18 Seconds to Make Old Things New Again - Chapter 7
Title: 18 Seconds to Make Old Things New Again - Chapter 7: Being Human
Author: amberwind
Character/Pairing: Nine/Rose, OC
Rating: PG-13
Warning: Swearing, implied violence
Disclaimer: I own nothing, and I make no money from this.
Spoilers: TPoTW and a dash of Doomsday
Summary:He'd just left Rose Tyler behind in an alley. So what was she doing nearly a hundred years in her relative future? And what's with all the Zeppelins?
Chapter 7: Being Human - “If being human means being like you, Bryce, then perhaps it’s a good thing that I’m not anymore.”
AU, missing scene from Rose and post-DD. Nine/Rose fluffy bits.
I'm not dead! I just had severe issues writing this chapter--never before have I had performance anxiety over my writing, and I hope it will never happen again. See what you people do to me?
I'm working on making chapter header images for this story. Expect to see them added over the next few days. I've added images to This Stunning Monochrome and To Be the Wolf, so go check them out so I can stroke my fragile ego.
Un-beta'd, and as per usual I love reviews--they give me girl wood.
Chapter 1 - Chapter 2
Chapter 3 - Chapter 4
Chapter 5 - Chapter 6
Chapter 7 - Being Human
“We are all brothers under the skin - and I, for one, would be willing to skin humanity to prove it.” - Ayn Rand
Rose's eyes widened momentarily at Bryce's intrusion, and then narrowed in comprehension. "You fucking snake," Rose hissed. "No wonder London wouldn't let me fire you."
Bryce shrugged, unruffled by Rose's ire. "I was under orders to figure out what you were doing here, after the archivists at Canary Wharf noticed a pattern of glitches and missing records spanning back several decades. It helped ever so much when you left those records out this afternoon." Bryce gave Rose a wolfish grin. "The transcripts of your vivisection were fascinating."
As she heard the Doctor suck in a sharp breath, Rose's jaw tightened, and her knuckles were white as she clenched her fists. She could feel fingernails biting into her palms; she knew from past experience that the pain would keep her focused and prevent her losing control. She was good in a hand to hand fight by necessity, since she refused to carry a sidearm, but even she knew that she stood no chance against a dozen heavily armed operatives.
She could feel the cool presence of the Doctor in her mind, a reassuring background rumble of thunder against the gold she was accustomed to. She concentrated for a moment, unsure of how exactly how to communicate, but trusting her instincts. Just play along, Doctor.
Rose felt an annoyed thrum in her mind. What else am I supposed to do? Dance a jig?
Wouldn't be the first time, Rose thought back glibly, before carefully re-erecting the psychic barriers her Torchwood training had instilled. She had been sloppy, allowing them to slip while the Doctor was holding her, and she couldn't afford the extra distraction now, when they had this many weapons trained in their direction.
Nevertheless, her mind felt hollow once the barriers were back in place, and reverberated with an emptiness she had not been aware of until that moment. Suddenly, she knew she had an inkling of what the Doctor felt with the rest of his people gone. It's a wonder he didn't go completely mad.
Rose uncurled her fingers, crossing her arms and leaning with forced casualness against the edge of Rhiannon's desk, returning Bryce's smirk. "Which time would that have been, Bry? I recall landing on the vivisection tables in London twice. Not exactly five star accommodations, in case you're wondering. That steel was bloody cold."
"And you would know. What was it the xenobiologists said? 'Subject continues with verbal abuse of examiners, even under extreme duress and trauma.' Kept enough of your head about you to insult them as they removed your organs," Bryce sneered. "And not even a scar to show for it. That is impressive. I'm going to have so much fun figuring out exactly how much abuse that pretty body of yours can take."
Rose sucked in an angry breath, ready to tell Bryce exactly what she would do to him if he dared lay a finger on her. She heard the Doctor shift closer to her, and knew he was giving Bryce his best intimidating glare. Or at least, that's what she thought until she heard him speak.
