Fic: She doesn't know what hurts the worst
Title: She doesn't know what hurts the worst
Author: kalany
Fandom: Doctor Who
Characters: Ten/Rose, Jackie, Alt!Pete
Spoilers? Seen the end of S2? You're good to go.
Rating: Appropriate for older teens with some adult supervision
Warnings: Very dark fic! Nothing explicit, but don't read if you have problems with themes of abuse
Summary: So many things hurt, she can't count anymore. (Post Doomsday, pre JE)
She doesn't know what hurts the worst
It hurts to hope. So many things seem out of reach. She remembers a time when she quite liked hope, she thinks. Or was that---
It hurts to remember even more.
Here is how it began.
She takes a long hot bath when they get home from London. He lets her use the master bath, and doesn't come knocking even when she stays there for two hours.
One of the truisms of life, she discovers, is that no amount of pain will make time stop. No amount of grief can stop life. She should have known this before, but it's still a surprise when hunger and thirst force her to her feet and out of the tub. Her tears dried up hours earlier.
She's just curious enough to look through the drawers. There's a bit of makeup in one of them, and she borrows enough to make her eyes look a little less puffy.
It's not until after that she realizes she has nothing to wear.
So she's creeping through the master suite in a towel, trying to find something to throw on, when he comes in. It is his bedroom, after all.
"I'll find you a bathrobe," he says, and he does. It's warm, and fluffy, and probably costs more than the entire wardrobe she left behind. Except not, because on the---
It hurts to think about dimensionally transcendant wardrobes, so she doesn't.
He takes the robe from her hands, and wraps it around her. It's so sweet of him, and she smiles at him, and tries not to start crying again.
And if his hands brush her breasts as he does so, well, she's the one wandering around naked, and she's sure it was an accident.
Yes, memory hurts worse than hope.
Although perhaps it began here:
Getting started in a new universe is hard, even when your sort-of-stepfather runs Torchwood.
So they move in with him, at least for now, and she can't help noticing that even the smallest guest bedroom is larger than her room back on the estate. It's easy to fall into the habit of letting him provide.
And, if she's honest with herself, it's nice to have a protective man in her life.
She just tries not to remember how she found this out the first time.
It's night that's the worst. It's quiet, and she can see the stars, and it hurts.
He comes on her one night while she's sitting in the back window and looking out at the stars and crying. She doesn't notice he's there until he wipes a tear off her cheek.
"You're too pretty to cry," he says, and she tries to smile. He means well, but it hurts.
Then he kisses her.
Perhaps her problem is that she has too much of one, and not enough of the other.
If only she knew which was which.
It's understandable that he'd be a bit confused. After all, she isn't his daughter, and he's not her father. Not really, not the way her Pete was. This one's never even had a child. How can he be expected to understand? To him, she's just a pretty young blonde thing.
She hears him telling a friend that, which is how she knows. And it's how she knows it hurts.
She still doesn't have papers. He says they're working on it.
The amazing thing, she's discovered, is that one gets used to hurting. You keep breathing, and eating, until one afternoon you realize it's been a day since you cried.
It doesn't hurt any less.
Or maybe this is when it starts:
He gets drunk, sometimes. She's seen him do it: her mum will flirt with him, and he'll flirt back, and they'll wander off somewhere. She really doesn't want to know. She doesn't want to even think about it.
And then he comes back downstairs, and heats some food, and gets the good stuff out from behind the bag of dried beans.
Sometimes he shares, if she's been crying. It's another thing that she thinks makes him sweet. She just wishes he'd quit trying to kiss her when he drinks.
Tonight she slips out when he comes down, before he can pour her a glass, before he can start talking to her and make her sit with him while he drinks. She goes up to her room, and sits in the window, and tries to reminisce without remembering.
It's hard, but she's getting better at it. Maybe one day she'll stop hurting when she sees the stars.
He knocks, and enters before she can get up from the window seat. It's dark in the room, but he doesn't turn on the lights or speak, just walks over and hands her a glass. She takes it because she doesn't know what else to do.
"I thought I'd find you up here," he says finally, when she's sipped a little. "Still looking for---"
"No," she cuts him off. "Just looking, yeah?"
He nods. "I wish he'd given me some warning," he says, and she tries not to remember that he's the one who made this happen. "Mickey was hard enough. It's hard work keeping people from asking awkward questions."
