"Out of Joint" Commentary, Part . . . oh, who cares.
In which Inara and the Doctor have another match in their battle of wits, and the Doctor finds himself on his arse--and in Rose's bed:
I thought that chapter title was apropos, considering Inara's vocation and personality.
In retrospect, the Doctor wished he’d locked the TARDIS doors.
Oh, Doctor!
It was night on Serenity. The Doctor was continuing his work on the TARDIS, Jack and Rose having trundled themselves off to bed some time ago. The Angelet incident had cost them some time; Jack and Kaylee had been wrapped up in the other ship’s repairs, much to the Doctor’s irritation, leaving him to work on the TARDIS alone. Not that he minded too terribly, but it was the principle
Not "principal"! Bad honorh!
of the thing. One couldn’t have one’s help wandering off. Set a bad precedent, that did.
Still, there was something almost meditative about working on his ship alone. It gave him time to think. While he was running a few tests on the console, he plotted out how he’d connect the TARDIS and Serenity.
The TARDIS doors opened quietly behind him, and the Doctor turned, expecting River. Instead, the doors admitted Inara. Her face was bare of makeup, to no appreciable detriment to her beauty, and she wore a gold wrap over a mauve silk nightgown. Perhaps it was just the mauve, but the Doctor found himself suddenly wary as her perfume wafted through the cool, dry air of the console room.
She did wear a mauve nightgown on the show, and I couldn't resist the joke. Besides, he's right to be wary--she's about to take him down.
“Hello,” he said, for lack of anything else coming to mind.
She smiled, walking toward him
Not "descending into the TARDIS"--another bad on me.
on silk-slippered feet. “Hello, Doctor.”
“Looking for Jack?” he asked. He was fully aware of their tryst the previous night, and had frankly been expecting it from the moment he met her.
“No,” she said. “I thought I’d take the opportunity to satisfy my curiosity.”
The Doctor gave a short laugh. “Careful with that. When I say those words, trouble is never far behind.”
You can't argue with the facts. Of course, no matter what he says, trouble has a way of being not too far behind, but we'll ignore that for the sake of a witticism.
“If even half of Jack’s and Rose’s stories are true, that’s not far from the truth,” said Inara with an amused quirk of her eyebrows.
“Well, out with it, then,” said the Doctor, tightening down a panel.
“Out with what?”
“The subject of your curiosity, of course.” He looked over his shoulder at her. “What are you curious about, Inara Serra? Life? The universe? Everything? If you can name the question, I understand the answer is forty-two.”
Unexpected HHGttG reference!
“Douglas Adams,” said Inara. “I read some of his work in my youth. Does your TARDIS run on an Infinite Improbability Drive?”
I've often wondered that myself. It seemed not unrealistic that Inara would've read some Adams when she was younger. I have no doubt his work will stand the test of time.
“Not exactly, but close. You know, about a thousand years from now, there’ll be a whole Galactic Hitchhikers movement, complete with electronic thumbs and the requisite towels. I’ve even ferried a few on the TARDIS.
I dearly hope this happens, because the future will be far less awesome if it doesn't.
Amazing what you humans get up to once you achieve faster-than-light travel.” He toggled a switch experimentally. “But that’s off the subject, of course. What curiosity would you like to satisfy?”
Inara moved gracefully to the console, running her hand lightly over a repaired portion. “Not to put too fine a point on it,” she said, “but you’re the subject of my curiosity. It’s not every day that I meet an alien.” She lifted her eyes to his face. “You look so human. How alien are you, Doctor?”
“Very,” he said, meeting her gaze before turning his attention to the console again. “Looks can be deceiving.”
“I don’t doubt it. Simon mentioned a few physical differences--two hearts, he said, and your blood proteins--but I’m more interested in non-physical differences.”
“How so?”
She put her head to the side a little in a rather fetching way. The Doctor wondered idly if it came naturally, as it did with Rose, or if her training was so ingrained that every move she made was calculated to evoke the reaction she was looking for.
I think the line between Inara's core personality and her training has become blurred over the years. It's not that she's always calculating her effect on people, but she does read them on instinct and adjusts her own behavior to match.
“Relationships,” she said after a moment. “How different were your people from humans in that regard?”
