NEW FIC: Disheveled - Part 12/17
Nov. 24th, 2006 11:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rabid1stDISHEVELED
By Rabid1st
Ten/Rose
Rating: T+ for this bit…NC-17 overall
Beta Babe: Keswindhover aka the Brit Babe. Because she knows the territory and isn’t doing Thanksgiving.
Spoiler: To Idiot's Lantern but none for this part.
Summary: Rose had an adventure in time with the Doctor’s people. Their interrogation has left her shaken and wary, almost afraid of her own shadow. Will she and the Doctor be able to rebuild their close relationship? Will Jackie ever learn what happened?
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.
For links to previous parts…
PART ONE
PART TWO
PART THREE
PART FOUR
PART FIVE
PART SIX
PART SEVEN
PART EIGHT
PART NINE
PART TEN
PART ELEVEN
PART TWELVE
As the hot water cooled, Rose gave her hair a final rinse. Eyes closed, she blindly patted for the shower knobs, found them and twisted until the pipes shrieked and the water stopped flowing. The screech of the pipes, familiar since her childhood, made her smile. With the rush of water now a sedate drip, she yanked the dolphin-motif curtain aside, rattling its leaping-dolphin hooks. Still in self-imposed darkness, she took an exaggerated step over the tub rim onto the mat. A towel eluded her out-of-practice search for a moment but she finally oriented herself to seize one.
She wiped her face, opened her eyes and felt the claustrophobic dimensions of the small, steamy room strike her at once. Ignoring the pressure in her chest, she turban-wrapped her wet hair and reached for another towel. One foot braced on the closed toilet lid, she set her back against a clammy wall and briskly scrubbed herself dry. Things changed for her in an instant. One moment she was fine and the next, the dripping walls seemed to wrap around her, clinging to her skin even as the clouded mirror denied her very existence. She gasped and straightened. The sodden towel on her head crushed down on her, stole her breath. She cast it off and repeatedly combed her fingers through her hair, pulling the wet mass away from her nape. Her sense of being shrink-wrapped in plastic didn’t abate.
Clutching her remaining towel to her breast, Rose retreated into the tub to crack the room’s only window a bit and let out some steam. Nose to the draught of fresh air, she breathed deep. Gradually the choking grip on her throat eased. Sighing, she rested her head against her extended arm and stared out the tiny window into a parking lot. Dawn was just breaking but the whole world seemed small to her now. Home wasn’t comforting anymore. It stifled.
She’d traveled so far, she supposed, grown accustomed to the TARDIS life. Unexplored horizons comforted her these days, even as they urged her to roam. Rose shook her head. She’d become a gypsy. No home but her interstellar van. Perhaps she could only feel at ease in the open. Or in a huge echoing bathrooms with waterfalls. Waterfalls but no mirrors.
Rose cast a narrow-eyed glare over her shoulder. The baleful blankness of the moisture-silvered mirror drew her attention. There were few mirrors in the TARDIS, none in the bathrooms. Time Lords didn’t seem to have physical vanity. Or admit to it anyway. The only mirrors the Doctor possessed were two standing ones in the wardrobe and one associated with the workings of the console. Mirrors had never struck Rose as ominous before. But, since waking up from her coma, she'd feared them. Feared what she would see in her own reflection. 'There is something of the wolf in you,' a Victorian monster had once told her. Now, it was easy to imagine it. Had some vile entity hollowed out a lair inside her? Rose thought she could sense the sun-bright thing pacing back and forth in her head. She was afraid to meet its eye in the mirror.
But outlining the shape of her fear gave Rose courage. She huffed, impatient with her cowardice, and turned abruptly to face the milky mirror, again. This was ridiculous. No wolves lurked in her head. She hadn’t changed. She was still Rose Marion Tyler, daughter of Jackie and Pete...the Doctor’s human, quite human, thank you, companion. She stepped out of the tub and stalked toward the sink, intending to face down her fears and put on a little makeup. Fix your face and you fix your whole outlook on life, as her mum put it. Jackie Tyler was a firm believer in the mystical power of cosmetic enhancement. Not having enough fun? Go blonde!
Approaching the mirror, Rose could see the dim reflection of the room in its pearled surface, muted colors and shadows. No monsters. Using the side of her hand, she smeared a clear area in the misted glass. The scariest things in the mirror were her under-eye circles. They were frightful. She couldn’t go out looking like this, couldn’t face her mum’s barely veiled suspicions. She needed to have her mask in place, a front of mascara and rouge. Unzipping her cosmetic bag, Rose chose a confidently crimson shade of lipstick and located both blush and foundation. Taking a deep breath, she dabbed a few smudges of color under her eyes to conceal the rings, blending it in. Then taking up the mascara wand she leaned forward for her first deep look into the dreaded mirror. There was a thump at the door.
Rose twitched convulsively, poking a few bristles into her eye. Tearing up, she tore away a handful of tissue to swab her face as she gasped, “I…wha…” Turning her back on the mirror, she let her frustration power a shout, “What is it?”
“Are you going to be all day?” Jackie Tyler whined from the hallway. There was no other word for it. She whined, like a crated puppy. Rose gritted her teeth. “Rose? You have to talk to me sometime, sweetheart.” Jackie’s tone hardened as she rapped again, “All right. Stay quiet, then, but open up. I’m dying for a pee.”
Rose drew a hissing breath through her clenched teeth. Her mother, solicitous at first, had grown increasingly demanding. She wanted answers. Answers Rose wasn’t prepared to give. Apparently, the Doctor had been very upset when he’d brought her home. And his circuitous explanations had left her mother in a highly agitated state. Rose wanted to soothe her but she didn’t yet have the patience.
“Almost done,” she called. Eye clearing, she could see well enough to exchange her towel toga for her bathrobe. “Just a minute more.”
Cinching the robe closed, she went to the sink again. This time she applied her makeup quickly without checking her reflection. Her mother wouldn’t care if the line of blush was stark on her cheek or the mascara a tad too heavy on her lashes. And the Doctor wouldn’t notice. He only saw the true her, underneath every artifice. Though he’d occasionally called her beautiful, she’d once compared his inability to see ‘sexy’ to colorblindness. ‘You’re hopeless,’ she’d told him, giving up on enticing dresses and impractical shoes. It didn’t matter to him if she was covered in war paint or festooned with muddy grime from a foul street. He would beam at her like she rivaled Keira Knightley gowned in couture. He always saw straight into her soul. She hoped her soul looked the same to him, now, but she doubted it did. Some changes branded you deep.
Opening the mirrored cupboard, she reached for a tampon, tore it free of the wrapper, and inserted it without stopping to debate herself again about the wisdom of consulting a gynecologist. She was hardly bleeding now and what would she say? My alien boyfriend’s people used temporal transportation to remove a baby from my belly…is that dangerous? Or how about…So, what do you know about the effects of time travel on pregnancy? Sensible old Dr. Patel would have her fitted for a straightjacket. Besides, Rose was pretty sure it was normal to bleed after losing a baby. She hadn’t exactly miscarried but the principle was probably the same. Rose needed maternal advice but her mum had trouble setting the VCR timer. Jackie needed constant reassurance and emotional support just to deal with the Doctor. The truth was, she'd never been much good in a crisis, unless the crisis demanded tea or Lasting Color #17.
“About time,” Jackie greeted Rose when she opened the bathroom door. “You’ve used all the hot water, I imagine. You and him. You’re a pair, all right.”
“Where is he?” Rose asked, peering around her mother and down the hall with the expectation of seeing the Doctor.
He wasn’t lurking. She retied her robe belt, making it tighter, mentally calculating her chances of gaining the bedroom ahead of him and locking the door.
“He’s gone to the market.”
“What? Without me?”
Rose frowned over her own mixed emotions. She was surprised by the hurt tone in her voice and the sharp stab of regret in her chest. Regret didn’t make much sense. She’d been avoiding the Doctor for days and she hated shopping. Small wonder he’d given up on her and gone off on his own. She’d dropped enough hints about needing breathing space and cast enough barbed glares to puncture even his over inflated ego.
”You’ve been forever in there. And you know what he’s like just now. He woke me up at 5:30 this morning, singing. ‘Operetta,’ he called it. ‘Drowning cats,’ is more like. He’s been in the Pepsi already. Two cans, at the very least. And he didn’t touch a morsel of breakfast.” Rose groaned. “Don’t groan at me. I’m not his keeper, but if you ask me he needs one.”
“Sugar keeps his spirits up. He’s worried. And he hates staying in one place.”
“One place? More like twenty. He was bouncing off the walls when he found you’d got by him and into the shower.” Jackie edged around Rose, shooing her out into the hallway.
“I’ve never really seen him this…fizzy.”
“Well, I should hope not if he’s driving. Seeing him this morning, I thought, it’s no wonder you go missing for years and end up on the wrong planet half the time,” Jackie said, starting to close the door in her daughter’s face. “I’ve got to use the loo. I’m bursting. You go make us the tea and toast.”
“Yeah, all right,” Rose said. After a brief, hesitation, she put a hand against the closing door and timidly said, “Mum?”
“What sweetheart?” Jackie inquired gently even as she bobbed a little against the demands of her bladder.
There was too much to say. Rose smiled sadly. “Nothing. I’ll see you in a minute, yeah?”
In the kitchen, she filled the kettle and put it on the heat. Then, she added four tea bags to the yellow and blue teapot, three for the people and one for the pot. Both her mum and the Doctor liked their tea strong and sweet. Checking the fridge, Rose saw they were nearly out of milk and completely out of jam. Luckily, the Doctor had left them some butter. She waited on the toast until the kettle whistled. Her mum walked in just as Rose was pouring the water over the tea.
“Did you warm the pot?”
Rose rolled her eyes. “The water’s boiling. It’s warm enough.”
“But the tea will cool too quickly, sweetheart,” Jackie said, her voice hitting that grating register the Doctor always grimaced over.
Though she loved her mother dearly, more and more Rose found herself grimacing, too. She was used to being mistress of her own house, well – TARDIS, and it irritated her to be corrected like a child. “We’ll drink it fast, then.”
“While it’s brewing,” Jackie said, pointedly, “It will cool down before it’s ready to drink.” Bumping Rose aside with her hip, she dumped the barely colored hot water from the teapot, added another tea bag, refilled the kettle and put it back on the burner. “There now, be ready in a minute.”
“Fine, whatever,” Rose said, sulkily. She gestured toward the door. “I’m going to go dress.”
“Don’t you want your tea?”
She almost said no. She hadn’t wanted tea in the first place but the beseeching look on her mother’s face checked her. “I’ll be right back,” she assured, taking a moment to pat her mum’s arm before she left. Jackie smiled and went in search of something in the fridge. Rose shuffled into the living room, heading for the hall.
She'd just reached her bedroom when she heard her mum shrilly exclaim, “He’s only eaten the last of the jam. Rose? He’s eaten the jam.”
Rose felt the muscles in her jaw cramp. They had to get out of here. Being torn down the middle like this was driving her mad. She felt trapped between her mother’s domestic inanity and the Doctor’s happy insanity. As she sank down on the edge of her bed, Rose wondered if the Doctor thought he was fooling anybody. He wasn’t. Both she and her mother knew his recent perpetual good humor arrived via self-medicating. His body didn’t process refined sugars as much as ferment them. A handful of jelly babies left him pleasantly relaxed. Four cans of Pepsi a day, plus jam and pudding, left him buoyant even in the face of tragedy. He was currently bio-chemically incapable of brooding.
To his credit, he’d neither pressed her for attention nor touched her in the last week. He only joked and talked and twitched and bounced about until she’d started locking the doors against him. It hurt him, which hurt her but she didn’t want to pretend things were normal when they weren’t. She, also, didn’t want to acknowledge her part in encouraging his abuse of uncontrolled substances.
Maybe they should go.
‘Maybe he should go,’ a tiny, self-pitying, inner voice told her. ‘Maybe he’d be happier on his own.’
Only, he hadn’t been happy before they’d met. Rose knew that. And besides…she needed him. Far more than he realized. Far more than she could ever say. She wanted to tell him, but the words always stalled in her throat. She was far better at physical expressions of affection. She wanted to slide back into his arms. Feel him naked against her. Hold him. Kiss him. Let him enter her mind. He would feel loved then. He would know. But even the thought of such intimacy sent fearful shivers prickling up her spine. Her skin crawled.
God, would she never get over these stomach-curdling flashbacks?
Even as she had the thought, a full-blown one hit. Ghostly hands seemed to close on her. Invisible cords cut across her chest, tightened, squeezed. Her body told her to run but refused to obey her. She shot to her feet but could go no further. Adrenaline spiked her heart rate and evaporated her saliva. Her mouth went popcorn dry. Her breath rasped in her throat. In her mind’s eye, she could see the High Inquisitor’s kindly but determined face grow wary and then twist in agony. Rose closed her eyes and covered her ears. She took a few blind, stumbling steps toward the door.
She could still see them all, the people she’d burned. She could still hear them screaming in her head. She screamed, too. The Doctor was right. She hadn’t killed them. She’d made them beg for death. Dimly, she was aware of noises outside her head, her mother’s pleas, the insistent keening of the kettle and then the crash of the front door as the Doctor kicked it open.
He was here.
Rose threw herself at him as he came through her door and he caught her, held on tight. His fingers skidded on the fleecy weave of her robe. Her hands clawed up his back, pulling him closer. She burrowed into him, into his mind, shocking him, bruising him psychically as she searched for a safe place to hide. He offered no resistance, unfolding thoughts and memories before her wild rush, giving in completely and generously to her need. She dove deep into his yielding dark, lost herself and then had to check the urge to lash out in panic. Afraid of burning him, she tamped down the fire in her wolfish soul. She would die before allowing it to strike at him. In their joined mind, she floated, waiting for him to find her, certain he would.
The storm came, sweeping over her with a jet-engine roar, swift as the sea swamping Pharaoh’s chariots. Stinging salt spray hit Rose’s face and pricked against her closed eyelids. Ducking her head, she held fast against the momentary maelstrom. It calmed in an instant, stilled and settled on her as a misting rain. Opening her eyes, Rose squinted into sunshine. The sky was a blue so pale it was almost white. The clearing rain and unnatural brightness birthed a multitude of rainbows on the horizon.
Rose didn’t recognize anything but she knew where she was. The Doctor had created an imaginary world around them, a haven with no triggers for her damaged spirit to exploit. They stood on the deck of a tiny sailing ship in the middle of a vast ocean. There was no land in sight, no claustrophobic walls or tight corners, no place for shadows to lurk. The entire world was apparent, bright and sunny.
Despite a slight breeze, which quickly dried her clothes, the seas seemed becalmed. Their little sailing vessel bobbed gently as she and the Doctor held one another. Rose relaxed. Sighing contentedly, she rested her cheek against his shoulder. He stroked her hair as he leaned back against the mast. Neither of them spoke, they simply breathed away her fear and his loneliness. After what seemed like a good half hour, Rose recalled herself enough to feel concern for him. Lifting her head, she tipped it back so she could search his face for some sign of pain or distress. He smiled sweetly at her and as soon as she grinned back they returned to reality.
