Like Fireflies 1/?
Apr. 2nd, 2007 12:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
misscamLike Fireflies 1/? (No more than five parts.)
by Camilla Sandman
Disclaimer: Doctor Who is the BBC's baby. I just took it out for a slight stroll.
Summary: Little Red Riding Hood. Big bad time in the clothes of grandma TARDIS. Maybe a prince, just without a kingdom. Certainly ever after. But this isn't a fairytale. This is a price to pay. [Doctor/Rose, Rose/Others, implied Doctor/Others]
Rating: Mature. Some language, adult activities and adult themes.
Author's Note: AU post-Doomsday. Takes some liberties with assumed events and what-ifs. Vague, vague hints of possible series three stuff, nothing particularly spoilery. If you prefer happy fics, this is probably not one for you. Thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
wendymr for beta work. Prompt 022 for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
50lyricsfanfic.
Table of Prompts.
II
From the perspective of eternity, even the stars have a life-span of fireflies.
-Stein Mehren, Norwegian poet
II
There is no moment where Rose realises she isn't dying. There are a bunch of little ones instead.
Moment one: Twenty-five, five years on from a windswept beach in Norway and something like a life weathered ever since. Family, a few boyfriends, a job with danger and running and saving the world from inconsiderate invading seals - yes, it makes a life. And seeing her face in the mirror one day, feeling a hundred and looking twenty still. Just a fleeting moment of something feeling wrong, but mirrors do lie. Not as good as humans, but they do lie.
Polar bears bring penguin friends and life goes on. Aging does not.
Moment two: Night before turning thirty, getting drunk in a bar with Mickey and Jake, both looking older and not one bit wiser, and Mickey grinning to her over a beer. "You never change, Rose," he says, slurring the words in ways that make Jake giggle and look young. "You never change..."
Rose does change. Her body just doesn't pay attention.
Moment three: Running into traffic at thirty-three, and feeling a hand on her arm yank her out of the way of a speeding car at the last moment. "You could've been killed," her rescuer tells her, his smile white and his hair smelling of rain, "without me here.". A knight in shining raincoat, who she dates until smiles aren't enough to bridge an abyss of differences. Gratitude doesn't keep her around either.
After all, she isn't all that sure she would've been killed without him there.
Moment four: Forty and looking into a different mirror. Emily Tyler, half Rose's age and not even looking one day younger. Getting confused for twins by strangers and giving up correcting it after a while. After all, they are sisters. Just with twenty years apart that isn't showing.
Something's very, very off with her reflection, so Rose stops looking.
Moment five: Forty-seven, watching Jackie in a hospital bed, fading away. Pete isn't crying, but Rose cries for them both, at least until she feels her mum's hand in hers, bony and skin like a funeral drape. "I'm so tried of fighting, love," Jackie Tyler says. "You'll understand. Look at you, not even a grey hair yet. You'll understand when you've got a head full."
There isn't any hair product to get grey hairs rather than hiding them. Rose looks.
Moment six: Sixty-two, sitting in a park with Pete after he's told her he's got three months left to live. Feeling a wind in her hair and watching pigeons peck for food amongst the fallen leaves, another autumn leaving its mark on London. "It's time, Rose," he says. "It's just my time. Do you understand?"
Rose doesn't. Nothing feels like her time anymore.
Moment seven: Sixty-five, and holding for the first time Jonathan Tyler Creddick, son of Emily Tyler and Henry Creddick come screaming into the world. "Hey," she says, feeling a hand clutch her one finger, "I'm your aunt, even if I'm old enough to be your grandmother..."
When she gets home, she sits in the dark a long time, feeling for wrinkles and only ending up with sore fingertips and a smaller electricity bill.
Moment eight: Eighty-one, getting clawed in a dark alley by an angry polar bear and watching her own blood make patterns across a gratified brick wall. So much pain, too much pain. No darkness, no silence, just her own ragged breath after the polar bear leaves her to die. Only she doesn't, and ten minutes later her body looks as if nothing's happened to it at all. Since twenty.
Only the blood on brick remains, and Rose can't deny something's very, very wrong anymore.
