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misscamSynonyms for Love 1/2
by Camilla Sandman
Disclaimer: BBC's characters. My words.
Summary: Word for love, four letters? [Nine/Rose, Ten/Rose, Others]
Rating: Mature. Some language and adult stuff.
Author's Note: Spoilers through series one and series two. Aside from Nine, Ten and Rose, there's also guest appearances by Eight, Charley, Jack, Sarah Jane, Reinette and original characters. Some pairings are hinted at. Thanks to Saz for beta. Prompt 001 for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
50lyricsfanfic.
Table of Prompts
II
The TARDIS is adrift in time and space, a little vessel in a giant sea, and the Doctor is waiting for a particular wind to catch him. There's no rush, though there undoubtedly will be as soon as he finds himself somewhere. For now, all the possibilities are exciting enough. A whole Universe of them, and they never run out.
He thinks he loves that.
"Doctor?" Charley asks, looking up at him with eyes changing colour as the TARDIS does. "Word for love, four letters?"
He smiles at her. "You need not finish a crossword just because Arthur Wynne gave it to you."
"I do," she insists. "It's polite. I can show it to him if we visit again."
If, he notes. She is at least learning he is not a great return visitor. Perhaps that will make it easier for her to understand when the time comes.
"Very well then," he agrees. "Word for love, four letters? Tricky. Love's so indefinable almost anything can be a synonym for it. Like, fond?"
She shakes her head.
"I have an idea," he says, leaping over to the TARDIS console, feeling the wind in his back. "We'll go see Samuel Johnson, he's bound to know."
In the end, they wind up in Ireland instead, and Charley gets nicked by Vikings and the Doctor nicks her right back along with a longboat he's sure will look smashing somewhere in the TARDIS, and the crossword, the crossword is left forgotten.
The word remains open.
II
Pain
He's screaming as he dies. Howling, and it still doesn't drown out the silence in his head. They're dead, they're dead, they're dead, and he's dying, and they're dead, they're gone. Nothing. Nothing, and everything hurts. There's pain, and he dies into it.
He is born into it. His body is betraying him, his TARDIS is betraying him, his mind is betraying him, and he screams into life. It hurts. He's just killed millions out of love, and it hurts, and they're gone, gone, gone.
The Daleks for his planet.
His planet for the Universe.
The TARDIS is still hurtling, and he doesn't care towards what, mind filled with what from. His body is healing, reshaped, and for once, he feels no urge to look at what he is. Not yet. His hair lies burned by his fingers, and he touches it, feeling the stink of ashes in his very skin. A womb of ashes and ruin and remembered death for him. A tomb for them, and space holds no warmth.
He holds no warmth, clothes torn off him, the remains smelling of his blood. He spends a long time crawling until he finds a leather jacket, worn and slightly tattered, and he curls into it. It would better resist debris than other fabrics, he considers. A strange thought, and he laughs hysterically at it.
Gone.
Dead.
By him. Because of him. From him.
He wonders if they understood, because he sure does not.
Dead.
They're dead, and he's alive, and it hurts.
II
Pity
He meets Kalanna on the planet of Garah, looking for parts to the TARDIS, slowly rebuilding it. He's not sure if it's out of habit, compulsion, genuine desire to have this last piece of Gallifrey work properly again or just love for her, his TARDIS. He does know she's all he has now, and every piece brings her closer to what she once was.
The market he goes to is crowded and busy, and as it turns out, under attack from Glybb worms. He does hesitate, but then he remembers he never had much choice about caring. He just does, and in either case, the screams make his heart pound a little and the silence in his head seem less quiet. He runs into danger, and into Kalanna, who seem to have much the same ideas as him. He knows about Glybb worms, and she knows about Garah, and it's enough to together knock out the worms with a whiff of a particular native flower mixed with flour.
Unfortunately it does knock him out too, and he awakes in a soft bed to soft hands on his face. Kalanna's hands and Kalanna's bed, and Kalanna's lips whispering about heroics and admiring him and how many lives he saved. On and on, she talks, clever Kalanna of a clever people, working things out.
