New Fic: Disheveled, Part 7, Dr. Who S2
Aug. 25th, 2006 12:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rabid1stDISHEVELED
By Rabid1st
Ten/Rose
Rating: NC-17 (Mature…Adult)
Beta Babes: LJ Users…Dual Bunny, Keswindhover & Aibhinn but also Jei
Warning: Angst and a baby
Summary: Rose and the Doctor made love Time Lord Style and it was all a bit different. Now they’ve got some consequences to deal with. And a few assumptions to get over.
Disclaimer: I don’t own these characters. If I did…the show would be censored by…everyone but you smutty few. I humbly thank Russell T. Davies for creating the sweetest, most-loving, most-genuinely iconic couple in the history of the world for me to play with.
A civilized society is one which tolerates eccentricity to the point of doubtful sanity.
PART ONE
http://rabid1st.livejournal.com/81014.html#cutid1
PART TWO
http://rabid1st.livejournal.com/81708.html#cutid1
PART THREE
http://rabid1st.livejournal.com/82748.html#cutid1
PART FOUR
http://rabid1st.livejournal.com/82969.html#cutid1
PART FIVE
http://rabid1st.livejournal.com/83272.html
PART SIX
http://rabid1st.livejournal.com/84922.html#cutid1
PART SEVEN
The Doctor was versed in 178 forms of interpersonal combat. He knew Tae Kwan Do and B’Ksal Duc. He’d trained with UNIT Special Forces and studied pugilism with Gentleman Jackson. Though he had a marked aversion to weaponry of any kind, he enjoyed developing new skills. To that end, he’d studied marksmanship with Annie Oakley and learned to fence from the Grey Mouser. He couldn’t remember who had schooled him in the broadsword, only that it hadn’t been Fafhrd. That worthy gentleman had been serving a long jail sentence when their paths crossed. (Part of the deal with the Mouser had involved the Doctor arranging for Fafhrd’s release.) He had a passing proficiency with throwing stars and boomerangs. And Master Ran Et’Sunkimi, the beautiful Ninja Warlord of Belisaria, had instructed his fourth incarnation in the arcane art of militant calligraphy. Oh, yes, he could pen a snippy letter so sharply worded it would cut a reader to the bone.
But he could not fight with Rose Tyler. Not really. He didn’t know how to fight with her. He’d had some vague idea once, before the regeneration, but one kiss had burned his knowing away. Even Nine, his warrior self, had had a difficult time holding out against her. “I know how scared you are,” she’d once told him when he’d threatened to leave her. And he was scared, even now. Of losing her. Of facing the cosmos on his own. Of what he might do without her mercy to guide him.
Whenever she displeased him, he kept silently remote. But even cat-like aloofness only served for a very short time. It would not withstand one beckoning glance from her starry eyes. He loved Rose, more than should even be possible. He’d sworn an oath not to tell her, but the feeling was no less real for all his silence. The extent of his devotion left him close to tears from time to time, because it always moved hand-in-hand with the thought of one day losing her. He longed to keep her with him forever and he had the power to do so. But using that power went against everything he stood for. If he was nothing else, the Doctor was the champion of free will, never putting his subjective desires first. He never mentioned his feelings.
But she had to know.
He did, after all, violate the spirit of his oath, if not the letter of it, every day. For one thing, he could never establish a sobering distance between them. His sleep disorder was only the most obvious manifestation of his weakness. In unguarded moments he’d found himself drifting closer to her. When he tried to avoid her, he failed. She exerted a pull he could not resist. It reeled him back into her orbit whenever he was tempted to stray. He was constantly nudging her shoulder. In this context, her jealousy of Reinette or Sarah Jane or anyone else was laughable. She needn’t fear losing him. If anything, she should worry about having him underfoot for the rest of her life. He was like a tiny ship to the bright beacon of her sun.
A minute or two after she stormed out of the console room, he followed. He caught up with her as she reached her old room, but before he could do more than say her name, she slammed the door in his face. She opened it again to tell him in no uncertain terms to take her home. The door closed a second time and he stood there numbly, hearts hammering and stomach churning. He’d told her to close him out of her life by going to this room. Now she’d done it. She’d shut him out. She hadn’t precisely said she was leaving him, but the implication hung in the air between his nose and the firmly closed door. The thought of life without Rose made him physically ill.
He’d always avoided thinking about the inevitable day when she would be gone.
If this were the day…then it would be his fault.
Self-recrimination left a bitter taste in his mouth and squeezed his hearts together. As he drew in a shuddering breath, a sharp pang stabbed into him just below his navel. He rubbed his belly, frowning down at it and absently wondering if he was going to be one of those weird fathers he’d read about who go through sympathy pregnancies. Maybe it was the hummus sandwich he’d had at the party. Then, again, maybe it was something to do with true union. Maybe in the distant past all Gallifreyan fathers felt what their partners felt. It might explain why Omega begat his children on Earth women instead of his proper companion. Not for the first time, the Doctor wished he could still consult the long dead Time Lords for their wisdom. Pain hit again.
Wasn’t it too soon for cramps?
He tapped on the door and called plaintively, “Rose?”
A moment or two later he knocked again, louder.
“Go away!” she shouted.
“There’s no call to be rude,” he shouted back and then, in a voice that probably didn’t carry to her, added, “How’s your stomach?”
She didn’t answer. He leaned against the door and easily picked up the waves of raw emotion surging along the tributaries of their psychic link. It wasn’t like Rose to be so unreasonable. He’d seriously miscalculated her attitude toward family. Or toward him, he mentally amended. He’d been so sure she’d be happy. Eyes closed, cheek pressed to the cool door, he experienced her sense of betrayal. She was hurt and confused, not just irate. She’d trusted him, and somehow he’d failed her. He reached for the door handle, gripping it firmly for a moment, but then let it go. He could think of nothing helpful to say. Hopefully, she just needed a little time alone. Sighing, he pushed away from the door, telling himself he didn’t care about this, couldn’t care about it. She was being childish. But she had the right to be childish without interference.
Hands in his trouser pockets, head hanging low, he scuffed back to the control room. Turning every second of the last two days over in his mind, he searched for some clue to her antipathy toward having a child out there somewhere in the universe. He was in the middle of setting the coordinates when his control snapped. He indulged his own anger, bashing his way around the console. This wasn’t completely his fault. Rose had domesticated him, made him part of her family. Every word. Every gesture. Every look she cast at him said she loved him. Every stray thought he picked up from her mind told him she’d never been happier.
Union in blood was the only eternal union for a Time Lord. How could she reject it so utterly? It would cost her nothing but a few strands of DNA. Could she be so adamantly against children? Or did she want them only on her terms? It crossed his mind quite suddenly that left to her own devices Rose might abort the child. Wasn’t that what her people did with unwanted pregnancies? They even had a pill to do it cleanly, painlessly.
He grew angrier, colder, still at the thought. He couldn’t allow that. Not when there were so many other options available to them. But he also couldn’t make her submit to any of those options. Couldn’t make her do anything. She had as much right to decide the child’s fate as he did. What he could do was tell her the truth. He wasn’t about to settle into domesticity in some temporal backwater. He wasn’t going to endanger the Earth and neglect his duty to a hundred thousand worlds just so she could raise their child to be a proper little primate.
It would do no good at all to force human behavior down little Etta’s throat. Having a mum and dad to coo over her would only shake her confidence. Make her unable to travel alone through time and space. And she would want a TARDIS. Rose couldn’t outwit genetics. Other people had tried. Omega’s children had ended up on Gallifrey, every last one of them. Penelope had done her best to make the Doctor more human. But she’d only succeed in instilling desires he could never fulfill. He wanted things no Time Lord should ever want. A life he could never have, probably never tolerate, without going slowly mad. He wanted a home.
Rose wanted her mother.
Fine. So be it. He stubbornly fixed their course for Earth, her planet, her time. She wanted to leave him? Her choice. Not his. He couldn’t say, “But I love you” or “Please stay.” A Time Lord should love everyone…equally, wholly and without prejudice. No selfish love allowed. No wanting things to be different. No interference. Free will for all.
But this wasn’t the end of the argument. Like it or not, Rose Tyler was the mother of his child. He’d already interfered with her. As a Time Lord he was duty bound not to change the course of her world or her life, but what else had he been doing? Taking her away from home? Taking Mickey away from her? Touching her? Bonding with her? Impregnating her? The truth was he did nothing but interfere.
And now their child would suffer for it. Unless…he took it all back. He could put Rose into the dream state. Take the baby somewhere safe. Wipe the memory of her from Rose’s mind.
He could almost hear his old enemy, the Master, chuckle at the thought. “Are we so very different, then, Doctor?” he seemed to sneer. “You, the champion of free will. How convenient your piety is!”
Appalled by the mental comparison, the Doctor turned his back on temptation. Whatever Rose decided, he would support her right to choose. She was his…partner…not a child to be protected. And besides, he wasn’t sure he could suppress her memory. She’d let things slip recently about the Time Vortex, as if she recalled harnessing its power, despite the barriers he’d put up to shelter her from the memory.
Rose puzzled him, intrigued him. She was minimally educated and no brighter than the top fifteen percent of her contemporaries. But she had a mousetrap of a mind. It snapped down on tiny details, held onto ideas until she could make sense of them. He supposed they were alike that way, not the cleverest in their class but certainly the most unpredictable.
With the proper training and tools, Rose might even become a Time Lord one day. She had a soul uniquely suited to time travel. She didn’t belong on the Powell Estate any more than he did. She would wither and die in that stifling place, performing a pointless duty and longing to be free of it. He couldn’t allow her to ruin her life and the child’s and his. But he had no idea how to stop her. He certainly couldn’t keep her against her will.
But, it turned out, the TARDIS could.
He’d braced to jump time streams, when the rotor stalled. He pounded a panel with the side of his fist. Nothing. He ducked under the console to check for loose wires. Everything looked okay. Frowning, he resurfaced and took a few readings. They’d landed, but not on Earth. Not anywhere close. He stepped to the door, opening it a crack to survey the frigid atmosphere outside. Against all reason, the TARDIS had planet hopped in the same solar system. They'd traveled no more than a decade beyond their last stop. The Doctor considered the history of this region. There was no trouble brewing anywhere nearby. There was nothing nearby but the wildlife refuge he'd hoped to explore. Why were they stalled?
Maybe he’d simply miscalculated the refraction angles. He had been distracted. He reset the navigation field and once again pumped, dinged and punched in data. The central rotor shunted into action. When it stopped a few moments later, the Doctor groaned in frustration. They’d barely moved. They were still a thousand light years from Earth and at least twelve centuries behind Rose’s time. Outside the TARDIS was another inhospitable rock, a barren asteroid in Orion’s belt.
Forcefully closing the outer door, the Doctor glared at the machinery thrumming under the gratings beneath his feet. “We can’t keep her,” he said, firmly.
The ship burbled something and the console-mounted monitor flashed a brilliant white.
“We’re taking her home,” the Doctor insisted, stripping off his jacket and rolling up his sleeves in preparation for a fight with his ship. “Her choice. Free will and all that…rubbish.” Stroking a column as he strode by, he softly added, “She needs her mother.”
The TARDIS made no further protest. Neither did it purr in agreement. At the console, the Doctor pulled the monitor around to face him. This time he intended to make sure his instructions were processed to the letter. No more automatic systems. He switched everything to manual control. But before he could begin entering coordinates, he noticed the spinning circles under the last image of Rose’s embryo. He read the message twice before it sank in. Numbly, he tapped a button to replay the clip of the convergence.
As he watched the miracle unfold, a disembodying feeling of alarm crept up on him and pounced. He’d seen the images before, but somehow the wrongness of them hadn’t registered. There it was again: cellular division. Less than thirty minutes after conception. Every lesson he’d ever had, every scrap of information he’d ever read, on human reproduction zipped through his head as the monitor displayed a warning again: cellular division anomaly…DNA replication accelerated…initiate temporal dampening field immediately.
He said it quite softly at first. “Rose?” But as he spun about and sprinted down the hall toward her room, he let his swirling emotions power the shout.
“Rose!”
He skidded to a halt at her room. Her door stood open. There was no sign of her. He tried their room. Nothing. The kitchen and the gym also proved fruitless. Finally, he put his hand to the wall and asked his ship where she was. The answer came intuitively…in the shower.
He should have known.
***********************************************************
“Rose?”
She heard him murmur her name, outside her door, but stubbornly refused to answer. Could she not have one minute’s peace? His ship. His rules. Her eyes burned with tears again as she zipped open her rucksack to pack. She’d trusted him completely and he hadn’t even considered her feelings. Any more than he’d ever considered her privacy. He’d dragged her out of bed and out of baths, forced her out of a job and even refused to respect her wishes about Mickey traveling with them.
But her body was her own. Or it had been until he started slipping into her mind and making her dreams come true. She’d kept her illusions though, until this morning. She’d believed she was his partner, an equal. Now she knew better. And there was no escaping him. He was in her mind and her heart and something of his was growing inside of her.
The reality of an alien pregnancy nearly overwhelmed her. She crossed her arms and sank down on the edge of her bed. Packing forgotten, she rocked, her heart hammering with claustrophobic zeal. She wasn’t ready to give up her own life. She’d just about pulled free of her mother and Mickey. She’d just started putting herself first. Being pregnant meant going back to thinking about another person’s needs. As her mind whirled, the walls of her room began closing in on her like a winepress on grapes. For the first time since she’d initially come onboard, Rose saw the TARDIS as alien. The scent of the processed air and the ever-present roundels made her skin crawl. Everything said Time Lord. She couldn’t bear it.
She decided to go back to the Tahitian Waterfall Environment. Greenery obscured the walls there. The natural setting always soothed her nerves. She fled as soon as the Doctor abandoned his vigil at her door, telling herself she just needed a moment or two to adjust. But what she really wanted to do was hide from him. When he started shouting her name, she remained silent. She knew he would find her eventually. He always did. But this time she wasn’t going to help him. Let him shout the roof in. He could learn what it felt like to be ignored.
Her clothes were damp and chilly from the spray of the waterfall but Rose didn’t care. Perched on a rock, she skimmed a bare foot over the surface of a deep, still pool and then scooped up a handful of pebbles to toss into the water. She threw the tiny missiles in one at a time. They created concentric rings, which intersected in patterns reminiscent of Gallifreyan script. She remembered how she’d scribbled nonsense as a child and thought it was cursive. Now she thought she spotted the symbol for the number eight in these random patterns. That’s what she was to him, an ignorant child. She wasn’t even literate in his world. Small wonder if he felt like taking charge of everything.
She’d felt so clever traveling the stars. Sure she could handle the consequences. Death seemed like a pretty big consequence…and she’d faced it down several times. But it turned out death had nothing on new life when it came to scaring her silly. She was pregnant. With an alien baby. And not just any alien. The second coming of the Time Lords. There were probably prophecies about her. She probably had some nickname like his Oncoming Storm. Maybe Bad Wolf? What big eyes you have, Mum?? Had the Doctor planned this since the day they’d met? Certainly, he’d known it could happen. And he’d chosen not to tell her.
