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rabid1stDISHEVELED
by Rabid1st
Doctor Who
Ten/Rose
Ratings: Adult +
Beta Babes: Keswindhover, larielromeniel, thewinterqueen, Measi, Aibhinn, Sensiblecat, Dualbunny, Kammi, Gina, Lilith, Jei and Queenrikki_hp, Caia. Hope I didn't leave anyone off the list. Tzikeh, too, has noted a number of typos in this chapter.
Spoilers: This fic covers ground through Voyage of the Damned and on beyond an alternative S4...though there are no real S4 spoilers and very few S3 ones. S2 is spoiled beyond measure.
Summary: This is the final chapter of my massive Doctor/Rose love story. I tend to think of Disheveled as having a happily ending. I hope you do, too.
Disclaimer and other stuff under this cut
Disclaimer: I wish to humbly thank the BBC, Russell T. Davies, David Tennant, Billie Piper and all of the wonderful writers who, all unwittingly, helped me tell this story. I borrowed liberally from the canon to make this story possible. I know I had no right to use the characters and situations. I did it because I love the Doctor and Rose and because I had something to say about them as a couple. Obviously I accept no compensation of any kind for this work. All right belong to the assorted production companies who own Doctor Who.
Author's Note: Here's a great big smooshy cyber-hug for those of you who have gotten this far. And another for those of you who, God bless you, have reread this whole story more than once. You all amaze me. Thank you so much for sticking with the story as I struggled to finish. Many times I was so frustrated or tired or sick that I thought about giving up and just enjoying my free time, watching Deal or No Deal or something. But every comment...be it a little WOOT or a long ramble...kept me motivated. I had to go back to my chair and write. I did try to thank you all along the way...but if I missed you, thank you now. It took two years but I wrote a 520 page book. And somebody read it! Good lord! I could use a drink. :grin:
CLICK HERE FOR ALL PREVIOUS PARTS
PART TWENTY EIGHT
“Go away,” the Doctor snarled, close to Rose's ear.
He went on kissing her throat as she tilted her head back to look at whomever had spoken. Taking in the upside-down view of a short, disheveled man crawling through into her bedroom, Rose gave a gurgle of surprise. Her Doctor muttered a series of curses aimed at his "ridiculous" subconscious. He accused it of worming in on his one shot at a happy ending even as Rose began to twist and squirm, scrambling for something to cover her nakedness. She refused to let his grumbling discourage her efforts. They were completely exposed, in the middle of the bed and some clown was breaking into the house. Wait. She poked into the corners of her memory as she squinted again at the intruder.
Clown seemed like the appropriate term. He had a droopy moroseness about him. His deeply lined face seemed neither young nor old, only well used. He looked worn, like a wool coat found under a table at a yard sale. A bowl-cut style made the most of his thick brown hair, giving it shine and swing. His over-sized and rumpled collar dwarfed a tiny polka-dotted bow tie. The hobo clown impression was definitely carried along by his baggy trousers and tailed morning coat. Something about him seemed very familiar, but Rose was certain she'd never seen him before. Not with these eyes, she realized suddenly, unconsciously quoting the Doctor. She'd seen him through the filter of sensors or cameras. Or in a dream. Yes, that was where she knew him from, shared, drugged dreams.
There was a slight catch of uncertainty in her voice. “Doctor?”
“Yes, very likely,” the newcomer said. His voice had a tremor behind it as if he were perpetually quivering with excitement. Pulling a huge hankie from a pocket, he acted out mopping his brow and dusting himself off as he spoke. “I believe I should know you young lady, but I don't quite recall ever having had the pleasure. We haven't been formally introduced, I think. Though I seem to remember you popping up in the library once upon a time. You were wearing--”
Rose's Doctor shot to his knees and bellowed, “Get! Out!”
“There's no need to shout,” the other Doctor said. “I can hear you perfectly clearly at this distance. I am simply ignoring you. Not easy to do, I might add, when you are spouting cnidocytes like a startled jellyfish. Put some clothes on, man.” A clatter of stones against the side of the house drew everyone's attention to the window again. Someone else was crawling through. “Oh, Jamie, best cover your...”
A strapping lad in full Highland regalia--kilt, sporran and leather vest--clambered into the room.
“I don't know that ye've noticed,” he exclaimed, adjusting his clothing, “but there's a barescud-nakit lass on that bed, Doctor!”
“...eyes,” the other Doctor, finished on a sigh.
“Oh, aye!”
Blushing as red as the plaid he sported, the young man obediently closed his eyes. Then, he covered them with one hand and turned his back. Rose couldn't help smiling at the excessive gallantry. She'd forgotten how endearing James McCrimmon could be. Her Doctor didn't seem at all moved by the young Highlander's show of respect. Head down, he furiously buttoned and cinched himself back into his pajamas. Then, he rolled over Rose to the edge of the bed and dropped to the floor. Lithe as any acrobat, he twisted mid-tumble, so he landed on his feet. He sprang forward, grabbed the other Doctor by his collar and propelled the little man across the room. While Rose fought the urge to giggle, her Doctor attempted to shove himself back out the window, despite Jamie effectively blocking the opening as he stood blindly in the way.
“Out. Right now. Both of you. Out!”
“Ow! Let go, you impertinent rascal.”
“I will not have my bothersome former selves critiquing my last moments like busybody maiden aunts.”
“Well,” said a deep and reasonable voice at the door. “If that's how you treat our maiden aunts, it's small wonder we only get five pence for Christmas.”
Rose gasped and jerked upright, clutching the sheet to her breast. There was another Doctor in the room. This one was as tall and rangy as the first was short and muscular. He wore a floppy hat, an endless scarf and a ridiculously broad grin. Behind him, peering around his left shoulder, was a woman Rose recognized, but had never expected to see again.
“Sarah Jane!” Rose cried.
The newly arrived Doctor smiled down at his companion and, sounding as pleased as a cat with a belly full of cream, said, “Why so it is!”
Rose was out of the bed and moving forward before she remembered her nakedness. The sheet pulled her up short. She turned back to wrestle with it for a moment, giving everyone a fine view of her bare backside. “How did you...? Damn, this thing. Sorry, I'm...we were just, oh...!” She went on rambling incoherently as she wrenched the sheet free of its moorings. Wrapping the rose-printed cotton around under one arm, she knotted the sheet at her shoulder, toga fashion. “Would you look at me!”
“You?” Sarah Jane exclaimed, elbowing her Doctor aside. “Look at me. I'm young,” she said, holding up her arms and rotating them for Rose to inspect. “Not a wrinkle. Not a single age spot.”
As Rose reached her, the two women embraced. “The last time I saw you, you were....” She didn't want to say it.
Sarah Jane, however, had no problem with the word. “Dying? Then it wasn't a dream,” she said.
Just as Jamie blurted, “And me. I was dying for certain.” Gingerly lifting his hand from his face, he cracked one eyelid to peer at them. Noting Rose's makeshift dress, he relaxed out of his rigid stance, opening his eyes with a sigh of relief. “Took a crossbow bolt through the leg. Had the fever. Last thing I remember was a powerful thirst and me too weak to stand or swallow. And I'm here.”
“And you,” Sarah Jane exclaimed, clutching at Rose's elbow. “You've come back.”
“We need to sort this out. Think it through,” Rose's Doctor said as he stroked the flat of his hand along his jaw.
“I was in hospice in London?” Sarah Jane began thoughtfully. Rose nodded. “You came to visit me. You and the Doctor. I remember. They said I only had a few days left. What happened next?”
“I...we don't know,” Rose said. Her uncertain glance instinctively sought her Doctor's face. He looked positively thunderous, but he had abandoned his effort to throw himself out the window.
“But it must have something to do with the Doctor,” Sarah Jane insisted. “And it's never good having two of them in the same place.”
“Three,” Jamie's Doctor sniffed. He gave Sarah Jane a pained look. “We have been introduced, young lady.”
“Oh,” Sarah Jane said, blushing as she nodded, “Oh, of course, in the Tomb of Rassilon.”
“In the Death Zone?” the fourth Doctor asked, obviously perplexed. Then, he brightened with recollection. “Yes, of course, the Game of Rassilon. Poor mad Borusa.” He puffed a dramatic pout at Sarah Jane. “You said I was all teeth and curls.”
“And so you are,” Sarah Jane chuckled, soothing him with an indulgent pat.
The newest Doctor's arrival had calmed Rose's Doctor considerably. He strode over to Rose and Sarah Jane. His fourth self stepped forward, too. They squinted at each other. They grimaced and gaped and both scratched their heads, mirroring one another's movements. Ten lost interest in the game and turned his attention to Sarah Jane. Taking her by both shoulders, he maneuvered her this way and that, examining her intently.
“You died,” he told her. Rose scowled and shook her head at him, but he went heedlessly on, “We attended your funeral.”
“Then she's crossing her own time line,” Jamie's Doctor said, bustling busily forward, his brows disappearing under his fringe. “We'll need to get her back where she belongs before--”
Rose's Doctor prodded Two's shoulder. “You feel real enough. But this could still be a--”
“Yes, yes,” Sarah Jane's Doctor inserted, leaning into the conversation. “It could be sexual, I suppose. The dreaming seed. Assuming you two get up to that sort of thing.” He grinned down at Sarah Jane. “Do they, do you think? Get up to that sort of thing?”
“I'm rather afraid they do,” Sarah Jane said, dryly.
“I always was a dasher with the ladies,” Sarah Jane's Doctor remarked. Rose noted he had a funny way of mouthing his words as he spoke them so they came out a little mushy. He flashed an impossible number of teeth. “But we hadn't ought to assume, as the mouse said to the milkmaid. Tell me more about this dying business. I've tried it once or twice myself, but it never seemed to take.”
Sarah Jane snickered a little, obviously very pleased to see him. But she quickly focused her mind to the task of explaining. “I was old,” she said, “so old.” She touched fingertips to her unlined face.
“Ninety-seven,” Rose supplied. “It's the background radiation. It protects the immune system from...everything.”
“Yes, never mind about the immune system,” Four gently admonished. “Go on, Sarah Jane.”
“It sounds silly to say it, but...there was a light, calling to me. Just like happens in films and things. And something else. A...a singing in the dark.”
“Singing? What sort of singing?” all three Doctors exclaimed as one.
“Like a choir,” Jamie said, nodding as he joined the conversation again, “a thousand voices uplifted in a hymn, all singing at once.”
Sarah Jane agreed, “Yes, exactly like in church.”
The second and fourth Doctors put their hands in their trouser pockets and rocked up onto their toes. Ten tried to do the same but his pajama bottoms had no pockets. He looked down at his bare feet and wiggled his toes. All of the Doctors appeared to be lost in thought.
“The Cruciform?” Two supposed.
“Could be...could be,” Sarah Jane's Doctor mumbled, cocking a brow at his elder and younger selves. “Any other ideas?”
“It was destroyed,” Ten said. He didn't bother to elaborate.
“The TARDIS sings,” Rose said. “In my head. Sometimes.”
“You know what's so very odd?” Sarah Jane turned to look back the way she'd come. “There was light, as I said, and singing. And then I was outside this house. And...I can't explain how, but...somehow, I knew where I was. Not really. Not what city or planet I was on. But the way you know things in a dream. I knew this was your house, Rose.” She repeated her friend's name. “Rose? You're alive. I'm--alive!” She looked in the mirror, one hand stroking the flawless skin exposed by the neckline of her blouse. “And look at me, not a day over twenty.”
Rose looked at her. Then, she looked toward her Doctor. As their eyes met, his jaw jutted stubbornly forward, his chin lifting a little. He seemed to be grinding frustration between his teeth.
“Bringing the dead back to life,” Rose reminded him. “We've seen this before.”
His brows arched as he tilted his head. “Life from the inanimate. If people can become pictures...?”
“The Isolus,” Rose said. “It has to be.”
“You sent the signal?”
“I tried,” she said. “I think it responded. There was something outside just before I lost consciousness. Something massive. The proximity alarms were sounding. There was a beeping.”
She glanced at the bedside clock. A shudder rocked her body and she felt suddenly faint. The floor tilted under her. Hand pressed to her temple, she staggered sideways. All three Doctors surged around her. Solicitous and gentle, they cooed and cuddled her. Two and Four took her by the forearms, bracing her from the elbows. Her Doctor slid his arm around her waist and guided her to a seat on the edge of the bed.
“Dizzy?” he asked.
Though she was, Rose shook her head. “This is wrong. None of it can be real.”
“Couldn't get any wronger,” he agreed, settling beside her. “But don't worry about it for a minute or three. You're just having a delayed reaction to the drug in your system. How many fingers do you see?” he asked, holding up two before her.
“Fingers?” Rose said, her eyes unfocused. Her Doctor tucked her head in under his chin, rocking her against him as his lips brushed over her hair.
“What's an Isolus?” the second Doctor asked into the long pause that followed Rose's dizzy spell.
“An ion being,” the fourth Doctor said in soft answer. “Harmless for the most part. They float about, occasionally frightening space travelers.” He glanced around the room. “Theoretically, powerful enough to create all of this out of digested energy particles. But why do it?”
Rose's Doctor also spoke in a quiet, modulated manner, his hand still gently stroking her shoulder. “When it was very small and very lost, we helped it find its way home.”
“It's paying a debt of honor, then?” Jamie surmised.
“Unlikely,” the fourth Doctor said. “The Isolus are elusive and, as far as I've every heard, completely unresponsive to requests from other species.”
Rose recovered enough to give sit up straighter. She gave a slight nod. “And I never got to ask it for help. The communication systems failed.”
