Double Crossing (15/20)
Title: Double Crossing
Author: Jessa L'Rynn
Character(s): Tenth Doctor, Seventh Doctor, Rose Tyler, Ace McShane
Rating: T+
Warnings: None
Summary: The Doctor is out of his depth. The Doctor is wondering what he could possibly be thinking. The companions are having the time of their lives. Two threats at once lead to a complicated situation.
Note: It... got a way from me a bit, yeah. Also, this is my favorite chapter. Well, one of two. Or three. Alright, I just love this one more than some.
Chapter 15: Confessions
Two Doctors worked over the unconscious form of their precious patient, performing scans, setting up surgical equipment, prepping her with silent efficiency. There were no words, little need for discussions between them as
two nearly identical minds worked in perfect tandem.
"The link will need to be reasserted immediately," the earlier Doctor reminded the later one.
"I plan on it," the brown-eyed Doctor insisted. "But why?"
"Because according to the scans, she's become dependent on it, too." The blue-eyed Doctor gestured at the very obvious indicator on the screen, the one his other self had apparently ignored. "You talked to her when she was conscious; didn't she complain of a headache?"
"She did," he agreed. "I didn't think." His head dropped into trembling hands. "I did this to her, I didn't think, I just..."
"Why?"
"She lived. She should have died, could have died, and I had to choose, to save the Earth or save her, and she chose the Earth, just stood there, not even knowing what I was going to do, how I was going to kill her, and told me to do it. I was so scared of losing her that when she lived, it literally just happened. I just meant to touch her, just to convince myself she was alive and... I only touched her, she let me in, trusted me so much, and I just made myself at home. So alone..." That last word came out, not in English but in the mathematically perfect, precise concept-words of their native language, making the "alone" both final and infinite.
"And this is why I'll have to block my memories, then. Because you've finally managed to tell me too much. We'll be exiled again, cut off from the Matrix this time?"
"Don't make me tell you," the older Doctor pleaded. "It's... wrong."
His younger self nodded. "Then tell me this. She carries the bond so proudly, so willingly, even I feel it centuries into your past. She sees me as an aspect of you. She drew me here, her distress. The TARDIS actively wants her. Rose is part of us. Why, with all that, haven't you acted on it? She's yours, and willfully so. So why haven't you completed it?"
The older Doctor ground his teeth, his face tight, his breathing heavy with rage and pain. "Look at her," he grated, his voice a threatening whisper. "Really look at her, tell me what you see."
The younger Doctor frowned and did as he was bidden, looked at the girl on the bed, her still face, her strong features, her clenched hands. He considered her body with a whimsical smile, listened to the quiet susurration of her single heart throbbing in her chest. He looked at the tangled skein of golden Time that danced around her, an incredible, perhaps even impossible person who would have or had at one time had all of reality at her fingertips. He thought about her smile, her dark, gold-flecked eyes, the way she looked at him so proudly when she watched infinity burn in his gaze. He thought about the way her hand just seemed to fit and then, because he couldn't help himself, he let himself remember her kiss, the exquisite, wet, giving, pleading human fire of her.
"I see a woman who loves me," he decided. "No matter what." He looked up then at the pain-haunted brown eyes of his later, darker incarnation. "Why?" he asked. "What do you see?"
The brown eyes swept slowly over her form, then up to meet the blue. The shields were gone and there was horror in his eyes, so much loss and emptiness and pain that just went on and on and on. There was no end there, not anymore, even though there should have been, no suggestion, not even the faintest hint of the possibility of rest. The Doctor stared into his future and saw an echo there of something he hadn't seen since he was eight years old, something that made him run then and would make him run, apparently forever.
He stared into it all the same. He was already running now, couldn't go any further or faster, not until whatever had happened to this Doctor and his impending fate finally met. "Well?"
The brown eyes batted closed, the shoulders slumped, the head bowed, the proud Time Lord brought low by a truth he was loath to admit. "I see her dead," the older man pronounced sorrowfully. "I always see her dead and I always will."
