Fic: Jump (1/1)
Title: Jump
Author: karenor
Character/Pairing: Doctor/Rose
Rating: Light R
Summary: Oh she really shouldn't be here. She should just slip out into the falling dark, hope that time would fix itself.
Beta: requialexa who makes my hearts wobble in the best possible way.
Disclaimer: BBC owns, etc. etc.
Author's Notes: Set pre-Rose and post-Doomsday, and thus... a bit angsty.
"That's not it... that's too kind. It's not the urge to jump, it's deeper than that."
The Dimension Cannon wasn’t just a universe hopper. It also travelled in time.
Only it wasn’t exactly under Control’s... control. The cannon was programmed to get her close to the TARDIS. Because where the TARDIS was, the Doctor was. In theory. But the Dimension Cannon was far from a perfect machine. While it managed to get her to and from her jumps in one piece every time, it often found the wrong time travel devices. She ran into half a dozen Time Agents, for example, before she ever got close to the TARDIS or the Doctor. And not all of them were as friendly as she remembered Jack to be.
She ran into an assorted selection of aliens, friendly and hostile, learning from them or for them or defeating them where necessary, doing what she could to save the world-like the Doctor had taught her-on the way to her ultimate goal.
And eventually they had managed to tweak the settings enough to find the Doctor more often than not. But finding him wasn’t as simple as that. The time was always wrong. The first time she’d seen the TARDIS again, she’d been ecstatic, nearly wept with joy, until she discovered that the year she’d landed in was a few years before her birth, the Doctor was a blonde man in cricket whites, and she dared not approach him.
Better to err on the side of earlier in the timeline than later, said the labcoats at Control.
She’d quickly become a pro in sorting out the when and where and figuring out whether this time would be the time she would find her Doctor. It never was. Not yet.
But she had faith. She’d find the right one at the right time, sooner or later. Hopefully before the end of every universe.
This latest jump dumped her in the middle of a crowded street. Nice, Control. Very incognito. Though luckily, aside from a few startled gasps from the people directly around her, no one seemed to take any special notice of a blonde, in leather, appearing right in front of them, out of thin air. It was nearly a universal constant that people tended to ignore things that didn’t fit into their perception of the world. In her current line of work, it often served her well.
She took stock of her surroundings as she walked. Busy shopping area. Rightish year, for a change. England, certainly. London, probably. Spring time. Late afternoon. She shielded her eyes from the setting sun with her hand as she looked for a familiar landmark. Or a newsagents.
So intent was she on getting her bearings that she completely missed the man barrelling towards her. All she noticed was a flash of black before she was knocked nearly to the ground. She would have ended up with a face full of pavement if a strong arm hadn’t caught her just in time, pulling her upright and holding her steady until she regained her balance.
“Oi, you want to watch where you’re going,” the man said, chuckling.
Oh. No.
She squeezed her eyes shut and held her breath, hoping she was wrong about the voice she recognized. That somehow the clipped, Northern accent might belong to someone else.
It didn’t.
“Are you all right?” the Doctor asked, when she finally looked at him.
It was him. And not the right one at all, but so very nearly almost. And she hadn’t seen this one yet on her jumps, not even from afar. Her first Doctor. Her heart clenched as her earliest memories of him were reawakened. That surge of brand new love that had cemented her to him almost immediately.
A wave of regret just as powerful washed over her. She knew immediately that they hadn’t met yet in his timeline. And so she would have to flee. All her training said get OUT of here before she damaged her own timeline, and his, and by extension further damaged the already very weakened multi-verse.
But she was rooted to the spot.
His deep blue eyes sparkled back at her. Alive with mirth, curiosity and something else. Not recognition, but... Oh brilliant, she moaned internally. She needed to fix this. Somehow, fast.
She took a deep breath and gave him a bright smile. “I’m... fantastic. Thanks for asking. And for...” She indicated the ground beneath their feet.
He dipped his eyes in acknowledgment of her thanks. Then returned her smile, tenfold. “Well, Fantastic,” he said, “Do you have a name?”