II
The Doctor is seeing things.
The first glimpse of Rose he is sure is just a slight eye-brain misco-ordination. The brain telling the eyes more what it's seeing rather than the opposite. It's not uncommon. Humans have turned it into an art and he borrows humanity enough for some things to rub off.
The second glimpse is more unsettling. Misco-ordination is now more delusion, unless the eyes were correct the first time around and the mistake is all on the brain. That's not too comforting either. He's supposed to know impossible enough to believe it.
The third is just joy.
"Rose!" he calls, already moving, catching a glimpse of her strangely still face before he sweeps her up and whirls her around. "Rose!"
Rose Tyler, not looking a day older, as if it was only yesterday he last saw her, a yesterday that has been several years. Rose.
She still smells like her remembers her. Hormones and hydrocarbon and human. Still feels like her hair tickling his cheek. How humans can forget so much, he's never understood. Sometimes, he almost wishes he could.
It takes him about ten seconds to realise she's about as responsive as a pillow being hugged. Well, a normal pillow. The mutated ones do tend to hug back. If they're in the mood.
"Rose?" he asks, putting her down back on her feet, but still keeping her so close he can feel the static from her clothes on his own. Rose. Really Rose.
"It's you," she says, voice flat. Her eyes look strangely dull too, he notes, and there is something off he can't quite pinpoint. She puts a finger to his cheek, but the touch feels nothing like affection and all like distance. "You haven't regenerated."
"No," he agrees cheerfully. "It's only been five years. I can keep a body five years. Five years is nothing! Now centuries, centuries make you want a new tongue."
"Yeah," she agrees, still in that flat voice. She looks at him again, and finally, finally there is something glimmering in her eyes.
"How did you...?" he asks, steadying her hair as the wind tears at it. He doesn't even realise he's kissing her forehead until he feels her skin against his lips and tastes autumn on it.
"Torchwood accident. I was trying to stop..." She pauses, as if the memory hurts, or the words hurt. "He tore... We fell... Such a long way. There was never any bottom. There was just the Void."
He's beginning to pinpoint what is wrong, he realises. Her eyes. Her eyes are old. She's not one day older in body, but her eyes...
Oh shit. Oh bollocks. Oh-not-that. Oh-so-very-not-that-please.
"Oh Rose," he says. "Like Jack, you haven't... How old are you?"
"About twelve hundred, give or take a decade," she says, voice a bit like David Attenburough rattling off an unusual fact of nature. (He never did tell her he'd taught David that voice, did he?)
Oh shit. Oh that.
As he just stares a bit at her, her lips curl into the first smile he's gotten from her, and it's almost a mockery of one for all the irony in it. "I outnumber you now."
II
Age: 900.
Rose doesn't celebrate her birthdays anymore. She doesn't curse them anymore, either. She just marks them. After all, years don't seem that important anymore. One more gone is just one more gone. There will be another, and another, and another and a decade. Those she might mark now and then, if she has a will to. A century might get a night of drinking tequila. Or vodka. Depends how bad it's been.
This one she is marking by drinking tea.
Tea on her sunny balcony in her London mansion, listening to the buzz from the pipeways where commuters are commuting to another workday. Clear sky, this century. They've done a good job of clearing the smog. Good job of clearing the ruins after WIC air raids too.
Good century. Not like last century, one best forgotten with absinthe. Good century.
Also the century she's going to age past the Doctor. At least the Doctor she remembers. He must be older in his own world now. Her own world. Only it doesn't feel like it anymore. This feels like her world, 880 years of living in it. She's fond of it. When she doesn't hate it. When it doesn't drive her mad. When she isn't lonely, watching people live like fireflies around her.
She's beginning to understand the Doctor more than she should ever have wanted.
"Happy birthday, Rose," she says quietly, and lets the tea get cold as the city buzz around and she wonders what it will be like another century past.
She knows she'll be there to find out.
II
They end up sitting on a London bridge, the river below, the sky above, two shapes framed by blue. He's a little stunned, he knows. He can tell by the way he's not gobbing away as usually, even if a suspicion has been slowly gathering in the shadows of his mind ever since he met Jack again. He just never expected to see Rose again to have it confirmed or denied. He could've lived with assuming the best. He's pretty good at it, and he's never had any problem daring to say so himself.
