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misscamAn Adventure in Norway 3/?
by Camilla Sandman
Disclaimer: BBC's characters. My words.
Rating: Mature. Language, adult situations and themes.
Summary: The one adventure I can never have - what if you could have it, Doctor? Have sixty years with Rose Tyler? What then? [Ten/Rose, Others] AU.
Author's Note: Spoilers for "Doomsday" and set after it. Prompt 031 for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
50lyricsfanfic. (you knocked me out, I can never be the same; I pushed you over, but here we still remain) Thanks to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sc_angel72 for looking it over :) This part is about 5000 words.
Table of Prompts
One
Two
Three
II
Norway
August and September. Year one.
II
The Doctor dreams.
It's the normal sort of nightmare at first - what he has killed, what he has failed to save and what he doesn't know the difference between all gathered in the place is mind where his quiet. A greater place now, hush eating into him since Gallifrey fell to fire. They rest there, voices of the past, ignored so he won't go mad in the present and be lost to the future. The future needs him. He needs the future.
He doesn't listen, but he does see. Always when he closes his eyes and opens his mind to sleep, they're there. Waiting. Not accusing, because they don't need to. He knows what he has done.
He fears what he has still to do.
This dream isn't like the others. It changes. Something new. A voice, a hum, and he keeps chasing it. It never grows any stronger, but it never dies either. It's just there, like an echo without a source. He knows it would comfort him if only he could make out the words, but they're always too faded. Too much space to cross to retain their meaning.
The TARDIS sings to him in dreams still, but he can't make out the words in its lullaby.
He wakes, Rose's hair in his face and for a moment he feels almost choked. He has to fight an urge to yank himself free and instead just lies very still, adjusting to the sounds and silence. She's breathing steadily, her back to his chest and her face hidden from view. He finds himself wondering what she dreams of and if it has changed at all since she met him.
He rather thinks so.
It is early night, he can tell, a sliver of sunlight from covered windows sneaking its way in. It hasn't set yet, and only a few hours have passed since they settled down. Rose to sleep, him to stay awake, but he seems to be picking up human habits even to the point of sleeping patterns.
Strange how much time those with short lifespans just waste, he thinks. Sleeping, working, looking after cows, searching truth, justice and the human way. And yet... Yet, there's that 'yet', that undefinable 'yet' that makes it seem alluring in a strange way.
He presses a kiss against Rose's neck, brushing her hair away and feeling her body respond even if her mind is lost to all but itself. There's a slight flush in her skin, like a trail after his touches. Must be strange to have a one body for all of your life and never knowing how much changes when you get a new, he considers. Then again, the pain of dying just once is enough for all the lifetimes in the universe.
"What time is it?" Rose murmurs sleepily, stretching slightly and he supposes he should feel guilty for waking her. Seems a human thing.
He doesn't have to be human in ever way, he decides, and just thinks about what they can do when she's awake.
"It's..." he trails off, feeling the flow of time around him, trying to get a feel for it. Strange, this timeline. Humming so loudly, particularly at one point. Same over and over again, like...
He bolts upwards, but tangled in Rose still all he manages to do is to fall spectacularly out of bed with her on top.
"Time to get out of bed ungracefully?" she asks, sounding more amused than annoyed. He doesn't really listen. Not to her. He doesn't know this universe or this time, but he can still feel something is wrong, like a false note in a grand symphony. So very false to his ears and it makes his teeth ache.
Oh yeah. That's trouble.
"Finally!" he grins, and she just laughs a little bewildered at him, hair all messy from sleep, but eyes already shining at him. "It's time for trouble."
"What kind of trouble?" she asks, always with the questions, but he likes that. It reminds him of all the answers he has.
"The best kind," he says truthfully. "The unknown."
II
Rose watches the Doctor drive with only the slightest hint of nervousness. She's grown used to his mad, sudden overtaking of other vehicles, and his disregard for traffic rules when he's in a mood to be a rebel. Which seems to be always.
She's almost sure the car gets propelled by enthusiasm alone and needs no petrol. Almost.
He talks a lot when he drives, too, and this time it's about hearing false notes in grand symphonies and how the Beatles wouldn't have had so many hits if he hadn't helped out and how Edvard Grieg really got inspiration for 'In the Hall of the Mountain King'. ("He couldn't very well have called it 'In the Hall of the Ugly Alien Git', now could he? Properly impressed he was when I took him...") She's not sure why he's talking about music, but she is sure that's not really what he's thinking about.
He's caught a whiff of trouble and adventure and he looks so alive he might very well have been a ghost before. It scares her a little, and thrills her too.
The landscape has grown more barren as they head north, vegetation giving an impression of clinging to stone and Earth only just enough and no more. If a storm comes, she can imagine it all being ripped away. But storms haunt here often enough, and the greenery is not that new, so it must manage somehow.
The mountains go all the way to the sea, the sea crashes into the land without mercy and the Doctor just smiles at it all, knowingly. It makes her wonder, and makes her a little horny too.
She thinks he might smile knowingly at that too, even if he seems to view human sexuality as something downright odd and a curious experiment at the same time, judging by his conduct. He knows so much and is so strangely childlike at the same time she almost wishes she could find out if it was normal for all Time Lords. But she can hardly write an advice column about it, and Sarah Jane is another universe. (Though if Sarah Jane would know or not, Rose isn't sure.) It rather leaves it all to her experience, and she could already write a book.
Observations on Shagging a Time Lord, by Rose Tyler. Studies in the Wild.
Foreplay - Unusual with a touch of blatant disregard for the rules. Often related to trouble and/or running. Can often be as simple as exchanged smiles, and sometimes as complicated as theories on hormonal imbalance caused by time distortions, at least if subject Time Lord is to be believed. Kissing usually involved, as well as other indications of oral fixation. Talkative. Mentions of mothers are at all times advised against as can kill the mood faster than 'a Trafikkaan beast with an appetite and a bottle of ketchup on the ready'. Hair is advised to keep free, as any elaborate hairstyle will get wrecked.