He was positively radiating charm and she knew for sure that she’d been made. He didn’t know her, but he knew she was a time traveller, and maybe more besides. This would be tricky.
She turned on her own charm. A good flirt, even (especially?) with the Doctor, could go a long way.
“Yeah,” she said. “I have.”
* * *
The mystery woman was being coy. That was fine; to be expected, even. He did enjoy a challenge. And he could tell, it’d be a challenge figuring her out-a woman who blinked into existence, who’d clearly travelled in time, who knew him, if her reaction to him saying “I’m the Doctor, by the way,” was any indication.
He did the only thing he could think of, because something about her seemed to slow down his incredibly quick brain, he invited her for a drink.
She looked at her watch. Did she have somewhere to be? Was this more coyness, playing hard to get? He was her target, of that he was almost sure, even if he had no idea why, so why the pretence?
She looked up at him from beneath her lashes and something in his stomach tightened. Oh yes, she knew him.
“Let me make a call?”
He smiled again and she stepped out of the river of people they were somehow still standing in the midst of. She walked out of earshot and pushed herself back against a building, covered one ear with her hand, and lifted her mobile to her other-a phone that was a bit too advanced for 2004. But no surprise there, really. At least he could see both her wrists now as her jacket slipped down her forearms. Not likely a time agent either, then.
He couldn’t hear her, but he gleaned plenty as he watched her body language change from flirtatious to all-business while she had a brief argument with whoever was on the other end of the phone. She probably assumed the throng of people passing between them made the subtleties of her demeanour virtually invisible. Probably would have done if it were anyone else’s eyes on her.
“Everything all right?” he asked when she rejoined him and they began to walk. She gave him an enigmatic smirk, but didn’t answer. “Had to check in, report your near death experience?” he pressed. “Or just to say you wouldn’t be home for tea?”
“Something like that,” she answered.
“Right...” he said non-commitally. Cards close to her chest. He liked that very much, even if it was aggravating. Someone had trained her well.
She flashed him another brief smile and then turned her eyes forward, looking for all the world like they were both regular people and this was a normal, every day encounter. Perhaps it was for her. It wasn’t for him. Her mystery was as seductive as the smell of time on her skin. And he was in danger of running into someone else if he kept staring at her while they walked.
“So,” she said after a moment. “Do you normally try to pull women this way?”
Smart girl, she was likely trying to draw attention away from herself. He didn’t believe for a second that she thought he was trying to seduce her. But... if they were going to play this game...
He gave a short, arrogant chuckle. “I don’t normally pull women.” When she turned questioning eyes to him, he quickly qualified. “Or anyone.”
She laughed in return, the first genuine sound he’d heard from her. “Next you’ll say you don’t have to,” she said.
“Well, I wouldn’t want to boast.”
* * *
They had stepped into the first pub they passed. It was cool and refreshingly dark in here after the brightness of the setting sun outside which had made her feel so very exposed to his scrutiny.
The pub was your bog standard, dark woods and greens, and filled with heavy smoke. Ah, she remembered smokey pubs. She sighed with nostalgia. Watching matches with Mickey, pints with her mates after a gruelling day at the Henrick’s... She'd been bored with her life before the Doctor, but it hadn't been all bad.
Though she’d never been in this exact pub, the scents and sounds were comforting and familiar. These days she was always running from jump to jump, gathering intel and fixing wrongs where she was able. It’d been so long since she could just relax and have a drink. Not that she’d be doing any relaxing here. She had to remind herself that this was a... business trip, just like all the others. She had to fix what she’d bollixed up and then be on her way.
Still, she gave herself a moment to decompress as she sat at a table and waited for the Doctor to fetch their drinks.
She should be formulating a plan, but so far she was turning up blank, most of her mind occupied with drinking in the sight of the Doctor. That familiar silhouette he cut, dark lines and leather (just like her), leaning so casually against the bar...