"The TARDIS made me immortal. Right?" she asks, but it's not really a question. It's blame. "When I looked into it. Sometimes, I think I almost remember it."
"You don't. The TARDIS does. I thought I took her all out of you." He looks at her sideways, watching her reaction. It's nothing, and he almost wants to shake her and yodel. Anything just to see a change across her face. "She's stubborn. Must've liked it in there."
"Who wouldn't? Rose Tyler, five star digs."
He's so relieved at the joke, at any sign of life in her, that he causes himself several bruises in the hurry to embrace her. He laughs too, and she laughs a little too, at least until she realises he's hugging them off the bridge. The she just says something very rude and then she's just spitting water and the river is embracing them.
He doesn't care. He doesn't care when she hits him hard in the chest either, both emerging spluttering and still clinging to the other. He doesn't care as long as she does. As long as there's something there. He can start with that. He started with that, lifetimes and a stolen TARDIS ago.
Forever is not too bad, one day at a time.
"You're lucky I can't get sick," Rose mutters, bopping slightly in the water as she glares at him, another thing that fills him with something close to jubilation. The water is clinging to her face and she's Rose and there's hope and he kisses her, just to taste London river on her lips and see if there's something else alive in her too.
He'll use that if he has to. Oh yeah, he'll use it.
He breaks it off the moment he knows what he needs to, and she doesn't remark upon it, just follows him as they swim to the riverbed and stumble up, dripping wet hand-in-hand.
"I got my own five star digs parked at Wembley," he says, then has a thought. "There isn't a match on today, is there?"
"I think there is."
"Ah. That might be trouble." He grins, as another thought makes itself known with cherish. "That might be serious trouble."
"Same old life still?"
"Same old life."
She nods, looking at their linked hands with what has to be remembrance. At least he hopes it's that, because he's carrying enough memories alone as it is.
"You travelling with someone right now?" she asks. A little too casually, but still fairly calm and not at all accusing. It tells him a whole lot he isn't sure if he wanted to know or not.
"No. I was," he says softly and remembers. "You with someone right now?"
"No. I was," she replies equally softly. "He died."
II
Age: 1155. She thinks.
It's cold and it rains, and for once the weather is actually narrating her mood. She feels cold. She feels like crying. But she's been standing at the grave for two hours, and the only thing she's managed to do is breathe. In, out, in, out, thundering in her ears because it never stops. Never dies.
His did.
Jonas Gregory. 1976-2050.
74 years. 42 with her. Happy, mostly. Falling in and out of love a little, but the years do that. She's learned that very well.
She didn't know it was possible to feel this old. Ancient, as if her bones have turned to fossils while in her body still. Cold, as if every winter's chill has settled in her skin. Tired, as if running a marathon and never seeing the finish line. Scarred, because time isn't gentle in its embrace.
Jonas never understood it. But he tried and she did love him, did did did and he died and it hurts and she can't cry. Maybe it's because she wouldn't know how to stop. Maybe it's because she's run out of tears. Maybe it's because she's learned to grieve without them.
It was a good funeral, though. She did give him that. It was only fair for all he'd given her. A sort of sanity back. Getting her used to this new world, or old world new again, as it might be. It's strange to know it was once her world, her universe. The other universe, the alternate one, that's the one that came to feel like it for such a long time. Over a thousand years of being home.
This is the Doctor's universe.
She thinks a little about that too, standing still all the way to sunset and feeling no hurry to leave. She's got all the time in the universe, after all.
II
The moment he leads her back into the TARDIS with him (after a disappointing amount of none-trouble, the match being tomorrow), Rose goes very still. He can feel her hand tense in his, and anger seems to radiate from it. He has only a brief moment to feel happy at that too before she throws herself at the TARDIS console with something like desperation. For a moment, she doesn't seem to know quite what to know next. Then she hits it, bare-knuckled. He has only a second to wince at the sound before she does it again. And kicks. And picks up the plank he half had forgotten was there (and probably should return to the Globe before they miss it), slamming it against the TARDIS rotor. And again. And again.
