FIC: E is for Earaches (5/26)
Title: E is for Ear Aches (5/26)
Rating: G/K
Summary: After a bit of a mishap with Torchwood in Victorian London Rose finds herself under the weather and doesn’t want to make the Doctor upset by telling him.
Length: 3,387
Disclaimer: Doctor Who & associated. does not belong to me.
Notes: beta’d by the excellent and extremely helpful Anastasia Dove (http://www.fanfiction.net/u/3793202/).
Rose’s feet pounded along the cobblestone streets of Victorian London. The rain poured down, soaking her on the final mad dash to the TARDIS.
The Doctor had sworn up and down that coming here wasn’t going to interfere with their previous visit to this time. After all, this was London, not Scotland and he told her that Queen Victoria hadn’t banned them yet; they were too early in her time stream for her to have met them yet.
Rose had seen that as conformation of her long suspected belief that the Doctor was mad, either that or absolutely awful at landing in the correct time. It had only been a few minutes after they'd left the TARDIS, when the Torchwood agents descended on them. At first, she hadn't understood what was happening. They had clearly not been the Police; their interest in the Doctor should have given that away instantly.
They’d been running through London ever since. Rose had felt rather let down on this trip, and she was feeling run down now-in more ways than just the obvious. The Doctor had been truly worried for their safety, but with the TARDIS in the enemy's hands, there hadn’t been much that he’d been able to do. He’d been strangely serious for the three days that they’d been on the run.
This should be the culmination of it all; the Doctor had found the TARDIS and he’d passed word to her in the odd ways that he had developed, through the homeless children and in the details that he knew she would notice and recognise. There was going to be a diversion and in that small space of time, she was going to have to run through the Torchwood London headquarters, to meet him outside the TARDIS. Then they could get out of this time. The TARDIS was supposed to remind him to flag it or something, so that he didn't come here again, at least not with this regeneration's face.
Rose ran blindly into the building that the Doctor had told her was holding the TARDIS. She crashed through three sets of doors; each was unlocked neatly, as if someone had used a sonic screwdriver. The fourth set of doors opened into a large storage area of some kind. Rose glanced around, finally seeing the light blue of the TARDIS behind some boxes and almost on the other side of the room. She glanced over her shoulder before running to the police box.
The TARDIS was locked, the Doctor wasn’t there. For a second her heart fell, but the pounding replaced it and she fumbled for the chain around her neck, slipping it off, turning the key and then pushing the door open. The ship was warm and dry, which was more than she could say for London. It smelled clean, no rotten grass lying around or muck underneath the grating. Rose walked up to the jump-seat and let herself collapse now that she was sure there weren’t any bedbugs underneath her.
Even though she felt like there were important things that she should be doing, Rose just sat for a while; enjoying the peaceful silence and the warmth.. These things didn’t really belong on the TARDIS, but she was happy to wait for the Doctor. Finally, she decided to get up and moving. If the Doctor wasn’t there in fifteen minutes, she was going to take a shower. Rose tucked her feet up on the jump-seat and angled her head towards the door before resting it on the jump-seat.
The sound of the TARDIS door opening woke her up. She bolted upright in a second, remembering all the times she’d managed a quick nap in between running from the Torchwood operatives. But there was nowhere to run now, and as she came to full wakefulness, she realised that there wasn’t any reason to run. The Doctor, a bit the worse for wear, but still the Doctor was leaning on the closed door of the TARDIS. Rose walked to his side and helped him up; he seemed asleep on his feet.
“Rose, that you?” He peered out at her, through eyebrows caked full of dirt and a scratched and bruised face. When she smiled and nodded, he managed a tired smile back. “I was worried; I can’t lose you Rose.” He grinned. “Let’s go to bed now.”
Rose nodded. “That sounds wonderful. Come on.”
She had to help him into the interior of the TARDIS, but once they were through that, the doors to their bedrooms were right in front of them, open and comfortable. Rose made sure that the Doctor collapsed on top of his bed, before heading into her room. She left her dirty clothes on the floor in a heap, then crawled into her bed in fresh knickers and a tank top, hoping that the Doctor would get some sleep and in turn let her sleep before their next adventure.
But as much as Rose had wanted the opportunity to get some sleep, she was rudely awoken a few hours later, by a pounding headache. Her first thought was that she’d caught the plague or cholera or something else that they had an abundance of in old London, but she felt better after a glass of water from the bathroom and rubbing some of the dirt off her face. Leaving the glass and the flannel she stumbled back to bed, hitting her foot on the edge of the bedpost as she scrambled back under the covers. Sighing as her headache intensified, she turned to lay sideways on her pillow. Despite her inability to find a comfortable position, Rose eventually fell asleep.
The next time she woke up it happened for slowly. The smell of fresh tea slowly seeped into her nose, the feeling of her clean sheets on her skin came next, and then the pain returned. From her current position, she was pretty sure that there were blisters and bruises on her feet and when she turned her head and the bit of a headache she still had, intensified and shifted to behind her ear. Rose gasped and sat up, a hand clutching at the burning sensation, she tried to rub it out, to no avail.