Act - Energetic. Often talkative. Subject fond of odd positions and strange pauses, as if suddenly listening to something far away. Like to tastes skin and perspiration. Can bite. Gentle at moments, ruthless at others. Predictions pointless, as variations seems tied to mood and mood well hidden behind what subjects want to feel. Size - no particular objections. Skill - yes. Experience - best not dwelt upon.
Afterplay - Talkative. Absence of commonly muttered affections in human relationships. Don't hope for them.
Don't.
She looks over at him, and he smiles, passing a car with vigor and caressing a pine tree in the process. Might not be words, but there are actions, and they do say something. It just takes some getting used to being all you get.
"So where is this 'false note', you reckon?" she asks when he takes a breath in a long story of a particular yellow car he was fond of. "You're not leading us on a wild moose chase?"
"I never!" he objects.
"That time on Carkuli?"
"That rock was suspicious!"
"In Australia?"
"That could've been an alien hiding in that crocodile."
"1889, Berlin? You told me I'd see the fall of the wall."
"So I missed by a century. 1989, 1889, just a number apart! And we did run into that plot with the Austrian Crown Prince..."
"How could I forget," she says quietly, and he looks a bit strangely at her. "But returning to the now, as fond as you are of messing about in the past. Where are we going?"
"North."
"There's an awful lot of north in this country."
He grins. "As much north as in a gathering of compasses. Could be around the next bend, could be over the next mountain, could be days ahead."
She looks ahead, road carving its way between mountains and sea, bending into the land again somewhere in the distance. So much north indeed, and the Doctor being vague doesn't exactly bode well. She would think it another wild Time Lord hunch chase if it wasn't for the almost buried tone in his voice and faint shadow in his eyes. She's learning. He's worried.
Definitely trouble.
"I have a good feeling about the next bend," she says brightly. "It looks very sneaky to me."
II
Rose isn't sure where they are when the Doctor stops the car so suddenly she almost hits her head against the dashboard. She opens her mouth to complain and maybe even dare a joke about his sudden stopping in the TARDIS too, but something in his face stops her.
"Here," he says.
"Here?"
She looks around. They stopped at a turn-off to a much smaller gravel road, a sign reading 'Saltfjellet og Svartisen Nasjonalpark'. The landscape looks much the same, mountains and rivers and grass bending in the wind. But in the distance, sun glimmers off ice and snow. Blueish, and she remembers Norway is home of several glaciers where the ice never goes away. Not even in the heat this world has suffered. Old, old ice and snow, thousands of years old. Tens of thousand. Might be anything in there. Maybe even something that'll keep the Doctor interested for more than five minutes.
He follows her gaze and maybe even her thoughts, for his smile widens.
"The ice?"
"The ice," he confirms. "Could be anything!"
That, she thinks, seems even more exciting than following process of narrowing it down. All the possibilities in the world. He likes those. They don't restrict him.
"Looks a bit impossible to get up there," she observes.
"What's a little impossibility before breakfast?" he asks, and his smile even touching his eyes for a moment, clouding the worry that's been there all day.
"Nothing at all."
"Nothing at all," he agrees. "Mind you, always gets my appetite going. I want to try this brown cheese they have here today. On toast."
"Adventurous," she teases, and he yanks the car back into life, turning onto the gravel road with enough energy to kick up dust and clouding them.
"Yes!" he says brightly. "Let's have us another little adventure in Norway."
II
Ice. Ice is cold, the Doctor concludes. Freezing, in fact. Not that this is a revolutionary new discovery, but he still feels it bears repeating. To be thorough and all. That's him. Thorough. Deep. Dedicated. Proper.
On second thought, maybe not. At all.
That sort of thing comes with responsibilities instead of burdens taken willingly and he knows which he prefers.
Rose mutters a little beside him, perhaps something not so nice about Norwegians not allowing cars too far into their national parks. As a result, they've parked the car and trudged their way upwards, the glacier glimmering blue-ishly at them all the while.
And singing, joining the chorus that is time, but so badly out of tune it might as well be a nil point Eurosong entry. From Norway. Something in that ice is loud and disruptive and making the hairs on the back of his manly-haired hand stand up. He's amazed the humans can't tell, but they never listen to time, only dance to its tune deafly.
It's no wonder they step on everyone else's toes, he reflects, and wriggles his toes a little inside his Chucks. Nope, not broken yet.
"It's very quiet," Rose says suddenly, a hush even in her voice. "It's like the ice absorbs the sounds. You can still hear them, so it's not silent, but it's quiet, you know?"
He does. Oh, he does, and he halts her with a hand on her arm, bending his head down to kiss her until all he hears is his breath and hers, mingling.
"Yes," he says, voice low and barely audible even to him. "I know."
It can be quiet in the greatest roar of noise the Universe has ever heard, he knows. It can be quiet when a planet burns, when millions of voices scream in death, when one little ship is hurtling off to die and fails to. So very quiet, surviving. So very quiet that talking endlessly feels like a bit of a rebellion.
"It's too quiet," he says, as a thought, realising the noise he's been following all the way here has died down. "It's gone, I heard it..."
He hears it again. The noise comes back and brings friends as the glacier itself seems to roar and move and come right at them.
"Doctor," Rose says a little urgently, but he just stares, a wall of blue ice staring back. A glacier shouldn't move like that. Old, settled ice and snow shouldn't come like an avalanche of new, impatient snow, eager to thunder through the land. Thousands of years the glacier has been here, and only now it decides to take a walk?
Okay, more like a sprint, to be fair.
"That's not supposed to happen," he says, ever the rebel of sound, silence and time.
The glacier still comes.
II
Cold burns, and he spends a long time trying to figure out how that is possible and comes to the conclusion it isn't. It just feels like it, because his brain is interpreting pain that way. He feels fairly proud at that conclusion until he considers maybe he should in fact do something about being in terrible pain and feeling like it burns.
Oh, right.
He's not sure if he's had his eyes closed or open all along, but the darkness doesn't seem to change either way. So, dark and cold. That's supposed to tell him something, isn't it?
Oh, right. Glacier that took a walk right over him and Rose. He remembers, and quite wishes he hadn't. He can't make much noise in here, and can't hear if Rose does, and all he can feel is ice and snow. No human clothes or flesh. No Rose.