"They say your people are gone," she whispers, her tail curled around his arm. "They say the burn screamed in the minds of millions light years away. In my mind, I heard the howl. I heard the echoes of it again today. That's when I knew what you were, what you are."
He says nothing. Confirms nothing. It doesn't matter. She already knows, but unconfirmed, she has no access to his grief. That does matter.
"Are they all gone, Time Lord?"
There's pity in her voice, and her eyes are filled with it, and her skin is comforting as she touches him. Warm, soft and alive. As his no longer feels like. She whispers what's meant as comfort too. All the clever words and he listens until he can't listen anymore and lets her lips own his flesh, because it's all he can imagine giving, and still she demands more.
In the morning, he leaves.
He's got enough pity for himself.
II
Hold
He runs into a silly human in the middle of a rather silly danger, and he takes her hand and runs with her away from Autons. It feels a bit like old days, and even more so when she starts asking questions and tries to find logic. She's young, and innocent, and he likes that. It's easier to craft pretend innocence when near the real thing. It's easier to feel wise when youth has still so much to learn. It's easier to feel alive when someone's there to live with.
He even asks her for her name, and remembers it. Rose Tyler.
He is surprised to run into her again still, and even more when she keeps asking and asking. Nosy, and it reminds him. So does the mirror, and he finally gets a look at himself. He hasn't really cared, he realises, but now he spares it a few thoughts.
He's going to have to get used to jokes about his ears. That's all right. There's always jokes about something.
Rose keeps asking, especially after the little hand-attack, and he gives her answers. They're safe enough questions, except for one.
Who are you?
Rebel, survivor, storm, death. A thousand words he might use, and each of them only describing one aspect and revealing much still.
He gives her an answer of sorts, but what he remembers afterwards is holding her hand, and feeling the Earth turn with them on it, gravity the only hold. He knows he can break it for her, spin her into space and time, his hand the only hold then. She'll love it, he's already sure.
Even so, he tells her to go home.
His hold is never safe.
She still comes into it in the end, and he's not even sure he's sorry.
II
Date
The Earth goes boom, and he takes Rose out for chips. Or rather, she takes him. She's not his girlfriend and he's certainly not her boyfriend (not that Ricky the Idiot would offer much competition), but it's still a date, still two people sharing a meal and the start of something. He's not sure what, but he's never paused for analysis on the very good reasoning that he would never get anything else done. What is, is. Everything else, he'll make something of.
Rose laughs easily, even after what she's just seen, and she smiles at him without pity, even after what he's told her. He likes both.
"Do aliens also have chips?" she asks, licking salt off her fingers. He watches, feeling a little strange.
"Only the really sophisticated ones."
"You never see that on telly," she reflects. "Aliens always seem to be eating something with tentacles."
"That's because humans are gross with gross ideas," he informs her, and she nicks a chip from him in retaliation. He doesn't take one from her, because she'll learn about loss soon enough. All too soon with him. Perhaps she's even forming ideas already.
Maybe he likes that too.
"Funny still," she goes on, chewing with consideration, "all the ideas humans got about aliens probably being all wrong. Like they're all going to speak proper English. You never think about dialects. Planets having a North and all."
"There's a lot of things you lot don't think about and still entertain ideas over."
She gives him a look he can't quite read, at least not yet. He makes a note of it for when he might be able to.
"You know everything then, Doctor?"
"Yes," he says confidently. If it's not true now, it will be soon enough. Time teaches and he learns. He teaches and Rose learns.
Maybe Rose has something to teach as well, he thinks, and smiles when she steals another chip.
"I think you're full of it," she says, and whatever has started, he rather thinks he likes it.
II
Care
Rose almost dies in a cellar in Cardiff.
Rose almost dies in Ten Downing Street.
Rose almost dies in a Utah bunker.
They're all his fault, even if not his will, because she's in his care and she's his responsibility and he can't lose her, refuses to lose her. He knows she is one life, and the world is millions and billions of lives and from the Universe's point of view, it's a more than fair trade.