No more than a few second had elapsed. Her mother and the whistling kettle were still shrilly demanding attention. The Doctor still held her. Cautiously, she loosened her death grip on his shoulder blades and took an unsteady step back. He let go easily, smiling down on her with his usual good humor as his hands skimmed her forearms. His unruffled manner reassured her. They would weather this bad patch. From the corner of her eye, Rose saw his hand rise into view. He moved carefully, as if he meant to lightly trace along her cheek but he checked himself before he touched her. His fingertips didn’t quite make contact with her skin. They hovered.
There was a sick churning in Rose’s stomach and her lower lip trembled but she stood still, letting him approach. She trusted him this much. Wanted to trust him completely. She could sense his mental presence in the room, a sort of blanketing influence. But he made no further contact with her mind. And once he’d hovered over her cheek and around her chin and skimmed his thumb above her mouth, he tucked his hands into his trouser pockets and became as closed to her as any human male. Rose felt an overwhelming sense of hope. Pressing to her tiptoes, one hand against his chest for balance, she gave him the quickest of kisses.
He held her gaze afterward, just for a moment, and then turned to face Jackie, speaking in his usual carefree way. “I’m afraid I’ve dropped the shopping down the stairwell,” he admitted, his expression benignly polite. They might have been having a pleasant stroll in fine weather for all the tension in him. He did grimace in slight apology as he added, “Might salvage something, but not the jam. There was a definite shattering on impact. So, it’s back to the market for me. Good thing I’m paying, hey?” A small nudge of his elbow to Jackie’s arm accompanied this last question.
Jackie shoved around him. She wasn’t a cruel woman but she was frightened and wouldn’t be easily deterred from hounding her daughter for answers. “Rose? What’s happened? Talk to me? Are you ill? Are you dizzy? Did something startle you, sweetheart?”
Falling back, Rose pressed the heel of her palm to the side of her head. She twisted her body, avoiding her mother’s grasping hands. She didn’t want to be touched, held. Confined. But she was quickly cornered between the bed and a small table. Shoulders hunched, she drew an unsteady breath. As Jackie closed on her, harrying her with questions, Rose cast a sidelong appeal at the Doctor.
‘Help me,’ her expression pleaded even as she tried to answer her mother. “I had a flashback, that's all,” she said. “But it’s over, now. I’m all right.”
“But a flashback of what?” Jackie cried. She hurled an irritated and accusing glare at the Doctor, who had begun to emit soothing mutters. He seemed to be shushing her, urging her away from Rose. “What happened out there? What are the pair of you hiding?” She demanded of him. When he didn’t answer, she moved in on Rose, again, arms extended to envelop her in a hug.
The Doctor gave up on gentle persuasion. Leaping forward from a standstill, he seized Jackie just above the elbow and pivoted her like a swinging gate on the hinge of her arm. “Leave it,” he hissed, locking his gaze on hers as she came around to face him.
There was nothing benign or polite in his expression. It was chilling. His slit-eyes flashed with venom. The set of his jaw coupled with his clenched teeth and snarling lips gave his face a psychotic cast. Jackie had never considered him harmless but this sudden shift into viciousness alarmed her. She’d harried him with impunity for so long that his lashing out struck her harder than being snapped at by a loyal mutt.
“I…just…” she sputtered, shaken more by what she considered confirmation of his menace than by any other event of the morning.
Sensing her mother’s distress, Rose called the Doctor off by simply stepping forward and gripping his arm. The effect on him was immediate. While he didn’t exactly morph into old Shep, faithful companion, his bristle vanished. He pulled into himself, reining in his temper as his gaze lifted to intersect hers.
“I’m...completely fine, now,” she told him, “really.” Her mother squeaked and Rose reassuringly caressed her back with her other hand, linking them into a unit of three. “No worries,” she insisted, smiling when Jackie shifted closer to her. “But the Doctor’s right, mum. I could use a bit of quiet. My head is killing me.”
“You have a headache, sweetheart?” Jackie said, solicitously. Rose braced herself to take the stroking pet of her mother’s hand. “You should have mentioned. What you need is a lie down. I could get you some aspirin. Or a nice icepack for your neck. Would you like that? A little ice?”
“Just some tea, thanks,” Rose said. She nodded toward the door. “You go on. We’ll be in in a minute.”
Jackie hesitated, clearly torn about leaving. Rose smiled reassuringly, not wanting her mother to feel unwelcome but silently urging her to go. Jackie obviously didn’t want to go without answers to her many questions. But her love for Rose won out over selfish curiosity, she sighed, “If you’re certain you’re all right.” Rose nodded briskly and, after a telling hesitation, gave her mother a quick hug. Jackie started for the hallway but stopped short at the open door, turning back to say, “If you ever want to talk about it…?”
“I’ll let you know,” Rose said, softly.
“I mean…at a time like this, you would think a girl would turn to her mother…”
Her suggestion trailed away into awkward silence. Rose and the Doctor stood side-by-side, regarding her with a good measure of detachment. Their postures were identical and their smiles had become fixed disguises, masking any real feelings. Fidgeting in the face of this disturbingly alien indifference, Jackie finally said, “Maybe a boiled egg with your tea and toast? Your headache could be low blood sugar. Sadie Carmichael, next floor up and three over, has attacks of low blood sugar. You won’t know her. She’s new since you went traveling. But I gave her son a steer toward Mickey’s old job at the garage and he got it. He stops by every evening and checks on his mum, says the sugar sets her off into fainting fits from time to time but all she needs is a little protein to be right as rain. Would you like me to boil you an egg?”
“That’d be…great,” Rose said, cheerfully enough.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jackie hesitated a moment longer before turning to go. She didn’t want to leave and, as she made her slow way to the kitchen, couldn’t help brooding on Rose’s inhumanly cool smile. She’d changed so much in the past two years. The airs that fancy shop had given her were nothing compared to the cocky attitude she’d picked up from the Doctor. The stories they told gave Jackie nightmares. The two of them laughed in the face of danger, spit in its face more like. But bad things still happened. And it was all right for him, he’d go on living if he died. But what about Rose?
Would he have the courage, or the common human decency, to tell her if Rose died out there on Mars or wherever? Or would the two of them simply vanish from her world, like Mickey did, leaving her forever wondering? It was months between visits now. How long would it be before they stopped coming back? Or worse before there was nothing left of the sweet girl Rose had once been? How long before some strange, alien woman took Rose Tyler’s place? Jackie felt like an anchor, stubbornly digging in to keep her child from drifting away. It was wearing.
Shaking her head in frustrations, she used a dishcloth to protect her hand as she removed the steaming kettle from the burner. There was almost no water left inside. After heaving a put upon sigh, she ran another five cups from the sink and started the kettle boiling one more time. Only the Doctor could make breakfast tea so much bother. She located an egg for Rose and decided she’d have one as well. Filling a small pan, she set their eggs to cook and then settled herself at the kitchen table to wait. She meant to give him a piece of her mind this time. She wasn’t about to sit quietly when her daughter had been reduced to screaming and shaking by whatever had happened to her.
Violation, he’d said. And she’d though ‘rape.’
But it couldn’t be that simple. Not with him involved. At least, Rose wasn’t pregnant. She’d entered her monthlies and that was a blessing. But she wouldn’t talk, wouldn’t answer the simplest of questions. Jackie had noticed her avoiding the Doctor, too. Perhaps now was the time to strike against him, to cut him out of Rose’s life forever. If she could only get Rose to see how dangerous he was--how alien.
As she stood to remove the eggs from the pan, Jackie heard Rose and the Doctor in the hallway, chattering like a caged finches. They sounded happy. They always did. Rose wasn’t afraid of him, that much was certain. And he seemed to dote on her. Bracing herself for the argument ahead, Jackie nested the eggs into cups, and then poured the left-over hot water into the sink. She was carrying the pan back to the stovetop when it struck her the voices were moving away. The front door opened. They were leaving. Dropping the empty pan, Jackie rushed to stop them.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The tension in Rose’s room eased by half once Jackie left, but the Doctor waited until she’d silenced the shrieking kettle before releasing his pent breath. Then, facing Rose, he placed his hands lightly on her robed shoulders. She had to steel herself, more than he liked, her breath catching slightly, but she didn’t flinch or twitch away. He catalogued that away as a hopeful sign.
Flexing his knees to meet her eye squarely, he asked, “Now, how are you really?”
With a gasping chuckle, Rose sagged to the edge of the bed, relief at his ready understanding evident on her face. “Shaky,” she confirmed. The confession reeled him closer. He dropped into a crouch before her, coat tails flaring on the floor. Looking up like one seeking divine guidance, he searched her face as she stared into the middle distance and added, “And you were right. I didn’t kill them.”
“I know,” he said with tender certainty. “You aren’t capable of murder. It goes against your nature. And you need to know this,” she glanced at him as he paused, “My people are very resilient. They can recover from anything, given enough time and rest.”
“I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want to hurt them. They just...kept coming.”
“I know.” He looked down, mumbling. “It’s my fault.”
Rose’s mouth fell open in surprise. “But you didn’t…” she began, before switching gears mid-sentence to firmly deny him. “No! It was my fault. I wanted to learn your language. I didn’t pay attention to K-9. I wandered off on my own.” The Doctor kept his head bowed and she read him as clearly as she might read a neon sign on a dark night. “And you didn’t have to talk me into anything else either. I wanted…”
With his gaze still focused on the carpet between her bare feet, his mouth lifted slightly at the corners. “To have your way with me?” he finished in a murmur.
“Oh, you wish,” Rose chuckled, tugging at his hair so he would lift his head and look at her. When he did she winked at him with a bit of her former sauciness. They stared into one another, finding peace.
“I should have a look at those groceries,” he said, at last, but he made no move to leave. “Maybe the juice survived and the butter...plastic containers on both…”
Rose slid her fingers free of his tousled hair. “Did you go to Tesco?” she asked, her light tone reflecting her hope of returning the conversation to less personal ground.
The Doctor nodded, but more in agreement with her unspoken desire for an emotional break than in answer to her question. Lips in a little moue, as if he were sucking on hard candy, he rose out of his crouch. As he stood, he combed a hand through his ruffled hair, smoothing it to his nape.
“They don’t open until eight-thirty,” he said, gripping the back of his neck. ‘I didn’t want to wait. So, I walked down to Elephant and Castle, found an express store.”
Also nodding, Rose stood. Dog-legging around him, like the black knight evading a pawn, she said, “It’s all that sugar. Makes you restless.”
He didn’t answer, only tracked her with his eyes while she rummaged about for something to wear. He had been restless, wound tight. The long walk had helped. But the relentless clamoring of this morning’s sugar high seemed like a muted chorus when compared to the current singing in his blood. He watched Rose haul jeans and underwear from her dresser. She stacked various pieces of clothing like pancakes, one on top of another, before transferring the lot to her bed.
After settling the stack so it wouldn’t tip, and without a trace of embarrassment, she cast her robe off and stood nude before him. He forgot to breathe. There was a sudden burning in his chest at this show of trust and his mind conjured up a brief but wickedly sharp memory from his previous life. It was a memory of Rose, sun drenched and confident, on the planet Barcelona. He’d met her there, only a few weeks after he’d left the asylum. He’d been desperate…alone…empty, seeking union but so afraid of it. And she’d been…well…Rose.
They came together as strangers in a bar and then later in a humid hotel room, bodies intertwined. He remembered her skin, soaked with sweat and silky smooth under his roaming hands. Her mind had remained closed to him, guarded, but her mouth had opened willingly to his tongue. She’d tasted as sweet, been as intoxicating, as honeyed mead. Bella, he’d called her, meaning only ‘beautiful’…though somewhere in his subconscious he must have known, sensed the vital role she would play in his life. Nothing, no one, had ever stirred him to such passion.
It was still to come for her, those memories, that day. For him it was sacred history. At her insistence, he’d left her behind on Barcelona only to come to Earth in the early twenty-first century, determined to see her again. He’d found her at five and then, again, a few years later. He’d stalked her in a way, arranging the delivery of a red bicycle one Christmas, scaring a wayward and abusive male from her door two summers later. He’d rescued her from shadows and store window dummies. One day on Barcelona, one brief encounter, had led him here.
He tucked his chin in and cocked his head to the side, watching Rose, remembering the journey as she chose a tank top from her closet and shimmied gracefully into it. He imagined sliding his fingers under the fabric, lifting it away from her skin. He wanted to delight her, make her gasp and moan. For a moment, she stood still, backlit by the window, all tan skin and white cotton--knickers and bra strap, socks and tank. He knew she would be surprised, if he gave his thoughts voice. She'd be surprised to learn he’d been gripped by something akin to lust.
It wasn’t the lust of a man, of course. He didn’t have the throbbing in his loins he’d read so much about in the novels on Jackie’s scant bookshelf. But he did have a hunger. A pang, Rassilon would surely say, came from encouraging arousal. He wanted. He yearned. Though he didn’t dare speak of it, not yet, he longed to be with Rose…enter her, even subjugate her…make her his, but gently…oh, so gently. His desire couldn’t be sated in the physical realm. Though he recognized Rose’s physical beauty, it did not captivate him. Until they touched, her naked flesh meant no more to him than her cast off robe. What haunted him, moved him, was her recent push into his mind. It was only a question of time now before they could be together, again, before they were complete.
“Was it really named for Catherine of Aragon, Infanta de Castile?” Rose asked, certain he would know.
He did but it took him a dazed moment to recall what they’d been talking about and process her question. “What? Oh…Elephant and Castle. Yes!” He blinked, looking lost, and then said, “I mean, no. Not even close. There was a real elephant. Trunk, tusks…big ears,” he continued breathlessly, acting out by sketching elephant parts in the air as he named them, “hide like…well…like an elephant, I suppose.” He grinned broadly. “What else has a hide like that?” He sucked in a long overdue breath, “On Earth? Mind you…Sontorans…if we were in the Peju Nebula or...another time, the Kraken…extinct, now, so…” Rose beamed adoringly at him. He knew she enjoyed his rambling. It was one of her best qualities as a companion. Too many people tired of him after a few days, some tired of him within minutes.
“My point was…is…” he went on, “the elephant was real enough. It once roamed or …that is…stood around, really, anchored by a great log and iron chains...down one of those crossroads. It was brought here by sailing ship. A tiny, seasick, mewling thing but it grew…,” he swallowed against his speeding tongue, slowing it, “into a sort of mascot for the Royal African Company.” The lift of his brows widened his eyes in pained resignation as he said, “Slave traders.” Rose scowled, obviously empathizing, as he did, with the enslaved. Freeing the oppressed was one of her pet projects in space/time. She frequently got him into trouble with it. “The local merchants provided stores and shackles and…oars to the Company. Profitable, of course. But the locals used to say they were caught between the Elephant and the Castle, meaning you might not like slavers but you had to pay your taxes somehow.”
“Like a rock and a hard place,” Rose suggested. The tip of her tongue appeared at the corner of her mouth as she drew the zip up on her jeans.