Ten smiled at her and took over the story. “The plan was to find the Isolus and ask it to restore Rose to corporeal form. It owed us a favor. We hoped to collect. The TARDIS had the necessary DNA coding, but she didn't have the power to manifest a permanent body. We needed a virtually unlimited power source in order to extract Rose from the interface systems that were maintaining her lifeforce. And we knew the Isolus was able to create living beings, whole imaginary worlds, from ionic energy.”
“Imaginary worlds like this one?” Sarah Jane exclaimed.
“What do you mean, 'extricate'?” the second Doctor yelped. “What have you been doing to my TARDIS?”
“You planned to ask the Isolus to make you a new body,” Sarah Jane said, working things out.
“Out of ionic energy,” Rose confirmed, nodding. “Yeah.”
“What a clever idea.”
“Well,” the fourth and tenth Doctors chorused as one, “I've always been clever.” Four beamed over the synchronization. Ten winked and clicked his tongue.
“A new body?” Jamie asked, blushing again as he remembered the scene he'd witnessed on arrival. “Were you a ghostie, then, lass?”
“The ghost in the machine,” the tenth Doctor said. Mouth slightly ajar, he leveled a speaking glance at both of his other selves. “The ghost,” he stressed. “All along. Since the beginning.”
“Oh, I see,” the second Doctor said. His face fell. “Then, my TARDIS is...?”
“Gone,” Ten confirmed.
“It's a long story,” Rose murmured with an apologetic cut of her eyes to indicate this was no time for long stories.
“Two thousand years of story,” her Doctor said with sigh. He smiled at Rose and whispered. “Your head should clear in a few minutes.” Then, he stood and started for the door. “I'm afraid we do need to investigate further.”
“So, here we are, figments of your imaginations,” Sarah Jane's Doctor said, falling into step with his older and younger selves. “I don't feel imaginary. But then do the shadows on the cave wall know that they are shadows?”
With a bark of mirthless laughter, Ten spun around to face the other two Doctors. “Philosophical riddles?” he sneered. “Quite right. How typical. Let's all sit around and contemplate our navels and creation and the little balls of lint in the dryer trap. I'm sure pondering philosophical questions will keep us all busy on those cold winter evenings ahead. But, at this precise moment, just now...has it occurred to either of you that everything I had, everything I was, disintegrated a few moments ago? I've lost my ship and my bearings. And I haven't touched my wife in a thousand years.”
“Looked at from another angle, we've all just lost everything,” said a new voice from the doorway. “Death comes to all, but great achievements build a monument which shall endure till the sun grows cold. Or your planet evaporates, whichever comes first. And some of us never got to properly touch our wife.”
Rose glanced toward the door and shivered as a pair of sparkling blue eyes met her wondering gaze. The mobile mouth below the eyes wore a manic grin.
“I do love philosophy,” the ninth Doctor said in his broadest Northern drawl. He pinched thumb and fingers together on each hand together and gleefully exclaimed, “All those little theories bouncing around, making things happen!”
“Last night I dreamed I was a frog,” Jack Harkness bombastically declared, as he strode through the door. “Or more accurately a big head in a glass tank full of smoke. Point is, I had very serious complexion issues. And when I woke up I didn't know if I was a man who dreamed he was a giant face in a tank or a giant face in a tank who was now dreaming--” He broke off with a grunt; staggered by Rose's unchecked forward momentum.
She had launched herself from the bed with a heartfelt cry of delight the second she'd heard Jack's voice. Unstable on her pins, she'd staggered across the room in a drunken series of lurches, intent on throwing herself into someone's arms. Nine sprang forward to catch her around the waist before she and Jack could collapse to the floor.
He gave her an enthusiastic whirl. Rose seemed perfectly content to hug him first and Jack second. Arms about his neck, she lavished him with heated kisses, only letting go to transfer her attentions to the recovered Jack. The knots of her toga slipped loose as she clambered from Time Lord to Time Agent. The sheet started to slide down her back, but Ten reached her before she was completely exposed. Prying her away from both newcomers, Ten wrapped her up in the sheet again as he hugged her close to his chest and glared at his apparent rivals.
“None of that,” he warned, shifting his grip to contain the squirming Rose.
“It's you,” she happily declared, wriggling like an affectionate puppy as she tried in vain to reach Jack again. He obliged her by coming closer. “And you.” The ninth Doctor also closed the gap between them. “And you are both so fit and alive and....” She gave a heartfelt little growl as her hand squeezed Jack's bicep. She stroked her other hand under the ninth Doctor's leather jacket as he bent to kiss her.
“Oi,” the tenth Doctor said, lifting Rose's feet from the floor and swinging her away from the ninth Doctor's lips. “My wife. Mine.”
“Our wife,” Nine corrected, as if addressing a particularly dense child. “Ours.” He leaned into Rose and murmured, “Is he always so possessive?”
“Oh, yes! It was such fun. And this? This is so...it's just....”
“Fantastic?” Nine suggested, smirking.
The lingering aphrodisiac in Rose's system, combined with the proximity of her favorite fantasy men, sent her thoughts in a naughty new direction. The mystery of what caused them all to be here was momentarily forgotten. There was definitely one thing she wanted more than answers. If she could have all three of them at the same time, she wouldn't care what was going on in this strange new world. Rose felt her nipples contract and tilted her head back so it lolled against her Doctor's shoulder, her other Doctor. Damn, it was getting confusing in here. If any more Doctors showed up, Twenty-two or Eleven or...she wouldn't know what to call them.
“We're going to have to start using numbers,” her Doctor said, easily reading her mind in such close quarters. “Just like in the dreams.”
“Do you think they are all here? Every Doctor? Everyone we've ever known?” Her face lit up with a happy realization. “Mickey? My mum and dad?”
“Doesn't sound much like Heaven to me,” Sarah Jane said. “Or maybe I just know a lot of disagreeable people.”
Ten went completely still, color draining from his face. His distress acted like a splash of cold water down Rose's back and she lost a good measure of her own sparkle. They both knew some very disagreeable people, as well. The Doctor, for example, could be a very disagreeable person.
Rose's libido switched off, as if someone had thrown a switch on it. Extracting herself from the tangle of Ten's embrace, she took a step back, retied and smoothed her bed sheet toga. This was no time to be thinking about orgies. Ten continued to look queasy. His mirrored reflection caught his eye and, after a long pause to study the man he now was, he turned again to Rose, his expression pensive. His tongue worried at the inside cheek of his open mouth. It took Rose less than a heartbeat to understand the haunted expression on his face. If every Doctor had been reincarnated, there could be serious trouble brewing.
“Thirteen,” she said, hollowly.
Her Doctor swallowed hard, tugging at his collar like it felt too tight. “And Jeffrey,” he said.
“What about...Them?” Two asked, his tone leaving no doubt he was talking about the Time Lords. “They forced me to regenerate. They found me guilty of meddling. Me!”
“They're gone,” Nine said, exchanging a glance with his next incarnation, “Like the Cruciform, like the Citadel and the Matrix.”
“Gone? What do you mean gone?” the Second Doctor huffed, scowling at Nine. “They don't go anywhere. If only they would go, the universe would be a better place, I think.”
There was an uncomfortable silence. Rose opened her mouth to speak, but it was Sarah Jane who said sharply, “They all died. Gallifrey was destroyed.”
“Destroyed?” Two whispered, not comprehending. “But...but...?”
Four believed her. He gave a mewling little cry, stumbled to the bed and sat down. His breathing labored, he gazed into the middle distance, trying to envision such complete devastation.
“How?” he finally asked.
“There was a war,” Rose answered, knowing that even now her two Doctors couldn't speak of it easily.
Four nodded. “The Sontarans?”
“The Daleks. We lost.”
“B--but they can't be gone,” Two argued. “Not all of them. They don't go, do they? They just sit there, moldering at the end of time. Even the ones you think you've gotten rid of keep coming back. Look at that meddling monk. Or Rassilon or that other fellow with his anti-matter experiments.”
“Omega,” the fourth Doctor supplied, though he was still gazing at some internal horror.
“The Master,” Sarah Jane added. She raised a brow at Rose. “They are rather resilient.”
Rose lightly touched her Doctor's arm. “Do you think...? Could there be other Time Lords here?”
“I don't know,” her Doctor said, sounding angry. “We don't know where we are or what's going on. It seems likely the Isolus is involved. Perhaps it read our subconscious minds. The way it did with Chloe Webber. But...would that be enough to restore my people? I just don't know.”
“Does anyone else need a jelly baby?” Four asked, pulling a worn paper bag from a pocket.
“Jelly babies,” Jack exclaimed. “I can't remember when I last had a jelly baby. Oh, wait, yes I can. It was in Guam. Henderson bet me I couldn't charm the vestigial flange off this Lorgorian waitress--”
“No,” Ten interrupted.
“No?” Sarah Jane said, giving him a quizzical squint. “What do you mean--”
“No,” he repeated. “No jelly babies. No rambling war stories. No more interruptions. I've changed my mind. I don't care anymore. Rose and I are going to spend the next twenty-four hours in this room in that bed...alone. The lot of you are going to push off. Go investigate. Meddle in someone else's business. Find out if you have homes, friends or relatives lurking. Find out everything you can. Talk to the neighbors.”
“I think we are your neighbors,” Jack said. He held a hand out to Jamie and announced, “Jack Harkness, pleased to meet you.”
“Twenty-four hours?” Jamie stage whispered to his Doctor even as he pumped Jack's offered hand. “What do you think he's planning that would take so long?”
“I'll explain it to you later,” Two said.
“Or I can demonstrate,” Jack said, winking at Nine.
“I doubt we can manage for twenty-four hours without more information, but I suppose we can spare you thirty minutes,” Four said to Ten, standing up as he spoke. “It will take that long to fix a proper tea.”
“Do you think we have food?” Rose asked, brightening again. “I could go for some strawberry ice cream.”
Her Doctor glared at her for a speechless moment or two before rolling his eyes heavenward and declaring, “Oh, I give up.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
After a bit of haggling, the other Doctors agreed to give Ten and Rose fifteen minutes to dress. Ten tried to gain a little more time but the others were adamant. Rose sided with the majority. However, as soon as the door closed behind Jamie, she grabbed Ten by both sides of his pajama top and dragged him into another kiss. He braced the flat of his palms on the door, one to each side of her head and gave himself over to the sweet sensation of her tongue lapping under and around his. It took every ounce of his willpower not to send a hundred fizzy darts into her mouth.
As they broke apart gasping, Nine pounded on the door. “Twelve minutes,” he said.
“Woo,” Rose breathed. Then, she raised her voice and called out, “All right. We're coming.”
“I think that's what worries him,” Ten quipped, nudging her to make her giggle. “Still, best get dressed, I suppose. I doubt this is our last dying moment.”
“It has gone on a bit.” She went to the wardrobe and picked out a pair of loose slacks and a white t-shirt. She couldn't imagine wearing some of the other clothes. “This blouse,” she said, pulling out a hanger and displaying a garment. “I don't like it. Why would I dream up clothes I didn't like and would never wear?”
“That's from the wardrobe,” he said.
“Yes, I know. I just took it out of there.”
Ten shook his head. “No, I don't mean that wardrobe. The one in the TARDIS.” He examined the some of the other clothing. “All of this is from the TARDIS. These are my suits, shirts and ties. But only some of this is yours. That blouse you are holding belonged to a woman named Liz Shaw.”
“That scientist friend of yours?” Rose said, scowling. “I barely remember her.”
“She didn't spend a lot of time on board.”
“And how did her blouse get in the wardrobe?” Rose asked, lifting a brow.
He turned red and seemed to be floundering. “Oh, well...I imagine...she had some sort of accident in the lab,” he said. Avoiding Rose's eye, he took an intent interest in searching for his shoes. “She probably had to change...or something? Have you seen my trainers?”
“I'm not jealous,” Rose told him. Catching his arm, she pointed toward a chair in the corner of the room. His trainers were neatly arranged under it.
“I didn't say you were,” he said, as he sat down in the chair. “There is, after all, absolutely no need.” He pulled on a shoe and began lacing himself into it. “But it has occurred to me that if every one of my former selves shows up here, emotions will be running very high.”
“We'll keep order somehow,” Rose said, crossing the room to his side. She very gently ruffled his hair. “I wish we could just stay here together, just you and I.” As he lifted his face to look up at her, her fingertips caressed his cheek and her thumb traced the bow of his lower lip.
Eyes closed he leaned into her touch. “We could block the door with the dresser,” he said. “Put the wardrobe in front of the window and....”
A strident voice sounded from the hallway. “I don't care what you promised. Let go of me. I know she's in there. I can feel her. Rose? Sweetheart, can you hear me?”
A frisson of icy fire washed over Rose's skin. Tears blurred her vision and a rushing noise deafened her as she bolted for the door. She was hiccuping through sobs. Her numb fingers scrambled for purchase on the knob. The stubborn thing refused to turn at first and she fought it, crying out, “Mum? I'm here. Here!”
“Oh, out of my way you big oaf,” Jackie Tyler said. There was the carrying sound of a resounding smack.
Ten snickered as Nine yelped, “Ow!”
Jackie was at the door, pounding on it. “Mickey? Pete? She's in here. That's her calling me.”
Ten helped Rose with the knob. They sorted out the proper direction to turn it and yanked it toward them. The door flew open and Rose found herself face to face with her entire family. They stared at one another for a few stunned seconds, and then everyone started talking at once.
“Oh, my god, it is her.”
“You disappeared,” Mickey blurted.
“I remember forgetting you,” Pete said. “You were sitting in a chair.”
“I was at death's door, I swear it and then suddenly I heard singing and I remembered having a daughter. How could I forget that? How could I forget you?”
“Mum? Dad? Mickey?”