It still doesn't feel it. He's already had to give a trade so unfair the burn of it still echoes in his head and he's not doing another. He could let her go, but that feels like another trade again and this time, he will be selfish. Will care for himself too.
He doesn't give her the option of leaving her. Not really. He knows his life is addictive, an addiction he's never kicked, but others have and he remembers. He remembers well enough to let Rose bring Adam along, simply because she cares.
He feels a little bit charitable about it all, and knows he's ever good at being selfish.
II
Home
Sometimes, at night, he dreams about Romana.
She holds Gallifrey in her hands, cradling it like a child. It burns, but she doesn't cry, doesn't make a sound, only looks at him. Bright, so bright, but he can't look away.
Our child, she doesn't say, but she might as well. Our home. Our family.
Her hair is fire and her lips are red, curved in a smile that holds nothing but accusations. He wants to take them from her, kiss her to life and himself to death, but he can't move. Can't ever move, only watch.
Here burns Gallifrey, brighter than the sun, held ever so softly in her arms.
She holds it until she's ashes and he wakes, head burning with her.
II
Ugly
"How do you feel about me?" Rose asks, and he wonders if humans learned subtly from the way they used to bash things with sticks. It certainly feels like he's been whacked over the head.
"You're annoying me," he says very firmly, and she is, standing between him and the TARDIS console he's itching to fiddle with, if only because the TARDIS doesn't ask what stroking it might mean.
Rose doesn't seem to take the annoyance factor too personally, but he can see some sort of worry in her eyes. "I mean, what Adam did... You're not... Not liking me for it?"
"Rose, Adam was a git all on his own."
She smiles a little. "He was a bit pretty, though."
"Never bring pretty on-board," he informs her, pushing her a little aside to get to the TARDIS, now humming impatiently. "Pretty is trouble."
"What am I then, ugly?"
"You're Rose," he says a little absentmindedly, and the TARDIS powers up into joyful song under his hand. She looks at him as if he's said something she doesn't quite get, but is enormously flattering all the same and he wonders if she might like stroking too.
It worries him he might like her to like it.
The next day, she asks to see her father, and he knows it will get ugly.
He still doesn't say no.
II
Want
She fucks him in her bed in the TARDIS, without kissing or gentleness or whispered words and lights off. It's just need and want, and he gives, because he's seen his planet die before his eyes to save the Universe and he can understand what seeing your father die to save the world does to you.
Skin is a little comfort, and he lets his fingers travel across hers. Warm, softer in some spots than others, little marks of life across it. A scar there, a freckle there, a mole on her thigh that he wishes he could see. In the dark, he can only faintly see the palest spots of her skin, almost ghostly and distant even touched.
He hopes she doesn't let grief haunt her. He knows how it feels. He lives how it feels.
She sighs a little, head falling back and hair cascading down her back as he thrusts into her, just a little angrily. Because forgiveness doesn't mean the anger just goes away and because it isn't just her want that made him follow her into this room when she took his hand.
He isn't quite sure who fucks who, in the end.
II
Move
Then there's Jack. Oh yes, there's Jack.
Pretty is trouble and Jack is plenty of both, that much is clear from first meeting. But with insults and pushing, Jack is also conscience, buried beneath the jokes and sex. Not buried well enough at all when even Rose sees, but every man has his lies.
The Doctor knows his, and knows taking Jack along on Rose's insistence is a sort of one. Because it's easier to let Rose push and think it only her moves. Easier to let Rose lead in the dance when he's not sure what it is, especially now that it is a threesome. It is a threesome, even when it's simply he and Rose dancing and Jack just watching. It is a threesome, even when it's Jack flirting and Rose blushing and the Doctor just watching. It is a threesome, even when it's Jack learning about the TARDIS from the Doctor and Rose just watching.
The Doctor, Rose and Jack, falling into a sort of rhythm. Better with two, she said once. Three isn't half bad either.