He exhales once, sharply, gets a feel for what direction is up (how humans sometimes fail to is beyond him) and forces his body to press itself in that general direction. The snow around him, hard-packed through the millennia, isn't all too keen on letting him through, but he persists. Pain is just pain. It ends, and death doesn't.
He quite wishes it would end very soon, though. Very, very soon. Right about now would be good.
Ow.
The Universe doesn't always do as he wishes, he remembers. How rude of it.
Now moves forward and he moves up, and finally, finally, he feels a glimmer of light and pushes through. Sunlight greets him, so very bright when bouncing off the snow, and he blinks a little at it. He hears distant voices, drifting on the wind as he crawls up and feels only sky above him and the snow blissfully under him. Air stings his lungs, but he still breathes in as much of it as he can, trying to force oxygen to strengthen his limbs.
Rose. He has to find Rose.
And then there's a noise again, so out of tune, burrowing into him with a strange sort of pain. He has to find it, has to silence it before time in this world goes mad. He can't... He has to find Rose, he has to... Time. Time first. Always time first.
A Time Lord's duty.
He's never liked duties. He left duties, but they didn't leave him.
He crawls froward until he knows it's the place, and he digs down, not minding the snow under his fingernails. Hands will have to do when he has no shovels, and the ice and snow seems to part more easily than it did when going up. Down and down, until it's flesh he finds, and it's Rose, Rose like an ice queen, her skin pale and cold. She feels to weigh the world as he drags her free and up, cradling her in his lap. Still, it's what she holds in her hand, a frozen grip, that makes him truly react.
It's a device that might as well have come from his TARDIS, but isn't. He knows his TARDIS, every last bit of it. This is from somewhere else. This is from this world, and it hums as he reaches for it it.
The noise dies, and returns, no longer disjointed as he touches it as he would his TARDIS, finding the tune and the pace under his fingers. It's been waiting for a long time, giving a signal the only way it knows how.
He knows of only one place where something like this would come from, and he wonders.
"How did you get here, then?" he asks quietly, freeing it from Rose's grasp and carefully putting it inside his coat. It beats alongside his hearts, almost as if it wants to match them. He'll worry about that later.
He worries about Rose now. She is breathing, but she doesn't stir, not even when he brushes snow out of her lashes.
"I did not come here to watch you die," he says harshly, staring at her still form with something like rage. "I came here to watch you live. Do you hear me, Rose? You're going to live and we're going to find out what sort of aliens steal socks from the washing machine and what plans for Universe domination they have with them. You're going to laugh at my sock puppet jokes, and I'm going to laugh with you. You're not going to leave me here alone to face your mother. She'd scare even socks and probably choke me to death with some."
He pauses, rage withdrawing slightly to make room for another emotion in its embrace. "Don't die, Rose. Please. I wouldn't..."
He doesn't know what he wouldn't.
The voices are close now, words distinguishable, but they still feel distant in his mind as he lowers his head a little, feeling so heavy he wonders how the snow carries him at all.
Someone talks to him, touches him, but he only looks up when the words change to English.
"Sir? Is this your wife?"
"It's Rose," he replies, not quite minding what he says. "I'm the Doctor. This is your glacier, I'm sure you've met. It just introduced itself to me. Forceful handshake."
"I think he's hit his head a little," the man says, and the Doctor just laughs, because it's not funny at all. He can still feel the device in his mind, forcefully jubilant, jubilant enough to move a glacier and much more besides. Two words echo with it, etching into his mind.
Time Lord.
It's funny, except not, but he never expected to be recognised here.
II
"Rose," voices keep urging, and Rose tries to understand what they're urging for. She doesn't know most of them, but sometimes, she thinks she hears the Doctor and she likes that. Sometimes, she thinks she hears her mother, and she's not sure about that at all.
"I had to be called by strangers to find out my daughter was in hospital in Tromsø!" her mother rages. "And what's this about you being her husband? You don't even have a last name to give her! Didn't even invite me to the wedding - what was the terrible rush? Oh my God, she's up the duff!"
"No," the Doctor says evenly, and Rose struggles to see his face, but her eyelids are much too heavy and remain down.
"Are you going to..."
"No. That child would have to endure far too much silence."
Silence comes and silence goes, and Rose knows time passes while she fades in and out of awareness. She hears Norwegian voices too, friendly and trained and with a hint of professional care, and it rather confirms she must be in a hospital. She remembers pain and cold, and clutching onto something in the snow made of metal, but the world didn't stop moving.
"You break your mother's heart," Pete says, and he sounds sad. "Don't. I love her heart."
She thinks of the Doctor and understands, and maybe even Pete understands her. She knows his hand on hers is gentle, and that is enough.
"Dad," she says, and sleeps again. There are no dreams, only confused sounds and the smell of clean linen. Sometimes, she thinks she feels needles, but perhaps the sharp pain in her skin is something else entirely. Her mind feels clearer each time she wakes, and finally she does manage to open her eyes to see the Doctor sitting in a chair, feet o her bed.
"Hi!" he says brightly, even giving her a little wave. If not for the shadow in his eyes, she might think he hadn't worried about her at all. "Your mother wants me to get a career so I can take care of you."
She has to laugh. "Maybe you should get a career so you can take care of yourself."
He considers it, tapping a finger thoughtfully against his chin. "No. Takes all the fun out of being careless."
This is a new life, she almost wants to tell him. It doesn't come with the TARDIS failsafe. Sometimes, it needs care.
"Is mum here, raving about us being married?" she asks instead, and he winces a little. "I thought I heard."
"Your Norwegian friend told her you were here. Remember to thank him," he replies cheerfully. "Or thank the glacier that decided thousands of years was quite long enough to be stuck in the same place. Gave you a proper beating, it did, but the doctors here aren't totally useless and you'll be fine."
He thinks a bit, then adds as an afterthought, "So will I, by the way."
She eyes him, pushing herself up on her elbows. "Doctor... You proposed to me, and now you're introducing yourself to people as my husband. Didn't we skip a part? Like the wedding?"