"Is this what your world is like, then, Rose?" The Doctor's voice was soft, but she could hear the barely restrained fury underneath. She tore her gaze away from Bryce, and looked up into the Doctor's face. His expression was impassive, unreadable to anyone who didn’t know him as well as she once had, but she could see the hurt and anger swimming dangerously just behind his eyes, his attention focused on her, unheeding of the dozen operatives surrounding them. It had been too long, though-she couldn’t tell if the anger was directed at her, or on her behalf.
Rose kept her own anger under a tight rein, and kept her eyes on his face as she replied in a low, angry hiss, “Things aren’t supposed to be like this. And this isn’t my world, Doctor. Never has been.”
“At least the freak admits it,” she heard Bryce sneer from across the Hub. He tutted at her in distaste. “I can’t believe London allowed you to play house down here for so long. Only God knows where you’ve managed to stick your fingers over the years. Good thing London has decided to reassert our original charter, eh?”
Rose spun to fix her gaze on Bryce again as her eyes widened in horror. “You wouldn’t… you can’t!”
Bryce fixed Rose with a nasty smile. “We already have.”
“But, what about the treaties? Interplanetary trade? The refugee colonies? All those people…”
“Those things are not people!” Bryce thundered, flinging an arm out to point at the door leading to the containment cells, where the Weevil she had brought in the night before was starting to make a distressed keening sound. “They’re not human, and if the brief glance I got at your files this afternoon is any indication, neither are you.”
Rose allowed his words to sink in, and straightened her back, letting her anger flow away and replacing it with as much dignity as she could muster. It was the first time anyone had said the words openly; in her mind it was an affirmation of what she had known all along, and instead of guilt or shame, it filled her with an odd sense of relief that she didn’t have to pretend anymore.
Rose gave Bryce a pitying glance, and then looked away. “If being human means being like you, Bryce,” she said softly, “then perhaps it’s a good thing that I’m not anymore.”
~0~0~0~
The Doctor was doing his best to keep up with the verbal play between Rose and Bryce, but internally he was still reeling. Rose had touched his mind in a way he hadn’t felt since the final moments of Gallifrey. There were plenty of telepaths in the universe, but they would not have had access to the part of his mind left empty by his planet’s destruction-only a Gallifreyan mind could have made that link, that deep buzzing connection in the back of his head that pulsed with a steady rhythm: you are not alone.
And after a few brief mental touches, barely a whisper, she had cut him off again. He knew she was supposed to be there, she was still standing right in front of him, but the golden mental presence, the plaintive wolf’s howl she had projected, had disappeared. If he didn’t know better, he would think the contact had never happened at all.
But it had, and that could only mean one thing; Rose, this Rose, was Gallifreyan. While one part of his mind was exulting in the face of no longer being the last of his kind, the rest of him couldn’t quite make sense of the situation. Rose, the younger Rose that he had left behind in the alley, had been undeniably human. She had been naïve, her body burning with fever warmth, and he could see the grains of her life slipping away as her natural human lifespan rushed forward on that heady tilt from cradle to grave that her species followed.
No creature that he was aware of could change species. There were plenty of species with shifting morphology, including Gallifreyans to a limited extent, but their essences remained the same. The Rose he had left behind had been human, and this Rose was definitely not, which meant… what?
He jiggled the puzzle pieces in his mind, but the picture just wasn’t adding up. He knew he was missing some vital piece of information, something that would make Rose and her situation make sense, but he couldn’t figure out what. Then, the present moment intruded on his musings, and he ran Rose’s last statement through his mind again. “If being human means being like you, Bryce, then perhaps it’s a good thing that I’m not anymore.”
The Doctor focused on those words. Not anymore.
“How?” he asked suddenly, drawing the attention of everyone in the room. When he noticed the confused look on Rose’s face, he elaborated, his attention focused solely on her; it wouldn’t be the first time he’d had an important personal conversation while weapons were trained in his direction, and he doubted it would be the last, so he just ignored them.
“When I left you in that alley, you may have been a lot of things, but one thing I knew for sure was that you were human. People don’t just change species, Rose.”
Rose gave him a wary look, and crossed her arms defensively over her chest. “I did,” she muttered, her eyes dropping down and away as she confirmed his suspicions.
“How?”
He saw Rose huff out an exasperated breath, and shoot a pointed glance in Bryce’s direction. “I’d rather not in front of the peanut gallery.”
“Rose…” The Doctor pleaded, using a finger to tilt her chin up so she would meet his eyes. “Tell me.”
He saw Rose searching his face for a moment, and a resigned look passed over her face. Her voice was soft when she spoke. “On those discs, how much did I say about what happened on the Gamestation?”
The Doctor thought for a moment, shifting through the hours of information he had recently absorbed. “Not much all told. You said the Daleks were there, and that I sent you away to keep you safe. Don’t much like that you didn’t stay where I put you, though.” He shot Rose a wry look, and saw her roll her eyes in response.
“You didn’t just send me away, Doctor,” Rose whispered. “You tricked me. Used an emergency programme to make the TARDIS take me home. You said…” Rose pressed her lips together in distress, before continuing in a slightly stronger voice, “You recorded a message. Told me that you were planning on dying, and that you hoped it was a good death. You said I should just abandon the TARDIS, let her die and be buried as the world went on. Asked me to have a fantastic life.”
Rose took his hand, intertwining their fingers and griping tight. “I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t just leave you alone up there to be killed. You showed me a better way of living my life, showed me the universe … I couldn’t just go back to working in the shops and eating beans on toast and leave you to it.”
The Doctor gave Rose a small smile, and gently returned the pressure on her hand. He didn’t know what he had done to inspire that kind of loyalty and he felt he didn’t deserve it, but he was fiercely glad that he had it all the same. Perhaps I’m not such a lost cause, after all.
Rose cast her eyes downwards again, and he could tell by the expression on her face that he wasn’t going to like what she had to say next. “I went a little crazy. It took some doing, but I managed to open the console. I looked into the heart of the TARDIS, and she looked into me.”
The Doctor sucked in an angry breath. How could she be so stupid? The look on Rose’s face, though, stopped the lecture on stupid apes trying to get themselves killed before it could leave his mouth. She was on the verge of tears, her lip trembling as she searched his face.
“It’s still so fuzzy. I remember light, and singin’. I remember the pain. And through all of that, all I could think of was that I wanted you safe, and I didn’t want you to be alone anymore.” Rose took in a shuddering breath, emotion playing plainly across her face. “I was burning alive, dying. But I did it; I got the TARDIS to go back, and I used it to turn the Daleks to dust. I named myself-Bad Wolf. I scattered my name through time and space, created a paradox so I could lead myself to where I was needed, so I could protect you.”
“I don’t know what happened next, exactly. I woke up on the grating in the console room, and we were flying away. You told me later that you took the power from me, kept me from dying, but…” Rose’s brow furrowed, as though she didn’t want to relive the memory.
“I didn’t notice anything at first. You regenerated, but it went all wrong, and you were so sick. We left again once you were better, and everything was happening so fast, all the time, that I didn’t realize until later. I wasn’t getting hurt as easily, I could keep up with you without having to make as much of an effort. I started sleeping less. For the longest time, I figured I was just becoming used to life with you, getting better at living at the same pace, and you never said anything.”
Rose seemed to regain a bit of her composure as she continued, her eyes now firmly glued to the floor. The Doctor made no move to force her gaze up again, shocked as he was by what she was saying.
“The last time you brought me home, just before… well, everything,” she made a small, helpless gesture with her free hand, “Mum finally noticed something was off. She told me that someday there’d be this girl, a million miles away on an alien planet, but that I wouldn’t be me anymore. I wouldn’t be human. I brushed it off, told her that it didn’t matter; I was still her daughter no matter what. I figured she was just scared of losing me because we were off traveling so much.”
“And then the world fell apart. I fell through the breach, got trapped here. After what happened at Darlig Ulv Stranden, I sort of shut down for a while. I threw myself into my work in Torchwood in London, trying to take my mind off things. Spent a lot of time taking care of my sister and pretty much ignoring everything else. When I started… how do I say it,” she looked up at him quizzically, “perceiving things differently, stuff that wasn’t there or had already happened, I figured I was finally losing it.”
The Doctor nodded, recognizing the sensation. It had been frightening enough, as a child on Gallifrey, having one’s extra senses awaken as you aged even when you knew it was coming. He could only imagine what she had gone through; not knowing what was happening to her and suddenly receiving extra sensory input that should never have been possible for her.
“Six years on,” Rose sighed, “I was looking through some photos with Lily, from right after she was born. You know how kids get; all naively observant… she asked me why I still looked the same. No one else had noticed before that; we were all so caught up with getting Torchwood up and running, with cleaning up after the Cyberwar, with trying to get ourselves settled into our new lives.”
“By then, Mickey and Jake were working as field agents, and they were able to slip a blood sample into the lab for me. When the results came back, and I finally figured out what had happened, what I had been changing into… well, you weren’t around any more for me to tell.”
The Doctor stared at Rose in worried wonder. She had changed herself, for him. He wasn’t alone anymore. He hesitated for a moment, and then pulled Rose into a fierce hug, squeezing her tight as she let out a choked sob of relief.
“Well,” the Doctor smiled into her hair, his own eyes shut against tears and his voice tight with emotion, “that explains the tattoo.”
************************************************
I went to go see Eddie Izzard at the Coronet Theater again last night, and I had the most surreal, hilarious experience. At one point, he was talking about the physical impossibility of Noah's Ark: "You can't fit every animal on the planet two by two on an ark. It'd have to be the size of Siberia! It's an ark, not a bloody TARDIS!"
In spite of there being a large English/Scottish contingent in the audience, I was the only one who got the joke and laughed. I feel bizarrely proud of that.
Author: amberwind
Character/Pairing: Nine/Rose, OC
Rating: PG-13
Warning: Swearing, implied violence
Disclaimer: I own nothing, and I make no money from this.
Spoilers: TPoTW and a dash of Doomsday
Summary:He'd just left Rose Tyler behind in an alley. So what was she doing nearly a hundred years in her relative future? And what's with all the Zeppelins?
Chapter 7: Being Human - “If being human means being like you, Bryce, then perhaps it’s a good thing that I’m not anymore.”
AU, missing scene from Rose and post-DD. Nine/Rose fluffy bits.
I'm not dead! I just had severe issues writing this chapter--never before have I had performance anxiety over my writing, and I hope it will never happen again. See what you people do to me?
I'm working on making chapter header images for this story. Expect to see them added over the next few days. I've added images to This Stunning Monochrome and To Be the Wolf, so go check them out so I can stroke my fragile ego.
Un-beta'd, and as per usual I love reviews--they give me girl wood.
Chapter 1 - Chapter 2
Chapter 3 - Chapter 4
Chapter 5 - Chapter 6
Chapter 7 - Being Human
“We are all brothers under the skin - and I, for one, would be willing to skin humanity to prove it.” - Ayn Rand
Rose's eyes widened momentarily at Bryce's intrusion, and then narrowed in comprehension. "You fucking snake," Rose hissed. "No wonder London wouldn't let me fire you."
Bryce shrugged, unruffled by Rose's ire. "I was under orders to figure out what you were doing here, after the archivists at Canary Wharf noticed a pattern of glitches and missing records spanning back several decades. It helped ever so much when you left those records out this afternoon." Bryce gave Rose a wolfish grin. "The transcripts of your vivisection were fascinating."
As she heard the Doctor suck in a sharp breath, Rose's jaw tightened, and her knuckles were white as she clenched her fists. She could feel fingernails biting into her palms; she knew from past experience that the pain would keep her focused and prevent her losing control. She was good in a hand to hand fight by necessity, since she refused to carry a sidearm, but even she knew that she stood no chance against a dozen heavily armed operatives.
She could feel the cool presence of the Doctor in her mind, a reassuring background rumble of thunder against the gold she was accustomed to. She concentrated for a moment, unsure of how exactly how to communicate, but trusting her instincts. Just play along, Doctor.
Rose felt an annoyed thrum in her mind. What else am I supposed to do? Dance a jig?
Wouldn't be the first time, Rose thought back glibly, before carefully re-erecting the psychic barriers her Torchwood training had instilled. She had been sloppy, allowing them to slip while the Doctor was holding her, and she couldn't afford the extra distraction now, when they had this many weapons trained in their direction.
Nevertheless, her mind felt hollow once the barriers were back in place, and reverberated with an emptiness she had not been aware of until that moment. Suddenly, she knew she had an inkling of what the Doctor felt with the rest of his people gone. It's a wonder he didn't go completely mad.
Rose uncurled her fingers, crossing her arms and leaning with forced casualness against the edge of Rhiannon's desk, returning Bryce's smirk. "Which time would that have been, Bry? I recall landing on the vivisection tables in London twice. Not exactly five star accommodations, in case you're wondering. That steel was bloody cold."
"And you would know. What was it the xenobiologists said? 'Subject continues with verbal abuse of examiners, even under extreme duress and trauma.' Kept enough of your head about you to insult them as they removed your organs," Bryce sneered. "And not even a scar to show for it. That is impressive. I'm going to have so much fun figuring out exactly how much abuse that pretty body of yours can take."
Rose sucked in an angry breath, ready to tell Bryce exactly what she would do to him if he dared lay a finger on her. She heard the Doctor shift closer to her, and knew he was giving Bryce his best intimidating glare. Or at least, that's what she thought until she heard him speak.
"Is this what your world is like, then, Rose?" The Doctor's voice was soft, but she could hear the barely restrained fury underneath. She tore her gaze away from Bryce, and looked up into the Doctor's face. His expression was impassive, unreadable to anyone who didn’t know him as well as she once had, but she could see the hurt and anger swimming dangerously just behind his eyes, his attention focused on her, unheeding of the dozen operatives surrounding them. It had been too long, though-she couldn’t tell if the anger was directed at her, or on her behalf.
Rose kept her own anger under a tight rein, and kept her eyes on his face as she replied in a low, angry hiss, “Things aren’t supposed to be like this. And this isn’t my world, Doctor. Never has been.”
“At least the freak admits it,” she heard Bryce sneer from across the Hub. He tutted at her in distaste. “I can’t believe London allowed you to play house down here for so long. Only God knows where you’ve managed to stick your fingers over the years. Good thing London has decided to reassert our original charter, eh?”
Rose spun to fix her gaze on Bryce again as her eyes widened in horror. “You wouldn’t… you can’t!”
Bryce fixed Rose with a nasty smile. “We already have.”
“But, what about the treaties? Interplanetary trade? The refugee colonies? All those people…”
“Those things are not people!” Bryce thundered, flinging an arm out to point at the door leading to the containment cells, where the Weevil she had brought in the night before was starting to make a distressed keening sound. “They’re not human, and if the brief glance I got at your files this afternoon is any indication, neither are you.”
Rose allowed his words to sink in, and straightened her back, letting her anger flow away and replacing it with as much dignity as she could muster. It was the first time anyone had said the words openly; in her mind it was an affirmation of what she had known all along, and instead of guilt or shame, it filled her with an odd sense of relief that she didn’t have to pretend anymore.
Rose gave Bryce a pitying glance, and then looked away. “If being human means being like you, Bryce,” she said softly, “then perhaps it’s a good thing that I’m not anymore.”
~0~0~0~
The Doctor was doing his best to keep up with the verbal play between Rose and Bryce, but internally he was still reeling. Rose had touched his mind in a way he hadn’t felt since the final moments of Gallifrey. There were plenty of telepaths in the universe, but they would not have had access to the part of his mind left empty by his planet’s destruction-only a Gallifreyan mind could have made that link, that deep buzzing connection in the back of his head that pulsed with a steady rhythm: you are not alone.
And after a few brief mental touches, barely a whisper, she had cut him off again. He knew she was supposed to be there, she was still standing right in front of him, but the golden mental presence, the plaintive wolf’s howl she had projected, had disappeared. If he didn’t know better, he would think the contact had never happened at all.
But it had, and that could only mean one thing; Rose, this Rose, was Gallifreyan. While one part of his mind was exulting in the face of no longer being the last of his kind, the rest of him couldn’t quite make sense of the situation. Rose, the younger Rose that he had left behind in the alley, had been undeniably human. She had been naïve, her body burning with fever warmth, and he could see the grains of her life slipping away as her natural human lifespan rushed forward on that heady tilt from cradle to grave that her species followed.
No creature that he was aware of could change species. There were plenty of species with shifting morphology, including Gallifreyans to a limited extent, but their essences remained the same. The Rose he had left behind had been human, and this Rose was definitely not, which meant… what?
He jiggled the puzzle pieces in his mind, but the picture just wasn’t adding up. He knew he was missing some vital piece of information, something that would make Rose and her situation make sense, but he couldn’t figure out what. Then, the present moment intruded on his musings, and he ran Rose’s last statement through his mind again. “If being human means being like you, Bryce, then perhaps it’s a good thing that I’m not anymore.”
The Doctor focused on those words. Not anymore.
“How?” he asked suddenly, drawing the attention of everyone in the room. When he noticed the confused look on Rose’s face, he elaborated, his attention focused solely on her; it wouldn’t be the first time he’d had an important personal conversation while weapons were trained in his direction, and he doubted it would be the last, so he just ignored them.
“When I left you in that alley, you may have been a lot of things, but one thing I knew for sure was that you were human. People don’t just change species, Rose.”
Rose gave him a wary look, and crossed her arms defensively over her chest. “I did,” she muttered, her eyes dropping down and away as she confirmed his suspicions.
“How?”
He saw Rose huff out an exasperated breath, and shoot a pointed glance in Bryce’s direction. “I’d rather not in front of the peanut gallery.”
“Rose…” The Doctor pleaded, using a finger to tilt her chin up so she would meet his eyes. “Tell me.”
He saw Rose searching his face for a moment, and a resigned look passed over her face. Her voice was soft when she spoke. “On those discs, how much did I say about what happened on the Gamestation?”
The Doctor thought for a moment, shifting through the hours of information he had recently absorbed. “Not much all told. You said the Daleks were there, and that I sent you away to keep you safe. Don’t much like that you didn’t stay where I put you, though.” He shot Rose a wry look, and saw her roll her eyes in response.
“You didn’t just send me away, Doctor,” Rose whispered. “You tricked me. Used an emergency programme to make the TARDIS take me home. You said…” Rose pressed her lips together in distress, before continuing in a slightly stronger voice, “You recorded a message. Told me that you were planning on dying, and that you hoped it was a good death. You said I should just abandon the TARDIS, let her die and be buried as the world went on. Asked me to have a fantastic life.”
Rose took his hand, intertwining their fingers and griping tight. “I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t just leave you alone up there to be killed. You showed me a better way of living my life, showed me the universe … I couldn’t just go back to working in the shops and eating beans on toast and leave you to it.”
The Doctor gave Rose a small smile, and gently returned the pressure on her hand. He didn’t know what he had done to inspire that kind of loyalty and he felt he didn’t deserve it, but he was fiercely glad that he had it all the same. Perhaps I’m not such a lost cause, after all.
Rose cast her eyes downwards again, and he could tell by the expression on her face that he wasn’t going to like what she had to say next. “I went a little crazy. It took some doing, but I managed to open the console. I looked into the heart of the TARDIS, and she looked into me.”
The Doctor sucked in an angry breath. How could she be so stupid? The look on Rose’s face, though, stopped the lecture on stupid apes trying to get themselves killed before it could leave his mouth. She was on the verge of tears, her lip trembling as she searched his face.
“It’s still so fuzzy. I remember light, and singin’. I remember the pain. And through all of that, all I could think of was that I wanted you safe, and I didn’t want you to be alone anymore.” Rose took in a shuddering breath, emotion playing plainly across her face. “I was burning alive, dying. But I did it; I got the TARDIS to go back, and I used it to turn the Daleks to dust. I named myself-Bad Wolf. I scattered my name through time and space, created a paradox so I could lead myself to where I was needed, so I could protect you.”
“I don’t know what happened next, exactly. I woke up on the grating in the console room, and we were flying away. You told me later that you took the power from me, kept me from dying, but…” Rose’s brow furrowed, as though she didn’t want to relive the memory.
“I didn’t notice anything at first. You regenerated, but it went all wrong, and you were so sick. We left again once you were better, and everything was happening so fast, all the time, that I didn’t realize until later. I wasn’t getting hurt as easily, I could keep up with you without having to make as much of an effort. I started sleeping less. For the longest time, I figured I was just becoming used to life with you, getting better at living at the same pace, and you never said anything.”
Rose seemed to regain a bit of her composure as she continued, her eyes now firmly glued to the floor. The Doctor made no move to force her gaze up again, shocked as he was by what she was saying.
“The last time you brought me home, just before… well, everything,” she made a small, helpless gesture with her free hand, “Mum finally noticed something was off. She told me that someday there’d be this girl, a million miles away on an alien planet, but that I wouldn’t be me anymore. I wouldn’t be human. I brushed it off, told her that it didn’t matter; I was still her daughter no matter what. I figured she was just scared of losing me because we were off traveling so much.”
“And then the world fell apart. I fell through the breach, got trapped here. After what happened at Darlig Ulv Stranden, I sort of shut down for a while. I threw myself into my work in Torchwood in London, trying to take my mind off things. Spent a lot of time taking care of my sister and pretty much ignoring everything else. When I started… how do I say it,” she looked up at him quizzically, “perceiving things differently, stuff that wasn’t there or had already happened, I figured I was finally losing it.”
The Doctor nodded, recognizing the sensation. It had been frightening enough, as a child on Gallifrey, having one’s extra senses awaken as you aged even when you knew it was coming. He could only imagine what she had gone through; not knowing what was happening to her and suddenly receiving extra sensory input that should never have been possible for her.
“Six years on,” Rose sighed, “I was looking through some photos with Lily, from right after she was born. You know how kids get; all naively observant… she asked me why I still looked the same. No one else had noticed before that; we were all so caught up with getting Torchwood up and running, with cleaning up after the Cyberwar, with trying to get ourselves settled into our new lives.”
“By then, Mickey and Jake were working as field agents, and they were able to slip a blood sample into the lab for me. When the results came back, and I finally figured out what had happened, what I had been changing into… well, you weren’t around any more for me to tell.”
The Doctor stared at Rose in worried wonder. She had changed herself, for him. He wasn’t alone anymore. He hesitated for a moment, and then pulled Rose into a fierce hug, squeezing her tight as she let out a choked sob of relief.
“Well,” the Doctor smiled into her hair, his own eyes shut against tears and his voice tight with emotion, “that explains the tattoo.”
************************************************
I went to go see Eddie Izzard at the Coronet Theater again last night, and I had the most surreal, hilarious experience. At one point, he was talking about the physical impossibility of Noah's Ark: "You can't fit every animal on the planet two by two on an ark. It'd have to be the size of Siberia! It's an ark, not a bloody TARDIS!"
In spite of there being a large English/Scottish contingent in the audience, I was the only one who got the joke and laughed. I feel bizarrely proud of that.