“And this is Pete Junior,” Jackie said, dragging a red-haired man of about twenty forward into the family hug. “Doesn't he look just like your dad?” He did. He looked almost exactly like Pete Tyler, because Pete didn't look much over twenty himself.
“What is going on?” Nine asked Ten.
“I think we need to find out.” They could hear crowd noise from the living room. “How many more have arrived?”
“Dozens. The noise levels keeps rising. I'm fairly certain I heard the Brigadier a moment ago.”
“Rose? Jackie?” Ten said, prying the women apart. He gave them both an apologetic but resolute look. “I really do hate to break this up but we need to focus on what's happened before we give in to the temptation to celebrate.”
“Yes, all right,” Rose sighed. She kept an arm around her mother's waist and pillowed her head on Jackie's well-padded shoulder, but she guided the family back down the hall in the wake of the Doctors. “Mum, could you make us all some tea and sandwiches.”
“I'm not leaving you,” Jackie declared. There was panic in her eyes. “You could disappear again. You don't know what that was like, remembering that I'd forgotten.” She sniffled back more tears. “My own daughter?”
Rose gave her a reassuring squeeze. “There, there,” she soothed. “It's going to be all right. But you have to let us figure this out. Dad? Mickey? Can you find Jack? He and Sarah Jane can help you set up some crowd control. Try to clear everyone out of the house.”
When they reached the living room they all stopped to stare at the people gathered inside the room and outside the house on the front lawn.
“How can there be so many?” Rose asked, looking out the front windows. “I don't even recognize half of them.”
“Not everyone we know,” Ten said, correcting their earlier hypothesis. “It's everyone we've ever known.”
"And we're all the same age," Jackie remarked. "Or close to it."
"We are," Rose agreed, looking around. "That has to mean something."
“But how did we all get here?” Jackie asked. “How did I know to leave my own house and come here for answers?”
Ten shook his head, at a loss. He raised his voice to address the crowd. “Can I have your attention,” he said. “We'll need to talk to each of you, eventually. But first, we need...well...me. Are there any other Doctors in the house?”
“Here,” Five said, stepping forward. “And it's good to see you, again, my dear fellow. Solve your shield problem?”
“Yes, thank you,” Ten said, dryly. “Well, almost. Probably not the time to go into it. Anyone else?”
“Here's one,” Donna Noble said, dragging a hapless Twenty-two along by his elbow. “I found him lurking near the back gate. And isn't he an improvement on the skinny weasel look?”
“Donna!” Ten crowed. He bound away from Rose to sweep his ginger-haired and long-departed companion into a bear hug.
“Put me down. Down!” Donna ordered, shoving at his shoulders. But she was laughing as she struggled to escape. “You'd think you never saw a ghost before and we both know you see them all the time.”
In all there were eighteen Doctors present. Sorting them out wasn't the easiest of tasks. They seemed to have all manifested within a four-block radius of what Rose thought of as her house. Eleven and Fourteen arrived within seconds of each other and there was a bit of a weasel-on-geezer-on-flutterboy dust up when they both challenged Ten's right to sit by Rose. Ten won on reach and stamina, but Rose wasn't at all sure the question of marital claims had been permanently laid to rest. There was an air of temporary truce about her Doctors.
After everyone had been greeted and embraced, Donna was dispatched to make tea. The room having been mostly cleared of bystanders, the Doctors gathered in a circle, perching on the arms of furniture or slouching against the walls.
Rose took stock. “We're missing Twenty-three and Twenty-four, Sixteen, Thirteen, Six and the original.”
“Twenty-three and Twenty-four make sense, I suppose,” Ten said. “They didn't have time to gel, as it were, in their respective bodies. They were both still in the regenerative cycle when they died. That could be why I've got their memories.”
“A sort of default,” Rose said, nodding. “Does that mean we are also missing another you? Another number Ten?”
“One of him is surely more than enough,” a new voice said.
Everyone turned to look toward the kitchen door. “What are you dressed up as?” Twenty-two asked, “Grandma's patchwork quilt?”
“You are in no position to cast stones, Long John Silver,” the new arrival intoned, sweeping his critic with a quelling glare. “Were they out of Sinbad costumes at the shop?”
“Six,” Rose greeted the outlandishly dressed Doctor. “How...lovely to see you.”
“You may call me Bernard,” the sixth Doctor declared pompously, as he carried her hand to his lips. “Doctor Lipses Bernard, I think. Might as well have a name. I refuse to be numbered like a billiard ball. And this,” he said, with a gracious dip of his head at his companion, “is Melanie Bush.”
“Well that settles it,” Ten muttered near Rose's ear, “It's not just the people we like who've come back.”
“I don't dislike him,” Rose said from the corner of her mouth, as she carefully extracted her hand from the sixth Doctor's grip. “I haven't even met him properly.”
“No, of course not, you--” Ten broke off, starting like a cat hearing a car backfire.
“Is he having some sort of seizure?” the third Doctor asked.
“Hush. Wait, wait, wait,” Ten declared, holding up a finger and cocking his head as if listening for an answer on the wind. After a moment of breathless anticipation, he pointed at Rose. “You haven't met any of them, One to Seven,” he said. “You and she were together when you met these versions of me. The TARDIS, I mean. You met Eight on your own but only grew to know him in the TARDIS years, yes?”
“I met the first you, One,” Rose reminded him, “in the library.”
“When you were about twenty," Ten mused, and then inhaled sharply. "Of course,” he hissed, stabbing his finger forward. He did a little celebratory spin. “The DNA sample.”
“What is he babbling about?” the fifth Doctor muttered.
Six, a.k.a. Doctor Bernard, flicked an invisible speck of dust from his outrageous waistcoat and spoke with marked disinterest, saying, “DNA samples, apparently.”
“Yes...no...yes,” Ten waffled, spitting a bit as he over-enunciated. “That's it.” He patted at the air with both hands as if shushing everyone. Then, he hunkered down and leaned closer to the circle of listeners. He looked about to impart some vital state secret, but all he said was, “Hair.” Then, he straightened again.
“Hair?” Mel repeated, only to be shushed by her Doctor.
“The musical?” Eight guessed.
“Oh, he does this all the time,” Jackie confided. “Talks all day and says absolutely nothing. My Rose can always translate whatever he's on about into English.”
Everyone looked at Rose. She shrugged. “What do you mean 'hair'?” She asked Ten.
“Hair,” he repeated.
“Yes, you've said that,” Donna sighed, setting down a tea tray overloaded with cups. "Would you like to give us a verb?"
“I fed Rose's hair into the TARDIS data bank. The TARDIS needed a proper blueprint so it could duplicate Rose's body exactly whenever we found an ion storm.” He glanced at the gathered Doctors. “And what is a TARDIS programmed to do? By order of High Council Edict 66-137Theta, subparagraph 885-B?”
“Record our genetic patterns after each regeneration,” Four answered.
“So that our biodata can be downloaded into the Matrix,” Eight added.
“And compile that biodata with our daily brain scans,” Three went on.
“In order to pass on our collected wisdom to future generations of Time Lords via our Matrix facsimilies,” Five finished.
Ten clapped a hand to his head. Fingers curling, he tugged up his hair as he enthusiastically shouted, “Exactly!”
“Well, I'm still lost,” Jackie told Donna. She took a meditative sip of her tea, before saying, “I thought all of his people were dead and buried. Who cares about their subparagraphs at this late date?”
“I believe he's suggesting that the TARDIS started recording everyone's biodata,” Eight explained. “After the Matrix was destroyed in the war. Or after he fed it this strand of Rose's hair.”
"The TARDIS recreated the Matrix,” Nine said, sounding awed. “Daily brain scans for everybody? But that would take enormous power reserves. She couldn't possibly....” He suddenly looked straight at Rose.
“Is that where we are,” Six said, “in the Matrix? Because there is this blighter calling himself the Valeyard and--”
“That's Thirteen,” Ten said. “It's a fair bet his being completely loony corrupted his biodata or scrambled his brain scans. Which means we may not have to deal with him, at least. And do try to keep up.”
“Hang on a minute,” Rose said. “We couldn't have collected hair samples from everyone we met.”
“You wouldn't have to,” Seven said. “All you would have to do is expand the parameters of the original programming. It used your DNA as a sort of template."
"Is that why everyone is about twenty?" Rose asked. "Because...?"
"They are exactly twenty, I'd say, since you were twenty when you lost that hair," Fourteen said.
"The TARDIS has access to the Vortex. Time isn't linear. It's a sort of wibbly-wobbly--” Ten and Five both cleared their throats. Ten slashed his hand across his neck, while shaking his head, and Eight finished with a quick cough, saying, “It could, in theory, continue a pattern through time and space, exponentially.”
“Everyone we know,” Ten said.
“And everyone they know,” Three added. “And so on and so forth.”
“Where would it stop?” Rose asked, glancing toward the window again. The crowd outside continued to grow. People were milling about restlessly, even though Sarah Jane, Pete, Jack and Mickey were doing their best to keep order. Nine and Ten exchanged speaking glances.
“Oh, come on,” Rose insisted, “it would have to stop somewhere!”
“Oh, yes, absolutely,” Ten agreed. Cutting his gaze away from Nine, he focused on her. “Where do you think it would stop, Rose?”
“Why are you asking her?” Jackie said, bristling as she stepped between them. “You're the genius. Or so you keep saying.”
“This has gone far enough,” Ten said. He pointed toward the front lawn. “Outside that window is a whole city. And all of those people came here for answers. To a house they knew. A house that belonged to someone who could explain what happened. Drawn to you, Rose, like Jack was drawn to you when he came back from the dead. He went to the Powell Estates, over and over again. Like you, Donna, were drawn into the TARDIS.”
Nine spoke in a reverent hush. “I took it out of her,” he said. “Every bit of it.”
“Not every bit,” Ten said, his eyes fixed on Rose's face.
“You left the root behind,” Nineteen said, quietly. “There's a door in the back of her mind.”
“All that is. All that was. All that ever will be,” Ten intoned. “How does everybody know where to go, Rose?” he asked. “What is it you're not telling us?”
“Nothing,” Rose insisted, tearful frustration making her voice wobble. “I woke up just like you, just like everyone else.”
“All right. That's enough. All of you back off,” Jackie snapped. “I mean it. I won't have you badgering her.”
“Mum, please,” Rose said, seizing her mother's hand. “They're just trying to help.” She stared into her Doctor's eyes. “I swear, I don't know what's going on. I'm as confused as the rest of you. I was dying and I woke up in this house in bed with you. Before that I was...falling. The TARDIS was breaking apart. Something hit us. I wanted to see it. I thought, maybe, if it was the Isolus, it could help up. I asked to be patched through to the outside monitors.”
The breath caught in her throat. She'd asked to be patched through to the Isolus. She'd gone to the door in her mind. It had shrunk to a pinprick but it was still there. All that power. All of time and space at her command. Everything else so tiny. The Isolus understood about life.
Without another word, Rose broke from the circle of Doctors. She strode purposefully to the door and yanked it open. The crowd gasped and fell silent. As she stepped out of the house, they parted. They all seemed to be orienting to her, even the ones she had never met. She scanned the crowd for familiar faces and found a lady who came to her mother for dye jobs and a merchant from the asteroid bazaar. Her primary school teacher, Mr. Sprinkle stood to her left by some bougainvillea bushes. The Doctor loved bougainvillea blossoms. A woman clutched Mr. Sprinkle's hand. She might be his wife. Rose didn't know as she had never met his wife. But she recognized Martha Jones and her husband and Jo Grant and her Dr. Green and the Brigadier helping Jack keep order.
She remembered the TARDIS Heart slipping away from her. She remembered calling out to it, begging it to help her save the Doctor. The Heart had responded but not through the usual communications systems of the dying ship. It had spoken to Rose through the direct link in her mind. It told her they were not subject to the rules of reality. The Heart could not die. So Rose could not die.
You are not flesh. You are my interface.
A voice, those same words, seemed to throb from the ground beneath Rose's feet. Golden light flooded her being. It shone from her eyes. People gasped and shrank away from her. She gripped the door frame to keep from falling as her knees turned to jelly. She swallowed the cold bile that flooded her mouth. As the Doctors pressed out of the door behind her, she continued her recollection.
“I asked to be patched through to the Isolus. But the mechanical interface was fragmenting. I tried to explain to the Heart of the TARDIS about you dying. About needing to be whole again.”
You are whole.
“This is my fault,” Rose said, one hand at her throat. She pushed her way into the crowd and stumbled across the lawn until she fell to her knees in the grass. Her Doctor was beside her in a moment. He caught her in his arms, holding her close, murmuring sweet nothings into her ear as he rocked her.
“It's not your fault,” he said. “I should never have asked you to remember.”
“No, no,” she said, shifting in the circle of his arms to capture and hold his gaze. When he stopped protesting, she glanced beyond him to her mother and the other Doctors. “It was me. It is me." Her attention shifted down. "Here,” she said, digging her fingers into the loam by Ten's right knee. “Look.”
He watched her tug free huge tufts of sod. Dirt blackened her nails. She kept mumbling to herself. Telling him it was with them, under the ground. Something was under them. Several inches down she uncovered what she was looking for, a twisted white root of some kind. She shook loose soil from the pulsating thing as she drew it out into the air. He recognized it as soon as she displayed it on her open palm.
“It's a seedling,” Two exclaimed, surging forward to peer at the root. “An infant TARDIS.”
“The TARDIS went to seed?” Nine blinked at the news. There was a general murmur of wonderment and confusion from the assembled onlookers.
“The Heart couldn't patch me through,” Rose said, wiping a tear from her eye with a grimy knuckle. “She tried but the interface, the part of the TARDIS that the Time Lords cultivated, was going to seed, breaking into pieces at the end of its lifespan.”