"Rose," he says a little angrily, ducking a second later as she swings around to look at him and the plank goes around too.
She stares wildly at him, blood on her knuckles and for a moment, he can't see Rose in her at all.
"I hate it," she says, and then he can. "I really hate it."
"I know," he says, walking over to her carefully and easing the plank from her hand.
"I hate you too."
"I know."
"I love you too."
"I know," he says a third time, putting a hand over her knuckles and feeling the blood against his palm. "Come on."
The TARDIS has changed a little since she was last here, he knows, but she doesn't remark upon it as they head deeper in. Maybe it seems stranger to her what hasn't changed. At least she smile at a little at the tea-room-cum-infirmary, still as cluttered as it always is. But then, there is a lot of different ways to get hurt when all of time can get creative on you.
He cleans off her blood, puts on some ointment (Martha's special concoction, he realises half-way through administering it) and knocks over three different boxes before can find towels. Some perfume as well, on second thoughts. L'Odeur de Thames is never going to be a real hit in the deodorant field, he's pretty sure.
"There's some of your clothes in the wardrobe," he says, surprised to hear himself sound almost shy. She just nods.
"Am I going to live forever, Doctor?" she asks, looking very straight at him. It's the first time she's used his name, he notes. He wonders why it took as long.
"I don't know," he admits. "You're different from Jack. It's possible that when the TARDIS... When she... That you'll too."
He can't even say it, but she understands, and she understands what he doesn't say too. He can see that from the sharp glint of hurt and something else in her eyes, quickly absorbed by just weariness. She knows he's going to go and patch up the TARDIS as gently as he has her, making no difference. She knows. Oh, she knows.
He's not going to kill one for the other.
She doesn't ask about Jack either, and he's beginning to wonder just how much she knows.
"I'll go find some old clothes," she replies after a moment, taking a step away from him. He only realises he's still holding her hand when she tugs a little to be let go. "I can find my own way."
"I'll find you if you get lost," he promises. "Can't hide from me, Rose Tyler."
"We'll see," she says, and slips out.
II
Age: Forgotten.
Rose is hiding.
Not from the Big Bad Wolf. She's used to the wolf, living in its belly. It ate her and then there was life after anyway. No, not the wolf. She's used to the wolf. She even howls with it.
There's something else here. Monsters. The kind that lives under your bed and are the most scary ever because only your imagination limits them, not reality. This is... This is where there are no limits and plenty of monsters. They find her sometimes, and she screams for a long time while not dying. She never dies. Not even here.
Sometimes she remembers a time before falling in and, if there was a start, maybe there's an end. Maybe there's a bottom and she can stop falling.
That's hope. It's best to hide from that too. It has the worst bite of all
The Void. That's what he called it. She never forgets that. Void. This is nothing. This is everything.
Oh god oh god oh god they're seeking her again.
Rose is hiding. It's the only thing she really knows anymore.
II
(To be continued.)
by Camilla Sandman
Disclaimer: Doctor Who is the BBC's baby. I just took it out for a slight stroll.
Summary: Little Red Riding Hood. Big bad time in the clothes of grandma TARDIS. Maybe a prince, just without a kingdom. Certainly ever after. But this isn't a fairytale. This is a price to pay. [Doctor/Rose, Rose/Others, implied Doctor/Others]
Rating: Mature. Some language, adult activities and adult themes.
Author's Note: AU post-Doomsday. Takes some liberties with assumed events and what-ifs. Vague, vague hints of possible series three stuff, nothing particularly spoilery. If you prefer happy fics, this is probably not one for you. Thanks to
wendymr for beta work. Prompt 022 for 50lyricsfanfic.Table of Prompts.
II
From the perspective of eternity, even the stars have a life-span of fireflies.
-Stein Mehren, Norwegian poet
II
There is no moment where Rose realises she isn't dying. There are a bunch of little ones instead.