She's silent, thinking about Torchwood, and questions, and things she doesn't want to think about, because there's nowhere to go, no hand to hold, no escape if she needs to run.
Not from this.
His hand closes over the glass, and he takes it away, and she looks up at him in confusion, because he's never done that before. He's staring at her strangely, and she takes a breath to ask him---
His lips are hard on hers, and she's too shocked to move, and his hands are cold. She's still shocked when he pushes her backwards, when he pulls open the dressing-robe tie. Of all the things she ran from, with----before, this is one she's never---
She's scared, and not ready, and it hurts.
Afterwards, he leaves the bottle, and she drinks it while she washes away blood and sweat and other things.
There's no escape from that either, she's found.
In the mornings, he's sweet and kind and he makes her tea and toast and flusters the servants. Her mum thinks it's wonderful. She thinks it hurts.
It hurts there, too, but she tries not to flinch when she sits, because that makes her mum ask questions she can't answer.
Her mum's got nowhere to run either.
They love each other, and that hurts too.
She thinks he loves her, and that might hurt worse.
He gets her a job when her mother complains, working under him. She gets to lead a team---a small team, but her own team. It's one thing about the new universe that she genuinely likes.
He praises her in the evenings to her mum, telling all about what they did that day, which person they saved, what aliens they defeated.
It's almost like--- And it hurts.
It hurts worse, after, when she discovers that he finds it exciting.
She read, once, that hope was a thing with feathers.
She met a thing with feathers, once, made out of sharpened metal. She found out they were sharp the hard way, of course, and then there was running, and yelling, and hair-tugging, and---.
She thinks that's what they meant, because it hurts just like that.
She makes friends, slowly, but she's always been friendly and she keeps at it until one of the women at work asks her if she'd like to come with them, out on the town, after work.
"You know," the woman says while they walk to the loo in a crowded pub, "there are people, you know---if you want to move out, get your own flat---"
She can't figure out what the woman means, until later, when she's home, staring at the ceiling while he holds her wrists and she tries not to whimper.
---but the next week, the woman isn't working at Torchwood anymore, and no one will talk to her.
She knows how to take a hint.
So do they.
They're not allowed to assign her to anything outside of London. She only knows this because she overheard someone talking in the loo.
She spends a lot of time there, these days. Kneeling on the tile hurts, but---
It always hurts, because she's never ready, or prepared, in the way she knows women should be first. He tries, sometimes, but she thinks it's more for him than for her.
She tries something different, just once. Just once, she lets herself imagine brown hair instead of greying red, an angular face, a manic grin.
It hurts to do, because----well, because. But it hurts less, too.
He seems excited, even happy, when she lets herself see him and not----Because she's responsive in ways she never is. He seems disappointed when she looks to see how he's taking it, and she thinks it's because----because she notices it's him.
So she lets her imagination loose.
And this time, she comes too, only she forgets and cries out, because she forgets she's here, and not there.
It hurts, later, and not just because he breaks her arm.
She cries all the way to A&E, although her mum thinks it's the pain. She can't tell her that she's had worse, that she has worse, that she always has worse. So she cries, and silently apologizes to him, even though he isn't there, he's never going to be there, and he'll never know.
A&E ask, of course, but her mum just says "Torchwood" and they go silent. That hurts too, because----
But of course, she's never going to get out, because where can she go?
There's nowhere to run.
They tell her something else, something she should have known, but she's never regular when she's stressed, and she'd thought the loo trips were just stress too. It's not like she's been eating well.
And then she wakes up, with his voice in her ears, and just for a day she has hope again. All she has to do is ask, and he drives her, with Mickey and her mum, and she realizes again that in his own way, he loves her. It's easier to bear, knowing that, knowing she's going home.
Her real home, not---not the bedroom she can barely stand to be in.
Only she's not, and she can barely keep standing when he tells her, but she can't bear to take her eyes off him either, and in the moment she says something she shouldn't've.
She sees it in his eyes, and she knows---three words, maybe six, and he'd do it. He'd collapse two universes to save her, if she asked.
But she knows, now, that she isn't worth two universes, so she lies. Only the lie turns to something else, and she tells him something else she shouldn't've.
It's all right that he didn't reply. She wouldn't have believed him anyway, because she knows now that she isn't worth that either.