“With no ground below, in the vacuum of space,” Ten said. “The seedlings would die.”
“Yes,” Rose said. “Like you were dying. Like everyone we knew had died. The Heart was slipping away, taking me with her, leaving death behind.”
“Because you are not flesh,” Ten said. He drew a deep breath and released it. “You asked her to help?”
Rose nodded. “I told her to ask the Isolus our question.”
“What question would that be,” a man's voice asked politely.
Rose glanced toward the speaker. There was a very dapper man at her gate. He had long brown hair and twinkling blue eyes and he carried a walking stick he scarcely seemed to need. He stood very straight. And even though he was rail thin, he looked to be agile and strong. Rose would have placed him in his late thirties. But she barely gave him a second thought. It was the young woman at his side who arrested her complete attention.
“Susan?” she croaked. She clutched at her Doctor's lapels. “Tell me you see her.”
There was a faint white line around Ten's mouth. “I see her,” he managed to say in a hoarse whisper, “and him.”
Tears were streaming down his cheeks. He tried to stand up but didn't have the strength and sank back to his knees again. Jackie and Donna both pushed their way to him. Jackie took his elbow. Donna cupped a hand under his arm. A chorus of gasps and exclamations escaped the other Doctors as they all careened toward the gate. Their expressions ran the gamut from pleased to completely overwhelmed.
“Who is that?” Donna asked.
“Never saw them before in my life,” Jackie answered.
“That's our daughter, mum,” Rose said. “Your granddaughter, Susan. You've seen pictures.”
Ten gave a burbling laugh and shook his head. “No...it's all of them,” he said, working his way past the choking lump in his throat. He bobbed his chin at the dapper young man beside Susan, the one who had spoken to Rose. “That's me. A very, very young me. And beyond me, that's...Ori-Orisriana, my sister. That's....my brother and his wife and their son and....” Once again, he lost his ability to speak.
An equally overset Nine was being held up by Jack and the Brigadier but he turned to say, “And my two daughters. Susan's husband, David. That's my entire family, Rose, at our gate.”
“Time Lords?” Rose said. It seemed like the wrong answer to her.
She struggled to rise, but the boneless Ten was an anchor around her shoulders. He shook his head. “People. Just my people. I'm the only Time Lord in the family, other than my parents. And I don't see them.”
“Maybe they would fracture,” Fourteen said, “Like us. Thirteen individuals.”
"Maybe they are still out there somewhere," Donna said. "This can't be everyone on the planet."
“Or maybe their biodata was destroyed,” Two said, grimly, “with all the rest of it.”
Rose didn't know. The knowing was slipping away from her, the way the crowd would slip away once they'd been told how this had all happened. Word must spread from here, from her. She still understood what the people were waiting for, at least. The Wolf would fade, disappear behind the door in her mind once she told them about it. It was going to give them all room to live full and fulfilling lives.
She didn't have the strength to lift her Doctor to his feet and didn't have the heart to stand without him. So, they stayed on the ground until Donna and Jackie helped them up. Other willing hands reached out to assist the other Doctors, several of whom looked ready to collapse. Everyone talked but in hushed tones. Everyone waited to be released. Rose felt too dazed to move, but the crowd shifted propelling her and Ten to the gate.
Both humans and Gallifreyans huddled in their respective family groups on either side of the picket fencing, equally shy. Everyone simply stared at one another for a long time. A cool breeze blew leaves around their feet. As feeling returned to her numb body, Rose noticed the wind drying her tears. She felt an ache in her clenched fingers. Glancing down, she realized she was still clutching the seedling to her breast. She extended her hand again, opening it to show the Doctor's family what she held. They all looked at the throbbing new life in her hands.
“I am the Bad Wolf,” Rose said. “The Organic Interface for a Type 40C TARDIS. I create myself. Over and over again, I am renewed.”
There was a collective sigh from all of those gathered. This was what they had come to hear. Knowing why they existed would set them all free, Rose was sure of it.
“The Heart of the TARDIS is so vast. And you...us...everything in our universe is so tiny. She never understood it. Never understood about life or death, not really. The Heart exists outside reality, beyond Time and Relative Dimensions in Space, even beyond the void. She worked with you, with the Time Lords, saving your memories and your biodata via the physical interface, helping you travel through the Vortex, but she didn't understand anything about your universe. Only that Time Lords renew. You regenerate. Jack renews. This,” she lifted the seed a bit higher, “is how her physical interface renews. Every TARDIS has the same Heart."
Her Doctor hugged her closer. He pressed his cheek to hers. Their tears mingled and, once again, the ironic urge to get away, to be alone together took them both. Rose interlaced her fingers with his. He longed to take her by that hand and run. But aware of the people gathered around them, silently waiting for an explanation, he managed to pull himself together. They knew they would have plenty of time to enjoy each other now. There were long, joyful years ahead of them. The people had come to be told. He and Rose must tell them.
“All that power,” Ten said, shifting a bit away from Rose, “concentrated in one place, on one thought. An Isolus merged with the Time Vortex, all of time and space at your commmand and an endless source of ionic energy.”
His original self leaned forward, blue eyes boring into brown. “You could create worlds,” One said, awed by the magnitude of it. He didn't need to know what an Isolus was to grasp the concept of it. “Create life out of nothing.”
“Or recreate it,” Jack said suddenly. His gaze met Rose's and she saw the knowledge in his eyes. “What are we but atoms rearranged, a spark of life and personality? If you know us well, then...you can bring us back.”
“We are the body of the Bad Wolf,” Ten answered, “all of us.” He gave Rose another squeeze and a lopsided grin. “Of course, you aren't flesh. You're Rose. Mind and soul. Affection and understanding. You're everything here. The people you love. The people they love. Everyone you ever knew. Everyone they ever knew. This city. Those mountains. This planet. This is what the TARDIS Heart knows about you, Rose. She told the Isolus everything she knew about you and asked it to make you whole again.”
Rose nodded in confirmation. “And just like with Jack,” she said, smiling over at the man she'd once gifted with eternal life, “they didn't quite know where to stop.”
TEN THOUSAND YEARS LATER
They lay side by side in the shelter of a mountaintop glen, Rose and her Doctor. The scent of apple grass teased their noses. Behind them, the silver leaves of a jaumelia grove caught the last rays of the setting sun and shimmered with false fire. Rose pointed to a rainbow arc rocketing across the sky. "There they go. That's everyone away."
"Alone at last," the Doctor said. "Shall we celebrate?"
“We should.”
"I've written you a poem,” he told her.
“Another one,” Rose sighed, but there was indulgent affection in the sidelong glance she gave him.
Needing no further encouragement, he immediately launched into verse.
Again and again, however we know the landscape of love
and the little churchyard there, with its sorrowing names,
and the frighteningly silent abyss into which the others
fall: again and again the two of us walk out together
under the ancient trees, lie down again and again
among the flowers, face to face with the sky.
“Isn't that Rainer Maria Rilke?"
“Is it?” His lower lip protruded as he considered her claim. Finally, he shrugged and, squirming around to face her, said, “That's the trouble with living forever; every thing has been written already.”
"Are we doomed to repeat ourselves, then?" Rose asked, carrying his hand to her cheek. She nuzzled into his touch, brushed her lips along his fingers, and then lightly kissed his palm. "Or shall we just stay here napping?”
“Asleep under the stars," the Doctor mused, "just like Rassilon, dreaming in his tower forever and ever. Eternity is a curse, not a blessing. Nothing left to do but go to seed.”
“I think we've already done that, as well,” Rose giggled, opening her body and mind to him.
As he entered her, she cradled his face between her hands. They made love until they were both sweaty and breathless. It still felt good to be flesh, but she knew they could be so much more. All it would take was a little daring. And they were nothing if not a little daring. She let the dreaming seed carry them together into a labyrinth of multicolored light. Rose held her Doctor's hand, interlacing their fingers, and led him through her bright corridors to the one place he'd never been brave enough to assail. They stood hand in hand, facing the forbidden golden door, her inner gateway to the Vortex.
“Oh, this is brilliant,” he exclaimed, happy to be reminded of this one unexplored corner of creation.
“Would you like to see?” Rose asked, her not-quite-human voice echoing through the valley. “All that is and was and ever will be?”
She felt the fearful hesitation in him as their flesh dissolved and their dream selves faded. They lost a sense of their physical separation and became nothing but intertwining thought.
I have seen. I ran away, he confessed.
The first time? Yes. I know. But the second time you took it into your body to save me. This time let it take you into it.
Lose myself? Lose the Doctor? What else is there?
She gave him a playful, mental nudge.
Well...if you think there's going to be trouble...we can always just go back.
He laughed with her, remembering their shared joke, and gleefully responded, Let's find out.
They pushed the door open together and merged, becoming a single strand of golden light as they stepped through into the Heart of the TARDIS. The Vortex boiled around them and three beings fused into one. The riptide of eternity swept them away from reality and time. Once they'd adjusted their perspective, they found the fine line which represented the retreating shore of their former universe. A thousand tributaries, streaming life-lights, stretched from their united consciousness back to that shallow homeland. Every minute stream of awareness anchored them to a ship. And on every ship their children's children chattered away about new worlds and boundless horizons yet to be explored.
THE END
by Rabid1st
Doctor Who
Ten/Rose
Ratings: Adult +
Beta Babes: Keswindhover, larielromeniel, thewinterqueen, Measi, Aibhinn, Sensiblecat, Dualbunny, Kammi, Gina, Lilith, Jei and Queenrikki_hp, Caia. Hope I didn't leave anyone off the list. Tzikeh, too, has noted a number of typos in this chapter.
Spoilers: This fic covers ground through Voyage of the Damned and on beyond an alternative S4...though there are no real S4 spoilers and very few S3 ones. S2 is spoiled beyond measure.
Summary: This is the final chapter of my massive Doctor/Rose love story. I tend to think of Disheveled as having a happily ending. I hope you do, too.
Disclaimer and other stuff under this cut
Disclaimer: I wish to humbly thank the BBC, Russell T. Davies, David Tennant, Billie Piper and all of the wonderful writers who, all unwittingly, helped me tell this story. I borrowed liberally from the canon to make this story possible. I know I had no right to use the characters and situations. I did it because I love the Doctor and Rose and because I had something to say about them as a couple. Obviously I accept no compensation of any kind for this work. All right belong to the assorted production companies who own Doctor Who.
Author's Note: Here's a great big smooshy cyber-hug for those of you who have gotten this far. And another for those of you who, God bless you, have reread this whole story more than once. You all amaze me. Thank you so much for sticking with the story as I struggled to finish. Many times I was so frustrated or tired or sick that I thought about giving up and just enjoying my free time, watching Deal or No Deal or something. But every comment...be it a little WOOT or a long ramble...kept me motivated. I had to go back to my chair and write. I did try to thank you all along the way...but if I missed you, thank you now. It took two years but I wrote a 520 page book. And somebody read it! Good lord! I could use a drink. :grin:
CLICK HERE FOR ALL PREVIOUS PARTS
PART TWENTY EIGHT
“Go away,” the Doctor snarled, close to Rose's ear.
He went on kissing her throat as she tilted her head back to look at whomever had spoken. Taking in the upside-down view of a short, disheveled man crawling through into her bedroom, Rose gave a gurgle of surprise. Her Doctor muttered a series of curses aimed at his "ridiculous" subconscious. He accused it of worming in on his one shot at a happy ending even as Rose began to twist and squirm, scrambling for something to cover her nakedness. She refused to let his grumbling discourage her efforts. They were completely exposed, in the middle of the bed and some clown was breaking into the house. Wait. She poked into the corners of her memory as she squinted again at the intruder.
Clown seemed like the appropriate term. He had a droopy moroseness about him. His deeply lined face seemed neither young nor old, only well used. He looked worn, like a wool coat found under a table at a yard sale. A bowl-cut style made the most of his thick brown hair, giving it shine and swing. His over-sized and rumpled collar dwarfed a tiny polka-dotted bow tie. The hobo clown impression was definitely carried along by his baggy trousers and tailed morning coat. Something about him seemed very familiar, but Rose was certain she'd never seen him before. Not with these eyes, she realized suddenly, unconsciously quoting the Doctor. She'd seen him through the filter of sensors or cameras. Or in a dream. Yes, that was where she knew him from, shared, drugged dreams.
There was a slight catch of uncertainty in her voice. “Doctor?”
“Yes, very likely,” the newcomer said. His voice had a tremor behind it as if he were perpetually quivering with excitement. Pulling a huge hankie from a pocket, he acted out mopping his brow and dusting himself off as he spoke. “I believe I should know you young lady, but I don't quite recall ever having had the pleasure. We haven't been formally introduced, I think. Though I seem to remember you popping up in the library once upon a time. You were wearing--”
Rose's Doctor shot to his knees and bellowed, “Get! Out!”
“There's no need to shout,” the other Doctor said. “I can hear you perfectly clearly at this distance. I am simply ignoring you. Not easy to do, I might add, when you are spouting cnidocytes like a startled jellyfish. Put some clothes on, man.” A clatter of stones against the side of the house drew everyone's attention to the window again. Someone else was crawling through. “Oh, Jamie, best cover your...”
A strapping lad in full Highland regalia--kilt, sporran and leather vest--clambered into the room.
“I don't know that ye've noticed,” he exclaimed, adjusting his clothing, “but there's a barescud-nakit lass on that bed, Doctor!”
“...eyes,” the other Doctor, finished on a sigh.
“Oh, aye!”