"Don't tell your mother that," he says after a moment of complete stillness, putting his feet down back on the floor. "She'll make us have one."
She opens her mouth to make a comment, but he leans forward and kisses her instead, his tongue warm inside her dry mouth. Without missing a beat, he withdraws long enough to lift a glass of water to her lips, and kisses her again the moment she swallows.
It feels more an alien kiss than it usually does, she reflects.
"I'll tell Jackie and Pete you're awake," he says finally, straightening up. "Your mum's a bit upset. Best just to nod along when she tells you what a horrible person you are. Or maybe that's just me."
"Doctor!" she calls, and he pauses at the door, not quite looking at her. "There was something in the snow."
"I know. You held on to it. I found it when I found you."
"What was it?"
"The impossible," he replies after a heartbeat, and leaves.
She's not sure it's a good sort of impossible this time.
II
Her mother doesn't quite call her horrible, Rose finds, but she does get a long lecture on how to answer and make calls. Enough to make her feel a little guilty, but she has had a year with her mother without the Doctor, so is it wrong to want a few months just with him?
She tries to explain, but feels tired instead, and just lets the words wash over her until they leave, her mother with a hug, Pete with a look.
Afterwards, she hears her mother cry in the hallway and Pete's whispered words, not really helping at all, but trying, always trying.
She sleeps a little again, and dreams of wolves and time, one devouring the other. She dreams of the Doctor, a wolf's grin on his lips, time in his eyes and her in his embrace, and wakes to find him sleeping in her bed, an arm around her waist. He looks almost innocent and boyish with his eyes closed and face relaxed, but she knows a little of what lurks behind it.
"What big eyes you have," she mutters, touching his eyelids carefully. "What big ears you used to have."
"Don't start on my teeth," he mutters back, smiling enough that she can see them. She presses herself closer to him, and can feel something hard in a front pocket press pack. Probably whatever she held onto in the roar of snow and he's holding onto now. He can tell she's feeling it too, shifting away a little. "Don't ask."
"Not yet," she agrees.
He's going to tell her of his own free will and motivation, she decides. She'll make him.
"Rose," he says very evenly, putting a hand on her breast so casually it might not be an intimate act at all. "I came here for sixty years with you. Almost dying not even one year in is bad form."
"I could say the same to you!" she flings back, remembering how she first saw him in this world. "Besides, what are you suggesting? The next time I see a glacier impossibly come at me, I duck?"
"I'm a great fan of ducking," he says seriously, pressing a kiss against her forehead. "There won't be a next time."
Of course there will be, she knows. He can't live a normal life any more than she can regenerate. There will be a next and a time after that and a time after that, and hundreds thereafter, because he's the Doctor and trouble will find him even when he doesn't look for it.
She has learned that, at least. He wouldn't be the Doctor if he didn't get hit by a glacier occasionally.
"I love you," she says instead of protesting, and takes advantage of his momentary inability to formulate a reply by kissing him. His lips meet hers eagerly enough, and his hand lingers on her breast as she swings herself on top of him.
"Are you going to shag me, Rose Tyler?" he asks, looking up at her what must be affection in his eyes.
"Was planning to."
"Good plan. We'll go with that."
They do. Rose Tyler and the Doctor, skin and sweat and shagging in a silence only broken when one of them - she's not even sure who - makes a noise that might be a sigh and might be even a surrender.
To what terms remains to be seen.
II
Tromsø is bathed in autumn sunset below him when the Doctor hears footsteps and knows he's about to have company on the rooftop. It's not Rose, because Rose is still sleeping and healing, and he doesn't think it's Jackie, because she'd be hurling abuse at him already.
"I don't think you're actually allowed up here," Pete says, and the Doctor turns to see what isn't quite Rose's father, but still is the love of Jackie's life. The Universe seems fond of those sort of ironies.
"Sonic screwdriver," he replies, waving it a little. "My permission. You?"
"Money," Pete says softly. "My permission."
"I prefer mine."
"I think I do too," Pete admits after a moment, looking down at the city below them. "I'm not going to apologise for Jackie. She has a right to be upset that you've just swanned back into Rose's life again."
"More fell than swanned," the Doctor corrects. "Rose makes her own choices. I'm not going to apologise for them."
"But you are sorry. You seem like that sort of a guy," Pete says softly, then seems to catch himself. "That sort of alien. Jackie wants me to slap you."
"Are you going to?"
"I'm thinking."
They stand in silence for a while, the sun performing the illusion of sinking behind a mountain. It's really the Earth that moves, the Doctor knows, the horizon moving and the sky not. Only a planet spinning so fast it can leave anyone dizzy would think the Universe moved and it stood still.
"I need your help," he says suddenly, and Pete looks up sharply. "I need to know if I'm the only one in this Universe."
"The only one what?"
"Time Lord," he says quietly. "I need to know if I'm the only Time Lord in this Universe."
In his pocket, the device hums almost happily, and he wonders; wonders while the planet spins the city into night and darkness and the sky remains quiet and still and might hide anything.
Four
by Camilla Sandman
Disclaimer: BBC's characters. My words.
Rating: Mature. Language, adult situations and themes.
Summary: The one adventure I can never have - what if you could have it, Doctor? Have sixty years with Rose Tyler? What then? [Ten/Rose, Others] AU.
Author's Note: Spoilers for "Doomsday" and set after it. Prompt 031 for
50lyricsfanfic. (you knocked me out, I can never be the same; I pushed you over, but here we still remain) Thanks to sc_angel72 for looking it over :) This part is about 5000 words.Table of Prompts
One
Two
Three
II
Norway
August and September. Year one.
II
The Doctor dreams.
It's the normal sort of nightmare at first - what he has killed, what he has failed to save and what he doesn't know the difference between all gathered in the place is mind where his quiet. A greater place now, hush eating into him since Gallifrey fell to fire. They rest there, voices of the past, ignored so he won't go mad in the present and be lost to the future. The future needs him. He needs the future.
He doesn't listen, but he does see. Always when he closes his eyes and opens his mind to sleep, they're there. Waiting. Not accusing, because they don't need to. He knows what he has done.