Oh she really shouldn't be here. She should just slip out into the falling dark, hope that time would fix itself. But instead she was sat at a sticky pub table, waiting for a drink and ogling a memory.
He returned before she had the vaguest idea of what she would do. Well, fly by the seat of her jeans worked for her before, she supposed.
The Doctor settled in his seat across the table and took a sip from his pint. He stared at her for a long moment before he spoke.
“You from around here?” he asked, a parody of small talk.
“Yes,” she answered truthfully.
“Really?” His voice was laced with suspicion. She supposed it was about time they chucked this charade, but she couldn’t quite yet.
“Really,” she confirmed. “You?”
“Not exactly, no.” He paused, like he was considering his next words very carefully. “But you already knew that.”
She took a deep breath and then made a final attempt to keep up their pretence a moment longer. “Right,” she said, hoping her voice wouldn’t tremble. “Because of your accent, you mean?”
“No, that’s not what I mean.”
She sighed and looked down at the table, picking at her thick paper coaster. “What do you mean?” she asked softly, without looking at him.
“I mean the device in your pocket.”
She looked up sharply. “What does that have to do with where you’re from?”
He looked unimpressed. Well, it was cards on the table time then, she supposed.
“It has to do with where you’re from. Or when.”
* * *
As her mask dropped, he saw years of pain fill her eyes, almost instantly. She was human, and young, but he knew, for certain now, that she’d seen so many unspeakable things in her very short time on this earth. She’d promised not to lie to him and he was fairly certain she wouldn’t. For some reason, though he remained on his guard, his instinct was to trust her. Didn’t mean she’d be any more forthcoming with the whole truth.
He fired off his first real question. “What are you doing here?”
“I...” she started shakily. “I... I lost someone.”
Her answer wasn’t exactly what he’d expected. Someone I love was left off of what she said, but it obviously belonged at the end of her sentence. “You...?” he began, already feeling an intense urge to comfort her. He shook it off. “I’m sorry. But what-?”
”-You’ve lost people too, haven’t you?” She was trying to make him talk about himself again, and it annoyed him that he still didn’t know how much she knew, if she was just guessing.
“Everyone has,” he said shortly, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Not like you.”
The way she said it... She knew everything.
He swallowed, did his best to remain stoic. “You’re trying to change the subject.”
“No,” she said, sighing in frustration. “I’m just... Why I’m here-it doesn’t matter.”
“Oh, I think it d-“
“I’m not here to destroy the world or anything, Doctor.” Oh how easily his name rolled off her tongue. He still didn’t know hers. “Really,” she said, almost a whisper. She plucked one of his hands from the bend of his elbow and clasped it between hers; his hearts stuttered like they had when he’d caught her in the street. “It’s... completely the opposite.”
He believed her, without question.
“I can help,” he said.
“Not with this you can’t. “
“Then what can I do?”
* * *
This was madness. Snogging the Doctor in the middle of a crowded pub.
Snogging the wrong (but so very nearly almost right) Doctor, a year before he’d ever met her. It was absolute madness. On a list of very wrong things to do on jumps across time and parallel worlds, messing with your own timeline, with your tongue, was up there with the very wrongest of them.
But when she’d leaned over without thinking, sealed her lips to his without a thought to the consequences, and he’d kissed her back-kissed her like he was starving for her, like he’d been waiting for her (he was, just not this her)-she couldn’t stop.
Their tongues alternately battled and caressed, warred and comforted. It was like his body knew her, knew exactly what she needed, without his mind knowing anything much at all. Because she needed this. And maybe... maybe he did too.
But the awkwardness of position, her rapid heart demanding more oxygen, eventually required her to pull back. She sat heavily back in her own chair and he did the same, staring at her with something akin to amazement.
“That,” he said, “probably wasn’t the best idea.”
“No,” she answered, pressing her lips together, tasting him still there. “Probably not.”
He glanced around, as if worried someone were listening in. “Do you want to get out of here?”
“Yes.”
