Sultry Heat
Rose was more than willing to follow wherever the Doctor led, eager even. Usually that meant excitement, danger and running for your life, and in one case hopping for their lives.
But this time, following the Doctor, her hand firmly grasped in his larger one, she was more than simply eager to follow, she was trembling with the NEED to go where he ( Read more... )
But this time, following the Doctor, her hand firmly grasped in his larger one, she was more than simply eager to follow, she was trembling with the NEED to go where he ( Read more... )
(What a way to meet the infamous and wonderful Rose that would be.)
Enough time traveling with him and running for her life put Martha immediately on the defense as she tilted her head to peek out and around the Doctor's shoulder. Then she saw what he saw and saw the reason that he'd stopped so suddenly.
Reacting immediately out of propriety and politeness Martha averted her eyes away from the far too intimate tableau before them.
One look at his face and Martha knew he was already gone. The wound that hadn't quite scarred over began to tear open again.
(At least now I know,) Martha thought, willing herself to not cry and break. Not here and not now. It was no wonder she couldn't compete with what the Doctor felt for and had with Rose Tyler, but at least she didn't have to pretend that she didn't still harbor those faint hopes and wishes.
She never noticed that she instinctively reached out to restrain the Time Lord from charging forward into the place where he very much didn't belong.
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Mostly because of the complete certainty that this pretty nance was HIM. A future him, evidently.
Rose gave off a squeal and her arms flew up to cover herself. He looked up to see her going ten shades of red.
He stood up and glared at… himself.
“Right, still rude I see. Turn about at least. Bit of privacy would be appreciated.” He bent over to grab Rose’s bra and tank top from the pile of clothing, handing them to her before finding his own jeans and yanking them on.
Rose freed one hand covering her breasts and snatched the clothing, turning her back to the strangers, trusting him to protect her back.
Not that he was too thrilled to be caught with his pants down. Or off.
“That’s me, Rose.” He thought maybe that would make her feel less vulnerable. He turned his own back, scratch marks and all, to yank on his pants and begin pulling on his shoes.
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That brought her present state to mind and she made a strange squeaking noise and crossed her arms over herself. The Doctor stood up and glared a the stranger, and the girl that had ran into his back and looked around him.
Didn't matter that he was starkers, he was still more than a bit intimidating. She felt a trickle of pride for a moment that this was her Doctor. Of course the pride was buried in the flush of humiliation. Bad enough people knew what they were doin out here, but to be CAUGHT. Only thing worse would be if it were her mum doing the catching.
“Right, still rude I see. Turn about at least. Bit of privacy would be appreciated.” The Doctor growled.
Huh? He knew these two? Who are they? She asked as he handed over her bra and top. She was about to mentally quiz him when he volunteered the answer.
“That’s me, Rose.”
Oh. She quickly pulled on her sports bra and tank, looking over her shoulder at the newcomers.
Lots more hair, and almost painfully thin there. The suit appeared rumpled, but this place wasn’t conducive to keeping things smart. The Doctor in a suit? There was something she didn’t think she’d ever see. Not that it was HER Doctor. He was… pretty.
Okay, he was definitely the kind she had gone for before her Doctor came along. Was he a past or future version, she wondered.
Dressed she had turned around and hardly realized she was looking the new guy up and down. New Doctor. Oh, how were they gonna work that?
She only then realized how… hurt, her Doctor looked as he looked to her.
She gave him a smile. *You’re mine. You did say he’s you, right?*
The surge of jealousy and insecurity was quickly pulled back. But she felt them. Then she realized how her mental message could be construed.
*No! Not like that. YOU are mine. Not him. I don’t know him. I mean, if he’s you I’m sure he’s a good enough sort but…*
Mental laughter. There was still a hint of hurt behind it, but he was covering for it. *It can be confusing.*
Rose looked back to the newcomers now, running her teeth over her bottom lip, she wondered what she was expected to do. Other than be mortified.
