Fic: "Sacred Couple" (1/2)
Title: Sacred Couple (1/2)
Pairing: Nine/Rose
Rating: Teens
Warnings: None
Spoilers: None
Beta: larielromeniel, joely_jo, sensiblecat, wendymr, and dark_aegis
Summary: On the planet Tombstone, Rose is stung by an insect and the Doctor is forced to lie about their relationship in order to be permitted to treat her. Unfortunately, the lie leads to much more than he bargained for.
A/N: Many, many thanks to everyone who helped me with this fic-I worked really, really hard on it. Originally written for the oh_she_knows Doctor/Rose ficathon. Second part will be posted shortly!
"This planet's name isn't really Tombstone, is it?" Rose asked.
"Yeah, it is. Named after the famous town in Arizona. Tourist town by your time, of course, but it was a hotbed of criminal activity in the 1800s. Heard of the gunfight at the OK Corral?"
"Some old movie, wasn't it?"
"Well, that too. But it was also the biggest, most famous gunfight in the whole of the American West, and it happened in Tombstone, Arizona. When this planet was terraformed, it didn't quite take the way it should have. They wanted a few green fields, ended up with semi-desert instead. Someone had a fondness for American pioneer history, and decided to name the planet after the town." The Doctor smirked. "Could've been worse, I suppose. Could've named it Donner Pass."
"What's that?" Rose asked, curious.
"Never mind. I'll explain later. Aren't you a bit hot in that getup?"
Rose was dressed in clothing that was reasonably close to what the women of this planet wore: a long, dark skirt and a white peasant blouse with long, loose sleeves gathered with a drawstring at the wrist. A large, floppy hat perched on her head, protecting her from the sun and somewhat obscuring her features. The Doctor didn't care for it; he much preferred to be able to see her eyes and her smile clearly, but he didn't particularly fancy treating her for sunburn.
"You told me this would blend in." She grinned at him. "'Sides, it's not as warm as it looks. The skirts are actually keeping my legs cool." She glanced sidelong at him mischievously. "Didn't bother with all the bloomers and stockings and such the women who live here wear. Not like anyone's gonna see my legs anyway."
Good, the Doctor thought but carefully did not say. Out loud he said, "This festival's in honour of their fertility goddess, a sort of Mother Earth figure. You'll see a lot of representations of her-usually a woman with a baby at the breast, though it might be a pregnant woman as well. The festival is supposed to ensure rain for the coming year so the crops will grow."
"I'm not even commenting on the symbolism of that," Rose said firmly. "Oh, there're tents over there. Come on!" She took his hand, tugging him along. "You did bring money, didn't you?"
"Yes," he sighed, but couldn't stop the grin. A day off, that's what Rose had wanted: a place and time with no world-saving needed. No wars, no rebellions, no despots, no alien invasions. The TARDIS insisted there hadn't even been any arrests on this day, when he checked into it. Just a day at a festival, that's all. She deserved it after their last couple of adventures, and now they'd got rid of Adam-the-Tosser, he was prepared to indulge her a bit.
All right, a lot.
The town's high street-main street, he corrected himself-was filled with tents that created shade for those who had come to spend their coin. Merchants lined both sides of the street, hawkers plied the crowd, and musicians played every couple hundred feet or so. The people here looked like the stereotype of people from the American West-dusty, sun-browned, and thin-but were clearly enjoying themselves. He did get a few odd looks in his leather jacket and jumper, but he was used to that. Besides, that jacket was bloody useful; lots of dimensionally-transcendental hidey-holes. As for the jumper, well, he had a normally lower body temperature than a human, and the wool acted as insulation to keep him from getting too overheated in this sun. Though a bit of shade wouldn't go amiss.
"I don't know why you never even try to blend in," Rose said in uncanny parallel to his thoughts. "Everyone's looking."
"They're always looking," he said dismissively. "Besides, this is who I am, how I dress. I'm not changing for anyone."
"You don't have to change," she pointed out. "Just try to blend in a bit. Playing dress-up is fun when you look at it the right way." She grinned and spun in place, then stumbled a bit as she lost her balance. "Ooh-better be careful doing that. I'd-"
She went suddenly silent, and just as suddenly turned sheet-white. Her eyes were wide and scared, her body rigid. Terror seized him, and he grabbed her arms. "Rose?" he said sharply. "You all right?"
"I'm…" She faltered. "I think…my leg…"
Her eyes rolled up in her head and she collapsed into him. He caught her, lifting her up so he could set her down on the steps of a nearby building. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw something dark and shiny scuttle back under the building, out of the sun.
Others had come to see what was going on. "What's happened?" a woman asked, concerned. "Too much sun?"
