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misscamAn Adventure in Norway 4/?
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)
wendymr for looking it over :)
Table of Prompts
One
Two
Three
Four
Norway.
October. Year one.
Normal life as a scientific exploration - all the discoveries seem small, a map of details becoming a strange larger picture.
The Doctor is discovering he likes to shag Rose in certain kinds of lighting.
Green neon light of a garage somewhere in Tromsø, having sneaked out of the hospital, Rose trapped between the wall and him, a leg lifted (to keep weight off her injured ankle) and another trying to keep her balance as he fucks her a little savagely. If he lowers his eyelids, all he can see is the light flickering across her face and they could be anywhere at all with green-flickering light.
He wonders if it's the sort of delusions humans are so good at, and notices Rose keeps her eyes only half open herself. At least until she closes them all the way and her nails are sharp against his skin, leaving marks. He doesn't mind, particularly not when they climb up on the roof, watching life below, and she kisses all the marks she's left save one.
It's autumn, scarves appearing and grass disappearing. Leaves turning colour, soon to fall. Green to brown and orange and red and gold. Like humans, living their season, slowly draining of life until what is left is simply swept away by a northern wind. Come spring, come new leaves to rustle in the summer breeze.
"What are you thinking?" Rose says quietly, her hands in his coat-pockets, seeking warmth.
"About winds," he says truthfully, and tells her about barometric pressure and uneven heating of polar caps and the spin of the planet, all the greater causes for the simple movement of air. She listens, and the sun on her face makes her almost look golden.
Afterwards, he sneaks her back in again, because she still has recovering to do and Jackie will probably have more than his head otherwise. That he has some poking around to do on his own, that he can pretend is secondary, hardly mattering at all.
He's picking up certain human habits very well, he considers. Getting the hang of the little details.
"Don't get lost," Rose whispers against his lips as he kisses her, and he knows humans are quite good at spotting delusions, too.
II
Sometimes, Rose isn't sure she knows her mum at all. Jackie Tyler - for all her talkative ways and open face, there remains a look in her eyes Rose can't quite grasp. Maybe it's experience. Maybe it's just age. Maybe it's just sunlight being reflected and maybe she's just imagining it. Rose feels she is good at that, after all.
It's a sunny day outside, and a white day inside, all very sterile and hospital. She's longing to get away, but she doesn't really have a home in this town and she's not going anywhere too far while the Doctor is out there, poking about. Not that she thinks he would leave her. It's just that she fears he would.
"Just because you feel like you need him doesn't mean he's good for you," Jackie says, eyes dark, picking up a conversation Rose was hoping had died three days prior.
"Not again," Rose says to the ceiling, and the ceiling just gleams at her, offering little escape. Jackie seems to catch the hint nevertheless, softening her tone a little.
"Sweetheart... I just want you to be happy."
"Mum... I'm... You love Dad, right?" Rose asks, and Jackie crosses her arms in a way that means war.
"That's not the same thing!"
"How is it not the same?" Rose asks, exasperated even to her own ears.
"Because your father isn't an alien! In any universe! Don't think I haven't checked!"
"Thanks, Jackie," Pete says from the door, and the way he looks at her mother makes Rose look away.
"She doesn't listen," Jackie says, sounding tired and old.
"Must run in the family. Neither do you," he says lightly, and gives Rose a smile. "Come on. Let's get out of here."
II
Pete takes them to a quiet little street on the mainland, the bridge over to the city centre on the island still visible among trees and zeppelins. It's a wooden house, as most Norwegian houses seem to be, slightly weathered by wind and rain. Not surprisingly, as it's rainy and windy even now.
"Have you gone bankrupt on another wild scheme and we're moving here to avoid debt?" Jackie asks, something like resignation in her voice.
"No! My schemes never fail," Pete protests and Jackie looks a little doubtful. "Trust me on this!"
They get into a little argument that seems more fond than really vicious, and Rose just lets the words drift with the wind, closing her eyes to feel rain on her face. It feels somehow different to English rain, or perhaps it's her that is different since then. Wet tends to be wet, after all.
She feels tired and aching, her left ankle and right wrist pounding a little with a dull sort of pain mostly just reminding her she's been mean to her body. Or rather, a glacier has been. It probably doesn't even feel guilty about it.
She only opens her eyes when she hears her name, and sees they're both looking at her.
"What?"
"It's yours," Pete says quietly. "Just yours. Twenty years of birthdays Pete Tyler owes you."
Her first absurd thought is that it's probably the most useless gift she's ever got. The Doctor, staying in one place? "But why would..."
She pauses, noting the look in Pete's eyes. "You know something I don't."
"Yes," he says and looks absurdly torn between guilt and pride.