“Or the devil and the deep blue sea,” the Doctor agreed. “Or tea with your mother and a visit to a barber for dental work.” He grinned to soften the insult. “Eventually,” he drawled, carrying on with his story, “the elephant died and was reincarnated as ivory knife handles and piano keys. But the idea of the elephant lives on so it’s had a bit of immortality, as well, more than the average pachyderm, at any rate. The slave trade fell out of favor. Local pub owners erected eye-sores. The world turned, moved on.”
“And Tesco Express moved in,” Rose finished.
The Doctor nodded but absently as if he too had moved on. He scratched his head, grimacing as he looked toward the door. “I suppose we can’t get out of tea.”
“Tea won’t hurt you.”
Fixing her with a glare, head waggling so much it seemed unhinged, he said, “You forget I’ve had your mother’s tea. The best I can say for it is it brought me out of a coma.”
“We’ll bottle it. You can do the television spots.”
“We’d be sued. I suspect cultist witch doctors employ your mother’s tea to raise the dead. And I’m afraid she might use it to overcome my resistance to questioning.”
“You aren’t going to be interrogated,” Rose said, shrugging into her jeans jacket. She skimmed a few pound notes, a bus pass and her keys off the bedside table and into a pocket. Outfitted, she straightened her shoulders and strode toward the hall door. The Doctor hung back. "Are you coming?"
“She'll ask…questions.”
Rose paused, turning back to give him a quizzical look. The expression on his tense features drew her back to his side. Lowering her voice, she asked, “What sort of questions?”
“Difficult, slippery ones,” he said. “My intentions.”
“Your what?”
“Intentions. Mostly, do I have any. If I’m going to be leaving you any time soon? Why I bother to stay? What I’m getting out of this…” he pointed back and forth between his chest and hers with one finger, “…relationship. And that’s…that’s just her warm up…I fear she’s just getting started. She’s also, interested in your motivation. How you feel about me? What happened to put you into a coma? Why didn’t I stop it? When will you be coming home to stay?”
“Maybe I should talk to her,” Rose said without enthusiasm. “Set her right on a few things.”
“Maybe,” the Doctor said, stretching the word like warm taffy as he stared at her in wide-eyed supposition, “We should go on a picnic. Instead of to tea. In lieu of.”
“A picnic?” Rose repeated as if she might have misunderstood. She cocked a brow and glanced around him at the alarm clock. “At this time of morning? Aren’t picnics more an afternoon sort of thing?”
“A breakfast picnic,” the Doctor clarified. “Baguettes and bananas in Victoria Tower Gardens. We can see the Burghers of Calais. I’ll buy you a fancy coffee.”
“You suggesting we just leg it out the front door? Give my mum the slip?”
“Oh, Jackie won’t mind,” he insisted, waving a carefree hand as he headed into the hall. “She’s probably sick of our company by now. We’ll say we’re off to do the shopping, again. Make sure it sticks this time. Matter of fact, we can stop at the Borough Market coming and going, pick up whatever we need.”
Rose privately thought her mother would mind very much being ditched with a full pot of tea and no answers to her questions. But Rose wanted to run as much as the Doctor did and this was their chance.
“The Borough Market is for toffs,” she told him as she caught up. “It’s not like it was back in 1880.”
“Well…I’m a sort of toff,” the Doctor said. “Or, at least, toff-ish. Lord of Time.” Rose smiled, loving the way he weighted the title in his mouth. He gave it resonance. “And I’m not so out of date as all that. 1880?” He scoffed and shot her a look that included a disappointed furrowing of his brow. “You go on as if I’d just dropped in from beyond the rim, first time on Earth, but I’ve seen the travelogues. I’ve been to the Borough Market since I met you. Bought a jellied eel last time we visited your mum.” He stooped to squint at the damage his kick had caused the frame and wood of the front door. “Need to fix this when we get back. Your mother claims I’ve gone through more than my share of doors.”
“Didn’t know there was a limit,” Rose said.
“Apparently it’s three.”
“You could have used the sonic screwdriver.”
He favored her with a needle-sharp glare. “No, I really couldn’t have,” he said and she remembered how he’d stormed in to save her.
Cheeks reddening under the burning intensity of his stare, Rose raised her voice, calling, “We’re going out, mum. Back in a little while.”
There was a sharp yelp of protest from the kitchen, followed by the clang of a dropped sauce pan. Rose turned toward the noise but the Doctor seized her hand and, throwing open the door, pulled her with him into the warm sunshine. Infected with his sense of urgency, Rose forgot to resist and, feet tripping along, followed in his wake as he launched them toward the stairs. Jackie was hot on their heels. But the damaged door slowed her down. Her exclamations grew louder, chasing them as they pelted down the steps
“Come back here, you,” she yelled after the Doctor, “…you…door smasher! What happened to …who’s going to pay for this? You’re going make this right! And Rose isn’t well. Honestly…of all the cowardly…”
The Doctor skidded to a halt on the ground floor, stepping aside to avoid being run down, he let Rose’s momentum carry her around in a swing dancer’s circle. She opened her mouth to question this sudden halt as she came back to him, but saw he’d paused only long enough to gather the grocery sacks full of shattered glass and sticky jam at the foot of the stairs. Releasing her hand for a moment, he examined the remains of his shopping disaster. Neighbors had already availed themselves of the undamaged merchandise. There was no sign of the canned goods, juice or butter.
“We have given to the poor,” the Doctor said after peering into each sack. “I feel like Robin Hood,” he added, grinning at her as he deposited the torn plastic bags in a nearby waste bin. “Rose Marion Tyler.”
“Except we’re not rich,” Rose grumbled. Though she knew the unwritten scavenging rules, she was still disappointed in her fellow estate tenants for swooping in like buzzards on road kill. It had been less than a half hour since the Doctor dropped the shopping.
“I am…rather,” the Doctor said, almost apologetically as he took her hand again and set off for the street.
“Really?” Frowning, Rose pursed her lips a bit. This was news to her but not the ‘stop the presses’ sort. She gave a careless shrug. “I suppose you must be, yeah? I never thought about it but you always have money.”
“Well…when I say, ‘rich’, I mean well off.” He tipped his head to the right as he reconsidered his phrasing a second time. “And when I say, ‘well off’…I mean …comfortable. You’ll want for nothing.”
Rose shook her hand free of his grip but only so she could seize his arm and bounce along beside him. “So, why do I always end up buying your chips and coffee?”
“I thought they were gifts,” he said, in a melting tone, his smile broad enough to belong to a door-to-door salesman. “Tokens of affection.”
She poked playfully in the general direction of his ribs but missed by several inches, only prodding his coat. “How does that work? If you don’t?” she asked, a few moments later. When he glowered in confusion, she laughingly clarified, “Work, I mean. If you don’t work how did you get rich? Is it a Time Lord thing? Do they send you off with bags of gold or something?”
“They didn’t send me off. I ran away. And no bags of gold. Investments,” The Doctor told her as they reached the bus stop. He twirled, coat flaring and settled on a bench to wait. His legs were braced wide, his arms open and resting along the bench back. “Over the years and across the stars, I’ve made a few wise investments with an eye to future financial solvency.”
Rose’s expression turned from playful to puzzled as she plopped down next to him. “Isn’t that cheating?” she asked. “Using the TARDIS for monetary gain? I mean, it’s sort of like insider trading.”
“The TARDIS?” the Doctor exclaimed, his lips twisting into a sneer. “Why would I need the TARDIS to understand the vagaries of a market economy and manipulate them to my own benefit?”
“Oh,” Rose said, cutting her eyes to the side to study him. “So, you’re just clever?”
“Just?” he declared, in such an affronted fashion she bent double and laughed out loud. The merry sound, balm to his spirit, drew an answering chuckle from the Doctor.
When she’d settled down enough to continue, Rose scooted closer to him and said, “Well, all right...it’s a bit more than cleverness. It must take some study.”
“Not a great deal," he admitted. "But I do need to be careful. I wouldn’t want to red flag my holding companies by taking too many risky plunges. Someone might notice and start asking questions if I never chose an unprofitable stock. There’s a company you should know about, Foreman, Ltd. Your name is on the paperwork. You could draw funds on your thumbprint. Should we ever be separated...”
“Don’t say that,” Rose warned.
He settled his hand over hers, but repeated himself with some firmness, “Should we ever be separated, you could make your way back to Earth from a thousand different planets. Remember, you’re not without resources.”
“Foreman,” Rose said wistfully. “I’ll remember.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The bus arrived with a growl and puff of smoke, like some great red dragon. It rumbled, while the driver grew irritated and the Doctor fumbled in pockets, coming up with everything but coins. Finally, Rose gave him one of her bus pass rides and they both boarded.
“Rich…yeah, that’s you, just not solvent,” she mocked as they climbed to the upper deck for the trip to the Borough Market.
The midsummer morning glistened. Bright sunshine made even old, graffiti-covered buildings sparkle. As they traveled the Doctor acted the tour guide, telling her about assorted monsters and menaces he’d faced down in this or that street. There didn’t seem to be a single block of the city he hadn’t defended at one time or other. Not to be out done, Rose pointed out her personal landmarks. Her school. Shareen's place. Mickey’s Gran’s house.
“And over there,” she said, indicating a small playground. “That’s where I had my first kiss.”
Sighting along her arm, the Doctor pressed so close his breath tickled her cheek as, in a teasingly seductive purr, he guessed, “On the swings?”
“On the merry-go-round,” she corrected. “I liked to get dizzy, hanging my head over the edge. Seeing the world go by upside down, enjoying the blurry colors. And when the spinning stopped, Tam Petersen was standing there. His mum was chatting with my mum and we just sort of stared at one another. Then, he kissed me.”
“Bold move.”
“Well,” Rose sniffed, trying to sound offhand. “He was older. Seven.”
The Doctor shifted away but nodded with her in astute sympathy. “Man of the world. You go for that type.”
“I was only five and three quarters.”
“Now, there’s an age gap. I’m surprised your mother didn’t nip the budding romance in the...well..bud. What ever could the two of you have had in common?”
“A love of spinning,” Rose said, cuddling his arm. “Same thing I have in common with you.”
They arrived at the Borough Market a few minutes later. It bustled on Saturday morning. All manner of people shopped its stalls and storefronts: caterers and housewives and students. Bus loads of tourists crowded in when the doors opened at 9:00 am. The stands full of colorful vegetables, fruit and fresh fish had brilliant canopies in primary red, yellow and blue. Chalkboard signs proclaimed prices in bold letters. Voices echoed from the high ceiling and mingled with the myriad sounds of commerce bouncing off the concrete floor.
Pausing on the threshold of the Market's vaulted doorway, the Doctor declared, "The marketplace, soul of a society, boon to archeologists and sociologist alike. The key to understanding any species, any culture."
"The Borough Market is the soul of our society?"
"Could be."
"I think England is in trouble."
"Could be."
Rose laughed. "Still...better than a Tesco Metro soul," she supposed as she let go of his hand, allowing the current of shoppers to carry her away. “I’ll meet you out front by the café,” she called to him. “Half an hour.”
Making up his mind not to worry, the Doctor bobbed his chin at her and waved absently. It would do neither of them any good for him to start fussing. The life they led frequently separated them and Rose wouldn’t tolerate coddling, even assuming he knew how to coddle. He purchased two bananas, a basket of fresh strawberries and several tiny cheese-filled pastries before thinking of Rose again. Glancing around, he saw no sign of her. Telling himself she was fine, he strolled to their rendezvous point, took a seat at one of the café tables and ordered a coffee. It had only just arrived when Rose returned.
“Are you drinking that here?” she asked. “It’s such a lovely day. I thought we might walk across the bridge rather than take the bus. You won’t want to balance coffee all the way.”
“Give this to the poor,” the Doctor told the mystified waitress, returning his cup to her hand as he stood. “Maid Marion has command of me.”
“Sorry,” Rose told the waitress. “We just…need to go.”
Arm in arm, they left behind one obviously perplexed woman holding the Doctor’s coffee and strolled across the bridge toward Victoria Tower Gardens. The walk was a bit long but lovely. Bright sunshine baked into their shoulders. The river breeze, crisp and cool, ruffled their hair. And the park, when they reached it, was relatively peaceful. Later in the day there would be more people about, treading the sidewalks or sitting on the benches along the Thames but, at this hour, only a few students lounged on spread blankets. A jogger or two jogged by, but mostly the Doctor and Rose had the place to themselves. They purchased coffee, a thicker more aromatic brew than the Doctor’s previous cup, from a street vendor. Then, they found a bench under a canopy of trees near Buxley’s Fountain and ate their breakfast. A student wearing a sweatshirt proclaiming allegiance to St. Thomas’s Medical School hurried past them
After licking soft-cheese filling off of her fingers, Rose asked, “What medical school did you attend?”
“St. Barts.”
“I find it hard to picture,” she said, “You…sitting in class, listening to lectures.” She watched him peel a banana and then looked toward the fountain. “I was here once with a school tour. It’s funny what you remember.”
“And what you forget,” he agreed. After chewing and swallowing a few bites of his banana, he told her, “I don’t really remember attending lectures. But I must have. I have the knowledge…and I know where it came from, St. Barts, class of 1892.”
“Was this…Eight?”
He didn’t answer for a long time and then he said, “I can’t be sure. I’ve forgotten so much. Huge icebergs of my life have been calved into the void. The war, I suppose. And then...as you age...you forget." He sighed and fell silent for a time. "The smell of the Jaumelia trees,” he went on, a bit later, apparently shifting to another subject. Rose was used to him switching topics mid-chat. “Groves of them surrounded the city. The blooms have a delicate aroma, almost like rum-laced cheesecake. But in the summer when the bark toasts under the hot suns, the air gets spicy. You can smell the perfume for miles and miles.”
“I was there in the summer, then,” Rose said, following him around the conversational curve with practiced ease. She knew he was speaking, not of his university days, but of his home world. “The air smelled like nutmeg and lime and black pepper.”
“Yes, your hair still carried the scent of the Jaumelia when you came home to me.” He stretched his legs out, crossing his ankles as he leaned into the bench back. Hands in his trouser pockets, he looked the picture of relaxation. “And this park,” he said, “still reeks of the Thames but it is a far, far sweeter smell these days than when I was a student at St. Barts. That much I remember.”
She didn’t question him further. What he'd told her was enough. She didn’t need to ask if he missed his home or his memories. It was evident he did. She understood him like he understood her. They finished their food in silence. Toying with the last strawberry, Rose scooted to the edge of her seat and squinted toward the statue of the Burghers. Now, that the time was at hand, she wasn’t sure she wanted to go see the famous sculpture. The siege of Calais remained fresh in her mind. The endless nights of worry would stay with her for a long time, the Doctor on one side of the battle and her on the other.
“You won’t recognize anyone,” the Doctor told her, reading the thoughts from her face as easily as he might uncover them with telepathy. “Rodin wasn’t there, of course. But it's more than that. He used stock heads for his figures. Two of the Burghers were cast from the same mould.”
“When I saw you come out with them,” she said softly, remembered fear coating her throat, making her voice thick. “Knowing they were condemned to die...I..." She swallowed. "You were so thin.”