He fears what he has still to do.
This dream isn't like the others. It changes. Something new. A voice, a hum, and he keeps chasing it. It never grows any stronger, but it never dies either. It's just there, like an echo without a source. He knows it would comfort him if only he could make out the words, but they're always too faded. Too much space to cross to retain their meaning.
The TARDIS sings to him in dreams still, but he can't make out the words in its lullaby.
He wakes, Rose's hair in his face and for a moment he feels almost choked. He has to fight an urge to yank himself free and instead just lies very still, adjusting to the sounds and silence. She's breathing steadily, her back to his chest and her face hidden from view. He finds himself wondering what she dreams of and if it has changed at all since she met him.
He rather thinks so.
It is early night, he can tell, a sliver of sunlight from covered windows sneaking its way in. It hasn't set yet, and only a few hours have passed since they settled down. Rose to sleep, him to stay awake, but he seems to be picking up human habits even to the point of sleeping patterns.
Strange how much time those with short lifespans just waste, he thinks. Sleeping, working, looking after cows, searching truth, justice and the human way. And yet... Yet, there's that 'yet', that undefinable 'yet' that makes it seem alluring in a strange way.
He presses a kiss against Rose's neck, brushing her hair away and feeling her body respond even if her mind is lost to all but itself. There's a slight flush in her skin, like a trail after his touches. Must be strange to have a one body for all of your life and never knowing how much changes when you get a new, he considers. Then again, the pain of dying just once is enough for all the lifetimes in the universe.
"What time is it?" Rose murmurs sleepily, stretching slightly and he supposes he should feel guilty for waking her. Seems a human thing.
He doesn't have to be human in ever way, he decides, and just thinks about what they can do when she's awake.
"It's..." he trails off, feeling the flow of time around him, trying to get a feel for it. Strange, this timeline. Humming so loudly, particularly at one point. Same over and over again, like...
He bolts upwards, but tangled in Rose still all he manages to do is to fall spectacularly out of bed with her on top.
"Time to get out of bed ungracefully?" she asks, sounding more amused than annoyed. He doesn't really listen. Not to her. He doesn't know this universe or this time, but he can still feel something is wrong, like a false note in a grand symphony. So very false to his ears and it makes his teeth ache.
Oh yeah. That's trouble.
"Finally!" he grins, and she just laughs a little bewildered at him, hair all messy from sleep, but eyes already shining at him. "It's time for trouble."
"What kind of trouble?" she asks, always with the questions, but he likes that. It reminds him of all the answers he has.
"The best kind," he says truthfully. "The unknown."
II
Rose watches the Doctor drive with only the slightest hint of nervousness. She's grown used to his mad, sudden overtaking of other vehicles, and his disregard for traffic rules when he's in a mood to be a rebel. Which seems to be always.
She's almost sure the car gets propelled by enthusiasm alone and needs no petrol. Almost.
He talks a lot when he drives, too, and this time it's about hearing false notes in grand symphonies and how the Beatles wouldn't have had so many hits if he hadn't helped out and how Edvard Grieg really got inspiration for 'In the Hall of the Mountain King'. ("He couldn't very well have called it 'In the Hall of the Ugly Alien Git', now could he? Properly impressed he was when I took him...") She's not sure why he's talking about music, but she is sure that's not really what he's thinking about.
He's caught a whiff of trouble and adventure and he looks so alive he might very well have been a ghost before. It scares her a little, and thrills her too.
The landscape has grown more barren as they head north, vegetation giving an impression of clinging to stone and Earth only just enough and no more. If a storm comes, she can imagine it all being ripped away. But storms haunt here often enough, and the greenery is not that new, so it must manage somehow.
The mountains go all the way to the sea, the sea crashes into the land without mercy and the Doctor just smiles at it all, knowingly. It makes her wonder, and makes her a little horny too.
She thinks he might smile knowingly at that too, even if he seems to view human sexuality as something downright odd and a curious experiment at the same time, judging by his conduct. He knows so much and is so strangely childlike at the same time she almost wishes she could find out if it was normal for all Time Lords. But she can hardly write an advice column about it, and Sarah Jane is another universe. (Though if Sarah Jane would know or not, Rose isn't sure.) It rather leaves it all to her experience, and she could already write a book.
Observations on Shagging a Time Lord, by Rose Tyler. Studies in the Wild.
Foreplay - Unusual with a touch of blatant disregard for the rules. Often related to trouble and/or running. Can often be as simple as exchanged smiles, and sometimes as complicated as theories on hormonal imbalance caused by time distortions, at least if subject Time Lord is to be believed. Kissing usually involved, as well as other indications of oral fixation. Talkative. Mentions of mothers are at all times advised against as can kill the mood faster than 'a Trafikkaan beast with an appetite and a bottle of ketchup on the ready'. Hair is advised to keep free, as any elaborate hairstyle will get wrecked.
Act - Energetic. Often talkative. Subject fond of odd positions and strange pauses, as if suddenly listening to something far away. Like to tastes skin and perspiration. Can bite. Gentle at moments, ruthless at others. Predictions pointless, as variations seems tied to mood and mood well hidden behind what subjects want to feel. Size - no particular objections. Skill - yes. Experience - best not dwelt upon.
Afterplay - Talkative. Absence of commonly muttered affections in human relationships. Don't hope for them.
Don't.
She looks over at him, and he smiles, passing a car with vigor and caressing a pine tree in the process. Might not be words, but there are actions, and they do say something. It just takes some getting used to being all you get.
"So where is this 'false note', you reckon?" she asks when he takes a breath in a long story of a particular yellow car he was fond of. "You're not leading us on a wild moose chase?"
"I never!" he objects.
"That time on Carkuli?"
"That rock was suspicious!"
"In Australia?"
"That could've been an alien hiding in that crocodile."
"1889, Berlin? You told me I'd see the fall of the wall."
"So I missed by a century. 1989, 1889, just a number apart! And we did run into that plot with the Austrian Crown Prince..."
"How could I forget," she says quietly, and he looks a bit strangely at her. "But returning to the now, as fond as you are of messing about in the past. Where are we going?"