Blushing as red as the plaid he sported, the young man obediently closed his eyes. Then, he covered them with one hand and turned his back. Rose couldn't help smiling at the excessive gallantry. She'd forgotten how endearing James McCrimmon could be. Her Doctor didn't seem at all moved by the young Highlander's show of respect. Head down, he furiously buttoned and cinched himself back into his pajamas. Then, he rolled over Rose to the edge of the bed and dropped to the floor. Lithe as any acrobat, he twisted mid-tumble, so he landed on his feet. He sprang forward, grabbed the other Doctor by his collar and propelled the little man across the room. While Rose fought the urge to giggle, her Doctor attempted to shove himself back out the window, despite Jamie effectively blocking the opening as he stood blindly in the way.
“Out. Right now. Both of you. Out!”
“Ow! Let go, you impertinent rascal.”
“I will not have my bothersome former selves critiquing my last moments like busybody maiden aunts.”
“Well,” said a deep and reasonable voice at the door. “If that's how you treat our maiden aunts, it's small wonder we only get five pence for Christmas.”
Rose gasped and jerked upright, clutching the sheet to her breast. There was another Doctor in the room. This one was as tall and rangy as the first was short and muscular. He wore a floppy hat, an endless scarf and a ridiculously broad grin. Behind him, peering around his left shoulder, was a woman Rose recognized, but had never expected to see again.
“Sarah Jane!” Rose cried.
The newly arrived Doctor smiled down at his companion and, sounding as pleased as a cat with a belly full of cream, said, “Why so it is!”
Rose was out of the bed and moving forward before she remembered her nakedness. The sheet pulled her up short. She turned back to wrestle with it for a moment, giving everyone a fine view of her bare backside. “How did you...? Damn, this thing. Sorry, I'm...we were just, oh...!” She went on rambling incoherently as she wrenched the sheet free of its moorings. Wrapping the rose-printed cotton around under one arm, she knotted the sheet at her shoulder, toga fashion. “Would you look at me!”
“You?” Sarah Jane exclaimed, elbowing her Doctor aside. “Look at me. I'm young,” she said, holding up her arms and rotating them for Rose to inspect. “Not a wrinkle. Not a single age spot.”
As Rose reached her, the two women embraced. “The last time I saw you, you were....” She didn't want to say it.
Sarah Jane, however, had no problem with the word. “Dying? Then it wasn't a dream,” she said.
Just as Jamie blurted, “And me. I was dying for certain.” Gingerly lifting his hand from his face, he cracked one eyelid to peer at them. Noting Rose's makeshift dress, he relaxed out of his rigid stance, opening his eyes with a sigh of relief. “Took a crossbow bolt through the leg. Had the fever. Last thing I remember was a powerful thirst and me too weak to stand or swallow. And I'm here.”
“And you,” Sarah Jane exclaimed, clutching at Rose's elbow. “You've come back.”
“We need to sort this out. Think it through,” Rose's Doctor said as he stroked the flat of his hand along his jaw.
“I was in hospice in London?” Sarah Jane began thoughtfully. Rose nodded. “You came to visit me. You and the Doctor. I remember. They said I only had a few days left. What happened next?”
“I...we don't know,” Rose said. Her uncertain glance instinctively sought her Doctor's face. He looked positively thunderous, but he had abandoned his effort to throw himself out the window.
“But it must have something to do with the Doctor,” Sarah Jane insisted. “And it's never good having two of them in the same place.”
“Three,” Jamie's Doctor sniffed. He gave Sarah Jane a pained look. “We have been introduced, young lady.”
“Oh,” Sarah Jane said, blushing as she nodded, “Oh, of course, in the Tomb of Rassilon.”
“In the Death Zone?” the fourth Doctor asked, obviously perplexed. Then, he brightened with recollection. “Yes, of course, the Game of Rassilon. Poor mad Borusa.” He puffed a dramatic pout at Sarah Jane. “You said I was all teeth and curls.”
“And so you are,” Sarah Jane chuckled, soothing him with an indulgent pat.
The newest Doctor's arrival had calmed Rose's Doctor considerably. He strode over to Rose and Sarah Jane. His fourth self stepped forward, too. They squinted at each other. They grimaced and gaped and both scratched their heads, mirroring one another's movements. Ten lost interest in the game and turned his attention to Sarah Jane. Taking her by both shoulders, he maneuvered her this way and that, examining her intently.
“You died,” he told her. Rose scowled and shook her head at him, but he went heedlessly on, “We attended your funeral.”
“Then she's crossing her own time line,” Jamie's Doctor said, bustling busily forward, his brows disappearing under his fringe. “We'll need to get her back where she belongs before--”
Rose's Doctor prodded Two's shoulder. “You feel real enough. But this could still be a--”
“Yes, yes,” Sarah Jane's Doctor inserted, leaning into the conversation. “It could be sexual, I suppose. The dreaming seed. Assuming you two get up to that sort of thing.” He grinned down at Sarah Jane. “Do they, do you think? Get up to that sort of thing?”
“I'm rather afraid they do,” Sarah Jane said, dryly.
“I always was a dasher with the ladies,” Sarah Jane's Doctor remarked. Rose noted he had a funny way of mouthing his words as he spoke them so they came out a little mushy. He flashed an impossible number of teeth. “But we hadn't ought to assume, as the mouse said to the milkmaid. Tell me more about this dying business. I've tried it once or twice myself, but it never seemed to take.”
Sarah Jane snickered a little, obviously very pleased to see him. But she quickly focused her mind to the task of explaining. “I was old,” she said, “so old.” She touched fingertips to her unlined face.
“Ninety-seven,” Rose supplied. “It's the background radiation. It protects the immune system from...everything.”
“Yes, never mind about the immune system,” Four gently admonished. “Go on, Sarah Jane.”
“It sounds silly to say it, but...there was a light, calling to me. Just like happens in films and things. And something else. A...a singing in the dark.”
“Singing? What sort of singing?” all three Doctors exclaimed as one.
“Like a choir,” Jamie said, nodding as he joined the conversation again, “a thousand voices uplifted in a hymn, all singing at once.”
Sarah Jane agreed, “Yes, exactly like in church.”
The second and fourth Doctors put their hands in their trouser pockets and rocked up onto their toes. Ten tried to do the same but his pajama bottoms had no pockets. He looked down at his bare feet and wiggled his toes. All of the Doctors appeared to be lost in thought.
“The Cruciform?” Two supposed.
“Could be...could be,” Sarah Jane's Doctor mumbled, cocking a brow at his elder and younger selves. “Any other ideas?”
“It was destroyed,” Ten said. He didn't bother to elaborate.
“The TARDIS sings,” Rose said. “In my head. Sometimes.”
“You know what's so very odd?” Sarah Jane turned to look back the way she'd come. “There was light, as I said, and singing. And then I was outside this house. And...I can't explain how, but...somehow, I knew where I was. Not really. Not what city or planet I was on. But the way you know things in a dream. I knew this was your house, Rose.” She repeated her friend's name. “Rose? You're alive. I'm--alive!” She looked in the mirror, one hand stroking the flawless skin exposed by the neckline of her blouse. “And look at me, not a day over twenty.”
Rose looked at her. Then, she looked toward her Doctor. As their eyes met, his jaw jutted stubbornly forward, his chin lifting a little. He seemed to be grinding frustration between his teeth.
“Bringing the dead back to life,” Rose reminded him. “We've seen this before.”
His brows arched as he tilted his head. “Life from the inanimate. If people can become pictures...?”
“The Isolus,” Rose said. “It has to be.”
“You sent the signal?”
“I tried,” she said. “I think it responded. There was something outside just before I lost consciousness. Something massive. The proximity alarms were sounding. There was a beeping.”
She glanced at the bedside clock. A shudder rocked her body and she felt suddenly faint. The floor tilted under her. Hand pressed to her temple, she staggered sideways. All three Doctors surged around her. Solicitous and gentle, they cooed and cuddled her. Two and Four took her by the forearms, bracing her from the elbows. Her Doctor slid his arm around her waist and guided her to a seat on the edge of the bed.
“Dizzy?” he asked.
Though she was, Rose shook her head. “This is wrong. None of it can be real.”
“Couldn't get any wronger,” he agreed, settling beside her. “But don't worry about it for a minute or three. You're just having a delayed reaction to the drug in your system. How many fingers do you see?” he asked, holding up two before her.
“Fingers?” Rose said, her eyes unfocused. Her Doctor tucked her head in under his chin, rocking her against him as his lips brushed over her hair.
“What's an Isolus?” the second Doctor asked into the long pause that followed Rose's dizzy spell.
“An ion being,” the fourth Doctor said in soft answer. “Harmless for the most part. They float about, occasionally frightening space travelers.” He glanced around the room. “Theoretically, powerful enough to create all of this out of digested energy particles. But why do it?”
Rose's Doctor also spoke in a quiet, modulated manner, his hand still gently stroking her shoulder. “When it was very small and very lost, we helped it find its way home.”
“It's paying a debt of honor, then?” Jamie surmised.
“Unlikely,” the fourth Doctor said. “The Isolus are elusive and, as far as I've every heard, completely unresponsive to requests from other species.”
Rose recovered enough to give sit up straighter. She gave a slight nod. “And I never got to ask it for help. The communication systems failed.”
Ten smiled at her and took over the story. “The plan was to find the Isolus and ask it to restore Rose to corporeal form. It owed us a favor. We hoped to collect. The TARDIS had the necessary DNA coding, but she didn't have the power to manifest a permanent body. We needed a virtually unlimited power source in order to extract Rose from the interface systems that were maintaining her lifeforce. And we knew the Isolus was able to create living beings, whole imaginary worlds, from ionic energy.”
“Imaginary worlds like this one?” Sarah Jane exclaimed.
“What do you mean, 'extricate'?” the second Doctor yelped. “What have you been doing to my TARDIS?”
“You planned to ask the Isolus to make you a new body,” Sarah Jane said, working things out.
“Out of ionic energy,” Rose confirmed, nodding. “Yeah.”
“What a clever idea.”
“Well,” the fourth and tenth Doctors chorused as one, “I've always been clever.” Four beamed over the synchronization. Ten winked and clicked his tongue.
“A new body?” Jamie asked, blushing again as he remembered the scene he'd witnessed on arrival. “Were you a ghostie, then, lass?”
“The ghost in the machine,” the tenth Doctor said. Mouth slightly ajar, he leveled a speaking glance at both of his other selves. “The ghost,” he stressed. “All along. Since the beginning.”
“Oh, I see,” the second Doctor said. His face fell. “Then, my TARDIS is...?”
“Gone,” Ten confirmed.
“It's a long story,” Rose murmured with an apologetic cut of her eyes to indicate this was no time for long stories.
“Two thousand years of story,” her Doctor said with sigh. He smiled at Rose and whispered. “Your head should clear in a few minutes.” Then, he stood and started for the door. “I'm afraid we do need to investigate further.”
“So, here we are, figments of your imaginations,” Sarah Jane's Doctor said, falling into step with his older and younger selves. “I don't feel imaginary. But then do the shadows on the cave wall know that they are shadows?”
With a bark of mirthless laughter, Ten spun around to face the other two Doctors. “Philosophical riddles?” he sneered. “Quite right. How typical. Let's all sit around and contemplate our navels and creation and the little balls of lint in the dryer trap. I'm sure pondering philosophical questions will keep us all busy on those cold winter evenings ahead. But, at this precise moment, just now...has it occurred to either of you that everything I had, everything I was, disintegrated a few moments ago? I've lost my ship and my bearings. And I haven't touched my wife in a thousand years.”
“Looked at from another angle, we've all just lost everything,” said a new voice from the doorway. “Death comes to all, but great achievements build a monument which shall endure till the sun grows cold. Or your planet evaporates, whichever comes first. And some of us never got to properly touch our wife.”
Rose glanced toward the door and shivered as a pair of sparkling blue eyes met her wondering gaze. The mobile mouth below the eyes wore a manic grin.
“I do love philosophy,” the ninth Doctor said in his broadest Northern drawl. He pinched thumb and fingers together on each hand together and gleefully exclaimed, “All those little theories bouncing around, making things happen!”
“Last night I dreamed I was a frog,” Jack Harkness bombastically declared, as he strode through the door. “Or more accurately a big head in a glass tank full of smoke. Point is, I had very serious complexion issues. And when I woke up I didn't know if I was a man who dreamed he was a giant face in a tank or a giant face in a tank who was now dreaming--” He broke off with a grunt; staggered by Rose's unchecked forward momentum.
She had launched herself from the bed with a heartfelt cry of delight the second she'd heard Jack's voice. Unstable on her pins, she'd staggered across the room in a drunken series of lurches, intent on throwing herself into someone's arms. Nine sprang forward to catch her around the waist before she and Jack could collapse to the floor.
He gave her an enthusiastic whirl. Rose seemed perfectly content to hug him first and Jack second. Arms about his neck, she lavished him with heated kisses, only letting go to transfer her attentions to the recovered Jack. The knots of her toga slipped loose as she clambered from Time Lord to Time Agent. The sheet started to slide down her back, but Ten reached her before she was completely exposed. Prying her away from both newcomers, Ten wrapped her up in the sheet again as he hugged her close to his chest and glared at his apparent rivals.
“None of that,” he warned, shifting his grip to contain the squirming Rose.
“It's you,” she happily declared, wriggling like an affectionate puppy as she tried in vain to reach Jack again. He obliged her by coming closer. “And you.” The ninth Doctor also closed the gap between them. “And you are both so fit and alive and....” She gave a heartfelt little growl as her hand squeezed Jack's bicep. She stroked her other hand under the ninth Doctor's leather jacket as he bent to kiss her.
“Oi,” the tenth Doctor said, lifting Rose's feet from the floor and swinging her away from the ninth Doctor's lips. “My wife. Mine.”