"You what?" says Jackie, but Rose doesn't listen, just looks at Pete. Not her dad, but her dad still, whatever this Universe might say.
"Thanks," she says.
II
Svartisen means "black ice", the Doctor learns, picking up Norwegian on a day he feels bored, watching the people Pete more or less has paid for slowly poke through the glacier at a pretend scientific mission. They are in fact doing useful measurements for calculating when it might move again and at what speed, but most importantly, they're looking for anything that shouldn't really be there.
Like the piece in his pocket, humming still.
Maybe a piece of a TARDIS. And, if a TARDIS is here, Time Lords are not far behind.
He's not sure how he feels about that, so he feels nothing at all, learning instead. He's almost forgotten what it feels like to have a Universe he doesn't really know. Not this version of it. Anything could be out there. Anything he can't travel to, unless, unless...
It worries him a bit that he's starting to forget why he came here. For Rose, yes, but he knows he can have Rose any way he likes, as selfish and cruel as it sounds. He tries not to think about it. He tries to think of why something as white as a glacier might be named black ice instead, constructing many fanciful theories and some quite inane.
Maybe it was named by someone colour-blind. Maybe it was so white it made everything else seem black. Maybe it had a black sense of humour. Maybe aliens from a distant planet painted it black to remember where they'd parked their space ship. Maybe it's a joke.
The fifth night, he dreams it's because it was once dark with ashes, the burning finally over. He wakes to a pounding headache, the device burning in his hand, and knowing where to look.
The sixth day, they find the second piece. On the seventh, the third and the fourth, and the ashes still clinging to them, black frozen in white.
He knows where the name came from now.
II
It's month before he's satisfied they've found all they can, a thousand pieces of varying size, all familiar and not. He is sure now. A TARDIS crashed to this planet, burning and broken. He's not sure if it's still alive or if he feels just the ghost of it, but he's already feeling like a Doctor, trying to nurse something back to life. Battered and broken and almost all quiet, it doesn't matter. He has to try to rebuild it.
And maybe someone will come looking for it and maybe this universe isn't silent, even if he can't hear the roar. Can't hear the Time Vortex. Maybe it just sings to a different tune than he's used to. Maybe it's just a problem of translation, as it were. Maybe that's why his own TARDIS died here and would die again, should he bring it.
No TARDIS should ever have to die violently.
They still do, and he wonders why this one did. Wonders if history repeats itself and echoes into other worlds, if Gallifrey died in this world too. If that is why it is silent, after all. Rocks and dust and echoes, perhaps.
That's all right, really. He's used to being alone. He really is. He was alone while Gallifrey lived too, but at least then he could pretend he wasn't, for a little time.
He misses Rose, he realises, and decides it's time to go back.
Pretences go on.
II
The Doctor comes waltzing into her kitchen as if he's always lived there, picking up her toast and biting into it with relish. She just stares at him, and he sits down, lifting a foot to rest on an empty chair.
"Morning!" he says brightly. "We need to get some jam."
"Morning," she replies, a little dazed. "How did you know..."
"Oh, Pete," he says breezily. "Gave me a key and everything."
"And you're okay with...?"
"What? The house? Well, it could do with some paint. Blue is good. Not enough blue in the world, if you ask me."
She stares at him, trying to will herself to read his mind, but all she can hear is the wind tapping on the window. She gives up when her eyes begin to water.
"I didn't think you were all that keen on house ideas."
"No mortgage with this one," he counters, and might even be sincere as explanations go, though she doubts it. "Need a place to tinker. Pete said it had an excellent basement. The neighbours won't even hear it if I accidentally reverse the time field."
"Are you planning on it?"
"No, but I could get lucky. Quite a rush. Much like inhaling helium while doing LSD in zero gravity."
She can't help but smile, but does manage a somewhat stern tone. "You haven't even asked me if you can move in."
"Questions are so burdensome when you already know the answers."
"And you know the answer to this one?"
"Yes," he says, and kisses her, toast still in his mouth. She tastes something else in his mouth too, and wonders where the heck he got ice cream so early in the morning. A month apart, and he goes to get ice cream before seeing her again. She should really be quite insulted. At arrogance and ice cream both.
The latter does taste sweet on his tongue, though, and the former, he's always had. He just pretends otherwise.
"Did you find what you were looking for?" she asks, pulling away slightly, adjusting his tie.
"No. Yes. Maybe." He stares at her and seems to be looking into something else entirely at the same time. Time itself, perhaps. "I don't know what I'm looking for."
"Ice cream?" she suggests and his eyes focuses on her again.
"Ice cream," he agrees. "Do you think they have any blue flavours?"
II
The Doctor moves into the basement with boxes and boxes of stuff that smells rotten and vaguely burnt, but she doesn't ask, not yet. Too many clouds across his face. He usually looks like all the sunshine in the world when he actually has things figured out. Even if it's bad news, he still delights in knowing and understanding.