"North."
"There's an awful lot of north in this country."
He grins. "As much north as in a gathering of compasses. Could be around the next bend, could be over the next mountain, could be days ahead."
She looks ahead, road carving its way between mountains and sea, bending into the land again somewhere in the distance. So much north indeed, and the Doctor being vague doesn't exactly bode well. She would think it another wild Time Lord hunch chase if it wasn't for the almost buried tone in his voice and faint shadow in his eyes. She's learning. He's worried.
Definitely trouble.
"I have a good feeling about the next bend," she says brightly. "It looks very sneaky to me."
II
Rose isn't sure where they are when the Doctor stops the car so suddenly she almost hits her head against the dashboard. She opens her mouth to complain and maybe even dare a joke about his sudden stopping in the TARDIS too, but something in his face stops her.
"Here," he says.
"Here?"
She looks around. They stopped at a turn-off to a much smaller gravel road, a sign reading 'Saltfjellet og Svartisen Nasjonalpark'. The landscape looks much the same, mountains and rivers and grass bending in the wind. But in the distance, sun glimmers off ice and snow. Blueish, and she remembers Norway is home of several glaciers where the ice never goes away. Not even in the heat this world has suffered. Old, old ice and snow, thousands of years old. Tens of thousand. Might be anything in there. Maybe even something that'll keep the Doctor interested for more than five minutes.
He follows her gaze and maybe even her thoughts, for his smile widens.
"The ice?"
"The ice," he confirms. "Could be anything!"
That, she thinks, seems even more exciting than following process of narrowing it down. All the possibilities in the world. He likes those. They don't restrict him.
"Looks a bit impossible to get up there," she observes.
"What's a little impossibility before breakfast?" he asks, and his smile even touching his eyes for a moment, clouding the worry that's been there all day.
"Nothing at all."
"Nothing at all," he agrees. "Mind you, always gets my appetite going. I want to try this brown cheese they have here today. On toast."
"Adventurous," she teases, and he yanks the car back into life, turning onto the gravel road with enough energy to kick up dust and clouding them.
"Yes!" he says brightly. "Let's have us another little adventure in Norway."
II
Ice. Ice is cold, the Doctor concludes. Freezing, in fact. Not that this is a revolutionary new discovery, but he still feels it bears repeating. To be thorough and all. That's him. Thorough. Deep. Dedicated. Proper.
On second thought, maybe not. At all.
That sort of thing comes with responsibilities instead of burdens taken willingly and he knows which he prefers.
Rose mutters a little beside him, perhaps something not so nice about Norwegians not allowing cars too far into their national parks. As a result, they've parked the car and trudged their way upwards, the glacier glimmering blue-ishly at them all the while.
And singing, joining the chorus that is time, but so badly out of tune it might as well be a nil point Eurosong entry. From Norway. Something in that ice is loud and disruptive and making the hairs on the back of his manly-haired hand stand up. He's amazed the humans can't tell, but they never listen to time, only dance to its tune deafly.
It's no wonder they step on everyone else's toes, he reflects, and wriggles his toes a little inside his Chucks. Nope, not broken yet.
"It's very quiet," Rose says suddenly, a hush even in her voice. "It's like the ice absorbs the sounds. You can still hear them, so it's not silent, but it's quiet, you know?"
He does. Oh, he does, and he halts her with a hand on her arm, bending his head down to kiss her until all he hears is his breath and hers, mingling.
"Yes," he says, voice low and barely audible even to him. "I know."
It can be quiet in the greatest roar of noise the Universe has ever heard, he knows. It can be quiet when a planet burns, when millions of voices scream in death, when one little ship is hurtling off to die and fails to. So very quiet, surviving. So very quiet that talking endlessly feels like a bit of a rebellion.
"It's too quiet," he says, as a thought, realising the noise he's been following all the way here has died down. "It's gone, I heard it..."
He hears it again. The noise comes back and brings friends as the glacier itself seems to roar and move and come right at them.
"Doctor," Rose says a little urgently, but he just stares, a wall of blue ice staring back. A glacier shouldn't move like that. Old, settled ice and snow shouldn't come like an avalanche of new, impatient snow, eager to thunder through the land. Thousands of years the glacier has been here, and only now it decides to take a walk?
Okay, more like a sprint, to be fair.
"That's not supposed to happen," he says, ever the rebel of sound, silence and time.
The glacier still comes.
II
Cold burns, and he spends a long time trying to figure out how that is possible and comes to the conclusion it isn't. It just feels like it, because his brain is interpreting pain that way. He feels fairly proud at that conclusion until he considers maybe he should in fact do something about being in terrible pain and feeling like it burns.
Oh, right.
He's not sure if he's had his eyes closed or open all along, but the darkness doesn't seem to change either way. So, dark and cold. That's supposed to tell him something, isn't it?
Oh, right. Glacier that took a walk right over him and Rose. He remembers, and quite wishes he hadn't. He can't make much noise in here, and can't hear if Rose does, and all he can feel is ice and snow. No human clothes or flesh. No Rose.
He exhales once, sharply, gets a feel for what direction is up (how humans sometimes fail to is beyond him) and forces his body to press itself in that general direction. The snow around him, hard-packed through the millennia, isn't all too keen on letting him through, but he persists. Pain is just pain. It ends, and death doesn't.
He quite wishes it would end very soon, though. Very, very soon. Right about now would be good.
Ow.
The Universe doesn't always do as he wishes, he remembers. How rude of it.
Now moves forward and he moves up, and finally, finally, he feels a glimmer of light and pushes through. Sunlight greets him, so very bright when bouncing off the snow, and he blinks a little at it. He hears distant voices, drifting on the wind as he crawls up and feels only sky above him and the snow blissfully under him. Air stings his lungs, but he still breathes in as much of it as he can, trying to force oxygen to strengthen his limbs.
Rose. He has to find Rose.
And then there's a noise again, so out of tune, burrowing into him with a strange sort of pain. He has to find it, has to silence it before time in this world goes mad. He can't... He has to find Rose, he has to... Time. Time first. Always time first.