"No," he said shortly. "She said something about her leg." He lifted her skirt up just enough to bare her calf, and sucked in a sharp breath. A puncture wound sluggishly seeped blood just above the top of her soft ankle-boots. It was angry red and rising into a welt even as he watched.
"Decapod," the woman breathed in horror. "She's been stung by a decapod."
He swung to look at her. "What's that?"
"Big insect with ten legs and a stinger on a long spine. It's harmless unless it's startled, but its sting is poisonous. It won't kill her, but it'll make her very, very ill if we don't get the anti-venom into her soon."
"Anti-venom?" Thank god, he thought. "Where do I get it?"
"Why, the House of Healing, of course," she said surprised, and jerked her chin in the direction of the crowd. "Up that way."
He tugged Rose's skirt back down and slid his arms beneath her, lifting her easily. "Show me."
***
The House of Healing was in the temple of their Earth Mother goddess. The Healer, a woman who looked to be in her forties or so, led him into an examination room with a bed-fairly primitive medical technology, but the Doctor wasn't worried about that; if he could just get the anti-venom into her, the rest could be done in the TARDIS. He wanted that anti-venom, though; just because a woman in the street said it wouldn't kill Rose, didn't mean that was so, and chances were they'd had enough experience with the local fauna to have a reasonably good means of helping those who'd been bitten.
"All right," the Doctor said as he laid her down. "I'll need the anti-venom and whatever you use to administer it-syringe, dermaspray…?"
"Syringe," the Healer said, rummaging in a drawer and bringing the syringe out, along with a bottle of golden-clear liquid, "but I'm afraid you can't be in here while I'm examining her."
"Oh, yes I can," the Doctor snapped. "I'm not leaving her."
"I'm going to have to remove her clothes," the Healer said in a tone of patient explanation.
"Yeah, I'd worked that out," he said dryly.
"Then you understand that, unless you're her husband or her father, I can't possibly allow you in the room with a woman who's not dressed."
"What?" the Doctor said, startled.
The Healer pursed her lips. "It wouldn't be appropriate," she said somewhat primly. "Or modest. And in the absence of her consent to have you in here, I'm sure you understand."
The Doctor rolled his eyes. "All right," he said. "Fine. We got married yesterday, and we're very happy. Blissful, even. Here on our honeymoon, just the two of us. I didn't want to say anything because her parents don't know, and they wouldn't approve." Which was just possibly the truest thing he'd said all day. "Now can we get the bloody anti-venom into her?"
"There's no need for strong language," she protested, but as she was unbuttoning Rose's shirt at the same time, the Doctor didn't snap back. Instead he unfastened Rose's skirt, helping to strip her so that the full extent of the damage could be seen and she could be wrapped in a hospital gown-which hadn't changed design in over a thousand years, he noted somewhat absently.
"All right," the Healer said, cleaning a patch of skin on Rose's upper arm with a ball of cotton wool soaked in alcohol, "this is the first of three injections we'll have to give over a twenty-four-hour period." She pulled the sterile cap off the syringe and filled it from the bottle, checked for air bubbles, then expertly slid the needle into Rose's vein, depressing the plunger and pulling the syringe back out under the pressure of her finger and another ball of cotton wool. She folded Rose's arm up over the cotton wool to hold it in place, then turned to the Doctor and said soberly, "If your wife is very lucky-and there's a good chance she will be, since you got her to me so quickly-she'll be completely unconscious for the whole time."
If. The Doctor didn't like ifs, especially when it came to Rose's safety or well-being. "And if she's not very lucky?"
The Healer shook her head. "We could see anything from restless tossing to outright convulsions, even screaming in pain as the anti-venom starts to work. The venom itself is a neurotoxin; with luck we've stopped it before it got a good hold, but it affects each victim differently. We're just going to have to wait and see."
"I'll wait," the Doctor said decisively, pulling over a chair and plopping himself down on it. "Leave the syringes with me; I can make the injections. Eight-hour intervals?"
"Yes." She looked at him, frowning a bit. "You're a Healer?"
"Yeah," he said, mostly honestly. "I'm perfectly capable of handling a couple of injections." He gave her his best I'm-the-Oncoming-Storm-don't-argue-with-me glare. "I'm not leaving her, and I'm not letting anyone else treat her. She's my responsibility."
"Yes, you're quite right," the Healer murmured. "She is." She dropped the used syringe into a container on the wall and said, "Very well. I'll check back in a few hours."
"Do that," the Doctor said absently. He'd already turned to Rose and taken her hand; he barely heard the door click as the Healer left. Rose was so cold; her body temperature was a good degree or two lower than usual. That fit; if the venom was a neurotoxin, it'd be interfering with her nerves' ability to communicate with her brain.