They have adventures, an amazing amount of them that seem to end up with Jack naked. Sometimes even in beds of others, and if Rose feels a little jealous, so does the Doctor. But Jack is what he is, and he always does return and they always say nothing. The next day, he will make a move on either one or both of them, as if it's just breathing to him and either would be a pleasure to inhale.
Little humans and their rushed sexualities, the Doctor thinks, and never says. He's always been good at the unspoken.
When Rose goes with Mickey in Cardiff, nothing is said either. It's not that sort of a threesome or even twosome, but when Rose returns, she looks as if she's moved on from something and he thinks a lot about to what.
He thinks a lot about what he's moved on to as well, and all the while, the Universe readies its own move.
II
Pick
They never die.
They just never die. The Universe never kills them, and he hates it a little.
The Daleks are alive and he knows many others will die. For a while, it looks like Rose is one of them and he can't feel anything but age, years and years of living crushing down on him. He's had so many lives. Rose should have at least one.
Will have at least one, he decides when he gets her back. His choice. He picks her to live, and knows Jack will die. He feels guilty for it, but he's used to guilt and used to having his own way and paying for it. Rose will live. Others will die.
He still hears her calling of his name echo in his mind long after the TARDIS has gone and feels all too young, almost like the first time he was shown what time could do and he ran away, thinking he could never carry that at all.
He was wrong then. He is wrong now.
He's not the only one with choices, he forgets. His seems simple enough. The Daleks for the Earth, this time. Is simple enough, should be simple enough. He's already traded Lynda for them, and Jack (oh Jack oh Jack oh) and himself, and the rest shouldn't be harder. Can't be harder. Just a few billion lives for all the Universe, and surely that is fair enough. Was fair enough for Gallifrey.
And he can't do it again.
He doesn't quite know why, just knows he's picked something else over killer this time. Maybe he doesn't love the Universe enough this time. Maybe he loves it too much.
"Coward," he says, and is. "Any day."
II
Kiss
Death in a kiss. His death, Rose's life and this time, the trade seems fair. He has lives to give. She doesn't, but she was ready to, she and whatever of the TARDIS she holds and he kisses both. Time tastes like fire on her lips, but he doesn't let go, not until he's almost sure he's taken all of the time vortex from her and her memories of it too.
He wants her as Rose, and it's easier if she doesn't remember. Maybe it's stealing innocence from her and forcing innocence on her at the same time, but he still does it.
He hopes whatever he becomes after death doesn't mind too much. Hopes he won't be a total git this time around. Hopes Rose will like him still and feels a little jealous of all the thing he'll get to experience with her without being himself any more.
But that's all right. He might be ginger this time. He might not feel like an open wound, raw and bleeding, this time.
So, he kisses her to life and himself to death and even feels a little hopeful over it.
Part Two
by Camilla Sandman
Disclaimer: BBC's characters. My words.
Summary: Word for love, four letters? [Nine/Rose, Ten/Rose, Others]
Rating: Mature. Some language and adult stuff.
Author's Note: Spoilers through series one and series two. Aside from Nine, Ten and Rose, there's also guest appearances by Eight, Charley, Jack, Sarah Jane, Reinette and original characters. Some pairings are hinted at. Thanks to Saz for beta. Prompt 001 for
50lyricsfanfic.Table of Prompts
II
The TARDIS is adrift in time and space, a little vessel in a giant sea, and the Doctor is waiting for a particular wind to catch him. There's no rush, though there undoubtedly will be as soon as he finds himself somewhere. For now, all the possibilities are exciting enough. A whole Universe of them, and they never run out.
He thinks he loves that.
"Doctor?" Charley asks, looking up at him with eyes changing colour as the TARDIS does. "Word for love, four letters?"
He smiles at her. "You need not finish a crossword just because Arthur Wynne gave it to you."
"I do," she insists. "It's polite. I can show it to him if we visit again."
If, he notes. She is at least learning he is not a great return visitor. Perhaps that will make it easier for her to understand when the time comes.