Moment one: Twenty-five, five years on from a windswept beach in Norway and something like a life weathered ever since. Family, a few boyfriends, a job with danger and running and saving the world from inconsiderate invading seals - yes, it makes a life. And seeing her face in the mirror one day, feeling a hundred and looking twenty still. Just a fleeting moment of something feeling wrong, but mirrors do lie. Not as good as humans, but they do lie.
Polar bears bring penguin friends and life goes on. Aging does not.
Moment two: Night before turning thirty, getting drunk in a bar with Mickey and Jake, both looking older and not one bit wiser, and Mickey grinning to her over a beer. "You never change, Rose," he says, slurring the words in ways that make Jake giggle and look young. "You never change..."
Rose does change. Her body just doesn't pay attention.
Moment three: Running into traffic at thirty-three, and feeling a hand on her arm yank her out of the way of a speeding car at the last moment. "You could've been killed," her rescuer tells her, his smile white and his hair smelling of rain, "without me here.". A knight in shining raincoat, who she dates until smiles aren't enough to bridge an abyss of differences. Gratitude doesn't keep her around either.
After all, she isn't all that sure she would've been killed without him there.
Moment four: Forty and looking into a different mirror. Emily Tyler, half Rose's age and not even looking one day younger. Getting confused for twins by strangers and giving up correcting it after a while. After all, they are sisters. Just with twenty years apart that isn't showing.
Something's very, very off with her reflection, so Rose stops looking.
Moment five: Forty-seven, watching Jackie in a hospital bed, fading away. Pete isn't crying, but Rose cries for them both, at least until she feels her mum's hand in hers, bony and skin like a funeral drape. "I'm so tried of fighting, love," Jackie Tyler says. "You'll understand. Look at you, not even a grey hair yet. You'll understand when you've got a head full."
There isn't any hair product to get grey hairs rather than hiding them. Rose looks.
Moment six: Sixty-two, sitting in a park with Pete after he's told her he's got three months left to live. Feeling a wind in her hair and watching pigeons peck for food amongst the fallen leaves, another autumn leaving its mark on London. "It's time, Rose," he says. "It's just my time. Do you understand?"
Rose doesn't. Nothing feels like her time anymore.
Moment seven: Sixty-five, and holding for the first time Jonathan Tyler Creddick, son of Emily Tyler and Henry Creddick come screaming into the world. "Hey," she says, feeling a hand clutch her one finger, "I'm your aunt, even if I'm old enough to be your grandmother..."
When she gets home, she sits in the dark a long time, feeling for wrinkles and only ending up with sore fingertips and a smaller electricity bill.
Moment eight: Eighty-one, getting clawed in a dark alley by an angry polar bear and watching her own blood make patterns across a gratified brick wall. So much pain, too much pain. No darkness, no silence, just her own ragged breath after the polar bear leaves her to die. Only she doesn't, and ten minutes later her body looks as if nothing's happened to it at all. Since twenty.
Only the blood on brick remains, and Rose can't deny something's very, very wrong anymore.
II
The Doctor is seeing things.
The first glimpse of Rose he is sure is just a slight eye-brain misco-ordination. The brain telling the eyes more what it's seeing rather than the opposite. It's not uncommon. Humans have turned it into an art and he borrows humanity enough for some things to rub off.
The second glimpse is more unsettling. Misco-ordination is now more delusion, unless the eyes were correct the first time around and the mistake is all on the brain. That's not too comforting either. He's supposed to know impossible enough to believe it.
The third is just joy.
"Rose!" he calls, already moving, catching a glimpse of her strangely still face before he sweeps her up and whirls her around. "Rose!"
Rose Tyler, not looking a day older, as if it was only yesterday he last saw her, a yesterday that has been several years. Rose.
She still smells like her remembers her. Hormones and hydrocarbon and human. Still feels like her hair tickling his cheek. How humans can forget so much, he's never understood. Sometimes, he almost wishes he could.
It takes him about ten seconds to realise she's about as responsive as a pillow being hugged. Well, a normal pillow. The mutated ones do tend to hug back. If they're in the mood.
"Rose?" he asks, putting her down back on her feet, but still keeping her so close he can feel the static from her clothes on his own. Rose. Really Rose.