“Dehydration and dysentery...they had no food and fresh water was a challenge, too. But you had the ear of the queen,” he finished, brightly, never one to dwell on past tragedy. “You saved us.”
“It wasn’t me,” Rose denied. “You were lucky. The queen was a kind woman, merciful, and King Edward listened to her.”
“He loved her,” the Doctor said. No further explanation was needed but, glancing at Rose from the corner of his eye, he added, “She followed him to war.”
Rose blushed and looked down at her strawberry. After an awkward and heated silence, she said, “Did you know they had fourteen children?”
“She followed him to war,” the Doctor repeated.
Sniggering, Rose bumped his shoulder with hers. She popped the strawberry into her mouth, corralling an escaping dribble of juice with her thumb, and chewed. The Doctor started packing their trash into one bag in preparation to leave. After he’d swept up every crumb and crumpled every scrap of waxed paper, he started to stand. Rose caught his arm, pulling him back to her. He offered no resistance, just plopped into his seat again. Lifting his chin high enough to expose his throat, he cast an inquiring glance her way.
“I have something for you,” she said, “A sort of present.” Releasing his arm, she reached into her jacket pocket and drew out a small, brown paper package. As she handed it to him, she added, “I think it’s about time.”
The Doctor took the oddly shaped gift and turned it about in his fingers, stroking it as if he might divine what it held. The hard ridges under the wrapping puzzled him. Intrigued, he quickly tore the paper and let the contents of the packet spill into his open palm. His left brow arched in surprise.
“It’s a key,” he exclaimed, pinching it up between two fingers and his thumb for a closer look.
Though he studied it thoroughly, it told him nothing more. It wasn't the Key to Time but it might be the key to anything else. A locker. A locket. A trapdoor. He glanced at Rose, hoping for enlightenment. She had her TARDIS key out. She swung it slowly back and forth from the chain wrapped around her middle finger, like a hypnotist with a pendulum. Back and forth. Back and forth. He watched it swing.
“You gave me yours,” she said, “but I never gave you mine.”
“Yours?” he muttered, drawing a blank on her meaning. His face reflected his confusion as he wondered if this was, perhaps, a symbolic gift: the key to her heart?
Rose snorted impatiently. “To the flat,” she clarified in a tone that told him he was being unnaturally dense. “It’s my key. To my home.”
It hit him broadside. Her key. The knowing cascaded over him in a festive flurry like a delivery of Dear Santa letters to the North Pole. He tried to speak. His mouth opened and closed but nothing but a soft squeak came out. Fighting for composure, he broke eye contact with Rose, turning his face away to stare into the middle distance. He studied the leaves on the trees through a happy haze of tears. He’d traveled with a lot of people in his time, given out at least a hundred keys. No one had ever reciprocated. No one had ever thought to offer him a standing invitation into their life as he’d invited them into his. Only Rose. Only Rose wanted to give him a home again.
“Thank you,” he finally managed to say, the deep current of his emotions making his voice quaver.
He didn’t look back at Rose as she took his hand in hers and gently squeezed, but he could hear the grin in her voice when she edged closer and casually whispered, “I reckon it will save you twenty quid a year on doors.”
END THIS PART
PART THIRTEEN
By Rabid1st
Ten/Rose
Rating: T+ for this bit…NC-17 overall
Beta Babe: Keswindhover aka the Brit Babe. Because she knows the territory and isn’t doing Thanksgiving.
Spoiler: To Idiot's Lantern but none for this part.
Summary: Rose had an adventure in time with the Doctor’s people. Their interrogation has left her shaken and wary, almost afraid of her own shadow. Will she and the Doctor be able to rebuild their close relationship? Will Jackie ever learn what happened?
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.
For links to previous parts…
PART ONE
PART TWO
PART THREE
PART FOUR
PART FIVE
PART SIX
PART SEVEN
PART EIGHT
PART NINE
PART TEN
PART ELEVEN
PART TWELVE
As the hot water cooled, Rose gave her hair a final rinse. Eyes closed, she blindly patted for the shower knobs, found them and twisted until the pipes shrieked and the water stopped flowing. The screech of the pipes, familiar since her childhood, made her smile. With the rush of water now a sedate drip, she yanked the dolphin-motif curtain aside, rattling its leaping-dolphin hooks. Still in self-imposed darkness, she took an exaggerated step over the tub rim onto the mat. A towel eluded her out-of-practice search for a moment but she finally oriented herself to seize one.
She wiped her face, opened her eyes and felt the claustrophobic dimensions of the small, steamy room strike her at once. Ignoring the pressure in her chest, she turban-wrapped her wet hair and reached for another towel. One foot braced on the closed toilet lid, she set her back against a clammy wall and briskly scrubbed herself dry. Things changed for her in an instant. One moment she was fine and the next, the dripping walls seemed to wrap around her, clinging to her skin even as the clouded mirror denied her very existence. She gasped and straightened. The sodden towel on her head crushed down on her, stole her breath. She cast it off and repeatedly combed her fingers through her hair, pulling the wet mass away from her nape. Her sense of being shrink-wrapped in plastic didn’t abate.
Clutching her remaining towel to her breast, Rose retreated into the tub to crack the room’s only window a bit and let out some steam. Nose to the draught of fresh air, she breathed deep. Gradually the choking grip on her throat eased. Sighing, she rested her head against her extended arm and stared out the tiny window into a parking lot. Dawn was just breaking but the whole world seemed small to her now. Home wasn’t comforting anymore. It stifled.
She’d traveled so far, she supposed, grown accustomed to the TARDIS life. Unexplored horizons comforted her these days, even as they urged her to roam. Rose shook her head. She’d become a gypsy. No home but her interstellar van. Perhaps she could only feel at ease in the open. Or in a huge echoing bathrooms with waterfalls. Waterfalls but no mirrors.
Rose cast a narrow-eyed glare over her shoulder. The baleful blankness of the moisture-silvered mirror drew her attention. There were few mirrors in the TARDIS, none in the bathrooms. Time Lords didn’t seem to have physical vanity. Or admit to it anyway. The only mirrors the Doctor possessed were two standing ones in the wardrobe and one associated with the workings of the console. Mirrors had never struck Rose as ominous before. But, since waking up from her coma, she'd feared them. Feared what she would see in her own reflection. 'There is something of the wolf in you,' a Victorian monster had once told her. Now, it was easy to imagine it. Had some vile entity hollowed out a lair inside her? Rose thought she could sense the sun-bright thing pacing back and forth in her head. She was afraid to meet its eye in the mirror.
But outlining the shape of her fear gave Rose courage. She huffed, impatient with her cowardice, and turned abruptly to face the milky mirror, again. This was ridiculous. No wolves lurked in her head. She hadn’t changed. She was still Rose Marion Tyler, daughter of Jackie and Pete...the Doctor’s human, quite human, thank you, companion. She stepped out of the tub and stalked toward the sink, intending to face down her fears and put on a little makeup. Fix your face and you fix your whole outlook on life, as her mum put it. Jackie Tyler was a firm believer in the mystical power of cosmetic enhancement. Not having enough fun? Go blonde!
Approaching the mirror, Rose could see the dim reflection of the room in its pearled surface, muted colors and shadows. No monsters. Using the side of her hand, she smeared a clear area in the misted glass. The scariest things in the mirror were her under-eye circles. They were frightful. She couldn’t go out looking like this, couldn’t face her mum’s barely veiled suspicions. She needed to have her mask in place, a front of mascara and rouge. Unzipping her cosmetic bag, Rose chose a confidently crimson shade of lipstick and located both blush and foundation. Taking a deep breath, she dabbed a few smudges of color under her eyes to conceal the rings, blending it in. Then taking up the mascara wand she leaned forward for her first deep look into the dreaded mirror. There was a thump at the door.
Rose twitched convulsively, poking a few bristles into her eye. Tearing up, she tore away a handful of tissue to swab her face as she gasped, “I…wha…” Turning her back on the mirror, she let her frustration power a shout, “What is it?”
“Are you going to be all day?” Jackie Tyler whined from the hallway. There was no other word for it. She whined, like a crated puppy. Rose gritted her teeth. “Rose? You have to talk to me sometime, sweetheart.” Jackie’s tone hardened as she rapped again, “All right. Stay quiet, then, but open up. I’m dying for a pee.”
Rose drew a hissing breath through her clenched teeth. Her mother, solicitous at first, had grown increasingly demanding. She wanted answers. Answers Rose wasn’t prepared to give. Apparently, the Doctor had been very upset when he’d brought her home. And his circuitous explanations had left her mother in a highly agitated state. Rose wanted to soothe her but she didn’t yet have the patience.
“Almost done,” she called. Eye clearing, she could see well enough to exchange her towel toga for her bathrobe. “Just a minute more.”
Cinching the robe closed, she went to the sink again. This time she applied her makeup quickly without checking her reflection. Her mother wouldn’t care if the line of blush was stark on her cheek or the mascara a tad too heavy on her lashes. And the Doctor wouldn’t notice. He only saw the true her, underneath every artifice. Though he’d occasionally called her beautiful, she’d once compared his inability to see ‘sexy’ to colorblindness. ‘You’re hopeless,’ she’d told him, giving up on enticing dresses and impractical shoes. It didn’t matter to him if she was covered in war paint or festooned with muddy grime from a foul street. He would beam at her like she rivaled Keira Knightley gowned in couture. He always saw straight into her soul. She hoped her soul looked the same to him, now, but she doubted it did. Some changes branded you deep.
Opening the mirrored cupboard, she reached for a tampon, tore it free of the wrapper, and inserted it without stopping to debate herself again about the wisdom of consulting a gynecologist. She was hardly bleeding now and what would she say? My alien boyfriend’s people used temporal transportation to remove a baby from my belly…is that dangerous? Or how about…So, what do you know about the effects of time travel on pregnancy? Sensible old Dr. Patel would have her fitted for a straightjacket. Besides, Rose was pretty sure it was normal to bleed after losing a baby. She hadn’t exactly miscarried but the principle was probably the same. Rose needed maternal advice but her mum had trouble setting the VCR timer. Jackie needed constant reassurance and emotional support just to deal with the Doctor. The truth was, she'd never been much good in a crisis, unless the crisis demanded tea or Lasting Color #17.
“About time,” Jackie greeted Rose when she opened the bathroom door. “You’ve used all the hot water, I imagine. You and him. You’re a pair, all right.”
“Where is he?” Rose asked, peering around her mother and down the hall with the expectation of seeing the Doctor.
He wasn’t lurking. She retied her robe belt, making it tighter, mentally calculating her chances of gaining the bedroom ahead of him and locking the door.
“He’s gone to the market.”
“What? Without me?”
Rose frowned over her own mixed emotions. She was surprised by the hurt tone in her voice and the sharp stab of regret in her chest. Regret didn’t make much sense. She’d been avoiding the Doctor for days and she hated shopping. Small wonder he’d given up on her and gone off on his own. She’d dropped enough hints about needing breathing space and cast enough barbed glares to puncture even his over inflated ego.
”You’ve been forever in there. And you know what he’s like just now. He woke me up at 5:30 this morning, singing. ‘Operetta,’ he called it. ‘Drowning cats,’ is more like. He’s been in the Pepsi already. Two cans, at the very least. And he didn’t touch a morsel of breakfast.” Rose groaned. “Don’t groan at me. I’m not his keeper, but if you ask me he needs one.”
“Sugar keeps his spirits up. He’s worried. And he hates staying in one place.”
“One place? More like twenty. He was bouncing off the walls when he found you’d got by him and into the shower.” Jackie edged around Rose, shooing her out into the hallway.
“I’ve never really seen him this…fizzy.”
“Well, I should hope not if he’s driving. Seeing him this morning, I thought, it’s no wonder you go missing for years and end up on the wrong planet half the time,” Jackie said, starting to close the door in her daughter’s face. “I’ve got to use the loo. I’m bursting. You go make us the tea and toast.”
“Yeah, all right,” Rose said. After a brief, hesitation, she put a hand against the closing door and timidly said, “Mum?”
“What sweetheart?” Jackie inquired gently even as she bobbed a little against the demands of her bladder.
There was too much to say. Rose smiled sadly. “Nothing. I’ll see you in a minute, yeah?”
In the kitchen, she filled the kettle and put it on the heat. Then, she added four tea bags to the yellow and blue teapot, three for the people and one for the pot. Both her mum and the Doctor liked their tea strong and sweet. Checking the fridge, Rose saw they were nearly out of milk and completely out of jam. Luckily, the Doctor had left them some butter. She waited on the toast until the kettle whistled. Her mum walked in just as Rose was pouring the water over the tea.
“Did you warm the pot?”
Rose rolled her eyes. “The water’s boiling. It’s warm enough.”
“But the tea will cool too quickly, sweetheart,” Jackie said, her voice hitting that grating register the Doctor always grimaced over.
Though she loved her mother dearly, more and more Rose found herself grimacing, too. She was used to being mistress of her own house, well – TARDIS, and it irritated her to be corrected like a child. “We’ll drink it fast, then.”
“While it’s brewing,” Jackie said, pointedly, “It will cool down before it’s ready to drink.” Bumping Rose aside with her hip, she dumped the barely colored hot water from the teapot, added another tea bag, refilled the kettle and put it back on the burner. “There now, be ready in a minute.”
“Fine, whatever,” Rose said, sulkily. She gestured toward the door. “I’m going to go dress.”
“Don’t you want your tea?”
She almost said no. She hadn’t wanted tea in the first place but the beseeching look on her mother’s face checked her. “I’ll be right back,” she assured, taking a moment to pat her mum’s arm before she left. Jackie smiled and went in search of something in the fridge. Rose shuffled into the living room, heading for the hall.
She'd just reached her bedroom when she heard her mum shrilly exclaim, “He’s only eaten the last of the jam. Rose? He’s eaten the jam.”
Rose felt the muscles in her jaw cramp. They had to get out of here. Being torn down the middle like this was driving her mad. She felt trapped between her mother’s domestic inanity and the Doctor’s happy insanity. As she sank down on the edge of her bed, Rose wondered if the Doctor thought he was fooling anybody. He wasn’t. Both she and her mother knew his recent perpetual good humor arrived via self-medicating. His body didn’t process refined sugars as much as ferment them. A handful of jelly babies left him pleasantly relaxed. Four cans of Pepsi a day, plus jam and pudding, left him buoyant even in the face of tragedy. He was currently bio-chemically incapable of brooding.
To his credit, he’d neither pressed her for attention nor touched her in the last week. He only joked and talked and twitched and bounced about until she’d started locking the doors against him. It hurt him, which hurt her but she didn’t want to pretend things were normal when they weren’t. She, also, didn’t want to acknowledge her part in encouraging his abuse of uncontrolled substances.
Maybe they should go.
‘Maybe he should go,’ a tiny, self-pitying, inner voice told her. ‘Maybe he’d be happier on his own.’
