Fic: Shake the Stars Down (1/many)
Title: Shake the Stars Down (Part 1)
Author: nocookiesjustbooks 2nd2ndalto
Character/Pairing: Ten/Rose
Rating: Teen this section
Disclaimer: BBC owns everything, obviously.
Summary: There used to be far more joy in this, and the thought of that is almost as disheartening as the grief itself.
Author's Notes: It's post-Doomsday fic, ladies and... other ladies! This is part one of my NaNo project. I'm feeling kind of insecure about this one - well, more than usual. I don't know if it's because of the sheer size of the thing, or because I've gone over it so many times that the words don't look like words anymore. Anyway. Here it is. Thanks very, very much to iluvmusicals for the beta.
It’s an old, gnarled oak. Wide generous branches make it all the better for climbing, all the better to eat you with. He wraps his fingers around a solid-looking limb, hauls himself up, trainer clad feet finding one foothold, then another, climbing into the atmosphere. He’s forgotten what he’s climbing for, but he’s fairly sure there’s someone up there who needs him, someone waiting. He feels a pang for the days, not so long ago, when he would have climbed just to climb. Just to have climbed. Maybe to show off, just a little bit.
Then everything shifts, slips sideways. He’s at the top and the bottom all once, still climbing even as he tumbles back to earth. It takes an astonishingly short amount of time and doesn’t hurt nearly as much as it should, the ground springy and soft under the angles of his knees and elbows. He jumps to his feet, brushing mud and bracken from pinstripes, flexing and testing jarred joints. There’s a soft “hmph” in front of him, and he looks up.
Martha shakes her head disappointedly, eyes him like he’s a small child who’s done wrong. “I did it all for you,” she says accusingly. “Two years of my life, and wouldn’t look at me twice.”
He scrubs at his face. “I never - I’m sorry, Martha. I tried to tell you. I thought -”
“It was always Rose,” she sneers, her voice fading in and out. “Blonde, brilliant Rose.”
“I’m sorry,” he repeats helplessly.
“It’s your fault,” her words echo as she fades into nothingness, takes the shape of the trees and brush around her. “All your fault.”
“I know,” he sighs as the wood dissolves around him, too.
He floats.
Drifts for a while in darkness, and then a blonde head swims into focus at his shoulder, ground materializing under their feet. They enter the wood together, but they’re separated almost immediately, cold, smothering darkness tearing her warm hand from his grasp the moment they step beneath the shelter of the trees. He reaches for her, stumbling, but there’s nothing, the air thick with silence, and he should have held tighter, he knows it.
The darkness is so complete he can barely make out his hand in front of his face, can’t be sure of the ground under his feet. She calls his name, sounds frightened, frantic, but her voice is sucked into the darkness. He tries to speak, wants to call out for her, but… nothing. No sound. He can’t seem to make his lips move, can’t open his mouth properly.
It’s his fault, must be, always is, but he still can’t rein in the helpless despair that washes over him at the reality of one more loss. He desperately whips his head around, arms outstretched, trying to pinpoint the piece of cold dark where he last heard her voice, but the more he turns, the more he’s lost and the further she’s gone, and it’s impossible, and he’s falling, falling…
And it’s dawn. New sunlight glittering pink and shadowed across his body, pale in the fading darkness. He can hear properly again, birdsong above him; can see properly, bare branches in dark silhouette against the rosy streaked sky.
Where is she? Hearts pounding in his chest, he blunders on through the undergrowth, brambles scraping and tearing at his bare legs. The ground is cold and moist under his feet, the muck and decay of early spring squishing between his toes. She’s here somewhere, has to be. He’s not sure how he knows it, but it feels right, feels sure. Besides, how could he bear it if she weren’t?
“Rose?” The forest is quiet and still except for small, scurrying creatures and the crunch and squish of his footsteps, but he knows.
“Rose.”
Warm, soft hands slip over his eyes, the heat of her breath in his ear. “Who’s afraid of the big bad wolf?”
She murmurs it like a lover. A lover she isn’t, wasn’t, won’t be. Her arms are bare against his naked shoulders, and she presses herself against him, molds her shape to his as if they should always fit against each other.