* * *
He was insane. The things he’d done, they’d finally pushed him past the brink of madness.
Why else would he have dragged her here-this girl he didn’t know, but who knew more about him than anyone alive-getting them both drenched in the evening rain, to the nearest semi-private horizontal surface? What possessed him to pull her body under his, in this shadowy corner of a dark park, and kiss her like she’d disappear at any moment?
But she was here. That meant that it all worked out. Whenever he meets her in her own timeline... it would still happen. It had to. He sighed into her mouth. Who was he, putting the responsibility for preserving timelines on this woman?
Her hands found the zip of his jeans more quickly than he expected. He broke their kiss to question her with his eyes.
“I don’t have a lot of time.”
“I...” he gasped, as she slipped a hand into his trousers and encircled him. “I have a time machine,” he heard himself saying.
“I... can’t” she groaned, and it wasn’t rain on her face.
* * *
There was etiquette about crying while fucking, wasn’t there? Never mind. She couldn’t stop it anymore than she could have stopped herself from kissing him in the pub, and the rain would cover it up anyway. And what else mattered but the Doctor inside her? Now mattered, not the past or the future. Now.
“I’m not him,” he gasped as he thrust into her. “The one you lost. Who you’re looking for.”
He saw the truth in her eyes. He wasn’t a replacement shag. He was him.
“Oh...” he said, and pushed his head against her shoulder.
“I’m Rose,” she said, finally, as she began to clench around him. “My name is Rose.”
She thought he might be crying too.
“I have to forget you, don’t I?” he asked.
Might be just the rain.
“I’m sorry.”
* * *
* * *
* * *
“I remember,” he said, slipping off his blue suit jacket and untying his tie.
“Remember what?” she asked, pulling her pyjamas over her head.
“That evening in London. That night in the park.”
She gaped at him, fishlike.
“Oh...” she said slowly. “What-?” She paused to moisten her lips. “What was the memory trigger?”
He could say it had just happened today, not weeks ago. He could lie.
He didn’t.
“I guess it did need saying.”
FIN
Author: karenor
Character/Pairing: Doctor/Rose
Rating: Light R
Summary: Oh she really shouldn't be here. She should just slip out into the falling dark, hope that time would fix itself.
Beta: requialexa who makes my hearts wobble in the best possible way.
Disclaimer: BBC owns, etc. etc.
Author's Notes: Set pre-Rose and post-Doomsday, and thus... a bit angsty.
"That's not it... that's too kind. It's not the urge to jump, it's deeper than that."
The Dimension Cannon wasn’t just a universe hopper. It also travelled in time.
Only it wasn’t exactly under Control’s... control. The cannon was programmed to get her close to the TARDIS. Because where the TARDIS was, the Doctor was. In theory. But the Dimension Cannon was far from a perfect machine. While it managed to get her to and from her jumps in one piece every time, it often found the wrong time travel devices. She ran into half a dozen Time Agents, for example, before she ever got close to the TARDIS or the Doctor. And not all of them were as friendly as she remembered Jack to be.
She ran into an assorted selection of aliens, friendly and hostile, learning from them or for them or defeating them where necessary, doing what she could to save the world-like the Doctor had taught her-on the way to her ultimate goal.
And eventually they had managed to tweak the settings enough to find the Doctor more often than not. But finding him wasn’t as simple as that. The time was always wrong. The first time she’d seen the TARDIS again, she’d been ecstatic, nearly wept with joy, until she discovered that the year she’d landed in was a few years before her birth, the Doctor was a blonde man in cricket whites, and she dared not approach him.
Better to err on the side of earlier in the timeline than later, said the labcoats at Control.
She’d quickly become a pro in sorting out the when and where and figuring out whether this time would be the time she would find her Doctor. It never was. Not yet.
But she had faith. She’d find the right one at the right time, sooner or later. Hopefully before the end of every universe.