"Always?" the younger Doctor questioned intently.
"Well, I saw her too young for so long and then... She did something... impossible. And I've been imagining her dead ever since, seeing her dying instead of living then, seeing her dying every time something goes wrong. She might live forever for all I know, but in my head I see her dead every time I look at her, and I'll have killed her every time."
The Doctor reached over and flipped a switch, turning up the volume on the instrument that registered her beating heart. He let the single pounding metronome fill the room. "The rhythm of life - of her life and, through the bond, of ours - is there in her beating heart. Must even a Time Lord live in the future he fears, when the present is before him, full of life and joy? You need to decide, Doctor. It's not going to go away." He shook his head. "Your hands are shaking, I'd better do this. You just be ready to reassert the link."
The older Doctor snorted. "I wouldn't be able to stop myself if I had to do."
"I know."
*?*
She is bathed in teal and starlight and the world is soft and still around her. She doesn't remember where she is, this world of light and dimness and so very much golden life, even though she knows with a knowledge that is almost instinct that this place is home. There is coral under her hand and music that she can't hear just out of reach of her senses. She doesn't know who she is, either, but she knows with a knowledge more basic than her label that she is where she belongs.
"You're safe here," a voice speaks. There's an echo, a vague presence where that voice seems to come from, the sound of it so beloved and familiar that she could forget everything else and still remember it.
"Should I be here?" she asks, because something about this doesn't fit right. She is alone, and the song is silent, and these two things are wrong. She must never be alone and must always hear the song, or else she is not who she is.
Whatever that means.
"Kinda funny concept, should," the voice replies. "Yeah, an' no, at least for you, let's say."
"Who are you?"
"You gonna ask me that forever?" the voice questions, sounding cheerful and perhaps there's a bit of fond exasperation in there as well.
"I should know, though," she insists, because it makes sense to her when nothing else does. It is her right to know and, in some inexplicable way, her responsibility as well.
"Well, for once it's a good question, I s'pose. Jus' a memory, me." There's a dim haze of presence near the center of this place, the suggestion of darkness and shadows and a wayward sort of beauty that isn't purely physical.
"Rose."
"What is that?" she asks.
"That? That's reality callin'. You should prob'ly answer it."
"Why?" she wonders. This place is home and she is nothing, what does it matter what she does?
"'D'you like bein' in the dark then? You? I don't believe it." There is conviction in the voice, in the shadows of a stance that is like a force of nature, a firm and unyielding, fundamental thing.
"Rose..."
She moves toward the doors, then turns back. "Are you sure?"
"Aren't you?"
"I'm alone. I'm... I'm not supposed to be alone, am I? Not now, not ever."
"Not you, Rose Tyler," the force of nature behind her agrees. "Never you." The way that voice says that name brings it back to her and brings tears to her eyes at once.
The doors fly open. "Rose..."
She looks out and there is a storm, a titanic, threatening, powerful, dreadful thing. It rages and rumbles and thunders, leaving devastation behind it, a path of destruction everywhere it touches. It should not be there, and yet it is, and the storm is screaming.
She hesitates. The storm is not safe. Of all the things she knows now or has ever known, this is one thing that is absolutely certain. The storm is chaos, a thing of majestic power, able to summon down disaster with a single bolt of lightning.
"Rose..."
But there is more there. She knows this, as no one knows. The storm is thunder and lightning and rage, but the storm is rain that falls on parched soil and wind that blows away blackness. The thunder is the warning, the lightning a physician's scalpel.
She looks back on safety one more time. She shakes her head, squares her shoulders. She is Rose Tyler. She has not chosen safe since the moment he came back for her. That storm out there, that absolutely necessary power that is renewal and life even more than it is destruction and death, it needs her. She has always, will always, choose it, choose him.
"Rose!"