He might’ve expected this. His mouth twisted into a smirk. “What kind of relationships in particular? Family? Friends? Enemies?” The Doctor looked at Inara directly. “Sex?”
I rather enjoyed writing this battle of wits. They're so very different, the Doctor and Inara, that figuring out how they'd connect was a challenge of the best kind.
Her returned smile was knowing. “Very well, then--I admit I’ve been rather at a loss concerning your relationship with Rose. I can normally deduce a great deal about a relationship between any two people in moments, but you and Rose . . . I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a relationship quite like it. I thought at first you might be like Mal and Kaylee, but that doesn’t fit. You’re not fraternal or paternal toward her. You’re more than friends, but not lovers. It occurs to me that your people might have had a word for your relationship that’s lacking in any of the languages I know.”
There aren't any really good words in English to describe the Doctor and Rose. I've often thought the Gaelic term anamchara, "soul friend," would be well applied to them
“My people’s language was painfully exact,” said the Doctor, skirting the edges of his most painful memories. “However, it concentrated less on nebulous concepts like relationships between two people and more on hard maths and science. And time, of course. Every verb had a dozen conjugations or more to suit at what point in time the action took or would be taking place.” He fiddled with another switch, not meeting Inara’s penetrating gaze. “They wouldn’t have approved of my relationships with Rose and Jack. Weren’t all that fond of humans, the Time Lords.”
“Yet you are.”
“Think you’re all right. You’re a troublesome lot, and I can respect that. One day, you might even be great, if you don’t do yourselves in through sheer stupidity first.”
A tart, if fair assessment.
Inara gave a light laugh, but there was a little strain behind it. The Doctor knew instinctively she was thinking about the Unification War (now, there was a grand example of oxymoron) and how destructive it had been. The most destructive war in human history . . . until the next one.
Isn't that the way it always goes?
“I’m glad to hear we have our charms,” she said at length. “My curiosity, however, is still unsatisfied. Did your people have romantic or sexual relationships in the same way we do?”
“Depends on how far you go back,” said the Doctor a bit flippantly. “The Time Lords were well on the way to becoming the stiff-necked old blowhards they were before your kind crawled out of the primordial ooze.”
He's deliberately dodging her intent. It's not working particularly well.
“Let’s try the last, say, 900 years,” Inara said dryly.
The Doctor silently cursed Jack. He considered--quite strongly--warning Inara off of this line of questioning, but in a fit of masochism decided to give her an answer. He turned to look at her.
“Interesting phase of history,” he said. “By the time I came around, Time Lords had, for the most part, given up on sexual reproduction, not that we were all that fertile to begin with. That was one price of our long lives. After me and a few of my peers, there were very few children born what you’d consider the natural way. Very few.”
Figured this covered the Looms as well as any other alternative methods of reproduction. Like sex.
Inara considered that. “Such as yours?”
She just saw right through him.
That was when it occurred to the Doctor that he’d seriously underestimated this woman.
No one expects the girl!
“Such as mine.” He turned away. “If you’ll excuse me, I have things to do.”
Inara didn’t move as the Doctor started fussing with switches again. If it was to be a war of attrition, he knew he could win, and he determinedly ignored her.
Needless to say, those switches don't need to be fussed with. Also, he's so wrong about that war of attrition.
“I wonder if that’s why you hold yourself back from Rose,” she said after the silence stretched uncomfortably.
He snorted softly. “Humans. You think sex is the answer to everything.”
“I know better than anyone that it isn’t,”
IMHO, a professional sex worker like Inara would know the limits of sexual solutions better than just about anyone.
Inara parried, “but I actually wasn’t talking about sex, in this case.”
“Oh?” He quietly cursed himself for making assumptions--and exposing his own feelings.
She shoots, she scores!
“I’m talking about touch and intimacy that’s not necessarily sexual. I watch the two of you, and while Rose is utterly open and vulnerable to you, you keep her at a distance--though I think she’s gotten a lot closer than you realize. You keep yourself apart when you don’t have to.”
“Don’t I?” he asked, looking directly at her again. “I am alien, Inara Serra. Don’t think I have the same urges or needs as human men.”