Her body covers his and his hands cover hers as he leans back into her, words tumbling freely.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. You have to stay. Please. Please stay.” He hears his voice break on the last, and she chuckles against his ear. I love you, he thinks, but still those words are sucked into the vacuum, lost in the void.
“You have to live on, alone,” she tells him in a sing-song voice, “you should have held tighter.”
Her fingers trace the tears on his cheeks, slip down his body, every touch leaving a trail of helpless need. His body tingles in her embrace, his blood sings with her. He wants to turn, see her and hold her properly, but he’s afraid the moment he moves, she’ll disappear into nothingness, fade back into the ether like she’s done so many times before.
Her hands slip, slide, teasing, warm fingers wrapping and stroking once, twice, again. He reaches blindly behind him, gasping, fingertips finding her waist, the curve of her hips. “Rose”.
“You could have, you know,” she murmurs, “could have had this to remember me by.”
I thought I was keeping you safe, keeping us both safe, I know, and I’m so sorry he thinks, but the words are lost and jumbled between his mind and his mouth, the motor plan dissolving as it travels sluggishly through grey matter.
Instead of the sound of his voice, he hears the pounding of his pulse, his own breath loud in his ears. Her hands are firm and insistent, her mouth hot and wet at his shoulder, and it’s all he can do to remain upright. Breath ragged, he dares to glance down to her fingers moving against him, and how did he not notice before? The red-gold glow isn’t coming from the sun at all, but from her.
She doesn’t move, neither of them do, but now she’s standing before him, arms around his neck. She gives him that teasing, knowing smile, glows with it. He traces the shape of her body with his eyes and fingers, memorizing, drinking her in hungrily before covering her mouth with his, breathing her. She tastes like time and heat and love and loss, and he won’t let go this time.
On the damp ground now, she wraps herself around him, her tongue drawing complicated patterns against his neck, fingers tangling in his hair. He gasps her name helplessly and she just chuckles again, teasing him with lips and teeth and the motion of her hips.
She glows brighter, shines all around him, and he nearly has to close his eyes against it. They move together with some kind of inevitability, like waves against the shore. Like it goes without saying.
It’s over too soon, his eyes squeezing shut as her name tumbles across his lips, over and over and over. One moment she’s warm against him, and the next her touch fades. When he opens his eyes again, he already knows she’s lost.
She dissolves beneath him, still giving him that same teasing smile, fades and disperses, a million specks of light that shatter and rise into the atmosphere. He hears her soft laugh in his ear again as the last glitter of light is lost to his vision. He collapses onto the forest floor and he fades, too.
***
Wherever he is now, it’s warm and soft, and there’s a comforting, rhythmic hum surrounding him. He’s content and untroubled, in that space between unconsciousness and waking where his body is heavy and limp, pleasantly paralyzed. His mind still drifts just below awareness. His eyes are closed, but there’s a gentle golden glow that penetrates his eyelids, and he thinks, Rose. And that’s all it takes for reality to come rushing back, for that wrenching sadness to wrap around his gut again.
He jerks up abruptly, yanking off his glasses to rub vigorously at his eyes. This is why he doesn’t sleep if he can help it. He glances around the library accusingly, as if there’s some book to blame in this. There’s a massive Gallifreyan tome open on the floor, and he realizes he must have drifted off while he was reading. That’s what he gets for holding still.
He pushes himself up off the sofa. Motion. Motion can fix anything, can leave anything, anyone behind. There have been days lately when he could barely even manage motion. That’s when he knows he’s in trouble. He wonders, not for the first time, why it never occurred to the Time Lords to develop some form of anti-depressant. Anyone would be bound to need one if they managed to live as long as he has.
He replaces his book on the shelf with a bit more force than necessary, a small cloud of dust puffing up from the space it’s been shoved into. Hands stuffed in his pockets, he heads down the corridor.
It’s little wonder he fell asleep - he’s been avoiding it for quite a long while. Ever since Canary Wharf, it’s something he dreads. The pleasant drift into unconsciousness is fine, but the dreams, when they come, seem to have no purpose besides subconscious torture. The waking is the worst - shifting from that moment of easy oblivion to recognition and awareness is like a blow to the chest, every single time.
It was better for a while. With Martha. He feels a wash of guilt just at the thought of her, her entire family. He walks faster, leaving that behind as well.