"Very well then," he agrees. "Word for love, four letters? Tricky. Love's so indefinable almost anything can be a synonym for it. Like, fond?"
She shakes her head.
"I have an idea," he says, leaping over to the TARDIS console, feeling the wind in his back. "We'll go see Samuel Johnson, he's bound to know."
In the end, they wind up in Ireland instead, and Charley gets nicked by Vikings and the Doctor nicks her right back along with a longboat he's sure will look smashing somewhere in the TARDIS, and the crossword, the crossword is left forgotten.
The word remains open.
II
Pain
He's screaming as he dies. Howling, and it still doesn't drown out the silence in his head. They're dead, they're dead, they're dead, and he's dying, and they're dead, they're gone. Nothing. Nothing, and everything hurts. There's pain, and he dies into it.
He is born into it. His body is betraying him, his TARDIS is betraying him, his mind is betraying him, and he screams into life. It hurts. He's just killed millions out of love, and it hurts, and they're gone, gone, gone.
The Daleks for his planet.
His planet for the Universe.
The TARDIS is still hurtling, and he doesn't care towards what, mind filled with what from. His body is healing, reshaped, and for once, he feels no urge to look at what he is. Not yet. His hair lies burned by his fingers, and he touches it, feeling the stink of ashes in his very skin. A womb of ashes and ruin and remembered death for him. A tomb for them, and space holds no warmth.
He holds no warmth, clothes torn off him, the remains smelling of his blood. He spends a long time crawling until he finds a leather jacket, worn and slightly tattered, and he curls into it. It would better resist debris than other fabrics, he considers. A strange thought, and he laughs hysterically at it.
Gone.
Dead.
By him. Because of him. From him.
He wonders if they understood, because he sure does not.
Dead.
They're dead, and he's alive, and it hurts.
II
Pity
He meets Kalanna on the planet of Garah, looking for parts to the TARDIS, slowly rebuilding it. He's not sure if it's out of habit, compulsion, genuine desire to have this last piece of Gallifrey work properly again or just love for her, his TARDIS. He does know she's all he has now, and every piece brings her closer to what she once was.
The market he goes to is crowded and busy, and as it turns out, under attack from Glybb worms. He does hesitate, but then he remembers he never had much choice about caring. He just does, and in either case, the screams make his heart pound a little and the silence in his head seem less quiet. He runs into danger, and into Kalanna, who seem to have much the same ideas as him. He knows about Glybb worms, and she knows about Garah, and it's enough to together knock out the worms with a whiff of a particular native flower mixed with flour.
Unfortunately it does knock him out too, and he awakes in a soft bed to soft hands on his face. Kalanna's hands and Kalanna's bed, and Kalanna's lips whispering about heroics and admiring him and how many lives he saved. On and on, she talks, clever Kalanna of a clever people, working things out.
"They say your people are gone," she whispers, her tail curled around his arm. "They say the burn screamed in the minds of millions light years away. In my mind, I heard the howl. I heard the echoes of it again today. That's when I knew what you were, what you are."
He says nothing. Confirms nothing. It doesn't matter. She already knows, but unconfirmed, she has no access to his grief. That does matter.
"Are they all gone, Time Lord?"
There's pity in her voice, and her eyes are filled with it, and her skin is comforting as she touches him. Warm, soft and alive. As his no longer feels like. She whispers what's meant as comfort too. All the clever words and he listens until he can't listen anymore and lets her lips own his flesh, because it's all he can imagine giving, and still she demands more.
In the morning, he leaves.
He's got enough pity for himself.
II
Hold
He runs into a silly human in the middle of a rather silly danger, and he takes her hand and runs with her away from Autons. It feels a bit like old days, and even more so when she starts asking questions and tries to find logic. She's young, and innocent, and he likes that. It's easier to craft pretend innocence when near the real thing. It's easier to feel wise when youth has still so much to learn. It's easier to feel alive when someone's there to live with.
He even asks her for her name, and remembers it. Rose Tyler.
