Episode Six
banner art by alizarin_skies
written by ljg_fanfic
dedicated to rosey_jo, world's best beta!
Time is the substance from which I am made. Time is a river which carries me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger that devours me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire. - Jorge Luis Borges
The Doctor stirred the fire with a long stick. Full night had fallen. He could smell Lake Superior, fresh and wet, and somewhere off in the woods there must be a bit of swamp because there were bull frogs sounding every so often, their deep voices spreading across the forest floor like thick syrup. Beside him, Rose threw a pinecone into the fire and they watched it flame up in bright, popping sparks. She took a breath as if to say something and let it out, unvoiced.
“What?” Turning, he watched the firelight flicker across her cheekbones and paint her eyes gold. The wind shifted, swirling smoke between them. He squinted against the acrid burn, blinking rapidly. When the smoke cleared, she had tilted her face to him and her eyes were lost in shadow.
She shrugged. “I was jus’ thinking about something that Charlie said, yeah?” Another pinecone dangled from her fingers. She passed it from hand to hand and tossed it into the fire. “Charlie said …” she frowned thinking, “he said that ‘now is the fire that burns in the center of time.' It feels … true.”
He dipped his stick back into the fire and poked at the second flaring pinecone. Two sparks shot up like waving arms. The Doctor grinned, dark and fierce. Time is the fire in which we burn, little man. He poked with the stick and the pinecone fell apart, subsumed.
With a sigh, he pulled the stick from the fire and after a pause, dug the smoking tip into the dirt between them. “This symbol, a circle with a dot in the middle, is very old and is found across the universe.” He traced the circle with the tip of the stick, around and around again. “The Filbarin, the Sontarans, and the Tz’koopi, to name just three, use this symbol as “now.” To the Chippewa,” he lifted the stick, waving it out toward the campsite, “this is the symbol of “spirit” or really, “the centre of life.” Pythagoras used it to mean “the starting place.” To the Gallifreyans…” Smoke clogged his throat and he swallowed … “this symbol means something like the null point in a particular five-space maths equation.”
“So,” Rose looked down, twisting her fingers together. “Now” she reached down and touched her fingertips to the dirt, to the point in the centre of the circle, and then out, following the scribed circle with a slow sweep of fingers. “The fire that burns in the center of time; it’s like that, it is true.”
He shrugged. “It’s a truth.”
There was a sound from the dirt road, feet scuffling in the gravel, and a cough. The Doctor squinted against the brightness of the fire. “Hello?”
“Just me - Charlie,” a voice spoke out from the darkness, and then Charlie was there, walking into the firelight and sinking down across from them. “You still want to come to the sweat?”
“If you’ll vouch for me.”
“Yep.” Charlie tipped his head and his eyes roamed around the Doctor’s face. “There’s something about you. Don’t know what it is. You’re like a piece of float copper.” He rolled his shoulders. “You make that spot between my shoulder blades itch.”
The Doctor looked down at his shoes and fought a grin. Still got the touch.
Charlie gestured to their tent with his chin. “Do you have swim suits?” He looked them over. “Doctor, you could get by with cutoffs or something.” The Doctor watched Charlie’s eyes slide casually up and down Rose’s seated figure. “I hear that most of the women bathe nude; it’s a cleansing ceremony. But you don’t have to.”
Rose bumped the Doctor’s shoulder with hers. “The Doctor is much more body conscious than I am.”
“Oi!”
“’s true!” He looked up at her as she stood and took her hand. She pulled him up, stepping back toward the tent. “We’ll be back in a tick, Charlie.”
The tent was small, and they had to get down on hands and knees to crawl through the zippered door. The Doctor flicked on the sonic screwdriver and a deep red light speared out. With a twist of his lips, he thumbed the button and a clear white light shone over their pack. Settings, he reminded himself, check the settings.
Rose pulled her arms out of her vest, reached her hands behind her back, popped the fastening of her bra, shrugged her shoulders, and the undergarment slid down her arms. She threw it aside and pulled the vest back into place, both arms momentarily over her head. He watched her breasts bounce with appreciation. He really loved Rose’s breasts.
