words flashed neon pink on the inside of Rose's eyelids.
IMMINENT COLLISION!
IMMINENT COLLISION!
IMMINENT COLLISION!
beep
beep
beep
“Alright, alright,” she grumbled, slamming a hand down on the snooze button. “I'm awake. I'm up.”
She pushed covers from her face and yawned, stretching as she sat up. Cold air swept along her back. Prying her eyes open, she blinked as morning sunlight contracted her pupils. She cast aside rosebud-printed, flannel sheets and mounds of fluffy comforters and swung her feet to the floor. The cold wood underfoot made her wince. Mornings were getting frigid. It would be worth it if they could have snow for Christmas. She arched her back in another stretch, feeling languidly satisfied with the world.
Noting her slippers, peeking out at her from the beneath the bed, she leaned over to retrieve them. Once her toes were cozy, she stood and shuffled to the end of the bed for her robe. She drew the wrap from the foot board and snuggled into its warmth. Toasty again, she padded over to the window and looked out. No snow. No frost. Pale sunlight filtered through the gauzy curtains. Dewdrop diamonds sparkled in the grass outside. It was a lovely brisk September day out.
But something nagged at the back of Rose's mind. It felt like she was forgetting an important appointment. Or maybe there was something off about the view. Had something been moved? The lawn furniture? She combed a hand through her hair and leaned against the window frame. Her eyes swept the yard again. She couldn't quite place what it was that was bothering her. Something missing, maybe?
She looked toward the Doctor's workshop. Everything seemed secure there. He'd left the hoe out again. It was sure to rust if they had another rain. But a rusty hoe was no cause for alarm. She examined the fence that constrained her herb garden. Nothing amiss. Nothing obviously wrong with the bird feeders or the birdbath. Beyond the back gate, the woods seemed much the same, silver leaves catching the morning sun. Nothing seemed to be out of place. Shaking her head, Rose turned back to survey the room, admiring its cheerful country cottage ambiance as if seeing it for the first time.
She loved this room. It was her second favorite in the house. The Doctor's library was her absolute favorite, but only because he was so often there. She'd picked out the furniture for this room and the rose-patterned curtains and bed linens. Rose's could be overdone and she had made sure they were tastefully discrete. She loved the carved cherry wood of the wardrobe. All of her dress clothes, suits and blouses, were lined up on one side and his were on the other. She crossed to the wardrobe, opened the door and ran her fingers down the sleeve of his brown suit jacket. The worn cotton felt wonderfully soothing to her. Suddenly daring and needing to feel closer to him, she shed her robe and pajamas. Stripped to her knickers, she slipped on his jacket. It caressed her skin, reminding her of his hands, his mouth.
Her nipples squeezed into rigid sensitivity as she stepped back to admire herself in the dresser mirror. The jacket fit snuggly across her chest and shoulders. She stroked her hands down the front of it, smoothing it over her belly and hips. Her hips were too wide. The white lace of her knickers flashed when she rocked from foot to foot. She cocked her head, turning this way and that to see how she looked from all angles. Her hair was a rat's nest and wrinkles from the sheets creased her cheeks. But she felt sexy in his clothes and wanted to show off for him. The very idea of parading before him like this made her ache between her legs. She grimaced as she grew slippery wet. Too many teeth, she thought, baring them again in a broad smile. She caught the reflection of movement behind her and turned. A robin settled on a feeder outside the window. It pecked at the suet she'd put out fresh yesterday.
No, that was wrong. Yesterday, there'd been...none of this. There'd been blood and smoke and...twisted metal. Yesterday...she'd had metal skin and...something had swallowed them.
IMMINENT COLLISION!
beep
beep
beep
“Rose?” the pile of comforters and blankets whined. “Make it stop beeping. It's not fair to let it go on beeping after you're already up. I don't get to sleep very often and...”
That voice, she hadn't heard that voice in a thousand years. “Doctor?” she gasped, staggering to the side.
The floor tilted under her feet as a rush of fear and hope and wonder made her dizzy. She put a hand out to the dresser edge to keep from falling over. This was wrong. Impossible. It couldn't be him. He was dead. Centuries dead. She glanced over her shoulder. That woman in the mirror...blond hair, dark brows, generous mouth...she was dead, too.