He closed his eyes and shivered as he pictured Rose's body shutting down, system by system, as the toxin worked its way through her. Pictured her going into a seizure, convulsing violently on the bed as he tried to hold her down to keep her from injuring herself. Pictured her sitting bolt upright and screaming at the phantom pain of her nerves as they came back on-line, every one of them at once. Every nerve burning, burning, as though she stood in the midst of a furnace….
"I'm sorry," he murmured brokenly, watching her pale, slack face. "I'm so sorry."
With the next injection of anti-venom a full eight hours away, the Doctor settled himself in for the pastime he hated more than anything else in the universe: waiting.
***
"Doc…tor…?"
He turned in a flash away from the window he'd been gazing out of, and felt his hearts skip a beat. Rose's eyes were open, and though they were glazed, there was real recognition in them. He stepped back around the foot of the bed to her side, sitting down and taking her hand. "How are you feeling?" he asked, reaching into his jacket for the sonic screwdriver.
"Like I've been beaten over every inch of my body," she said as he ran the screwdriver's beam over her face and torso, checking her vital signs and nerve reaction. "I wasn't, was I?"
Heart rate: slightly elevated, but not frighteningly so. Respiration: shallow but clear. Blood pressure: a little low, but within normal range. Nerve reaction in her upper body: based on the slight twitches of her hands as he passed the blue beam over specific points, just fine. "No, you weren't beaten," he reassured her. "Just an insect bite. You had a reaction, but you're gonna be just fine. Here, let me check your feet."
He tugged the sheet down and sat on the bed by her feet, checking her nerves there. A finger run up the sole of her right foot from heel to toes caused her to jerk reflexively and giggle, and her toes curled properly. Good signs, those; he'd been afraid the toxin might have damaged the nerves down here more quickly, since she'd been stung on her right calf, but everything appeared to be fine. He checked the reflexes on her other foot, just to be certain, and felt his shoulder tension loosen slightly as those nerves responded as well. "There you are," he said cheerfully, setting her foot back down on the bed. "Right as rain. Told you so."
Rose nodded toward the bandage on her right calf. "That where I was stung?"
"Yeah. D'you remember it?" He kept his voice light, but this was the last of his tests to see the extent of the toxin damage, and her answer would be telling. Neurotoxins worked on nerves, and the human brain was made of nothing but.
She frowned, eyes drifting up to the ceiling as she thought. "Yeah, I think so," she said slowly. "I was teasing you about never dressing up, and I tried to do a dance-turn but I stepped on something and stumbled-and then I felt this sharp pain in my leg, and the whole world went sort of hazy." Her eyes re-focused on him. "Nothing really after that, until I woke up here."
"You've been unconscious since, so there's nothing for you to remember." He grinned at her, more relieved than he wanted her to know. He never wanted her to find out how frightened he'd been for her. Alien toxins were nearly always bad news for any species, their affects ranging from the relatively mild case she seemed to've had, to agonising death.
"How long have I been out?"
"Long enough to make a good recovery," the Doctor hedged. He peeled the medical tape carefully away from her skin and examined the wound carefully. It was nearly healed, most of the redness faded and the puncture itself scabbed over. "Ah, fantastic," he said, folding the bandage carefully over the blood that stained it and chucking it into the bin to be incinerated, then reaching over to the cupboard and picking up a clean one, along with tape, scissors, and a tube of antibiotic cream. "Another day or so and you'll be good as new."
Her eyes widened and she tried to push herself into a sitting position. "Another day?" she repeated. "What do you mean, another? How long has it been?"
He shifted, placing a hand against her shoulder and pressing her gently back down to the bed. "Don't do that, Rose. You're not strong enough to move about yet."
"Then tell me!" she snapped. "Don't treat me like I'm thick or something. How long has it been since I was stung?"
The Doctor waited patiently, looking sternly at her until she huffed and relaxed against the bed again. He moved back down to put the last couple of pieces of tape over the bandage, securing it and buying himself time to think. Though there wasn't much to think about, really. She was right; he was treating her like she was stupid, which she most definitely was not. She had the right to know what had happened to her.
So he sighed, set the supplies back where he'd found them, and sat down beside her bed again, taking her hand in his. "Twenty-eight hours," he told her quietly. "Almost exactly."
Her irritation seemed to run away from her like water as her eyes widened and she stared at him. "Twenty…eight? Hours? More than a day?"
"Yeah." His throat tightened, and he swallowed and glanced away. "You were in a bad way for a while." An understatement, that; at one point, in the darkest hours of the night, her pulse and breathing had become so shallow that he'd had to curl himself around her just to reassure himself that her heart was still beating, her lungs still filling and emptying.