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The voice was different, Martha realized. Of course, she realized that the voice would be different; the body and form were different. However, the accent was different as well and that was what caused her to turn around and cast a surprised glance in that direction.
Surprise turned to embarrassment and mortification as the other - earlier - version of the Doctor leaned over to gather something up from the jungle floor. He apparently had all of the same modesty as Jack Harkness, which was to say none whatsoever, and her eyes made a quick comparative circuit of his body before her own modesty made Martha realize what she was doing.
Martha jerked her attention away, her face hot. Even not looking, her brain made the comparisons: the other was lean and wiry, not skinny like this one, a bit tan with muscle in all the right places. Not that she really could make a full comparison, she'd never seen the Doctor - her Doctor - totally starkers. . .
That thought sent her mind spiraling down another path she didn't wish to follow and Martha gave a firm tug on the Doctor's arm. "Doctor, I think that we should go."
[Ten]
"Doctor, I think that we should go." Martha's words and her insistent pulling upon his arm broke through the stasis of the Doctor's mind. He'd looked away the moment his earlier self had chastised him, for once out of his element and completely off-kilter.
It had never been like that with Rose. Could it have been? He didn't know. What he did know was that Rose was mortified, and that wasn't the way he wanted to see her again.
"This is private," Martha added, apparently thinking that he was too daft and addled to figure that out.
At the present moment, perhaps he was.
"Yes, go, we should," the Doctor agreed, giving a quick glance to his companion. Martha looked steadfastly ahead into the jungle, not behind her and not even in his direction.
Martha turned just enough to meet his eyes, and then gave another tug on his jacket sleeve. The Doctor did not resist the forward pull. Her hand slid easily into his and she led him away like an errant child, calling back, without looking back, "Sorry to intrude."
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"You know, I rarely ever get along with other mes." The Doctor pulled on hsi leather jacket.
"You know there's something basically wrong with even saying that." Rose shoved her feet into her trainers.
"Not to Time Lords it isn't."
He held out his hand to Rose. She smiled a bit and took it. She was still highly embarassed, but recovering.
Not that she'd be able to look at the other Doctor in the face for a while.
"Is that a past or future you?" She asked as they began to follow the trail back towards the camp.
She felt a pulse of annoyance and jealousy as her Doctor untied the warning ribbon, for all the good it did.
"Come on, I'm just curious. Not about to run off with 'im." Rose sent love and reassurance. *I'm very happy with the model I got.*
"Future. I didn't recognize him. So he's the tenth, eleventh or twelfth." The Doctor now understood why the mental signature was a bit off. "I don't think he's in the right reality. But how is that possible? Time Lords are fixed, we don't have alternates."
"Alternates? Like that place the people who chased down the escaped prisoners were in?" Rose looked at him for an explanation, grasping for a change of subject to keep her mind off what had just happened.
"Exactly. Problem is, Time Lords used to be able to move between realities, but there was no alternate version of Gallifrey. It was fixed. No alternate Time Lords. An alternate me shouldn't exist."
"Lots of things are real.
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I figure that they came in from a different direction, so didn't see the ribbon. Just wanted to make that clear.
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Part of Martha actually ached for him, as unbelievable as that was. Here she was, doing her best to not fall under his spell again (It had been too late for that from the moment I set foot back in the TARDIS) and to not fall into the same trap of wanting something that she could never have, yet she knew that it was happening all over again.
She was wiser and knew better this time 'round but that didn't change a bloody thing.
"I'm sorry," Martha whispered. She didn't know if the Doctor was listening to her, but she plunged on anyway. "I never realized. . .I mean, I never knew . . . I didn't realize that you and Rose were -"
"We weren't," The Doctor answered, his voice somehow quieter than Martha ever imagined it could be. "It was never like that between me and Rose."
"Oh, but back there . . . " Martha trailed off. She didn't want to remember her first sighting of Rose Tyler, didn't want to remember the fully starkers Doctor that had been before her Doctor.
