Madness (1/1)
Title: Madness (1/1)
Author: jlrpuck
Rating: K
Characters: Ninth Doctor, Rose Tyler
Disclaimer: Characters from Doctor Who are the property of BBC, and are used with the greatest of love and respect; no profit is intended from the writing or sharing of this story.
Summary: There is no great genius without a mixture of madness
Notes: A rare day today--posting two stories on one day. Um...well...this was kind of due last Friday, but I completely flaked out (I'm great with time; I tend to fail with dates). And so I wanted to get it up post-haste, regardless of day of the week. Thank you--Thank you!--to mkejenkins for her remarkable patience.
Written for the third round over at storm_and_wolf. My prompt is the summary.
Many thanks to ginamak, earlgreytea68, and chicklet73 for their beta and feedback on this. Any errors in the story are mine and mine alone.
πάντες ὅσοι περιττοὶ γεγόνασιν ἄνδρες φαίνονται μελαγχολικοὶ ὄντες
There is no great genius without a mixture of madnesss
Madness
She’d seen the words once, chiseled in cold grey stone in a temple to learning on a planet which revered Ancient Greece. They’d been visiting to recover after a week spent running, hiding, and running again after rescuing a young boy from execution (“He’ll change the course of the planet’s history” had been the Doctor’s explanation-to her, not the enraged guards), and for once the Doctor had timed their holiday just right, landing them on Ithacus during its most peaceful and prosperous period.
It had been excruciatingly dull, thanks to the peace. As a result, she’d spent the days gazing at the quotes on the wall while the Doctor happily swam through book after book on topics far and wide.
She gave a small shake of her head. It was such an incongruous thing to think of, especially as it had been weeks before. They were on still another planet, this one populated by small creatures living in mud huts, and the Doctor was chatting amiably with the leader of the village. His blue eyes practically sparkled, his grin not manic but delighted, and she had to admit that his idea for redirecting the agrarian habits of the society to keep the planet from a crushing drought a century later was particularly clever. She’d never tell him, of course-he’d preen and never let her live down the admission-but he really was a genius.
Sometimes.
She’d thought the line referred to men in white lab coats with thick glasses and crazy hair, potions and poisons bubbling merrily away in the glass jars before them. Dr. Frankenstein, maybe-she’d seen the movie, after all, and if he wasn’t a mad genius, she wasn’t quite sure who was. But as she travelled more with the Doctor, as she watched him more, she began to suspect that there were other kinds of madness.
She leaned against the warm wall of the building, her arms crossed as she watched him, and tried to reconcile the happy man in front of her with the man she sometimes-often, really-saw. The way he’d grin in almost crazy glee when things were particularly dire; the way he’d retreat within himself, the grief of his lost people and planet an almost tangible weight. The fury he could unleash-had unleashed, on several occasions-when someone had done something he deemed particularly beyond the pale. The way his blue eyes would sometimes gaze at her and not see her at all, his mind completely wrapped up in whatever memory was consuming him.
His laughter pulled her away from those particular memories, and she found him looking at her now, actually seeing her as he gestured for her to come over and join him and the village leader. She moved to him with a smile, happily accepting his hand and twining their fingers together.
~ - ~
She forgot about the quote for a little while, living in a series of near-perfect moments as they bounced between galaxies and millennia, landing perfectly, having happy adventures, experiencing days when everything went as right as possible. And then things went disastrously wrong, the timing right, the plan seemingly a good one, but one simple unforeseeable event derailing everything and causing enough death that she wanted to curl up in a corner of the TARDIS and cry for a week.
The Doctor held her hand as they walked back to his ship, his eyes downcast, his hand soft even as his entire body seemed to thrum with tension. He was silent, which was slightly unnerving, and she began to worry what he might do when they were safely behind the blue doors.
She lurked in the shadows of the console room once they were safely in the TARDIS, watching carefully as he carelessly twisted widgets and gadgets, finally giving a sharp tug to the lever which would set them in motion. She continued to watch as he stood, staring up at the time rotor, his hands resting on the side of the console; and then as his head dropped, his body seeming to sag.