She loves him, in all his thunder and lightning and rain, in all his aftermath and rampaging wake. She smiles, and takes a step, and the storm in all its terror and glory sweeps her up into the maelstrom.
*?*
Rose woke with a gasp like a reviving drowning victim. She coughed and choked and arms on both sides of her supported her, forcing her into a sitting position. She sighed. "My Doctor," she said proudly, sensing the familiar hands, the familiar touches.
She turned her head to the left, met the softened blue of the younger, older Doctor's eyes, and smiled gently. A memory brushed her, a stolen kiss, not the least bit chaste. "You got my name right," she teased softly and watched with satisfaction as he blushed rather adorably. She leaned in to hug him and he enfolded her in his arms, a fierce, fond embrace. "Love you," she whispered in his ear and kissed his cheek.
"Love you, too," he whispered back.
When he released her, she turned to her Doctor, her current Doctor, she supposed, because all Doctors were hers. He'd told her that, point blank, after all. He grinned sloppily, his bright brown eyes sparkling, his lips parted. She knew that look. He was about to explode with emotion, but rather than let it out, he was going to explode with white noise instead, words and words and words, saying everything, meaning nothing. "C'mere," she said softly.
"Rose," he whispered, leaning over her.
She hugged him tightly. "I missed you," she said. "I missed you so much and I didn't even know it."
He lifted her lightly from the bed, supporting her against his body as he buried his face in her hair. "I missed you, too. My girl, my precious girl. Oh, Rose, I missed you."
She realized he was shaking about the same moment she realized she was crying. She brought a hand up, petting his hair as he set her lightly on her feet, still holding her so tightly it felt like they might just melt together. Her voice was soft, her words like gentling a child. "Love, shh, love, don't worry, I'm not leaving you, not ever, my Doctor..."
He, too, whispered words of comfort, words of solace. "Rose, my Rose, I'm here, love, I've got you, I won't let you go..."
He held her until he stopped trembling, until her tears had dried. "What happened to me?" she wondered at last.
"You were attacked," Seven told her calmly.
"I remember. I remember everything. But it's like... when I was... It's all a haze, like I was watching it on telly or something. Although some things stand out." She realized that exactly as she said it, and felt her face go crimson as she turned to Ten, watching him squirm. She grinned, despite her embarrassment. "No, you're wearing the handcuffs next time, too."
Ten sputtered and Seven chuckled with delight. "Now that's not a secret I'd want anyone else to know," he observed dryly. Ten sputtered worse than before and his face shaded a lovely pale pink, bringing his freckles into sharp relief.
Rose laughed and brushed his face, and he snatched her back into a hug again, holding on to her as if she would try to get away. Shouldn't she say something? Shouldn't he? Maybe they should both, or maybe... He released her from the hug and smiled at her with that fond, proud expression firmly back in place. Rose realized then that, handcuff jokes aside, they were probably going to go on with their dance.
Any other day and at any other time, she was happy with it, more content with it than resigned to it. They belonged together and neither of them would do a damn thing about it. They had made it part of them, not just their relationship, and most of the time it was easy enough to accept. But... just... just maybe not particularly now. "C'mon," she said, tiredly, "we've got a couple of worlds to save or something, don't we?"
She turned away from them and headed for the familiar infirmary door, shoving it open and getting ready, mentally, to run for her life, same as always.
*?*
"Rose?" the Doctor whispered to her retreating back. He looked at his younger self, blinking in surprise. "What did I say?" he asked.
"Nothing," said Seven with an understanding sigh. "Same thing we always say."
"Oh."
"You really ought to fix this," he added. "She deserves better."
The Doctor nodded, even as his other self turned to follow Rose, leaving him standing there alone with the same weighty questions that always plagued him, plus the press of a knowledge he hadn't had when all this started.
Maybe it was time to make confessions to more than just himself.
"What the hell is all this?" Rose's voice echoed from the corridor.
He grinned and turned to follow them. There was time.