She still likes that in him, the first thing he rather wooed her with, prattling on about aliens and plastic such a long time ago. Different her, different him, different Universe.
Still holding hands across.
He doesn't move into her bedroom, but grabs another room instead, and she feels vaguely rejected. At least until she wakes up at four in the morning from him sweeping into her room, skin smelling of wet wood and sharp chemicals, pressing her down in the mattress as he kisses her. Not her idea of an ideal shag-time, but his fingers are warm and nimble and her cheeks feel increasingly warm as strokes and pets continue. She can't read his face as he looks at her, can only guess he lowers his eyelids because he enjoys it too or at least enjoys something about her.
When he flips her over, she closes her eyes, feeling her pillow cold against her cheek and his chin warm against her shoulder. The weight of him feels less heavy than she imagined and she thinks she might be able to carry him. If she'd ever need to.
"Rose," he says, a whisper by her ear, hard inside her and heavy on top of her, a hand finding hers as he tenses. "Åh helvete svarte faen..."
An alien with weird habits, weird shag-time, a mysterious project in her basement and who curses in a different language each time he comes. Some normal life that is, she thinks, and does a little cursing of her own. In English. Mostly.
Afterwards, he lies next to her, mirroring her pose, looking at her so intently it almost makes up for the absentmindedness the rest of the time.
"How do I do at human?" he asks.
"Badly."
He looks positively affronted. "You're born human! You have no idea how hard it is."
Yeah, I do, she wants to say. Yeah, I do. Can't dance with time and Time Lords and remain fully human. Resonance. It doesn't just go one way.
He notices something in her face, but doesn't say what, just changes the tone slightly. "So, Rose Tyler, Human Integration Expert, how do I do better?"
"For starters, you need to get a job," she replies, and he looks horrified, clutching the sonic screwdriver almost protectively. (Why does he bring that to bed anyway? She decides she better not ask.)
"Time Lord is a full-time job."
"Being human is, too," she counters. "We still have time for careers."
II
Careers, there's the thing. Humans have careers. Sure, he could say he's had a great career in Universe Saving and General Mischief, but he can't seem to find any vacancies when he goes by the local employment office.
He considers being a doctor just for the amusing gags he can make to Rose about being Doctor the doctor, but human biology just feels too depressing. They die much too easily, humans. Like flies, and the Universe has plenty of pesticide.
Teaching, there's a possibility. He's already tried it, and there's always the hope that he'll find some devious alien plot at work while at it. He is qualified enough, given his obviously superior knowledge and general good human skills (he's not sure why Rose laughs a lot when he mentions that particular skill, though).
He considers journalism briefly, but thinks of Sarah Jane and then doesn't think of it any more.
In the end, he decides a weatherman is the thing to be.
II
"I got a job as a weatherman," he announces to Rose in the middle of her physical therapy and she looks so surprised she falls off the ball-thing she's using to regain strength in her injured ankle.
"You what?" she says, getting up, cursing a little. (In Norwegian, he notes. Must've picked it up from him.)
"I weatherman," he replies, smiling proudly. "Well, 'I weatherman' very soon, that is. Went to the local news broadcaster and showed my credentials..."
"Your slightly physic paper, you mean," she interrupts, but he ignores it.
"...and they said I had a very 'unique style of relaying information'."
"In other words, they thought you were bonkers."
"Yep!"
"But...?"
"But I predicted the weather correctly for the next few weeks. They were very impressed when I told them it would start snowing at exactly a quarter past seven this evening. Particularly since they weren't expecting snow until next week."
He follows her gaze as she looks out the window, where the first snowflakes are quietly drifting into the window and sliding down. Then she looks at the time, and she shakes her head at him a little.
Quarter past nine. He's always been on time, after all.
"I'll be hired tomorrow," he predicts, and she walks up to him, hardly limping at all.
"You're really trying," she says, voice a little strange. "You're living here, getting a job, inventing ice cream flavours, really trying for normal as you understand it..."
He thinks of the boxes in the basement and feels a moment of guilt, but it fades as she plants herself on his lap.
"You're really trying," she repeats, leaning her face against his chest and he's not sure if she's happy for the effort or sad because all he can do is try.
"Rose?" he asks.
"Weatherman," she replies, and after a moment, they both laugh, a touch hysterically, but laughter still. They haven't laughed enough of late, he decides, and lures her out to throw loose snow at her and watch flakes melt in her hair.
In the morning, he gets the job, and buys a scarf with part of the advance. He'll need it for the winter. Or at least, humans do, so he can pretend he does as well.
He gets Rose one too. Blue, of course. It really is an underestimated colour.