"It's you," she says, voice flat. Her eyes look strangely dull too, he notes, and there is something off he can't quite pinpoint. She puts a finger to his cheek, but the touch feels nothing like affection and all like distance. "You haven't regenerated."
"No," he agrees cheerfully. "It's only been five years. I can keep a body five years. Five years is nothing! Now centuries, centuries make you want a new tongue."
"Yeah," she agrees, still in that flat voice. She looks at him again, and finally, finally there is something glimmering in her eyes.
"How did you...?" he asks, steadying her hair as the wind tears at it. He doesn't even realise he's kissing her forehead until he feels her skin against his lips and tastes autumn on it.
"Torchwood accident. I was trying to stop..." She pauses, as if the memory hurts, or the words hurt. "He tore... We fell... Such a long way. There was never any bottom. There was just the Void."
He's beginning to pinpoint what is wrong, he realises. Her eyes. Her eyes are old. She's not one day older in body, but her eyes...
Oh shit. Oh bollocks. Oh-not-that. Oh-so-very-not-that-please.
"Oh Rose," he says. "Like Jack, you haven't... How old are you?"
"About twelve hundred, give or take a decade," she says, voice a bit like David Attenburough rattling off an unusual fact of nature. (He never did tell her he'd taught David that voice, did he?)
Oh shit. Oh that.
As he just stares a bit at her, her lips curl into the first smile he's gotten from her, and it's almost a mockery of one for all the irony in it. "I outnumber you now."
II
Age: 900.
Rose doesn't celebrate her birthdays anymore. She doesn't curse them anymore, either. She just marks them. After all, years don't seem that important anymore. One more gone is just one more gone. There will be another, and another, and another and a decade. Those she might mark now and then, if she has a will to. A century might get a night of drinking tequila. Or vodka. Depends how bad it's been.
This one she is marking by drinking tea.
Tea on her sunny balcony in her London mansion, listening to the buzz from the pipeways where commuters are commuting to another workday. Clear sky, this century. They've done a good job of clearing the smog. Good job of clearing the ruins after WIC air raids too.
Good century. Not like last century, one best forgotten with absinthe. Good century.
Also the century she's going to age past the Doctor. At least the Doctor she remembers. He must be older in his own world now. Her own world. Only it doesn't feel like it anymore. This feels like her world, 880 years of living in it. She's fond of it. When she doesn't hate it. When it doesn't drive her mad. When she isn't lonely, watching people live like fireflies around her.
She's beginning to understand the Doctor more than she should ever have wanted.
"Happy birthday, Rose," she says quietly, and lets the tea get cold as the city buzz around and she wonders what it will be like another century past.
She knows she'll be there to find out.
II
They end up sitting on a London bridge, the river below, the sky above, two shapes framed by blue. He's a little stunned, he knows. He can tell by the way he's not gobbing away as usually, even if a suspicion has been slowly gathering in the shadows of his mind ever since he met Jack again. He just never expected to see Rose again to have it confirmed or denied. He could've lived with assuming the best. He's pretty good at it, and he's never had any problem daring to say so himself.
"The TARDIS made me immortal. Right?" she asks, but it's not really a question. It's blame. "When I looked into it. Sometimes, I think I almost remember it."
"You don't. The TARDIS does. I thought I took her all out of you." He looks at her sideways, watching her reaction. It's nothing, and he almost wants to shake her and yodel. Anything just to see a change across her face. "She's stubborn. Must've liked it in there."
"Who wouldn't? Rose Tyler, five star digs."
He's so relieved at the joke, at any sign of life in her, that he causes himself several bruises in the hurry to embrace her. He laughs too, and she laughs a little too, at least until she realises he's hugging them off the bridge. The she just says something very rude and then she's just spitting water and the river is embracing them.
He doesn't care. He doesn't care when she hits him hard in the chest either, both emerging spluttering and still clinging to the other. He doesn't care as long as she does. As long as there's something there. He can start with that. He started with that, lifetimes and a stolen TARDIS ago.
Forever is not too bad, one day at a time.