"Please," whispered the Time Lord, "please let there be time."
Author: Jessa L'Rynn
Character(s): Tenth Doctor, Seventh Doctor, Rose Tyler, Ace McShane
Rating: T+
Warnings: None
Summary: The Doctor is out of his depth. The Doctor is wondering what he could possibly be thinking. The companions are having the time of their lives. Two threats at once lead to a complicated situation.
Note: It... got a way from me a bit, yeah. Also, this is my favorite chapter. Well, one of two. Or three. Alright, I just love this one more than some.
Chapter 15: Confessions
Two Doctors worked over the unconscious form of their precious patient, performing scans, setting up surgical equipment, prepping her with silent efficiency. There were no words, little need for discussions between them as
two nearly identical minds worked in perfect tandem.
"The link will need to be reasserted immediately," the earlier Doctor reminded the later one.
"I plan on it," the brown-eyed Doctor insisted. "But why?"
"Because according to the scans, she's become dependent on it, too." The blue-eyed Doctor gestured at the very obvious indicator on the screen, the one his other self had apparently ignored. "You talked to her when she was conscious; didn't she complain of a headache?"
"She did," he agreed. "I didn't think." His head dropped into trembling hands. "I did this to her, I didn't think, I just..."
"Why?"
"She lived. She should have died, could have died, and I had to choose, to save the Earth or save her, and she chose the Earth, just stood there, not even knowing what I was going to do, how I was going to kill her, and told me to do it. I was so scared of losing her that when she lived, it literally just happened. I just meant to touch her, just to convince myself she was alive and... I only touched her, she let me in, trusted me so much, and I just made myself at home. So alone..." That last word came out, not in English but in the mathematically perfect, precise concept-words of their native language, making the "alone" both final and infinite.
"And this is why I'll have to block my memories, then. Because you've finally managed to tell me too much. We'll be exiled again, cut off from the Matrix this time?"
"Don't make me tell you," the older Doctor pleaded. "It's... wrong."
His younger self nodded. "Then tell me this. She carries the bond so proudly, so willingly, even I feel it centuries into your past. She sees me as an aspect of you. She drew me here, her distress. The TARDIS actively wants her. Rose is part of us. Why, with all that, haven't you acted on it? She's yours, and willfully so. So why haven't you completed it?"
The older Doctor ground his teeth, his face tight, his breathing heavy with rage and pain. "Look at her," he grated, his voice a threatening whisper. "Really look at her, tell me what you see."
The younger Doctor frowned and did as he was bidden, looked at the girl on the bed, her still face, her strong features, her clenched hands. He considered her body with a whimsical smile, listened to the quiet susurration of her single heart throbbing in her chest. He looked at the tangled skein of golden Time that danced around her, an incredible, perhaps even impossible person who would have or had at one time had all of reality at her fingertips. He thought about her smile, her dark, gold-flecked eyes, the way she looked at him so proudly when she watched infinity burn in his gaze. He thought about the way her hand just seemed to fit and then, because he couldn't help himself, he let himself remember her kiss, the exquisite, wet, giving, pleading human fire of her.
"I see a woman who loves me," he decided. "No matter what." He looked up then at the pain-haunted brown eyes of his later, darker incarnation. "Why?" he asked. "What do you see?"
The brown eyes swept slowly over her form, then up to meet the blue. The shields were gone and there was horror in his eyes, so much loss and emptiness and pain that just went on and on and on. There was no end there, not anymore, even though there should have been, no suggestion, not even the faintest hint of the possibility of rest. The Doctor stared into his future and saw an echo there of something he hadn't seen since he was eight years old, something that made him run then and would make him run, apparently forever.
He stared into it all the same. He was already running now, couldn't go any further or faster, not until whatever had happened to this Doctor and his impending fate finally met. "Well?"
The brown eyes batted closed, the shoulders slumped, the head bowed, the proud Time Lord brought low by a truth he was loath to admit. "I see her dead," the older man pronounced sorrowfully. "I always see her dead and I always will."