II
Rose dreams of wolves and ashes, falling like snow until all is covered. The wolves hunt, shadows at first, but shadows taking form. Shadows becoming the Doctor, ashes in his hair and no TARDIS to flee to. Not here. Only her here. Only Rose.
Only Rose will have to do.
She wakes with a pounding headache and her skin tingling and, somewhere in the part of her that remembers the TARDIS, she knows she's been given a warning.
The Doctor isn't the only one to love enough to cross time and space and void to give a message, perhaps.
II
Tromsø is covered in white after three days of straight snow, and the city feels almost quiet as she walks through it, blue scarf tucked around her head and neck. (It's so long it's the only way to keep her from tripping on it, really.) Even the zeppelins seem to be less noisy than usual, but on the downside, snow falls off them as they move and falls down unsuspecting people's necks. Rose have had two incidents already, but tries not to feel too annoyed. After, her father now owns one too. At her mum's insistence, to better be able to travel to see Rose whenever.
It feels a bit like moving away from home for the first time. She never really moved out of the estate even when she was living in the TARDIS, but she has this time. She and the Doctor, shacking up. Except she often hardly sees him for all the time he spends in the basement and now soon at work.
She still has no idea how he intends to manage a steady job, even if it is only three times a week.
Now for her work...
"Mickey!" she calls delightedly as she finally spots him, and he turns, already grinning. She doesn't care she looks a bit idiotic as she throws herself into his arms.
"I had to come when I heard," he says, a little breathlessly. He hasn't shaved, she notices, and wonders who he's trying to look butch for.
"He came just for me, Mickey," she babbles, but he shakes his head.
"Not that. I knew you'd found him the moment your mum called and said you'd gone missing in Norway. Only him would make you do that."
She can feel her face burning a little, but Mickey doesn't seem to notice, plowing on.
"Torchwood, Rose. There's someone at Torchwood who knows about the Doctor besides me, Jake and Pete. I saw a mention on a memo I shouldn't have seen. They may want to use him."
"How did..." she starts, her lips feeling stiff. "Did someone tell..."
"Jake would never tell anyone," he says harshly, then softens a little. "You might be safe here. You got friends in Norway, right?"
"Yeah. I helped them," she mutters, mind racing. No one's going to chase her Doctor. No one. Petter will help her. He owes her that. "Thanks, Mickey."
He shrugs a little modestly. "Jake and I will see what we can do when we get back to London."
"Jake's here with you?"
"Yes," he says, saying nothing more, but she still hears all too well.
It begins to snow again.
II
It's snowing when the Doctor walks home, feeling just a tad proud. First day at work and he was only threatened with being fired twice. And even that stopped when he predicted where tornadoes would touch ground in Russia (quite a tornado-plagued country in this world, apparently). Tornadoes are easy. Why humans are so appalling bad at predicting them, he has no idea. Then again, they even get temperature predictions wrong.
It's a wonder human weathermen aren't chased away after the first sudden rainfall, really.
There's a person standing outside his house, he notices as he walks closer, and then his head feels like it's been hit by a glacier at the realisation. A woman. Not Rose. He'd know Rose anywhere. He'd know...
She turns, hair golden even without the sun to shine on it, the snow falling around her like leaves, face familiar and eyes not. The picture clicks into place. He knows her, but doesn't know the life she's lived and doesn't know why the stars in her eyes are dead.
He'd know her anywhere.
"Romana," he says.
(To be continued.)
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 wendymr for looking it over :) Table of Prompts
One
Two
Three
Four
Norway.
October. Year one.
Normal life as a scientific exploration - all the discoveries seem small, a map of details becoming a strange larger picture.
The Doctor is discovering he likes to shag Rose in certain kinds of lighting.
Green neon light of a garage somewhere in Tromsø, having sneaked out of the hospital, Rose trapped between the wall and him, a leg lifted (to keep weight off her injured ankle) and another trying to keep her balance as he fucks her a little savagely. If he lowers his eyelids, all he can see is the light flickering across her face and they could be anywhere at all with green-flickering light.
He wonders if it's the sort of delusions humans are so good at, and notices Rose keeps her eyes only half open herself. At least until she closes them all the way and her nails are sharp against his skin, leaving marks. He doesn't mind, particularly not when they climb up on the roof, watching life below, and she kisses all the marks she's left save one.
It's autumn, scarves appearing and grass disappearing. Leaves turning colour, soon to fall. Green to brown and orange and red and gold. Like humans, living their season, slowly draining of life until what is left is simply swept away by a northern wind. Come spring, come new leaves to rustle in the summer breeze.
"What are you thinking?" Rose says quietly, her hands in his coat-pockets, seeking warmth.