Only, he hadn’t been happy before they’d met. Rose knew that. And besides…she needed him. Far more than he realized. Far more than she could ever say. She wanted to tell him, but the words always stalled in her throat. She was far better at physical expressions of affection. She wanted to slide back into his arms. Feel him naked against her. Hold him. Kiss him. Let him enter her mind. He would feel loved then. He would know. But even the thought of such intimacy sent fearful shivers prickling up her spine. Her skin crawled.
God, would she never get over these stomach-curdling flashbacks?
Even as she had the thought, a full-blown one hit. Ghostly hands seemed to close on her. Invisible cords cut across her chest, tightened, squeezed. Her body told her to run but refused to obey her. She shot to her feet but could go no further. Adrenaline spiked her heart rate and evaporated her saliva. Her mouth went popcorn dry. Her breath rasped in her throat. In her mind’s eye, she could see the High Inquisitor’s kindly but determined face grow wary and then twist in agony. Rose closed her eyes and covered her ears. She took a few blind, stumbling steps toward the door.
She could still see them all, the people she’d burned. She could still hear them screaming in her head. She screamed, too. The Doctor was right. She hadn’t killed them. She’d made them beg for death. Dimly, she was aware of noises outside her head, her mother’s pleas, the insistent keening of the kettle and then the crash of the front door as the Doctor kicked it open.
He was here.
Rose threw herself at him as he came through her door and he caught her, held on tight. His fingers skidded on the fleecy weave of her robe. Her hands clawed up his back, pulling him closer. She burrowed into him, into his mind, shocking him, bruising him psychically as she searched for a safe place to hide. He offered no resistance, unfolding thoughts and memories before her wild rush, giving in completely and generously to her need. She dove deep into his yielding dark, lost herself and then had to check the urge to lash out in panic. Afraid of burning him, she tamped down the fire in her wolfish soul. She would die before allowing it to strike at him. In their joined mind, she floated, waiting for him to find her, certain he would.
The storm came, sweeping over her with a jet-engine roar, swift as the sea swamping Pharaoh’s chariots. Stinging salt spray hit Rose’s face and pricked against her closed eyelids. Ducking her head, she held fast against the momentary maelstrom. It calmed in an instant, stilled and settled on her as a misting rain. Opening her eyes, Rose squinted into sunshine. The sky was a blue so pale it was almost white. The clearing rain and unnatural brightness birthed a multitude of rainbows on the horizon.
Rose didn’t recognize anything but she knew where she was. The Doctor had created an imaginary world around them, a haven with no triggers for her damaged spirit to exploit. They stood on the deck of a tiny sailing ship in the middle of a vast ocean. There was no land in sight, no claustrophobic walls or tight corners, no place for shadows to lurk. The entire world was apparent, bright and sunny.
Despite a slight breeze, which quickly dried her clothes, the seas seemed becalmed. Their little sailing vessel bobbed gently as she and the Doctor held one another. Rose relaxed. Sighing contentedly, she rested her cheek against his shoulder. He stroked her hair as he leaned back against the mast. Neither of them spoke, they simply breathed away her fear and his loneliness. After what seemed like a good half hour, Rose recalled herself enough to feel concern for him. Lifting her head, she tipped it back so she could search his face for some sign of pain or distress. He smiled sweetly at her and as soon as she grinned back they returned to reality.
No more than a few second had elapsed. Her mother and the whistling kettle were still shrilly demanding attention. The Doctor still held her. Cautiously, she loosened her death grip on his shoulder blades and took an unsteady step back. He let go easily, smiling down on her with his usual good humor as his hands skimmed her forearms. His unruffled manner reassured her. They would weather this bad patch. From the corner of her eye, Rose saw his hand rise into view. He moved carefully, as if he meant to lightly trace along her cheek but he checked himself before he touched her. His fingertips didn’t quite make contact with her skin. They hovered.
There was a sick churning in Rose’s stomach and her lower lip trembled but she stood still, letting him approach. She trusted him this much. Wanted to trust him completely. She could sense his mental presence in the room, a sort of blanketing influence. But he made no further contact with her mind. And once he’d hovered over her cheek and around her chin and skimmed his thumb above her mouth, he tucked his hands into his trouser pockets and became as closed to her as any human male. Rose felt an overwhelming sense of hope. Pressing to her tiptoes, one hand against his chest for balance, she gave him the quickest of kisses.
He held her gaze afterward, just for a moment, and then turned to face Jackie, speaking in his usual carefree way. “I’m afraid I’ve dropped the shopping down the stairwell,” he admitted, his expression benignly polite. They might have been having a pleasant stroll in fine weather for all the tension in him. He did grimace in slight apology as he added, “Might salvage something, but not the jam. There was a definite shattering on impact. So, it’s back to the market for me. Good thing I’m paying, hey?” A small nudge of his elbow to Jackie’s arm accompanied this last question.
Jackie shoved around him. She wasn’t a cruel woman but she was frightened and wouldn’t be easily deterred from hounding her daughter for answers. “Rose? What’s happened? Talk to me? Are you ill? Are you dizzy? Did something startle you, sweetheart?”
Falling back, Rose pressed the heel of her palm to the side of her head. She twisted her body, avoiding her mother’s grasping hands. She didn’t want to be touched, held. Confined. But she was quickly cornered between the bed and a small table. Shoulders hunched, she drew an unsteady breath. As Jackie closed on her, harrying her with questions, Rose cast a sidelong appeal at the Doctor.
‘Help me,’ her expression pleaded even as she tried to answer her mother. “I had a flashback, that's all,” she said. “But it’s over, now. I’m all right.”
“But a flashback of what?” Jackie cried. She hurled an irritated and accusing glare at the Doctor, who had begun to emit soothing mutters. He seemed to be shushing her, urging her away from Rose. “What happened out there? What are the pair of you hiding?” She demanded of him. When he didn’t answer, she moved in on Rose, again, arms extended to envelop her in a hug.
The Doctor gave up on gentle persuasion. Leaping forward from a standstill, he seized Jackie just above the elbow and pivoted her like a swinging gate on the hinge of her arm. “Leave it,” he hissed, locking his gaze on hers as she came around to face him.
There was nothing benign or polite in his expression. It was chilling. His slit-eyes flashed with venom. The set of his jaw coupled with his clenched teeth and snarling lips gave his face a psychotic cast. Jackie had never considered him harmless but this sudden shift into viciousness alarmed her. She’d harried him with impunity for so long that his lashing out struck her harder than being snapped at by a loyal mutt.
“I…just…” she sputtered, shaken more by what she considered confirmation of his menace than by any other event of the morning.
Sensing her mother’s distress, Rose called the Doctor off by simply stepping forward and gripping his arm. The effect on him was immediate. While he didn’t exactly morph into old Shep, faithful companion, his bristle vanished. He pulled into himself, reining in his temper as his gaze lifted to intersect hers.
“I’m...completely fine, now,” she told him, “really.” Her mother squeaked and Rose reassuringly caressed her back with her other hand, linking them into a unit of three. “No worries,” she insisted, smiling when Jackie shifted closer to her. “But the Doctor’s right, mum. I could use a bit of quiet. My head is killing me.”
“You have a headache, sweetheart?” Jackie said, solicitously. Rose braced herself to take the stroking pet of her mother’s hand. “You should have mentioned. What you need is a lie down. I could get you some aspirin. Or a nice icepack for your neck. Would you like that? A little ice?”
“Just some tea, thanks,” Rose said. She nodded toward the door. “You go on. We’ll be in in a minute.”
Jackie hesitated, clearly torn about leaving. Rose smiled reassuringly, not wanting her mother to feel unwelcome but silently urging her to go. Jackie obviously didn’t want to go without answers to her many questions. But her love for Rose won out over selfish curiosity, she sighed, “If you’re certain you’re all right.” Rose nodded briskly and, after a telling hesitation, gave her mother a quick hug. Jackie started for the hallway but stopped short at the open door, turning back to say, “If you ever want to talk about it…?”
“I’ll let you know,” Rose said, softly.
“I mean…at a time like this, you would think a girl would turn to her mother…”
Her suggestion trailed away into awkward silence. Rose and the Doctor stood side-by-side, regarding her with a good measure of detachment. Their postures were identical and their smiles had become fixed disguises, masking any real feelings. Fidgeting in the face of this disturbingly alien indifference, Jackie finally said, “Maybe a boiled egg with your tea and toast? Your headache could be low blood sugar. Sadie Carmichael, next floor up and three over, has attacks of low blood sugar. You won’t know her. She’s new since you went traveling. But I gave her son a steer toward Mickey’s old job at the garage and he got it. He stops by every evening and checks on his mum, says the sugar sets her off into fainting fits from time to time but all she needs is a little protein to be right as rain. Would you like me to boil you an egg?”
“That’d be…great,” Rose said, cheerfully enough.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jackie hesitated a moment longer before turning to go. She didn’t want to leave and, as she made her slow way to the kitchen, couldn’t help brooding on Rose’s inhumanly cool smile. She’d changed so much in the past two years. The airs that fancy shop had given her were nothing compared to the cocky attitude she’d picked up from the Doctor. The stories they told gave Jackie nightmares. The two of them laughed in the face of danger, spit in its face more like. But bad things still happened. And it was all right for him, he’d go on living if he died. But what about Rose?
Would he have the courage, or the common human decency, to tell her if Rose died out there on Mars or wherever? Or would the two of them simply vanish from her world, like Mickey did, leaving her forever wondering? It was months between visits now. How long would it be before they stopped coming back? Or worse before there was nothing left of the sweet girl Rose had once been? How long before some strange, alien woman took Rose Tyler’s place? Jackie felt like an anchor, stubbornly digging in to keep her child from drifting away. It was wearing.
Shaking her head in frustrations, she used a dishcloth to protect her hand as she removed the steaming kettle from the burner. There was almost no water left inside. After heaving a put upon sigh, she ran another five cups from the sink and started the kettle boiling one more time. Only the Doctor could make breakfast tea so much bother. She located an egg for Rose and decided she’d have one as well. Filling a small pan, she set their eggs to cook and then settled herself at the kitchen table to wait. She meant to give him a piece of her mind this time. She wasn’t about to sit quietly when her daughter had been reduced to screaming and shaking by whatever had happened to her.
Violation, he’d said. And she’d though ‘rape.’
But it couldn’t be that simple. Not with him involved. At least, Rose wasn’t pregnant. She’d entered her monthlies and that was a blessing. But she wouldn’t talk, wouldn’t answer the simplest of questions. Jackie had noticed her avoiding the Doctor, too. Perhaps now was the time to strike against him, to cut him out of Rose’s life forever. If she could only get Rose to see how dangerous he was--how alien.
As she stood to remove the eggs from the pan, Jackie heard Rose and the Doctor in the hallway, chattering like a caged finches. They sounded happy. They always did. Rose wasn’t afraid of him, that much was certain. And he seemed to dote on her. Bracing herself for the argument ahead, Jackie nested the eggs into cups, and then poured the left-over hot water into the sink. She was carrying the pan back to the stovetop when it struck her the voices were moving away. The front door opened. They were leaving. Dropping the empty pan, Jackie rushed to stop them.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The tension in Rose’s room eased by half once Jackie left, but the Doctor waited until she’d silenced the shrieking kettle before releasing his pent breath. Then, facing Rose, he placed his hands lightly on her robed shoulders. She had to steel herself, more than he liked, her breath catching slightly, but she didn’t flinch or twitch away. He catalogued that away as a hopeful sign.
Flexing his knees to meet her eye squarely, he asked, “Now, how are you really?”
With a gasping chuckle, Rose sagged to the edge of the bed, relief at his ready understanding evident on her face. “Shaky,” she confirmed. The confession reeled him closer. He dropped into a crouch before her, coat tails flaring on the floor. Looking up like one seeking divine guidance, he searched her face as she stared into the middle distance and added, “And you were right. I didn’t kill them.”
“I know,” he said with tender certainty. “You aren’t capable of murder. It goes against your nature. And you need to know this,” she glanced at him as he paused, “My people are very resilient. They can recover from anything, given enough time and rest.”
“I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want to hurt them. They just...kept coming.”
“I know.” He looked down, mumbling. “It’s my fault.”
Rose’s mouth fell open in surprise. “But you didn’t…” she began, before switching gears mid-sentence to firmly deny him. “No! It was my fault. I wanted to learn your language. I didn’t pay attention to K-9. I wandered off on my own.” The Doctor kept his head bowed and she read him as clearly as she might read a neon sign on a dark night. “And you didn’t have to talk me into anything else either. I wanted…”
With his gaze still focused on the carpet between her bare feet, his mouth lifted slightly at the corners. “To have your way with me?” he finished in a murmur.
“Oh, you wish,” Rose chuckled, tugging at his hair so he would lift his head and look at her. When he did she winked at him with a bit of her former sauciness. They stared into one another, finding peace.
“I should have a look at those groceries,” he said, at last, but he made no move to leave. “Maybe the juice survived and the butter...plastic containers on both…”
Rose slid her fingers free of his tousled hair. “Did you go to Tesco?” she asked, her light tone reflecting her hope of returning the conversation to less personal ground.
The Doctor nodded, but more in agreement with her unspoken desire for an emotional break than in answer to her question. Lips in a little moue, as if he were sucking on hard candy, he rose out of his crouch. As he stood, he combed a hand through his ruffled hair, smoothing it to his nape.
“They don’t open until eight-thirty,” he said, gripping the back of his neck. ‘I didn’t want to wait. So, I walked down to Elephant and Castle, found an express store.”
Also nodding, Rose stood. Dog-legging around him, like the black knight evading a pawn, she said, “It’s all that sugar. Makes you restless.”
He didn’t answer, only tracked her with his eyes while she rummaged about for something to wear. He had been restless, wound tight. The long walk had helped. But the relentless clamoring of this morning’s sugar high seemed like a muted chorus when compared to the current singing in his blood. He watched Rose haul jeans and underwear from her dresser. She stacked various pieces of clothing like pancakes, one on top of another, before transferring the lot to her bed.
After settling the stack so it wouldn’t tip, and without a trace of embarrassment, she cast her robe off and stood nude before him. He forgot to breathe. There was a sudden burning in his chest at this show of trust and his mind conjured up a brief but wickedly sharp memory from his previous life. It was a memory of Rose, sun drenched and confident, on the planet Barcelona. He’d met her there, only a few weeks after he’d left the asylum. He’d been desperate…alone…empty, seeking union but so afraid of it. And she’d been…well…Rose.
They came together as strangers in a bar and then later in a humid hotel room, bodies intertwined. He remembered her skin, soaked with sweat and silky smooth under his roaming hands. Her mind had remained closed to him, guarded, but her mouth had opened willingly to his tongue. She’d tasted as sweet, been as intoxicating, as honeyed mead. Bella, he’d called her, meaning only ‘beautiful’…though somewhere in his subconscious he must have known, sensed the vital role she would play in his life. Nothing, no one, had ever stirred him to such passion.
It was still to come for her, those memories, that day. For him it was sacred history. At her insistence, he’d left her behind on Barcelona only to come to Earth in the early twenty-first century, determined to see her again. He’d found her at five and then, again, a few years later. He’d stalked her in a way, arranging the delivery of a red bicycle one Christmas, scaring a wayward and abusive male from her door two summers later. He’d rescued her from shadows and store window dummies. One day on Barcelona, one brief encounter, had led him here.