"Doctor."
He glanced back at her. She was quiet now, pensive, brow furrowed and bottom lip between her teeth. "Were you… did you stay with me the whole time?"
"Of course," he said, surprised that she would even ask.
"Were you… I mean, did you…" She hesitated, then licked her lips and tried again. "I thought I felt someone… with me… in one of my dreams. I was all alone in this dark place, and I was scared, and then someone… sort of wrapped themselves around me, and I felt safe again." She looked down, blushing.
"You felt that?" he asked, startled. "While you were unconscious?" But she shouldn't have. She shouldn't have remembered anything-in fact, she didn't remember anything overtly. His presence should not have made that much of a difference to her dreams, though.
Unless….
No. Not possible. He shoved the thought away.
Her eyes flickered back up, meeting his gaze, and she smiled. "You mean it was you? You slept with me?"
"Not like that!" he exclaimed, then mentally kicked himself as her face fell, probably because of his vehemence. He tried again. "You were hardly breathing, and your pulse was so weak. I couldn't tell just by looking at you if you were still…" He couldn't say the word, just hurried on. "So I climbed into bed with you so I could make sure you were all right."
"You were really worried," she said. There was an odd tone to her voice. It was as though she were marvelling.
"Of course I was worried!" he protested, but was interrupted by the door opening. The Healer from before came in, smiling.
"Ah, good! You're awake. And lucid?" The last was aimed at the Doctor.
"Perfectly lucid, no memory loss except while she was unconscious. Reflexes and reactions all look good, and no overt change in personality."
"That could've happened?" Rose near-yelped. "My personality could've changed?"
"If the neurotoxin had got into your brain before we got the anti-venom into you…maybe," the Healer said soberly. "Decapod poison is nothing to be taken lightly." She turned to the Doctor. "We have another room for her, one that will be much more comfortable for both of you."
"If she's safe to be moved, then we'll just be on our way," the Doctor said firmly. "But thank you for your help."
"Oh, but you must stay!" the Healer exclaimed, looking from one to the other. "I've just spoken with the priestesses, and they've confirmed it. You're the Sacred Couple!"
"The what?" Rose asked, managing to raise herself up on one arm. The Doctor was too startled to get her to lie back down; he hadn't heard about this either.
"The Sacred Couple," the Healer repeated, glancing between the two of them. At their blank looks, she said, "You don't know about the Sacred Couple?"
The Doctor had a bad feeling about this, but Rose said, "No, sorry. Tell us."
"The most recently-married couple at the Festival goes into the inner sanctum of the Temple and asks the Goddess's blessing on the fields," she said simply. "If you were just married two days ago, that makes you the most recently-married couple. No marriages are performed here within a week of the start of the Festival."
He could feel Rose's look even with his eyes on the Healer-he'd conveniently forgotten to tell her about saying they were married. "I don't think so," he began.
But Rose jumped in. "Of course we'll do it," she said. He swung round to look at her and felt his heart drop down to his stomach at the sweet smile on her face. He knew that smile. "You've saved my life," she went on, "you and your anti-venom, and it's the least we can do. We don't know what's involved, though, since we're strangers."
Damn. There was no way for him to back out now; she'd reminded him that these people had indeed saved her life. He made a mental note to growl about this later. Asking the Goddess's blessing on the fields, indeed. Pure rubbish. Rose had better not get into the habit of volunteering me for religious ceremonies, he thought darkly.
"The priestesses will explain it all," the Healer said, her smile broad and her eyes sparkling with pleasure. "Oh, excellent. I'll tell them immediately. You need to rest for another night, but tomorrow you'll be taken to the Sanctum and everything will be made clear." She looked up at the Doctor. "We'll get you moved into your new room and have food brought round, including a special soup that will help your wife's recovery. She should make sure to eat it all. And you'll want the dishes I bring for you, too. It's part of the cleansing ritual for tomorrow."
"Yeah, all right," the Doctor grunted, trying hard not to roll his eyes. "So what will we be doing tomorrow that requires all this strength-building and cleansing?"
"Nothing terribly taxing," she reassured them. "Just sharing yourselves with each other before the statue of the Goddess, that's all. Don't worry, the doors are locked and it's all very private." She leant forward as though to share a great secret. "My husband and I were the Sacred Couple the year we married. Such an honour! And a blessing on our marriage as well as on the fields. No need to be nervous, truly. The Goddess will bless any union born out of love."
She smiled reassuringly at them and slipped out the door before the Doctor could recover enough to speak.