He is surprised to run into her again still, and even more when she keeps asking and asking. Nosy, and it reminds him. So does the mirror, and he finally gets a look at himself. He hasn't really cared, he realises, but now he spares it a few thoughts.
He's going to have to get used to jokes about his ears. That's all right. There's always jokes about something.
Rose keeps asking, especially after the little hand-attack, and he gives her answers. They're safe enough questions, except for one.
Who are you?
Rebel, survivor, storm, death. A thousand words he might use, and each of them only describing one aspect and revealing much still.
He gives her an answer of sorts, but what he remembers afterwards is holding her hand, and feeling the Earth turn with them on it, gravity the only hold. He knows he can break it for her, spin her into space and time, his hand the only hold then. She'll love it, he's already sure.
Even so, he tells her to go home.
His hold is never safe.
She still comes into it in the end, and he's not even sure he's sorry.
II
Date
The Earth goes boom, and he takes Rose out for chips. Or rather, she takes him. She's not his girlfriend and he's certainly not her boyfriend (not that Ricky the Idiot would offer much competition), but it's still a date, still two people sharing a meal and the start of something. He's not sure what, but he's never paused for analysis on the very good reasoning that he would never get anything else done. What is, is. Everything else, he'll make something of.
Rose laughs easily, even after what she's just seen, and she smiles at him without pity, even after what he's told her. He likes both.
"Do aliens also have chips?" she asks, licking salt off her fingers. He watches, feeling a little strange.
"Only the really sophisticated ones."
"You never see that on telly," she reflects. "Aliens always seem to be eating something with tentacles."
"That's because humans are gross with gross ideas," he informs her, and she nicks a chip from him in retaliation. He doesn't take one from her, because she'll learn about loss soon enough. All too soon with him. Perhaps she's even forming ideas already.
Maybe he likes that too.
"Funny still," she goes on, chewing with consideration, "all the ideas humans got about aliens probably being all wrong. Like they're all going to speak proper English. You never think about dialects. Planets having a North and all."
"There's a lot of things you lot don't think about and still entertain ideas over."
She gives him a look he can't quite read, at least not yet. He makes a note of it for when he might be able to.
"You know everything then, Doctor?"
"Yes," he says confidently. If it's not true now, it will be soon enough. Time teaches and he learns. He teaches and Rose learns.
Maybe Rose has something to teach as well, he thinks, and smiles when she steals another chip.
"I think you're full of it," she says, and whatever has started, he rather thinks he likes it.
II
Care
Rose almost dies in a cellar in Cardiff.
Rose almost dies in Ten Downing Street.
Rose almost dies in a Utah bunker.
They're all his fault, even if not his will, because she's in his care and she's his responsibility and he can't lose her, refuses to lose her. He knows she is one life, and the world is millions and billions of lives and from the Universe's point of view, it's a more than fair trade.
It still doesn't feel it. He's already had to give a trade so unfair the burn of it still echoes in his head and he's not doing another. He could let her go, but that feels like another trade again and this time, he will be selfish. Will care for himself too.
He doesn't give her the option of leaving her. Not really. He knows his life is addictive, an addiction he's never kicked, but others have and he remembers. He remembers well enough to let Rose bring Adam along, simply because she cares.
He feels a little bit charitable about it all, and knows he's ever good at being selfish.
II
Home
Sometimes, at night, he dreams about Romana.
She holds Gallifrey in her hands, cradling it like a child. It burns, but she doesn't cry, doesn't make a sound, only looks at him. Bright, so bright, but he can't look away.
Our child, she doesn't say, but she might as well. Our home. Our family.
Her hair is fire and her lips are red, curved in a smile that holds nothing but accusations. He wants to take them from her, kiss her to life and himself to death, but he can't move. Can't ever move, only watch.
Here burns Gallifrey, brighter than the sun, held ever so softly in her arms.
She holds it until she's ashes and he wakes, head burning with her.
II
Ugly
"How do you feel about me?" Rose asks, and he wonders if humans learned subtly from the way they used to bash things with sticks. It certainly feels like he's been whacked over the head.