“Our wife,” Nine corrected, as if addressing a particularly dense child. “Ours.” He leaned into Rose and murmured, “Is he always so possessive?”
“Oh, yes! It was such fun. And this? This is so...it's just....”
“Fantastic?” Nine suggested, smirking.
The lingering aphrodisiac in Rose's system, combined with the proximity of her favorite fantasy men, sent her thoughts in a naughty new direction. The mystery of what caused them all to be here was momentarily forgotten. There was definitely one thing she wanted more than answers. If she could have all three of them at the same time, she wouldn't care what was going on in this strange new world. Rose felt her nipples contract and tilted her head back so it lolled against her Doctor's shoulder, her other Doctor. Damn, it was getting confusing in here. If any more Doctors showed up, Twenty-two or Eleven or...she wouldn't know what to call them.
“We're going to have to start using numbers,” her Doctor said, easily reading her mind in such close quarters. “Just like in the dreams.”
“Do you think they are all here? Every Doctor? Everyone we've ever known?” Her face lit up with a happy realization. “Mickey? My mum and dad?”
“Doesn't sound much like Heaven to me,” Sarah Jane said. “Or maybe I just know a lot of disagreeable people.”
Ten went completely still, color draining from his face. His distress acted like a splash of cold water down Rose's back and she lost a good measure of her own sparkle. They both knew some very disagreeable people, as well. The Doctor, for example, could be a very disagreeable person.
Rose's libido switched off, as if someone had thrown a switch on it. Extracting herself from the tangle of Ten's embrace, she took a step back, retied and smoothed her bed sheet toga. This was no time to be thinking about orgies. Ten continued to look queasy. His mirrored reflection caught his eye and, after a long pause to study the man he now was, he turned again to Rose, his expression pensive. His tongue worried at the inside cheek of his open mouth. It took Rose less than a heartbeat to understand the haunted expression on his face. If every Doctor had been reincarnated, there could be serious trouble brewing.
“Thirteen,” she said, hollowly.
Her Doctor swallowed hard, tugging at his collar like it felt too tight. “And Jeffrey,” he said.
“What about...Them?” Two asked, his tone leaving no doubt he was talking about the Time Lords. “They forced me to regenerate. They found me guilty of meddling. Me!”
“They're gone,” Nine said, exchanging a glance with his next incarnation, “Like the Cruciform, like the Citadel and the Matrix.”
“Gone? What do you mean gone?” the Second Doctor huffed, scowling at Nine. “They don't go anywhere. If only they would go, the universe would be a better place, I think.”
There was an uncomfortable silence. Rose opened her mouth to speak, but it was Sarah Jane who said sharply, “They all died. Gallifrey was destroyed.”
“Destroyed?” Two whispered, not comprehending. “But...but...?”
Four believed her. He gave a mewling little cry, stumbled to the bed and sat down. His breathing labored, he gazed into the middle distance, trying to envision such complete devastation.
“How?” he finally asked.
“There was a war,” Rose answered, knowing that even now her two Doctors couldn't speak of it easily.
Four nodded. “The Sontarans?”
“The Daleks. We lost.”
“B--but they can't be gone,” Two argued. “Not all of them. They don't go, do they? They just sit there, moldering at the end of time. Even the ones you think you've gotten rid of keep coming back. Look at that meddling monk. Or Rassilon or that other fellow with his anti-matter experiments.”
“Omega,” the fourth Doctor supplied, though he was still gazing at some internal horror.
“The Master,” Sarah Jane added. She raised a brow at Rose. “They are rather resilient.”
Rose lightly touched her Doctor's arm. “Do you think...? Could there be other Time Lords here?”
“I don't know,” her Doctor said, sounding angry. “We don't know where we are or what's going on. It seems likely the Isolus is involved. Perhaps it read our subconscious minds. The way it did with Chloe Webber. But...would that be enough to restore my people? I just don't know.”
“Does anyone else need a jelly baby?” Four asked, pulling a worn paper bag from a pocket.
“Jelly babies,” Jack exclaimed. “I can't remember when I last had a jelly baby. Oh, wait, yes I can. It was in Guam. Henderson bet me I couldn't charm the vestigial flange off this Lorgorian waitress--”
“No,” Ten interrupted.
“No?” Sarah Jane said, giving him a quizzical squint. “What do you mean--”
“No,” he repeated. “No jelly babies. No rambling war stories. No more interruptions. I've changed my mind. I don't care anymore. Rose and I are going to spend the next twenty-four hours in this room in that bed...alone. The lot of you are going to push off. Go investigate. Meddle in someone else's business. Find out if you have homes, friends or relatives lurking. Find out everything you can. Talk to the neighbors.”
“I think we are your neighbors,” Jack said. He held a hand out to Jamie and announced, “Jack Harkness, pleased to meet you.”
“Twenty-four hours?” Jamie stage whispered to his Doctor even as he pumped Jack's offered hand. “What do you think he's planning that would take so long?”
“I'll explain it to you later,” Two said.
“Or I can demonstrate,” Jack said, winking at Nine.
“I doubt we can manage for twenty-four hours without more information, but I suppose we can spare you thirty minutes,” Four said to Ten, standing up as he spoke. “It will take that long to fix a proper tea.”
“Do you think we have food?” Rose asked, brightening again. “I could go for some strawberry ice cream.”
Her Doctor glared at her for a speechless moment or two before rolling his eyes heavenward and declaring, “Oh, I give up.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
After a bit of haggling, the other Doctors agreed to give Ten and Rose fifteen minutes to dress. Ten tried to gain a little more time but the others were adamant. Rose sided with the majority. However, as soon as the door closed behind Jamie, she grabbed Ten by both sides of his pajama top and dragged him into another kiss. He braced the flat of his palms on the door, one to each side of her head and gave himself over to the sweet sensation of her tongue lapping under and around his. It took every ounce of his willpower not to send a hundred fizzy darts into her mouth.
As they broke apart gasping, Nine pounded on the door. “Twelve minutes,” he said.
“Woo,” Rose breathed. Then, she raised her voice and called out, “All right. We're coming.”
“I think that's what worries him,” Ten quipped, nudging her to make her giggle. “Still, best get dressed, I suppose. I doubt this is our last dying moment.”
“It has gone on a bit.” She went to the wardrobe and picked out a pair of loose slacks and a white t-shirt. She couldn't imagine wearing some of the other clothes. “This blouse,” she said, pulling out a hanger and displaying a garment. “I don't like it. Why would I dream up clothes I didn't like and would never wear?”
“That's from the wardrobe,” he said.
“Yes, I know. I just took it out of there.”
Ten shook his head. “No, I don't mean that wardrobe. The one in the TARDIS.” He examined the some of the other clothing. “All of this is from the TARDIS. These are my suits, shirts and ties. But only some of this is yours. That blouse you are holding belonged to a woman named Liz Shaw.”
“That scientist friend of yours?” Rose said, scowling. “I barely remember her.”
“She didn't spend a lot of time on board.”
“And how did her blouse get in the wardrobe?” Rose asked, lifting a brow.
He turned red and seemed to be floundering. “Oh, well...I imagine...she had some sort of accident in the lab,” he said. Avoiding Rose's eye, he took an intent interest in searching for his shoes. “She probably had to change...or something? Have you seen my trainers?”
“I'm not jealous,” Rose told him. Catching his arm, she pointed toward a chair in the corner of the room. His trainers were neatly arranged under it.
“I didn't say you were,” he said, as he sat down in the chair. “There is, after all, absolutely no need.” He pulled on a shoe and began lacing himself into it. “But it has occurred to me that if every one of my former selves shows up here, emotions will be running very high.”
“We'll keep order somehow,” Rose said, crossing the room to his side. She very gently ruffled his hair. “I wish we could just stay here together, just you and I.” As he lifted his face to look up at her, her fingertips caressed his cheek and her thumb traced the bow of his lower lip.
Eyes closed he leaned into her touch. “We could block the door with the dresser,” he said. “Put the wardrobe in front of the window and....”
A strident voice sounded from the hallway. “I don't care what you promised. Let go of me. I know she's in there. I can feel her. Rose? Sweetheart, can you hear me?”
A frisson of icy fire washed over Rose's skin. Tears blurred her vision and a rushing noise deafened her as she bolted for the door. She was hiccuping through sobs. Her numb fingers scrambled for purchase on the knob. The stubborn thing refused to turn at first and she fought it, crying out, “Mum? I'm here. Here!”
“Oh, out of my way you big oaf,” Jackie Tyler said. There was the carrying sound of a resounding smack.
Ten snickered as Nine yelped, “Ow!”
Jackie was at the door, pounding on it. “Mickey? Pete? She's in here. That's her calling me.”
Ten helped Rose with the knob. They sorted out the proper direction to turn it and yanked it toward them. The door flew open and Rose found herself face to face with her entire family. They stared at one another for a few stunned seconds, and then everyone started talking at once.
“Oh, my god, it is her.”
“You disappeared,” Mickey blurted.
“I remember forgetting you,” Pete said. “You were sitting in a chair.”
“I was at death's door, I swear it and then suddenly I heard singing and I remembered having a daughter. How could I forget that? How could I forget you?”
“Mum? Dad? Mickey?”
“And this is Pete Junior,” Jackie said, dragging a red-haired man of about twenty forward into the family hug. “Doesn't he look just like your dad?” He did. He looked almost exactly like Pete Tyler, because Pete didn't look much over twenty himself.
“What is going on?” Nine asked Ten.
“I think we need to find out.” They could hear crowd noise from the living room. “How many more have arrived?”
“Dozens. The noise levels keeps rising. I'm fairly certain I heard the Brigadier a moment ago.”
“Rose? Jackie?” Ten said, prying the women apart. He gave them both an apologetic but resolute look. “I really do hate to break this up but we need to focus on what's happened before we give in to the temptation to celebrate.”
“Yes, all right,” Rose sighed. She kept an arm around her mother's waist and pillowed her head on Jackie's well-padded shoulder, but she guided the family back down the hall in the wake of the Doctors. “Mum, could you make us all some tea and sandwiches.”
“I'm not leaving you,” Jackie declared. There was panic in her eyes. “You could disappear again. You don't know what that was like, remembering that I'd forgotten.” She sniffled back more tears. “My own daughter?”
Rose gave her a reassuring squeeze. “There, there,” she soothed. “It's going to be all right. But you have to let us figure this out. Dad? Mickey? Can you find Jack? He and Sarah Jane can help you set up some crowd control. Try to clear everyone out of the house.”
When they reached the living room they all stopped to stare at the people gathered inside the room and outside the house on the front lawn.
“How can there be so many?” Rose asked, looking out the front windows. “I don't even recognize half of them.”
“Not everyone we know,” Ten said, correcting their earlier hypothesis. “It's everyone we've ever known.”
"And we're all the same age," Jackie remarked. "Or close to it."
"We are," Rose agreed, looking around. "That has to mean something."
“But how did we all get here?” Jackie asked. “How did I know to leave my own house and come here for answers?”
Ten shook his head, at a loss. He raised his voice to address the crowd. “Can I have your attention,” he said. “We'll need to talk to each of you, eventually. But first, we need...well...me. Are there any other Doctors in the house?”
“Here,” Five said, stepping forward. “And it's good to see you, again, my dear fellow. Solve your shield problem?”
“Yes, thank you,” Ten said, dryly. “Well, almost. Probably not the time to go into it. Anyone else?”
“Here's one,” Donna Noble said, dragging a hapless Twenty-two along by his elbow. “I found him lurking near the back gate. And isn't he an improvement on the skinny weasel look?”
“Donna!” Ten crowed. He bound away from Rose to sweep his ginger-haired and long-departed companion into a bear hug.
“Put me down. Down!” Donna ordered, shoving at his shoulders. But she was laughing as she struggled to escape. “You'd think you never saw a ghost before and we both know you see them all the time.”
In all there were eighteen Doctors present. Sorting them out wasn't the easiest of tasks. They seemed to have all manifested within a four-block radius of what Rose thought of as her house. Eleven and Fourteen arrived within seconds of each other and there was a bit of a weasel-on-geezer-on-flutterboy dust up when they both challenged Ten's right to sit by Rose. Ten won on reach and stamina, but Rose wasn't at all sure the question of marital claims had been permanently laid to rest. There was an air of temporary truce about her Doctors.
After everyone had been greeted and embraced, Donna was dispatched to make tea. The room having been mostly cleared of bystanders, the Doctors gathered in a circle, perching on the arms of furniture or slouching against the walls.
Rose took stock. “We're missing Twenty-three and Twenty-four, Sixteen, Thirteen, Six and the original.”
“Twenty-three and Twenty-four make sense, I suppose,” Ten said. “They didn't have time to gel, as it were, in their respective bodies. They were both still in the regenerative cycle when they died. That could be why I've got their memories.”
“A sort of default,” Rose said, nodding. “Does that mean we are also missing another you? Another number Ten?”
“One of him is surely more than enough,” a new voice said.
Everyone turned to look toward the kitchen door. “What are you dressed up as?” Twenty-two asked, “Grandma's patchwork quilt?”
“You are in no position to cast stones, Long John Silver,” the new arrival intoned, sweeping his critic with a quelling glare. “Were they out of Sinbad costumes at the shop?”
“Six,” Rose greeted the outlandishly dressed Doctor. “How...lovely to see you.”
“You may call me Bernard,” the sixth Doctor declared pompously, as he carried her hand to his lips. “Doctor Lipses Bernard, I think. Might as well have a name. I refuse to be numbered like a billiard ball. And this,” he said, with a gracious dip of his head at his companion, “is Melanie Bush.”