This latest jump dumped her in the middle of a crowded street. Nice, Control. Very incognito. Though luckily, aside from a few startled gasps from the people directly around her, no one seemed to take any special notice of a blonde, in leather, appearing right in front of them, out of thin air. It was nearly a universal constant that people tended to ignore things that didn’t fit into their perception of the world. In her current line of work, it often served her well.
She took stock of her surroundings as she walked. Busy shopping area. Rightish year, for a change. England, certainly. London, probably. Spring time. Late afternoon. She shielded her eyes from the setting sun with her hand as she looked for a familiar landmark. Or a newsagents.
So intent was she on getting her bearings that she completely missed the man barrelling towards her. All she noticed was a flash of black before she was knocked nearly to the ground. She would have ended up with a face full of pavement if a strong arm hadn’t caught her just in time, pulling her upright and holding her steady until she regained her balance.
“Oi, you want to watch where you’re going,” the man said, chuckling.
Oh. No.
She squeezed her eyes shut and held her breath, hoping she was wrong about the voice she recognized. That somehow the clipped, Northern accent might belong to someone else.
It didn’t.
“Are you all right?” the Doctor asked, when she finally looked at him.
It was him. And not the right one at all, but so very nearly almost. And she hadn’t seen this one yet on her jumps, not even from afar. Her first Doctor. Her heart clenched as her earliest memories of him were reawakened. That surge of brand new love that had cemented her to him almost immediately.
A wave of regret just as powerful washed over her. She knew immediately that they hadn’t met yet in his timeline. And so she would have to flee. All her training said get OUT of here before she damaged her own timeline, and his, and by extension further damaged the already very weakened multi-verse.
But she was rooted to the spot.
His deep blue eyes sparkled back at her. Alive with mirth, curiosity and something else. Not recognition, but... Oh brilliant, she moaned internally. She needed to fix this. Somehow, fast.
She took a deep breath and gave him a bright smile. “I’m... fantastic. Thanks for asking. And for...” She indicated the ground beneath their feet.
He dipped his eyes in acknowledgment of her thanks. Then returned her smile, tenfold. “Well, Fantastic,” he said, “Do you have a name?”
He was positively radiating charm and she knew for sure that she’d been made. He didn’t know her, but he knew she was a time traveller, and maybe more besides. This would be tricky.
She turned on her own charm. A good flirt, even (especially?) with the Doctor, could go a long way.
“Yeah,” she said. “I have.”
* * *
The mystery woman was being coy. That was fine; to be expected, even. He did enjoy a challenge. And he could tell, it’d be a challenge figuring her out-a woman who blinked into existence, who’d clearly travelled in time, who knew him, if her reaction to him saying “I’m the Doctor, by the way,” was any indication.
He did the only thing he could think of, because something about her seemed to slow down his incredibly quick brain, he invited her for a drink.
She looked at her watch. Did she have somewhere to be? Was this more coyness, playing hard to get? He was her target, of that he was almost sure, even if he had no idea why, so why the pretence?
She looked up at him from beneath her lashes and something in his stomach tightened. Oh yes, she knew him.
“Let me make a call?”
He smiled again and she stepped out of the river of people they were somehow still standing in the midst of. She walked out of earshot and pushed herself back against a building, covered one ear with her hand, and lifted her mobile to her other-a phone that was a bit too advanced for 2004. But no surprise there, really. At least he could see both her wrists now as her jacket slipped down her forearms. Not likely a time agent either, then.
He couldn’t hear her, but he gleaned plenty as he watched her body language change from flirtatious to all-business while she had a brief argument with whoever was on the other end of the phone. She probably assumed the throng of people passing between them made the subtleties of her demeanour virtually invisible. Probably would have done if it were anyone else’s eyes on her.
“Everything all right?” he asked when she rejoined him and they began to walk. She gave him an enigmatic smirk, but didn’t answer. “Had to check in, report your near death experience?” he pressed. “Or just to say you wouldn’t be home for tea?”
“Something like that,” she answered.
“Right...” he said non-commitally. Cards close to her chest. He liked that very much, even if it was aggravating. Someone had trained her well.