He tucked his chin in and cocked his head to the side, watching Rose, remembering the journey as she chose a tank top from her closet and shimmied gracefully into it. He imagined sliding his fingers under the fabric, lifting it away from her skin. He wanted to delight her, make her gasp and moan. For a moment, she stood still, backlit by the window, all tan skin and white cotton--knickers and bra strap, socks and tank. He knew she would be surprised, if he gave his thoughts voice. She'd be surprised to learn he’d been gripped by something akin to lust.
It wasn’t the lust of a man, of course. He didn’t have the throbbing in his loins he’d read so much about in the novels on Jackie’s scant bookshelf. But he did have a hunger. A pang, Rassilon would surely say, came from encouraging arousal. He wanted. He yearned. Though he didn’t dare speak of it, not yet, he longed to be with Rose…enter her, even subjugate her…make her his, but gently…oh, so gently. His desire couldn’t be sated in the physical realm. Though he recognized Rose’s physical beauty, it did not captivate him. Until they touched, her naked flesh meant no more to him than her cast off robe. What haunted him, moved him, was her recent push into his mind. It was only a question of time now before they could be together, again, before they were complete.
“Was it really named for Catherine of Aragon, Infanta de Castile?” Rose asked, certain he would know.
He did but it took him a dazed moment to recall what they’d been talking about and process her question. “What? Oh…Elephant and Castle. Yes!” He blinked, looking lost, and then said, “I mean, no. Not even close. There was a real elephant. Trunk, tusks…big ears,” he continued breathlessly, acting out by sketching elephant parts in the air as he named them, “hide like…well…like an elephant, I suppose.” He grinned broadly. “What else has a hide like that?” He sucked in a long overdue breath, “On Earth? Mind you…Sontorans…if we were in the Peju Nebula or...another time, the Kraken…extinct, now, so…” Rose beamed adoringly at him. He knew she enjoyed his rambling. It was one of her best qualities as a companion. Too many people tired of him after a few days, some tired of him within minutes.
“My point was…is…” he went on, “the elephant was real enough. It once roamed or …that is…stood around, really, anchored by a great log and iron chains...down one of those crossroads. It was brought here by sailing ship. A tiny, seasick, mewling thing but it grew…,” he swallowed against his speeding tongue, slowing it, “into a sort of mascot for the Royal African Company.” The lift of his brows widened his eyes in pained resignation as he said, “Slave traders.” Rose scowled, obviously empathizing, as he did, with the enslaved. Freeing the oppressed was one of her pet projects in space/time. She frequently got him into trouble with it. “The local merchants provided stores and shackles and…oars to the Company. Profitable, of course. But the locals used to say they were caught between the Elephant and the Castle, meaning you might not like slavers but you had to pay your taxes somehow.”
“Like a rock and a hard place,” Rose suggested. The tip of her tongue appeared at the corner of her mouth as she drew the zip up on her jeans.
“Or the devil and the deep blue sea,” the Doctor agreed. “Or tea with your mother and a visit to a barber for dental work.” He grinned to soften the insult. “Eventually,” he drawled, carrying on with his story, “the elephant died and was reincarnated as ivory knife handles and piano keys. But the idea of the elephant lives on so it’s had a bit of immortality, as well, more than the average pachyderm, at any rate. The slave trade fell out of favor. Local pub owners erected eye-sores. The world turned, moved on.”
“And Tesco Express moved in,” Rose finished.
The Doctor nodded but absently as if he too had moved on. He scratched his head, grimacing as he looked toward the door. “I suppose we can’t get out of tea.”
“Tea won’t hurt you.”
Fixing her with a glare, head waggling so much it seemed unhinged, he said, “You forget I’ve had your mother’s tea. The best I can say for it is it brought me out of a coma.”
“We’ll bottle it. You can do the television spots.”
“We’d be sued. I suspect cultist witch doctors employ your mother’s tea to raise the dead. And I’m afraid she might use it to overcome my resistance to questioning.”
“You aren’t going to be interrogated,” Rose said, shrugging into her jeans jacket. She skimmed a few pound notes, a bus pass and her keys off the bedside table and into a pocket. Outfitted, she straightened her shoulders and strode toward the hall door. The Doctor hung back. "Are you coming?"
“She'll ask…questions.”
Rose paused, turning back to give him a quizzical look. The expression on his tense features drew her back to his side. Lowering her voice, she asked, “What sort of questions?”
“Difficult, slippery ones,” he said. “My intentions.”
“Your what?”
“Intentions. Mostly, do I have any. If I’m going to be leaving you any time soon? Why I bother to stay? What I’m getting out of this…” he pointed back and forth between his chest and hers with one finger, “…relationship. And that’s…that’s just her warm up…I fear she’s just getting started. She’s also, interested in your motivation. How you feel about me? What happened to put you into a coma? Why didn’t I stop it? When will you be coming home to stay?”
“Maybe I should talk to her,” Rose said without enthusiasm. “Set her right on a few things.”
“Maybe,” the Doctor said, stretching the word like warm taffy as he stared at her in wide-eyed supposition, “We should go on a picnic. Instead of to tea. In lieu of.”
“A picnic?” Rose repeated as if she might have misunderstood. She cocked a brow and glanced around him at the alarm clock. “At this time of morning? Aren’t picnics more an afternoon sort of thing?”
“A breakfast picnic,” the Doctor clarified. “Baguettes and bananas in Victoria Tower Gardens. We can see the Burghers of Calais. I’ll buy you a fancy coffee.”
“You suggesting we just leg it out the front door? Give my mum the slip?”
“Oh, Jackie won’t mind,” he insisted, waving a carefree hand as he headed into the hall. “She’s probably sick of our company by now. We’ll say we’re off to do the shopping, again. Make sure it sticks this time. Matter of fact, we can stop at the Borough Market coming and going, pick up whatever we need.”
Rose privately thought her mother would mind very much being ditched with a full pot of tea and no answers to her questions. But Rose wanted to run as much as the Doctor did and this was their chance.
“The Borough Market is for toffs,” she told him as she caught up. “It’s not like it was back in 1880.”
“Well…I’m a sort of toff,” the Doctor said. “Or, at least, toff-ish. Lord of Time.” Rose smiled, loving the way he weighted the title in his mouth. He gave it resonance. “And I’m not so out of date as all that. 1880?” He scoffed and shot her a look that included a disappointed furrowing of his brow. “You go on as if I’d just dropped in from beyond the rim, first time on Earth, but I’ve seen the travelogues. I’ve been to the Borough Market since I met you. Bought a jellied eel last time we visited your mum.” He stooped to squint at the damage his kick had caused the frame and wood of the front door. “Need to fix this when we get back. Your mother claims I’ve gone through more than my share of doors.”
“Didn’t know there was a limit,” Rose said.
“Apparently it’s three.”
“You could have used the sonic screwdriver.”
He favored her with a needle-sharp glare. “No, I really couldn’t have,” he said and she remembered how he’d stormed in to save her.
Cheeks reddening under the burning intensity of his stare, Rose raised her voice, calling, “We’re going out, mum. Back in a little while.”
There was a sharp yelp of protest from the kitchen, followed by the clang of a dropped sauce pan. Rose turned toward the noise but the Doctor seized her hand and, throwing open the door, pulled her with him into the warm sunshine. Infected with his sense of urgency, Rose forgot to resist and, feet tripping along, followed in his wake as he launched them toward the stairs. Jackie was hot on their heels. But the damaged door slowed her down. Her exclamations grew louder, chasing them as they pelted down the steps
“Come back here, you,” she yelled after the Doctor, “…you…door smasher! What happened to …who’s going to pay for this? You’re going make this right! And Rose isn’t well. Honestly…of all the cowardly…”
The Doctor skidded to a halt on the ground floor, stepping aside to avoid being run down, he let Rose’s momentum carry her around in a swing dancer’s circle. She opened her mouth to question this sudden halt as she came back to him, but saw he’d paused only long enough to gather the grocery sacks full of shattered glass and sticky jam at the foot of the stairs. Releasing her hand for a moment, he examined the remains of his shopping disaster. Neighbors had already availed themselves of the undamaged merchandise. There was no sign of the canned goods, juice or butter.
“We have given to the poor,” the Doctor said after peering into each sack. “I feel like Robin Hood,” he added, grinning at her as he deposited the torn plastic bags in a nearby waste bin. “Rose Marion Tyler.”
“Except we’re not rich,” Rose grumbled. Though she knew the unwritten scavenging rules, she was still disappointed in her fellow estate tenants for swooping in like buzzards on road kill. It had been less than a half hour since the Doctor dropped the shopping.
“I am…rather,” the Doctor said, almost apologetically as he took her hand again and set off for the street.
“Really?” Frowning, Rose pursed her lips a bit. This was news to her but not the ‘stop the presses’ sort. She gave a careless shrug. “I suppose you must be, yeah? I never thought about it but you always have money.”
“Well…when I say, ‘rich’, I mean well off.” He tipped his head to the right as he reconsidered his phrasing a second time. “And when I say, ‘well off’…I mean …comfortable. You’ll want for nothing.”
Rose shook her hand free of his grip but only so she could seize his arm and bounce along beside him. “So, why do I always end up buying your chips and coffee?”
“I thought they were gifts,” he said, in a melting tone, his smile broad enough to belong to a door-to-door salesman. “Tokens of affection.”
She poked playfully in the general direction of his ribs but missed by several inches, only prodding his coat. “How does that work? If you don’t?” she asked, a few moments later. When he glowered in confusion, she laughingly clarified, “Work, I mean. If you don’t work how did you get rich? Is it a Time Lord thing? Do they send you off with bags of gold or something?”
“They didn’t send me off. I ran away. And no bags of gold. Investments,” The Doctor told her as they reached the bus stop. He twirled, coat flaring and settled on a bench to wait. His legs were braced wide, his arms open and resting along the bench back. “Over the years and across the stars, I’ve made a few wise investments with an eye to future financial solvency.”
Rose’s expression turned from playful to puzzled as she plopped down next to him. “Isn’t that cheating?” she asked. “Using the TARDIS for monetary gain? I mean, it’s sort of like insider trading.”
“The TARDIS?” the Doctor exclaimed, his lips twisting into a sneer. “Why would I need the TARDIS to understand the vagaries of a market economy and manipulate them to my own benefit?”
“Oh,” Rose said, cutting her eyes to the side to study him. “So, you’re just clever?”
“Just?” he declared, in such an affronted fashion she bent double and laughed out loud. The merry sound, balm to his spirit, drew an answering chuckle from the Doctor.
When she’d settled down enough to continue, Rose scooted closer to him and said, “Well, all right...it’s a bit more than cleverness. It must take some study.”
“Not a great deal," he admitted. "But I do need to be careful. I wouldn’t want to red flag my holding companies by taking too many risky plunges. Someone might notice and start asking questions if I never chose an unprofitable stock. There’s a company you should know about, Foreman, Ltd. Your name is on the paperwork. You could draw funds on your thumbprint. Should we ever be separated...”
“Don’t say that,” Rose warned.
He settled his hand over hers, but repeated himself with some firmness, “Should we ever be separated, you could make your way back to Earth from a thousand different planets. Remember, you’re not without resources.”
“Foreman,” Rose said wistfully. “I’ll remember.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The bus arrived with a growl and puff of smoke, like some great red dragon. It rumbled, while the driver grew irritated and the Doctor fumbled in pockets, coming up with everything but coins. Finally, Rose gave him one of her bus pass rides and they both boarded.
“Rich…yeah, that’s you, just not solvent,” she mocked as they climbed to the upper deck for the trip to the Borough Market.
The midsummer morning glistened. Bright sunshine made even old, graffiti-covered buildings sparkle. As they traveled the Doctor acted the tour guide, telling her about assorted monsters and menaces he’d faced down in this or that street. There didn’t seem to be a single block of the city he hadn’t defended at one time or other. Not to be out done, Rose pointed out her personal landmarks. Her school. Shareen's place. Mickey’s Gran’s house.
“And over there,” she said, indicating a small playground. “That’s where I had my first kiss.”
Sighting along her arm, the Doctor pressed so close his breath tickled her cheek as, in a teasingly seductive purr, he guessed, “On the swings?”
“On the merry-go-round,” she corrected. “I liked to get dizzy, hanging my head over the edge. Seeing the world go by upside down, enjoying the blurry colors. And when the spinning stopped, Tam Petersen was standing there. His mum was chatting with my mum and we just sort of stared at one another. Then, he kissed me.”
“Bold move.”
“Well,” Rose sniffed, trying to sound offhand. “He was older. Seven.”
The Doctor shifted away but nodded with her in astute sympathy. “Man of the world. You go for that type.”
“I was only five and three quarters.”
“Now, there’s an age gap. I’m surprised your mother didn’t nip the budding romance in the...well..bud. What ever could the two of you have had in common?”
“A love of spinning,” Rose said, cuddling his arm. “Same thing I have in common with you.”
They arrived at the Borough Market a few minutes later. It bustled on Saturday morning. All manner of people shopped its stalls and storefronts: caterers and housewives and students. Bus loads of tourists crowded in when the doors opened at 9:00 am. The stands full of colorful vegetables, fruit and fresh fish had brilliant canopies in primary red, yellow and blue. Chalkboard signs proclaimed prices in bold letters. Voices echoed from the high ceiling and mingled with the myriad sounds of commerce bouncing off the concrete floor.
Pausing on the threshold of the Market's vaulted doorway, the Doctor declared, "The marketplace, soul of a society, boon to archeologists and sociologist alike. The key to understanding any species, any culture."
"The Borough Market is the soul of our society?"
"Could be."
"I think England is in trouble."
"Could be."
Rose laughed. "Still...better than a Tesco Metro soul," she supposed as she let go of his hand, allowing the current of shoppers to carry her away. “I’ll meet you out front by the café,” she called to him. “Half an hour.”
Making up his mind not to worry, the Doctor bobbed his chin at her and waved absently. It would do neither of them any good for him to start fussing. The life they led frequently separated them and Rose wouldn’t tolerate coddling, even assuming he knew how to coddle. He purchased two bananas, a basket of fresh strawberries and several tiny cheese-filled pastries before thinking of Rose again. Glancing around, he saw no sign of her. Telling himself she was fine, he strolled to their rendezvous point, took a seat at one of the café tables and ordered a coffee. It had only just arrived when Rose returned.
“Are you drinking that here?” she asked. “It’s such a lovely day. I thought we might walk across the bridge rather than take the bus. You won’t want to balance coffee all the way.”
“Give this to the poor,” the Doctor told the mystified waitress, returning his cup to her hand as he stood. “Maid Marion has command of me.”
“Sorry,” Rose told the waitress. “We just…need to go.”