“Well that settles it,” Ten muttered near Rose's ear, “It's not just the people we like who've come back.”
“I don't dislike him,” Rose said from the corner of her mouth, as she carefully extracted her hand from the sixth Doctor's grip. “I haven't even met him properly.”
“No, of course not, you--” Ten broke off, starting like a cat hearing a car backfire.
“Is he having some sort of seizure?” the third Doctor asked.
“Hush. Wait, wait, wait,” Ten declared, holding up a finger and cocking his head as if listening for an answer on the wind. After a moment of breathless anticipation, he pointed at Rose. “You haven't met any of them, One to Seven,” he said. “You and she were together when you met these versions of me. The TARDIS, I mean. You met Eight on your own but only grew to know him in the TARDIS years, yes?”
“I met the first you, One,” Rose reminded him, “in the library.”
“When you were about twenty," Ten mused, and then inhaled sharply. "Of course,” he hissed, stabbing his finger forward. He did a little celebratory spin. “The DNA sample.”
“What is he babbling about?” the fifth Doctor muttered.
Six, a.k.a. Doctor Bernard, flicked an invisible speck of dust from his outrageous waistcoat and spoke with marked disinterest, saying, “DNA samples, apparently.”
“Yes...no...yes,” Ten waffled, spitting a bit as he over-enunciated. “That's it.” He patted at the air with both hands as if shushing everyone. Then, he hunkered down and leaned closer to the circle of listeners. He looked about to impart some vital state secret, but all he said was, “Hair.” Then, he straightened again.
“Hair?” Mel repeated, only to be shushed by her Doctor.
“The musical?” Eight guessed.
“Oh, he does this all the time,” Jackie confided. “Talks all day and says absolutely nothing. My Rose can always translate whatever he's on about into English.”
Everyone looked at Rose. She shrugged. “What do you mean 'hair'?” She asked Ten.
“Hair,” he repeated.
“Yes, you've said that,” Donna sighed, setting down a tea tray overloaded with cups. "Would you like to give us a verb?"
“I fed Rose's hair into the TARDIS data bank. The TARDIS needed a proper blueprint so it could duplicate Rose's body exactly whenever we found an ion storm.” He glanced at the gathered Doctors. “And what is a TARDIS programmed to do? By order of High Council Edict 66-137Theta, subparagraph 885-B?”
“Record our genetic patterns after each regeneration,” Four answered.
“So that our biodata can be downloaded into the Matrix,” Eight added.
“And compile that biodata with our daily brain scans,” Three went on.
“In order to pass on our collected wisdom to future generations of Time Lords via our Matrix facsimilies,” Five finished.
Ten clapped a hand to his head. Fingers curling, he tugged up his hair as he enthusiastically shouted, “Exactly!”
“Well, I'm still lost,” Jackie told Donna. She took a meditative sip of her tea, before saying, “I thought all of his people were dead and buried. Who cares about their subparagraphs at this late date?”
“I believe he's suggesting that the TARDIS started recording everyone's biodata,” Eight explained. “After the Matrix was destroyed in the war. Or after he fed it this strand of Rose's hair.”
"The TARDIS recreated the Matrix,” Nine said, sounding awed. “Daily brain scans for everybody? But that would take enormous power reserves. She couldn't possibly....” He suddenly looked straight at Rose.
“Is that where we are,” Six said, “in the Matrix? Because there is this blighter calling himself the Valeyard and--”
“That's Thirteen,” Ten said. “It's a fair bet his being completely loony corrupted his biodata or scrambled his brain scans. Which means we may not have to deal with him, at least. And do try to keep up.”
“Hang on a minute,” Rose said. “We couldn't have collected hair samples from everyone we met.”
“You wouldn't have to,” Seven said. “All you would have to do is expand the parameters of the original programming. It used your DNA as a sort of template."
"Is that why everyone is about twenty?" Rose asked. "Because...?"
"They are exactly twenty, I'd say, since you were twenty when you lost that hair," Fourteen said.
"The TARDIS has access to the Vortex. Time isn't linear. It's a sort of wibbly-wobbly--” Ten and Five both cleared their throats. Ten slashed his hand across his neck, while shaking his head, and Eight finished with a quick cough, saying, “It could, in theory, continue a pattern through time and space, exponentially.”
“Everyone we know,” Ten said.
“And everyone they know,” Three added. “And so on and so forth.”
“Where would it stop?” Rose asked, glancing toward the window again. The crowd outside continued to grow. People were milling about restlessly, even though Sarah Jane, Pete, Jack and Mickey were doing their best to keep order. Nine and Ten exchanged speaking glances.
“Oh, come on,” Rose insisted, “it would have to stop somewhere!”
“Oh, yes, absolutely,” Ten agreed. Cutting his gaze away from Nine, he focused on her. “Where do you think it would stop, Rose?”
“Why are you asking her?” Jackie said, bristling as she stepped between them. “You're the genius. Or so you keep saying.”
“This has gone far enough,” Ten said. He pointed toward the front lawn. “Outside that window is a whole city. And all of those people came here for answers. To a house they knew. A house that belonged to someone who could explain what happened. Drawn to you, Rose, like Jack was drawn to you when he came back from the dead. He went to the Powell Estates, over and over again. Like you, Donna, were drawn into the TARDIS.”
Nine spoke in a reverent hush. “I took it out of her,” he said. “Every bit of it.”
“Not every bit,” Ten said, his eyes fixed on Rose's face.
“You left the root behind,” Nineteen said, quietly. “There's a door in the back of her mind.”
“All that is. All that was. All that ever will be,” Ten intoned. “How does everybody know where to go, Rose?” he asked. “What is it you're not telling us?”
“Nothing,” Rose insisted, tearful frustration making her voice wobble. “I woke up just like you, just like everyone else.”
“All right. That's enough. All of you back off,” Jackie snapped. “I mean it. I won't have you badgering her.”
“Mum, please,” Rose said, seizing her mother's hand. “They're just trying to help.” She stared into her Doctor's eyes. “I swear, I don't know what's going on. I'm as confused as the rest of you. I was dying and I woke up in this house in bed with you. Before that I was...falling. The TARDIS was breaking apart. Something hit us. I wanted to see it. I thought, maybe, if it was the Isolus, it could help up. I asked to be patched through to the outside monitors.”
The breath caught in her throat. She'd asked to be patched through to the Isolus. She'd gone to the door in her mind. It had shrunk to a pinprick but it was still there. All that power. All of time and space at her command. Everything else so tiny. The Isolus understood about life.
Without another word, Rose broke from the circle of Doctors. She strode purposefully to the door and yanked it open. The crowd gasped and fell silent. As she stepped out of the house, they parted. They all seemed to be orienting to her, even the ones she had never met. She scanned the crowd for familiar faces and found a lady who came to her mother for dye jobs and a merchant from the asteroid bazaar. Her primary school teacher, Mr. Sprinkle stood to her left by some bougainvillea bushes. The Doctor loved bougainvillea blossoms. A woman clutched Mr. Sprinkle's hand. She might be his wife. Rose didn't know as she had never met his wife. But she recognized Martha Jones and her husband and Jo Grant and her Dr. Green and the Brigadier helping Jack keep order.
She remembered the TARDIS Heart slipping away from her. She remembered calling out to it, begging it to help her save the Doctor. The Heart had responded but not through the usual communications systems of the dying ship. It had spoken to Rose through the direct link in her mind. It told her they were not subject to the rules of reality. The Heart could not die. So Rose could not die.
You are not flesh. You are my interface.
A voice, those same words, seemed to throb from the ground beneath Rose's feet. Golden light flooded her being. It shone from her eyes. People gasped and shrank away from her. She gripped the door frame to keep from falling as her knees turned to jelly. She swallowed the cold bile that flooded her mouth. As the Doctors pressed out of the door behind her, she continued her recollection.
“I asked to be patched through to the Isolus. But the mechanical interface was fragmenting. I tried to explain to the Heart of the TARDIS about you dying. About needing to be whole again.”
You are whole.
“This is my fault,” Rose said, one hand at her throat. She pushed her way into the crowd and stumbled across the lawn until she fell to her knees in the grass. Her Doctor was beside her in a moment. He caught her in his arms, holding her close, murmuring sweet nothings into her ear as he rocked her.
“It's not your fault,” he said. “I should never have asked you to remember.”
“No, no,” she said, shifting in the circle of his arms to capture and hold his gaze. When he stopped protesting, she glanced beyond him to her mother and the other Doctors. “It was me. It is me." Her attention shifted down. "Here,” she said, digging her fingers into the loam by Ten's right knee. “Look.”
He watched her tug free huge tufts of sod. Dirt blackened her nails. She kept mumbling to herself. Telling him it was with them, under the ground. Something was under them. Several inches down she uncovered what she was looking for, a twisted white root of some kind. She shook loose soil from the pulsating thing as she drew it out into the air. He recognized it as soon as she displayed it on her open palm.
“It's a seedling,” Two exclaimed, surging forward to peer at the root. “An infant TARDIS.”
“The TARDIS went to seed?” Nine blinked at the news. There was a general murmur of wonderment and confusion from the assembled onlookers.
“The Heart couldn't patch me through,” Rose said, wiping a tear from her eye with a grimy knuckle. “She tried but the interface, the part of the TARDIS that the Time Lords cultivated, was going to seed, breaking into pieces at the end of its lifespan.”
“With no ground below, in the vacuum of space,” Ten said. “The seedlings would die.”
“Yes,” Rose said. “Like you were dying. Like everyone we knew had died. The Heart was slipping away, taking me with her, leaving death behind.”
“Because you are not flesh,” Ten said. He drew a deep breath and released it. “You asked her to help?”
Rose nodded. “I told her to ask the Isolus our question.”
“What question would that be,” a man's voice asked politely.
Rose glanced toward the speaker. There was a very dapper man at her gate. He had long brown hair and twinkling blue eyes and he carried a walking stick he scarcely seemed to need. He stood very straight. And even though he was rail thin, he looked to be agile and strong. Rose would have placed him in his late thirties. But she barely gave him a second thought. It was the young woman at his side who arrested her complete attention.
“Susan?” she croaked. She clutched at her Doctor's lapels. “Tell me you see her.”
There was a faint white line around Ten's mouth. “I see her,” he managed to say in a hoarse whisper, “and him.”
Tears were streaming down his cheeks. He tried to stand up but didn't have the strength and sank back to his knees again. Jackie and Donna both pushed their way to him. Jackie took his elbow. Donna cupped a hand under his arm. A chorus of gasps and exclamations escaped the other Doctors as they all careened toward the gate. Their expressions ran the gamut from pleased to completely overwhelmed.
“Who is that?” Donna asked.
“Never saw them before in my life,” Jackie answered.
“That's our daughter, mum,” Rose said. “Your granddaughter, Susan. You've seen pictures.”
Ten gave a burbling laugh and shook his head. “No...it's all of them,” he said, working his way past the choking lump in his throat. He bobbed his chin at the dapper young man beside Susan, the one who had spoken to Rose. “That's me. A very, very young me. And beyond me, that's...Ori-Orisriana, my sister. That's....my brother and his wife and their son and....” Once again, he lost his ability to speak.
An equally overset Nine was being held up by Jack and the Brigadier but he turned to say, “And my two daughters. Susan's husband, David. That's my entire family, Rose, at our gate.”
“Time Lords?” Rose said. It seemed like the wrong answer to her.
She struggled to rise, but the boneless Ten was an anchor around her shoulders. He shook his head. “People. Just my people. I'm the only Time Lord in the family, other than my parents. And I don't see them.”
“Maybe they would fracture,” Fourteen said, “Like us. Thirteen individuals.”
"Maybe they are still out there somewhere," Donna said. "This can't be everyone on the planet."
“Or maybe their biodata was destroyed,” Two said, grimly, “with all the rest of it.”
Rose didn't know. The knowing was slipping away from her, the way the crowd would slip away once they'd been told how this had all happened. Word must spread from here, from her. She still understood what the people were waiting for, at least. The Wolf would fade, disappear behind the door in her mind once she told them about it. It was going to give them all room to live full and fulfilling lives.
She didn't have the strength to lift her Doctor to his feet and didn't have the heart to stand without him. So, they stayed on the ground until Donna and Jackie helped them up. Other willing hands reached out to assist the other Doctors, several of whom looked ready to collapse. Everyone talked but in hushed tones. Everyone waited to be released. Rose felt too dazed to move, but the crowd shifted propelling her and Ten to the gate.
Both humans and Gallifreyans huddled in their respective family groups on either side of the picket fencing, equally shy. Everyone simply stared at one another for a long time. A cool breeze blew leaves around their feet. As feeling returned to her numb body, Rose noticed the wind drying her tears. She felt an ache in her clenched fingers. Glancing down, she realized she was still clutching the seedling to her breast. She extended her hand again, opening it to show the Doctor's family what she held. They all looked at the throbbing new life in her hands.
“I am the Bad Wolf,” Rose said. “The Organic Interface for a Type 40C TARDIS. I create myself. Over and over again, I am renewed.”
There was a collective sigh from all of those gathered. This was what they had come to hear. Knowing why they existed would set them all free, Rose was sure of it.
“The Heart of the TARDIS is so vast. And you...us...everything in our universe is so tiny. She never understood it. Never understood about life or death, not really. The Heart exists outside reality, beyond Time and Relative Dimensions in Space, even beyond the void. She worked with you, with the Time Lords, saving your memories and your biodata via the physical interface, helping you travel through the Vortex, but she didn't understand anything about your universe. Only that Time Lords renew. You regenerate. Jack renews. This,” she lifted the seed a bit higher, “is how her physical interface renews. Every TARDIS has the same Heart."