A Time Lord's duty.
He's never liked duties. He left duties, but they didn't leave him.
He crawls froward until he knows it's the place, and he digs down, not minding the snow under his fingernails. Hands will have to do when he has no shovels, and the ice and snow seems to part more easily than it did when going up. Down and down, until it's flesh he finds, and it's Rose, Rose like an ice queen, her skin pale and cold. She feels to weigh the world as he drags her free and up, cradling her in his lap. Still, it's what she holds in her hand, a frozen grip, that makes him truly react.
It's a device that might as well have come from his TARDIS, but isn't. He knows his TARDIS, every last bit of it. This is from somewhere else. This is from this world, and it hums as he reaches for it it.
The noise dies, and returns, no longer disjointed as he touches it as he would his TARDIS, finding the tune and the pace under his fingers. It's been waiting for a long time, giving a signal the only way it knows how.
He knows of only one place where something like this would come from, and he wonders.
"How did you get here, then?" he asks quietly, freeing it from Rose's grasp and carefully putting it inside his coat. It beats alongside his hearts, almost as if it wants to match them. He'll worry about that later.
He worries about Rose now. She is breathing, but she doesn't stir, not even when he brushes snow out of her lashes.
"I did not come here to watch you die," he says harshly, staring at her still form with something like rage. "I came here to watch you live. Do you hear me, Rose? You're going to live and we're going to find out what sort of aliens steal socks from the washing machine and what plans for Universe domination they have with them. You're going to laugh at my sock puppet jokes, and I'm going to laugh with you. You're not going to leave me here alone to face your mother. She'd scare even socks and probably choke me to death with some."
He pauses, rage withdrawing slightly to make room for another emotion in its embrace. "Don't die, Rose. Please. I wouldn't..."
He doesn't know what he wouldn't.
The voices are close now, words distinguishable, but they still feel distant in his mind as he lowers his head a little, feeling so heavy he wonders how the snow carries him at all.
Someone talks to him, touches him, but he only looks up when the words change to English.
"Sir? Is this your wife?"
"It's Rose," he replies, not quite minding what he says. "I'm the Doctor. This is your glacier, I'm sure you've met. It just introduced itself to me. Forceful handshake."
"I think he's hit his head a little," the man says, and the Doctor just laughs, because it's not funny at all. He can still feel the device in his mind, forcefully jubilant, jubilant enough to move a glacier and much more besides. Two words echo with it, etching into his mind.
Time Lord.
It's funny, except not, but he never expected to be recognised here.
II
"Rose," voices keep urging, and Rose tries to understand what they're urging for. She doesn't know most of them, but sometimes, she thinks she hears the Doctor and she likes that. Sometimes, she thinks she hears her mother, and she's not sure about that at all.
"I had to be called by strangers to find out my daughter was in hospital in Tromsø!" her mother rages. "And what's this about you being her husband? You don't even have a last name to give her! Didn't even invite me to the wedding - what was the terrible rush? Oh my God, she's up the duff!"
"No," the Doctor says evenly, and Rose struggles to see his face, but her eyelids are much too heavy and remain down.
"Are you going to..."
"No. That child would have to endure far too much silence."
Silence comes and silence goes, and Rose knows time passes while she fades in and out of awareness. She hears Norwegian voices too, friendly and trained and with a hint of professional care, and it rather confirms she must be in a hospital. She remembers pain and cold, and clutching onto something in the snow made of metal, but the world didn't stop moving.
"You break your mother's heart," Pete says, and he sounds sad. "Don't. I love her heart."
She thinks of the Doctor and understands, and maybe even Pete understands her. She knows his hand on hers is gentle, and that is enough.
"Dad," she says, and sleeps again. There are no dreams, only confused sounds and the smell of clean linen. Sometimes, she thinks she feels needles, but perhaps the sharp pain in her skin is something else entirely. Her mind feels clearer each time she wakes, and finally she does manage to open her eyes to see the Doctor sitting in a chair, feet o her bed.
"Hi!" he says brightly, even giving her a little wave. If not for the shadow in his eyes, she might think he hadn't worried about her at all. "Your mother wants me to get a career so I can take care of you."
She has to laugh. "Maybe you should get a career so you can take care of yourself."
He considers it, tapping a finger thoughtfully against his chin. "No. Takes all the fun out of being careless."
This is a new life, she almost wants to tell him. It doesn't come with the TARDIS failsafe. Sometimes, it needs care.
"Is mum here, raving about us being married?" she asks instead, and he winces a little. "I thought I heard."
"Your Norwegian friend told her you were here. Remember to thank him," he replies cheerfully. "Or thank the glacier that decided thousands of years was quite long enough to be stuck in the same place. Gave you a proper beating, it did, but the doctors here aren't totally useless and you'll be fine."
He thinks a bit, then adds as an afterthought, "So will I, by the way."
She eyes him, pushing herself up on her elbows. "Doctor... You proposed to me, and now you're introducing yourself to people as my husband. Didn't we skip a part? Like the wedding?"
"Don't tell your mother that," he says after a moment of complete stillness, putting his feet down back on the floor. "She'll make us have one."
She opens her mouth to make a comment, but he leans forward and kisses her instead, his tongue warm inside her dry mouth. Without missing a beat, he withdraws long enough to lift a glass of water to her lips, and kisses her again the moment she swallows.
It feels more an alien kiss than it usually does, she reflects.
"I'll tell Jackie and Pete you're awake," he says finally, straightening up. "Your mum's a bit upset. Best just to nod along when she tells you what a horrible person you are. Or maybe that's just me."
"Doctor!" she calls, and he pauses at the door, not quite looking at her. "There was something in the snow."
"I know. You held on to it. I found it when I found you."
"What was it?"
"The impossible," he replies after a heartbeat, and leaves.
She's not sure it's a good sort of impossible this time.
II
Her mother doesn't quite call her horrible, Rose finds, but she does get a long lecture on how to answer and make calls. Enough to make her feel a little guilty, but she has had a year with her mother without the Doctor, so is it wrong to want a few months just with him?