Now that the warm and peaceful feeling of just waking up was gone, Rose wasted no time getting out of bed and into the shower, trying her hardest to ignore the pain in her ear. The shower was warm and once the water stopped running dirty brown through her hair and off her body, she felt much better. The TARDIS provided her with warm towels as she stepped from the bath and Rose wrapped one around her waist and then without thinking, leaned over and flipped her hair over her head to rub at it with another towel. The burning in her ear turned into a hot stabbing pain, that didn’t weaken or go away once she had flipped her head the right-side up again.
Rose leaned against the sink, cupping cool water in her hands and holding them to her ear, but the burning was on the inside and it didn’t go any good. Slowly, most of the fresh pain dissipated and she cleaned her teeth, forgoing any makeup at this time. She put on sweatpants and a sweatshirt over a fresh tank top and checked both her purse and her backpack for some paracetamol or something to quell the pain. But her bottles were empty and Rose made a mental note to get some more whenever they next stopped off someplace that had shops and medicines she recognized.
The smell of tea directed her to the kitchen where the Doctor was sitting at the table, a large stack of toast and bacon in front of him. He smiled at her when she came in and gestured to the place across from his, where a covered plate sat waiting next to a mug of tea that he’d neglected to remove the bag from. She mustered a small grin for him and took a seat, folding her legs up on the chair.
The Doctor finished his food quickly, and ate another heaping plateful while she picked at her food and had one small sip of the tea, realising that it was much too strong and leaving it sitting beside her plate.
“Rose.” The Doctor looked at her over his empty plate, “I never should have brought us to London. I thought it would be safe, and I’m so very sorry that it wasn’t.”
“It’s not your fault that we saved Queen Victoria from a werewolf and she founded an institute that’s sole purpose is to find and imprison us,” Rose shrugged.
"Well we're safe now and it's off to new adventures!" the Doctor nodded. He stood up and cleared his dishes off the table and into the sink before glancing at her still mostly full plate, "Are you all right Rose?"
"Now that we're back, I'm better," she smiled," Let's go somewhere nice and quiet today, maybe warm and dry too."
He laughed and left the kitchen.
Once Rose heard the door to the control open and close, she dumped the remainder of her tea down the drain and the rest of her food into a container for later, although it would probably just be stored indefinitely by the TARDIS, until she threw it out in a few months because no one was ever going to eat it. Then, with the feeling of blood pounding through her ear, Rose left the kitchen and wondered if she could find the infirmary on her own and without the Doctor finding out.
She had thought about telling him that her ear hurt and that two or three of the popped blisters on her feet were weeping some kind of yellow fluid, but after seeing his guilt she decided that she couldn’t add anything more to it and kept quiet, she could take care of this on her own, or it would eventually get better if she didn’t do anything.
But after half an hour of wandering through the increasingly twisty corridors of the TARDIS, Rose hadn’t found anything of use, although she had managed to find the swimming pool and a very large fancy office that she couldn’t imagine this Doctor would ever use. Rounding yet another corner, she hoped that the next door she tried would be the one that she needed, but it opened before she could get to it and the Doctor stood in the doorway.
“Rose, there you are, I was just wondering where you were,” He grinned and looked at the corridors around her. “Did you get lost trying to find the control room?”
"Nah, I was just exploring a bit," Rose followed him into the control room and shrugged, "We going to do some real exploring now?" She glanced at the door that led to the outside, as if it would open and reveal some new world, beyond the wood.
"I think I've found just the place," the Doctor grinned," Deserts with hot springs that are the size of Lake Superior and yet are never more than eleven feet deep. The water is so clear and the steam blows the sand on the adjacent desert into little clouds that feel absolutely amazing."
The journey to the planet wasn’t so pleasant. The TARDIS did its usual knocking and rocking around and Rose found that every pitch and twirl sent a stab of pain through her head, but she fixed a smile on her face and imagined the warm feel of sand and steam between her fingers and on her skin. When the Doctor finally landed, with a bump that felt bigger than she’d ever felt before, Rose couldn’t help but breathe a sigh of relief, and pretended to ignore the look at the Doctor gave her from the other side of the console.
As Rose got back to her feet, she tried to fight the impulse to wince as the pain in her feet grew and the stabbing continued in her head. When she noticed the Doctor looking at her, she forced a smile hoping that he would quickly get distracted and move his attention onto something else. Normally she liked being the object of the Doctor’s focus, but when she was trying to hide something it couldn’t be worse off.
The Doctor came around the console, his hands casually stuffed into his suit pockets. “Rose, are you all right?” He regarded her carefully as if looking for some visible injury.
The smile that Rose was forcing grew a bit larger. “Fine Doctor. Let’s go swim and sand and whatever else we’re going to do today.” She could almost feel the warmth outside the TARDIS and imagined the relaxing and healing that she’d be able to do without ever having to bug him or worsen his guilt.
He looked her up and down again and his expression plainly wrote his doubt on his face, but he let the subject fall. “Get what you need from your room then and we’ll be off.”