Her Doctor hugged her closer. He pressed his cheek to hers. Their tears mingled and, once again, the ironic urge to get away, to be alone together took them both. Rose interlaced her fingers with his. He longed to take her by that hand and run. But aware of the people gathered around them, silently waiting for an explanation, he managed to pull himself together. They knew they would have plenty of time to enjoy each other now. There were long, joyful years ahead of them. The people had come to be told. He and Rose must tell them.
“All that power,” Ten said, shifting a bit away from Rose, “concentrated in one place, on one thought. An Isolus merged with the Time Vortex, all of time and space at your commmand and an endless source of ionic energy.”
His original self leaned forward, blue eyes boring into brown. “You could create worlds,” One said, awed by the magnitude of it. He didn't need to know what an Isolus was to grasp the concept of it. “Create life out of nothing.”
“Or recreate it,” Jack said suddenly. His gaze met Rose's and she saw the knowledge in his eyes. “What are we but atoms rearranged, a spark of life and personality? If you know us well, then...you can bring us back.”
“We are the body of the Bad Wolf,” Ten answered, “all of us.” He gave Rose another squeeze and a lopsided grin. “Of course, you aren't flesh. You're Rose. Mind and soul. Affection and understanding. You're everything here. The people you love. The people they love. Everyone you ever knew. Everyone they ever knew. This city. Those mountains. This planet. This is what the TARDIS Heart knows about you, Rose. She told the Isolus everything she knew about you and asked it to make you whole again.”
Rose nodded in confirmation. “And just like with Jack,” she said, smiling over at the man she'd once gifted with eternal life, “they didn't quite know where to stop.”
TEN THOUSAND YEARS LATER
They lay side by side in the shelter of a mountaintop glen, Rose and her Doctor. The scent of apple grass teased their noses. Behind them, the silver leaves of a jaumelia grove caught the last rays of the setting sun and shimmered with false fire. Rose pointed to a rainbow arc rocketing across the sky. "There they go. That's everyone away."
"Alone at last," the Doctor said. "Shall we celebrate?"
“We should.”
"I've written you a poem,” he told her.
“Another one,” Rose sighed, but there was indulgent affection in the sidelong glance she gave him.
Needing no further encouragement, he immediately launched into verse.
Again and again, however we know the landscape of love
and the little churchyard there, with its sorrowing names,
and the frighteningly silent abyss into which the others
fall: again and again the two of us walk out together
under the ancient trees, lie down again and again
among the flowers, face to face with the sky.
“Isn't that Rainer Maria Rilke?"
“Is it?” His lower lip protruded as he considered her claim. Finally, he shrugged and, squirming around to face her, said, “That's the trouble with living forever; every thing has been written already.”
"Are we doomed to repeat ourselves, then?" Rose asked, carrying his hand to her cheek. She nuzzled into his touch, brushed her lips along his fingers, and then lightly kissed his palm. "Or shall we just stay here napping?”
“Asleep under the stars," the Doctor mused, "just like Rassilon, dreaming in his tower forever and ever. Eternity is a curse, not a blessing. Nothing left to do but go to seed.”
“I think we've already done that, as well,” Rose giggled, opening her body and mind to him.
As he entered her, she cradled his face between her hands. They made love until they were both sweaty and breathless. It still felt good to be flesh, but she knew they could be so much more. All it would take was a little daring. And they were nothing if not a little daring. She let the dreaming seed carry them together into a labyrinth of multicolored light. Rose held her Doctor's hand, interlacing their fingers, and led him through her bright corridors to the one place he'd never been brave enough to assail. They stood hand in hand, facing the forbidden golden door, her inner gateway to the Vortex.
“Oh, this is brilliant,” he exclaimed, happy to be reminded of this one unexplored corner of creation.
“Would you like to see?” Rose asked, her not-quite-human voice echoing through the valley. “All that is and was and ever will be?”
She felt the fearful hesitation in him as their flesh dissolved and their dream selves faded. They lost a sense of their physical separation and became nothing but intertwining thought.
I have seen. I ran away, he confessed.
The first time? Yes. I know. But the second time you took it into your body to save me. This time let it take you into it.
Lose myself? Lose the Doctor? What else is there?
She gave him a playful, mental nudge.
Well...if you think there's going to be trouble...we can always just go back.
He laughed with her, remembering their shared joke, and gleefully responded, Let's find out.
They pushed the door open together and merged, becoming a single strand of golden light as they stepped through into the Heart of the TARDIS. The Vortex boiled around them and three beings fused into one. The riptide of eternity swept them away from reality and time. Once they'd adjusted their perspective, they found the fine line which represented the retreating shore of their former universe. A thousand tributaries, streaming life-lights, stretched from their united consciousness back to that shallow homeland. Every minute stream of awareness anchored them to a ship. And on every ship their children's children chattered away about new worlds and boundless horizons yet to be explored.
THE END
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-25 07:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-26 04:29 am (UTC):hugs:
Rae
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-25 08:26 pm (UTC)Thanks again for this brilliant story!
You are welcome
Date: 2008-05-26 04:35 am (UTC)Much love.
Rae
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-25 08:37 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-26 04:36 am (UTC)Thank you for calling it "beautiful." I'm very pleased to have given you something to read and remember.
Rae
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-25 08:39 pm (UTC)((And I was right! It was one of the older Doctors at the window!))
I must re-read this again, but I'm running out of time to do things in. It'll hit the top of my list of priorities, eventually. XD
This is the Number One Doctor Who fic, ever!
♥♥ ♥♥ ♥♥ ♥♥ ♥♥ ♥♥ ♥♥ ♥♥ ♥♥ ♥♥ ♥♥ ♥♥ ♥♥
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-25 11:58 pm (UTC)Question: And my two daughters. Susan's father.
I though HE was Susan's father. Is he talking about her adopted father? But if she had an adoptive father, why did she run away with the Doctor in the TARDIS? ((declaring them related and everything =D ))
Oh, and understand which doctor was which got a bit confusing when there were three in the bedroom. I remember reading "her doctor" as Rose's (the only one truly deserving a possessive pronoun), but re-reading and seeing that the "her" was probably Sarah-Jane and you were talking about Four. ((It didn't sound like Ten))
Also, Why did "everyone" leave?
What happened to the other Doctors? Wouldn't many of them want to stay with Rose, their wife? Some of them probably never got to touch her in that form. Then again, it's been TEN THOUSAND YEARS later! Are they immortal now? Did the humans and gallifreyans live a normal life-span and later die? If they did, why doesn't The Doctor? Was that their descendants (the humans and gallifreyans on the...planet?) going off into the aether?
Was that Ten with Rose, at the end? Or did they all eventually die, with the oldest Doctor regenerating again?
I love that they're together in the TARDIS's heart, at the end, watching their descendants' lives. Brilliant!
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-25 08:48 pm (UTC)Wonderful story, wonderful chapter, and just... wonderful.
Just one thing small thing:
Rose didn't knowing was slipping away from her.
I'm not quite sure what that sentence is supposed to say.
But really, that is so minor in this chapter and this story as a whole.
Absolutely lovely. :)
I'm happy to hear I wasn't the only one crying
Date: 2008-05-25 11:06 pm (UTC)Thank you so much for taking the time to leave feedback. I really appreciate your wonderful comments. Many hugs.
Rae
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-25 09:08 pm (UTC)::inserts deafening applause::
What a fitting end to an amazingly epic journey.
Can I have your babies?
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-26 04:32 am (UTC):takes a self-conscious bow:
You can have my babies, sure! As soon as I give birth to one, I will drop it off at your place. Address, please!
:grin:
Rae
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-25 09:20 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-26 04:38 am (UTC)Thank you for the "Bravo." I am gratified that you so enjoyed the final chapter.
Rae
GLEE!
Date: 2008-05-25 09:25 pm (UTC)I only have time for a peek now; I will post again later after I have the time to really savor and enjoy reading the whole chapter through.
Thank you!
Re: GLEE!
Date: 2008-05-26 02:28 am (UTC)Score: Rae = infinity, Me = ...1...(hmmmm)
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-25 09:29 pm (UTC)I'm glad it was a happy ending though. <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3
I'll probably have something better to say once I re-read...
But for now... *goes back to reread the ENTIRETY*
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-26 04:42 am (UTC)Look at all the ones in this chapter, after all.
I am very happy you liked the ending though and showered it will little sideways hearts.
Loads of little sideways hearts for you, too.
Rae
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-25 09:38 pm (UTC)A perfect ending for the epic that this is. It kept me captivated from chapter one until now.
Thank you. For sticking with it for two years; for not giving up for more free free time; for creating something so wonderful and sharing it with all of us.
Anne
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-26 05:01 am (UTC)But I will take credit for the long uphill battle that this epic thing was. I mean...I started out with 24 pages of somewhat different smut. And then it just kept getting bigger and bigger. Every week as the canon progressed, I would think, okay...now I will get over Rose and her Doctor! And every week, RTD would give me another gem of an episode.
Then, in Love and Monsters he all but confirmed my idea that love could endure if one of the lovers was a brick. And in Fear Her...he gave me the power source I needed to make my renewal of Rose and Ten possible. So, really...it was RTD helping me. But I'm the one with mouse shoulder from all this computer work. :grin:
Thanks for much for sharing the long slog with me.
Rae
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-25 10:00 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-25 10:03 pm (UTC)Thank you for writing this. Really.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-25 10:21 pm (UTC)Glad you found the ending wonderful. Told you it would work out okay in the end. Much love.
Rae
Wow...
Date: 2008-05-25 10:22 pm (UTC)I think I'm going to go and have a good cry. Well done. Well done indeed.
P.S. *snort* So it was another Doctor at the window, and Two even! That made my day. Well, the whole chapter made my day, but you know. ^__^ *sniffle*
I know...
Date: 2008-05-25 10:27 pm (UTC)Keeping everyone in motion and in the conversation was the hardest part of this chapter.
And I'm very glad to hear you enjoyed it. Thank you for sticking with me through the rough patches. Hugs and love to you and your husband.
Rae
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-25 11:11 pm (UTC)I honestly don't have words. This isn't a sappy ending at all! It's beautiful and perfect. And I love that the wanderlust and yen for exploration and new experiences lives on in all forms, whether it's out there in the stars or within themselves.
It's silly, but I'm kinda sad! I'm sitting here with tears in my eyes and not quite sure why. The last chapter is just so...immense...and overwhelming.
All I do know is that I am *definitely* going back and reading this beginning to end!
Congrats, Rae! This story is truly a monumental achievement and you should be *so* proud. I know I'll be re-reading it for years to come.
I may have more coherent thoughts later. ;)
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-25 11:23 pm (UTC)Thank you ever so much for sharing this with us all.
and for posting this on my birthday, because that so made my day
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-27 04:46 am (UTC)It is funny...if you go back to...oh, Part 14 or so...I do warn everyone that they will be quite upset at the ending before the ending and will need to force themselves to read through the painful parts.
And I'm so very happy I made it for your Birthday. Happy Birthday!
Rae
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-26 12:43 am (UTC)You are amazing.
This is one of the loveliest things I have ever read. The whole thing.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-26 01:25 am (UTC)I need a moment or... fifty, before I can say anything other than... wow.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-26 01:36 am (UTC)I came very late to the Disheveled party, but have enjoyed it so, so much.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-26 01:37 am (UTC)I am... completely... awestruck by this incredible, magical, BRILLIANT story.
Thank you.
*heads back to read the entire 28 chapters from the beginning*
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-26 01:51 am (UTC)The perfect ending to the perfect story. I know I usually leave long rambling comments but I am without words to explain how I feel about this ending, about this entire fic.
Love it. Love you. Well done!
Stolen My Heart
Date: 2008-05-26 01:57 am (UTC)Ok I am rambling now, and the tears that have welled up are blocking my vision some what. I could just read this story forever and spout it's love from within the vortex.
Ok, I'm done with the poetic dribble, I swear. Just know, that from now on I will read this at least once a year, and maybe even print it out so that I can have a copy just to carry around. I will read whatever you have to write from now on, and just know that I am forever here to support your creative works.
Now I sound like a creepy stalker, I am done now...
Lots of Love
Bobbi
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-26 02:08 am (UTC)But I think it's kinda 'cause every chapter's just so fantastic that I really don't know what to say after I've read one. Saying "I loved this/great chapter!" feels a little weak, and nitpicking feels useless 'cause it's all brilliant. So I'm just gonna say that you've had me hooked for a while now, and even though I'm sad to see it end you worked this brilliantly and it was a great ride while it lasted. (Still, definitely one to save to the mems for future re-reads. C= )
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-26 02:10 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-26 04:54 am (UTC)Goodness me, you really did it...
Date: 2008-05-26 03:21 am (UTC)What a triumph!
It's gorgeous and wondrous and joyous.
You are inspirational, Rae!
I think that I can bear whatever comes at the end of S4 (and even after), because in my heart of hearts I will always hold this story as my personal canon.
Thank you for all your hard work and for giving us The Ultimate HEA of HEAs.
You will always have my gratitude for shaping and sharing this glorious epic story. It's an Infinite Love Story, without beginning, without ending. More than that, it is the most magnificent Creation Myth.
The Doctor and Rose: United, they are All and Everything, and as such, they always were...they always are...they always will be...
I am in awe.
Brava! Brava! Brava!
::tosses roses and jelly babies::
XOXOXOXXOXOX
(I love them, and I love you.)
Well...once she declared it...
Date: 2008-05-26 04:29 am (UTC):scoops up an armful of roses and a handful of jelly babies:
:happily sniffs and chews:
Thank you ever so much for the virtual gifts and all of your comments and your loyal readership. You are a treasure.
Rae