She flashed him another brief smile and then turned her eyes forward, looking for all the world like they were both regular people and this was a normal, every day encounter. Perhaps it was for her. It wasn’t for him. Her mystery was as seductive as the smell of time on her skin. And he was in danger of running into someone else if he kept staring at her while they walked.
“So,” she said after a moment. “Do you normally try to pull women this way?”
Smart girl, she was likely trying to draw attention away from herself. He didn’t believe for a second that she thought he was trying to seduce her. But... if they were going to play this game...
He gave a short, arrogant chuckle. “I don’t normally pull women.” When she turned questioning eyes to him, he quickly qualified. “Or anyone.”
She laughed in return, the first genuine sound he’d heard from her. “Next you’ll say you don’t have to,” she said.
“Well, I wouldn’t want to boast.”
* * *
They had stepped into the first pub they passed. It was cool and refreshingly dark in here after the brightness of the setting sun outside which had made her feel so very exposed to his scrutiny.
The pub was your bog standard, dark woods and greens, and filled with heavy smoke. Ah, she remembered smokey pubs. She sighed with nostalgia. Watching matches with Mickey, pints with her mates after a gruelling day at the Henrick’s... She'd been bored with her life before the Doctor, but it hadn't been all bad.
Though she’d never been in this exact pub, the scents and sounds were comforting and familiar. These days she was always running from jump to jump, gathering intel and fixing wrongs where she was able. It’d been so long since she could just relax and have a drink. Not that she’d be doing any relaxing here. She had to remind herself that this was a... business trip, just like all the others. She had to fix what she’d bollixed up and then be on her way.
Still, she gave herself a moment to decompress as she sat at a table and waited for the Doctor to fetch their drinks.
She should be formulating a plan, but so far she was turning up blank, most of her mind occupied with drinking in the sight of the Doctor. That familiar silhouette he cut, dark lines and leather (just like her), leaning so casually against the bar...
Oh she really shouldn't be here. She should just slip out into the falling dark, hope that time would fix itself. But instead she was sat at a sticky pub table, waiting for a drink and ogling a memory.
He returned before she had the vaguest idea of what she would do. Well, fly by the seat of her jeans worked for her before, she supposed.
The Doctor settled in his seat across the table and took a sip from his pint. He stared at her for a long moment before he spoke.
“You from around here?” he asked, a parody of small talk.
“Yes,” she answered truthfully.
“Really?” His voice was laced with suspicion. She supposed it was about time they chucked this charade, but she couldn’t quite yet.
“Really,” she confirmed. “You?”
“Not exactly, no.” He paused, like he was considering his next words very carefully. “But you already knew that.”
She took a deep breath and then made a final attempt to keep up their pretence a moment longer. “Right,” she said, hoping her voice wouldn’t tremble. “Because of your accent, you mean?”
“No, that’s not what I mean.”
She sighed and looked down at the table, picking at her thick paper coaster. “What do you mean?” she asked softly, without looking at him.
“I mean the device in your pocket.”
She looked up sharply. “What does that have to do with where you’re from?”
He looked unimpressed. Well, it was cards on the table time then, she supposed.
“It has to do with where you’re from. Or when.”
* * *
As her mask dropped, he saw years of pain fill her eyes, almost instantly. She was human, and young, but he knew, for certain now, that she’d seen so many unspeakable things in her very short time on this earth. She’d promised not to lie to him and he was fairly certain she wouldn’t. For some reason, though he remained on his guard, his instinct was to trust her. Didn’t mean she’d be any more forthcoming with the whole truth.
He fired off his first real question. “What are you doing here?”
“I...” she started shakily. “I... I lost someone.”
Her answer wasn’t exactly what he’d expected. Someone I love was left off of what she said, but it obviously belonged at the end of her sentence. “You...?” he began, already feeling an intense urge to comfort her. He shook it off. “I’m sorry. But what-?”