"Always?" the younger Doctor questioned intently.
"Well, I saw her too young for so long and then... She did something... impossible. And I've been imagining her dead ever since, seeing her dying instead of living then, seeing her dying every time something goes wrong. She might live forever for all I know, but in my head I see her dead every time I look at her, and I'll have killed her every time."
The Doctor reached over and flipped a switch, turning up the volume on the instrument that registered her beating heart. He let the single pounding metronome fill the room. "The rhythm of life - of her life and, through the bond, of ours - is there in her beating heart. Must even a Time Lord live in the future he fears, when the present is before him, full of life and joy? You need to decide, Doctor. It's not going to go away." He shook his head. "Your hands are shaking, I'd better do this. You just be ready to reassert the link."
The older Doctor snorted. "I wouldn't be able to stop myself if I had to do."
"I know."
*?*
She is bathed in teal and starlight and the world is soft and still around her. She doesn't remember where she is, this world of light and dimness and so very much golden life, even though she knows with a knowledge that is almost instinct that this place is home. There is coral under her hand and music that she can't hear just out of reach of her senses. She doesn't know who she is, either, but she knows with a knowledge more basic than her label that she is where she belongs.
"You're safe here," a voice speaks. There's an echo, a vague presence where that voice seems to come from, the sound of it so beloved and familiar that she could forget everything else and still remember it.
"Should I be here?" she asks, because something about this doesn't fit right. She is alone, and the song is silent, and these two things are wrong. She must never be alone and must always hear the song, or else she is not who she is.
Whatever that means.
"Kinda funny concept, should," the voice replies. "Yeah, an' no, at least for you, let's say."
"Who are you?"
"You gonna ask me that forever?" the voice questions, sounding cheerful and perhaps there's a bit of fond exasperation in there as well.
"I should know, though," she insists, because it makes sense to her when nothing else does. It is her right to know and, in some inexplicable way, her responsibility as well.
"Well, for once it's a good question, I s'pose. Jus' a memory, me." There's a dim haze of presence near the center of this place, the suggestion of darkness and shadows and a wayward sort of beauty that isn't purely physical.
"Rose."
"What is that?" she asks.
"That? That's reality callin'. You should prob'ly answer it."
"Why?" she wonders. This place is home and she is nothing, what does it matter what she does?
"'D'you like bein' in the dark then? You? I don't believe it." There is conviction in the voice, in the shadows of a stance that is like a force of nature, a firm and unyielding, fundamental thing.
"Rose..."
She moves toward the doors, then turns back. "Are you sure?"
"Aren't you?"
"I'm alone. I'm... I'm not supposed to be alone, am I? Not now, not ever."
"Not you, Rose Tyler," the force of nature behind her agrees. "Never you." The way that voice says that name brings it back to her and brings tears to her eyes at once.
The doors fly open. "Rose..."
She looks out and there is a storm, a titanic, threatening, powerful, dreadful thing. It rages and rumbles and thunders, leaving devastation behind it, a path of destruction everywhere it touches. It should not be there, and yet it is, and the storm is screaming.
She hesitates. The storm is not safe. Of all the things she knows now or has ever known, this is one thing that is absolutely certain. The storm is chaos, a thing of majestic power, able to summon down disaster with a single bolt of lightning.
"Rose..."
But there is more there. She knows this, as no one knows. The storm is thunder and lightning and rage, but the storm is rain that falls on parched soil and wind that blows away blackness. The thunder is the warning, the lightning a physician's scalpel.
She looks back on safety one more time. She shakes her head, squares her shoulders. She is Rose Tyler. She has not chosen safe since the moment he came back for her. That storm out there, that absolutely necessary power that is renewal and life even more than it is destruction and death, it needs her. She has always, will always, choose it, choose him.
"Rose!"