"Never happened, not anything like that."
"But you wanted it." Martha regretted the words the moment that they left her lips.
The Doctor stopped walking, and it was only their joined hands that pulled her to a halt. Martha didn't - couldn't - meet his eyes. She couldn't bear to see the hurt there, or the shadow of Rose Tyler, the shadow she finally thought she no longer lived under.
"I - I don't know." The heavy, resigned weight in the Doctor's voice drew Martha's head up to meet his troubled gaze. "I thought she would be there and that she wouldn't leave me. She wouldn't have either, but I sent her away and whatever might have been with Rose really wouldn't have ever been at all."
(Is it scary that that actually made sense to me?) Martha wondered.
"But," the Doctor snapped out the word, shaking the mask of melancholy off. Regret and questions still haunted his eyes, but his posture and the twitch of his lips told Martha that the worse had passed. At least in the interim. "*That* was not my Rose. My Rose is safe with Pete and her Mum and Mickey. This is another world and it's not ours and it's time we started asking our own questions."
(to be continued in Part 2)
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The suddenness with which he skidded to a halt pulled Martha off balance. Her toe hooked over a root and she stumbled forward, saved from a face plant by the Doctor's reflexes and his firm grip around her waist.
"All right, then?" The Doctor asked.
Martha nodded, carefully making certain she was balanced before letting go of his forearms. "Warn me when you're going to turn it around like that, yeah?"
"Sorry, but I was just thinking. There are two of me, which is entirely possible in time travel but shouldn't be at all possible now."
"Now you're not making a bit of sense."
"We're Time Lords. We don't have alternates. We used to travel through realities, but we were the only ones. We were a fixed point and yet -"
"There are two of you from two different realities."
"One of us shouldn't exist. It shouldn't even be possible." The Doctor grabbed up her hand and set off for a mad dash back toward his other self and Rose Tyler. "Best stay close and keep up."
Martha had no idea what the Doctor was thinking, but he was no longer being maudlin so it had to be a good sign. Not that she had any choice with the keeping up as he dragged her along behind him.
(Of course how do you a greet a Time Lord whom you've seen starkers and a woman you've seen half undressed?)
"Oi! Wait up a minute you!" The Doctor shouted out as a head with large ears and a head of blonde hair came into sight further along the path. "We're wrong, you know that? We're not supposed to have alternates!"
"You might have wanted to apologize for interrupting, first?" Martha couched as they drew to a halt a good ten feet away from the pair.
The Doctor looked at her and frowned a bit, then turned back to face forward. "Sorry for the earlier interruption. I'm you, you're me and we're from two different universes. Doesn't that fly in the face of everything we've ever learned or been taught?"
"Blimey," Martha muttered at the look her Doctor received from the other Doctor. "You don't even play well with yourself, do you?"
Then she gave thanks for her dark complexion as she felt her face flush with the double entendre of those words.
((OOC: And now it's open to respond to))
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He crossed his arms and noticed Rose was finding something interesting on her trainers.
“But yeah. Was just tellin’ Rose it was wrong. Bound to bump into yourself once in a while when you spend hundreds of years travellin’ in time. But an alternate version? Should be impossible.”
“You said Gallifrey was a fixed point. Was that why Time Lords were? I mean once Gallifrey was gone, would you follow the same rules as the rest of the universe, or were you kept separate some other way?” Rose looked up, but only at HER Doctor.
The Doctor looked momentarily turned inward, then broke into a huge grin. He grabbed the sides of Rose’s head and pressed a kiss to her hair. “Brilliant. Might not be THE answer, but it’s one of the many possibilities.”
Rose was beaming at him. Then she seemed to remember who they were with and tucked her head down again.
“Got the feeling, we already met, hay? But I’m The Doctor. Ninth version. And this is Rose Tyler, my plus one plus one. Or is that plus two?” Rose went a deeper shade of pink now.
“Not something you tell strangers.” She punched his arm.