Maybe that hurts the worst.
Author: kalany
Fandom: Doctor Who
Characters: Ten/Rose, Jackie, Alt!Pete
Spoilers? Seen the end of S2? You're good to go.
Rating: Appropriate for older teens with some adult supervision
Warnings: Very dark fic! Nothing explicit, but don't read if you have problems with themes of abuse
Summary: So many things hurt, she can't count anymore. (Post Doomsday, pre JE)
She doesn't know what hurts the worst
It hurts to hope. So many things seem out of reach. She remembers a time when she quite liked hope, she thinks. Or was that---
It hurts to remember even more.
Here is how it began.
She takes a long hot bath when they get home from London. He lets her use the master bath, and doesn't come knocking even when she stays there for two hours.
One of the truisms of life, she discovers, is that no amount of pain will make time stop. No amount of grief can stop life. She should have known this before, but it's still a surprise when hunger and thirst force her to her feet and out of the tub. Her tears dried up hours earlier.
She's just curious enough to look through the drawers. There's a bit of makeup in one of them, and she borrows enough to make her eyes look a little less puffy.
It's not until after that she realizes she has nothing to wear.
So she's creeping through the master suite in a towel, trying to find something to throw on, when he comes in. It is his bedroom, after all.
"I'll find you a bathrobe," he says, and he does. It's warm, and fluffy, and probably costs more than the entire wardrobe she left behind. Except not, because on the---
It hurts to think about dimensionally transcendant wardrobes, so she doesn't.
He takes the robe from her hands, and wraps it around her. It's so sweet of him, and she smiles at him, and tries not to start crying again.
And if his hands brush her breasts as he does so, well, she's the one wandering around naked, and she's sure it was an accident.
Yes, memory hurts worse than hope.
Although perhaps it began here:
Getting started in a new universe is hard, even when your sort-of-stepfather runs Torchwood.
So they move in with him, at least for now, and she can't help noticing that even the smallest guest bedroom is larger than her room back on the estate. It's easy to fall into the habit of letting him provide.
And, if she's honest with herself, it's nice to have a protective man in her life.
She just tries not to remember how she found this out the first time.
It's night that's the worst. It's quiet, and she can see the stars, and it hurts.
He comes on her one night while she's sitting in the back window and looking out at the stars and crying. She doesn't notice he's there until he wipes a tear off her cheek.
"You're too pretty to cry," he says, and she tries to smile. He means well, but it hurts.
Then he kisses her.
Perhaps her problem is that she has too much of one, and not enough of the other.
If only she knew which was which.
It's understandable that he'd be a bit confused. After all, she isn't his daughter, and he's not her father. Not really, not the way her Pete was. This one's never even had a child. How can he be expected to understand? To him, she's just a pretty young blonde thing.
She hears him telling a friend that, which is how she knows. And it's how she knows it hurts.
She still doesn't have papers. He says they're working on it.
The amazing thing, she's discovered, is that one gets used to hurting. You keep breathing, and eating, until one afternoon you realize it's been a day since you cried.
It doesn't hurt any less.
Or maybe this is when it starts:
He gets drunk, sometimes. She's seen him do it: her mum will flirt with him, and he'll flirt back, and they'll wander off somewhere. She really doesn't want to know. She doesn't want to even think about it.
And then he comes back downstairs, and heats some food, and gets the good stuff out from behind the bag of dried beans.
Sometimes he shares, if she's been crying. It's another thing that she thinks makes him sweet. She just wishes he'd quit trying to kiss her when he drinks.
Tonight she slips out when he comes down, before he can pour her a glass, before he can start talking to her and make her sit with him while he drinks. She goes up to her room, and sits in the window, and tries to reminisce without remembering.
It's hard, but she's getting better at it. Maybe one day she'll stop hurting when she sees the stars.
He knocks, and enters before she can get up from the window seat. It's dark in the room, but he doesn't turn on the lights or speak, just walks over and hands her a glass. She takes it because she doesn't know what else to do.
"I thought I'd find you up here," he says finally, when she's sipped a little. "Still looking for---"
"No," she cuts him off. "Just looking, yeah?"
He nods. "I wish he'd given me some warning," he says, and she tries not to remember that he's the one who made this happen. "Mickey was hard enough. It's hard work keeping people from asking awkward questions."