Rose changed into her swimsuit and as she was sitting on her bed peeling off her socks, she realised what a huge mistake she’d made. Her feet were tender and bits of the material of her sock stuck to the weeping blister sores that she had. She looked at her sandals and wondered how exactly she was going to survive with sores on her feet at a sand covered beach.
This was a bit too much to bear. And, so, she lay back on her bed; careful to keep her head perfectly straight, so that the pounding in either one of her ears didn't intensify. She closed her eyes and bit her lip, wondering how long it would take for her to recover and if she could continue to put the Doctor off until then.
The rap of the Doctor’s knuckles on her door surprised her, but when the door- which she obviously had failed to latch properly- flew open, it was hard to say which one of them was more surprised. The Doctor stood there, staring at her feet and she hurried pulled her legs up onto the bed and pulled a sheet over her body; she was only in her swimsuit.
There was no stopping him now, the Doctor came into her room and with a look to her for permission he sat down on the bed next to her. “Rose, you should have told me.” The guilt and disappointment was heavy in his voice. “You know that I would have helped you, there’s no reason to suffer.”
Despite her best efforts, Rose felt tears pooling behind her eyes. Everything was coming together now, the awful things that she’d seen in London, the pain in her head and feet, the awful feeling that she was hurting the Doctor. No matter what she did and that there was nothing she could do. She managed to choke out a sorry before turning her body away from him, her head still perfectly vertical.
He got off her bed and retrieved her dressing gown from the floor and handed it to her before glancing down at her feet. “All right to the infirmary it is. I’ll get those taken care of and then we can go to the beach. Twenty minutes and you’ll be as good as new!”
He stopped her from trying to stand up and scooped her up in his arms. At first Rose worried that she’d be too heavy for this Doctor, he was so much smaller than the previous one. But if he had any difficulty carrying her, he didn’t let it show and they left the room and he pushed open the door across the corridor with his foot to reveal the infirmary.
Rose waited as he set her down on the exam couch and pulled the sonic screwdriver out of his pocket. It hummed quietly, as he ran it over her feet and then around her body in general, she looked at her lap as he ran it around her head, not wanting to see his disappointed expression yet again.
But he didn’t say anything. Instead, he crossed over to the cabinets and retrieving the things that he would need to fix her feet. He set the items on a standing tray table and took a seat on the high stool next to the couch.
“Okay Rose, why don’t you just lie back for a minute,” there was a strained smile on his face, “I’m going to clean your injures and then I’ll fix them in a second with a dermal sealant and regenerator. Just hold on for a couple minutes.”
The antiseptic was cold and any pressure against the blister sore thingies hurt, but Rose had held her breath in anticipation of a sting that had never came and she tried to relax as the buzz of the dermal regenerator meant that the first injury was gone and there was no trace of it on her foot any longer.
When he was finished, Rose sat back up and swung her feet back and forth, revealing the fact that the air passing over her feet, no longer sent little shock-waves of pain up her legs. She slid off the couch as the Doctor up away his tools and was almost as the door by the time that he’d finished cleaning up.
“Rose, come back please,” the Doctor didn’t look at her; he just returned to the side of the exam couch and waited.
She turned back and walked slowly to his side and hopped back on the exam couch, looking down the whole time, determined not to meet his eyes.
"I'm so sorry Rose; I never met for you to get hurt or ill or for any of this to happen," the Doctor almost sighed.
"No, I should have been more careful Doctor. It's my fault that I couldn't figure out what I needed, and that I misread everything. And spent the night sleeping under the bridge... and just screwing up."
"Rose, we've both made mistakes. And now it's time to fix them," The Doctor covered her hands, with one of his and used the other to brush a stray lock of hair off her face," We can never move on if you're still suffering, we can both get better and fix this. Please let me help you. Tell me when you need something and I can fix it."
Rose nodded minutely so as to not aggravate her ears and head. A tear slipped out of her eye, “Okay, please help me.”
The Doctor nodded and handed her a bottle of water and several tablets. “These should clear up the infection in a few hours.” He had another little bottle in his hand. “And I’ve got 24th century ear drops that can get rid of the pain until then.”
It hurt to tilt her head to one side for the Doctor to place a single drop of the liquid in her ear. But then that side was blissfully numb and turning her head for the other side didn’t hurt at all. Rose breathed a sigh of relief as the pain ended and finished off the water bottle that the Doctor had given her, enjoying the now pain free experience of swallowing.
“So are we going swimming in shallow hot springs the size of lake superior now?” Rose asked with a grin. Being pain free and guilt free had done a lot for her mood in the past few minutes.
"We've got to wait," the Doctor grinned back," You go take a nap and I'll put together a picnic basket and then once you've slept and the dermal sealant has had time to set and the infection in your ears is gone, we'll go and you'll enjoy it even more then."
Rose nodded and smiled and at the last minute threw her arms around the Doctor squeezing him tightly to her. “Thanks.” She whispered as she crushed her face into his chest and felt the tension of the past few days melt away.