Rose pinned him with a look. "Wife?" she asked in a challenging tone of voice.
tbc
Pairing: Nine/Rose
Rating: Teens
Warnings: None
Spoilers: None
Beta: larielromeniel, joely_jo, sensiblecat, wendymr, and dark_aegis
Summary: On the planet Tombstone, Rose is stung by an insect and the Doctor is forced to lie about their relationship in order to be permitted to treat her. Unfortunately, the lie leads to much more than he bargained for.
A/N: Many, many thanks to everyone who helped me with this fic-I worked really, really hard on it. Originally written for the oh_she_knows Doctor/Rose ficathon. Second part will be posted shortly!
"This planet's name isn't really Tombstone, is it?" Rose asked.
"Yeah, it is. Named after the famous town in Arizona. Tourist town by your time, of course, but it was a hotbed of criminal activity in the 1800s. Heard of the gunfight at the OK Corral?"
"Some old movie, wasn't it?"
"Well, that too. But it was also the biggest, most famous gunfight in the whole of the American West, and it happened in Tombstone, Arizona. When this planet was terraformed, it didn't quite take the way it should have. They wanted a few green fields, ended up with semi-desert instead. Someone had a fondness for American pioneer history, and decided to name the planet after the town." The Doctor smirked. "Could've been worse, I suppose. Could've named it Donner Pass."
"What's that?" Rose asked, curious.
"Never mind. I'll explain later. Aren't you a bit hot in that getup?"
Rose was dressed in clothing that was reasonably close to what the women of this planet wore: a long, dark skirt and a white peasant blouse with long, loose sleeves gathered with a drawstring at the wrist. A large, floppy hat perched on her head, protecting her from the sun and somewhat obscuring her features. The Doctor didn't care for it; he much preferred to be able to see her eyes and her smile clearly, but he didn't particularly fancy treating her for sunburn.
"You told me this would blend in." She grinned at him. "'Sides, it's not as warm as it looks. The skirts are actually keeping my legs cool." She glanced sidelong at him mischievously. "Didn't bother with all the bloomers and stockings and such the women who live here wear. Not like anyone's gonna see my legs anyway."
Good, the Doctor thought but carefully did not say. Out loud he said, "This festival's in honour of their fertility goddess, a sort of Mother Earth figure. You'll see a lot of representations of her-usually a woman with a baby at the breast, though it might be a pregnant woman as well. The festival is supposed to ensure rain for the coming year so the crops will grow."
"I'm not even commenting on the symbolism of that," Rose said firmly. "Oh, there're tents over there. Come on!" She took his hand, tugging him along. "You did bring money, didn't you?"
"Yes," he sighed, but couldn't stop the grin. A day off, that's what Rose had wanted: a place and time with no world-saving needed. No wars, no rebellions, no despots, no alien invasions. The TARDIS insisted there hadn't even been any arrests on this day, when he checked into it. Just a day at a festival, that's all. She deserved it after their last couple of adventures, and now they'd got rid of Adam-the-Tosser, he was prepared to indulge her a bit.
All right, a lot.
The town's high street-main street, he corrected himself-was filled with tents that created shade for those who had come to spend their coin. Merchants lined both sides of the street, hawkers plied the crowd, and musicians played every couple hundred feet or so. The people here looked like the stereotype of people from the American West-dusty, sun-browned, and thin-but were clearly enjoying themselves. He did get a few odd looks in his leather jacket and jumper, but he was used to that. Besides, that jacket was bloody useful; lots of dimensionally-transcendental hidey-holes. As for the jumper, well, he had a normally lower body temperature than a human, and the wool acted as insulation to keep him from getting too overheated in this sun. Though a bit of shade wouldn't go amiss.
"I don't know why you never even try to blend in," Rose said in uncanny parallel to his thoughts. "Everyone's looking."
"They're always looking," he said dismissively. "Besides, this is who I am, how I dress. I'm not changing for anyone."
"You don't have to change," she pointed out. "Just try to blend in a bit. Playing dress-up is fun when you look at it the right way." She grinned and spun in place, then stumbled a bit as she lost her balance. "Ooh-better be careful doing that. I'd-"
She went suddenly silent, and just as suddenly turned sheet-white. Her eyes were wide and scared, her body rigid. Terror seized him, and he grabbed her arms. "Rose?" he said sharply. "You all right?"
"I'm…" She faltered. "I think…my leg…"
Her eyes rolled up in her head and she collapsed into him. He caught her, lifting her up so he could set her down on the steps of a nearby building. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw something dark and shiny scuttle back under the building, out of the sun.
Others had come to see what was going on. "What's happened?" a woman asked, concerned. "Too much sun?"