"About winds," he says truthfully, and tells her about barometric pressure and uneven heating of polar caps and the spin of the planet, all the greater causes for the simple movement of air. She listens, and the sun on her face makes her almost look golden.
Afterwards, he sneaks her back in again, because she still has recovering to do and Jackie will probably have more than his head otherwise. That he has some poking around to do on his own, that he can pretend is secondary, hardly mattering at all.
He's picking up certain human habits very well, he considers. Getting the hang of the little details.
"Don't get lost," Rose whispers against his lips as he kisses her, and he knows humans are quite good at spotting delusions, too.
II
Sometimes, Rose isn't sure she knows her mum at all. Jackie Tyler - for all her talkative ways and open face, there remains a look in her eyes Rose can't quite grasp. Maybe it's experience. Maybe it's just age. Maybe it's just sunlight being reflected and maybe she's just imagining it. Rose feels she is good at that, after all.
It's a sunny day outside, and a white day inside, all very sterile and hospital. She's longing to get away, but she doesn't really have a home in this town and she's not going anywhere too far while the Doctor is out there, poking about. Not that she thinks he would leave her. It's just that she fears he would.
"Just because you feel like you need him doesn't mean he's good for you," Jackie says, eyes dark, picking up a conversation Rose was hoping had died three days prior.
"Not again," Rose says to the ceiling, and the ceiling just gleams at her, offering little escape. Jackie seems to catch the hint nevertheless, softening her tone a little.
"Sweetheart... I just want you to be happy."
"Mum... I'm... You love Dad, right?" Rose asks, and Jackie crosses her arms in a way that means war.
"That's not the same thing!"
"How is it not the same?" Rose asks, exasperated even to her own ears.
"Because your father isn't an alien! In any universe! Don't think I haven't checked!"
"Thanks, Jackie," Pete says from the door, and the way he looks at her mother makes Rose look away.
"She doesn't listen," Jackie says, sounding tired and old.
"Must run in the family. Neither do you," he says lightly, and gives Rose a smile. "Come on. Let's get out of here."
II
Pete takes them to a quiet little street on the mainland, the bridge over to the city centre on the island still visible among trees and zeppelins. It's a wooden house, as most Norwegian houses seem to be, slightly weathered by wind and rain. Not surprisingly, as it's rainy and windy even now.
"Have you gone bankrupt on another wild scheme and we're moving here to avoid debt?" Jackie asks, something like resignation in her voice.
"No! My schemes never fail," Pete protests and Jackie looks a little doubtful. "Trust me on this!"
They get into a little argument that seems more fond than really vicious, and Rose just lets the words drift with the wind, closing her eyes to feel rain on her face. It feels somehow different to English rain, or perhaps it's her that is different since then. Wet tends to be wet, after all.
She feels tired and aching, her left ankle and right wrist pounding a little with a dull sort of pain mostly just reminding her she's been mean to her body. Or rather, a glacier has been. It probably doesn't even feel guilty about it.
She only opens her eyes when she hears her name, and sees they're both looking at her.
"What?"
"It's yours," Pete says quietly. "Just yours. Twenty years of birthdays Pete Tyler owes you."
Her first absurd thought is that it's probably the most useless gift she's ever got. The Doctor, staying in one place? "But why would..."
She pauses, noting the look in Pete's eyes. "You know something I don't."
"Yes," he says and looks absurdly torn between guilt and pride.
"You what?" says Jackie, but Rose doesn't listen, just looks at Pete. Not her dad, but her dad still, whatever this Universe might say.
"Thanks," she says.
II
Svartisen means "black ice", the Doctor learns, picking up Norwegian on a day he feels bored, watching the people Pete more or less has paid for slowly poke through the glacier at a pretend scientific mission. They are in fact doing useful measurements for calculating when it might move again and at what speed, but most importantly, they're looking for anything that shouldn't really be there.
Like the piece in his pocket, humming still.
Maybe a piece of a TARDIS. And, if a TARDIS is here, Time Lords are not far behind.
He's not sure how he feels about that, so he feels nothing at all, learning instead. He's almost forgotten what it feels like to have a Universe he doesn't really know. Not this version of it. Anything could be out there. Anything he can't travel to, unless, unless...
It worries him a bit that he's starting to forget why he came here. For Rose, yes, but he knows he can have Rose any way he likes, as selfish and cruel as it sounds. He tries not to think about it. He tries to think of why something as white as a glacier might be named black ice instead, constructing many fanciful theories and some quite inane.
Maybe it was named by someone colour-blind. Maybe it was so white it made everything else seem black. Maybe it had a black sense of humour. Maybe aliens from a distant planet painted it black to remember where they'd parked their space ship. Maybe it's a joke.
The fifth night, he dreams it's because it was once dark with ashes, the burning finally over. He wakes to a pounding headache, the device burning in his hand, and knowing where to look.