”-You’ve lost people too, haven’t you?” She was trying to make him talk about himself again, and it annoyed him that he still didn’t know how much she knew, if she was just guessing.
“Everyone has,” he said shortly, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Not like you.”
The way she said it... She knew everything.
He swallowed, did his best to remain stoic. “You’re trying to change the subject.”
“No,” she said, sighing in frustration. “I’m just... Why I’m here-it doesn’t matter.”
“Oh, I think it d-“
“I’m not here to destroy the world or anything, Doctor.” Oh how easily his name rolled off her tongue. He still didn’t know hers. “Really,” she said, almost a whisper. She plucked one of his hands from the bend of his elbow and clasped it between hers; his hearts stuttered like they had when he’d caught her in the street. “It’s... completely the opposite.”
He believed her, without question.
“I can help,” he said.
“Not with this you can’t. “
“Then what can I do?”
* * *
This was madness. Snogging the Doctor in the middle of a crowded pub.
Snogging the wrong (but so very nearly almost right) Doctor, a year before he’d ever met her. It was absolute madness. On a list of very wrong things to do on jumps across time and parallel worlds, messing with your own timeline, with your tongue, was up there with the very wrongest of them.
But when she’d leaned over without thinking, sealed her lips to his without a thought to the consequences, and he’d kissed her back-kissed her like he was starving for her, like he’d been waiting for her (he was, just not this her)-she couldn’t stop.
Their tongues alternately battled and caressed, warred and comforted. It was like his body knew her, knew exactly what she needed, without his mind knowing anything much at all. Because she needed this. And maybe... maybe he did too.
But the awkwardness of position, her rapid heart demanding more oxygen, eventually required her to pull back. She sat heavily back in her own chair and he did the same, staring at her with something akin to amazement.
“That,” he said, “probably wasn’t the best idea.”
“No,” she answered, pressing her lips together, tasting him still there. “Probably not.”
He glanced around, as if worried someone were listening in. “Do you want to get out of here?”
“Yes.”
* * *
He was insane. The things he’d done, they’d finally pushed him past the brink of madness.
Why else would he have dragged her here-this girl he didn’t know, but who knew more about him than anyone alive-getting them both drenched in the evening rain, to the nearest semi-private horizontal surface? What possessed him to pull her body under his, in this shadowy corner of a dark park, and kiss her like she’d disappear at any moment?
But she was here. That meant that it all worked out. Whenever he meets her in her own timeline... it would still happen. It had to. He sighed into her mouth. Who was he, putting the responsibility for preserving timelines on this woman?
Her hands found the zip of his jeans more quickly than he expected. He broke their kiss to question her with his eyes.
“I don’t have a lot of time.”
“I...” he gasped, as she slipped a hand into his trousers and encircled him. “I have a time machine,” he heard himself saying.
“I... can’t” she groaned, and it wasn’t rain on her face.
* * *
There was etiquette about crying while fucking, wasn’t there? Never mind. She couldn’t stop it anymore than she could have stopped herself from kissing him in the pub, and the rain would cover it up anyway. And what else mattered but the Doctor inside her? Now mattered, not the past or the future. Now.
“I’m not him,” he gasped as he thrust into her. “The one you lost. Who you’re looking for.”
He saw the truth in her eyes. He wasn’t a replacement shag. He was him.
“Oh...” he said, and pushed his head against her shoulder.
“I’m Rose,” she said, finally, as she began to clench around him. “My name is Rose.”
She thought he might be crying too.
“I have to forget you, don’t I?” he asked.
Might be just the rain.
“I’m sorry.”
* * *
* * *
* * *
“I remember,” he said, slipping off his blue suit jacket and untying his tie.
“Remember what?” she asked, pulling her pyjamas over her head.
“That evening in London. That night in the park.”
She gaped at him, fishlike.
“Oh...” she said slowly. “What-?” She paused to moisten her lips. “What was the memory trigger?”
He could say it had just happened today, not weeks ago. He could lie.
He didn’t.
“I guess it did need saying.”
FIN