She loves him, in all his thunder and lightning and rain, in all his aftermath and rampaging wake. She smiles, and takes a step, and the storm in all its terror and glory sweeps her up into the maelstrom.
*?*
Rose woke with a gasp like a reviving drowning victim. She coughed and choked and arms on both sides of her supported her, forcing her into a sitting position. She sighed. "My Doctor," she said proudly, sensing the familiar hands, the familiar touches.
She turned her head to the left, met the softened blue of the younger, older Doctor's eyes, and smiled gently. A memory brushed her, a stolen kiss, not the least bit chaste. "You got my name right," she teased softly and watched with satisfaction as he blushed rather adorably. She leaned in to hug him and he enfolded her in his arms, a fierce, fond embrace. "Love you," she whispered in his ear and kissed his cheek.
"Love you, too," he whispered back.
When he released her, she turned to her Doctor, her current Doctor, she supposed, because all Doctors were hers. He'd told her that, point blank, after all. He grinned sloppily, his bright brown eyes sparkling, his lips parted. She knew that look. He was about to explode with emotion, but rather than let it out, he was going to explode with white noise instead, words and words and words, saying everything, meaning nothing. "C'mere," she said softly.
"Rose," he whispered, leaning over her.
She hugged him tightly. "I missed you," she said. "I missed you so much and I didn't even know it."
He lifted her lightly from the bed, supporting her against his body as he buried his face in her hair. "I missed you, too. My girl, my precious girl. Oh, Rose, I missed you."
She realized he was shaking about the same moment she realized she was crying. She brought a hand up, petting his hair as he set her lightly on her feet, still holding her so tightly it felt like they might just melt together. Her voice was soft, her words like gentling a child. "Love, shh, love, don't worry, I'm not leaving you, not ever, my Doctor..."
He, too, whispered words of comfort, words of solace. "Rose, my Rose, I'm here, love, I've got you, I won't let you go..."
He held her until he stopped trembling, until her tears had dried. "What happened to me?" she wondered at last.
"You were attacked," Seven told her calmly.
"I remember. I remember everything. But it's like... when I was... It's all a haze, like I was watching it on telly or something. Although some things stand out." She realized that exactly as she said it, and felt her face go crimson as she turned to Ten, watching him squirm. She grinned, despite her embarrassment. "No, you're wearing the handcuffs next time, too."
Ten sputtered and Seven chuckled with delight. "Now that's not a secret I'd want anyone else to know," he observed dryly. Ten sputtered worse than before and his face shaded a lovely pale pink, bringing his freckles into sharp relief.
Rose laughed and brushed his face, and he snatched her back into a hug again, holding on to her as if she would try to get away. Shouldn't she say something? Shouldn't he? Maybe they should both, or maybe... He released her from the hug and smiled at her with that fond, proud expression firmly back in place. Rose realized then that, handcuff jokes aside, they were probably going to go on with their dance.
Any other day and at any other time, she was happy with it, more content with it than resigned to it. They belonged together and neither of them would do a damn thing about it. They had made it part of them, not just their relationship, and most of the time it was easy enough to accept. But... just... just maybe not particularly now. "C'mon," she said, tiredly, "we've got a couple of worlds to save or something, don't we?"
She turned away from them and headed for the familiar infirmary door, shoving it open and getting ready, mentally, to run for her life, same as always.
*?*
"Rose?" the Doctor whispered to her retreating back. He looked at his younger self, blinking in surprise. "What did I say?" he asked.
"Nothing," said Seven with an understanding sigh. "Same thing we always say."
"Oh."
"You really ought to fix this," he added. "She deserves better."
The Doctor nodded, even as his other self turned to follow Rose, leaving him standing there alone with the same weighty questions that always plagued him, plus the press of a knowledge he hadn't had when all this started.
Maybe it was time to make confessions to more than just himself.
"What the hell is all this?" Rose's voice echoed from the corridor.
He grinned and turned to follow them. There was time.
"Please," whispered the Time Lord, "please let there be time."