At her chuckle, he met her eyes, grinning too. “This too … um,” she looked down at the tight vest, swayed her shoulders and watched her breasts bounce gently, “too …”
“Yes.” His gaze went from her breasts back to her eyes. “Too lovely, too human, too Rose.” She looked down at herself again, and he leaned forward, kissing her lightly on the crown of her head. “It will be fine. Sling a towel over your shoulders if it bothers you.”
While he toed off his trainers and wriggled out of his jeans, Rose dug through the rucksack for his swim trunks. He watched her fold his jeans and boxers neatly, tuck them and her bra into the pack and pull out their towels. Efficient and neat. She really had changed. They scrambled back through the tent door and he zipped it closed.
Ten metres down the road, they met a woman who was standing, hands slung in her pockets, waiting. “Cathy,” Charlie said, “here’s Rose and the Doctor.”
The Doctor thought that she was somewhere near Charlie in age, white showing at the temples of her thick, black hair. She smiled, reserved, and nodded. “Nice t’ meet you.”
They were quiet as they walked down the camp road, and when it forked, Charlie led him off toward the woods, and Cathy lead Rose off toward the lake. He watched the two women until Rose looked over her shoulder and beamed a smile at him.
***
As the Doctor crawled through the low opening of the sweat tent, he decided that he wasn’t surprised that Charlie was the elder who would be conducting the ceremony. He scooted to the left, following the man in front of him as they crept along the inside edge, stopping when the other man sat and settling himself on the woven mat that covered the bare ground. Two other men came behind him, with Charlie at the end, pulling the tarp door cover closed.
Charlie held a small drum and struck a slow heart-beat rhythm on it with his fingertips. His voice spoke in a low murmur, weaving in and out of the drum beat, as if it was the drum that spoke, “Gizhe Manidoo -- I'iw nama'ewinan, maaba asemaa, miinwaa n'ode'winaanin gda-bagidinimaagom.”
The Doctor closed his eyes, the words of this language flowing over him. I was up this way onece before he'd told Rose. A memory that belonged to another him: “This is your thumb. Thumb. And these are your fingers. See? Fingers! I will count them; one, two, three, four.” A flash of smile, and then her fingers reaching up, “And this is your hair. Hair! Yes, that’s right. Your hair is yellow. I have never seen yellow hair, but Grandmother says that you are not sick and Grandfather says that you are not a Spirit, but you are not a real man.” She placed both hands on his chest. “Two hearts. Grandfather wanted to kill you, but I told him that you must have been given to us by the Manidoo, like a piece of float copper. A sign.”
Charlie continued in a mixture of English and Anishnaabemowin, “Miigwetch, Gizhe Manidoo, for this night, for bringing us here. Miigwetch, miigwetch. We thank you for the Grandmothers and the daughters. Miigwetch, miigwetch. We thank you for our women, the Mothers of our children.”
Setting the drum down, Charlie raised his arm and lifted the tarp covering the door. A man came halfway into the tent, balancing a large stone between two smoking sticks. Carefully, he set the hot stone in the shallow pit at the center of the tent and withdrew, shutting the tarp door behind him.
When the rock was in place, Charlie leaned forward, a dripping cedar frond in his hand, and shook water onto the stone. Cedar-scented steam curled up and around the men like a caressing hand.
“We come to Baraga every year to celebrate our families” Charlie said. “Each one of us here knows a woman who is a Grandmother, a Mother, a wife and a daughter. These women are the heart of the tribe, like the fire that burns in the hearth. They are what makes us more than animals. But we forget, eh? They want us to be men and not animals and we get angry at them.
When my Betty was alive, she would nag me. ‘Why haven’t you fixed this door like I’ve been asking? Have you called your parents this week? Why don’t you take your children on a hike?’ Always after me, eh? I would shake my head like a bear with a bug in its ear. ‘Leave me alone, woman!’ I’d yell.”
Charlie picked up the cedar fronds, shook them over the stone, and steam curled through the air. There was a thick silence, and then the drum again, beating like a heart. “Miigwetch, Gizhe Manidoo, for the women who make us men. Gizhe Miigwetch.”
***
It was lovely, warmer than she was expecting, and Rose took a deep breath of dark, pine scented night air. The strip of road sloped down to the water. She stopped, taking in the eerie beauty of the dark lake that moved with slow, breath-like waves, as if it was a great beast slumbering under a blanket of stars. A full moon cast a glowing path on the surface and outlined the pale strip of sand that hugged the shoreline.