"No," he said shortly. "She said something about her leg." He lifted her skirt up just enough to bare her calf, and sucked in a sharp breath. A puncture wound sluggishly seeped blood just above the top of her soft ankle-boots. It was angry red and rising into a welt even as he watched.
"Decapod," the woman breathed in horror. "She's been stung by a decapod."
He swung to look at her. "What's that?"
"Big insect with ten legs and a stinger on a long spine. It's harmless unless it's startled, but its sting is poisonous. It won't kill her, but it'll make her very, very ill if we don't get the anti-venom into her soon."
"Anti-venom?" Thank god, he thought. "Where do I get it?"
"Why, the House of Healing, of course," she said surprised, and jerked her chin in the direction of the crowd. "Up that way."
He tugged Rose's skirt back down and slid his arms beneath her, lifting her easily. "Show me."
***
The House of Healing was in the temple of their Earth Mother goddess. The Healer, a woman who looked to be in her forties or so, led him into an examination room with a bed-fairly primitive medical technology, but the Doctor wasn't worried about that; if he could just get the anti-venom into her, the rest could be done in the TARDIS. He wanted that anti-venom, though; just because a woman in the street said it wouldn't kill Rose, didn't mean that was so, and chances were they'd had enough experience with the local fauna to have a reasonably good means of helping those who'd been bitten.
"All right," the Doctor said as he laid her down. "I'll need the anti-venom and whatever you use to administer it-syringe, dermaspray…?"
"Syringe," the Healer said, rummaging in a drawer and bringing the syringe out, along with a bottle of golden-clear liquid, "but I'm afraid you can't be in here while I'm examining her."
"Oh, yes I can," the Doctor snapped. "I'm not leaving her."
"I'm going to have to remove her clothes," the Healer said in a tone of patient explanation.
"Yeah, I'd worked that out," he said dryly.
"Then you understand that, unless you're her husband or her father, I can't possibly allow you in the room with a woman who's not dressed."
"What?" the Doctor said, startled.
The Healer pursed her lips. "It wouldn't be appropriate," she said somewhat primly. "Or modest. And in the absence of her consent to have you in here, I'm sure you understand."
The Doctor rolled his eyes. "All right," he said. "Fine. We got married yesterday, and we're very happy. Blissful, even. Here on our honeymoon, just the two of us. I didn't want to say anything because her parents don't know, and they wouldn't approve." Which was just possibly the truest thing he'd said all day. "Now can we get the bloody anti-venom into her?"
"There's no need for strong language," she protested, but as she was unbuttoning Rose's shirt at the same time, the Doctor didn't snap back. Instead he unfastened Rose's skirt, helping to strip her so that the full extent of the damage could be seen and she could be wrapped in a hospital gown-which hadn't changed design in over a thousand years, he noted somewhat absently.
"All right," the Healer said, cleaning a patch of skin on Rose's upper arm with a ball of cotton wool soaked in alcohol, "this is the first of three injections we'll have to give over a twenty-four-hour period." She pulled the sterile cap off the syringe and filled it from the bottle, checked for air bubbles, then expertly slid the needle into Rose's vein, depressing the plunger and pulling the syringe back out under the pressure of her finger and another ball of cotton wool. She folded Rose's arm up over the cotton wool to hold it in place, then turned to the Doctor and said soberly, "If your wife is very lucky-and there's a good chance she will be, since you got her to me so quickly-she'll be completely unconscious for the whole time."
If. The Doctor didn't like ifs, especially when it came to Rose's safety or well-being. "And if she's not very lucky?"
The Healer shook her head. "We could see anything from restless tossing to outright convulsions, even screaming in pain as the anti-venom starts to work. The venom itself is a neurotoxin; with luck we've stopped it before it got a good hold, but it affects each victim differently. We're just going to have to wait and see."
"I'll wait," the Doctor said decisively, pulling over a chair and plopping himself down on it. "Leave the syringes with me; I can make the injections. Eight-hour intervals?"
"Yes." She looked at him, frowning a bit. "You're a Healer?"
"Yeah," he said, mostly honestly. "I'm perfectly capable of handling a couple of injections." He gave her his best I'm-the-Oncoming-Storm-don't-argue-with-me glare. "I'm not leaving her, and I'm not letting anyone else treat her. She's my responsibility."
"Yes, you're quite right," the Healer murmured. "She is." She dropped the used syringe into a container on the wall and said, "Very well. I'll check back in a few hours."
"Do that," the Doctor said absently. He'd already turned to Rose and taken her hand; he barely heard the door click as the Healer left. Rose was so cold; her body temperature was a good degree or two lower than usual. That fit; if the venom was a neurotoxin, it'd be interfering with her nerves' ability to communicate with her brain.