Reaching the console room, he abruptly loses momentum and sags onto the captain’s chair. He groans, hands scrubbing fiercely through his hair. He needs to go somewhere, do something. He’s feeling bleak and listless, knows he’s dangerously close to spending another unconscionable amount of time holed up in his ship, eating little and sleeping less.
He has a complicated relationship with time, of course, but it’s been two years. He can feel that sort of time in his bones. Two linear, human years since he lost Rose. Surely it should be getting easier by now, the dull ache in his chest should have subsided more than it has. Heartbroken, he thinks. Having two of them should make it easier, surely? Share the pain between them. Instead, it feels as if it’s been doubled.
No, it is getting easier. Just not easy enough to forget. He needs to try harder, that’s all. Keep moving.
He’s so tired of being on auto-pilot, of trudging from one adventure to the next. He remembers his mock horror on Krop Tor - horror at having a job, a mortgage, just a regular life. That’s exactly what this has felt like lately, though: just a job. There used to be far more joy in it, and the thought of that is almost as disheartening as the grief itself.
He needs to shake himself out of this. Sliding down off the captain’s chair, he strides determinedly back down the corridor, his footsteps loud on the floor of his empty ship. A shower and a change of clothes and he’ll feel much better. Have something to eat, find somewhere fantastic to go.
He shoulders open the door to his bedroom, slipping a finger into the knot of his tie and unbuttoning his cuffs as he goes. His jacket and shirt fall into a careless pile on the floor, trousers, pants and socks following in quick succession. He flicks on the light in the en suite, pointedly avoiding a glance at Rose’s extra toothbrush, kept here for the few nights when their adventures had been more horror than exhilaration. He still can’t bear to move it.
He catches the reflection of his body in the mirror, pale and seemingly even more angular than usual under the fluorescent light, more alien. Pulling open the door of the shower, he reaches for the tap, opening the hot water all the way and breathing deep as the steam begins to rise around him, the condensation kissing his skin and wilting his hair against his forehead. Glowy, dream-Rose still lingers at the back of his consciousness, and he can’t decide if he wants to wash her away or invite her closer.
Author: nocookiesjustbooks 2nd2ndalto
Character/Pairing: Ten/Rose
Rating: Teen this section
Disclaimer: BBC owns everything, obviously.
Summary: There used to be far more joy in this, and the thought of that is almost as disheartening as the grief itself.
Author's Notes: It's post-Doomsday fic, ladies and... other ladies! This is part one of my NaNo project. I'm feeling kind of insecure about this one - well, more than usual. I don't know if it's because of the sheer size of the thing, or because I've gone over it so many times that the words don't look like words anymore. Anyway. Here it is. Thanks very, very much to iluvmusicals for the beta.
It’s an old, gnarled oak. Wide generous branches make it all the better for climbing, all the better to eat you with. He wraps his fingers around a solid-looking limb, hauls himself up, trainer clad feet finding one foothold, then another, climbing into the atmosphere. He’s forgotten what he’s climbing for, but he’s fairly sure there’s someone up there who needs him, someone waiting. He feels a pang for the days, not so long ago, when he would have climbed just to climb. Just to have climbed. Maybe to show off, just a little bit.
Then everything shifts, slips sideways. He’s at the top and the bottom all once, still climbing even as he tumbles back to earth. It takes an astonishingly short amount of time and doesn’t hurt nearly as much as it should, the ground springy and soft under the angles of his knees and elbows. He jumps to his feet, brushing mud and bracken from pinstripes, flexing and testing jarred joints. There’s a soft “hmph” in front of him, and he looks up.
Martha shakes her head disappointedly, eyes him like he’s a small child who’s done wrong. “I did it all for you,” she says accusingly. “Two years of my life, and wouldn’t look at me twice.”
He scrubs at his face. “I never - I’m sorry, Martha. I tried to tell you. I thought -”
“It was always Rose,” she sneers, her voice fading in and out. “Blonde, brilliant Rose.”
“I’m sorry,” he repeats helplessly.
“It’s your fault,” her words echo as she fades into nothingness, takes the shape of the trees and brush around her. “All your fault.”
“I know,” he sighs as the wood dissolves around him, too.