“Did my brother tell you this was gonna be a ceremony?”
Rose started at the other woman’s quiet words. “Your brother? Oh, Charlie?”
“Yeah. Sorry, thought you knew.” Cathy began to walk down to the lake, and Rose followed. “Did he say that this was gonna be a ceremony?”
“Yes.” Rose stepped onto beach sand, cool and soft. It squeaked under her heel.
“Huh,” Cathy stopped and turned, a small grin on her lips. “Don’t know if you’d call it a ceremony. We’ll swim and then smudge. It’s … it’s like it’s between you and the water and the moon, eh? It’s a ceremony if you want it to be.”
Rose nodded. “Yeah. Okay.”
Four other women waited for them on the beach and another small group of women were further away, visible only where the moon shone on the curve of a shoulder or the long line of thigh.
There was a rustle of cloth and Rose turned to see Cathy already nude, perched at the edge of the water. “There’s no easy way to do this,” Cathy threw over her shoulder. “Ya just gotta jump in.” And with a splash, she was gone.
The other women undressed quickly, some laughing and calling softly to each other, one squealing as she hit the water, and Rose was alone on the beach. With a self-conscious look, so much for not being body conscious, she pulled her vest over her head and pushed off her shorts.
The water was cold. Rose stood, toes lapped by gentle waves and arms around her waist. Out on the black lake, a head broke the water, out where the moon cast its light, and disappeared again.
Jumping across dimensions? Snap. Cold water? Not so much.
The realization that the Doctor would never let her forget it if she didn’t come back wet finally mobilized her. And it looked gorgeous, like black silk. She took a deep breath, three running steps and dove down into the darkness.
***
The Doctor closed his eyes and breathed in. A trickle of sweat rolled down his spine and his skin prickled. Miigwetch, Gizhe Manidoo, for the women who make us men. When he first met her, she was just a girl. Weell, not just a girl. Rose Tyler had never been just anything. But he’d swept her off her little human feet.
He was The Doctor.
She stared down at the Earth, eyes round, and then back at him. “Is that why we're here? I mean, is that what you do? Jump in at the last minute and save the Earth?”
Oh, no, no, no. He had to nip that in the bud. That look, that certainty on her face. That …belief.
“I'm not saving it. Time's up.”
Rose, young and bright and soft and sure. He had thought that she was small, just a little girl, all yellow and pink. But she’d faced down a Dalek. A Dalek. And he’d had to re-evaluate this new companion. She’d flipped off armed thugs, dined with the Emperor of Kneash and made him giggle, and saved the whole Tr’dori race with a particularly clever slight of hand. She’d teased him about dancing. Him!
The drum beat, thrummed across the hot, damp air. The Doctor clenched his hands and surrendered to memory -- I looked into the TARDIS. And the TARDIS looked into me.
Just a woman? Rose Tyler? Sweat dripped into the Doctor’s eyes and he squeezed them shut.
Every time the universe threw something at her, something unbelievable, bizarre, something that should have sent her screaming, she just took it in, took it and made it hers.
***
Rose’s head broke the surface and she gasped.
Cold, yes, but not unbearable. When she dived back down, the water was a cool caress and she had a sudden memory, the feel of him, all sharp and cool, pressed against her. For a moment, she let the thought swirl around her head.
She had woken from a nightmare of snapping jaws and fangs, just a dream, but she couldn’t get back to sleep. So she’d gone looking, through the empty control room, kitchen, library, and she’d thought of calling but then noticed a door swing open and he was there, in a quiet dark room, asleep. When she stepped in the room, he started and blinked open his eyes, brows drawn down.
She must have had a look, a just-woke-up-from-a-nightmare look, because he simply scooted over and lifted the edge of the blanket. She bit her lip and he wafted the blanket, eyebrows raised.
When she slipped under his arm he gathered her against him and she shivered.
With a kick, she reached out her arms and opened her eyes. Down deep, skimming along the lake bottom, the water was beautifully clear. Moonlight speared through the depths. She kicked down, reached out, and moonlight played across her cupped fingers, on her forearms, making them glow. At the lake bottom, she gathered her legs under herself and pushed off. Her face broke the surface and she grabbed a lungful of air and dived down again.