He closed his eyes and shivered as he pictured Rose's body shutting down, system by system, as the toxin worked its way through her. Pictured her going into a seizure, convulsing violently on the bed as he tried to hold her down to keep her from injuring herself. Pictured her sitting bolt upright and screaming at the phantom pain of her nerves as they came back on-line, every one of them at once. Every nerve burning, burning, as though she stood in the midst of a furnace….
"I'm sorry," he murmured brokenly, watching her pale, slack face. "I'm so sorry."
With the next injection of anti-venom a full eight hours away, the Doctor settled himself in for the pastime he hated more than anything else in the universe: waiting.
***
"Doc…tor…?"
He turned in a flash away from the window he'd been gazing out of, and felt his hearts skip a beat. Rose's eyes were open, and though they were glazed, there was real recognition in them. He stepped back around the foot of the bed to her side, sitting down and taking her hand. "How are you feeling?" he asked, reaching into his jacket for the sonic screwdriver.
"Like I've been beaten over every inch of my body," she said as he ran the screwdriver's beam over her face and torso, checking her vital signs and nerve reaction. "I wasn't, was I?"
Heart rate: slightly elevated, but not frighteningly so. Respiration: shallow but clear. Blood pressure: a little low, but within normal range. Nerve reaction in her upper body: based on the slight twitches of her hands as he passed the blue beam over specific points, just fine. "No, you weren't beaten," he reassured her. "Just an insect bite. You had a reaction, but you're gonna be just fine. Here, let me check your feet."
He tugged the sheet down and sat on the bed by her feet, checking her nerves there. A finger run up the sole of her right foot from heel to toes caused her to jerk reflexively and giggle, and her toes curled properly. Good signs, those; he'd been afraid the toxin might have damaged the nerves down here more quickly, since she'd been stung on her right calf, but everything appeared to be fine. He checked the reflexes on her other foot, just to be certain, and felt his shoulder tension loosen slightly as those nerves responded as well. "There you are," he said cheerfully, setting her foot back down on the bed. "Right as rain. Told you so."
Rose nodded toward the bandage on her right calf. "That where I was stung?"
"Yeah. D'you remember it?" He kept his voice light, but this was the last of his tests to see the extent of the toxin damage, and her answer would be telling. Neurotoxins worked on nerves, and the human brain was made of nothing but.
She frowned, eyes drifting up to the ceiling as she thought. "Yeah, I think so," she said slowly. "I was teasing you about never dressing up, and I tried to do a dance-turn but I stepped on something and stumbled-and then I felt this sharp pain in my leg, and the whole world went sort of hazy." Her eyes re-focused on him. "Nothing really after that, until I woke up here."
"You've been unconscious since, so there's nothing for you to remember." He grinned at her, more relieved than he wanted her to know. He never wanted her to find out how frightened he'd been for her. Alien toxins were nearly always bad news for any species, their affects ranging from the relatively mild case she seemed to've had, to agonising death.
"How long have I been out?"
"Long enough to make a good recovery," the Doctor hedged. He peeled the medical tape carefully away from her skin and examined the wound carefully. It was nearly healed, most of the redness faded and the puncture itself scabbed over. "Ah, fantastic," he said, folding the bandage carefully over the blood that stained it and chucking it into the bin to be incinerated, then reaching over to the cupboard and picking up a clean one, along with tape, scissors, and a tube of antibiotic cream. "Another day or so and you'll be good as new."
Her eyes widened and she tried to push herself into a sitting position. "Another day?" she repeated. "What do you mean, another? How long has it been?"
He shifted, placing a hand against her shoulder and pressing her gently back down to the bed. "Don't do that, Rose. You're not strong enough to move about yet."
"Then tell me!" she snapped. "Don't treat me like I'm thick or something. How long has it been since I was stung?"
The Doctor waited patiently, looking sternly at her until she huffed and relaxed against the bed again. He moved back down to put the last couple of pieces of tape over the bandage, securing it and buying himself time to think. Though there wasn't much to think about, really. She was right; he was treating her like she was stupid, which she most definitely was not. She had the right to know what had happened to her.
So he sighed, set the supplies back where he'd found them, and sat down beside her bed again, taking her hand in his. "Twenty-eight hours," he told her quietly. "Almost exactly."
Her irritation seemed to run away from her like water as her eyes widened and she stared at him. "Twenty…eight? Hours? More than a day?"
"Yeah." His throat tightened, and he swallowed and glanced away. "You were in a bad way for a while." An understatement, that; at one point, in the darkest hours of the night, her pulse and breathing had become so shallow that he'd had to curl himself around her just to reassure himself that her heart was still beating, her lungs still filling and emptying.