"You're annoying me," he says very firmly, and she is, standing between him and the TARDIS console he's itching to fiddle with, if only because the TARDIS doesn't ask what stroking it might mean.
Rose doesn't seem to take the annoyance factor too personally, but he can see some sort of worry in her eyes. "I mean, what Adam did... You're not... Not liking me for it?"
"Rose, Adam was a git all on his own."
She smiles a little. "He was a bit pretty, though."
"Never bring pretty on-board," he informs her, pushing her a little aside to get to the TARDIS, now humming impatiently. "Pretty is trouble."
"What am I then, ugly?"
"You're Rose," he says a little absentmindedly, and the TARDIS powers up into joyful song under his hand. She looks at him as if he's said something she doesn't quite get, but is enormously flattering all the same and he wonders if she might like stroking too.
It worries him he might like her to like it.
The next day, she asks to see her father, and he knows it will get ugly.
He still doesn't say no.
II
Want
She fucks him in her bed in the TARDIS, without kissing or gentleness or whispered words and lights off. It's just need and want, and he gives, because he's seen his planet die before his eyes to save the Universe and he can understand what seeing your father die to save the world does to you.
Skin is a little comfort, and he lets his fingers travel across hers. Warm, softer in some spots than others, little marks of life across it. A scar there, a freckle there, a mole on her thigh that he wishes he could see. In the dark, he can only faintly see the palest spots of her skin, almost ghostly and distant even touched.
He hopes she doesn't let grief haunt her. He knows how it feels. He lives how it feels.
She sighs a little, head falling back and hair cascading down her back as he thrusts into her, just a little angrily. Because forgiveness doesn't mean the anger just goes away and because it isn't just her want that made him follow her into this room when she took his hand.
He isn't quite sure who fucks who, in the end.
II
Move
Then there's Jack. Oh yes, there's Jack.
Pretty is trouble and Jack is plenty of both, that much is clear from first meeting. But with insults and pushing, Jack is also conscience, buried beneath the jokes and sex. Not buried well enough at all when even Rose sees, but every man has his lies.
The Doctor knows his, and knows taking Jack along on Rose's insistence is a sort of one. Because it's easier to let Rose push and think it only her moves. Easier to let Rose lead in the dance when he's not sure what it is, especially now that it is a threesome. It is a threesome, even when it's simply he and Rose dancing and Jack just watching. It is a threesome, even when it's Jack flirting and Rose blushing and the Doctor just watching. It is a threesome, even when it's Jack learning about the TARDIS from the Doctor and Rose just watching.
The Doctor, Rose and Jack, falling into a sort of rhythm. Better with two, she said once. Three isn't half bad either.
They have adventures, an amazing amount of them that seem to end up with Jack naked. Sometimes even in beds of others, and if Rose feels a little jealous, so does the Doctor. But Jack is what he is, and he always does return and they always say nothing. The next day, he will make a move on either one or both of them, as if it's just breathing to him and either would be a pleasure to inhale.
Little humans and their rushed sexualities, the Doctor thinks, and never says. He's always been good at the unspoken.
When Rose goes with Mickey in Cardiff, nothing is said either. It's not that sort of a threesome or even twosome, but when Rose returns, she looks as if she's moved on from something and he thinks a lot about to what.
He thinks a lot about what he's moved on to as well, and all the while, the Universe readies its own move.
II
Pick
They never die.
They just never die. The Universe never kills them, and he hates it a little.
The Daleks are alive and he knows many others will die. For a while, it looks like Rose is one of them and he can't feel anything but age, years and years of living crushing down on him. He's had so many lives. Rose should have at least one.
Will have at least one, he decides when he gets her back. His choice. He picks her to live, and knows Jack will die. He feels guilty for it, but he's used to guilt and used to having his own way and paying for it. Rose will live. Others will die.
He still hears her calling of his name echo in his mind long after the TARDIS has gone and feels all too young, almost like the first time he was shown what time could do and he ran away, thinking he could never carry that at all.
He was wrong then. He is wrong now.