Under the water was like being in another world. There were no plants here, nothing but the water, the sand, and the moonlight. She swam down to the lake bottom again and ran her fingers through the sand so that it swirled up, sparkling in the moonlight. Like the nanogenes, when he threw them out into the night. Under the water, the moonlight rippled on her arms. She turned and looked up through the water to the wavering image of the moon. Waves rippled across the surface of the lake and cast shadows across her skin, just like the rippled, sandy floor of the lake, below.
It’s between you and the water and the moon.
She surfaced and treaded water, lifting her face up to the moon, arms waving languidly through the coolness. A falling star streaked across the sky and she turned, frog-kicking, watching its path through the star field.
As her legs parted, kicking out, coolness washed against her labia and rushed inside.
She folded, letting herself sink slowly until she sat on the lake bottom, and opened her limbs into the coolness like a flower opening to the sun. To the moon. She looked down her body, hair swirling around, and moonlight played on the length of her, across dark-tipped breasts, belly, hip and thigh. Her body glowed and for a moment she remembered another time when her skin glowed golden like this.
***
The Doctor rocked forward, letting the steam caress his face. He wavered, lightheaded, and rocked back into the tarp side of the tent. Droplets of condensed water plinked down on his bare back and shoulders.
They were walking in Maruyama Park, with the cherry blossoms in full bloom, and a young Japanese family was sitting on a blanket. The man scrapped his fingers through the grass and sprinkled cherry petals in his little daughter’s hair. The girl looked up at her Father, laughing.
“Oh, look at that Rose! Humans are so lovely.” He’d said it without thinking, something that he might have said to Romana.
Rose had turned her gaze from the family and met his eyes, a little sad. Then she swung their hands between them, giving his fingers a squeeze. “You forget, yeah?” A slow smile spread over her face. “’s alright. Sometimes I do too. But you know what?" He met her eyes and wondered at the sadness there. She looked at the laughing child and back at him. "Sometimes," she said, "I forget that you are a Time Lord.”
He’d taken a sharp breath, not sure of what he was going to say, but she squeezed his fingers again, making him swallow whatever it was, because the sadness was gone and her eyes were shining, and he got a little lost when she looked at him like that.
She’d taken who he was and made him hers in ways that no one ever had. Over a millennia of taking what this Universe could throw at me. And then there was a girl, just a human girl. It was impossible, incredible, too improbable to be believed. It was …
…fantastic.
***
Back at the surface, Rose sucked in air, flipped bottom up, dived, and the water slid cool along her limbs. He’d held her in his arms and danced her around the control room, smiling from ear to ear, his cool body pressed against her. She’d loved him then, that leather clad Doctor, and he had left her in a blaze of light. Still me, he’d said. And she knew it, knew that the new, pinstripe-suited man was the Doctor.
And yet she missed that daft, old face. She’d never stopped missing him.
How long are you going to stay with me?
Forever.
She’d said the words to the man in the pinstripes but she knew that her leather clad Doctor heard them, too. In the one man’s wry, accepting grin, she’d heard the other man’s fantastic.
Ripples flowed up and down her skin, painted her with nature’s mark of water. Cool water, ebb and flow, impermanence, acceptance, resilience.
She had followed him across time, across dimensions, and he eluded her like water running through her fingers. Even when she regained him, he slipped away. Does it need saying? She had searched his eyes, and saw such need and pain that she could do nothing else but look away. My Doctor. She had vowed that she would save him, whatever the cost. And so she opened her fingers and he flowed away; she could hold on to him no more than she could hold on to time.
She had released the Time Lord like a too-long held breath. When she searched his eyes in that last searing moment, she saw past the pain and need to the love and gratitude underneath.
Rose kicked up from the cold, silken depths and surfaced with a gasp. This was him, flowing, unstoppable, forever. She ran a hand down the length of her body. This was her, fixed, temporary, solid. Breathing out bubbles, she twirled in the coolness. Now, in this moment in the moonlit lake, this was them.
They were all the Doctor. She’d watched him change in a burst of orange flame, one face blending into the other; she’d watched him die again and again under the Thames; she’d watched him burn a second time and not change; she’d watched, head spinning, as he stood next to himself.