How many different kinds of stupid had she been? Falling in love with an alien, letting him take her away in his magic machine, giving up Mickey and her old life for…what? Adventure? Thrills? The most amazing sex she’d ever had? A man and a love like no other? Did he love her? He’d never said. But in unguarded moments he’d touched her in a certain way. Not just physically, but spiritually. The love was there in his eyes and his mind. He’d shown her the peerless beauty of the stars, sharing wonders with her the way a lover might share choice morsels from his plate. He hadn’t treated Mickey or Jack or even Sarah Jane with the same sort of deference.
Rose shook her head. What did it matter? Maybe he did love her, but it wouldn’t change anything. If she’d learned nothing else from her mother’s struggles, Rose had learned that love didn’t conquer all; her father had died despite loving her mother. Rose had decided very early on not to have children. Life was too uncertain. Feeling sorry for herself, Rose sniffled. It seemed to be her destiny to live her mother’s life all over again. So many of her neighborhood friends had ended up pregnant and alone. But Rose had always been careful and, yes, scornful of those who weren’t. But all of her precautions. All of those stern internal monologues. All of her mother’s dire warnings. All of it…had come to nothing.
For the first time, Rose truly appreciated how scared her mother must have been, newly widowed with a small baby. How had she coped? Rose tried to envision it, piecing together stories she’d heard all her life with this new insight she’d been granted. Her mum had taken in washing and worked as a home hairdresser. But Rose lacked her mother’s homemaking skills. Jackie Tyler had relied on friends and relatives to baby-sit. Grandma Prentice had helped out. Rose sighed. No Mickey. And she’d barely spoken to Shareen in the last two years. Her mum would help, of course, but it would be a hard road without little…Oh, so help her, they were not going to call her Etta…without the baby’s father.
Rose had no illusions about the Doctor staying with her or even visiting. He’d never gone back to see Sarah Jane, and she was the one he wanted to be his child’s mother. The Doctor belonged to the universe. Rose had come to accept that. She’d gotten over being jealous but she hadn’t gotten over her fear of losing him. Still, she knew him well enough to know he would never settle down. He certainly wasn’t going to turn his back on his duty as a Time Lord to help her raise a baby he’d planned to give away. And she couldn’t travel with him again until their child was at least fifteen or sixteen. By that time, she’d have arthritis and he’d have a new companion.
Rose tossed another pebble into the water. If she worked the night shift at one of the motorway’s all night diners maybe her mum could watch the baby. They’d be on the dole but they might cope. But what if the baby had two hearts or needed some kind of alien vaccination? What if it was a difficult pregnancy? She wouldn’t be able to go to hospital. These dire thoughts brought her back to some semblance of reason. She shook her head again.
“He would have thought of that,” she mumbled. Oddly comforted by the imaginary tragedy, she lightly touched her abdomen and whispered, “Don’t you worry. The Doctor won’t let anything happen to you.”
“Indeed, I won’t,” he said.
Startled, Rose glanced up to see him leaning against the doorframe on the far side of the room. He looked quite angry. His chin was high, his dark eyes blazed. The fingers of his right hand were pressed to the wall. The TARDIS had ratted her out, told him she was in the Tahitian Waterfall environment. Rose mentally cursed the busybody ship as the Doctor pushed away from the doorway. He headed for her at a determined pace, fishing the sonic screwdriver out of his pocket with one hand as he started to climb over rocks. Rose scrambled to her feet and backed to the edge of her perch.
“I don’t want to talk to you,” she said, in a brittle tone. “There’s nothing you can say to change my mind.”
“Yes. All right,” he said, mildly. “We needn’t talk. But I wonder if you would mind terribly not talking to me in the infirmary?” he asked. “Also, I need you to answer a few questions. Short answers will be fine. How’s your head? Are you in any pain?”
Before Rose could summon a response, he was at her side. He cut around her like a sheepdog herding a flock, seized her arm just above the elbow and started retracing his steps, hustling her along before him.
“Let go of me,” she declared, digging in her heels.
“Yes. All right,” he repeated in the same meek way as he released her. “Hold very still,” he ordered, looking directly into her face before returning his attention to the screwdriver. She did as he asked, stewing silently while he recalibrated the sonic device, pointed it at her navel and swept a tight blue beam across her abdomen, turning her yellow sweater momentarily green. Then, he aimed the screwdriver at her temple and took another reading from it. Grim faced, he turned abruptly toward the door. “Come on.”
“Wha’s wrong?” she demanded, holding her ground. When he tut-tutted, she snapped, “Tell me.”
Plainly agitated, he whirled back to face her. “Children can’t travel through time, Rose, as I’ve said. There’s radiation, background, foreground, mid-ground…there’s…temporal distortions, gravitation anomalies, alien parasites,” the list of dangers knotted in his mouth, making it a trial to speak, “Peril on all sides. Little…” he stopped dead on the name, dipping his chin vaguely at Rose’s midsection, before pushing out, “…not-Etta…is having some difficulty. We’ve stopped. I need to be sure she’s stopped, as well. I need to get both of you to the infirmary. Run a few diagnostics.” Refocusing on the screwdriver’s new reading, he distractedly asked, “Any nausea? Lightheadedness?”
“No and no,” Rose said without really considering the questions. Truthfully, she had been feeling a bit queasy. “What do you mean…stopped?” The Doctor shot a piercing glance at her but, after a tiny shake of his head and a long suffering sigh, turned away without answering. “What is going on?” Rose peeped. “Doctor…? Are you saying…? Is there’s something wrong with the baby?”
She stared after him in exasperation as he strode toward the door. Finally, moved by her curiosity, she trotted after him. Teeth worrying at her lower lip, she tried to make sense of his concerns. What could he mean by ‘make sure the baby had stopped?’ By the time they’d reached the hallway, she’d worked it out. As she started putting his current actions into context with his earlier warnings, icy tendrils of apprehension crawled along her arms. She hugged herself against the chill.
“Traveling,” she whispered then spoke louder, calling to him, “Do you mean traveling, Doctor?” When he kept walking, she put on a burst of speed, bounced around in front of him and demanded, “Doctor, do you mean she’s still time traveling…inside me?”
He halted so abruptly Rose had to trip to a stop and come back to him.
“Are you talking to me or not?” he asked. “I’ve lost track.”
“Oh…of all the…just answer my question.”
“Yes. All right.”
“And stop saying that…all resigned to your fate and everything,” Rose countered. “You sound just like my Great-Aunt Mabel.”
“Aunt Mabel?” the Doctor snarled. “Oh, you are very lucky I don’t…” he began, angrily but he caught himself in time. Sighing, he broke eye contact to stare into the middle distance for a beat. His shoulders slumped a little. When he looked back at her the fire had left his gaze and he was her sweet Doctor again.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m not trying to be difficult. Or…no…I suppose I was trying…but I understand you have a right to know what's going on. I just don’t have any answers, yet. I don’t know enough about what’s happening inside you. Etta…the baby… appears to be developing too quickly.” He consulted the screwdriver once more. “I’d say you’ve gone through about four days of your pregnancy in just under two hours. But we need to be sure of those figures. Infirmary,” he repeated, dropping a hand to the small of her back and steering her along again.
As they traversed the halls, the reality of her situation sent sweeping chills all over Rose’s body. They snaked up her arms and then down into her stomach. There the crawling sensation solidified into a great chunk of Titanic-sinking ice. She shivered, hugging herself. But she still didn’t see the problem with an accelerated pregnancy.
“That’s not so bad though, yeah? At this rate it’ll all be over in two months.”
“Oh, it will be over much sooner than that,” the Doctor said, “If I try to move this ship. You’ll both be dead before we’re halfway to Earth.”
“Dead?”
“What do you think would happen if someone tried to cram a half stone of baby into your abdomen just now?” A shadow of fear crossed Rose’s face, dulling her usually bright eyes. She shivered again. Seeing he’d frightened her, the Doctor stroked his hand up her back. “It’s not that bad yet,” he said gently, “We’ll try to fix it. But you’re going to need to have an open mind about this. I’m not sure what we’ll have to do to save you both. You’re not changing, Rose. Only the baby is.”
“I’m not changing…?”
He gave a terse nod as they made the turn into the infirmary. “Your womb needs to prepare for a fetus,” he went on, pointing her toward the examining tables before leaving her side. “That doesn’t happen overnight. Given time your body would slowly adjust to accommodate the growing baby.” He started opening drawers and cabinets. “Your organs would shift into new alignments, making room. However, just now…your body is under attack. And it is fighting back with every anti-viral in its arsenal.”
“That’s why I feel chilled?”
“Yes. And why I am in pain.”
Still standing at the door, Rose looked at him in surprise. “You’re in pain? But…?”
“Psychic link,” he murmured.
But he offered no further explanation. Instead he returned to her side and guided her to the nearest elevated exam table. He patted it so she would hop up. She did as he indicated, sliding her bum back to make herself more comfortable on the warmly cushioned surface. The Doctor went back to locating supplies. She watched silently as he fished assorted instruments out of various cupboards, lining up what he’d found on the countertop. Some of the tools looked more like torture devices than medical implements. A wave of nausea splashed over her and she saw the Doctor grimace, his hand dropping to his beltline.
“Sorry,” she muttered.
“Not your fault. And I imagine labor is much worse,” he said, trying to sound chipper.
They both inhaled deeply and exhaled again in perfect synchronicity as the discomfort eased. “I suppose you are a real doctor?” Rose inquired meekly. She’d heard him make the claim at least a dozen times but never knew if she believed it.
“Oh, yes,” he declared breezily as he stooped to retrieve a suitcase-sized machine from a lower cupboard. “Board certified on seventeen worlds…including Earth. Medical College of St. Bartholomew, Class of 1892.”
“1892? Have you taken your continuing education classes?”
“Been a little busy,” the Doctor replied. “Which means…unfortunately I am about as useful as a whale-bone corset in this emergency. And,” he sighed, “my specialty was definitely not obstetrics. Or…to put it another way: I don’t know nothing about birthing no babies.”
Rose would have smiled if she hadn’t been so frightened. “What are we going to do?” she asked, watching him open the suitcase machine like a tackle box, folding out level after level.
“Ideally? Get you to hospital. Preferably one of the earlier xenobiological ones on Gallifrey. Only we can’t. I can’t go back there without perpetuating disaster. Although…I suppose…,” he drawled, rotating at the waist to study her for a moment, “We might send you down to the surface alone…I wonder…” Giving his head a quick shake, he went on with his work, saying more briskly. “No. Far too dangerous. Anything could happen to you. Besides there’s no point in speculating until we solve this current crisis. We can’t move the TARDIS without killing you. Lie down, please,” the Doctor said as he extracted what looked like two plastic bangle bracelets from the top level of the suitcase machine. Each of the bracelets had a kite-tail of wires. “Try to relax,” he added, crossing to help her into the right position on the table.
After he’d shifted her a little, he snapped the plastic bands around both her right wrist and ankle. A few deft pokes of his fingertips set the wrist monitor flashing and beeping. Rose lifted her arm to look but he firmly forced her hand back into position over her navel and ordered her to lie still.
She complied, though her expression told him her patience was wearing thin. He gave her shoulder a pat before bouncing back across the room. Rose watched him consult the equipment. He could feel her eyes on him. And the diagnostic scanner seemed to be malfunctioning. Irritated, he fiddled with dials, tweaking the settings. The scanner was acting like it had never seen a human being before. The Doctor adjusted the band on Rose’s ankle and then retreated again to the cupboard. The scanner started pouring forth data. He squinted at the tiny screen and then at the larger print out before pulling his glasses from an inside jacket pocket. He gave the lenses a quick polish and, settling the specs onto his face, started reading.
Rose tried to relax as requested. The longer the Doctor took the harder it became.
“The good news is the latest developmental stage appears to be holding,” the Doctor finally told her. “You’re very close to implantation but there’s been no change in the embryo since we stopped moving.”
He glanced over his shoulder at her. His grim expression made her sit up and ask, “What’s the bad news?”
Crumbling the printout into a ball, the Doctor sighed. ‘Just like Aunt Mabel’ he thought but what he said was, “The bad news is you’ve got a rather high fever and we could be stuck on this asteroid for a very long time. No fuel for the TARDIS, no medicine or food to sustain us.” Snatching off his glasses, he settled his hip against the countertop. He tapped one earpiece against his lower lip as he illuminated the extent of the crisis. “We could theoretically last for a couple of years, rationing our current supplies. I could shut down all the auxiliary systems; jettison redundant rooms, etc. to conserve power. Proper nutrition would certainly become an issue at some point. But, provided there were no pregnancy complications, we could theoretically save your life.”
“But…?”
“But there are already pregnancy complications. And we would need to stay here much longer than is even theoretically possible if we hoped to save our child. Not only through the birth, but until she is old enough to time travel.”
“So we’re stuck.”
“We’re stuck. But on the bright side,” he added, with a heavy dose of sarcasm, “we will all be one big, happy, nuclear-age family when we starve to death.”
“Can’t we just…I don’t know…send a distress call or travel through space but not time? Find food…supplies? A proper doctor?”
“Yes, of course, but it takes time to travel through space,” the Doctor said, “even for a distress signal. Centuries in fact. Traversing light years in the blink of an eye is no easy task.” He folded his glasses back into an inside jacket pocket and began rummaging in the cabinets again. Pulling down a blue bottle, he read the label. Then, he shook a pill out into his palm. Crossing to Rose, he offered her the tiny pink tablet. “Here. Take this.” She pinched the pill from his palm but instead of swallowing it, eyed it warily. The Doctor didn’t appear to notice her discomfort. He went on explaining, using the bottle and his hands to act out the concepts, “The TARDIS travels quickly and easily from one world to another precisely because she can travel in time as well as space. There are other ways to travel, straight loop wormhole transduction, for example. But they would be just as risky. We are able to bypass the longer routes and minimize our risks by shortcutting through the temporal dimension. This keeps the…” he broke off to bob his chin at the tablet between her fingers. “Go on. Take it,” he urged. “You’ll feel better.”
“What is it?”
“Aspirin.”
“Really? Oh.” Embarrassed, she popped the pill into her mouth and swallowed.
“Well. No. But nearly,” the Doctor continued smoothly, turning away from her to place the bottle on the counter. He adjust a few of the dials on the suitcase-sized device. “It will do the same thing: lower your fever.”
Rose’s temper broke like an overstressed levee. All of her outrage and betrayal spilled into her voice as she cried, “That’s what I mean! Exactly that.”
As she leapt down from the exam table, the Doctor whirled to face her but he fell back a step, when she closed on him, unsure how to respond to her evident anger. “You would rather have a fever?” he guessed.
“No. But you can’t just give me something and lie to me about what it is. I know you’re smarter than me. Older. Wiser. Better educated. I know, maybe...you get tired of explaining things. But this is serious. This is real. Do you get that? Why won’t you tell me what’s going on? You’re nothing but secrets. Do you think I wouldn’t understand? How much effort does it take to say, ‘This could get you pregnant’, ‘this medicine is used to bring down fevers?’ Do you think I’m…what? Stupid…? A stupid ape?” Her voice cracked as tears glistened in her eyes. “I’m like a…a pet or something?”
“Pet?” he gaped. “A pet? Why would you think…? Is that what this is about? You think I look down on you? Honestly, I don’t,” he soothed, completely thrown by her outburst. He reached for her, took her face in his hands. “Rose, you can’t think I would…” he glanced down, carrying her gaze with his to her navel, “father a child on a…on someone I…on a…pet?”
“I can’t even read,” she countered, tears finally spilling over her lashes.
“Yes, you can,” he argued, letting his hands drop to her shoulders, steadying her. “I’ve seen you. We’ve read things together…Shakespeare. Dickens. Electronic Shaver Directions.” He gave her a few comical nods, “And, you’ll remember, I could make nothing out of those.”
“Not English,” she groused, impatiently, “Time Lord.”
“Gallifreyan,” he corrected.
“Your language,” she clarified, moving away from him. “Whatever you call it. I can’t read my own name in your language. I can’t count. Never mind flying the TARDIS. I’m here at your mercy and…”
“I’ll teach you to read,” he promised but then immediately recanted, grimacing and scratching his ear. “No, I won’t. Because you have to develop the sight first and you haven’t. Gallifreyan script is pan-dimensional. That means…we don’t use tenses. There’s no past…future…imperfect…because the relevance of a particular word, even a particular letter is intrinsically linked to when and where it appears. To read my language properly…you have to be able to see around corners. You have to know when and where you are.”
Rose sighed. She didn’t even understand his explanation. “It’s not just the reading. The point is that’s why you don’t explain things properly, you don’t think I’m smart enough. Because I’m not like Madame de Pompadour or any of your other…companions.”
“No, no,” he said, adamantly, “That’s not it at all. You're very bright. And it’s not fair you saying I don’t explain things, because I do…constantly running off at the mouth, tha’s me. But explanations take time and we…”
“What? Don’t have time?” Rose said, bitterly. “You just said we have nothing but! We’re stuck here, right? Until you figure this out? Maybe you should take a little time to think about what you’ve done to my life.” He reached for her again, knowing that one touch would calm her, but she swept her arm in a dramatic arc, forcing him back. “All of this? This is your life. Your ship. All of it says…Time Lord. Everything here is alien. And yours. Your ship. Your rules. Your way of doing things. What about what I want?”
“You want to raise this child as a human,” he inferred. “You and I and her, little…” he aimed a terse nod at her lower abdomen as he forced out, “Not-Etta. A proper Earth family with mum and dad and a…a car…with a…a,” he wrinkled his nose, looking positively ill, as he slid the bitter word off his tongue, “car-seat. Or a…what? A baby onboard sign in the rear window?”
Rose shot him a sullen glare. “I didn’t say that.”
“But it is what you want?” the Doctor insisted. “The domestic package.”
“What I want is to not be pregnant,” Rose corrected. “What I want is to have my life back and no choices in it involving you or…not-Etta or anyone else.”
“Yes, well, it’s a little too late for that now, isn’t it? You’re her mother. We will always be her parents. We can’t change that, Rose. The question is what kind of parents are we going to be?”
“No. No. That’s not the question. This is…it’s…bigger than what to do about the baby.” Rose bit down on her lower lip, shaking her head. Her fingers curled, grabbing at the air, as she searched for a way to clearly explain her frustration with this one-sided relationship. “This is about us, you and me. It’s…” Despite a quaking fear that threatened to buckle her knees, Rose forced herself to ask him for what she needed. “It’s like the shower, yeah? You and Jack between you decided I should be okay with sharing.” Afraid to look at him, see him rejecting her plea for equality, she began to pace off the small area between the door and the exam tables. “My way was wrong and as far as you were concerned, I should just get over it. So I did. I changed. You wanted Mickey onboard and you didn’t care what I thought about it. Now, he’s gone. Now, I’m expected to deal with your baby. Change everything about who I am and what I want. I don’t want children. Do you get that?”
“Yes, of course, but…”
“No! You don’t. I know because you just assume this is all going to go your way. I’ll go along because that’s what I do. Calling her Etta.” Her voice turned shrill. “You never even asked me about children. We never sat and talked about this because you… you either think I’m too stupid to have an opinion or you just don’t care what I think. What I want. It’s like I’m nothing but a noise in the room. Someone to keep you company. No thoughts of my own.”
The Doctor stared at her, his mouth open. His breathing turned ragged as he fought through his initial, visceral reaction to her complaints. He hadn’t been expecting anything close to this and the surprise caused his respiratory bypass to kick in. A hundred retorts log-jammed in the back of his throat. But nothing came out of his mouth. He stood very still as he processed his feelings, his attention fixed on Rose. He studied her face. Saw the truth of what she was saying in her eyes. Then, he lowered his head and sank back against the edge of the counter, bracing his hands behind him. Staring at a spot on the floor midway between them, he murmured, “Is it like that?”
“It feels like it.”
The room faded away as he considered her grievance. Was he selfishly forcing her to do all the adapting? Of course not. Obviously not. He’d changed so much in the last two years. Changed to please her. Regenerated to please her. He was barely Gallifreyan now. He’d been domesticated. Gone to Christmas dinners. Had afternoon teas with her mother. For the love of all that was holy, he’d worn a paper crown on his head. But she had no way of knowing what he’d been like before. How cold he’d been in the face of emotional commitment…closing the door on Susan, abandoning Sarah Jane and Tegan…and Ace. He’d mourned them, of course. But not like he would mourn Rose. Rose would leave a scar behind when she left him.
Even knowing him a little as he’d been, she didn’t see what he’d become because of her. She must have assumed some of the more obvious changes were due to the regeneration. Or maybe she’d failed to notice the changes because they’d started as soon as he’d taken her hand in that shop. He thought about her reaction to Sarah Jane, putting it into this new context. “You felt this way about her once,” she’d said. Did Rose really believe he’d cared about Sarah Jane the same way he cared about her?
He glanced up to find Rose watching him warily. She actually looked frightened and that cut him to the quick. “I’m a Time Lord,” he told her, as if saying it explained everything.
“I know,” she sighed.
He shook his head sharply. “But you don’t,” he said. “That’s just it. You don’t understand what it means. And how could you? You don’t know what we were like. What I was like…before I met you.” She drew in breath to contradict him again but he forestalled her by crossing quickly to her side and taking her hand. “Please, Rose. Let me tell you. Sit down for a minute and we’ll talk this out. I promise I’ll listen to you.”
Rose closed her eyes. It was on the tip of her tongue to deny him, to say she didn’t want to sit down but he grazed his fingertips along her cheek and her resistance melted. If they were ever going to get past this, they would both have to give a little. Opening her eyes, she looked up into his. He seemed so concerned, so earnest in his appeal. She focused on his mouth, moistening her lips as she remembered kissing him. He was such a tender lover, almost always putting her first. Just this morning she’d trusted him completely. He smiled as she relaxed and gently pulled her into a hug. She let her hands slide up his back. Then, she turned with him as he guided her to the exam table. They both hopped up and sat, side by side. But they remained silent for a good while, the Doctor toying with her fingers.
Finally, he asked, “What do you want to do about the baby?”
“I don’t know,” she breathed, shaking her head. “I wasn’t pregnant yesterday. Isn’t there some kind of...?”
She felt his fingers twitch and stopped herself before she could ask him about a morning-after pill. As much as she wanted this to be over, she couldn’t seriously imagine aborting the Doctor’s baby. He wanted it too much. On the other hand, she didn’t want it at all. The thought of it filled her with bitter dread. Maybe Sarah Jane was the answer.
He nodded as if he’d heard her unspoken musings and they sat quietly, again. After a long pause, he said, “None of this would have happened to you if I hadn’t interfered in your life.”
“We don’t know that,” Rose said, a while later. “Maybe I’m…supposed to be a mum…but I’m scared.”
His next contribution to the conversation took them down a side road. “Time Lords don’t share,” he said. “We don’t ask permission to do things. We’re like tigers or…or polar bears, solitary...with all of time and space our territory. From the moment he’s able to walk until the day he dies a true Time Lord has no need for company. I’m a bit of an anomaly, you see? A misfit.” Rose smiled slightly, favoring him with what he considered an adoring glance. He longed to ask her what the look actually meant but this wasn’t the time. He sighed, and she slid a hand down his leg to gently squeeze his knee.
“But you’re not like them.”
“We were apex predators on our home world and wholly untrustworthy. We preyed on the universe until we were forced to withdraw from it. Do you see, Rose? We withdrew from the universe for its own good? Time Lords don’t do domestic. Why else do you think we’d have to drug our females before mating with them?”
“Yeah, I wondered about that.”
“It’s because we can’t bear to be that close to, that…open with, one another. We are so lacking in trust we must literally be mentally linked before we can reproduce. And, oh yes, I am very much like them. Or I was for nine hundred years. Nothing touched me. Always okay…” In a voice so soft she could barely hear it, he added, “Until I met you.”
Rose didn’t know what to say. The Doctor she knew was a force for good in the universe. She’d seen him angry, hard and cold with it. But she’d never believed he would harm her or anyone else. He’d told her he was responsible for the death of all his people but it couldn’t be that simple. He hadn’t been able to destroy the Daleks, knowing he would also destroy the Earth. And Sarah Jane Smith had loved him before, several regenerations ago. So, despite what he said about how he’d changed, he’d always been the Doctor. He was generally unarmed, if not exactly defenseless, and almost always benevolent. And maybe he didn’t share his feelings or his thoughts with her. But he was hardly a xenophobic loner. He cared about others. He’d had any number of traveling companions. Who were these people of his that they were so unlike him?
“Even our society, the peaceful republic we were so very proud of, existed only because of our blood ties. Each of us was mentally linked to every other Time Lord through our clans.” He nodded pointedly. “And through selective crossbreeding each clan was joined to every other. We learned to get along, but our benevolence was nothing but an illusion. We were xenophobic to a fault, first using other species for sport and then completely isolating ourselves. Every cultural exchange was steeped in ritual. Without our rituals, without our culturally imposed ties and stifling formalities, each of us would become, quite literally, a law unto himself. That’s what I am, Rose. A renegade. The Penelope Experiment proved that beyond any doubt.”
“I thought…wasn’t she your mother?” She immediately corrected herself, “I mean, I know she wasn’t your real mother but she raised you.”
“Yes, she did. She was…very important to me. But she was only part of an experiment. One designed to see if other species could influence our behaviors. There were ten of us in her care…The Master, The Rani, The Pearl, The Cat, The Monk…”
“The Doctor,” Rose murmured.
“Indeed,” he agreed, giving her a lopsided grin. His voice took on an indulgent undertone as he added, “She couldn’t pronounce our real names.”
“Well, you have to admit it’s a tongue twister,” Rose said. She took a deep breath and tried to say his name, “Whn’txchat’lle…” He cut her off with two fingers to her lips.
“No. Never say it,” he admonished. “Forget you even know that name. It’s far too dangerous to know.”
“But I thought…in your mind, I saw you’d just forgotten it.”
“I had. On purpose. I should take it from you, purge your memory. It’s not safe.”
Bristling, Rose pulled away from him. “What do you mean take it? Make me forget? Can you do that?” It struck her, quite forcefully, that he may already have done it. There was a blank spot in her memory. After she'd looked into the heart of the TARDIS, she'd blacked out. Sometimes she picked at the edges of the blackness like a child might pick at a scab. She'd learned a few things that way. But there was more to know and what if it was the Doctor who had made her forget in the first place? He never spoke of what happened on Satellite 5.
She cast a sidelong look at him. He seemed to have stalled. For a moment he stared into space, apparently lost in thought. Then, he shook himself and went on as if they had never spoken of his name at all. As if the last few minutes had never happened.
“In a way," he said, "I was Penelope’s star pupil. The others were removed from her care quite early on. As soon as it became obvious the experiment was failing. They’d…imprinted on her…picked up certain…personality traits: Human arrogance, cunning, religious zealotry and that endless curiosity. But not the essence of humanity, not the soul of it.”
When he glanced at Rose she nodded her understanding but her mind was still worrying at the puzzle of his unspeakable name. This wasn’t the first time he’d veered away from any discussion of it. There was more to this than the story she’d read so easily in his mind. More to it all than a lonely little boy who’d forgotten his name because nobody used it. What was he hiding? Had someone played with his mind the way he’d just suggested he might play with hers? With some difficulty she forced attention back onto their present problems, saving her questions about names and memories for another time.
“When the others were removed, I was left with her as a…a control, I think. Though, I believe, my family was...what’s the word…pleased? …intrigued? …by my unique development. I became something else. Not a Time Lord. But certainly not human. Impatient with ritual, I craved change. I wanted to know…what was out there. I was chaos in my society, a law unto myself. Just like the Master and the Rani…and all the rest. I stayed with Penelope until she died. She aged. Faded. There was nothing I could do to stop it.”
Rose squeezed his hand, drawing him out of the painful past and back to her side. What kind of parents would allow a child to suffer like that? she wondered and then answered her own question: the same kind who would give their baby to a stranger, an alien.
“But don’t you see,” Rose said, “This is exactly why we can’t leave our baby with Sarah Jane. She’ll need you to explain all this to her. She’ll be lonely, too. Out of place. Never knowing who she really is.”
“But she will know. I told you. We’ll visit. All the time.”
“Weekend custody,” Rose scoffed. “My best friend, Shareen, yeah? Her dad’s got that kind of arrangement. Comes up every other Saturday and takes her to the country for a few days. But it’s not like she really knows him. It’s not like they can bond on a car trip, is it? Things happen in life and if you miss them you can’t go back.” She laughed then. “Or…I suppose…you can. But what about her first date? When she gets her ears pierced…or her heart broken. We won’t be there to help or see.”
She slid her knee onto the table, shifting to face the Doctor as she went on, “There were times when Shareen was all put out because her dad had missed a play she was in at school or something, and I’d think I was the lucky one. ‘Cause my dad had a good reason for not being there. What kind of reason will we have, Doctor? Just traveling? And what if…” Again she hesitated not wanting to give her fears voice. “What if…you get another traveling companion? Shareen’s dad remarried and after that he stopped coming up so much. Sixteen years is a long time. Anything could happen.”
You could leave, you mean, the Doctor thought, die…fade into nothing. But he only said, “It’s not going to be sixteen years for us. TARDIS remember? I don’t suppose it will be more than a few weeks. We could hop straight to the end, pick her up the next minute, if you liked. But as you said, there are other things to consider. Her healthy development. Birthdays and…and trips to the zoo…lessons about warp engines…pony rides…all the things little girls care about. We’ll have to be careful not to cross our time lines or she’ll get confused.”
“I didn’t say we were doing this,” Rose reminded him, “leaving her with Sarah Jane. In fact, I said we weren’t going to do that. I’m just telling you why it’s a particularly horrid idea. And you said we can’t do it anyway. Cause we’re stuck here.”
“I’ve been thinking about that, we might travel laterally as you suggested earlier, if I recalibrate the temporal stabilizers. Could kill us? More likely kill the baby? And it won’t get us any closer to the twenty-first century in any case.” He broke off and stared at her with wide-eyed inquiry. “Do you have any other ideas? Other than Sarah Jane, I mean? If you don’t want children…what do we do?”
Startled he was asking her, Rose didn't know what to say for a minute, but then she sat up straighter and declared, “Okay, first things first. We need to find a way to not be stuck. Is there any way you can think of to protect the baby?”
He rubbed his cheek, squinting, mouth pursed, as he thought about it. “If we could isolate her somehow…say we still had a zero room…but we don’t. Maybe we could duplicate the effect…on a small scale…miniscule. I wonder…” Wondering left him silent as he jumped down from the table. Lost in thought, he absently removed the monitor band from Rose’s ankle. “We could…theoretically…travel without harming you or little not-Et….” He’d been walking away from Rose but he suddenly shifted gears, turning back to her to ask, “Why not Etta? Perfectly good Earth name and you’re dead set against it. I might have insisted on something from my own world.”
“Look, we can’t call her Etta.” Rose said, bracing against his offered hand before sliding her feet to the floor. “She’s bound to get teased as it is without giving her a stupid name. Half-alien? She’ll have a hard enough time of it. And she’ll never find Etta on any of the doodads. All those things kids like with their names on them like…I don’t know…plaques for the door and little licenses for their bikes. But mostly we can’t call her Etta because eventually you’d have to introduce us to people. I’m the Doctor and this is Rose and Etta.” She let it sink in for a moment and then, pantomimed the introductions again, stressing, “Rose-Etta.”
“Oh,” he said. And then tossing his head back he repeated, “Oh! But that's marvelous!” Bending his knees, he bounced a little, grinning as the absurdity of the name hit him. He leaned into Rose’s shoulder in a show of affection, forgetting their argument in the glow of the shared joke.
“Marvelous? Puns on your own daughter's name? Mind you,” she said, nudging him in the side, “Be really funny if, instead of Smith, you started calling yourself Dr. John W. Stone.?”
He pretended to introduce them to company. “Rose…Etta…Stone.” Shaking his head, he reached for Rose’s wrist to unfasten the wired bracelet. “Yes, I can see the problem with that. Might lighten the mood in precarious situations. But...no...I see your point. So, here’s a bit of involvement for you. What shall we call her, if not Etta?”
Rose frowned. “Do we have to name it?”
“Not it…her,” he corrected, with a little pout. “And oh, yes. We can’t call just keep calling her something generic. Like ‘the offspring.” It would damage her psyche. Give her some kind of complex.”
“Like you, Doctor?” Rose said with a smile. “You got a complex, then?”
“More than one,” he admitted, tossing her an affectionate look over his shoulder before giving his attention to straightening up the countertop. “And she’s going to be half-human besides. Humans need concrete identities, Rose.”
“All right, then,” Rose sighed. “What about…Susan?”
“What about her?” The Doctor asked as he tucked both monitors back into their case and snapped the lid shut on them.
“It’s a name, isn’t it? Susan.”
The Doctor was reaching up when she said this, putting things away. The blue bottle of pills slipped from his hand and shattered on the countertop. Rose jumped, staring at him with the same startled expression he had just turned on her.
“Wh-what did you say?” he stammered, his pale skin ashen. “What?”
His pallor and his intent gaze scared Rose. She had to force the words out. “I said…we could call her Susan. But if you don’t like it…”
He charged her, grapping her arms above the elbows and shaking her very gently but also quite pointedly. “Why? Why that name?” he demanded. “Did you read it somewhere? Have I mentioned her? Did you see a photograph or…read it in my mind? Why?”
“Why what? Who are you talking about?’
“Susan,” he hissed. His eyes showed too much white as he glanced down at her belly. “Why...pick...that name? Why...Susan?” he ground out, between clenched teeth.
“Suzette,” Rose squeaked as he tightened his grip on her arms, almost hurting her. “It's my mum’s middle name, Suzette. I’ve always liked it. But for the plaques and things…” she twisted her body to be free of him but he held on, “…better if it’s Susan, yeah?”
“Oh…no. No, no, no, no, no….” he wailed as he broke away from Rose and staggered to the counter. Clutching it for support, he let denial bend him double. “This can’t be happening,” he insisted. But it was happening. Denying it seemed slightly mad. Pushing back from the counter, he scrubbed both hands through his hair and then threw himself into pacing back and forth. “But it did happen, didn’t it?" he told himself. "It has to happen. She had to come from somewhere. Why not now? Why not Rose? Oh…Rose.” He tugged on the wild tufts of his hair as he recalled how angry she'd been about leaving the baby with Sarah Jane. “This is too much. She’ll never agree to it. Never forgive me.”
“Are you talking about me?” Rose asked, stepping into his path, “Because I’m still here.”
He was too frightened, too lost in the possibilities just around the corner to hear her. Skirting her, he went on muttering and pacing. She blocked him, again, taking his arm.
“Doctor,” she snapped, “Stop it. You’re scaring me.”
He started to jerk away but her fear reached him. He drew in a sharp breath and then sobered, becoming aware of her again. Meeting her eye squarely, he said, “She’s going to burn.”
It was Rose's turn to jerk back in alarm. Her lip curled as she repeated, “Burn?”
The Doctor reached out a hesitant hand, longing to press his palm to her belly. But he didn’t dare. He stopped short, fingers curling like a wilting flower. He was suddenly afraid to touch her. “Susan,” he nodded at Rose’s navel, “That’s not a random name. You plucked it out of the air. But…I know her.”
“How can you? She hasn’t even been…oh, time machine, right.”
“This means something. Because I didn’t know she was your child. I didn’t know you and my not knowing is a clue. It tells us what to do if we can just think it through. I know one thing: I know I don’t know what happened. And that narrows down the time and the place. And I know how Susan came to be where she was. And that,” he declared, pointing a triumphant finger at her, “narrows down the regeneration.”
“You’re saying you knew our baby before? In another regeneration?” Rose said, putting his rambling comments into some kind of order.
“Yes, she was older, when I remember meeting her. Old enough to travel in the TARDIS. She recognized me as I was then…as her grandfather. But I didn’t recognize her. All I could tell for sure was that we were blood relations.”
“What happened to her?”
The Doctor didn’t answer for a moment and then he said, quietly, “She didn’t survive the Time War.”
Rose winced. “She died?” The loss was unexpectedly painful.
“She will. For me…she already has. For you…I can’t be sure. All I know is I can’t see her. I can’t touch her. She still exists in the past but if I enter her time stream, she won’t. She’ll burn like the rest of my people burned.”
“But you’re crossing her time stream right now,” Rose protested.
He gave a quick terse nod. “Maybe it’s too soon. I’ve already done this. I did it before, don’t you see? I must have. I must be ‘the Other.’ But I have no idea how..or how long we have. There will come a day, a moment when it’s too late. If we stay here, if we linger beyond that moment…she’ll burn…and so will you, Rose. You’ll both die,” he clarified. “Casualties of the Time War.”
“But if we try to move,” Rose said, getting the complete grim picture, “We’re just as dead.”
END THIS PART
AUTHOR'S NOTE: For the New Skool Readers...Susan Foreman was/is the Doctor's first companion. She was introduced by him as his grandaughter and refered to him as "Grandfather." There are many theories (some of it book canon...very little TRUE canon) about her origins and the truth of their blood relationship. I am going to use some of the book canon but I will be using it to my own ends. To learn more about what is known/accepted about Susan...follow this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Foreman
But don't expect you will learn too much that will spoil this fic. ;->
PART EIGHT
By Rabid1st
Ten/Rose
Rating: NC-17 (Mature…Adult)
Beta Babes: LJ Users…Dual Bunny, Keswindhover & Aibhinn but also Jei
Warning: Angst and a baby
Summary: Rose and the Doctor made love Time Lord Style and it was all a bit different. Now they’ve got some consequences to deal with. And a few assumptions to get over.
Disclaimer: I don’t own these characters. If I did…the show would be censored by…everyone but you smutty few. I humbly thank Russell T. Davies for creating the sweetest, most-loving, most-genuinely iconic couple in the history of the world for me to play with.
A civilized society is one which tolerates eccentricity to the point of doubtful sanity.
PART ONE
http://rabid1st.livejournal.com/81014.html#cutid1
PART TWO
http://rabid1st.livejournal.com/81708.html#cutid1
PART THREE
http://rabid1st.livejournal.com/82748.html#cutid1
PART FOUR
http://rabid1st.livejournal.com/82969.html#cutid1
PART FIVE
http://rabid1st.livejournal.com/83272.html
PART SIX
http://rabid1st.livejournal.com/84922.html#cutid1
PART SEVEN
The Doctor was versed in 178 forms of interpersonal combat. He knew Tae Kwan Do and B’Ksal Duc. He’d trained with UNIT Special Forces and studied pugilism with Gentleman Jackson. Though he had a marked aversion to weaponry of any kind, he enjoyed developing new skills. To that end, he’d studied marksmanship with Annie Oakley and learned to fence from the Grey Mouser. He couldn’t remember who had schooled him in the broadsword, only that it hadn’t been Fafhrd. That worthy gentleman had been serving a long jail sentence when their paths crossed. (Part of the deal with the Mouser had involved the Doctor arranging for Fafhrd’s release.) He had a passing proficiency with throwing stars and boomerangs. And Master Ran Et’Sunkimi, the beautiful Ninja Warlord of Belisaria, had instructed his fourth incarnation in the arcane art of militant calligraphy. Oh, yes, he could pen a snippy letter so sharply worded it would cut a reader to the bone.
But he could not fight with Rose Tyler. Not really. He didn’t know how to fight with her. He’d had some vague idea once, before the regeneration, but one kiss had burned his knowing away. Even Nine, his warrior self, had had a difficult time holding out against her. “I know how scared you are,” she’d once told him when he’d threatened to leave her. And he was scared, even now. Of losing her. Of facing the cosmos on his own. Of what he might do without her mercy to guide him.
Whenever she displeased him, he kept silently remote. But even cat-like aloofness only served for a very short time. It would not withstand one beckoning glance from her starry eyes. He loved Rose, more than should even be possible. He’d sworn an oath not to tell her, but the feeling was no less real for all his silence. The extent of his devotion left him close to tears from time to time, because it always moved hand-in-hand with the thought of one day losing her. He longed to keep her with him forever and he had the power to do so. But using that power went against everything he stood for. If he was nothing else, the Doctor was the champion of free will, never putting his subjective desires first. He never mentioned his feelings.
But she had to know.
He did, after all, violate the spirit of his oath, if not the letter of it, every day. For one thing, he could never establish a sobering distance between them. His sleep disorder was only the most obvious manifestation of his weakness. In unguarded moments he’d found himself drifting closer to her. When he tried to avoid her, he failed. She exerted a pull he could not resist. It reeled him back into her orbit whenever he was tempted to stray. He was constantly nudging her shoulder. In this context, her jealousy of Reinette or Sarah Jane or anyone else was laughable. She needn’t fear losing him. If anything, she should worry about having him underfoot for the rest of her life. He was like a tiny ship to the bright beacon of her sun.
A minute or two after she stormed out of the console room, he followed. He caught up with her as she reached her old room, but before he could do more than say her name, she slammed the door in his face. She opened it again to tell him in no uncertain terms to take her home. The door closed a second time and he stood there numbly, hearts hammering and stomach churning. He’d told her to close him out of her life by going to this room. Now she’d done it. She’d shut him out. She hadn’t precisely said she was leaving him, but the implication hung in the air between his nose and the firmly closed door. The thought of life without Rose made him physically ill.
He’d always avoided thinking about the inevitable day when she would be gone.
If this were the day…then it would be his fault.
Self-recrimination left a bitter taste in his mouth and squeezed his hearts together. As he drew in a shuddering breath, a sharp pang stabbed into him just below his navel. He rubbed his belly, frowning down at it and absently wondering if he was going to be one of those weird fathers he’d read about who go through sympathy pregnancies. Maybe it was the hummus sandwich he’d had at the party. Then, again, maybe it was something to do with true union. Maybe in the distant past all Gallifreyan fathers felt what their partners felt. It might explain why Omega begat his children on Earth women instead of his proper companion. Not for the first time, the Doctor wished he could still consult the long dead Time Lords for their wisdom. Pain hit again.
Wasn’t it too soon for cramps?
He tapped on the door and called plaintively, “Rose?”
A moment or two later he knocked again, louder.
“Go away!” she shouted.
“There’s no call to be rude,” he shouted back and then, in a voice that probably didn’t carry to her, added, “How’s your stomach?”
She didn’t answer. He leaned against the door and easily picked up the waves of raw emotion surging along the tributaries of their psychic link. It wasn’t like Rose to be so unreasonable. He’d seriously miscalculated her attitude toward family. Or toward him, he mentally amended. He’d been so sure she’d be happy. Eyes closed, cheek pressed to the cool door, he experienced her sense of betrayal. She was hurt and confused, not just irate. She’d trusted him, and somehow he’d failed her. He reached for the door handle, gripping it firmly for a moment, but then let it go. He could think of nothing helpful to say. Hopefully, she just needed a little time alone. Sighing, he pushed away from the door, telling himself he didn’t care about this, couldn’t care about it. She was being childish. But she had the right to be childish without interference.
Hands in his trouser pockets, head hanging low, he scuffed back to the control room. Turning every second of the last two days over in his mind, he searched for some clue to her antipathy toward having a child out there somewhere in the universe. He was in the middle of setting the coordinates when his control snapped. He indulged his own anger, bashing his way around the console. This wasn’t completely his fault. Rose had domesticated him, made him part of her family. Every word. Every gesture. Every look she cast at him said she loved him. Every stray thought he picked up from her mind told him she’d never been happier.
Union in blood was the only eternal union for a Time Lord. How could she reject it so utterly? It would cost her nothing but a few strands of DNA. Could she be so adamantly against children? Or did she want them only on her terms? It crossed his mind quite suddenly that left to her own devices Rose might abort the child. Wasn’t that what her people did with unwanted pregnancies? They even had a pill to do it cleanly, painlessly.
He grew angrier, colder, still at the thought. He couldn’t allow that. Not when there were so many other options available to them. But he also couldn’t make her submit to any of those options. Couldn’t make her do anything. She had as much right to decide the child’s fate as he did. What he could do was tell her the truth. He wasn’t about to settle into domesticity in some temporal backwater. He wasn’t going to endanger the Earth and neglect his duty to a hundred thousand worlds just so she could raise their child to be a proper little primate.
It would do no good at all to force human behavior down little Etta’s throat. Having a mum and dad to coo over her would only shake her confidence. Make her unable to travel alone through time and space. And she would want a TARDIS. Rose couldn’t outwit genetics. Other people had tried. Omega’s children had ended up on Gallifrey, every last one of them. Penelope had done her best to make the Doctor more human. But she’d only succeed in instilling desires he could never fulfill. He wanted things no Time Lord should ever want. A life he could never have, probably never tolerate, without going slowly mad. He wanted a home.
Rose wanted her mother.
Fine. So be it. He stubbornly fixed their course for Earth, her planet, her time. She wanted to leave him? Her choice. Not his. He couldn’t say, “But I love you” or “Please stay.” A Time Lord should love everyone…equally, wholly and without prejudice. No selfish love allowed. No wanting things to be different. No interference. Free will for all.
But this wasn’t the end of the argument. Like it or not, Rose Tyler was the mother of his child. He’d already interfered with her. As a Time Lord he was duty bound not to change the course of her world or her life, but what else had he been doing? Taking her away from home? Taking Mickey away from her? Touching her? Bonding with her? Impregnating her? The truth was he did nothing but interfere.
And now their child would suffer for it. Unless…he took it all back. He could put Rose into the dream state. Take the baby somewhere safe. Wipe the memory of her from Rose’s mind.
He could almost hear his old enemy, the Master, chuckle at the thought. “Are we so very different, then, Doctor?” he seemed to sneer. “You, the champion of free will. How convenient your piety is!”
Appalled by the mental comparison, the Doctor turned his back on temptation. Whatever Rose decided, he would support her right to choose. She was his…partner…not a child to be protected. And besides, he wasn’t sure he could suppress her memory. She’d let things slip recently about the Time Vortex, as if she recalled harnessing its power, despite the barriers he’d put up to shelter her from the memory.
Rose puzzled him, intrigued him. She was minimally educated and no brighter than the top fifteen percent of her contemporaries. But she had a mousetrap of a mind. It snapped down on tiny details, held onto ideas until she could make sense of them. He supposed they were alike that way, not the cleverest in their class but certainly the most unpredictable.
With the proper training and tools, Rose might even become a Time Lord one day. She had a soul uniquely suited to time travel. She didn’t belong on the Powell Estate any more than he did. She would wither and die in that stifling place, performing a pointless duty and longing to be free of it. He couldn’t allow her to ruin her life and the child’s and his. But he had no idea how to stop her. He certainly couldn’t keep her against her will.
But, it turned out, the TARDIS could.
He’d braced to jump time streams, when the rotor stalled. He pounded a panel with the side of his fist. Nothing. He ducked under the console to check for loose wires. Everything looked okay. Frowning, he resurfaced and took a few readings. They’d landed, but not on Earth. Not anywhere close. He stepped to the door, opening it a crack to survey the frigid atmosphere outside. Against all reason, the TARDIS had planet hopped in the same solar system. They'd traveled no more than a decade beyond their last stop. The Doctor considered the history of this region. There was no trouble brewing anywhere nearby. There was nothing nearby but the wildlife refuge he'd hoped to explore. Why were they stalled?
Maybe he’d simply miscalculated the refraction angles. He had been distracted. He reset the navigation field and once again pumped, dinged and punched in data. The central rotor shunted into action. When it stopped a few moments later, the Doctor groaned in frustration. They’d barely moved. They were still a thousand light years from Earth and at least twelve centuries behind Rose’s time. Outside the TARDIS was another inhospitable rock, a barren asteroid in Orion’s belt.
Forcefully closing the outer door, the Doctor glared at the machinery thrumming under the gratings beneath his feet. “We can’t keep her,” he said, firmly.
The ship burbled something and the console-mounted monitor flashed a brilliant white.
“We’re taking her home,” the Doctor insisted, stripping off his jacket and rolling up his sleeves in preparation for a fight with his ship. “Her choice. Free will and all that…rubbish.” Stroking a column as he strode by, he softly added, “She needs her mother.”
The TARDIS made no further protest. Neither did it purr in agreement. At the console, the Doctor pulled the monitor around to face him. This time he intended to make sure his instructions were processed to the letter. No more automatic systems. He switched everything to manual control. But before he could begin entering coordinates, he noticed the spinning circles under the last image of Rose’s embryo. He read the message twice before it sank in. Numbly, he tapped a button to replay the clip of the convergence.
As he watched the miracle unfold, a disembodying feeling of alarm crept up on him and pounced. He’d seen the images before, but somehow the wrongness of them hadn’t registered. There it was again: cellular division. Less than thirty minutes after conception. Every lesson he’d ever had, every scrap of information he’d ever read, on human reproduction zipped through his head as the monitor displayed a warning again: cellular division anomaly…DNA replication accelerated…initiate temporal dampening field immediately.
He said it quite softly at first. “Rose?” But as he spun about and sprinted down the hall toward her room, he let his swirling emotions power the shout.
“Rose!”
He skidded to a halt at her room. Her door stood open. There was no sign of her. He tried their room. Nothing. The kitchen and the gym also proved fruitless. Finally, he put his hand to the wall and asked his ship where she was. The answer came intuitively…in the shower.
He should have known.
***********************************************************
“Rose?”
She heard him murmur her name, outside her door, but stubbornly refused to answer. Could she not have one minute’s peace? His ship. His rules. Her eyes burned with tears again as she zipped open her rucksack to pack. She’d trusted him completely and he hadn’t even considered her feelings. Any more than he’d ever considered her privacy. He’d dragged her out of bed and out of baths, forced her out of a job and even refused to respect her wishes about Mickey traveling with them.
But her body was her own. Or it had been until he started slipping into her mind and making her dreams come true. She’d kept her illusions though, until this morning. She’d believed she was his partner, an equal. Now she knew better. And there was no escaping him. He was in her mind and her heart and something of his was growing inside of her.
The reality of an alien pregnancy nearly overwhelmed her. She crossed her arms and sank down on the edge of her bed. Packing forgotten, she rocked, her heart hammering with claustrophobic zeal. She wasn’t ready to give up her own life. She’d just about pulled free of her mother and Mickey. She’d just started putting herself first. Being pregnant meant going back to thinking about another person’s needs. As her mind whirled, the walls of her room began closing in on her like a winepress on grapes. For the first time since she’d initially come onboard, Rose saw the TARDIS as alien. The scent of the processed air and the ever-present roundels made her skin crawl. Everything said Time Lord. She couldn’t bear it.
She decided to go back to the Tahitian Waterfall Environment. Greenery obscured the walls there. The natural setting always soothed her nerves. She fled as soon as the Doctor abandoned his vigil at her door, telling herself she just needed a moment or two to adjust. But what she really wanted to do was hide from him. When he started shouting her name, she remained silent. She knew he would find her eventually. He always did. But this time she wasn’t going to help him. Let him shout the roof in. He could learn what it felt like to be ignored.
Her clothes were damp and chilly from the spray of the waterfall but Rose didn’t care. Perched on a rock, she skimmed a bare foot over the surface of a deep, still pool and then scooped up a handful of pebbles to toss into the water. She threw the tiny missiles in one at a time. They created concentric rings, which intersected in patterns reminiscent of Gallifreyan script. She remembered how she’d scribbled nonsense as a child and thought it was cursive. Now she thought she spotted the symbol for the number eight in these random patterns. That’s what she was to him, an ignorant child. She wasn’t even literate in his world. Small wonder if he felt like taking charge of everything.
She’d felt so clever traveling the stars. Sure she could handle the consequences. Death seemed like a pretty big consequence…and she’d faced it down several times. But it turned out death had nothing on new life when it came to scaring her silly. She was pregnant. With an alien baby. And not just any alien. The second coming of the Time Lords. There were probably prophecies about her. She probably had some nickname like his Oncoming Storm. Maybe Bad Wolf? What big eyes you have, Mum?? Had the Doctor planned this since the day they’d met? Certainly, he’d known it could happen. And he’d chosen not to tell her.
How many different kinds of stupid had she been? Falling in love with an alien, letting him take her away in his magic machine, giving up Mickey and her old life for…what? Adventure? Thrills? The most amazing sex she’d ever had? A man and a love like no other? Did he love her? He’d never said. But in unguarded moments he’d touched her in a certain way. Not just physically, but spiritually. The love was there in his eyes and his mind. He’d shown her the peerless beauty of the stars, sharing wonders with her the way a lover might share choice morsels from his plate. He hadn’t treated Mickey or Jack or even Sarah Jane with the same sort of deference.
Rose shook her head. What did it matter? Maybe he did love her, but it wouldn’t change anything. If she’d learned nothing else from her mother’s struggles, Rose had learned that love didn’t conquer all; her father had died despite loving her mother. Rose had decided very early on not to have children. Life was too uncertain. Feeling sorry for herself, Rose sniffled. It seemed to be her destiny to live her mother’s life all over again. So many of her neighborhood friends had ended up pregnant and alone. But Rose had always been careful and, yes, scornful of those who weren’t. But all of her precautions. All of those stern internal monologues. All of her mother’s dire warnings. All of it…had come to nothing.
For the first time, Rose truly appreciated how scared her mother must have been, newly widowed with a small baby. How had she coped? Rose tried to envision it, piecing together stories she’d heard all her life with this new insight she’d been granted. Her mum had taken in washing and worked as a home hairdresser. But Rose lacked her mother’s homemaking skills. Jackie Tyler had relied on friends and relatives to baby-sit. Grandma Prentice had helped out. Rose sighed. No Mickey. And she’d barely spoken to Shareen in the last two years. Her mum would help, of course, but it would be a hard road without little…Oh, so help her, they were not going to call her Etta…without the baby’s father.
Rose had no illusions about the Doctor staying with her or even visiting. He’d never gone back to see Sarah Jane, and she was the one he wanted to be his child’s mother. The Doctor belonged to the universe. Rose had come to accept that. She’d gotten over being jealous but she hadn’t gotten over her fear of losing him. Still, she knew him well enough to know he would never settle down. He certainly wasn’t going to turn his back on his duty as a Time Lord to help her raise a baby he’d planned to give away. And she couldn’t travel with him again until their child was at least fifteen or sixteen. By that time, she’d have arthritis and he’d have a new companion.
Rose tossed another pebble into the water. If she worked the night shift at one of the motorway’s all night diners maybe her mum could watch the baby. They’d be on the dole but they might cope. But what if the baby had two hearts or needed some kind of alien vaccination? What if it was a difficult pregnancy? She wouldn’t be able to go to hospital. These dire thoughts brought her back to some semblance of reason. She shook her head again.
“He would have thought of that,” she mumbled. Oddly comforted by the imaginary tragedy, she lightly touched her abdomen and whispered, “Don’t you worry. The Doctor won’t let anything happen to you.”
“Indeed, I won’t,” he said.
Startled, Rose glanced up to see him leaning against the doorframe on the far side of the room. He looked quite angry. His chin was high, his dark eyes blazed. The fingers of his right hand were pressed to the wall. The TARDIS had ratted her out, told him she was in the Tahitian Waterfall environment. Rose mentally cursed the busybody ship as the Doctor pushed away from the doorway. He headed for her at a determined pace, fishing the sonic screwdriver out of his pocket with one hand as he started to climb over rocks. Rose scrambled to her feet and backed to the edge of her perch.
“I don’t want to talk to you,” she said, in a brittle tone. “There’s nothing you can say to change my mind.”
“Yes. All right,” he said, mildly. “We needn’t talk. But I wonder if you would mind terribly not talking to me in the infirmary?” he asked. “Also, I need you to answer a few questions. Short answers will be fine. How’s your head? Are you in any pain?”
Before Rose could summon a response, he was at her side. He cut around her like a sheepdog herding a flock, seized her arm just above the elbow and started retracing his steps, hustling her along before him.
“Let go of me,” she declared, digging in her heels.
“Yes. All right,” he repeated in the same meek way as he released her. “Hold very still,” he ordered, looking directly into her face before returning his attention to the screwdriver. She did as he asked, stewing silently while he recalibrated the sonic device, pointed it at her navel and swept a tight blue beam across her abdomen, turning her yellow sweater momentarily green. Then, he aimed the screwdriver at her temple and took another reading from it. Grim faced, he turned abruptly toward the door. “Come on.”
“Wha’s wrong?” she demanded, holding her ground. When he tut-tutted, she snapped, “Tell me.”
Plainly agitated, he whirled back to face her. “Children can’t travel through time, Rose, as I’ve said. There’s radiation, background, foreground, mid-ground…there’s…temporal distortions, gravitation anomalies, alien parasites,” the list of dangers knotted in his mouth, making it a trial to speak, “Peril on all sides. Little…” he stopped dead on the name, dipping his chin vaguely at Rose’s midsection, before pushing out, “…not-Etta…is having some difficulty. We’ve stopped. I need to be sure she’s stopped, as well. I need to get both of you to the infirmary. Run a few diagnostics.” Refocusing on the screwdriver’s new reading, he distractedly asked, “Any nausea? Lightheadedness?”
“No and no,” Rose said without really considering the questions. Truthfully, she had been feeling a bit queasy. “What do you mean…stopped?” The Doctor shot a piercing glance at her but, after a tiny shake of his head and a long suffering sigh, turned away without answering. “What is going on?” Rose peeped. “Doctor…? Are you saying…? Is there’s something wrong with the baby?”
She stared after him in exasperation as he strode toward the door. Finally, moved by her curiosity, she trotted after him. Teeth worrying at her lower lip, she tried to make sense of his concerns. What could he mean by ‘make sure the baby had stopped?’ By the time they’d reached the hallway, she’d worked it out. As she started putting his current actions into context with his earlier warnings, icy tendrils of apprehension crawled along her arms. She hugged herself against the chill.
“Traveling,” she whispered then spoke louder, calling to him, “Do you mean traveling, Doctor?” When he kept walking, she put on a burst of speed, bounced around in front of him and demanded, “Doctor, do you mean she’s still time traveling…inside me?”
He halted so abruptly Rose had to trip to a stop and come back to him.
“Are you talking to me or not?” he asked. “I’ve lost track.”
“Oh…of all the…just answer my question.”
“Yes. All right.”
“And stop saying that…all resigned to your fate and everything,” Rose countered. “You sound just like my Great-Aunt Mabel.”
“Aunt Mabel?” the Doctor snarled. “Oh, you are very lucky I don’t…” he began, angrily but he caught himself in time. Sighing, he broke eye contact to stare into the middle distance for a beat. His shoulders slumped a little. When he looked back at her the fire had left his gaze and he was her sweet Doctor again.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m not trying to be difficult. Or…no…I suppose I was trying…but I understand you have a right to know what's going on. I just don’t have any answers, yet. I don’t know enough about what’s happening inside you. Etta…the baby… appears to be developing too quickly.” He consulted the screwdriver once more. “I’d say you’ve gone through about four days of your pregnancy in just under two hours. But we need to be sure of those figures. Infirmary,” he repeated, dropping a hand to the small of her back and steering her along again.
As they traversed the halls, the reality of her situation sent sweeping chills all over Rose’s body. They snaked up her arms and then down into her stomach. There the crawling sensation solidified into a great chunk of Titanic-sinking ice. She shivered, hugging herself. But she still didn’t see the problem with an accelerated pregnancy.
“That’s not so bad though, yeah? At this rate it’ll all be over in two months.”
“Oh, it will be over much sooner than that,” the Doctor said, “If I try to move this ship. You’ll both be dead before we’re halfway to Earth.”
“Dead?”
“What do you think would happen if someone tried to cram a half stone of baby into your abdomen just now?” A shadow of fear crossed Rose’s face, dulling her usually bright eyes. She shivered again. Seeing he’d frightened her, the Doctor stroked his hand up her back. “It’s not that bad yet,” he said gently, “We’ll try to fix it. But you’re going to need to have an open mind about this. I’m not sure what we’ll have to do to save you both. You’re not changing, Rose. Only the baby is.”
“I’m not changing…?”
He gave a terse nod as they made the turn into the infirmary. “Your womb needs to prepare for a fetus,” he went on, pointing her toward the examining tables before leaving her side. “That doesn’t happen overnight. Given time your body would slowly adjust to accommodate the growing baby.” He started opening drawers and cabinets. “Your organs would shift into new alignments, making room. However, just now…your body is under attack. And it is fighting back with every anti-viral in its arsenal.”
“That’s why I feel chilled?”
“Yes. And why I am in pain.”
Still standing at the door, Rose looked at him in surprise. “You’re in pain? But…?”
“Psychic link,” he murmured.
But he offered no further explanation. Instead he returned to her side and guided her to the nearest elevated exam table. He patted it so she would hop up. She did as he indicated, sliding her bum back to make herself more comfortable on the warmly cushioned surface. The Doctor went back to locating supplies. She watched silently as he fished assorted instruments out of various cupboards, lining up what he’d found on the countertop. Some of the tools looked more like torture devices than medical implements. A wave of nausea splashed over her and she saw the Doctor grimace, his hand dropping to his beltline.
“Sorry,” she muttered.
“Not your fault. And I imagine labor is much worse,” he said, trying to sound chipper.
They both inhaled deeply and exhaled again in perfect synchronicity as the discomfort eased. “I suppose you are a real doctor?” Rose inquired meekly. She’d heard him make the claim at least a dozen times but never knew if she believed it.
“Oh, yes,” he declared breezily as he stooped to retrieve a suitcase-sized machine from a lower cupboard. “Board certified on seventeen worlds…including Earth. Medical College of St. Bartholomew, Class of 1892.”
“1892? Have you taken your continuing education classes?”
“Been a little busy,” the Doctor replied. “Which means…unfortunately I am about as useful as a whale-bone corset in this emergency. And,” he sighed, “my specialty was definitely not obstetrics. Or…to put it another way: I don’t know nothing about birthing no babies.”
Rose would have smiled if she hadn’t been so frightened. “What are we going to do?” she asked, watching him open the suitcase machine like a tackle box, folding out level after level.
“Ideally? Get you to hospital. Preferably one of the earlier xenobiological ones on Gallifrey. Only we can’t. I can’t go back there without perpetuating disaster. Although…I suppose…,” he drawled, rotating at the waist to study her for a moment, “We might send you down to the surface alone…I wonder…” Giving his head a quick shake, he went on with his work, saying more briskly. “No. Far too dangerous. Anything could happen to you. Besides there’s no point in speculating until we solve this current crisis. We can’t move the TARDIS without killing you. Lie down, please,” the Doctor said as he extracted what looked like two plastic bangle bracelets from the top level of the suitcase machine. Each of the bracelets had a kite-tail of wires. “Try to relax,” he added, crossing to help her into the right position on the table.
After he’d shifted her a little, he snapped the plastic bands around both her right wrist and ankle. A few deft pokes of his fingertips set the wrist monitor flashing and beeping. Rose lifted her arm to look but he firmly forced her hand back into position over her navel and ordered her to lie still.
She complied, though her expression told him her patience was wearing thin. He gave her shoulder a pat before bouncing back across the room. Rose watched him consult the equipment. He could feel her eyes on him. And the diagnostic scanner seemed to be malfunctioning. Irritated, he fiddled with dials, tweaking the settings. The scanner was acting like it had never seen a human being before. The Doctor adjusted the band on Rose’s ankle and then retreated again to the cupboard. The scanner started pouring forth data. He squinted at the tiny screen and then at the larger print out before pulling his glasses from an inside jacket pocket. He gave the lenses a quick polish and, settling the specs onto his face, started reading.
Rose tried to relax as requested. The longer the Doctor took the harder it became.
“The good news is the latest developmental stage appears to be holding,” the Doctor finally told her. “You’re very close to implantation but there’s been no change in the embryo since we stopped moving.”
He glanced over his shoulder at her. His grim expression made her sit up and ask, “What’s the bad news?”
Crumbling the printout into a ball, the Doctor sighed. ‘Just like Aunt Mabel’ he thought but what he said was, “The bad news is you’ve got a rather high fever and we could be stuck on this asteroid for a very long time. No fuel for the TARDIS, no medicine or food to sustain us.” Snatching off his glasses, he settled his hip against the countertop. He tapped one earpiece against his lower lip as he illuminated the extent of the crisis. “We could theoretically last for a couple of years, rationing our current supplies. I could shut down all the auxiliary systems; jettison redundant rooms, etc. to conserve power. Proper nutrition would certainly become an issue at some point. But, provided there were no pregnancy complications, we could theoretically save your life.”
“But…?”
“But there are already pregnancy complications. And we would need to stay here much longer than is even theoretically possible if we hoped to save our child. Not only through the birth, but until she is old enough to time travel.”
“So we’re stuck.”
“We’re stuck. But on the bright side,” he added, with a heavy dose of sarcasm, “we will all be one big, happy, nuclear-age family when we starve to death.”
“Can’t we just…I don’t know…send a distress call or travel through space but not time? Find food…supplies? A proper doctor?”
“Yes, of course, but it takes time to travel through space,” the Doctor said, “even for a distress signal. Centuries in fact. Traversing light years in the blink of an eye is no easy task.” He folded his glasses back into an inside jacket pocket and began rummaging in the cabinets again. Pulling down a blue bottle, he read the label. Then, he shook a pill out into his palm. Crossing to Rose, he offered her the tiny pink tablet. “Here. Take this.” She pinched the pill from his palm but instead of swallowing it, eyed it warily. The Doctor didn’t appear to notice her discomfort. He went on explaining, using the bottle and his hands to act out the concepts, “The TARDIS travels quickly and easily from one world to another precisely because she can travel in time as well as space. There are other ways to travel, straight loop wormhole transduction, for example. But they would be just as risky. We are able to bypass the longer routes and minimize our risks by shortcutting through the temporal dimension. This keeps the…” he broke off to bob his chin at the tablet between her fingers. “Go on. Take it,” he urged. “You’ll feel better.”
“What is it?”
“Aspirin.”
“Really? Oh.” Embarrassed, she popped the pill into her mouth and swallowed.
“Well. No. But nearly,” the Doctor continued smoothly, turning away from her to place the bottle on the counter. He adjust a few of the dials on the suitcase-sized device. “It will do the same thing: lower your fever.”
Rose’s temper broke like an overstressed levee. All of her outrage and betrayal spilled into her voice as she cried, “That’s what I mean! Exactly that.”
As she leapt down from the exam table, the Doctor whirled to face her but he fell back a step, when she closed on him, unsure how to respond to her evident anger. “You would rather have a fever?” he guessed.
“No. But you can’t just give me something and lie to me about what it is. I know you’re smarter than me. Older. Wiser. Better educated. I know, maybe...you get tired of explaining things. But this is serious. This is real. Do you get that? Why won’t you tell me what’s going on? You’re nothing but secrets. Do you think I wouldn’t understand? How much effort does it take to say, ‘This could get you pregnant’, ‘this medicine is used to bring down fevers?’ Do you think I’m…what? Stupid…? A stupid ape?” Her voice cracked as tears glistened in her eyes. “I’m like a…a pet or something?”
“Pet?” he gaped. “A pet? Why would you think…? Is that what this is about? You think I look down on you? Honestly, I don’t,” he soothed, completely thrown by her outburst. He reached for her, took her face in his hands. “Rose, you can’t think I would…” he glanced down, carrying her gaze with his to her navel, “father a child on a…on someone I…on a…pet?”
“I can’t even read,” she countered, tears finally spilling over her lashes.
“Yes, you can,” he argued, letting his hands drop to her shoulders, steadying her. “I’ve seen you. We’ve read things together…Shakespeare. Dickens. Electronic Shaver Directions.” He gave her a few comical nods, “And, you’ll remember, I could make nothing out of those.”
“Not English,” she groused, impatiently, “Time Lord.”
“Gallifreyan,” he corrected.
“Your language,” she clarified, moving away from him. “Whatever you call it. I can’t read my own name in your language. I can’t count. Never mind flying the TARDIS. I’m here at your mercy and…”
“I’ll teach you to read,” he promised but then immediately recanted, grimacing and scratching his ear. “No, I won’t. Because you have to develop the sight first and you haven’t. Gallifreyan script is pan-dimensional. That means…we don’t use tenses. There’s no past…future…imperfect…because the relevance of a particular word, even a particular letter is intrinsically linked to when and where it appears. To read my language properly…you have to be able to see around corners. You have to know when and where you are.”
Rose sighed. She didn’t even understand his explanation. “It’s not just the reading. The point is that’s why you don’t explain things properly, you don’t think I’m smart enough. Because I’m not like Madame de Pompadour or any of your other…companions.”
“No, no,” he said, adamantly, “That’s not it at all. You're very bright. And it’s not fair you saying I don’t explain things, because I do…constantly running off at the mouth, tha’s me. But explanations take time and we…”
“What? Don’t have time?” Rose said, bitterly. “You just said we have nothing but! We’re stuck here, right? Until you figure this out? Maybe you should take a little time to think about what you’ve done to my life.” He reached for her again, knowing that one touch would calm her, but she swept her arm in a dramatic arc, forcing him back. “All of this? This is your life. Your ship. All of it says…Time Lord. Everything here is alien. And yours. Your ship. Your rules. Your way of doing things. What about what I want?”
“You want to raise this child as a human,” he inferred. “You and I and her, little…” he aimed a terse nod at her lower abdomen as he forced out, “Not-Etta. A proper Earth family with mum and dad and a…a car…with a…a,” he wrinkled his nose, looking positively ill, as he slid the bitter word off his tongue, “car-seat. Or a…what? A baby onboard sign in the rear window?”
Rose shot him a sullen glare. “I didn’t say that.”
“But it is what you want?” the Doctor insisted. “The domestic package.”
“What I want is to not be pregnant,” Rose corrected. “What I want is to have my life back and no choices in it involving you or…not-Etta or anyone else.”
“Yes, well, it’s a little too late for that now, isn’t it? You’re her mother. We will always be her parents. We can’t change that, Rose. The question is what kind of parents are we going to be?”
“No. No. That’s not the question. This is…it’s…bigger than what to do about the baby.” Rose bit down on her lower lip, shaking her head. Her fingers curled, grabbing at the air, as she searched for a way to clearly explain her frustration with this one-sided relationship. “This is about us, you and me. It’s…” Despite a quaking fear that threatened to buckle her knees, Rose forced herself to ask him for what she needed. “It’s like the shower, yeah? You and Jack between you decided I should be okay with sharing.” Afraid to look at him, see him rejecting her plea for equality, she began to pace off the small area between the door and the exam tables. “My way was wrong and as far as you were concerned, I should just get over it. So I did. I changed. You wanted Mickey onboard and you didn’t care what I thought about it. Now, he’s gone. Now, I’m expected to deal with your baby. Change everything about who I am and what I want. I don’t want children. Do you get that?”
“Yes, of course, but…”
“No! You don’t. I know because you just assume this is all going to go your way. I’ll go along because that’s what I do. Calling her Etta.” Her voice turned shrill. “You never even asked me about children. We never sat and talked about this because you… you either think I’m too stupid to have an opinion or you just don’t care what I think. What I want. It’s like I’m nothing but a noise in the room. Someone to keep you company. No thoughts of my own.”
The Doctor stared at her, his mouth open. His breathing turned ragged as he fought through his initial, visceral reaction to her complaints. He hadn’t been expecting anything close to this and the surprise caused his respiratory bypass to kick in. A hundred retorts log-jammed in the back of his throat. But nothing came out of his mouth. He stood very still as he processed his feelings, his attention fixed on Rose. He studied her face. Saw the truth of what she was saying in her eyes. Then, he lowered his head and sank back against the edge of the counter, bracing his hands behind him. Staring at a spot on the floor midway between them, he murmured, “Is it like that?”
“It feels like it.”
The room faded away as he considered her grievance. Was he selfishly forcing her to do all the adapting? Of course not. Obviously not. He’d changed so much in the last two years. Changed to please her. Regenerated to please her. He was barely Gallifreyan now. He’d been domesticated. Gone to Christmas dinners. Had afternoon teas with her mother. For the love of all that was holy, he’d worn a paper crown on his head. But she had no way of knowing what he’d been like before. How cold he’d been in the face of emotional commitment…closing the door on Susan, abandoning Sarah Jane and Tegan…and Ace. He’d mourned them, of course. But not like he would mourn Rose. Rose would leave a scar behind when she left him.
Even knowing him a little as he’d been, she didn’t see what he’d become because of her. She must have assumed some of the more obvious changes were due to the regeneration. Or maybe she’d failed to notice the changes because they’d started as soon as he’d taken her hand in that shop. He thought about her reaction to Sarah Jane, putting it into this new context. “You felt this way about her once,” she’d said. Did Rose really believe he’d cared about Sarah Jane the same way he cared about her?
He glanced up to find Rose watching him warily. She actually looked frightened and that cut him to the quick. “I’m a Time Lord,” he told her, as if saying it explained everything.
“I know,” she sighed.
He shook his head sharply. “But you don’t,” he said. “That’s just it. You don’t understand what it means. And how could you? You don’t know what we were like. What I was like…before I met you.” She drew in breath to contradict him again but he forestalled her by crossing quickly to her side and taking her hand. “Please, Rose. Let me tell you. Sit down for a minute and we’ll talk this out. I promise I’ll listen to you.”
Rose closed her eyes. It was on the tip of her tongue to deny him, to say she didn’t want to sit down but he grazed his fingertips along her cheek and her resistance melted. If they were ever going to get past this, they would both have to give a little. Opening her eyes, she looked up into his. He seemed so concerned, so earnest in his appeal. She focused on his mouth, moistening her lips as she remembered kissing him. He was such a tender lover, almost always putting her first. Just this morning she’d trusted him completely. He smiled as she relaxed and gently pulled her into a hug. She let her hands slide up his back. Then, she turned with him as he guided her to the exam table. They both hopped up and sat, side by side. But they remained silent for a good while, the Doctor toying with her fingers.
Finally, he asked, “What do you want to do about the baby?”
“I don’t know,” she breathed, shaking her head. “I wasn’t pregnant yesterday. Isn’t there some kind of...?”
She felt his fingers twitch and stopped herself before she could ask him about a morning-after pill. As much as she wanted this to be over, she couldn’t seriously imagine aborting the Doctor’s baby. He wanted it too much. On the other hand, she didn’t want it at all. The thought of it filled her with bitter dread. Maybe Sarah Jane was the answer.
He nodded as if he’d heard her unspoken musings and they sat quietly, again. After a long pause, he said, “None of this would have happened to you if I hadn’t interfered in your life.”
“We don’t know that,” Rose said, a while later. “Maybe I’m…supposed to be a mum…but I’m scared.”
His next contribution to the conversation took them down a side road. “Time Lords don’t share,” he said. “We don’t ask permission to do things. We’re like tigers or…or polar bears, solitary...with all of time and space our territory. From the moment he’s able to walk until the day he dies a true Time Lord has no need for company. I’m a bit of an anomaly, you see? A misfit.” Rose smiled slightly, favoring him with what he considered an adoring glance. He longed to ask her what the look actually meant but this wasn’t the time. He sighed, and she slid a hand down his leg to gently squeeze his knee.
“But you’re not like them.”
“We were apex predators on our home world and wholly untrustworthy. We preyed on the universe until we were forced to withdraw from it. Do you see, Rose? We withdrew from the universe for its own good? Time Lords don’t do domestic. Why else do you think we’d have to drug our females before mating with them?”
“Yeah, I wondered about that.”
“It’s because we can’t bear to be that close to, that…open with, one another. We are so lacking in trust we must literally be mentally linked before we can reproduce. And, oh yes, I am very much like them. Or I was for nine hundred years. Nothing touched me. Always okay…” In a voice so soft she could barely hear it, he added, “Until I met you.”
Rose didn’t know what to say. The Doctor she knew was a force for good in the universe. She’d seen him angry, hard and cold with it. But she’d never believed he would harm her or anyone else. He’d told her he was responsible for the death of all his people but it couldn’t be that simple. He hadn’t been able to destroy the Daleks, knowing he would also destroy the Earth. And Sarah Jane Smith had loved him before, several regenerations ago. So, despite what he said about how he’d changed, he’d always been the Doctor. He was generally unarmed, if not exactly defenseless, and almost always benevolent. And maybe he didn’t share his feelings or his thoughts with her. But he was hardly a xenophobic loner. He cared about others. He’d had any number of traveling companions. Who were these people of his that they were so unlike him?
“Even our society, the peaceful republic we were so very proud of, existed only because of our blood ties. Each of us was mentally linked to every other Time Lord through our clans.” He nodded pointedly. “And through selective crossbreeding each clan was joined to every other. We learned to get along, but our benevolence was nothing but an illusion. We were xenophobic to a fault, first using other species for sport and then completely isolating ourselves. Every cultural exchange was steeped in ritual. Without our rituals, without our culturally imposed ties and stifling formalities, each of us would become, quite literally, a law unto himself. That’s what I am, Rose. A renegade. The Penelope Experiment proved that beyond any doubt.”
“I thought…wasn’t she your mother?” She immediately corrected herself, “I mean, I know she wasn’t your real mother but she raised you.”
“Yes, she did. She was…very important to me. But she was only part of an experiment. One designed to see if other species could influence our behaviors. There were ten of us in her care…The Master, The Rani, The Pearl, The Cat, The Monk…”
“The Doctor,” Rose murmured.
“Indeed,” he agreed, giving her a lopsided grin. His voice took on an indulgent undertone as he added, “She couldn’t pronounce our real names.”
“Well, you have to admit it’s a tongue twister,” Rose said. She took a deep breath and tried to say his name, “Whn’txchat’lle…” He cut her off with two fingers to her lips.
“No. Never say it,” he admonished. “Forget you even know that name. It’s far too dangerous to know.”
“But I thought…in your mind, I saw you’d just forgotten it.”
“I had. On purpose. I should take it from you, purge your memory. It’s not safe.”
Bristling, Rose pulled away from him. “What do you mean take it? Make me forget? Can you do that?” It struck her, quite forcefully, that he may already have done it. There was a blank spot in her memory. After she'd looked into the heart of the TARDIS, she'd blacked out. Sometimes she picked at the edges of the blackness like a child might pick at a scab. She'd learned a few things that way. But there was more to know and what if it was the Doctor who had made her forget in the first place? He never spoke of what happened on Satellite 5.
She cast a sidelong look at him. He seemed to have stalled. For a moment he stared into space, apparently lost in thought. Then, he shook himself and went on as if they had never spoken of his name at all. As if the last few minutes had never happened.
“In a way," he said, "I was Penelope’s star pupil. The others were removed from her care quite early on. As soon as it became obvious the experiment was failing. They’d…imprinted on her…picked up certain…personality traits: Human arrogance, cunning, religious zealotry and that endless curiosity. But not the essence of humanity, not the soul of it.”
When he glanced at Rose she nodded her understanding but her mind was still worrying at the puzzle of his unspeakable name. This wasn’t the first time he’d veered away from any discussion of it. There was more to this than the story she’d read so easily in his mind. More to it all than a lonely little boy who’d forgotten his name because nobody used it. What was he hiding? Had someone played with his mind the way he’d just suggested he might play with hers? With some difficulty she forced attention back onto their present problems, saving her questions about names and memories for another time.
“When the others were removed, I was left with her as a…a control, I think. Though, I believe, my family was...what’s the word…pleased? …intrigued? …by my unique development. I became something else. Not a Time Lord. But certainly not human. Impatient with ritual, I craved change. I wanted to know…what was out there. I was chaos in my society, a law unto myself. Just like the Master and the Rani…and all the rest. I stayed with Penelope until she died. She aged. Faded. There was nothing I could do to stop it.”
Rose squeezed his hand, drawing him out of the painful past and back to her side. What kind of parents would allow a child to suffer like that? she wondered and then answered her own question: the same kind who would give their baby to a stranger, an alien.
“But don’t you see,” Rose said, “This is exactly why we can’t leave our baby with Sarah Jane. She’ll need you to explain all this to her. She’ll be lonely, too. Out of place. Never knowing who she really is.”
“But she will know. I told you. We’ll visit. All the time.”
“Weekend custody,” Rose scoffed. “My best friend, Shareen, yeah? Her dad’s got that kind of arrangement. Comes up every other Saturday and takes her to the country for a few days. But it’s not like she really knows him. It’s not like they can bond on a car trip, is it? Things happen in life and if you miss them you can’t go back.” She laughed then. “Or…I suppose…you can. But what about her first date? When she gets her ears pierced…or her heart broken. We won’t be there to help or see.”
She slid her knee onto the table, shifting to face the Doctor as she went on, “There were times when Shareen was all put out because her dad had missed a play she was in at school or something, and I’d think I was the lucky one. ‘Cause my dad had a good reason for not being there. What kind of reason will we have, Doctor? Just traveling? And what if…” Again she hesitated not wanting to give her fears voice. “What if…you get another traveling companion? Shareen’s dad remarried and after that he stopped coming up so much. Sixteen years is a long time. Anything could happen.”
You could leave, you mean, the Doctor thought, die…fade into nothing. But he only said, “It’s not going to be sixteen years for us. TARDIS remember? I don’t suppose it will be more than a few weeks. We could hop straight to the end, pick her up the next minute, if you liked. But as you said, there are other things to consider. Her healthy development. Birthdays and…and trips to the zoo…lessons about warp engines…pony rides…all the things little girls care about. We’ll have to be careful not to cross our time lines or she’ll get confused.”
“I didn’t say we were doing this,” Rose reminded him, “leaving her with Sarah Jane. In fact, I said we weren’t going to do that. I’m just telling you why it’s a particularly horrid idea. And you said we can’t do it anyway. Cause we’re stuck here.”
“I’ve been thinking about that, we might travel laterally as you suggested earlier, if I recalibrate the temporal stabilizers. Could kill us? More likely kill the baby? And it won’t get us any closer to the twenty-first century in any case.” He broke off and stared at her with wide-eyed inquiry. “Do you have any other ideas? Other than Sarah Jane, I mean? If you don’t want children…what do we do?”
Startled he was asking her, Rose didn't know what to say for a minute, but then she sat up straighter and declared, “Okay, first things first. We need to find a way to not be stuck. Is there any way you can think of to protect the baby?”
He rubbed his cheek, squinting, mouth pursed, as he thought about it. “If we could isolate her somehow…say we still had a zero room…but we don’t. Maybe we could duplicate the effect…on a small scale…miniscule. I wonder…” Wondering left him silent as he jumped down from the table. Lost in thought, he absently removed the monitor band from Rose’s ankle. “We could…theoretically…travel without harming you or little not-Et….” He’d been walking away from Rose but he suddenly shifted gears, turning back to her to ask, “Why not Etta? Perfectly good Earth name and you’re dead set against it. I might have insisted on something from my own world.”
“Look, we can’t call her Etta.” Rose said, bracing against his offered hand before sliding her feet to the floor. “She’s bound to get teased as it is without giving her a stupid name. Half-alien? She’ll have a hard enough time of it. And she’ll never find Etta on any of the doodads. All those things kids like with their names on them like…I don’t know…plaques for the door and little licenses for their bikes. But mostly we can’t call her Etta because eventually you’d have to introduce us to people. I’m the Doctor and this is Rose and Etta.” She let it sink in for a moment and then, pantomimed the introductions again, stressing, “Rose-Etta.”
“Oh,” he said. And then tossing his head back he repeated, “Oh! But that's marvelous!” Bending his knees, he bounced a little, grinning as the absurdity of the name hit him. He leaned into Rose’s shoulder in a show of affection, forgetting their argument in the glow of the shared joke.
“Marvelous? Puns on your own daughter's name? Mind you,” she said, nudging him in the side, “Be really funny if, instead of Smith, you started calling yourself Dr. John W. Stone.?”
He pretended to introduce them to company. “Rose…Etta…Stone.” Shaking his head, he reached for Rose’s wrist to unfasten the wired bracelet. “Yes, I can see the problem with that. Might lighten the mood in precarious situations. But...no...I see your point. So, here’s a bit of involvement for you. What shall we call her, if not Etta?”
Rose frowned. “Do we have to name it?”
“Not it…her,” he corrected, with a little pout. “And oh, yes. We can’t call just keep calling her something generic. Like ‘the offspring.” It would damage her psyche. Give her some kind of complex.”
“Like you, Doctor?” Rose said with a smile. “You got a complex, then?”
“More than one,” he admitted, tossing her an affectionate look over his shoulder before giving his attention to straightening up the countertop. “And she’s going to be half-human besides. Humans need concrete identities, Rose.”
“All right, then,” Rose sighed. “What about…Susan?”
“What about her?” The Doctor asked as he tucked both monitors back into their case and snapped the lid shut on them.
“It’s a name, isn’t it? Susan.”
The Doctor was reaching up when she said this, putting things away. The blue bottle of pills slipped from his hand and shattered on the countertop. Rose jumped, staring at him with the same startled expression he had just turned on her.
“Wh-what did you say?” he stammered, his pale skin ashen. “What?”
His pallor and his intent gaze scared Rose. She had to force the words out. “I said…we could call her Susan. But if you don’t like it…”
He charged her, grapping her arms above the elbows and shaking her very gently but also quite pointedly. “Why? Why that name?” he demanded. “Did you read it somewhere? Have I mentioned her? Did you see a photograph or…read it in my mind? Why?”
“Why what? Who are you talking about?’
“Susan,” he hissed. His eyes showed too much white as he glanced down at her belly. “Why...pick...that name? Why...Susan?” he ground out, between clenched teeth.
“Suzette,” Rose squeaked as he tightened his grip on her arms, almost hurting her. “It's my mum’s middle name, Suzette. I’ve always liked it. But for the plaques and things…” she twisted her body to be free of him but he held on, “…better if it’s Susan, yeah?”
“Oh…no. No, no, no, no, no….” he wailed as he broke away from Rose and staggered to the counter. Clutching it for support, he let denial bend him double. “This can’t be happening,” he insisted. But it was happening. Denying it seemed slightly mad. Pushing back from the counter, he scrubbed both hands through his hair and then threw himself into pacing back and forth. “But it did happen, didn’t it?" he told himself. "It has to happen. She had to come from somewhere. Why not now? Why not Rose? Oh…Rose.” He tugged on the wild tufts of his hair as he recalled how angry she'd been about leaving the baby with Sarah Jane. “This is too much. She’ll never agree to it. Never forgive me.”
“Are you talking about me?” Rose asked, stepping into his path, “Because I’m still here.”
He was too frightened, too lost in the possibilities just around the corner to hear her. Skirting her, he went on muttering and pacing. She blocked him, again, taking his arm.
“Doctor,” she snapped, “Stop it. You’re scaring me.”
He started to jerk away but her fear reached him. He drew in a sharp breath and then sobered, becoming aware of her again. Meeting her eye squarely, he said, “She’s going to burn.”
It was Rose's turn to jerk back in alarm. Her lip curled as she repeated, “Burn?”
The Doctor reached out a hesitant hand, longing to press his palm to her belly. But he didn’t dare. He stopped short, fingers curling like a wilting flower. He was suddenly afraid to touch her. “Susan,” he nodded at Rose’s navel, “That’s not a random name. You plucked it out of the air. But…I know her.”
“How can you? She hasn’t even been…oh, time machine, right.”
“This means something. Because I didn’t know she was your child. I didn’t know you and my not knowing is a clue. It tells us what to do if we can just think it through. I know one thing: I know I don’t know what happened. And that narrows down the time and the place. And I know how Susan came to be where she was. And that,” he declared, pointing a triumphant finger at her, “narrows down the regeneration.”
“You’re saying you knew our baby before? In another regeneration?” Rose said, putting his rambling comments into some kind of order.
“Yes, she was older, when I remember meeting her. Old enough to travel in the TARDIS. She recognized me as I was then…as her grandfather. But I didn’t recognize her. All I could tell for sure was that we were blood relations.”
“What happened to her?”
The Doctor didn’t answer for a moment and then he said, quietly, “She didn’t survive the Time War.”
Rose winced. “She died?” The loss was unexpectedly painful.
“She will. For me…she already has. For you…I can’t be sure. All I know is I can’t see her. I can’t touch her. She still exists in the past but if I enter her time stream, she won’t. She’ll burn like the rest of my people burned.”
“But you’re crossing her time stream right now,” Rose protested.
He gave a quick terse nod. “Maybe it’s too soon. I’ve already done this. I did it before, don’t you see? I must have. I must be ‘the Other.’ But I have no idea how..or how long we have. There will come a day, a moment when it’s too late. If we stay here, if we linger beyond that moment…she’ll burn…and so will you, Rose. You’ll both die,” he clarified. “Casualties of the Time War.”
“But if we try to move,” Rose said, getting the complete grim picture, “We’re just as dead.”
END THIS PART
AUTHOR'S NOTE: For the New Skool Readers...Susan Foreman was/is the Doctor's first companion. She was introduced by him as his grandaughter and refered to him as "Grandfather." There are many theories (some of it book canon...very little TRUE canon) about her origins and the truth of their blood relationship. I am going to use some of the book canon but I will be using it to my own ends. To learn more about what is known/accepted about Susan...follow this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Foreman
But don't expect you will learn too much that will spoil this fic. ;->
PART EIGHT
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-25 04:20 am (UTC)*rips out own heart and presents it to rabid as a way of thanking her for continuing this fic*
AHAHA THANK GOD I ALWAYS GO TO BED LATE. THANK YOU RABID! :D *goes to read*
SQUEE!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-25 07:08 am (UTC)poor susan. :(
Oh...look...your still beating heart...
From:(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-25 05:25 am (UTC)First you made me chuckle with the Gray Mouser reference (an old old favorite of mine).
Then the complications of an alien pregnancy.
And now Susan, the Other and the Time War!
Wow! You've tied in some amazing threads here, taking this well beyond the realm of the smut fic.
Excellent!
Smooches your little Grey Mouser lovin' nose!
Date: 2006-08-25 06:16 pm (UTC)Yes, Susan...the Other...the Time War. And alien pregnancy complications...and all because these two can't keep their bodies off each other. :hee:
Thanks for the touchstone comment...Go Mouser!
Rae
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-25 05:55 am (UTC)This chapter is intense. The arguments over the baby and the revelation about Susan. Oy.
I really love how you wrote both point of views about the baby and expanded from there to other issues. It's clear you put a lot of thought into this. This fic is heavy on the shading of gray. There's no clear 100% right/wrong answer to any question or situation.
It's interesting how had the Doctor and Rose not really understand each other's point of view. I found that this rings true to reality. Misunderstanding or not understanding period leads to a lot of conflicts. A lack of understanding lead to conflict in this fic too.
Susan. What a total mindf**k. Susan is the Doctor and Rose's daughter. I'm not too familiar with this character, so I don't really understand why the Doctor thinks he can't be involved in her life. (All I know is that she's the first companion and called the Doctor "Grandfather".) Has there ever been any reference to her parents in the old!Who? I just know that the Doctor's probably hurting a lot already knowing (or at least assuming) Susan's fate. I think that's one of the worse things a parent could ever face. Already knowing your child will die and not being able to do something about it. (Well, I guess the Doctor could mess with the timeline, but that's just not a good idea.)
I have to admit that I still side with Rose on the pregnancy issue. Of course, this makes perfect sense because I'm human and I see things from a human perspective. I still can't find myself agreeing with the Doctor at all, no matter how compelling his view may be.
I was going to type more here, but then my brain fell asleep. Oh well...
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-25 10:13 pm (UTC)You rock. Best pair of sentences ever, especially the latter one. ;)
Well...in my canon...the Doctor feels...
From:Re: Well...in my canon...the Doctor feels...
From:Re: Well...in my canon...the Doctor feels...
From:Nope...Susan was exceptionally bright
From:Re: Nope...Susan was exceptionally bright
From:(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-25 06:00 am (UTC)Seriously, I saw the update and just about died of happiness, that's what this fic does to me.
Susan. That complicates things beyond what my mind can comprehend, but i'm sure you can explain it all neatly for all of us who are feeling just a wee bit confused.
*flits off to read again*
Gives you back your soul...
Date: 2006-08-26 12:46 am (UTC)Susan does indeed complicate things...if it IS Susan. If it isn't Susan...boy is the Doctor about to do something very bad to Rose for no good reason. You will have to tune in and find out.
Do not die of happiness until you know how the fic ends. That would be a shame.
And thanks so much for the happy dance of joy over this chapter. I'm glad I gave you something to feel good about. You certainly gave me the good feelings with your expansive feedback. It was much appreciated.
Rae
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-25 06:29 am (UTC)Polishes my plot-twist device
Date: 2006-08-26 12:47 am (UTC)Rae
“Oh…no. No, no, no, no, no….”
Date: 2006-08-25 06:32 am (UTC)I couldn't breathe for just a second when it hit me what you'd done.
Very well written. But god.
Yep...it's bad...
Date: 2006-08-26 12:49 am (UTC)Because he's gone from thinking this is something he can totally handle (unlike Rose) to seeing this as a gut-wrenching mistake that could cost him not only Rose...but his own past identity. Without Susan...would he have even left Gallifrey at all?
Rae
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-25 06:43 am (UTC)Hope I didn't disappoint you
Date: 2006-08-26 12:53 am (UTC)Also, now...I point at Doomsday...plenty of conflict...and yet...plenty of love, too.
Rae
thanking you for the feedback.
Re: Hope I didn't disappoint you
From:(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-25 07:06 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-25 07:08 am (UTC)God, I don't know how I'm going to hang on through the suspense of waiting for the next chapter; I spent the last three weeks of LJing anticipating nothing else but this chapter.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-25 07:11 am (UTC)Yes....my muse is on some interesting crack ;->
From:whiskey tango foxtrot
Date: 2006-08-25 08:36 am (UTC)Well I suppose she could have said Grandfather to not freak him out as much or mess with the timeline. *tries to reason it out*
Dang, it would indeed suck if she does burn along with Gallifrey. But I'm thinking there's more possibilities here than just that. And how are they even going to get out of this predicament! Oh my oh my, they just can't go a day without a crisis can they?
For a minute I was scared you were going to have something go horribly wrong with the baby and they'd lose it. I admit we'd never see it coming, but how cruel. I'm glad I was wrong. At least... for now. Nah, I don't see that happening. At least not now, not if she really is Susan. That still makes my brain stutter and twitch.
Now that I'm able to think in complete sentences, I am very glad to see how you had them sit down and talk about it. Maybe it's not all out there yet, but they're certainly trying to do their best at what they need to do right now: communicate.
And yay for the tardis being smarter than the Doctor, or at least, a bit faster on the uptake on details. That could have been a lot worse. You know, I always did wonder how they got their food in the Tardis. You never see them eating so to speak. Or sleeping for that matter, but you know it happens somewhere.
And on the Peter Pan reference. Wendy's daughter was Jane. Sara-Jane... weird. I suppose next in line is Margaret. *shakes head* I'm thinking too much about this.
Well...don't get too confident...
Date: 2006-08-26 06:14 am (UTC)Nah! I won't do that...at least not in this fic. ;->
But how ARE they going to get out of this one? Bet they have to work together! You have put your finger on the very question. A lot depends on the baby actually being Susan...if she's not...if the Doctor has miscalculated...things might get very dicey for Rose.
As for the TARDIS...yep, she's a smart girl. Notice how she didn't want to land on the Impossible Planet...she knew her people were going to be in trouble there. "Touch of indigestion", my eye! Bah! And just as an aside...I like to think the BBC censors wouldn't let us see the sleeping arrangements. ;-> Though...really...it was the BBC budget that wouldn't stretch to more rooms in the TARDIS. I hear they have fixed that issue and we will see more rooms this coming season. My hope is we see Rose's room (all shrined out to her).
Thanks for the thoughtful commentary. I'm not going to think about Peter Pan anymore...but yeah, definitely one of his complexes, I imagine.
Rae
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-25 09:44 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-26 04:51 pm (UTC)Oh...we will be turning back to smutty fun
From:Re: Oh...we will be turning back to smutty fun
From:(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-25 10:15 am (UTC)Speaking of really, really ace things...
Date: 2006-08-26 06:17 am (UTC)Thanks for the feedback. I'm glad you think the fic just gets better and better...I hope it continues to please.
Rae
(no subject)
I have to admit now that I was holding you at arm's length, narrative-trust-wise, when we hit the baby revelation.
Now I am not just regained but thoroughly captured. You don't for a moment flinch away from any of the things that Need To Be Here, even though some of them are very subtle and almost no one really goes there. Rose's free will. The sense that the Doctor is in fact very dangerous.
The tantalizing bit with the name.
The oath? I hope we see more on that.
Wow. And wow. And I am finally going to rec this to my very seriously anti-baby spouses, because exactly where every other pregnancy story goes wrong, yours goes right.
No sense in flinching...
Date: 2006-08-26 06:23 am (UTC)I'm happy that you are finally feeling confident enough to rec me to others...your spouses? plural? :Rabid wonders if you live in the Middle East...or Mid-West...know Donny Osmond personally...or just had a typo there?: No matter what...I'm glad that you are feeling better about the baby!fic.
Rae
Re: No sense in flinching...
From:That was going to be my fifth guess ;->
From:Re: That was going to be my fifth guess ;->
From:(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-25 11:24 am (UTC)Wasn't expecting that twist. It's brilliant!
Look forward to reading the next chapter! :)
Thanks for the feedback
Date: 2006-08-26 06:24 am (UTC)Rae
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-25 01:14 pm (UTC)I also love the explanation of Time Lords as solitary predators, and that they had to stop being what they were born to for the sake of the universe. That in itself makes them a lot more sympathetic. I also loved the explanation of the anomalous Time Lords like the Master and the Rani, because really they are predatory creatures, different manifestations of the worst of the Time Lords (the Master's megalomania and the Rani's unethical and immoral pursuit of scientific knowledge).
I've actually seen the idea of Susan being born to a future Doctor once before many moons ago in a Who fic. It was in an 11th Doctor story (this was back when there were just 8 Doctors, no 9th or 10th Doctor yet). But that author didn't have the consequences of the Time War to consider. If anyone is interested in that story (which is very good) it's archived at whofic.com (start with the Synaesthesia Trilogy (three parts), and there's a sequel called Sacred Rites (also three parts)):
http://www.whofic.com/viewuser.php?uid=9
I'm surprised to hear it's not very common
Date: 2006-08-26 06:33 am (UTC)I do think the Time Lords were a very odd bunch. All of that ritual and look how they turn on one another. Also, you can see the predatory nature in the Master and the Rani...and really...on occasion in the Doctor. He's a happy tom cat of a predator, of course, but he's still quite self-contained and somewhat dangerous. One of the few things I loved about the Tom Baker era was watching him deal with the other Time Lords.
Thank you for the feedback, the insight into what the chapter brought to your mind...and the link to the other story.
Rae
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-25 01:26 pm (UTC)And I adore your "Oh!" icon...where is that look from?
Date: 2006-08-26 06:04 pm (UTC):HEE:
Thanks for the feedback.
Rae
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-25 03:11 pm (UTC)So, they're starting to get it together then *clang!* they can't move the TARDIS or the baby (and Rose) is in danger and *WHAM!* the baby might be/is Susan... My head is spinning from all the twists and turns! Amazing update and I'm just dying to see where the heck this is all going!
Yes...they are having some troubles...
Date: 2006-08-26 06:44 pm (UTC)This part of Disheveled is set during that time because it is about the assorted issues that might come up to bring about that change. Mostly issues of trust. I've said it before but one of my favorite couple moments from Rose and the Doctor is in Doomsday when she's outlining his plan to get rid of her and he keeps saying "yeah" and not meeting her eye...until he fails to say "Yeah" after she says "Forever." He can't bear to think of her being gone...forever. I loved that.
Thanks for the feedback. I always look forward to reading your take on a chapter.
Rae
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-25 04:19 pm (UTC)Also, I'm intrigued by the project the Doctor, Master, Rani, etc. were involved in. Considering their xenophobia, it's fascinating that the Time Lords must have felt they could benefit from a human influence. Were they trying to develop more sociable/socialized Gallifreyan, to ease the difficulty of propogating the species? That's certainly tinkering with the most basic nature of a species.
And the romantic side of me enjoyed reading how very devoted the Doctor really is to Rose. After the last chapter, I thought that perhaps that he should actually say something of his feelings to her despite his reluctance, since she was feeling insecure. But they seem to be more or less on the same page. They still need to do some serious talking, but they're finally starting to work on their misunderstandings. Maybe it would be easier for them both to do it mentally? Maybe with a bout of cnidocytes. ;-D
I'm curious why the Doctor felt that extending Rose's life would deny her free will. I know you've indicated that Time Lords don't like to ask permission, but is he certain Rose would refuse? Sure, she was spooked by Cassandra, but would she really object to some procedure extending her lifespan for him?
Oh, and *Susan*. Man. Can't wait to see how that unfolds.
I think what truly makes this story so compelling is the level of thought put into what makes the Doctor an alien. Scratch the surface and he seems human. Get down to brass tacks, the basic functioning of another species and
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-25 04:25 pm (UTC)Previously on Binah comment...
the differences in the two species become magnified.
Thank you for writing this.
Free will and oaths...extended life spans and such
From:(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-25 04:36 pm (UTC)Oh...a sweet comment I did not say thank you for...
Date: 2006-09-12 04:51 am (UTC)Seriously, happy to see you liked the chapter and the way the story is wrapping around itself. Time paradoxes can be fun, yeah?
Rae
Re: Oh...a sweet comment I did not say thank you for...
From:(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-25 05:42 pm (UTC)Whoah! I didn't expect the child to be (possibly be) Susan! Does that mean that they are set in stone though? What will happen I wonder? I suspect that they are going to keep the name but how to protect her/save her I don't know how that will happen.
Another wonderful chapter.
Glad to see I have you wondering
Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts with me. Great to see you still reading along. HUGS!
Rae
loving it!
Date: 2006-08-25 06:59 pm (UTC)This fic has surprised me all the way, it's really done well. I hope you continue for a long time.
Re: loving it!
Date: 2006-08-25 09:00 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-25 08:34 pm (UTC)Seriously, I'm a little choked. If I tried to talk to someone out loud just now they'd get crazy choked babble.
I. CAN'T. WAIT. TO. SEE. WHAT. HAPPENS. NEXT.
OMFG. And, just because I can never say it enough: I LOVE your charactarization of Rose and the Doctor. Just so ON.
You may say that every time if you like...
Date: 2006-08-26 12:32 am (UTC)SQUEE!
I love that I manage to stay in character for people even when I am hopping all over the emotional trampoline. One of my beta babes made a comment about the "Rose...Etta...Stone" exchange, pointing out that it was just like the two of them to go off into the slapstick humor during this big emo chapter. And I totally agree...whenever I'm writing them...they always tend to talk about whatever crosses their minds in the moment. Like they've got A.D.D. or something.
Thanks for the feedback. Hopefully, you won't have long to wait for more.
Rae
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-25 11:26 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-26 12:01 am (UTC):grinning at you: But as I say in the author's note
Date: 2006-08-26 12:25 am (UTC)What we know, from TV canon is that the Doctor had a grandchild, Susan Foreman (assumed to be an alias) and he's stated...he also "was a Dad once"...the "once" could be taken as "once upon a time"...or it could mean...ONE TIME. To me, the concept of "DAD" is more interesting...especially in the context in which he uses it. He is arguing with Rose about how to REAR children...and DAD implies a much closer association than FATHER.
While I certainly admire your ideas about one wife/love per regeneration and reincarnated souls (you should write your own fic ;-> if you haven't already) I don't hold with that concept. My canon definitely singles Rose out...not as the only person he's ever LOVED (since I'd like to believe he loved Tegan and I'm willing to accept his fondness for Reinette and Sarah Jane)...but as the only person he's ever bonded with to this extent (barring the possiblity of my accepting another bit of book canon: that he married while not in his right mind and had a family then).
I vividly recall the Doctor who locked Susan out of the TARDIS for her own good...and I draw a straight line between that Doctor and Ten, who makes all of those arrangements for Rose in Doomsday without consulting her. The Disheveled Doctor is the one who dumped Sarah Jane because he was feeling too close to her. The Doctor who seemed completely flummoxed by one kiss from a courtesan. The Doctor who thinks domestic is a bad word. This is not a being who does relationships WELL. Which, to my mind...means he doesn't do them very often.
Thank you so much for your feedback...and the insight into your thought process concerning the Doctor. As far as this Susan goes...she's either THE Susan or no relation at all. Much depends on what happens in the next chapter.
Rae
Re: :grinning at you: But as I say in the author's note
From:Well...it would certainly make for interesting smut ;->
From:Re: Well...it would certainly make for interesting smut ;->
From:(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-26 03:07 am (UTC)Oh. My. GOD. OF COURSE. SERIOUSLY, YES. This is so fantastic I can't even express it. (I was getting a bit iffy about the baby stuff; but NOW, my GOD woman.)
Oooh...lots of CAPS
Date: 2006-08-26 12:12 pm (UTC)Rae