“’Snot a stranger. It’s me, and another companion, yeah?”
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Rose wanted the ground to open up and swallow her when the other Doctor and his friend caught up with them. However; that brought to mind the whole bunker blowing and collapsing inwards, she she’d settle for a rock to hide under. Especially at the apology for interrupting. At least they hadn’t been in the middle of something
She was pathetically glad for a change in topic. Her mind was working faster than it once had. She might have come up with the idea before, although it would have taken longer. But that was before she could run mathematical probabilities through her head to see possible futures.
“You said Gallifrey was a fixed point. Was that why Time Lords were? I mean once Gallifrey was gone, would you follow the same rules as the rest of the universe, or were you kept separate some other way?” She looked at her Doctor, found him seem saddened by the mention of his world and its fate, then turn on a mental dime and beam at her. He called her brilliant and kissed the top of her head.
Yet another display the two others saw. Oh, this was gonna remain awkward for a while.
“Got the feeling, we already met, hay? But I’m The Doctor. Ninth version. And this is Rose Tyler, my plus one plus one. Or is that plus two?”
Introductions? That might have been semi-polite, if he hadn’t gone all testosterone claim staking. She half expected him to drape an arm over her shoulder.
She tried to cover her further mortification by punching him in the arm. “Not something you tell strangers.”
“’Snot a stranger. It’s me, and another companion, yeah?” He gestured to the other two.
Rose forced herself to actually face the two. Oh yes, the new Doctor was definitely conventionally good lookin’ and younger lookin, with a puppyish thing goin’ on. What about the woman? Older than her by only a few years. Really pretty. Was she to the other Doctor what Rose was to this one? He said he didn’t do that. But maybe that one felt it was time to change as well. Was she jealous at the idea?
Oh this whole thing could give her a headache.
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When the younger version declared that Rose was brilliant, the Doctor could only smile full of fond memories, "Of course she is. Rose always did know what to say."
However, it was the next words that took him completely off guard. His eyes darted back and forth between this version of himself and Rose as he figured out the meaning behind the words.
"That's not possible," the Doctor objected. "It - it can't be."
"Doctor?" Martha asked quietly at his side. When the Doctor looked at her, he noticed that she was a bit distracted, leaning against the nearest tree, which was likely why she - Dr. Martha Jones - hadn't figured out the meaning of the words.
"Rose is pregnant."
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(Not that you're so much older,) Martha reminded herself. Except that she'd been to university and medical training and even practiced for a bit before the Doctor parked the TARDIS in a corner of her lounge and waited for her to come home from a long day at the hospital.
"Of course she is. Rose always did know what to say."
Martha flinched ever so slightly at the words, and looked away from Rose, away from the Ninth Doctor, instead finding the pattern of the tree trunk of the utmost interest to her. She leaned against it a bit, resting her cheek against the rough bark while she scraped gently at it with the thumbnail of one hand.
The Doctor's - *her* Doctor's - exclamation of surprise and denial drew Martha's attention back to the conversation. "Doctor?"
"Rose is pregnant."
Now Martha could put a location to this place. (Hell. This is hell.)
Martha's attention moved to the Doctor, watching him carefully. He looked about gob smocked, but wasn't teetering on the edge of withdrawal again. It was too early to tell whether that was a good or bad thing.
Steeling herself, Martha pushed away from the tree and smiled at Rose, although the woman didn't seem to be looking at her at all. (Is she as bothered by my presence as I am by hers?) "I say congratulations are in order then?
"And while this one here's forgotten his manners, I'm Martha Jones," Martha politely extended her hand. "Dr. Martha Jones and that's version ten-point-oh." She didn't mention that she'd only learned that not twenty minutes ago.
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There was silence for a moment, then Martha introducing herself. Romana burst into view right on the heels of that introduction.
"And I'm Romana," she said, for Rose's benefit for the other Doctor had clearly recognised her instantly. Judging by the look of utter shock on his face, anyway. "Lady President of Gallifrey."
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