The sixth day, they find the second piece. On the seventh, the third and the fourth, and the ashes still clinging to them, black frozen in white.
He knows where the name came from now.
II
It's month before he's satisfied they've found all they can, a thousand pieces of varying size, all familiar and not. He is sure now. A TARDIS crashed to this planet, burning and broken. He's not sure if it's still alive or if he feels just the ghost of it, but he's already feeling like a Doctor, trying to nurse something back to life. Battered and broken and almost all quiet, it doesn't matter. He has to try to rebuild it.
And maybe someone will come looking for it and maybe this universe isn't silent, even if he can't hear the roar. Can't hear the Time Vortex. Maybe it just sings to a different tune than he's used to. Maybe it's just a problem of translation, as it were. Maybe that's why his own TARDIS died here and would die again, should he bring it.
No TARDIS should ever have to die violently.
They still do, and he wonders why this one did. Wonders if history repeats itself and echoes into other worlds, if Gallifrey died in this world too. If that is why it is silent, after all. Rocks and dust and echoes, perhaps.
That's all right, really. He's used to being alone. He really is. He was alone while Gallifrey lived too, but at least then he could pretend he wasn't, for a little time.
He misses Rose, he realises, and decides it's time to go back.
Pretences go on.
II
The Doctor comes waltzing into her kitchen as if he's always lived there, picking up her toast and biting into it with relish. She just stares at him, and he sits down, lifting a foot to rest on an empty chair.
"Morning!" he says brightly. "We need to get some jam."
"Morning," she replies, a little dazed. "How did you know..."
"Oh, Pete," he says breezily. "Gave me a key and everything."
"And you're okay with...?"
"What? The house? Well, it could do with some paint. Blue is good. Not enough blue in the world, if you ask me."
She stares at him, trying to will herself to read his mind, but all she can hear is the wind tapping on the window. She gives up when her eyes begin to water.
"I didn't think you were all that keen on house ideas."
"No mortgage with this one," he counters, and might even be sincere as explanations go, though she doubts it. "Need a place to tinker. Pete said it had an excellent basement. The neighbours won't even hear it if I accidentally reverse the time field."
"Are you planning on it?"
"No, but I could get lucky. Quite a rush. Much like inhaling helium while doing LSD in zero gravity."
She can't help but smile, but does manage a somewhat stern tone. "You haven't even asked me if you can move in."
"Questions are so burdensome when you already know the answers."
"And you know the answer to this one?"
"Yes," he says, and kisses her, toast still in his mouth. She tastes something else in his mouth too, and wonders where the heck he got ice cream so early in the morning. A month apart, and he goes to get ice cream before seeing her again. She should really be quite insulted. At arrogance and ice cream both.
The latter does taste sweet on his tongue, though, and the former, he's always had. He just pretends otherwise.
"Did you find what you were looking for?" she asks, pulling away slightly, adjusting his tie.
"No. Yes. Maybe." He stares at her and seems to be looking into something else entirely at the same time. Time itself, perhaps. "I don't know what I'm looking for."
"Ice cream?" she suggests and his eyes focuses on her again.
"Ice cream," he agrees. "Do you think they have any blue flavours?"
II
The Doctor moves into the basement with boxes and boxes of stuff that smells rotten and vaguely burnt, but she doesn't ask, not yet. Too many clouds across his face. He usually looks like all the sunshine in the world when he actually has things figured out. Even if it's bad news, he still delights in knowing and understanding.
She still likes that in him, the first thing he rather wooed her with, prattling on about aliens and plastic such a long time ago. Different her, different him, different Universe.
Still holding hands across.
He doesn't move into her bedroom, but grabs another room instead, and she feels vaguely rejected. At least until she wakes up at four in the morning from him sweeping into her room, skin smelling of wet wood and sharp chemicals, pressing her down in the mattress as he kisses her. Not her idea of an ideal shag-time, but his fingers are warm and nimble and her cheeks feel increasingly warm as strokes and pets continue. She can't read his face as he looks at her, can only guess he lowers his eyelids because he enjoys it too or at least enjoys something about her.
When he flips her over, she closes her eyes, feeling her pillow cold against her cheek and his chin warm against her shoulder. The weight of him feels less heavy than she imagined and she thinks she might be able to carry him. If she'd ever need to.
"Rose," he says, a whisper by her ear, hard inside her and heavy on top of her, a hand finding hers as he tenses. "Åh helvete svarte faen..."
An alien with weird habits, weird shag-time, a mysterious project in her basement and who curses in a different language each time he comes. Some normal life that is, she thinks, and does a little cursing of her own. In English. Mostly.