On a zeppelin over the Maldives, she had broken down and wept. “I don’t understand. I can’t understand. You are my Doctor, my Doctor. But there’s him, and I miss him and I don’t understand!”
He had held her and murmured something about particles and waves, and time tangled like a skein of yarn in the claws of Schrödinger’s cat.
The moon dazzled, and she shook her head, blinking and gasping. It’s a ceremony if you want it to be. She closed her eyes and kicked out, spearing through the water. Dark and cold and sharp and bright and brilliant. She thought that, if she could have felt him in her mind, it would have felt like this. She opened her mouth and let the cool water rush past her lips.
All of that, all of them.
All of them in one man, in the Doctor, in her Doctor who she lay down beside and loved. She loved him and the blue eyed man in leather laced his fingers in hers. She loved him and the brown-eyed Time Lord was there, sweeping her off her feet and swinging her around, taking her love into his two hearts, making it his and then offering it back with whispered words from his single heart to hers.
This was them.
She floated on the surface, waving her arms and kicking gently, taking in the stars and the moon. It was time to go back. One more time, she flipped her body and dove down. Her fingertips touched the sand and she opened her eyes and looked up at the moon.
***
Sweat broke out across his temple and trickled down The Doctor’s neck. Another man spoke but the Doctor didn’t hear him, lost in his own thoughts. He felt suddenly weightless, floating in empty space, and he swallowed, grabbing at the ground.
These women are the heart of the tribe, like the fire that burns in the hearth.
Now; the fire that burns in the center of time.
Oh, Rose. Rose, who burnt at the center of time.
He had sent her away and she had come back burning with the fire of the vortex. He had said goodbye to her and she had flung herself through the cracks in reality. How many times had she watched him die? Why? Why did she do it? It didn’t make sense. Surely it was beyond human love! He knew humans, he’d been around them for a very, very long time.
“He died and didn’t regenerate? And you were there?”
“No, I wasn’t there. I got there too late that time.”
He bent his head and sweat dripped down onto his knees.
The man on his right nudged him with an elbow and handed him the cedar frond. The Doctor took it in his hand, dipped it in the basin and sprinkled water on the hot rocks. His tongue felt thick in his mouth. What could he say? What could he ever say that would be enough? With a sigh, he shook the frond again. “Thank you, Rose Tyler,” he said, leaning his face into the steam. “Gizhe Miigwetch.”
It was too simple, really. But the simple words, the self-acknowledgment, were enough for now. He leaned back and watched the steam curl lazily up into the air.
As he turned to hand the cedar frond to the next man, a scream cut through the night and the men around him froze.
Charlie’s eyes were wide. “That came from the lake.”
The Doctor was moving before he was conscious of it, diving over the fire pit. His shoulder hit the ground and he somersaulted through the door, staggering to his feet with a painful grunt and shake of his head. He took his bearings and spun toward the lake. There was another scream. “Rose Tyler,” he muttered and took off running. A grin cracked his lips. “Jeopardy friendly.”
**
A strong current pushed at Rose and something moved across the sky, blocking out the moonlight.
What?
As she began to kick to the surface, the water moved against her again, stronger, a cool blast that rolled her across the lake bed in a wild tangle of limbs, hair and sand. What? She choked, breathing water and struggled up toward the air, finding it and grabbing a breath.
Something huge was moving in the water. It lifted up, dark and dripping, blotting out the stars, and turned. Another wave lifted Rose high up, and then down again. The wave pulled at her, sucking her under. She scraped along the lake bottom and fought against the urge to gasp. Fighting for traction in the twirling sand, she dug her toes in, bent her knees and kicked off again.
When her head broke the water, she heard shouts on the shore.
Far above her, something blinked its eyes closed and open, looking at the shore and then down to where she floated. Moonlight limned the edges of a great horned head and a rounded snout; moonlight glinted off many, many sharp teeth. But when it breathed out, ruffling the water all around her, it smelled of the lake, pine forests and time.
She grinned. She was the Doctor’s companion, after all.
I know you. Rose looked up, far up, into the ancient eyes. I might not have ever met you, but I know you, and you know me. “Hello!” she called up at it. “I’m Rose, and over there on the shore,” she waved her arm, flinging out water drops, “I’m sure you’ll see the Doctor!”
To Be Continued in Episode Seven