"Doctor."
He glanced back at her. She was quiet now, pensive, brow furrowed and bottom lip between her teeth. "Were you… did you stay with me the whole time?"
"Of course," he said, surprised that she would even ask.
"Were you… I mean, did you…" She hesitated, then licked her lips and tried again. "I thought I felt someone… with me… in one of my dreams. I was all alone in this dark place, and I was scared, and then someone… sort of wrapped themselves around me, and I felt safe again." She looked down, blushing.
"You felt that?" he asked, startled. "While you were unconscious?" But she shouldn't have. She shouldn't have remembered anything-in fact, she didn't remember anything overtly. His presence should not have made that much of a difference to her dreams, though.
Unless….
No. Not possible. He shoved the thought away.
Her eyes flickered back up, meeting his gaze, and she smiled. "You mean it was you? You slept with me?"
"Not like that!" he exclaimed, then mentally kicked himself as her face fell, probably because of his vehemence. He tried again. "You were hardly breathing, and your pulse was so weak. I couldn't tell just by looking at you if you were still…" He couldn't say the word, just hurried on. "So I climbed into bed with you so I could make sure you were all right."
"You were really worried," she said. There was an odd tone to her voice. It was as though she were marvelling.
"Of course I was worried!" he protested, but was interrupted by the door opening. The Healer from before came in, smiling.
"Ah, good! You're awake. And lucid?" The last was aimed at the Doctor.
"Perfectly lucid, no memory loss except while she was unconscious. Reflexes and reactions all look good, and no overt change in personality."
"That could've happened?" Rose near-yelped. "My personality could've changed?"
"If the neurotoxin had got into your brain before we got the anti-venom into you…maybe," the Healer said soberly. "Decapod poison is nothing to be taken lightly." She turned to the Doctor. "We have another room for her, one that will be much more comfortable for both of you."
"If she's safe to be moved, then we'll just be on our way," the Doctor said firmly. "But thank you for your help."
"Oh, but you must stay!" the Healer exclaimed, looking from one to the other. "I've just spoken with the priestesses, and they've confirmed it. You're the Sacred Couple!"
"The what?" Rose asked, managing to raise herself up on one arm. The Doctor was too startled to get her to lie back down; he hadn't heard about this either.
"The Sacred Couple," the Healer repeated, glancing between the two of them. At their blank looks, she said, "You don't know about the Sacred Couple?"
The Doctor had a bad feeling about this, but Rose said, "No, sorry. Tell us."
"The most recently-married couple at the Festival goes into the inner sanctum of the Temple and asks the Goddess's blessing on the fields," she said simply. "If you were just married two days ago, that makes you the most recently-married couple. No marriages are performed here within a week of the start of the Festival."
He could feel Rose's look even with his eyes on the Healer-he'd conveniently forgotten to tell her about saying they were married. "I don't think so," he began.
But Rose jumped in. "Of course we'll do it," she said. He swung round to look at her and felt his heart drop down to his stomach at the sweet smile on her face. He knew that smile. "You've saved my life," she went on, "you and your anti-venom, and it's the least we can do. We don't know what's involved, though, since we're strangers."
Damn. There was no way for him to back out now; she'd reminded him that these people had indeed saved her life. He made a mental note to growl about this later. Asking the Goddess's blessing on the fields, indeed. Pure rubbish. Rose had better not get into the habit of volunteering me for religious ceremonies, he thought darkly.
"The priestesses will explain it all," the Healer said, her smile broad and her eyes sparkling with pleasure. "Oh, excellent. I'll tell them immediately. You need to rest for another night, but tomorrow you'll be taken to the Sanctum and everything will be made clear." She looked up at the Doctor. "We'll get you moved into your new room and have food brought round, including a special soup that will help your wife's recovery. She should make sure to eat it all. And you'll want the dishes I bring for you, too. It's part of the cleansing ritual for tomorrow."
"Yeah, all right," the Doctor grunted, trying hard not to roll his eyes. "So what will we be doing tomorrow that requires all this strength-building and cleansing?"
"Nothing terribly taxing," she reassured them. "Just sharing yourselves with each other before the statue of the Goddess, that's all. Don't worry, the doors are locked and it's all very private." She leant forward as though to share a great secret. "My husband and I were the Sacred Couple the year we married. Such an honour! And a blessing on our marriage as well as on the fields. No need to be nervous, truly. The Goddess will bless any union born out of love."
She smiled reassuringly at them and slipped out the door before the Doctor could recover enough to speak.
Rose pinned him with a look. "Wife?" she asked in a challenging tone of voice.
tbc