She looked him up and down. “Perhaps you don’t, but . . .” She reached up, cupping his cheek with her hand. “I recognize skin hunger when I see it.”
Oh, wounded Nine! How he needs human touch.
As her hand slipped down his face to his neck, the Doctor realized he was instinctively leaning into her touch. He stepped back quickly.
She's playing him like a dulcimer, she is.
Inara’s smile was amused. “I’m not the one you want touching you, anyway.”
“It would be a mistake to allow Rose any closer,” he said.
“Why?”
How the conversation had got this far, the Doctor wasn’t sure. He decided it was time to put an end to it.
“Do you want to know what a Time Lord is?” he asked, stepping just a bit closer, forcing Inara to look up at him. She met his gaze steadily, lifting her eyebrows in silent assent. “I don’t foretell the future. That’s a parlor trick. I see time for what it truly is. The first and last lesson I learned was, ‘There is no past. There is no present. There is no future. There is only Time.’
Made that right up, but I thought it sounded good for a lesson that might be drummed into the heads of Time Tots.
And it all passes through my head. All that was, all that is, and everything that could be. I see every possibility, Inara. I see what is possible, and what is probable. Do you want to know what’s ahead for Rose?”
“Tell me,” said Inara.
“There are dozens of futures in which we part by choice. She sees too much, or she discovers that she wants a normal human life with a husband and a mortgage and a dozen children, and she leaves me. Or I leave because it’s best for her. Sometimes I even send her away because things get too dangerous--got a whole emergency program and everything just for that eventuality.” He paused briefly. “Then there are the scores of futures in which I have nothing to bring back to Jackie Tyler but her daughter’s corpse. And then there are the hundreds in which I can’t even do that. Disintegrated, incinerated, lost to space and time, swallowed by a black hole, fallen into the Void--so many ways for a young woman to meet her end in the universe. So very many ways. That is what could be, Inara.
The last few, of course, are things that nearly did happen to her. He sees them already.
“There is no future in which she and I live happily ever after. Not one.”
This is, in part, informed by Jonquil's excellent The Ragged Edge, which I consider one of the best Nine character studies. Barely a page long, and she packs so much into it. I envy that. But, to get back on track, the Doctor can see "all that could ever be," and in it, there are so many ways for Rose to die while she's with him. Yet he needs her too badly to override her will and send her home.
Inara nodded after a silent moment. “I see.”
“Then you know why I can’t allow Rose any closer.”
“Do I?” Inara smiled a little, sadness in her eyes. “What I know, Doctor, is that you have to make the decision as to what you’ll regret more--what you did, or what you didn’t do.”
Which is the real question with the Doctor and Rose, of course. What's certain is that he'll lose her. What's not certain is whether he'll be left beating himself up for words unsaid, life unloved.
The Doctor gave her a hard smile. “Interesting that you say that to me, considering the situation between you and Captain Reynolds.”
A counter-offensive, but not the strongest one. It's a bit too easy for her to parry.
“Perhaps I’m simply bad at taking my own advice,” said Inara with a shrug and a wry smile, one the Doctor couldn’t help but return. “Or perhaps the situation is different between us. Mal will never accept what I am--but Rose accepts you completely. You should know the value of that better than any of us.” She turned and began to move toward the exit.
“Rose doesn’t know what she’s accepting,” said the Doctor, voice heavy.
Inara looked back at him. “If she did, do you truly think she’d reject you?” She watched him struggle with the concept for a moment. “Were I to advise you, Doctor, I would tell you to go to her. Be close to her physically, whatever that means to you. Let your barriers down. I don’t think you’ll be displeased with the results, and so few can say that. So very few.”
Inara sees this strange, but beautiful, relationship, and like Jack, she can't understand why the Doctor doesn't take what's in front of him. It's so much more than most people have.
Just before she got to the doors, the Doctor realized something. “You remind me of someone,” he said.
She turned back to him with a slight smile. “Who?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I haven’t met her yet.” He gave her one of his bright grins. “Time Lord thing. Déjà vu in reverse.”
The answer, of course, is in the chapter title. When he meets Reinette, he'll realize whom Inara reminded him of.
Inara’s soft laugh followed her out the doors.
Alone again, the Doctor suddenly couldn’t concentrate on his work anymore. The fact that Inara had seen through him so easily . . . perhaps he was worse than he thought at keeping the world at bay.
Match to Inara.
Maybe he was downright lousy at it. Maybe he was sick of keeping up the effort.
Suddenly, the thought of touching Rose was almost irresistible. He’d done such a good job of keeping that bit of distance between them early on--holding her hand and occasionally hugging her, even though she was an incredibly tactile person and had made it clear that his touch was more than welcome. In a few cases, his need had won out--like after the Dalek, when he’d pulled Rose almost violently close, burying his face in her neck as she wrapped her arms around him, trying to give him the comfort he demanded
I so love that cut scene, and I wish it'd been kept, with a few extra seconds added on. It was like he was trying to physically absorb the comfort he needed from her body, and she was willing to give him all she had.
--or hers had, as when he’d cradled her in his arms in the Cloisters for hours after her father’s death.
"Father's Day"--the other fanon favorite for Nine and Rose's first time.
Then Jack came on board. He was more than willing to give Rose the physical closeness she craved, though to his credit, he’d never pressed the issue of what he might want from her. The first time the Doctor found them cuddled together on the couch watching some godawful movie, jealousy had almost overwhelmed him. If Rose had noticed that the Doctor more readily hugged her or put his arm around her since then, she’d not said anything.
Men are so competitive. I fully believe this is exactly how it went.
Leaving his coat slung over the railing, the Doctor headed down the halls to Rose’s room. He thought he’d just look in on her, as she was likely asleep, but when he opened the door, oh so carefully, she shifted and lifted her head from the pillows to look at him.
This is another scene I had planned from the start. I actually did consider having them make love at this point, but ultimately decided that would complicate the plot unnecessarily. But I wanted them to talk about River and cuddle.
“Doctor?” she asked.
Giving in to temptation, he moved fully into the room, closing the door behind him. A soft, warm glow, as if from firelight, prevented the room from being totally dark, and he could see her quite clearly. Her eyelids were heavy, but she wasn’t displeased to see him.
“You should be sleeping,” he said, sitting on the edge of her bed. “The tissue regeneration takes a lot out of you.”
“I know. I was just thinking . . .” She trailed off, biting her lip. “What you said about River yesterday, that she sees so much more than we do, but we call her crazy--you’re right; I just thought she was, you know, off. And . . . I’m sorry.”
“For what?” he asked.
She shrugged a little. “Jus’ after all you’ve taught me, I feel like I should know better than that. I don’t want to let you down.”
I think Rose probably had more than a few moments like this with Nine. Everything was so new between them, and with him being so much more experienced, she must've felt more than once that she let him down or disappointed him.
Hearts heavy, the Doctor reached out, touching Rose’s face like Inara had touched him not long ago. “Rose Tyler, I never want you to be other than what you are.”
But he's not disappointed in her. On the contrary, she's so much more than he ever expected.
Rose’s hand covered his, and her eyes glistened in the half-light. Giving in to impulse, the Doctor said, “Shove over.”
Rose made a questioning noise, but moved over a bit. The Doctor kicked off his shoes and settled against the pillows next to her.
Good boy! Take what you need.
“What’s this about?” she asked, sounding a bit confused but not at all dismayed.
“I need to sleep sometimes, too,” he said. “Your room’s prettier than mine.
Niiiice excuse!
Did it go like this after we visited the 1920s?” The room was all warm tones and dark wood with a distinct art deco feel.
“Yeah, came back and the TARDIS had redecorated,” said Rose. She moved closer to his side a bit tentatively, and the Doctor slipped an arm around her. Taking that as encouragement, Rose snuggled against his side, pillowing her head on his shoulder and resting her hand on his chest. “This is nice.”
To say the least.
He didn’t say anything. She was so warm and soft, and he felt like she was somehow sinking into him, filling the hollow space between his hearts. He could sense her thoughts like butterflies flitting at the edge of his mind, feel them settling as her breathing deepened and she slipped into sleep.
Another piece of imagery I'm rather smug about having written.
Letting himself settle and drift, he reflected that whatever else she was, Inara Serra was worth listening to.
This, of course, leads to me pulling a switcheroo next chapter. Hee!
I thought that chapter title was apropos, considering Inara's vocation and personality.
In retrospect, the Doctor wished he’d locked the TARDIS doors.
Oh, Doctor!
It was night on Serenity. The Doctor was continuing his work on the TARDIS, Jack and Rose having trundled themselves off to bed some time ago. The Angelet incident had cost them some time; Jack and Kaylee had been wrapped up in the other ship’s repairs, much to the Doctor’s irritation, leaving him to work on the TARDIS alone. Not that he minded too terribly, but it was the principle
Not "principal"! Bad honorh!
of the thing. One couldn’t have one’s help wandering off. Set a bad precedent, that did.
Still, there was something almost meditative about working on his ship alone. It gave him time to think. While he was running a few tests on the console, he plotted out how he’d connect the TARDIS and Serenity.
The TARDIS doors opened quietly behind him, and the Doctor turned, expecting River. Instead, the doors admitted Inara. Her face was bare of makeup, to no appreciable detriment to her beauty, and she wore a gold wrap over a mauve silk nightgown. Perhaps it was just the mauve, but the Doctor found himself suddenly wary as her perfume wafted through the cool, dry air of the console room.
She did wear a mauve nightgown on the show, and I couldn't resist the joke. Besides, he's right to be wary--she's about to take him down.
“Hello,” he said, for lack of anything else coming to mind.
She smiled, walking toward him
Not "descending into the TARDIS"--another bad on me.
on silk-slippered feet. “Hello, Doctor.”
“Looking for Jack?” he asked. He was fully aware of their tryst the previous night, and had frankly been expecting it from the moment he met her.
“No,” she said. “I thought I’d take the opportunity to satisfy my curiosity.”
The Doctor gave a short laugh. “Careful with that. When I say those words, trouble is never far behind.”
You can't argue with the facts. Of course, no matter what he says, trouble has a way of being not too far behind, but we'll ignore that for the sake of a witticism.
“If even half of Jack’s and Rose’s stories are true, that’s not far from the truth,” said Inara with an amused quirk of her eyebrows.
“Well, out with it, then,” said the Doctor, tightening down a panel.
“Out with what?”
“The subject of your curiosity, of course.” He looked over his shoulder at her. “What are you curious about, Inara Serra? Life? The universe? Everything? If you can name the question, I understand the answer is forty-two.”
Unexpected HHGttG reference!
“Douglas Adams,” said Inara. “I read some of his work in my youth. Does your TARDIS run on an Infinite Improbability Drive?”
I've often wondered that myself. It seemed not unrealistic that Inara would've read some Adams when she was younger. I have no doubt his work will stand the test of time.
“Not exactly, but close. You know, about a thousand years from now, there’ll be a whole Galactic Hitchhikers movement, complete with electronic thumbs and the requisite towels. I’ve even ferried a few on the TARDIS.
I dearly hope this happens, because the future will be far less awesome if it doesn't.
Amazing what you humans get up to once you achieve faster-than-light travel.” He toggled a switch experimentally. “But that’s off the subject, of course. What curiosity would you like to satisfy?”
Inara moved gracefully to the console, running her hand lightly over a repaired portion. “Not to put too fine a point on it,” she said, “but you’re the subject of my curiosity. It’s not every day that I meet an alien.” She lifted her eyes to his face. “You look so human. How alien are you, Doctor?”
“Very,” he said, meeting her gaze before turning his attention to the console again. “Looks can be deceiving.”
“I don’t doubt it. Simon mentioned a few physical differences--two hearts, he said, and your blood proteins--but I’m more interested in non-physical differences.”
“How so?”
She put her head to the side a little in a rather fetching way. The Doctor wondered idly if it came naturally, as it did with Rose, or if her training was so ingrained that every move she made was calculated to evoke the reaction she was looking for.
I think the line between Inara's core personality and her training has become blurred over the years. It's not that she's always calculating her effect on people, but she does read them on instinct and adjusts her own behavior to match.
“Relationships,” she said after a moment. “How different were your people from humans in that regard?”
He might’ve expected this. His mouth twisted into a smirk. “What kind of relationships in particular? Family? Friends? Enemies?” The Doctor looked at Inara directly. “Sex?”
I rather enjoyed writing this battle of wits. They're so very different, the Doctor and Inara, that figuring out how they'd connect was a challenge of the best kind.
Her returned smile was knowing. “Very well, then--I admit I’ve been rather at a loss concerning your relationship with Rose. I can normally deduce a great deal about a relationship between any two people in moments, but you and Rose . . . I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a relationship quite like it. I thought at first you might be like Mal and Kaylee, but that doesn’t fit. You’re not fraternal or paternal toward her. You’re more than friends, but not lovers. It occurs to me that your people might have had a word for your relationship that’s lacking in any of the languages I know.”
There aren't any really good words in English to describe the Doctor and Rose. I've often thought the Gaelic term anamchara, "soul friend," would be well applied to them
“My people’s language was painfully exact,” said the Doctor, skirting the edges of his most painful memories. “However, it concentrated less on nebulous concepts like relationships between two people and more on hard maths and science. And time, of course. Every verb had a dozen conjugations or more to suit at what point in time the action took or would be taking place.” He fiddled with another switch, not meeting Inara’s penetrating gaze. “They wouldn’t have approved of my relationships with Rose and Jack. Weren’t all that fond of humans, the Time Lords.”
“Yet you are.”
“Think you’re all right. You’re a troublesome lot, and I can respect that. One day, you might even be great, if you don’t do yourselves in through sheer stupidity first.”
A tart, if fair assessment.
Inara gave a light laugh, but there was a little strain behind it. The Doctor knew instinctively she was thinking about the Unification War (now, there was a grand example of oxymoron) and how destructive it had been. The most destructive war in human history . . . until the next one.
Isn't that the way it always goes?
“I’m glad to hear we have our charms,” she said at length. “My curiosity, however, is still unsatisfied. Did your people have romantic or sexual relationships in the same way we do?”
“Depends on how far you go back,” said the Doctor a bit flippantly. “The Time Lords were well on the way to becoming the stiff-necked old blowhards they were before your kind crawled out of the primordial ooze.”
He's deliberately dodging her intent. It's not working particularly well.
“Let’s try the last, say, 900 years,” Inara said dryly.
The Doctor silently cursed Jack. He considered--quite strongly--warning Inara off of this line of questioning, but in a fit of masochism decided to give her an answer. He turned to look at her.
“Interesting phase of history,” he said. “By the time I came around, Time Lords had, for the most part, given up on sexual reproduction, not that we were all that fertile to begin with. That was one price of our long lives. After me and a few of my peers, there were very few children born what you’d consider the natural way. Very few.”
Figured this covered the Looms as well as any other alternative methods of reproduction. Like sex.
Inara considered that. “Such as yours?”
She just saw right through him.
That was when it occurred to the Doctor that he’d seriously underestimated this woman.
No one expects the girl!
“Such as mine.” He turned away. “If you’ll excuse me, I have things to do.”
Inara didn’t move as the Doctor started fussing with switches again. If it was to be a war of attrition, he knew he could win, and he determinedly ignored her.
Needless to say, those switches don't need to be fussed with. Also, he's so wrong about that war of attrition.
“I wonder if that’s why you hold yourself back from Rose,” she said after the silence stretched uncomfortably.
He snorted softly. “Humans. You think sex is the answer to everything.”
“I know better than anyone that it isn’t,”
IMHO, a professional sex worker like Inara would know the limits of sexual solutions better than just about anyone.
Inara parried, “but I actually wasn’t talking about sex, in this case.”
“Oh?” He quietly cursed himself for making assumptions--and exposing his own feelings.
She shoots, she scores!
“I’m talking about touch and intimacy that’s not necessarily sexual. I watch the two of you, and while Rose is utterly open and vulnerable to you, you keep her at a distance--though I think she’s gotten a lot closer than you realize. You keep yourself apart when you don’t have to.”
“Don’t I?” he asked, looking directly at her again. “I am alien, Inara Serra. Don’t think I have the same urges or needs as human men.”
She looked him up and down. “Perhaps you don’t, but . . .” She reached up, cupping his cheek with her hand. “I recognize skin hunger when I see it.”
Oh, wounded Nine! How he needs human touch.
As her hand slipped down his face to his neck, the Doctor realized he was instinctively leaning into her touch. He stepped back quickly.
She's playing him like a dulcimer, she is.
Inara’s smile was amused. “I’m not the one you want touching you, anyway.”
“It would be a mistake to allow Rose any closer,” he said.
“Why?”
How the conversation had got this far, the Doctor wasn’t sure. He decided it was time to put an end to it.
“Do you want to know what a Time Lord is?” he asked, stepping just a bit closer, forcing Inara to look up at him. She met his gaze steadily, lifting her eyebrows in silent assent. “I don’t foretell the future. That’s a parlor trick. I see time for what it truly is. The first and last lesson I learned was, ‘There is no past. There is no present. There is no future. There is only Time.’
Made that right up, but I thought it sounded good for a lesson that might be drummed into the heads of Time Tots.
And it all passes through my head. All that was, all that is, and everything that could be. I see every possibility, Inara. I see what is possible, and what is probable. Do you want to know what’s ahead for Rose?”
“Tell me,” said Inara.
“There are dozens of futures in which we part by choice. She sees too much, or she discovers that she wants a normal human life with a husband and a mortgage and a dozen children, and she leaves me. Or I leave because it’s best for her. Sometimes I even send her away because things get too dangerous--got a whole emergency program and everything just for that eventuality.” He paused briefly. “Then there are the scores of futures in which I have nothing to bring back to Jackie Tyler but her daughter’s corpse. And then there are the hundreds in which I can’t even do that. Disintegrated, incinerated, lost to space and time, swallowed by a black hole, fallen into the Void--so many ways for a young woman to meet her end in the universe. So very many ways. That is what could be, Inara.
The last few, of course, are things that nearly did happen to her. He sees them already.
“There is no future in which she and I live happily ever after. Not one.”
This is, in part, informed by Jonquil's excellent The Ragged Edge, which I consider one of the best Nine character studies. Barely a page long, and she packs so much into it. I envy that. But, to get back on track, the Doctor can see "all that could ever be," and in it, there are so many ways for Rose to die while she's with him. Yet he needs her too badly to override her will and send her home.
Inara nodded after a silent moment. “I see.”
“Then you know why I can’t allow Rose any closer.”
“Do I?” Inara smiled a little, sadness in her eyes. “What I know, Doctor, is that you have to make the decision as to what you’ll regret more--what you did, or what you didn’t do.”
Which is the real question with the Doctor and Rose, of course. What's certain is that he'll lose her. What's not certain is whether he'll be left beating himself up for words unsaid, life unloved.
The Doctor gave her a hard smile. “Interesting that you say that to me, considering the situation between you and Captain Reynolds.”
A counter-offensive, but not the strongest one. It's a bit too easy for her to parry.
“Perhaps I’m simply bad at taking my own advice,” said Inara with a shrug and a wry smile, one the Doctor couldn’t help but return. “Or perhaps the situation is different between us. Mal will never accept what I am--but Rose accepts you completely. You should know the value of that better than any of us.” She turned and began to move toward the exit.
“Rose doesn’t know what she’s accepting,” said the Doctor, voice heavy.
Inara looked back at him. “If she did, do you truly think she’d reject you?” She watched him struggle with the concept for a moment. “Were I to advise you, Doctor, I would tell you to go to her. Be close to her physically, whatever that means to you. Let your barriers down. I don’t think you’ll be displeased with the results, and so few can say that. So very few.”
Inara sees this strange, but beautiful, relationship, and like Jack, she can't understand why the Doctor doesn't take what's in front of him. It's so much more than most people have.
Just before she got to the doors, the Doctor realized something. “You remind me of someone,” he said.
She turned back to him with a slight smile. “Who?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I haven’t met her yet.” He gave her one of his bright grins. “Time Lord thing. Déjà vu in reverse.”
The answer, of course, is in the chapter title. When he meets Reinette, he'll realize whom Inara reminded him of.
Inara’s soft laugh followed her out the doors.
Alone again, the Doctor suddenly couldn’t concentrate on his work anymore. The fact that Inara had seen through him so easily . . . perhaps he was worse than he thought at keeping the world at bay.
Match to Inara.
Maybe he was downright lousy at it. Maybe he was sick of keeping up the effort.
Suddenly, the thought of touching Rose was almost irresistible. He’d done such a good job of keeping that bit of distance between them early on--holding her hand and occasionally hugging her, even though she was an incredibly tactile person and had made it clear that his touch was more than welcome. In a few cases, his need had won out--like after the Dalek, when he’d pulled Rose almost violently close, burying his face in her neck as she wrapped her arms around him, trying to give him the comfort he demanded
I so love that cut scene, and I wish it'd been kept, with a few extra seconds added on. It was like he was trying to physically absorb the comfort he needed from her body, and she was willing to give him all she had.
--or hers had, as when he’d cradled her in his arms in the Cloisters for hours after her father’s death.
"Father's Day"--the other fanon favorite for Nine and Rose's first time.
Then Jack came on board. He was more than willing to give Rose the physical closeness she craved, though to his credit, he’d never pressed the issue of what he might want from her. The first time the Doctor found them cuddled together on the couch watching some godawful movie, jealousy had almost overwhelmed him. If Rose had noticed that the Doctor more readily hugged her or put his arm around her since then, she’d not said anything.
Men are so competitive. I fully believe this is exactly how it went.
Leaving his coat slung over the railing, the Doctor headed down the halls to Rose’s room. He thought he’d just look in on her, as she was likely asleep, but when he opened the door, oh so carefully, she shifted and lifted her head from the pillows to look at him.
This is another scene I had planned from the start. I actually did consider having them make love at this point, but ultimately decided that would complicate the plot unnecessarily. But I wanted them to talk about River and cuddle.
“Doctor?” she asked.
Giving in to temptation, he moved fully into the room, closing the door behind him. A soft, warm glow, as if from firelight, prevented the room from being totally dark, and he could see her quite clearly. Her eyelids were heavy, but she wasn’t displeased to see him.
“You should be sleeping,” he said, sitting on the edge of her bed. “The tissue regeneration takes a lot out of you.”
“I know. I was just thinking . . .” She trailed off, biting her lip. “What you said about River yesterday, that she sees so much more than we do, but we call her crazy--you’re right; I just thought she was, you know, off. And . . . I’m sorry.”
“For what?” he asked.
She shrugged a little. “Jus’ after all you’ve taught me, I feel like I should know better than that. I don’t want to let you down.”
I think Rose probably had more than a few moments like this with Nine. Everything was so new between them, and with him being so much more experienced, she must've felt more than once that she let him down or disappointed him.
Hearts heavy, the Doctor reached out, touching Rose’s face like Inara had touched him not long ago. “Rose Tyler, I never want you to be other than what you are.”
But he's not disappointed in her. On the contrary, she's so much more than he ever expected.
Rose’s hand covered his, and her eyes glistened in the half-light. Giving in to impulse, the Doctor said, “Shove over.”
Rose made a questioning noise, but moved over a bit. The Doctor kicked off his shoes and settled against the pillows next to her.
Good boy! Take what you need.
“What’s this about?” she asked, sounding a bit confused but not at all dismayed.
“I need to sleep sometimes, too,” he said. “Your room’s prettier than mine.
Niiiice excuse!
Did it go like this after we visited the 1920s?” The room was all warm tones and dark wood with a distinct art deco feel.
“Yeah, came back and the TARDIS had redecorated,” said Rose. She moved closer to his side a bit tentatively, and the Doctor slipped an arm around her. Taking that as encouragement, Rose snuggled against his side, pillowing her head on his shoulder and resting her hand on his chest. “This is nice.”
To say the least.
He didn’t say anything. She was so warm and soft, and he felt like she was somehow sinking into him, filling the hollow space between his hearts. He could sense her thoughts like butterflies flitting at the edge of his mind, feel them settling as her breathing deepened and she slipped into sleep.
Another piece of imagery I'm rather smug about having written.
Letting himself settle and drift, he reflected that whatever else she was, Inara Serra was worth listening to.
This, of course, leads to me pulling a switcheroo next chapter. Hee!