"You're lucky I can't get sick," Rose mutters, bopping slightly in the water as she glares at him, another thing that fills him with something close to jubilation. The water is clinging to her face and she's Rose and there's hope and he kisses her, just to taste London river on her lips and see if there's something else alive in her too.
He'll use that if he has to. Oh yeah, he'll use it.
He breaks it off the moment he knows what he needs to, and she doesn't remark upon it, just follows him as they swim to the riverbed and stumble up, dripping wet hand-in-hand.
"I got my own five star digs parked at Wembley," he says, then has a thought. "There isn't a match on today, is there?"
"I think there is."
"Ah. That might be trouble." He grins, as another thought makes itself known with cherish. "That might be serious trouble."
"Same old life still?"
"Same old life."
She nods, looking at their linked hands with what has to be remembrance. At least he hopes it's that, because he's carrying enough memories alone as it is.
"You travelling with someone right now?" she asks. A little too casually, but still fairly calm and not at all accusing. It tells him a whole lot he isn't sure if he wanted to know or not.
"No. I was," he says softly and remembers. "You with someone right now?"
"No. I was," she replies equally softly. "He died."
II
Age: 1155. She thinks.
It's cold and it rains, and for once the weather is actually narrating her mood. She feels cold. She feels like crying. But she's been standing at the grave for two hours, and the only thing she's managed to do is breathe. In, out, in, out, thundering in her ears because it never stops. Never dies.
His did.
Jonas Gregory. 1976-2050.
74 years. 42 with her. Happy, mostly. Falling in and out of love a little, but the years do that. She's learned that very well.
She didn't know it was possible to feel this old. Ancient, as if her bones have turned to fossils while in her body still. Cold, as if every winter's chill has settled in her skin. Tired, as if running a marathon and never seeing the finish line. Scarred, because time isn't gentle in its embrace.
Jonas never understood it. But he tried and she did love him, did did did and he died and it hurts and she can't cry. Maybe it's because she wouldn't know how to stop. Maybe it's because she's run out of tears. Maybe it's because she's learned to grieve without them.
It was a good funeral, though. She did give him that. It was only fair for all he'd given her. A sort of sanity back. Getting her used to this new world, or old world new again, as it might be. It's strange to know it was once her world, her universe. The other universe, the alternate one, that's the one that came to feel like it for such a long time. Over a thousand years of being home.
This is the Doctor's universe.
She thinks a little about that too, standing still all the way to sunset and feeling no hurry to leave. She's got all the time in the universe, after all.
II
The moment he leads her back into the TARDIS with him (after a disappointing amount of none-trouble, the match being tomorrow), Rose goes very still. He can feel her hand tense in his, and anger seems to radiate from it. He has only a brief moment to feel happy at that too before she throws herself at the TARDIS console with something like desperation. For a moment, she doesn't seem to know quite what to know next. Then she hits it, bare-knuckled. He has only a second to wince at the sound before she does it again. And kicks. And picks up the plank he half had forgotten was there (and probably should return to the Globe before they miss it), slamming it against the TARDIS rotor. And again. And again.
"Rose," he says a little angrily, ducking a second later as she swings around to look at him and the plank goes around too.
She stares wildly at him, blood on her knuckles and for a moment, he can't see Rose in her at all.
"I hate it," she says, and then he can. "I really hate it."
"I know," he says, walking over to her carefully and easing the plank from her hand.
"I hate you too."
"I know."
"I love you too."
"I know," he says a third time, putting a hand over her knuckles and feeling the blood against his palm. "Come on."
The TARDIS has changed a little since she was last here, he knows, but she doesn't remark upon it as they head deeper in. Maybe it seems stranger to her what hasn't changed. At least she smile at a little at the tea-room-cum-infirmary, still as cluttered as it always is. But then, there is a lot of different ways to get hurt when all of time can get creative on you.
He cleans off her blood, puts on some ointment (Martha's special concoction, he realises half-way through administering it) and knocks over three different boxes before can find towels. Some perfume as well, on second thoughts. L'Odeur de Thames is never going to be a real hit in the deodorant field, he's pretty sure.
"There's some of your clothes in the wardrobe," he says, surprised to hear himself sound almost shy. She just nods.
"Am I going to live forever, Doctor?" she asks, looking very straight at him. It's the first time she's used his name, he notes. He wonders why it took as long.
"I don't know," he admits. "You're different from Jack. It's possible that when the TARDIS... When she... That you'll too."
He can't even say it, but she understands, and she understands what he doesn't say too. He can see that from the sharp glint of hurt and something else in her eyes, quickly absorbed by just weariness. She knows he's going to go and patch up the TARDIS as gently as he has her, making no difference. She knows. Oh, she knows.
He's not going to kill one for the other.
She doesn't ask about Jack either, and he's beginning to wonder just how much she knows.
"I'll go find some old clothes," she replies after a moment, taking a step away from him. He only realises he's still holding her hand when she tugs a little to be let go. "I can find my own way."
"I'll find you if you get lost," he promises. "Can't hide from me, Rose Tyler."
"We'll see," she says, and slips out.
II
Age: Forgotten.
Rose is hiding.
Not from the Big Bad Wolf. She's used to the wolf, living in its belly. It ate her and then there was life after anyway. No, not the wolf. She's used to the wolf. She even howls with it.
There's something else here. Monsters. The kind that lives under your bed and are the most scary ever because only your imagination limits them, not reality. This is... This is where there are no limits and plenty of monsters. They find her sometimes, and she screams for a long time while not dying. She never dies. Not even here.
Sometimes she remembers a time before falling in and, if there was a start, maybe there's an end. Maybe there's a bottom and she can stop falling.
That's hope. It's best to hide from that too. It has the worst bite of all
The Void. That's what he called it. She never forgets that. Void. This is nothing. This is everything.
Oh god oh god oh god they're seeking her again.
Rose is hiding. It's the only thing she really knows anymore.
II
(To be continued.)
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no subject
Date: 2007-04-01 10:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-01 10:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-01 10:51 pm (UTC)As I said before, I adore the little twist of Rose now being older than the Doctor. He's always (though he) held the moral high ground with his whole "woe as me, lonely angel" shtick. In a lot of ways she's now trumped him with the time and experience that comes by being forced to take the slow path. And then there's the side-trip to the Void....
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Date: 2007-04-01 10:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-01 11:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-01 11:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-02 12:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-02 12:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-02 12:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-02 02:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-02 02:14 am (UTC)It's solid and unique even when using well-worn plot devices (Rose is immortal). You make it read like the freshest idea to hit the fandom.
Solid in a complex way - like a stone foundation instead of poured concrete. Takes longer to assemble, but amazingly beautiful and just oozing fantastic craftsmanship. You describe the angst in such a way that I think I understand it, even if I've never had any experience with that particular kind of emotional reaction.
Lovely rich little details. This was my favourite bit of throw-away humour. It takes him about ten seconds to realise she's about as responsive as a pillow being hugged. Well, a normal pillow. The mutated ones do tend to hug back. If they're in the mood.
Brava!
no subject
Date: 2007-04-02 03:38 am (UTC)Splendid story so far, horrifying in a fantastic way. I look forward to the next part. I love Rose's uncertainty regarding her own immortality. She's not..very human now I would think.
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Date: 2007-04-02 10:24 am (UTC)You get Rose but and you can also write the Doctor/aliens/immortal people so well. Which is quite scary.
Loved the wee touches of humour.
It's only been five years. I can keep a body five years. Five years is nothing! Now centuries, centuries make you want a new tongue.
That is so Ten. I can totally imagine Tennant delivering this line.
no subject
Date: 2007-04-02 11:51 am (UTC)I can't wait for more, please hurry!
no subject
Date: 2007-04-02 02:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-02 03:37 pm (UTC)(Toward the end of the Rose's-900th-birthday section, I think you meant "city buzzes", but what do I know?)
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Date: 2007-04-02 11:19 pm (UTC)It hurts and I want to read more. As fast as you can, please. =]
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Date: 2007-04-03 03:28 am (UTC)Oh, Rose.
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Date: 2007-04-08 07:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-14 04:50 pm (UTC)I've already commented here, but I'm back to spur you on! Mooore please! I simply can't wait :P