He floats.
Drifts for a while in darkness, and then a blonde head swims into focus at his shoulder, ground materializing under their feet. They enter the wood together, but they’re separated almost immediately, cold, smothering darkness tearing her warm hand from his grasp the moment they step beneath the shelter of the trees. He reaches for her, stumbling, but there’s nothing, the air thick with silence, and he should have held tighter, he knows it.
The darkness is so complete he can barely make out his hand in front of his face, can’t be sure of the ground under his feet. She calls his name, sounds frightened, frantic, but her voice is sucked into the darkness. He tries to speak, wants to call out for her, but… nothing. No sound. He can’t seem to make his lips move, can’t open his mouth properly.
It’s his fault, must be, always is, but he still can’t rein in the helpless despair that washes over him at the reality of one more loss. He desperately whips his head around, arms outstretched, trying to pinpoint the piece of cold dark where he last heard her voice, but the more he turns, the more he’s lost and the further she’s gone, and it’s impossible, and he’s falling, falling…
And it’s dawn. New sunlight glittering pink and shadowed across his body, pale in the fading darkness. He can hear properly again, birdsong above him; can see properly, bare branches in dark silhouette against the rosy streaked sky.
Where is she? Hearts pounding in his chest, he blunders on through the undergrowth, brambles scraping and tearing at his bare legs. The ground is cold and moist under his feet, the muck and decay of early spring squishing between his toes. She’s here somewhere, has to be. He’s not sure how he knows it, but it feels right, feels sure. Besides, how could he bear it if she weren’t?
“Rose?” The forest is quiet and still except for small, scurrying creatures and the crunch and squish of his footsteps, but he knows.
“Rose.”
Warm, soft hands slip over his eyes, the heat of her breath in his ear. “Who’s afraid of the big bad wolf?”
She murmurs it like a lover. A lover she isn’t, wasn’t, won’t be. Her arms are bare against his naked shoulders, and she presses herself against him, molds her shape to his as if they should always fit against each other.
Her body covers his and his hands cover hers as he leans back into her, words tumbling freely.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. You have to stay. Please. Please stay.” He hears his voice break on the last, and she chuckles against his ear. I love you, he thinks, but still those words are sucked into the vacuum, lost in the void.
“You have to live on, alone,” she tells him in a sing-song voice, “you should have held tighter.”
Her fingers trace the tears on his cheeks, slip down his body, every touch leaving a trail of helpless need. His body tingles in her embrace, his blood sings with her. He wants to turn, see her and hold her properly, but he’s afraid the moment he moves, she’ll disappear into nothingness, fade back into the ether like she’s done so many times before.
Her hands slip, slide, teasing, warm fingers wrapping and stroking once, twice, again. He reaches blindly behind him, gasping, fingertips finding her waist, the curve of her hips. “Rose”.
“You could have, you know,” she murmurs, “could have had this to remember me by.”
I thought I was keeping you safe, keeping us both safe, I know, and I’m so sorry he thinks, but the words are lost and jumbled between his mind and his mouth, the motor plan dissolving as it travels sluggishly through grey matter.
Instead of the sound of his voice, he hears the pounding of his pulse, his own breath loud in his ears. Her hands are firm and insistent, her mouth hot and wet at his shoulder, and it’s all he can do to remain upright. Breath ragged, he dares to glance down to her fingers moving against him, and how did he not notice before? The red-gold glow isn’t coming from the sun at all, but from her.
She doesn’t move, neither of them do, but now she’s standing before him, arms around his neck. She gives him that teasing, knowing smile, glows with it. He traces the shape of her body with his eyes and fingers, memorizing, drinking her in hungrily before covering her mouth with his, breathing her. She tastes like time and heat and love and loss, and he won’t let go this time.
On the damp ground now, she wraps herself around him, her tongue drawing complicated patterns against his neck, fingers tangling in his hair. He gasps her name helplessly and she just chuckles again, teasing him with lips and teeth and the motion of her hips.
She glows brighter, shines all around him, and he nearly has to close his eyes against it. They move together with some kind of inevitability, like waves against the shore. Like it goes without saying.