Afterwards, he lies next to her, mirroring her pose, looking at her so intently it almost makes up for the absentmindedness the rest of the time.
"How do I do at human?" he asks.
"Badly."
He looks positively affronted. "You're born human! You have no idea how hard it is."
Yeah, I do, she wants to say. Yeah, I do. Can't dance with time and Time Lords and remain fully human. Resonance. It doesn't just go one way.
He notices something in her face, but doesn't say what, just changes the tone slightly. "So, Rose Tyler, Human Integration Expert, how do I do better?"
"For starters, you need to get a job," she replies, and he looks horrified, clutching the sonic screwdriver almost protectively. (Why does he bring that to bed anyway? She decides she better not ask.)
"Time Lord is a full-time job."
"Being human is, too," she counters. "We still have time for careers."
II
Careers, there's the thing. Humans have careers. Sure, he could say he's had a great career in Universe Saving and General Mischief, but he can't seem to find any vacancies when he goes by the local employment office.
He considers being a doctor just for the amusing gags he can make to Rose about being Doctor the doctor, but human biology just feels too depressing. They die much too easily, humans. Like flies, and the Universe has plenty of pesticide.
Teaching, there's a possibility. He's already tried it, and there's always the hope that he'll find some devious alien plot at work while at it. He is qualified enough, given his obviously superior knowledge and general good human skills (he's not sure why Rose laughs a lot when he mentions that particular skill, though).
He considers journalism briefly, but thinks of Sarah Jane and then doesn't think of it any more.
In the end, he decides a weatherman is the thing to be.
II
"I got a job as a weatherman," he announces to Rose in the middle of her physical therapy and she looks so surprised she falls off the ball-thing she's using to regain strength in her injured ankle.
"You what?" she says, getting up, cursing a little. (In Norwegian, he notes. Must've picked it up from him.)
"I weatherman," he replies, smiling proudly. "Well, 'I weatherman' very soon, that is. Went to the local news broadcaster and showed my credentials..."
"Your slightly physic paper, you mean," she interrupts, but he ignores it.
"...and they said I had a very 'unique style of relaying information'."
"In other words, they thought you were bonkers."
"Yep!"
"But...?"
"But I predicted the weather correctly for the next few weeks. They were very impressed when I told them it would start snowing at exactly a quarter past seven this evening. Particularly since they weren't expecting snow until next week."
He follows her gaze as she looks out the window, where the first snowflakes are quietly drifting into the window and sliding down. Then she looks at the time, and she shakes her head at him a little.
Quarter past nine. He's always been on time, after all.
"I'll be hired tomorrow," he predicts, and she walks up to him, hardly limping at all.
"You're really trying," she says, voice a little strange. "You're living here, getting a job, inventing ice cream flavours, really trying for normal as you understand it..."
He thinks of the boxes in the basement and feels a moment of guilt, but it fades as she plants herself on his lap.
"You're really trying," she repeats, leaning her face against his chest and he's not sure if she's happy for the effort or sad because all he can do is try.
"Rose?" he asks.
"Weatherman," she replies, and after a moment, they both laugh, a touch hysterically, but laughter still. They haven't laughed enough of late, he decides, and lures her out to throw loose snow at her and watch flakes melt in her hair.
In the morning, he gets the job, and buys a scarf with part of the advance. He'll need it for the winter. Or at least, humans do, so he can pretend he does as well.
He gets Rose one too. Blue, of course. It really is an underestimated colour.
II
Rose dreams of wolves and ashes, falling like snow until all is covered. The wolves hunt, shadows at first, but shadows taking form. Shadows becoming the Doctor, ashes in his hair and no TARDIS to flee to. Not here. Only her here. Only Rose.
Only Rose will have to do.
She wakes with a pounding headache and her skin tingling and, somewhere in the part of her that remembers the TARDIS, she knows she's been given a warning.
The Doctor isn't the only one to love enough to cross time and space and void to give a message, perhaps.
II
Tromsø is covered in white after three days of straight snow, and the city feels almost quiet as she walks through it, blue scarf tucked around her head and neck. (It's so long it's the only way to keep her from tripping on it, really.) Even the zeppelins seem to be less noisy than usual, but on the downside, snow falls off them as they move and falls down unsuspecting people's necks. Rose have had two incidents already, but tries not to feel too annoyed. After, her father now owns one too. At her mum's insistence, to better be able to travel to see Rose whenever.
It feels a bit like moving away from home for the first time. She never really moved out of the estate even when she was living in the TARDIS, but she has this time. She and the Doctor, shacking up. Except she often hardly sees him for all the time he spends in the basement and now soon at work.
She still has no idea how he intends to manage a steady job, even if it is only three times a week.
Now for her work...
"Mickey!" she calls delightedly as she finally spots him, and he turns, already grinning. She doesn't care she looks a bit idiotic as she throws herself into his arms.