She moved to join him then, taking care not to startle him while still respecting the heavy silence which surrounded them.
“Doctor?” She kept her voice soft, and tentatively reached out to touch his shoulder.
“You shouldn’t be here, Rose.” The words were low and dark, a tone she recognized from when he was in one of his bleaker moods.
“’Course I should,” she rejoined.
“No.” His hands tightened around the edge of the console, but he kept his head down. “I should never have brought you; you should never have said yes.”
She pulled her hand back, her mind racing. When things had gone really, really wrong, he often retreated to this tactic-hoping to scare her, perhaps enough make her to leave.
“I’m not leaving, Doctor. Not unless you tell me to straight out.”
He gave a mirthless laugh. “You think that’s how you’ll leave?” He raised his head, his eyes dark and intense as they focused on her. “Swan off, back to London-back to the chip shop?” He leaned forward, causing her breath to catch. “That doesn’t happen with me, Rose; it never happens with me. You’ll die.”
“Gonna happen to us all someday, isn’t it?” she tried to joke, not wanting to acknowledge the probability of his prediction. Of course she might die, especially given their penchant for fighting for the oppressed-but that didn’t mean she needed to be reminded of it.
“It’s not a joke, Rose.” In the blink of an eye he’d moved so his hands grasped her upper arms. “Stay with me, and die. Leave, and live.” He leaned forward, dropping his voice. “Live, Rose. Leave.”
His grip hurt, and was no doubt going to leave a bruise-but it was a madness of his she’d seen often enough that she could deal with it. Hopefully.
“I’m not leaving you, Doctor.” She kept her voice low as well, infusing the words with as much steel as she could given how he had her pinned. “I know I could die. I’d have to be stupid not to. But you could die, too, yeah? So I’m thinking we need to stick together to keep each other alive. Because without you, I reckon the universe falls to pieces, and then what good is being alive anyway?”
He released her sharply, causing her to stumble, and she could see his emotions shift to despair. He held her gaze for a beat then turned, his head dropping as he began to move away from her. “Your choice then,” he said quietly, without breaking stride.
“It is my choice,” she said loudly, as though her defiance would keep the inevitable from happening.
That got him to pause-just a beat, taking a deep breath, raising his head now to look at the struts arching above him. “Don’t forget that, Rose.” He began to move again, not speaking until he reached the door to the main hallway. “Leave me be for the night.”
The room practically seethed with silence after he exited, even the pulse of the rotor muted. Rose shuffled over to the captain’s chair, collapsing in it, allowing the steady motion of the ship’s heart to slowly relax her. She wanted to help him-wanted to take the sadness away from him, to ease the burden he always seemed to carry. She wanted to see him more like he’d been the day before: Eyes bright, a smile pulling at his lips the entirety of the day. He’d been bouncing through the market like a child at Christmas, eagerly pointing out gew-gaws, swinging their hands between them when he wasn’t tugging her aside to show her some exotic plant or animal.
She sighed, slowly pushing herself up from the seat. The Doctor had his good days, and his bad days. Today had been an extraordinarily bad day by anyone’s standard, and she simply had to hope that he’d find a way to come to terms with what had happened. After all, he’d taught her there was no point dwelling on things you couldn’t go back and change. Not even with a time machine.
~ - ~
“Reading?” The voice came from the doorway, and Rose twisted to look at the Doctor.
“I do know how to do it, y’know.”
“I know.” His lips curved in a small smile. She smiled back, reflexively, and shifted so he could join her on the small couch. As he moved to join her she reached for the remote control-type device, muting the sound on a game show from 32nd century Plaxar.
“Good day?” She set the book aside as he collapsed into the sofa, all lithe limbs and sharp angles even with the leather coat.
“How was yours?” he evaded.
She’d not seen him since he’d left her in the console room, almost two days ago now. Or so she reckoned-she’d had two good nights’ sleep in the interim, and had been content to simply wander the TARDIS in-between, letting the images slowly fade from her mind. It would take a little bit longer for her soul to heal-but another lesson she’d learned from the Doctor was that she would heal, and would move on.
“Relaxing. Spent some time in the garden-”
“Which one?”
“The one without the predatory plants. And did a spot of swimming, which was nice. But why was the water pink?”
“Did the room have sort of an orangey-purplish-brown tree?”
“Yeah.”
He nodded. “Scruidnord. Probably.”
“Um. Ok. And I got caught up on Eastenders.”
That earned an eyeroll out of him, which was just what she’d hoped. “All of this magnificent ship at your disposal, and you watch telly from 21st-century Earth.”
“I wanted to be able to keep up with Mum when she rang!”
“That’s about the level of intellectual conversation I’d expect from Jackie Tyler,” he said-not entirely sincerely, she hoped.
“Oi. That’s my mum you’re talking about.”
“I’m well aware of that,” he reassured her, his attention shifting to the book on the table before them. Before she could stop him he leaned forward, pulling it towards him and reading the spine with interest. “Ancient Greek? Not something I’d have expected you to be reading.”
“Of course not. Not when I’m watching Eastenders.”
“That’s not what I meant and you know it.” He opened the book, idly flipping until, by some uncanny instinct, he found the page she’d been reading. “Would have thought you’d want something a bit lighter, means of relaxing. This is the sort of thing you’d pick up after one of our happier trips.”
She found herself blushing at his accuracy. When had he come to know her so well?
“Yeah, well, I was thinking about you.” She glanced up, horrified at the secret which had slipped out.
Her comment certainly drew his attention back to her, his eyes unusually bright. “Thinking about me?”
“Yeah, um, well.” She scrambled briefly, then forged on. “There was this quote. By Aristotle, back on Ithacus. Something about genius and madness going together.”
“There is no great genius without a mixture of madness.”
“That’s the one.”
“That wasn’t Aristotle. It was Seneca. And he wasn’t Greek, either-he was Roman.”
“Oh.” Her eyes dropped, and she fidgeted with her hands. “I…it’s just, that’s you, really.”
“You saying I’m mad?” She could hear bemusement in his tone.
“I’d think if it meant me calling you a genius, you’d be pleased as punch.”
That earned a soft chuckle. “I am a genius, Rose. Everyone knows that. Smartest man in the universe.”
“So you keep sayin’. But you can’t figure out how to take off a twist-top cap without scraping your hand.”
“Those are devious devices, Rose.”
She bumped his shoulder. “Smarter’n you?”
He scoffed.
“But…you do have moments. Where it’s like you’re someone else. Brilliant moments, but kind of scary, too.” She was gazing at her hands again, feeling confident enough to be honest, but not to look at him as she said it. It somehow felt terribly personal, saying the things she’d been thinking for so long.
“Are you afraid of me?”
“Sometimes.” She looked up at him. “But I trust you.”
That earned a mirthless smile. “You shouldn’t.”
“So you keep telling me.”
“I keep hoping you’ll listen. Talk about madness.” Mercurial as ever, his mood lightened. “No more mad than me, taking you back to see Jackie.”
“I think you like my mum, deep down,” she teased.
He shuddered. “That’s not a nice thing to say to your designated driver.”
She laughed. “Alright, I’ll pretend not to notice.” She met his glare with a smile. “Where we off to next?”
He slipped his hand into hers, squeezing it before saying, “I was thinking it might be time to learn how to sail.”
“Sail?”
“Yeah, sail. You know, boat, water, bit of fabric hauled up a pole, catching the wind? Most ancient form of sea transportation?”
“You sure about that?”
“Positive. “ He gave her a sly look. “Never said which planet I was talking about, did I?”
“Cheater.”
“Genius.”
She shook her head. “Mad as a hatter.”
“Can’t have the one without the other, now, can we?” He squeezed her hand, then stood. “Ready?”
“Always.”
~ fin ~
Author: jlrpuck
Rating: K
Characters: Ninth Doctor, Rose Tyler
Disclaimer: Characters from Doctor Who are the property of BBC, and are used with the greatest of love and respect; no profit is intended from the writing or sharing of this story.
Summary: There is no great genius without a mixture of madness
Notes: A rare day today--posting two stories on one day. Um...well...this was kind of due last Friday, but I completely flaked out (I'm great with time; I tend to fail with dates). And so I wanted to get it up post-haste, regardless of day of the week. Thank you--Thank you!--to mkejenkins for her remarkable patience.
Written for the third round over at storm_and_wolf. My prompt is the summary.
Many thanks to ginamak, earlgreytea68, and chicklet73 for their beta and feedback on this. Any errors in the story are mine and mine alone.
πάντες ὅσοι περιττοὶ γεγόνασιν ἄνδρες φαίνονται μελαγχολικοὶ ὄντες
There is no great genius without a mixture of madnesss
Madness
She’d seen the words once, chiseled in cold grey stone in a temple to learning on a planet which revered Ancient Greece. They’d been visiting to recover after a week spent running, hiding, and running again after rescuing a young boy from execution (“He’ll change the course of the planet’s history” had been the Doctor’s explanation-to her, not the enraged guards), and for once the Doctor had timed their holiday just right, landing them on Ithacus during its most peaceful and prosperous period.
It had been excruciatingly dull, thanks to the peace. As a result, she’d spent the days gazing at the quotes on the wall while the Doctor happily swam through book after book on topics far and wide.
She gave a small shake of her head. It was such an incongruous thing to think of, especially as it had been weeks before. They were on still another planet, this one populated by small creatures living in mud huts, and the Doctor was chatting amiably with the leader of the village. His blue eyes practically sparkled, his grin not manic but delighted, and she had to admit that his idea for redirecting the agrarian habits of the society to keep the planet from a crushing drought a century later was particularly clever. She’d never tell him, of course-he’d preen and never let her live down the admission-but he really was a genius.
Sometimes.
She’d thought the line referred to men in white lab coats with thick glasses and crazy hair, potions and poisons bubbling merrily away in the glass jars before them. Dr. Frankenstein, maybe-she’d seen the movie, after all, and if he wasn’t a mad genius, she wasn’t quite sure who was. But as she travelled more with the Doctor, as she watched him more, she began to suspect that there were other kinds of madness.
She leaned against the warm wall of the building, her arms crossed as she watched him, and tried to reconcile the happy man in front of her with the man she sometimes-often, really-saw. The way he’d grin in almost crazy glee when things were particularly dire; the way he’d retreat within himself, the grief of his lost people and planet an almost tangible weight. The fury he could unleash-had unleashed, on several occasions-when someone had done something he deemed particularly beyond the pale. The way his blue eyes would sometimes gaze at her and not see her at all, his mind completely wrapped up in whatever memory was consuming him.
His laughter pulled her away from those particular memories, and she found him looking at her now, actually seeing her as he gestured for her to come over and join him and the village leader. She moved to him with a smile, happily accepting his hand and twining their fingers together.
~ - ~
She forgot about the quote for a little while, living in a series of near-perfect moments as they bounced between galaxies and millennia, landing perfectly, having happy adventures, experiencing days when everything went as right as possible. And then things went disastrously wrong, the timing right, the plan seemingly a good one, but one simple unforeseeable event derailing everything and causing enough death that she wanted to curl up in a corner of the TARDIS and cry for a week.
The Doctor held her hand as they walked back to his ship, his eyes downcast, his hand soft even as his entire body seemed to thrum with tension. He was silent, which was slightly unnerving, and she began to worry what he might do when they were safely behind the blue doors.
She lurked in the shadows of the console room once they were safely in the TARDIS, watching carefully as he carelessly twisted widgets and gadgets, finally giving a sharp tug to the lever which would set them in motion. She continued to watch as he stood, staring up at the time rotor, his hands resting on the side of the console; and then as his head dropped, his body seeming to sag.
She moved to join him then, taking care not to startle him while still respecting the heavy silence which surrounded them.
“Doctor?” She kept her voice soft, and tentatively reached out to touch his shoulder.
“You shouldn’t be here, Rose.” The words were low and dark, a tone she recognized from when he was in one of his bleaker moods.
“’Course I should,” she rejoined.
“No.” His hands tightened around the edge of the console, but he kept his head down. “I should never have brought you; you should never have said yes.”
She pulled her hand back, her mind racing. When things had gone really, really wrong, he often retreated to this tactic-hoping to scare her, perhaps enough make her to leave.
“I’m not leaving, Doctor. Not unless you tell me to straight out.”
He gave a mirthless laugh. “You think that’s how you’ll leave?” He raised his head, his eyes dark and intense as they focused on her. “Swan off, back to London-back to the chip shop?” He leaned forward, causing her breath to catch. “That doesn’t happen with me, Rose; it never happens with me. You’ll die.”
“Gonna happen to us all someday, isn’t it?” she tried to joke, not wanting to acknowledge the probability of his prediction. Of course she might die, especially given their penchant for fighting for the oppressed-but that didn’t mean she needed to be reminded of it.
“It’s not a joke, Rose.” In the blink of an eye he’d moved so his hands grasped her upper arms. “Stay with me, and die. Leave, and live.” He leaned forward, dropping his voice. “Live, Rose. Leave.”
His grip hurt, and was no doubt going to leave a bruise-but it was a madness of his she’d seen often enough that she could deal with it. Hopefully.
“I’m not leaving you, Doctor.” She kept her voice low as well, infusing the words with as much steel as she could given how he had her pinned. “I know I could die. I’d have to be stupid not to. But you could die, too, yeah? So I’m thinking we need to stick together to keep each other alive. Because without you, I reckon the universe falls to pieces, and then what good is being alive anyway?”
He released her sharply, causing her to stumble, and she could see his emotions shift to despair. He held her gaze for a beat then turned, his head dropping as he began to move away from her. “Your choice then,” he said quietly, without breaking stride.
“It is my choice,” she said loudly, as though her defiance would keep the inevitable from happening.
That got him to pause-just a beat, taking a deep breath, raising his head now to look at the struts arching above him. “Don’t forget that, Rose.” He began to move again, not speaking until he reached the door to the main hallway. “Leave me be for the night.”
The room practically seethed with silence after he exited, even the pulse of the rotor muted. Rose shuffled over to the captain’s chair, collapsing in it, allowing the steady motion of the ship’s heart to slowly relax her. She wanted to help him-wanted to take the sadness away from him, to ease the burden he always seemed to carry. She wanted to see him more like he’d been the day before: Eyes bright, a smile pulling at his lips the entirety of the day. He’d been bouncing through the market like a child at Christmas, eagerly pointing out gew-gaws, swinging their hands between them when he wasn’t tugging her aside to show her some exotic plant or animal.
She sighed, slowly pushing herself up from the seat. The Doctor had his good days, and his bad days. Today had been an extraordinarily bad day by anyone’s standard, and she simply had to hope that he’d find a way to come to terms with what had happened. After all, he’d taught her there was no point dwelling on things you couldn’t go back and change. Not even with a time machine.
~ - ~
“Reading?” The voice came from the doorway, and Rose twisted to look at the Doctor.
“I do know how to do it, y’know.”
“I know.” His lips curved in a small smile. She smiled back, reflexively, and shifted so he could join her on the small couch. As he moved to join her she reached for the remote control-type device, muting the sound on a game show from 32nd century Plaxar.
“Good day?” She set the book aside as he collapsed into the sofa, all lithe limbs and sharp angles even with the leather coat.
“How was yours?” he evaded.
She’d not seen him since he’d left her in the console room, almost two days ago now. Or so she reckoned-she’d had two good nights’ sleep in the interim, and had been content to simply wander the TARDIS in-between, letting the images slowly fade from her mind. It would take a little bit longer for her soul to heal-but another lesson she’d learned from the Doctor was that she would heal, and would move on.
“Relaxing. Spent some time in the garden-”
“Which one?”
“The one without the predatory plants. And did a spot of swimming, which was nice. But why was the water pink?”
“Did the room have sort of an orangey-purplish-brown tree?”
“Yeah.”
He nodded. “Scruidnord. Probably.”
“Um. Ok. And I got caught up on Eastenders.”
That earned an eyeroll out of him, which was just what she’d hoped. “All of this magnificent ship at your disposal, and you watch telly from 21st-century Earth.”
“I wanted to be able to keep up with Mum when she rang!”
“That’s about the level of intellectual conversation I’d expect from Jackie Tyler,” he said-not entirely sincerely, she hoped.
“Oi. That’s my mum you’re talking about.”
“I’m well aware of that,” he reassured her, his attention shifting to the book on the table before them. Before she could stop him he leaned forward, pulling it towards him and reading the spine with interest. “Ancient Greek? Not something I’d have expected you to be reading.”
“Of course not. Not when I’m watching Eastenders.”
“That’s not what I meant and you know it.” He opened the book, idly flipping until, by some uncanny instinct, he found the page she’d been reading. “Would have thought you’d want something a bit lighter, means of relaxing. This is the sort of thing you’d pick up after one of our happier trips.”
She found herself blushing at his accuracy. When had he come to know her so well?
“Yeah, well, I was thinking about you.” She glanced up, horrified at the secret which had slipped out.
Her comment certainly drew his attention back to her, his eyes unusually bright. “Thinking about me?”
“Yeah, um, well.” She scrambled briefly, then forged on. “There was this quote. By Aristotle, back on Ithacus. Something about genius and madness going together.”
“There is no great genius without a mixture of madness.”
“That’s the one.”
“That wasn’t Aristotle. It was Seneca. And he wasn’t Greek, either-he was Roman.”
“Oh.” Her eyes dropped, and she fidgeted with her hands. “I…it’s just, that’s you, really.”
“You saying I’m mad?” She could hear bemusement in his tone.
“I’d think if it meant me calling you a genius, you’d be pleased as punch.”
That earned a soft chuckle. “I am a genius, Rose. Everyone knows that. Smartest man in the universe.”
“So you keep sayin’. But you can’t figure out how to take off a twist-top cap without scraping your hand.”
“Those are devious devices, Rose.”
She bumped his shoulder. “Smarter’n you?”
He scoffed.
“But…you do have moments. Where it’s like you’re someone else. Brilliant moments, but kind of scary, too.” She was gazing at her hands again, feeling confident enough to be honest, but not to look at him as she said it. It somehow felt terribly personal, saying the things she’d been thinking for so long.
“Are you afraid of me?”
“Sometimes.” She looked up at him. “But I trust you.”
That earned a mirthless smile. “You shouldn’t.”
“So you keep telling me.”
“I keep hoping you’ll listen. Talk about madness.” Mercurial as ever, his mood lightened. “No more mad than me, taking you back to see Jackie.”
“I think you like my mum, deep down,” she teased.
He shuddered. “That’s not a nice thing to say to your designated driver.”
She laughed. “Alright, I’ll pretend not to notice.” She met his glare with a smile. “Where we off to next?”
He slipped his hand into hers, squeezing it before saying, “I was thinking it might be time to learn how to sail.”
“Sail?”
“Yeah, sail. You know, boat, water, bit of fabric hauled up a pole, catching the wind? Most ancient form of sea transportation?”
“You sure about that?”
“Positive. “ He gave her a sly look. “Never said which planet I was talking about, did I?”
“Cheater.”
“Genius.”
She shook her head. “Mad as a hatter.”
“Can’t have the one without the other, now, can we?” He squeezed her hand, then stood. “Ready?”
“Always.”
~ fin ~