He's not the only one with choices, he forgets. His seems simple enough. The Daleks for the Earth, this time. Is simple enough, should be simple enough. He's already traded Lynda for them, and Jack (oh Jack oh Jack oh) and himself, and the rest shouldn't be harder. Can't be harder. Just a few billion lives for all the Universe, and surely that is fair enough. Was fair enough for Gallifrey.
And he can't do it again.
He doesn't quite know why, just knows he's picked something else over killer this time. Maybe he doesn't love the Universe enough this time. Maybe he loves it too much.
"Coward," he says, and is. "Any day."
II
Kiss
Death in a kiss. His death, Rose's life and this time, the trade seems fair. He has lives to give. She doesn't, but she was ready to, she and whatever of the TARDIS she holds and he kisses both. Time tastes like fire on her lips, but he doesn't let go, not until he's almost sure he's taken all of the time vortex from her and her memories of it too.
He wants her as Rose, and it's easier if she doesn't remember. Maybe it's stealing innocence from her and forcing innocence on her at the same time, but he still does it.
He hopes whatever he becomes after death doesn't mind too much. Hopes he won't be a total git this time around. Hopes Rose will like him still and feels a little jealous of all the thing he'll get to experience with her without being himself any more.
But that's all right. He might be ginger this time. He might not feel like an open wound, raw and bleeding, this time.
So, he kisses her to life and himself to death and even feels a little hopeful over it.
Part Two
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2006-08-19 03:11 pm (UTC)*gives you a piece of cake and frisks you for part two in the meantime*
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Date: 2006-08-19 03:21 pm (UTC)*eats the cake anyway*
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Date: 2006-08-19 03:22 pm (UTC)Cup of tea?
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Date: 2006-08-19 03:25 pm (UTC)You're looking in the wrong spot, anyway. I don't keep drafts *on* me.no subject
Date: 2006-08-19 03:40 pm (UTC)*gives you a cuppa, with two sugars added*
There you are. :-)
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Date: 2006-08-19 03:50 pm (UTC)*sips*
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Date: 2006-08-19 03:30 pm (UTC)And you included Eight'n'Charley -- squeeeee! (Um, I've recently discovered the BF audios, so please excuse my overenthusiasm in that respect. :D)
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Date: 2006-08-19 03:46 pm (UTC):) Thanks.
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Date: 2006-08-19 05:20 pm (UTC)Eight & Charley are cute, and the audioplays I've listened to so far are generally well-written. I bought the CD for Rob Shearman's Chimes at Midnight at the Forbidden Planet store in London, and it's actually a bit scaaary when you listen to it for the first time in the dark. :)
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Date: 2006-08-19 05:57 pm (UTC)*plots*
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Date: 2006-08-19 06:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-19 03:43 pm (UTC)*kicks the universe*
This was fabulous. I adore the inner monologue and you get bonus points and sparkly rainbow stars for Eight and Charley.
he can't feel anything but age, years and years of living crushing down on him
This line is just perfect. It really captures the weariness and anguish that he portrayed so beautifully on screen.
I am aching for part 2.
WAH!
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Date: 2006-08-19 03:48 pm (UTC)*pats you*
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Date: 2006-08-19 03:45 pm (UTC)NOW, demmit!
I really loved the bit about Romana and his dreams. It's so haunting, and you wrote it so well.
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Date: 2006-08-19 03:49 pm (UTC)Part two shan't take too long - just some tweaking and fixing. Might be up tomorrow already, or early next week.
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Date: 2006-08-19 04:08 pm (UTC)Will you be moving to Ten in part 2? Because I'm debating reccing this to some new DW converts, but some of them haven't seen Ten yet.
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Date: 2006-08-19 04:13 pm (UTC)They are written so that they almost work independently of each other as well, though, so you could always just point to part one. Your call, that.
Anyway, thanks!
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Date: 2006-08-19 05:24 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2006-08-19 05:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-19 04:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-19 05:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-19 05:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-19 05:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-20 10:04 pm (UTC)