Arm in arm, they left behind one obviously perplexed woman holding the Doctor’s coffee and strolled across the bridge toward Victoria Tower Gardens. The walk was a bit long but lovely. Bright sunshine baked into their shoulders. The river breeze, crisp and cool, ruffled their hair. And the park, when they reached it, was relatively peaceful. Later in the day there would be more people about, treading the sidewalks or sitting on the benches along the Thames but, at this hour, only a few students lounged on spread blankets. A jogger or two jogged by, but mostly the Doctor and Rose had the place to themselves. They purchased coffee, a thicker more aromatic brew than the Doctor’s previous cup, from a street vendor. Then, they found a bench under a canopy of trees near Buxley’s Fountain and ate their breakfast. A student wearing a sweatshirt proclaiming allegiance to St. Thomas’s Medical School hurried past them
After licking soft-cheese filling off of her fingers, Rose asked, “What medical school did you attend?”
“St. Barts.”
“I find it hard to picture,” she said, “You…sitting in class, listening to lectures.” She watched him peel a banana and then looked toward the fountain. “I was here once with a school tour. It’s funny what you remember.”
“And what you forget,” he agreed. After chewing and swallowing a few bites of his banana, he told her, “I don’t really remember attending lectures. But I must have. I have the knowledge…and I know where it came from, St. Barts, class of 1892.”
“Was this…Eight?”
He didn’t answer for a long time and then he said, “I can’t be sure. I’ve forgotten so much. Huge icebergs of my life have been calved into the void. The war, I suppose. And then...as you age...you forget." He sighed and fell silent for a time. "The smell of the Jaumelia trees,” he went on, a bit later, apparently shifting to another subject. Rose was used to him switching topics mid-chat. “Groves of them surrounded the city. The blooms have a delicate aroma, almost like rum-laced cheesecake. But in the summer when the bark toasts under the hot suns, the air gets spicy. You can smell the perfume for miles and miles.”
“I was there in the summer, then,” Rose said, following him around the conversational curve with practiced ease. She knew he was speaking, not of his university days, but of his home world. “The air smelled like nutmeg and lime and black pepper.”
“Yes, your hair still carried the scent of the Jaumelia when you came home to me.” He stretched his legs out, crossing his ankles as he leaned into the bench back. Hands in his trouser pockets, he looked the picture of relaxation. “And this park,” he said, “still reeks of the Thames but it is a far, far sweeter smell these days than when I was a student at St. Barts. That much I remember.”
She didn’t question him further. What he'd told her was enough. She didn’t need to ask if he missed his home or his memories. It was evident he did. She understood him like he understood her. They finished their food in silence. Toying with the last strawberry, Rose scooted to the edge of her seat and squinted toward the statue of the Burghers. Now, that the time was at hand, she wasn’t sure she wanted to go see the famous sculpture. The siege of Calais remained fresh in her mind. The endless nights of worry would stay with her for a long time, the Doctor on one side of the battle and her on the other.
“You won’t recognize anyone,” the Doctor told her, reading the thoughts from her face as easily as he might uncover them with telepathy. “Rodin wasn’t there, of course. But it's more than that. He used stock heads for his figures. Two of the Burghers were cast from the same mould.”
“When I saw you come out with them,” she said softly, remembered fear coating her throat, making her voice thick. “Knowing they were condemned to die...I..." She swallowed. "You were so thin.”
“Dehydration and dysentery...they had no food and fresh water was a challenge, too. But you had the ear of the queen,” he finished, brightly, never one to dwell on past tragedy. “You saved us.”
“It wasn’t me,” Rose denied. “You were lucky. The queen was a kind woman, merciful, and King Edward listened to her.”
“He loved her,” the Doctor said. No further explanation was needed but, glancing at Rose from the corner of his eye, he added, “She followed him to war.”
Rose blushed and looked down at her strawberry. After an awkward and heated silence, she said, “Did you know they had fourteen children?”
“She followed him to war,” the Doctor repeated.
Sniggering, Rose bumped his shoulder with hers. She popped the strawberry into her mouth, corralling an escaping dribble of juice with her thumb, and chewed. The Doctor started packing their trash into one bag in preparation to leave. After he’d swept up every crumb and crumpled every scrap of waxed paper, he started to stand. Rose caught his arm, pulling him back to her. He offered no resistance, just plopped into his seat again. Lifting his chin high enough to expose his throat, he cast an inquiring glance her way.
“I have something for you,” she said, “A sort of present.” Releasing his arm, she reached into her jacket pocket and drew out a small, brown paper package. As she handed it to him, she added, “I think it’s about time.”
The Doctor took the oddly shaped gift and turned it about in his fingers, stroking it as if he might divine what it held. The hard ridges under the wrapping puzzled him. Intrigued, he quickly tore the paper and let the contents of the packet spill into his open palm. His left brow arched in surprise.
“It’s a key,” he exclaimed, pinching it up between two fingers and his thumb for a closer look.
Though he studied it thoroughly, it told him nothing more. It wasn't the Key to Time but it might be the key to anything else. A locker. A locket. A trapdoor. He glanced at Rose, hoping for enlightenment. She had her TARDIS key out. She swung it slowly back and forth from the chain wrapped around her middle finger, like a hypnotist with a pendulum. Back and forth. Back and forth. He watched it swing.
“You gave me yours,” she said, “but I never gave you mine.”
“Yours?” he muttered, drawing a blank on her meaning. His face reflected his confusion as he wondered if this was, perhaps, a symbolic gift: the key to her heart?
Rose snorted impatiently. “To the flat,” she clarified in a tone that told him he was being unnaturally dense. “It’s my key. To my home.”
It hit him broadside. Her key. The knowing cascaded over him in a festive flurry like a delivery of Dear Santa letters to the North Pole. He tried to speak. His mouth opened and closed but nothing but a soft squeak came out. Fighting for composure, he broke eye contact with Rose, turning his face away to stare into the middle distance. He studied the leaves on the trees through a happy haze of tears. He’d traveled with a lot of people in his time, given out at least a hundred keys. No one had ever reciprocated. No one had ever thought to offer him a standing invitation into their life as he’d invited them into his. Only Rose. Only Rose wanted to give him a home again.
“Thank you,” he finally managed to say, the deep current of his emotions making his voice quaver.
He didn’t look back at Rose as she took his hand in hers and gently squeezed, but he could hear the grin in her voice when she edged closer and casually whispered, “I reckon it will save you twenty quid a year on doors.”
END THIS PART
PART THIRTEEN
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-25 05:12 am (UTC)The key-giving was inspired for both of you!
Glad to see you enjoyed the new chapter
Date: 2006-11-27 04:35 pm (UTC)I think in a relationship that's a big part of it...you don't have to force the other person to change...you have to know that should it be required they will do what they need to do for you.
Thanks so much for leaving me your thoughts. It was a slow feedback weekend, everyone out of town or with family, and you cheered me bunches.
Rae
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-25 05:25 am (UTC)How beautiful.
Bravo! You make me so green with envy! I wish I'd thought of it myself! <3
Hands you a tissue
Date: 2006-11-27 04:43 pm (UTC)Once I had that concept down...the rest of the chapter fell into line...and, as you can see, there is very little shopping in the final draft. <<--Amazing if you knew that there was at least 6 pages of shopping in all the other drafts. And a good bit of tea drinking, too.
Thank you for the care and feeding of my fragile muse with appreciative comments. She and I adore feedback on every chapter...but this time you have given her a virtual shot of whiskey and an ice pack for her head. I'm sure she will be back on duty once the bruising fades. ;->
Rae
Re: Hands you a tissue
From:Disheveled...
Date: 2006-11-25 05:35 am (UTC)Keep up the wonderfulness....
And there you are...urging me on...
Date: 2006-11-25 10:07 am (UTC)And yet, I did have that Freudian slip of marking this chapter as "The End"...and people are applauding it as such. Still, I feel I will keep going...because they aren't quite healed, yet, even though, yes, they are on the mend.
Besides, the smut I planned is rather inventive...so...
I just might have to 'keep up the wonderfulness' as you so generously phrase it.
Thank you so much for the encouragement.
Rae
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-25 05:37 am (UTC)BUT in case you didn't already know it was coming: I AM SO CRAZY HAPPY YOU UPDATED! Loving this chapter because Rose is adorable and the Doctor is adorable and Jackie is SO SPOT ON. My love for you knows no bounds. Hope the next chapter is up soon!
My love for you...?
Date: 2006-11-25 01:38 pm (UTC)And even though I know you are enjoying the story, have enjoyed it for 12 chapters...it still gives me a glow to see you popping up to say you are happy I updated. Especially, when...like this one did...the chapter has kicked my muse's ass.
This chapter was soooooo hard to finish. And you, see, it was because of the key...it needed the key scene but I didn't know that...how was I to know? I kept writing new and more elaborate shopping sequences and feeling all battered and rejected by the chapter.
And then...once I had the key scene...I couldn't even wait for all my betas to come back from their vacations...I just shoved the whole thing at Kes and said..."ARRGGHH! Take it! If I looked at it any longer I'll go mad. Mad, I tell you!"
And then...Kes said..."Well, it seems okay to me. Except for the wordiness. You used a lot of words." SIGH!
I'm glad to hear you found the Doctor adorable...and Rose adorable...and Jackie spot on...because I like to be fair to everybody. I knew Rose wouldn't be able to deal with her mother on top of everything she was going though. But I, also, know that Jackie and Rose love each other and would never intentionally hurt one another. So, I had to use some extra wordiness to convey all those conflicted emotions. At least...I think I had to. I'll be happy when I'm back to the smut.
Anyway, thanks for the feedback. It makes all the gnashing of teeth and flailing about worth it.
Rae
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-25 06:14 am (UTC)Thank you so much. ^_^
*waits semi-patiently for more, but mostly contented for the time being*
You are very welcome
Date: 2006-11-27 04:45 pm (UTC)So happy to see your *smile* when a chapter is posted.
Rae
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-25 06:26 am (UTC)Beautiful chapter! Need more soon. Please.
Hands out another tissue
Date: 2006-11-27 04:47 pm (UTC)*gets back to work on next chapter*
Rae
thanking you for continuing to read and for leaving me your kitten-sign of approval.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-25 07:37 am (UTC)i'm too happy to be coherent.
Awww...
Date: 2006-11-27 04:48 pm (UTC)Thanks for letting me know. Smooches.
Rae
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-25 08:45 am (UTC)Whoops...not THE END...
Date: 2006-11-25 10:00 am (UTC)On the other hand...
I could end it here. You could assume that I had and quietly retire. But I did promise people five more chapters.
Rae
thank you for thinking this would be a 'great ending' though
Re: Whoops...not THE END...
From:(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-25 09:20 am (UTC)As I said: perfect.
(the whole chapter was fantastic, as usual. But the ending - I am seriously beside myself with the beauty and appropriateness of it.)
Now...you are making me think I should end it here, too!
Date: 2006-11-25 10:03 am (UTC)Oh, well...we will see. Maybe, I will want to move on to other fic. But I did have somewhere else to go with this one.
I'm glad you enjoyed the bit about the key. I actually think Rose did give him one...because he comes in during The Christmas Invasion...but maybe they were expecting him and just left the door unlocked.
Thanks you for your kind words and general support.
Rae
Re: Now...you are making me think I should end it here, too!
From:(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-25 09:47 am (UTC)"Foreman, Ltd." Nice nod to Susan. I wonder if Rose will ever have the chance to put two and two together regarding that one.
And is it just my imagination, or did I see a nod to your fic "Suicide Blonde" in there...?
You did, indeed, see a nod...
Date: 2006-11-25 10:17 am (UTC)As for Foreman, Ltd. I think Rose already put it together...when she says, "I'll remember."
Thanks for the observations and the kind words. You made my early morning brighter.
Rae
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-25 09:58 am (UTC)I take it Eight *was* the one who went to St. Bart's? (You wrote him so beautifully... I was sad to see him go.)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-25 10:13 am (UTC)And I'm happy you are happy about an update. I should have another chapter for you soon...and more smut...I promise...lots more smut.
Meanwhile, thank you for taking the time to leave feedback. It means a lot to me.
Rae
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-25 12:23 pm (UTC)You totally kick ass... I am going to be so sad when this fic is over
Mo
*Plucks up a handful of tissues...
Date: 2006-11-27 05:15 pm (UTC)You totally kick ass for leaving me such rhinotastic feedback. Thanks for sharing your caring with me.
Maybe I will write another fic when this one is over. I do have an idea for a post Doomsday tale. And I have just a story...like a Doctor Who novel type story...featuring Rose and Ten.
Rae
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-25 12:27 pm (UTC)loved it!
Words cannot convey...
Date: 2006-11-27 04:51 pm (UTC)It had to be said...so I said it.
Ehem...thanks for the kind words re: Chapter 12 of Disheveled. I'm glad you continue to read and enjoy and, above all, let me know you care. Hugs you! Hugs your icon! Refuses to let your icon go until you hose me down! ;->
Rae
Re: Words cannot convey...
From:(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-25 02:00 pm (UTC)If you had left it there it would be perfect but I'm also waiting excitedly for more smut. :)
OH...be still my heart...SIGH!
Date: 2006-11-26 02:41 am (UTC)However, there is something to be said for the sweetness. I do have another Who story...two, in fact...but I'm not sure how long I will be able to sustain my excitement. Generally, I like gettting more of what I like...and I like Ten/Rose. Heroes and House are both trying to lure me away to write for them. ;->
Rae
Re: OH...be still my heart...SIGH!
From:(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-25 06:32 pm (UTC)Hand out yet another tissue
Date: 2006-11-27 04:53 pm (UTC)I am going through the tissues on this one. But I'm glad people are feeling the love. I wanted to convey the domestic side of the Doctor/Rose relationship again...get a feeling of what they were like day to day...a bit.
Thank you so, so much for sharing your love of my stories with me. It means everything to know I've communicated what I wanted to communicate to people.
Rae
LMAO...I, now, have 10% less ass
Date: 2006-11-26 12:09 am (UTC)So, I just couldn't go there...but, dagnabit, he's an ALIEN. I wanted some alien sex, even if I had to write my own to get it. He's quite lovely though...in the genetalia department...like an orchid...with tongue...a sort of organic vibrator, so the sensation is quite intense for Miss Rose. And she likes it.
However, she's had a hard time since that wonderful union. I'm hoping to let everyone take a little smut break in a few chapters. The Doctor is curious about "throbbing loins"...and that should certainly lead somewhere.
Did you happen to read Suicide Blonde? http://rabid1st.livejournal.com/87051.html#cutid1
I ask because it sounds like you are new to my fiction...and this chapter references THAT fic a bit. And...well...I wasn't sure I was doing everything I could to undermine your effort to get a quality college education. ;->
I'm so happy to have you as a reader. Thank you so much for sharing your joyous response to the fic with me. Encouragement like your is the tonic that keeps me writing...I will slave away for the next few weeks now...cheerfully ignoring my basic needs, just so I can produce more pages. I'm kind of like Poe that way. ;->
Rae
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-25 09:10 pm (UTC)I know almost every step of their route around London, and I think that made me respond more than someone who doesn't, because in a way they're two homeless people. Or at least displaced. The TARDIS is a little world outside time and space, where you don't have to interface with reality. That's why it means so much to them. Not fitting in hurts like hell, even when you've found someone else to not fit in with. The ending with the key brought tears to my eyes. It's not a solution, but the gesture is everything.