She tries to explain, but feels tired instead, and just lets the words wash over her until they leave, her mother with a hug, Pete with a look.
Afterwards, she hears her mother cry in the hallway and Pete's whispered words, not really helping at all, but trying, always trying.
She sleeps a little again, and dreams of wolves and time, one devouring the other. She dreams of the Doctor, a wolf's grin on his lips, time in his eyes and her in his embrace, and wakes to find him sleeping in her bed, an arm around her waist. He looks almost innocent and boyish with his eyes closed and face relaxed, but she knows a little of what lurks behind it.
"What big eyes you have," she mutters, touching his eyelids carefully. "What big ears you used to have."
"Don't start on my teeth," he mutters back, smiling enough that she can see them. She presses herself closer to him, and can feel something hard in a front pocket press pack. Probably whatever she held onto in the roar of snow and he's holding onto now. He can tell she's feeling it too, shifting away a little. "Don't ask."
"Not yet," she agrees.
He's going to tell her of his own free will and motivation, she decides. She'll make him.
"Rose," he says very evenly, putting a hand on her breast so casually it might not be an intimate act at all. "I came here for sixty years with you. Almost dying not even one year in is bad form."
"I could say the same to you!" she flings back, remembering how she first saw him in this world. "Besides, what are you suggesting? The next time I see a glacier impossibly come at me, I duck?"
"I'm a great fan of ducking," he says seriously, pressing a kiss against her forehead. "There won't be a next time."
Of course there will be, she knows. He can't live a normal life any more than she can regenerate. There will be a next and a time after that and a time after that, and hundreds thereafter, because he's the Doctor and trouble will find him even when he doesn't look for it.
She has learned that, at least. He wouldn't be the Doctor if he didn't get hit by a glacier occasionally.
"I love you," she says instead of protesting, and takes advantage of his momentary inability to formulate a reply by kissing him. His lips meet hers eagerly enough, and his hand lingers on her breast as she swings herself on top of him.
"Are you going to shag me, Rose Tyler?" he asks, looking up at her what must be affection in his eyes.
"Was planning to."
"Good plan. We'll go with that."
They do. Rose Tyler and the Doctor, skin and sweat and shagging in a silence only broken when one of them - she's not even sure who - makes a noise that might be a sigh and might be even a surrender.
To what terms remains to be seen.
II
Tromsø is bathed in autumn sunset below him when the Doctor hears footsteps and knows he's about to have company on the rooftop. It's not Rose, because Rose is still sleeping and healing, and he doesn't think it's Jackie, because she'd be hurling abuse at him already.
"I don't think you're actually allowed up here," Pete says, and the Doctor turns to see what isn't quite Rose's father, but still is the love of Jackie's life. The Universe seems fond of those sort of ironies.
"Sonic screwdriver," he replies, waving it a little. "My permission. You?"
"Money," Pete says softly. "My permission."
"I prefer mine."
"I think I do too," Pete admits after a moment, looking down at the city below them. "I'm not going to apologise for Jackie. She has a right to be upset that you've just swanned back into Rose's life again."
"More fell than swanned," the Doctor corrects. "Rose makes her own choices. I'm not going to apologise for them."
"But you are sorry. You seem like that sort of a guy," Pete says softly, then seems to catch himself. "That sort of alien. Jackie wants me to slap you."
"Are you going to?"
"I'm thinking."
They stand in silence for a while, the sun performing the illusion of sinking behind a mountain. It's really the Earth that moves, the Doctor knows, the horizon moving and the sky not. Only a planet spinning so fast it can leave anyone dizzy would think the Universe moved and it stood still.
"I need your help," he says suddenly, and Pete looks up sharply. "I need to know if I'm the only one in this Universe."
"The only one what?"
"Time Lord," he says quietly. "I need to know if I'm the only Time Lord in this Universe."
In his pocket, the device hums almost happily, and he wonders; wonders while the planet spins the city into night and darkness and the sky remains quiet and still and might hide anything.
Four
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2006-08-14 05:34 pm (UTC)Can't wait
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Date: 2006-08-15 02:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-15 05:24 am (UTC)Thanks!
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Date: 2006-08-14 06:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-15 05:24 am (UTC)Nice icon ;)
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Date: 2006-08-15 06:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-14 06:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-15 05:28 am (UTC)Thanks!
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Date: 2006-08-14 06:48 pm (UTC)I'll be curiously anticipating what the device is.
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Date: 2006-08-15 05:29 am (UTC)Thanks!
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Date: 2006-08-14 09:49 pm (UTC)and an evil plot to lure tourists to Norway. Curious where this is heading, please update soon?no subject
Date: 2006-08-15 05:30 am (UTC)But Norway is shiny! You should all come see.Shall try my best. Thanks!
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Date: 2006-08-15 01:42 am (UTC)So very quiet, surviving. So very quiet that talking endlessly feels like a bit of a rebellion.
Gorgeous insight.
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Date: 2006-08-17 03:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-15 04:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-17 03:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-15 05:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-17 03:05 pm (UTC)Thanks!
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Date: 2006-08-15 08:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-17 03:10 pm (UTC)Anyhoo, thanks!
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Date: 2006-08-16 05:17 am (UTC)I think my most favoritest element is that the pace is unhurried. It's a stroll, not a breakneck sprint to the end. You're taking your time with these characters but still moving them, and I love the way its presented.
One quibble: He considers it, taping a finger thoughtfully against his chin. Now, Ten isn't above taping his finger to his chin. However, I'm more inclined to assume he's tapping it instead? :D (Pardon my cheek; school is really getting to me. *sheepish grin*)
Anyway, I haunt your journal for updates of this sucker. It's brilliant, I love it, don't stop now. ♥
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Date: 2006-08-17 03:12 pm (UTC)Thanks - and I'll try not to keep you haunting too long for the next bit ;)
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Date: 2006-08-18 03:31 am (UTC)Hah. I'm rambling - so sorry!
Yay. That's actually really exciting. Erm. For me, anyway.
*makes ghostly noises...because I am secretly five*
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Date: 2006-08-17 10:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-17 03:13 pm (UTC)I shall try my best not to keep you waiting too long.