"I had to come when I heard," he says, a little breathlessly. He hasn't shaved, she notices, and wonders who he's trying to look butch for.
"He came just for me, Mickey," she babbles, but he shakes his head.
"Not that. I knew you'd found him the moment your mum called and said you'd gone missing in Norway. Only him would make you do that."
She can feel her face burning a little, but Mickey doesn't seem to notice, plowing on.
"Torchwood, Rose. There's someone at Torchwood who knows about the Doctor besides me, Jake and Pete. I saw a mention on a memo I shouldn't have seen. They may want to use him."
"How did..." she starts, her lips feeling stiff. "Did someone tell..."
"Jake would never tell anyone," he says harshly, then softens a little. "You might be safe here. You got friends in Norway, right?"
"Yeah. I helped them," she mutters, mind racing. No one's going to chase her Doctor. No one. Petter will help her. He owes her that. "Thanks, Mickey."
He shrugs a little modestly. "Jake and I will see what we can do when we get back to London."
"Jake's here with you?"
"Yes," he says, saying nothing more, but she still hears all too well.
It begins to snow again.
II
It's snowing when the Doctor walks home, feeling just a tad proud. First day at work and he was only threatened with being fired twice. And even that stopped when he predicted where tornadoes would touch ground in Russia (quite a tornado-plagued country in this world, apparently). Tornadoes are easy. Why humans are so appalling bad at predicting them, he has no idea. Then again, they even get temperature predictions wrong.
It's a wonder human weathermen aren't chased away after the first sudden rainfall, really.
There's a person standing outside his house, he notices as he walks closer, and then his head feels like it's been hit by a glacier at the realisation. A woman. Not Rose. He'd know Rose anywhere. He'd know...
She turns, hair golden even without the sun to shine on it, the snow falling around her like leaves, face familiar and eyes not. The picture clicks into place. He knows her, but doesn't know the life she's lived and doesn't know why the stars in her eyes are dead.
He'd know her anywhere.
"Romana," he says.
(To be continued.)
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no subject
Date: 2006-10-16 05:28 pm (UTC)Regardless, yay! And well done, as always. I thought you might have a trick or two up your sleeve, since you've given yourself sixty years of them to write. It'll be interesting to see how the Romana thing turns out. And Torchwood looking for the Doctor. And the Doctor and Rose figuring their shit out and realizing that forever/sixty years has a lot less allure when you're actually in the thick of it.
Yay!
no subject
Date: 2006-10-16 06:05 pm (UTC)And thanks. Sixty years of domestics would've been kinda... blah, really. I always did have a Time Lord plot and Torchwood difficulties in mind. Just a matter of sorting plot in my easily confused brain, basically.
Sixty years is a long time to spend with someone indeed.
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Date: 2006-10-16 06:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-16 05:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-16 06:05 pm (UTC)Thanks!
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Date: 2006-10-16 05:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-16 06:08 pm (UTC)Thanks!
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Date: 2006-10-16 05:52 pm (UTC)Well done, you.
(And I got your postcard, and it was lovely, thanks. I used to live in New Hampshire, nearly as north as you, and I saw the Northern Lights on snow. I've never forgotten.)
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Date: 2006-10-16 05:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-16 06:11 pm (UTC)http://www.translation-guide.com/free_online_translators.php?
Glad you liked the postcard - if you've seen Northern Lights you know how lovely they are indeed.
And thanks!
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Date: 2006-10-16 06:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-16 06:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-16 07:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-16 08:19 pm (UTC)Romana! *waits to see more*
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Date: 2006-10-16 08:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-16 10:58 pm (UTC)How tragic in a way this is. He really can't conform to something he's not, despite how much he may or may not love Rose.
Lovely!
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Date: 2006-10-16 11:42 pm (UTC)!!!
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Date: 2006-10-17 05:54 am (UTC)I swear, I will one day be able to write a review that is more than a fangirl gushing. Cept it's 2 AM and I just don't feel like trying.
I love it. I've been waiting for it. I wasn't let down. I want more ;)
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Date: 2006-10-17 12:33 pm (UTC)I really like the way you describe the Doctor trying - but not really succeeding - to live a normal life, and in Norway no less! But it wouldn't be any fun at all if we really had such accurate weathermen. (Does it have anything at all to do with this article, btw? *grins*)
Also, the Norwegean cursing really threw me... somehow it's more embarassing when someone swears in Norwegean than when they do it in English. Huh.
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Date: 2006-10-17 01:04 pm (UTC)Romana! Oh yay!
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Date: 2006-10-18 12:44 am (UTC)thanks so much for sharing! have a great day :o)
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Date: 2006-10-18 05:31 am (UTC)