It’s over too soon, his eyes squeezing shut as her name tumbles across his lips, over and over and over. One moment she’s warm against him, and the next her touch fades. When he opens his eyes again, he already knows she’s lost.
She dissolves beneath him, still giving him that same teasing smile, fades and disperses, a million specks of light that shatter and rise into the atmosphere. He hears her soft laugh in his ear again as the last glitter of light is lost to his vision. He collapses onto the forest floor and he fades, too.
***
Wherever he is now, it’s warm and soft, and there’s a comforting, rhythmic hum surrounding him. He’s content and untroubled, in that space between unconsciousness and waking where his body is heavy and limp, pleasantly paralyzed. His mind still drifts just below awareness. His eyes are closed, but there’s a gentle golden glow that penetrates his eyelids, and he thinks, Rose. And that’s all it takes for reality to come rushing back, for that wrenching sadness to wrap around his gut again.
He jerks up abruptly, yanking off his glasses to rub vigorously at his eyes. This is why he doesn’t sleep if he can help it. He glances around the library accusingly, as if there’s some book to blame in this. There’s a massive Gallifreyan tome open on the floor, and he realizes he must have drifted off while he was reading. That’s what he gets for holding still.
He pushes himself up off the sofa. Motion. Motion can fix anything, can leave anything, anyone behind. There have been days lately when he could barely even manage motion. That’s when he knows he’s in trouble. He wonders, not for the first time, why it never occurred to the Time Lords to develop some form of anti-depressant. Anyone would be bound to need one if they managed to live as long as he has.
He replaces his book on the shelf with a bit more force than necessary, a small cloud of dust puffing up from the space it’s been shoved into. Hands stuffed in his pockets, he heads down the corridor.
It’s little wonder he fell asleep - he’s been avoiding it for quite a long while. Ever since Canary Wharf, it’s something he dreads. The pleasant drift into unconsciousness is fine, but the dreams, when they come, seem to have no purpose besides subconscious torture. The waking is the worst - shifting from that moment of easy oblivion to recognition and awareness is like a blow to the chest, every single time.
It was better for a while. With Martha. He feels a wash of guilt just at the thought of her, her entire family. He walks faster, leaving that behind as well.
Reaching the console room, he abruptly loses momentum and sags onto the captain’s chair. He groans, hands scrubbing fiercely through his hair. He needs to go somewhere, do something. He’s feeling bleak and listless, knows he’s dangerously close to spending another unconscionable amount of time holed up in his ship, eating little and sleeping less.
He has a complicated relationship with time, of course, but it’s been two years. He can feel that sort of time in his bones. Two linear, human years since he lost Rose. Surely it should be getting easier by now, the dull ache in his chest should have subsided more than it has. Heartbroken, he thinks. Having two of them should make it easier, surely? Share the pain between them. Instead, it feels as if it’s been doubled.
No, it is getting easier. Just not easy enough to forget. He needs to try harder, that’s all. Keep moving.
He’s so tired of being on auto-pilot, of trudging from one adventure to the next. He remembers his mock horror on Krop Tor - horror at having a job, a mortgage, just a regular life. That’s exactly what this has felt like lately, though: just a job. There used to be far more joy in it, and the thought of that is almost as disheartening as the grief itself.
He needs to shake himself out of this. Sliding down off the captain’s chair, he strides determinedly back down the corridor, his footsteps loud on the floor of his empty ship. A shower and a change of clothes and he’ll feel much better. Have something to eat, find somewhere fantastic to go.
He shoulders open the door to his bedroom, slipping a finger into the knot of his tie and unbuttoning his cuffs as he goes. His jacket and shirt fall into a careless pile on the floor, trousers, pants and socks following in quick succession. He flicks on the light in the en suite, pointedly avoiding a glance at Rose’s extra toothbrush, kept here for the few nights when their adventures had been more horror than exhilaration. He still can’t bear to move it.
He catches the reflection of his body in the mirror, pale and seemingly even more angular than usual under the fluorescent light, more alien. Pulling open the door of the shower, he reaches for the tap, opening the hot water all the way and breathing deep as the steam begins to rise around him, the condensation kissing his skin and wilting his hair against his forehead. Glowy, dream-Rose still lingers at the back of his consciousness, and he can’t decide if he wants to wash her away or invite her closer.