I know I'm going on but I also wanted to mention how well you write Jackie, who is so easy to make into a pantomime dame. I've a daughter and I could have wept for her. I don't know how you can resolve that one but I hope you don't just leave her there. It reminded me of that very sad scene in the Slitheen episode where all she can say is, "What happened to you that was so terrible you can't even tell me?"
I do love it when you update, but also I'm content to wait because I can read your work repeatedly and see new things in it all the time. There are many published writers around I couldn't say that about.
Hello, kitty!
Date: 2006-11-26 02:51 am (UTC)And then...they could, also, walk to the park. When I read the history of the Burghers of Calais, I thought, "Now, there is a story tailor-made for the Doctor and Rose. They could talk about the actually seige and how hard it was."
My Brit Beta Babe...Kes is, also, very protective of Jackie. Matter of fact, she told me not to do Jackie POV before she saw mine because she was with you in thinking nobody could get Jackie right in fic. However, she does seem to like my Jackie. She thinks I'm hard on her...and I am...a bit. I love Jackie...I think of her as family...but I do think Rose had to coddle her a bit and I, also, felt she was holding Rose back.
To me, the whole story of Rose was about her growing into womanhood, become the Doctor's other half in a complete way. She may have been looking for a lark to begin with but she came to understand how tough life was...and she knew where she wanted to spend her life, too. With him...by his side.
Anyway...so glad you are still with me...and enjoying the updates. Thanks for your encouraging comments. I really appreciate them.
Rae
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-26 12:53 am (UTC)I'm not sure they are going to tell Jackie
Date: 2006-11-27 04:58 pm (UTC)We know they must have mended fences a bit though...because of Love & Monsters and Army of Ghosts. I see that more as the passage of time putting Jackie more at ease.
Yes, there will be more of this.
I am going to keep going until I solve some things. Oddly, this fic hasn't really changed in its objectives even with Doomsday. Though I don't think the ending is ever going to mesh with canon and I have an urge to do a story that could mesh, now. I will fit canon into this story, however, not to worry.
Rae
thanking you for leaving me a comment...it's good to know people are still reading and enjoying the fic.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-26 02:48 am (UTC)When Rose makes amends, she does it in grand style. This chapter made me love her so much. Not just the key, but the whole chapter. How when she finally began to get herself together, she was able to see the Doctor self-medicating and did her part to heal his hurting heart.
I was particularly intrigued by her aggressive mental advance on the Doctor. We've seen the Doctor enter her mind and even if the sexual mental twinings have been mutual, it always felt like they took place in her mind.
It's pretty clear to me that even though the Doctor is more accustomed to being the aggressor, he more than welcomed Rose storming HIS castle. You've made it clear that it certainly turned him on, psychic bruises or not. I get the sense those "bruises" are like being sore after vigorous sex. You tend not to mind them if you enjoyed what caused them. ;)
Even though I've read the chapter a few times, I didn't catch many, if any, tell-tale "throwaway" lines. Just the fact that evidently Rose has become more mentally adept with the bond that she can reach out, not just receive. I kinda wonder if this development is restricted to her bond with the Doctor, or if she's becoming more all-around adept with telepathic communication. If she met another telepathic race or person, would she be able to sense them?
Hello...Hi...Hey there!
Date: 2006-11-26 03:33 am (UTC)You are quite right in comparing the psychic bruising to a bout of vigorous sex. She is acting as sexual aggressor here...and yes, it turns him on. We even have a little hint that maybe Rose is naturally more sexually aggressive than we've seen...given his flashback to Barcelona. So far, the Doctor has been the one with the fancy genitalia and he's been leading the dance. But that doesn't mean Rose is going to be meek sexual partner forever. She roughs him up a little but not so he minds.
I am glad you love Rose...because I do, too. I see her as this deeply caring person...some people thought her callow but I found her endlessly fascinating. The Doctor and I agree on this...Rose is wonderful. I loved how she could be fizzy with the Doctor and make lame jokes and, yet, put her arms around Toby, trying to comfort him and protect him. How she would stand by the Doctor even if it meant her own death. She really seemed to me to be a person full to the brim with love...tenderly nurturing her mum, Elton, Toby, the Ood, Mrs. Cunningham, her dad...even Mickey.
All the little things add up to a bigger whole in this chapter...and all of your comments add up to a lovely bit of feedback. Thanks for the love.
Rae
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-26 03:22 am (UTC)There are moments in my various fandoms where I will just suddenly feel completely in love and weep. (Yes, I am that mushy. And geeky) Listening to Rose's theme on BBC Wales last weekend was one such moment.
The last three paragraphs to this chapter are another. Brava! Any other witty or intelligent commentary has fled in the face of sheer emotion.
I hope you don't mind, but I'm adding this to my memories *and* friending you. No need to reciprocate as I'm fairly boring, but I just simply must keep up with your future plans. I've been enjoying your stories far too much. Thank you. :)
You're back
Date: 2006-11-26 04:44 am (UTC)I am delighted to learn I reduced you to a heap of lurker mushiness with my last three paragraphs. I know what you mean about Rose's theme...I was all sniffly, too. And then...I was watching Spiderman 2...and it got to the scene where MJ tells him she would rather live with him and have her life at risk than live without him in some safe bubble. And I teared up and said, "Oh, it's just like Rose and the Doctor."
I suppose I've never been a fan of that whole school of thought that suggests you give up the one you love and live a safe, happy life. I think it's a bit patronizing...just like MJ said, "Respect me enough to let me make my own life and death decisions." <<-- I think Rose was saying the same thing when she popped back from Pete's World and said, "I'm never gonna leave you." She was a woman who knew her own heart and mind...and knew where she belonged.
Anyway...yes...friend away...happy to have you on the list. I generally don't reciprocate...but only because being MY friend is virtually meaningless...I never, ever check my friend's page. I don't log in either...so "friend's only" is lost on me. I am sort of a lurker in friending...introverted...not one to get out.
Rae
very happy to hear from you again...and so soon. Thanks for the kind words.
I'm getting quite wordy here...
From:I would love to see your fanart
From:(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-26 04:48 am (UTC)School work first
Date: 2006-11-27 04:59 pm (UTC)Looking forward to your thoughts on the chapter when you get a chance to read it.
Rae
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-26 05:47 am (UTC)Love the key part though.
Given what we see from Jackie
Date: 2006-11-27 05:12 pm (UTC)They thought what they were doing was for the best though...and I don't think Jackie would be self-centered enough to think that if she knew about Susan.
And while I know you hold that Rose still needs her mum. I kind of see Rose letting go of that...she tells the Doctor "everyone leaves home sometime" and nothing will separate them...and that she's staying with him "forever." She tells her mum quite clearly that she's ready to move on having spent "nineteen years" with Jackie...and she's outlined her life from this point forward with the Doctor. She, also, tells the Doctor that same thing when she comes back to him again.
He uses the "you'll never see her again, you're own mother" lash on her, too. But she is very calm and centered when she tells him she's already made up her mind about her life. There is no desperate, self-deluding childishness about her there. She's a woman who knows what she wants.
That IS what people do...they let go of their parents and they make a new life with a spouse. Good parents don't ask you to chose between the one you love and them. Jackie...sadly...felt she was doing the right thing because she was afraid of what might happen to Rose with the Doctor...she didn't want Rose to change (grow up) and, I think, she deluded herself a little...because she didn't want Rose to leave her...because she, Jackie, didn't have anyone else in her life.
Rae
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-26 04:31 pm (UTC)I'm hoping they can work things out so that they can both be happy with their relationship, however that ends up looking. I loved all the thought that went into both their physiological differences and the social/emotional ones, and their struggle to meet somewhere in the middle. I hope this makes sense; I'm fighting off a cold and sleep-deprived, so I feel really incoherent!
I look forward to reading future parts; this is a riveting story. Cheers!
Amy
Delighted to see a new installment
Date: 2006-11-26 04:49 pm (UTC)I've sought out and enjoyed reading all your Who fic, and with this new chapter I continue to be impressed. There is a certain lushness to your descriptions, both of places and of people, that underscores the deep feelings of the characters as well as the author's feelings about them. It's clear that you love these characters, and you have entirely succeeded in conveying that the Doctor is both alien, and completely besotted, mind and body alike, with Rose.
I'm also glad that you have been using the comments to answer questions. I have one now. The Doctor recollects his ninth self's meeting with Rose on Barcelona and the passionate nature of that encounter. But I have been assuming that we're not meant to consider the two stories as being in continuity with each other, due to differences in the process (no dreaming seed in Suicide Blonde) and in the descriptions of Time Lord anatomy and capabilities. Should we assume the two stories are in continuity, or that the encounter in Suicide Blonde happened, but not quite as described in that story?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-26 05:59 pm (UTC)And I do hope you come back to read my answer...oh, anonymous one.
The continuity issue with anatomy was my main problem with the events of Suicide Blonde and at the core of why I made it a separate fic. While Ten does indeed remember that encounter and it did stir him to a height of passion nothing had before...
It would not/could not be as interesting for my readers if I left it in Disheveled...because it would be much less intense than what we have already experienced with Ten/Rose. Because of the continuity of Disheveled...I couldn't have Nine orgasm or meld with Rose in any meaningful Time Lord way. Since, I felt that would be anticlimactic and since I also felt that we should experience the emotions of the fic at the same level that NINE experienced them...I cut it out of Disheveled and gave it a life of its own.
We will learn a bit more about the encounter...get what was missing from Suicide Blonde...which was Ten's perspective. However, we won't delve into the specifics of the sex because they would be boring for the Disheveled reader. For the record...in the Disheveled universe Nine and Rose have 'sex' as the Doctor has defined it when he says he's had sex before...he means...he has sexually stimulated people/aliens to orgasm and felt close to them...the only difference this time was the sex left him wanting so much more...wanting Time Lord Style Union with Rose...unable to resist finding her again.
There ya' go. Feel free to go read Suicide Blonde as a sort of fictionalized version of the true events in Disheveled.
And thank you so much for your encouraging feedback. My muse does find it hard to go on when we lose hope in canon. I've found that I tend to accept canon once it establishes something in a universe. One thing I loved about RTD and Co. is they had a very light touch on the plot while, at the same time, being very clear as to what was going on between Rose/Ten.
I don't mean I felt they were shagging like bunnies...though RTD never DID disallow that...I mean that they loved one another completely. I know some people doubt that...but to me it was evident in every look and line. All the viewer had to do was understand that the Doctor was the DOCTOR and his behavior became uber-shippy. He was, after all, consistently off-hand about everyone else in the show (save Sarah Jane and Reinette...and even they got rather waved off when he was ready to move on).
See? This is the sort of book that is generated when you ask me a question about my plot. I use a lot of WORDS!
Thank you again for your kind comments. I'm happy you are enjoying the lush language. It annoys me a bit (I'm more of a Robert Parker fan). And, also, my betas but I have this particular style...and, as you say, I use it to illuminate the emotions of the characters. And I do...very much...love Rose and Ten. I'm glad that comes through.
Rae
Thank you for your reply!
From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2006-11-26 08:51 pm (UTC) - ExpandAnd now...for a bit more...replying...
From:(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-26 04:52 pm (UTC)First off, as everybody and his brother has said, that last scene with the key is just...I don't have words for how beautiful it is. There are so many levels of meaning to that gesture - trust, love, wanting to give the Doctor a place to belong, healing...it is just wonderful. And I love that the meaning is SO not lost on the Doctor. He totally understands what Rose is "saying".
I find it funny that everyone takes this scene to be an "ending". To me, it's much more a beginning! Or, at least, a giant step toward the repair and strengthening of their relationship. But it's not even remotely done yet, and I want to see what happens next!
I'm glad that Rose didn't kill the inquisitors. I can't imagine that she would have, and it would have been a huge scar on her soul (on top of everything else that happened). This strikes me as being just right - when the Bad Wolf was let out, she did what she needed to do to protect and defend herself. But in the same way that a hypnotized person won't do something that they wouldn't do when awake, Rose couldn't take that final step.
I love your Jackie, and I actually feel a bit sorry for her. All of these crazy things have been happening and she knows that her daughter has been hurt in some terrible, personal way, but she can't do anything about it. Yeah, she doesn't help herself by getting all hysterical and over-the-top, but I can't help but hope that as soon as Rose feels strong enough (which looks like would be soon), she tells her mother at least something of what has happened. If it were my daughter, I know I would be completely freaked out right about now, even though she is apparently healing. And I would certainly want to know what happened.
I like this quiet, "ordinary" sort of chapter. It seems appropriate to the healing and reconnecting process that the Doctor and Rose are going through. I love the small details like going on the picnic, talking about the Doctor's relatively "rich"ness (and the fact that he's set up a financial safety net for her was VERY interesting and shows how much he cares for her and wants to make sure she'll be okay), shopping in the market, talking about Rose's first kiss, etc. It's about a domestic as the Doctor will ever get, but those little moments are so important in a relationship. As much as I love the smut and the dangerous adventures, they do not a relationship make! :D
I'm sure there's more I want to comment on, but I think I'm still in a bit of a sleep-deprived tryptophan fog. lol
I'm so looking forward to the next part!
I know the deluge of feedback...
Date: 2006-11-27 01:02 am (UTC)Good to see you. Hope you are well over your sinus troubles.
Your instincts are right on the money with the key...it IS a beginning. It is the start of true couple life for them. Though, neither of them have confirmed it, yet. That happens in The Impossible Planet...or it starts happening. As you note, the Doctor isn't likely to get anymore domestic than he does here...or when he is THERE on that planet under a black hole and has no TARDIS to whisk away in.
And...unlike with a human male...it's not because he doesn't really love Rose or because he's afraid of being tied down to one woman or something. It's because the whole concept of 'normal life' is completely alien to him. He can't imagine living in a house with doors and carpets...he would only do it to make Rose happy. And she knows that...I loved that she knew that in Army of Ghosts. I loved that he made the offer in Impossible Planet...and she...sweet Rose...made up her mind to stay with him, rather than insisting he stay with her.
I want you to feel sorry for Jackie. I do, too. But I am a bit angry with her about Doomsday. She is, in my mind, largely responsible for what happened. She plays on the Doctor's weakness...illustrating very clearly that Rose will probably die in battle if she stays with him. This leads the Doctor to try to make other arrangements for Rose.
Rose stubbornly refuses to go along with him or to feel bad about her mother's dire predictions. Rose knows what she wants...she wants to be with the Doctor. Which makes him angry and frustrated...but I think he would have gotten over that...if she'd stayed with him. As it is...he's in a very sad position...knowing Rose won't be living a happy life. She'll go on...but that's not quite the same thing. I think he did all he could for her...to make her a comfortable as possible on the other side...but I think he knows...she will be living a half-life...strong for him and her mum but not complete.
SIGH!
I think that's inevitable...if you lose someone you really love...you decide to go on...you can go on...but that piece of you will always be missing. And Rose got a big piece of the Doctor.
Rae
Re: I know the deluge of feedback...
From:You are right...
From: