Fic: The Journey (1/1)
Title: The Journey
Authors: Gillian Taylor (dark_aegis)
Characters: Ninth Doctor, Jack Harkness, Rose Tyler (Nine/Rose/Jack)
Spoilers: None
Rated: PG-13
Disclaimer: Not mine by any stretch of the imagination. I'm just having fun with them
Summary: Success is a journey, not a destination.
Author's Notes: Written for kholly who asked for "OT3, success" as an incentive fic in the September Support Stacie auction. With many thanks to yamx and wendymr for their invaluable betaing services.
"The Journey"
by Gillian Taylor
Rose grimaced as she stepped into the TARDIS, shaking one shoe clean of the mud that'd gathered there from their latest adventure. The ship rumbled around her, expressing its displeasure at the flecks of mud that were now decorating the floor.
“Sorry, old girl,” she said, patting one of the struts. “But blame him.” She shot a venomous glance back at the Doctor and Jack and primly looked away again.
She'd come off the worst of it in comparison to the others. Her left leg was covered in mud and she felt like she hadn't bathed in weeks. Jack - the git - wasn't even dirty, despite hauling her out of the bog or whatever it was that she'd fallen into.
She wasn't even going to go into her thoughts about the Doctor. She blamed him for this. Pleasure planet, he'd said. Fantastic beaches, he'd said.
He hadn’t mentioned the bogs. Or the heat. Or the insect life. Or the fact that they weren’t even on Tulusa or Tulusi or whatever that pleasure planet was called, and instead on its sister planet. Its evil, muddy sister planet inhabited by equally muddy humans.
And these were her favourite pair of jeans, too.
It just wasn't fair. She should’ve shoved them both into that mud pit when she had the chance.
The Doctor was probably behind her right now, smirking. Or, even worse, appearing stoic when he was really laughing at her. She hated that look. But she really hated the mud more.
Another fleck of dried mud came loose with her movements and she watched it fall to the floor. Definitely not fair.
“I’m takin’ a shower,” she declared, not daring to turn her head to look at the others. She had no desire to see their barely-contained mirth. Her imagination did well enough on its own. The reality could only be worse.
“Want some help?” Jack asked. “I’d love to help scrub all those hard-to-reach places.”
“You wish,” she retorted.
“Every night,” he replied, his voice dropping an octave lower as he continued, almost thoughtfully, “Every day, too.”
She shivered. It just wasn’t fair. She was supposed to be angry with him. But it was so difficult when he did that. It was just a game, she reminded herself. Just a game. Because she certainly wasn’t imagining Jack helping her in the shower. Or the Doctor. In that way.
Much.
“Nope, sorry. This is a girls-only party,” she said.
“Oooh, just you and the TARDIS? Can I watch?” Jack asked.
“Oi!” The Doctor’s and her own exclamations echoed through the console room.
“Don’t worry, Doctor,” Jack said. She turned her head in time to see him patting the Doctor’s arm. “You can join in, too. Though I must say, watching is one thing. Participating is so much better. So what do you say, Rose? Can we come help?”
“Leave me out of this,” the Doctor said, moving toward the console. She couldn’t help feeling a little bereft since he wasn’t joining in the banter. “Jus’ need to get us into the Vortex and you two apes can do what you like.”
“Alone,” she added, hoping that she wasn’t blushing too badly.
Jack feigned disappointment as he sighed heavily. “That’s all right. My imagination’ll fill in the details. At least until I can get my hands on the real thing.” He gave her a jaunty wink.
She couldn't help it. He was being incorrigible. And so very much Jack. So she laughed. "You-" she began, but couldn't complete the thought, shaking her head.
"Me?" he asked, suddenly made of pure innocence.
She swatted his shoulder and, before he had the chance to reply to her, she moved towards the interior of the TARDIS. Bits of mud still continued to fleck off her jeans, but somehow it didn’t seem as noticeable as before. Jack was good at distractions. Sometimes too good.
She shucked her clothing when she got into her room, leaving the messy clothes on the floor. She'd deal with them later. After she got clean. When she finally stepped into the shower, she felt like she'd died and gone to heaven. The TARDIS kept the water at the perfect temperature for just as long as she wanted it. She'd taken some rather long showers before, but the water never went cold. Bliss.
Closing her eyes, Rose ducked her head under the spray. She blamed the water for her not noticing that someone else had come into the bathroom. It was only when she stepped out of the spray to reach for her shampoo that she heard the first movement outside the stall.
"Hello?" she asked, looking at the murky glass that separated her from the rest of the bathroom with suspicion. She wouldn't put it past Jack to have come into the bathroom. Mind, he never looked, but he did seem to have a major problem with personal boundaries.
"Sorry 'bout your clothes," the Doctor said, startling her. He'd never - okay, he did before Jack came along, but not since - been in the bathroom while she was showering. It was rather…intimate.
She was not thinking about asking him to join her in here. Not at all. " 'S all right," she replied. "But you're takin' me shopping, Doctor."
Rose didn't have to see his face to know he was wincing. "Shopping? Can't you grab something out of the wardrobe room?"
She sighed as she grabbed her shampoo bottle and poured a small amount into her hand. After putting the bottle back on the shelf, she began scrubbing the shampoo into her hair. " 'S not the same. You've got some great clothes in there, but nothing for knocking about in. I need jeans. Not just generic jeans, but good, sturdy jeans that can take the muck you tend to get us into."
"Oi! 'S not my fault."
She paused in the midst of scrubbing and, staring at the ceiling as though it could possibly give her strength, she replied, "Wrong planet?"
"Right. Fine. Might be a bit my fault. "
Ha. Now that wasn't something she got to hear every day. The Doctor admitting he was wrong. "Shopping, Doctor."
She could hear his sigh even over the sound of the water. "Fine. Shopping. But don't blame me if you can't get Jack to finish when you're ready to go. Bloke loves shopping more than you do."
Jack did. But he also knew how to find the best bargains. "An' you're paying," she added.
The Doctor sighed again. "Fine. Celestine II it is."
"Thanks, Doctor," she said, grinning. She'd won. He was going to take her shopping.
"You're welcome," the Doctor replied as she ducked under the spray again.
This was more like it. She might've got covered in mud, but something good definitely came out of it.
She was more than willing to count that as a victory.
Even though those were her favourite pair of jeans.
Giggles preceded their entrance into the TARDIS. This was what it was supposed to be like. Go out, have an adventure, come back home. No-one got hurt and no-one chased them. Sure, she knew the Doctor loved running. And, yeah, she loved it, too. There were just times where slowing down was a good thing.
This was definitely a good thing.
"Your face," she said again, trying and failing to stop giggling.
"Forgot that brussberries tended to turn human skin blue," the Doctor said, his lips twitching in reflection of his own merriment.
Their resident blue man sighed. "Don't worry. I'm getting even with both of you. I've got spare brussberries right here in my pockets. When you least expect it, boom! You'll be just as blue as me."
"I dunno. Think it's a good look for you, Jack," she said. "Really brings out your eyes."
That did it. Both she and the Doctor burst out laughing.
Now this, she decided in the midst of her laughter, was the way adventures were supposed to end. With laughter.
Rose stood in the semi-darkness cast by the struts in the console room, watching the two men as they worked. Tools and grunts were exchanged far more often than words and she smiled. Jack belonged here, with them.
She knew that long before the Doctor did, but she knew he felt the same way. It was obvious in how he let the Captain touch his precious TARDIS. No, more than that. It was obvious in every glance, small gesture, and tool that was passed between them.
It was about time the Doctor realised the truth.
Two people were good, but three were better.
She stared in the general direction of the console, unable to move and unable to really even think. The events of the past few days played over and over again in her mind, each image more hurtful than the last. They were supposed to be the heroes, weren't they? They were supposed to succeed where others failed. They were supposed to save lives, not kill them.
They'd done neither.
Instead, dozens had died under the thumb of their government and they? Well, they ran. Because, apparently, this had been something they couldn't fix. Something no-one could sort out.
She suddenly found herself on the floor, her legs unable to hold herself up any longer. She wanted to know why. Why couldn't they sort this? Why couldn't they have saved those poor people?
Amelia - a beautiful woman with the soul of a poet. She'd spoken of revolutions and changing the minds of her people. She'd spoken of a better world and a few others had dared to believe her. Rose had believed her. Amelia was dead now, as was her fledgling rebellion.
A tear escaped from her eye, tracking a chilled path down her cheek to drop, unnoticed, onto the floor. They were supposed to win the day, weren't they?
Suddenly, a pair of arms surrounded her. "Rose," Jack said. Just her name, nothing more. She could hear the sorrow in his voice, in the way her name caught just so on his lips.
She leaned against him, closing her eyes against the images that would not - could not - stop. Death. All they brought, all they could leave those poor people with, was that. "Why didn't it work?" she asked quietly, somehow managing not to sob the words, though she was crying now.
"That's the problem with fixed points," the Doctor told her. She could feel the warmth of his breath upon her face and knew he'd crouched in front of her. "We couldn't stop it, Rose."
"Why not?" she asked, fury colouring those two words. She opened her eyes and glared at him, catching his subtle wince. "You're a Time Lord, aren't you? Can't you do something about that? It's not right!"
"No," the Doctor agreed. "It isn't. But because Amelia and her lot died, one year from now, this planet will rise up against their government. They'll replace their government with one voted upon by the people. Makes a better world, eventually."
"We didn't succeed, though," she said quietly. "Amelia didn't succeed."
"Yes, she did," Jack said, murmuring into her hair. "She just didn't live to see it happen."
"We didn't succeed," she retorted.
"We weren't meant to," the Doctor said and she closed her eyes again at the sight of his own echoing pain.
She wasn't certain what had started it. Had it been the Doctor's glance, or Jack's? Had Jack kissed her first, or had she kissed him? Or did she kiss the Doctor first?
It didn't matter, though. Not if this was the result.
Rose rolled onto her back, reaching out for one person and finding, to her delight, two. One cool body moved closer to her, arms and legs wrapping around her like she was a giant teddy bear. The Doctor murmured sleepily, but didn't wake.
She smiled at him, brushing her lips against the crown of his head before she turned her head.
Jack was awake and watching them, a smile of his own on his lips.
"Never thought I'd see this day," Jack said, nodding at the Doctor.
She thought about it, from that day on that mud planet to what happened just a few days ago with Amelia, and grinned. "I did."
END
x-posted to: dark_aegis & better_with_3
Authors: Gillian Taylor (dark_aegis)
Characters: Ninth Doctor, Jack Harkness, Rose Tyler (Nine/Rose/Jack)
Spoilers: None
Rated: PG-13
Disclaimer: Not mine by any stretch of the imagination. I'm just having fun with them
Summary: Success is a journey, not a destination.
Author's Notes: Written for kholly who asked for "OT3, success" as an incentive fic in the September Support Stacie auction. With many thanks to yamx and wendymr for their invaluable betaing services.
"The Journey"
by Gillian Taylor
Rose grimaced as she stepped into the TARDIS, shaking one shoe clean of the mud that'd gathered there from their latest adventure. The ship rumbled around her, expressing its displeasure at the flecks of mud that were now decorating the floor.
“Sorry, old girl,” she said, patting one of the struts. “But blame him.” She shot a venomous glance back at the Doctor and Jack and primly looked away again.
She'd come off the worst of it in comparison to the others. Her left leg was covered in mud and she felt like she hadn't bathed in weeks. Jack - the git - wasn't even dirty, despite hauling her out of the bog or whatever it was that she'd fallen into.
She wasn't even going to go into her thoughts about the Doctor. She blamed him for this. Pleasure planet, he'd said. Fantastic beaches, he'd said.
He hadn’t mentioned the bogs. Or the heat. Or the insect life. Or the fact that they weren’t even on Tulusa or Tulusi or whatever that pleasure planet was called, and instead on its sister planet. Its evil, muddy sister planet inhabited by equally muddy humans.
And these were her favourite pair of jeans, too.
It just wasn't fair. She should’ve shoved them both into that mud pit when she had the chance.
The Doctor was probably behind her right now, smirking. Or, even worse, appearing stoic when he was really laughing at her. She hated that look. But she really hated the mud more.
Another fleck of dried mud came loose with her movements and she watched it fall to the floor. Definitely not fair.
“I’m takin’ a shower,” she declared, not daring to turn her head to look at the others. She had no desire to see their barely-contained mirth. Her imagination did well enough on its own. The reality could only be worse.
“Want some help?” Jack asked. “I’d love to help scrub all those hard-to-reach places.”
“You wish,” she retorted.
“Every night,” he replied, his voice dropping an octave lower as he continued, almost thoughtfully, “Every day, too.”
She shivered. It just wasn’t fair. She was supposed to be angry with him. But it was so difficult when he did that. It was just a game, she reminded herself. Just a game. Because she certainly wasn’t imagining Jack helping her in the shower. Or the Doctor. In that way.
Much.
“Nope, sorry. This is a girls-only party,” she said.
“Oooh, just you and the TARDIS? Can I watch?” Jack asked.
“Oi!” The Doctor’s and her own exclamations echoed through the console room.
“Don’t worry, Doctor,” Jack said. She turned her head in time to see him patting the Doctor’s arm. “You can join in, too. Though I must say, watching is one thing. Participating is so much better. So what do you say, Rose? Can we come help?”
“Leave me out of this,” the Doctor said, moving toward the console. She couldn’t help feeling a little bereft since he wasn’t joining in the banter. “Jus’ need to get us into the Vortex and you two apes can do what you like.”
“Alone,” she added, hoping that she wasn’t blushing too badly.
Jack feigned disappointment as he sighed heavily. “That’s all right. My imagination’ll fill in the details. At least until I can get my hands on the real thing.” He gave her a jaunty wink.
She couldn't help it. He was being incorrigible. And so very much Jack. So she laughed. "You-" she began, but couldn't complete the thought, shaking her head.
"Me?" he asked, suddenly made of pure innocence.
She swatted his shoulder and, before he had the chance to reply to her, she moved towards the interior of the TARDIS. Bits of mud still continued to fleck off her jeans, but somehow it didn’t seem as noticeable as before. Jack was good at distractions. Sometimes too good.
She shucked her clothing when she got into her room, leaving the messy clothes on the floor. She'd deal with them later. After she got clean. When she finally stepped into the shower, she felt like she'd died and gone to heaven. The TARDIS kept the water at the perfect temperature for just as long as she wanted it. She'd taken some rather long showers before, but the water never went cold. Bliss.
Closing her eyes, Rose ducked her head under the spray. She blamed the water for her not noticing that someone else had come into the bathroom. It was only when she stepped out of the spray to reach for her shampoo that she heard the first movement outside the stall.
"Hello?" she asked, looking at the murky glass that separated her from the rest of the bathroom with suspicion. She wouldn't put it past Jack to have come into the bathroom. Mind, he never looked, but he did seem to have a major problem with personal boundaries.
"Sorry 'bout your clothes," the Doctor said, startling her. He'd never - okay, he did before Jack came along, but not since - been in the bathroom while she was showering. It was rather…intimate.
She was not thinking about asking him to join her in here. Not at all. " 'S all right," she replied. "But you're takin' me shopping, Doctor."
Rose didn't have to see his face to know he was wincing. "Shopping? Can't you grab something out of the wardrobe room?"
She sighed as she grabbed her shampoo bottle and poured a small amount into her hand. After putting the bottle back on the shelf, she began scrubbing the shampoo into her hair. " 'S not the same. You've got some great clothes in there, but nothing for knocking about in. I need jeans. Not just generic jeans, but good, sturdy jeans that can take the muck you tend to get us into."
"Oi! 'S not my fault."
She paused in the midst of scrubbing and, staring at the ceiling as though it could possibly give her strength, she replied, "Wrong planet?"
"Right. Fine. Might be a bit my fault. "
Ha. Now that wasn't something she got to hear every day. The Doctor admitting he was wrong. "Shopping, Doctor."
She could hear his sigh even over the sound of the water. "Fine. Shopping. But don't blame me if you can't get Jack to finish when you're ready to go. Bloke loves shopping more than you do."
Jack did. But he also knew how to find the best bargains. "An' you're paying," she added.
The Doctor sighed again. "Fine. Celestine II it is."
"Thanks, Doctor," she said, grinning. She'd won. He was going to take her shopping.
"You're welcome," the Doctor replied as she ducked under the spray again.
This was more like it. She might've got covered in mud, but something good definitely came out of it.
She was more than willing to count that as a victory.
Even though those were her favourite pair of jeans.
Giggles preceded their entrance into the TARDIS. This was what it was supposed to be like. Go out, have an adventure, come back home. No-one got hurt and no-one chased them. Sure, she knew the Doctor loved running. And, yeah, she loved it, too. There were just times where slowing down was a good thing.
This was definitely a good thing.
"Your face," she said again, trying and failing to stop giggling.
"Forgot that brussberries tended to turn human skin blue," the Doctor said, his lips twitching in reflection of his own merriment.
Their resident blue man sighed. "Don't worry. I'm getting even with both of you. I've got spare brussberries right here in my pockets. When you least expect it, boom! You'll be just as blue as me."
"I dunno. Think it's a good look for you, Jack," she said. "Really brings out your eyes."
That did it. Both she and the Doctor burst out laughing.
Now this, she decided in the midst of her laughter, was the way adventures were supposed to end. With laughter.
Rose stood in the semi-darkness cast by the struts in the console room, watching the two men as they worked. Tools and grunts were exchanged far more often than words and she smiled. Jack belonged here, with them.
She knew that long before the Doctor did, but she knew he felt the same way. It was obvious in how he let the Captain touch his precious TARDIS. No, more than that. It was obvious in every glance, small gesture, and tool that was passed between them.
It was about time the Doctor realised the truth.
Two people were good, but three were better.
She stared in the general direction of the console, unable to move and unable to really even think. The events of the past few days played over and over again in her mind, each image more hurtful than the last. They were supposed to be the heroes, weren't they? They were supposed to succeed where others failed. They were supposed to save lives, not kill them.
They'd done neither.
Instead, dozens had died under the thumb of their government and they? Well, they ran. Because, apparently, this had been something they couldn't fix. Something no-one could sort out.
She suddenly found herself on the floor, her legs unable to hold herself up any longer. She wanted to know why. Why couldn't they sort this? Why couldn't they have saved those poor people?
Amelia - a beautiful woman with the soul of a poet. She'd spoken of revolutions and changing the minds of her people. She'd spoken of a better world and a few others had dared to believe her. Rose had believed her. Amelia was dead now, as was her fledgling rebellion.
A tear escaped from her eye, tracking a chilled path down her cheek to drop, unnoticed, onto the floor. They were supposed to win the day, weren't they?
Suddenly, a pair of arms surrounded her. "Rose," Jack said. Just her name, nothing more. She could hear the sorrow in his voice, in the way her name caught just so on his lips.
She leaned against him, closing her eyes against the images that would not - could not - stop. Death. All they brought, all they could leave those poor people with, was that. "Why didn't it work?" she asked quietly, somehow managing not to sob the words, though she was crying now.
"That's the problem with fixed points," the Doctor told her. She could feel the warmth of his breath upon her face and knew he'd crouched in front of her. "We couldn't stop it, Rose."
"Why not?" she asked, fury colouring those two words. She opened her eyes and glared at him, catching his subtle wince. "You're a Time Lord, aren't you? Can't you do something about that? It's not right!"
"No," the Doctor agreed. "It isn't. But because Amelia and her lot died, one year from now, this planet will rise up against their government. They'll replace their government with one voted upon by the people. Makes a better world, eventually."
"We didn't succeed, though," she said quietly. "Amelia didn't succeed."
"Yes, she did," Jack said, murmuring into her hair. "She just didn't live to see it happen."
"We didn't succeed," she retorted.
"We weren't meant to," the Doctor said and she closed her eyes again at the sight of his own echoing pain.
She wasn't certain what had started it. Had it been the Doctor's glance, or Jack's? Had Jack kissed her first, or had she kissed him? Or did she kiss the Doctor first?
It didn't matter, though. Not if this was the result.
Rose rolled onto her back, reaching out for one person and finding, to her delight, two. One cool body moved closer to her, arms and legs wrapping around her like she was a giant teddy bear. The Doctor murmured sleepily, but didn't wake.
She smiled at him, brushing her lips against the crown of his head before she turned her head.
Jack was awake and watching them, a smile of his own on his lips.
"Never thought I'd see this day," Jack said, nodding at the Doctor.
She thought about it, from that day on that mud planet to what happened just a few days ago with Amelia, and grinned. "I did."
END
x-posted to: dark_aegis & better_with_3