She's silent, thinking about Torchwood, and questions, and things she doesn't want to think about, because there's nowhere to go, no hand to hold, no escape if she needs to run.
Not from this.
His hand closes over the glass, and he takes it away, and she looks up at him in confusion, because he's never done that before. He's staring at her strangely, and she takes a breath to ask him---
His lips are hard on hers, and she's too shocked to move, and his hands are cold. She's still shocked when he pushes her backwards, when he pulls open the dressing-robe tie. Of all the things she ran from, with----before, this is one she's never---
She's scared, and not ready, and it hurts.
Afterwards, he leaves the bottle, and she drinks it while she washes away blood and sweat and other things.
There's no escape from that either, she's found.
In the mornings, he's sweet and kind and he makes her tea and toast and flusters the servants. Her mum thinks it's wonderful. She thinks it hurts.
It hurts there, too, but she tries not to flinch when she sits, because that makes her mum ask questions she can't answer.
Her mum's got nowhere to run either.
They love each other, and that hurts too.
She thinks he loves her, and that might hurt worse.
He gets her a job when her mother complains, working under him. She gets to lead a team---a small team, but her own team. It's one thing about the new universe that she genuinely likes.
He praises her in the evenings to her mum, telling all about what they did that day, which person they saved, what aliens they defeated.
It's almost like--- And it hurts.
It hurts worse, after, when she discovers that he finds it exciting.
She read, once, that hope was a thing with feathers.
She met a thing with feathers, once, made out of sharpened metal. She found out they were sharp the hard way, of course, and then there was running, and yelling, and hair-tugging, and---.
She thinks that's what they meant, because it hurts just like that.
She makes friends, slowly, but she's always been friendly and she keeps at it until one of the women at work asks her if she'd like to come with them, out on the town, after work.
"You know," the woman says while they walk to the loo in a crowded pub, "there are people, you know---if you want to move out, get your own flat---"
She can't figure out what the woman means, until later, when she's home, staring at the ceiling while he holds her wrists and she tries not to whimper.
---but the next week, the woman isn't working at Torchwood anymore, and no one will talk to her.
She knows how to take a hint.
So do they.
They're not allowed to assign her to anything outside of London. She only knows this because she overheard someone talking in the loo.
She spends a lot of time there, these days. Kneeling on the tile hurts, but---
It always hurts, because she's never ready, or prepared, in the way she knows women should be first. He tries, sometimes, but she thinks it's more for him than for her.
She tries something different, just once. Just once, she lets herself imagine brown hair instead of greying red, an angular face, a manic grin.
It hurts to do, because----well, because. But it hurts less, too.
He seems excited, even happy, when she lets herself see him and not----Because she's responsive in ways she never is. He seems disappointed when she looks to see how he's taking it, and she thinks it's because----because she notices it's him.
So she lets her imagination loose.
And this time, she comes too, only she forgets and cries out, because she forgets she's here, and not there.
It hurts, later, and not just because he breaks her arm.
She cries all the way to A&E, although her mum thinks it's the pain. She can't tell her that she's had worse, that she has worse, that she always has worse. So she cries, and silently apologizes to him, even though he isn't there, he's never going to be there, and he'll never know.
A&E ask, of course, but her mum just says "Torchwood" and they go silent. That hurts too, because----
But of course, she's never going to get out, because where can she go?
There's nowhere to run.
They tell her something else, something she should have known, but she's never regular when she's stressed, and she'd thought the loo trips were just stress too. It's not like she's been eating well.
And then she wakes up, with his voice in her ears, and just for a day she has hope again. All she has to do is ask, and he drives her, with Mickey and her mum, and she realizes again that in his own way, he loves her. It's easier to bear, knowing that, knowing she's going home.
Her real home, not---not the bedroom she can barely stand to be in.
Only she's not, and she can barely keep standing when he tells her, but she can't bear to take her eyes off him either, and in the moment she says something she shouldn't've.
She sees it in his eyes, and she knows---three words, maybe six, and he'd do it. He'd collapse two universes to save her, if she asked.
But she knows, now, that she isn't worth two universes, so she lies. Only the lie turns to something else, and she tells him something else she shouldn't've.
It's all right that he didn't reply. She wouldn't have believed him anyway, because she knows now that she isn't worth that either.
Maybe that hurts the worst.