Even as she denied his existence and her own, the snooze alarm beeped again and the Doctor exploded from the bed. Sheets and comforter went flying as he sprang from within them. His navy blue pajamas had a gold pocket-watch print on them. An unruly mass of brown hair stood straight up in spikes on his head. His dark eyes flashed as he grinned and cocked a brow at her.
“Hello?” he said, beaming ear to ear.
Before she could respond, he skipped around the bed to her side of it and yanked the alarm from the wall. He tossed the clock into the wastebasket, dusted off his hands, and then stiffened. Very slowly he turned to squint at her.
“It's you!”
“Me?” she said, accusingly. “It's you!”
He took a half-step forward, and then, apparently as dizzy as she'd been, grabbed at his temples and sat down on the edge of the bed.
“Oh, no, no, no! It's you...you,” he said, focusing on her. He pointed emphatically at the mirror behind her, shaking his finger. “Look at you.” Then, he shifted his perspective and stared open-mouthed at his own reflection. He hopped up onto his knees. Kneeling on the bed, he leaned forward to clutch the footboard with both hands “No, look at me.” Wonder flooded his face. “Look at us.”
Rose watched him pat his face, and then tug at his hair. He grimaced at the mirror, mugging as he touched two fingers to his lips. He curled his upper lip to expose his teeth and appeared to count them with the tip of his tongue.
“I was sleeping,” he said, twisting at the waist to assess the rumbled bedding. “No! I was dead. Dying, at any rate. Rose?”
“Yes,” she confirmed, nodding as she moved closer to him. “I remember, too. The blood and smoke.”
“We took a direct hit. The console exploded and something,” he pantomimed the spike driving into his chest. His mouth dropped open again as his eyes lost focus. “I was slipping away...so cold...holding your hand.”
“I tried to save you.”
“But you couldn't. You didn't have the power. Even the TARDIS was dying.” Rose nodded mutely. The Doctor's mind returned to the present and his gaze swept the room. “And now, we're here.”
“Are we dead?”
His bottom lip pouted into fullness as he considered the notion. “I don't feel dead. Do you?”
“What does dead feel like?” Rose asked, closing the remaining distance between them. “We must be. How could we survive? Maybe...maybe we're dreaming.”
“Maybe we are,” he agreed, meeting her eye. “If this is our last shared dream, we might only have a few seconds left.”
As the grim reality of it sank in, they launched themselves at one another. Rose gave a mewling cry of alarm as she seized his face in both hands and brought her mouth to his. His lips felt warm and soft under hers. She forced them apart, eager to taste him. He groaned, yielding to her tongue. His hands clawed their way to her skin, sliding up under his jacket. Once they were flesh on flesh, he wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her down into the warm nest of bed covers.
His fingers found the waistband of her knickers and peeled the lacy cloth from her as they skimmed under it. Gripping the curves of her bare bottom with both hands, he encouraged Rose to plunder his mouth by teasing her tongue with his own. She stroked her fingers through his hair and squirmed and he broke from her lips to whimper her name. Rolling her to her back, he straddled her hips and began frantically unbuttoning his pajama top. Rose struggled to free herself from the tangle of his jacket.
“Not dead,” she gasped. “Not yet. Oh, god...this...can't be happening...it's just so....oh, Doctor.”
Tiny darts fired into her bared skin as he returned to her arms. She arched under him, clawing at his shoulders, reveling in the exquisite mix of pain and pleasure. This was living. She hadn't felt this alive, this hungry, in centuries. There were tears of joy on her cheeks. Real tears. She tasted salt as they reached her lips. The mating drug filled her vision with pastel colors. A dreamlike lassitude relaxed her limbs. Her Doctor entered her mind. He was here with her and everything—the joy, the drug in her system, his tender kisses—all of it felt so real. He was at her throat, sucking on it like she was hard candy, when the knock came at the window. Lost in each other, they ignored the noise, but it came again, louder.
The latch was thrown on the window and a voice said, “Oh, I say, this is hardly the time for that. Not just now, if you don't mind. In case you haven't noticed, we've got a rather nasty problem on our hands.”
END THIS PART
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-13 04:43 am (UTC)I have printed this up and can't wait to get home to read it!
I must admit that I have been very lax in adding comments, but I really do have to re-iterate here that this epic fic is a marvel to read, and I bow to your brilliance (Oh that sounds sooooo like I am crawling, but I am not).
It amazes me how one person can have all these wonderful ideas, and to be able to share them with non-writers like myself is priceless.
Thank you for a brilliant ride (so far).
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-20 01:34 am (UTC)Thanks again for taking the time to comment. I really do appreciate it.
Rae
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-13 04:46 am (UTC)::hums and goes to read::
Oh, interesting chapter, by the by. I can't wait to see how it all wraps up.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-13 04:54 am (UTC)(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-13 04:55 am (UTC)I never cry!? I NEVER CRY AT FANFIC! *wibbles like a nerd*
I love you. You've ruined me. You know that right? *wibbles*
Okay... Thats Jack right? AT the end?
*dies* MAN! *whimper* *pile of fangirl tears and mush* SO HAPPY.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-13 04:56 am (UTC)(no subject)
From:Thirty?!?
From:Re: Thirty?!?
From:Re: Thirty?!?
From:Oh, thank God
Date: 2008-05-13 05:04 am (UTC)I adore Ten...more than iced coffee
Date: 2008-05-13 05:13 am (UTC)And I, too, am happy you stuck with me...lesser people would give up and weep. Or something. :grin:
Rae
Re: I adore Ten...more than iced coffee
From:(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-13 05:22 am (UTC)I must admit I was a little confused about the beginning. The orgy and the sex drones. I understand what happened...just not why it happened, or how it worked for the two of them. Did the Doctor fire off into the drones and then she entered their minds and made their dreams hers?
And how exactly was the Isolus going to help Rose become Rose again? You probably have plans to answer this but I"m thinking back to Fear Her and can't really figure out how they were going to use it/them.
Sorry, I feel bad for haveing so many questions.
The final death scene was very moving all three of them dying then the mysterious thing that swallowed the TARDIS and then POOF They are Rose and Ten again. But are they? And who's the dude at the window? Sounds like Eight for some reason but that could just be me.
I liked the description of his twenty-second body. Very yummm!
“And mighty thankful you are for it, too,” Rose told him, dropping his shoe and trousers on the floor at his feet. “The things I've had to overlook,” she said, primly. Her fond glance took the sting from her complaint.
This made me smile. All the bodies he's been through, some probably not so pleasant, not to mention the changes in personality but it seems she got use to it since the last chapter. And when she's dreaming it's still always of his tenth body because his was the last body to really touch her. Yet despite this she loves the Doctor no matter his body. She may like sex...a lot...but the same holds true for her as it does for him. It's not about the sex it's about him, it's about them and that bond that has lasted 900 years and will never, ever die.
*blushes* Sorry about that last bit. Nothing like some stream of consciousness rambling to make you scratch your head and go 'HUH?' Hope you were able to understand that.
So will the next (last??) part be up as quickly as this one was?
*hugs*
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-13 05:27 am (UTC)I should have it up by this time next week though. It is all done...but it needs to be fleshed out more...and then poked for comma placement and run-on sentences.
And you are so right...that is why it is Ten...because he is the one who touched her...she loves the Doctor but she longs for his body. They needed the drones, as he says, for him to penetrate...she has no nervous system for his cnidocytes to lock on and merge with.
Rae
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-13 05:48 am (UTC)No...no...it is going to end...
Date: 2008-05-13 06:07 am (UTC)Let me say...I do have an actual ending...but it might not take the shape people expect. You have all the clues...but you might not expect it. We will see, of course, if you like it.
And I am very happy someone cried at the TARDIS dying. Though the Heart of the TARDIS can't die...as it isn't part of time or space. Still, no more police box or coral rooms or any of that...SNIFF!
Thanks for the feedback.
Rae
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-13 06:45 am (UTC)Onto the chapter. This is amazing! The cut(s) in time were not so jarring this time. I'm so glad D&R are interacting so well again.
Together forever. I thought you might have killed them off, near the end; I had conveniently forgotten that there was still another chapter to go.
((YAY! 10/Rose are back!))
Thank you so much for the alien!cnidocytes! I'm glad you put them in one (hopefully not) last time.
Who is that man?! I didn't understand before. Is it the Iiolis?! It must be, they're dreaming/in a V.R...
But the guy reminded me of one of the earlier versions of the doctor. Pre-Ten. ((it's weird I have to qualify 'earlier versions'))
(wild guess)If it's not the Doctor, is it a Timelord?! It doesn't exactly bring that female Iiolis to mind. =D
The only other person I could think it could be would be Jack. And no matter how old Jack gets, he will never talk like that! "Oh, I say!" Very British, that. Actually, the entire sentence is practically dripping with British. Wait, lets take out the practically, and just make it: "That sentence IS British. It's so British it's wearing Union Flag pants and tweed suits."
I so adore the guessing...:giggle:
Date: 2008-05-13 07:06 am (UTC)Jack doesn't talk like that. It is a very British sentence. And that is a clue. Meanwhile, I'm happy to find people are happy...if confused and speechless. This chapter was described as balm to my poor betas...who were afraid I'd gone mad with the last one. And it hopefully will make everyone feel a little better.
All I really need do now...is tell you what has happened. Which our Ten and Rose must actually figure out...along with that bloke at the window, of course. Oh...and it is definitely NOT the Isolus at the window, either. I will go as far as to say...I believe it is someone you will all recognize.
Rae
teasing you now...and thanking you very much for your kindness in commenting and so happily...10/Rose YAY!
(no subject)
From:Your manifestation is getting warmer
From:lovely!!
Date: 2008-05-13 06:48 am (UTC)Re: lovely!!
Date: 2008-05-20 01:40 am (UTC)At least, I call it happy. We will see what people think.
Rae
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-13 07:25 am (UTC)I love that Rose always pictures Ten, that she still is human that way. no matter how much they changed they were still themselves and still loved each other.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-20 01:37 am (UTC)I, too, enjoyed that Rose always pictured Ten. She loved many of the Doctor's incarnations, but it was Ten she remembered touching her as a woman.
Rae
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-13 08:33 am (UTC)Next thought: Not certain that I can follow who the speaker is in this:
"Rose gave him a look. “I mean because of the queen is giving off those suppressor hormones.” She tapped her temple. “It's all coming back to me.” "
Next: Does Rae realize that she has used the word 'sting' in her bee-orgy scene? :-D
"Her fond glance took the sting from her complaint."
Next: "bound"?
"“Yeah, you look like a ruin,” she said, admiring his denim-clad backside when he bound over drones to reach a clear corner of the bed. "
Next: Hee! Jerry McGuire.
"you complete me"
Next: "Drown"? Meaning "Drone"?
"Rose checked her stride, nearly stumbling over a drown as she turned to face the Doctor."
Next: Confused. Please clarify: "not with someone else"
That's some of the intellectual feedback. The mopping up of my tears and runny nose into a roll of toilet paper was my emotional response. (Darn you, Rae, for the rest of my life, I will never, but never, again be able to remain dry-eyed about swans.)
P.S. - "Dilithium power cells". Heh. Star Trek. ;-)
To answer your questions...
Date: 2008-05-13 11:57 am (UTC)Sting...? Why YES I did know I did that. :smirk: Would you rather I used bite. I had originally only suggested they were bees by word choice. I had the room being more of a hive cell at one point...but then, since the betas were confused...I just went back and said they were like bees.
Drown...? Why NO I did not. Will fix it.
Bound...? Not sure what you are getting at, here, unless you are thinking there was bondage. There was not. Bounding is something young colts do. It ties in with his previous lack of bounce at the beginning of the last chapter. Used the word because it is more evocative of forward bouncing motion than jump or leap. Also, it is alliterative.
Rose is speaking...but I see she has an extra IS in there. And I can see how you might get confused because she looked at him.
And not with someone else...means...I have to find that one...not sure where it is.
Ah-ha...! He really couldn't, not with someone else, not so soon. ?
Go again. As Rose asked him if he could and he really couldn't, just then...he doesn't have the stomach for it...as he makes clear. He bristles up for Rose but he doesn't want to have sex again...because it would mean using a surrogate again. They would have to find another drone.
This whole scene is subtle and ties way back to the scene in...uhm...chapter 7, I think, when Rose raked her nails down his chest and he fired off nematocytes into the air. He was in agony. Because unlike a man ejaculating for release, his nervous system links to hers via those tiny darts and he needs that completed circuit to take pleasure in the sex.
As they work to perfect her body, via all these little vignettes...they keep having troubles. In this scene, Rose is made from a metal alloy, she's mostly a cyborg. Think Terminator not Borg. She has the feel of a human and the look and emotional reactions, at least when he holds her and sets of her hormones.
She has synthetic hormones, the pleasure centers, to enjoy sex again. But HIS biology is a problem He can't fire into her flesh and connect with nerve tissue. She has a neural network but no synaptic links for him to fasten to. So, if he is going to become aroused by her...and need to be complete, whole, in body and mind with her...he will need somone to take the dose of drug to their nerves...someone like a pleasure drone.
The bet in this context is how many times he could go on...how many sexual partners he needed to satisfy him, and if Rose would need more to blunt her own appetite. They were, essentially, using these fleshy people to get to one another in fully satisfied fashion. Which is why Rose was hesitant...she didn't want to exploit innocent people for her own pleasure. So, here we see the Doctor in the same general position as Omega...only more so...because the Doctor's wife isn't really refusing to allow him to drug her...he just CAN'T.
:hee: happy I have ruined you for Swans! And the Jerry Maguire is not me...I hated that movie...it's RTD and his, "She completes him." She does...I can't help it if Tom Cruise ruined it for everyone. Come to think of it...that TC does a lot of bounding, too.
Thanks for your mysterious feedback. Always a pleasure to hear from you. Would you like to try being a beta for Wild Geese? I will go examine the Rose line for clarity and fix the "drone" typo.
Rae
Re: To answer your questions...
From:Re: To answer your questions...
From:You are welcome...and thank you...
From:(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-13 09:18 am (UTC)Hopefully the next chapter will help explain it all for me.
Not to worry...
Date: 2008-05-13 12:04 pm (UTC)Originally, the vignettes, the flashes of passing time were only 20 lines or so long...but I expanded on the Mary Alice scene, because Mary Alice made an earlier appearance...and then the beta babes kept asking for more details on each scene. Why are the drones being exploited? What happened to Rose when she was "filleted" and lost her fish body? Explain about her being a fish. SIGH! So, now the clues are hidden deep inside the text...but they are still all there.
And I will tie them all together in a neat little bow next time...so not to worry if you don't understand it yet. Thanks so very much for the commenting, btw, I know I don't hear from you as often as I do from some others...and I really do appreciate the questions. Hopefully you will let me know if it all becomes clear at the last...or if it stays murky.
Rae
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-13 12:02 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-20 01:41 am (UTC)Thank you again for taking the time to comment. It means so much to me to know people are reading along.
Rae
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-13 12:29 pm (UTC)obviously not awake enough to get simple html tags to work. fixed now. *g*
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-20 01:44 am (UTC)I am pleased to be the one you woke up to and happy I left you HTML scrambled with love.
The last, final, absolute wrap it all up in a bow chapter is at the betas. We will see if they understand it or need more insight and such. Then I should be slapping it up next weekend.
Thank you for your frequent comments and kind praise of my work. You've always made me smile.
Rae
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-20 01:46 am (UTC)Rae
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-13 02:17 pm (UTC)I am officially just as confused as the Doctor and Rose. Happily confused, at least, but definitely still confused! lol
I would write more, but I feel like crap, so I'll have to catch up later.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-20 02:06 am (UTC)Anyway, thanks for taking the time, despite your illness to at least tell me you were still reading. I was very worried after the last chapter that everyone would abandon ship.
Rae
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-13 04:27 pm (UTC)But can I admit that I'm an idiot? I thought the last chapter was the END. As such I needed time to digest. Imagine my shock when this chapter came out!
This is not a proper reaction post. I will do that soon! But I loved it.
See? It is all very confusing.
Date: 2008-05-13 04:39 pm (UTC)There was one chapter to go...I divided it into Part A...Part B...and a coda...and sent each 6-10 page section off to the betas to be looked over...thinking that would mean I could get it up quicker.
The betas had a number of strong reactions to the last part...Rose being a fish...the Doctor being small and fluttery...the filleting...and so on. All of these scenes were very short in the original...like...a couple of paragraphs, a few lines of dialogue. The beta babes had trouble with the breakneck tour of time and space with a very clear objective...get Rose a body that worked for both HER and HIM.
And they just wanted the chapter to look like MY work...to have texture and color and smell funny. They wanted snappy exchanges and loving glances and to know that everything was going to work out okay. So, I had to add a lot...15 pages or something...to the original work. The theme doesn't change though...last chapter and this chapter are the same chapter.
And then there is a coda...to explain WTF?
Rae
hoping I see you later when you've recovered.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-13 04:56 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-20 01:57 am (UTC)Conclusion by the weekend I imagine. Thank you again for commenting.
Rae
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-13 06:53 pm (UTC)The drones depressed you?
Date: 2008-05-13 07:22 pm (UTC)But...I will say I didn't want to have them involve anyone else at all. In the original vignette, the idea was for Rose to take over the body of a drone...but I felt that would be too exploitative for our Rose. This way, the drones are very happy with the arrangement.
Anyway, thanks for the feedback. Sorry I hurt you. And that's...uhm...well...not Jack at the window. :grin:
Rae
Re: The drones depressed you?
From:This is a test of the LJ comment
From:(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-13 07:56 pm (UTC)I wonder if the TARDIS has been swallowed by her earlier self? The person at the window sounds like One to me. And I'd really love that because it seems to link to Susan and bring everything full circle in a rather lovely way.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-13 08:02 pm (UTC)Thanks for taking a look at the whole. I feel that makes a big difference...and it will teach me not to experiment with the process. Or maybe it won't...experimentation can bring good things, after all. I did think that with this being vignettes...it really wouldn't matter to break it. But, it seemed to make people quite confused. More than I think the text called for in its completed state.
I do appreciate your kind words. On to the coda of explanation...which with my luck and tendancey to run on...will be a full chapter on its own. :grin:
Rae
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-13 08:46 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-20 02:00 am (UTC)Though I believe the ending is both shocking AND sappy. Two things, I am told, do not go together. Thank you for your feedback. I treasure the confused comments from this bit. And I hope all becomes clear to you at the end.
Rae
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-13 10:34 pm (UTC)I'm so happy to have Ten and Rose back, but what is the deal with that , and how long does it last? :D
I got a bit upset when The TARDIS was dying and all three of them looked like they had no hope of being rescued , then the story took a big huge twist he he!
looking forward to the last chapter, have no clue as to what it's gonna turn out as , But I am Intrigued :D
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-20 01:48 am (UTC)I hope you enjoy the final bit...and the explanation of what happened.
Thank you for your frequent comments and kind words.
Rae
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-13 10:50 pm (UTC)I love, love, love (with a capital 'L') this story. Typically when something is done this well I try to leave a comment a chapter but I just couldn't be bothered to stop reading! So a brief overview of how much I love it will have to suffice.
You've given me absolutely everything I look for in a good DW fic. I've read a few others that were advertised as epic but none of them even come close to this one (don't worry about being so wordy with your chapters...I won't even buy a book unless it's at least 600 pages long and my favorite is well over a thousand). Your angst is spot on...I can tell because my stomach hurts at the end of each chapter. Your fluff makes me smile like crazy, your humor has me in hysterics (love Gnome-Doctor), and two minutes later you have me bawling my eyes out. And of course who could forget the smut...I was very unsure at first if I was going to enjoy it because of the differences between Time Lord and human sex but now I'm just jealous. I love how close it brings the Doctor and Rose, love how intimate it is. And you write it so beautifully!
Well the kids are screaming in my ear now so I gotta run...can't wait for the final chapter next week! Oh, and do you have any other fics?
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-20 02:13 am (UTC)But here you are...at the end...loving the Gnome-Doctor. And you are seeing the whole, almost complete and it did for you what I wanted it to do...show you intimacy between the Doctor and Rose. I wanted the reader to feel that these two people could make it through anything. And I wanted the reader to see exactly HOW and WHY. Because I feel all too often in our media and literature we see people who simply have no chance of making it through anything. Love is too often presented as the end product of UST or abuse. People who never shared anything with one another...are lofted up as happy couple for us. Makes me grind my teeth together.
The Doctor and Rose faced lots of obstacles together on screen. Their alieness to one another was slowly overcome until Rose's own mother said she was "just like him." And we can readily see Rose in him this season. I happen to think that they would deal with any future problems as they dealt with them in canon. They would struggle and fuss but come together in the end and solve whatever was separating them.
Thank you again for your comments. I hope you enjoy the finale.
Rae
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-13 11:21 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-20 02:16 am (UTC)I'm so pleased that you enjoyed it. Thanks ever so much for your kind words and feedback.
Rae
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-14 12:32 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-20 02:16 am (UTC)Thanks for the feedback.
Rae
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-14 01:08 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-20 02:02 am (UTC)Thank you for taking the time to comment and for sharing your thoughts and questions with me.
Rae