Support Stacie Fic: The Feather and the Mountain -- for The Shadow Proclamation (5/11)
Title: The Feather and the Mountain (5/11) [Chapter Four: Trinity]
Author: ladychi
Graphic: amyxaphania
Rating: Older Teen
Characters: Ten/Jack/Rose
Summary: Written to the prompt "Ten, Jack and Rose figure out how to have a relationship together". Just after Children of Earth, Ten, Jack and Rose must heal their individual wounds and come together.
Author's Note: The angst level on this chapter is... pretty high. Just so you know. Happy Easter! Oh, and thanks to plaid_slytherin for talking me down off the cliff with this one.
Previous Chapters: Prologue | Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three
Chapter Four: Trinity
In her dream, Rose languished with the Doctor. The low light of evening filtered in through the blinds, red and hot. Summer was sticky and thick and laid on their skin just as tangibly as the sweat they'd earned from the pleasure they'd given each other.
“Do you miss me?” the Doctor asked, kissing her hand and rolling over onto his stomach to stare at her with serious brown eyes.
“Like I'd miss my own hand,” Rose answered honestly, but somehow without the crushing weight of grief she'd mostly managed to hide during the day. “Do you miss me?”
“Like I'd miss my own heart,” the Doctor assured her, his hand sliding across the skin of her thighs. “I miss this, too.”
Rose chuckled, feeling for all the world like a sex goddess - like Grace Kelley or perhaps Audrey Hepburn, with her whip-thin leading man in a strategically wrapped sheet. Dream her had sexily tousled hair and glowed with sun-kissed skin, although part of her knew that the real her lay dying in a dojo in Kyoto. “You would,” she said, arching into his touch. “You're very... tactile.”
“You're very soft,” the Doctor countered in a low voice. “Bit of a cliché, that. The softness of a woman against the hardness of a man, but there's something elemental about that dichotomy, don't you think?”
Rose hmmed, more content to listen to the rhythms of his voice, soothing and predictable as the sun. “Something, yeah.”
“You're not listening to me,” the Doctor chided, his hand sliding across her stomach and drawing a complex set of circles she recognized as his language.
“What are you writing on me?”
“It's a blessing,” the Doctor said absently.
Rose wrinkled her forehead. “I didn't know you believed in anything.”
“I believe in Time,” the Doctor said. “I believe in the tangible. I believe in you.” He smiled.
“So what's the blessing for?”
“Swift feet,” the Doctor said. “Where I am, there's no Time. But somehow it seems endless, waiting for you.”
“Do we go to the same place, if we die in different universes?” Rose fought the lump of panic that rose in her throat.
The Doctor soothed her with a look and a brush of his hand against her temple. “No matter where you go, Rose, wherever you end up, that's where I'll be.”
“I wanted to stay with you forever,” Rose said, kissing his hand and drawing him close. “I would have been content, you and me. Traveling Europe and saving the world. Torchwood and babysitting and fixing the washing machine and running for our lives.”
“I wanted to stay with you forever.” The Doctor swallowed and kissed her cheek. “I wanted existence.”
Her heart broke in her chest. “I miss you so much. The Doctor, he's you but he's not you.”
“You've said that before,” the Doctor said, and before her eyes he seemed to flash back and forth - a man with a Roman nose and the man with tall hair. “He's me. I'm him.”
She squeezed his hand and rolled him over onto his back, crawling on top of him until she straddled his stomach. “He's you. But he's got two hearts. And a shield over both of them ten feet thick. He gave me you because he couldn't give me everything. Now I'm here, trying to force...” She shook her head. “What if I break his heart again?”
“Rose.” The Doctor smiled at her - but there was little joy in it. More sad understanding. “I would never deny you the chance to break my hearts. It's the sweetest pain I know.”
“I want them to be happy together, when I leave,” Rose said. “I want so much for them both.”
The Doctor arched his back and rubbed his eyes, threatening to dislodge Rose. “Immortality's a tricky business, Rose. So is near-immortality. They'll be as happy as they can be.”
“I should tell them to leave me here. I should tell them to go on.”
“Don't give up yet, Rose. I want you with me but I want you with him.” The Doctor chuckled. “I want us both to have you. There's no Time where I am, remember.”
“So you want me to keep fighting?” Rose arched her eyebrows.
“Of course. You're my heart, Rose. I'd never want you to stop.”
**
The two men walked much more quickly together than they had when Rose was with them. They'd fallen into a sort of rhythm, through all of the adventures they'd had together. The Doctor's lanky strides carried him with grace over the ground that the Captain powered through, but they were somehow equal.
They didn't speak, for the most part, except to warn each other of the hazards of the terrain they were passing over. At least, until they opened the TARDIS door, and the Doctor stepped inside. He threw his coat off and rubbed his eyes. He let out a string of words that the TARDIS refused to translate.
“Hey, Doc. Slow down.” Jack crossed the console room and stood next to the man who suddenly seemed broken in half, leaning over the console.
“There has to be a way to fix this,” the Doctor snarled. “There has to be.”
“Yeah, and we're going to figure it out.” Jack's arms folded across his chest and he smiled brightly. “We're going to set it right. Just like we always do.”
“Except for when we don't.” The Doctor ran his hands through his hair. “You know, she was supposed to go off with... the other... you know, the one, and get to do all of those human things that she deserves to be able to do and...”
“Yeah, well. Shit happens, Doc.” Jack rolled up his sleeves. “We don't always get to lead the lives we planned to lead. We don't get to keep our wives or our husbands or our kids or our... lovers.”
“Jack, I'm sorry...”
“I've already hit my quota on grief this year, Doc. I can't lose Ianto and Alice and Steven and...” Jack swallowed. “Rose gets to live.'
“You're absolutely right.” The Doctor pulled himself up and seemed to stand straighter - seemed as tall as he was in Jack's imagination. A fire lit in his eyes. “Rose gets to live.”
He threw a switch, twisted a knob, pumped a pump, stapled a stapler, swung a hammer, stomped a foot pedal, whistled a tune, and piloted the TARDIS up the hill to the edge of the dojo property.
**
“Our visitors are very strange,” Miss Kaoru said, kneeling next to Kenshin in the garden, where they companionably pulled weeds.
“They're from the West,” Kenshin said succinctly. “They're bound to be a bit different.”
“Yes, of course.” There was silence for many moments as they worked. “I'm very sorry for Miss Rose, though. She seems terribly young to be so ill, and to have suffered so much.”
Kenshin nodded, his long hair obscuring the view to his eyes. “It is never fair that the young suffer.”
They both bowed their heads silently, ignoring their own pasts to acknowledge a greater truth. A sound interrupted their conversation - grinding and harsh. Kenshin jumped to his feet. He'd heard the sound before.
“What's that?” Miss Kaoru followed closely on his heels.
“This humble one is going to try to see,” Kenshin said softly, and they walked to the edge of the property where there stood a tall blue box with POLICE PUBLIC CALL BOX written on it in kanji.
“What is it?” Kaoru asked, laying her hand on Kenshin's forearm. He rested his palm against his sword and shrugged his shoulders.
“This humble one has no idea, Miss Kaoru.”
The door swung open with a bang and out marched the Doctor, coat sweeping out behind him. He whirled and faced them. “Oh, hallo!”
“Hello, Doctor,” Kaoru said, bowing politely. “Is this your... box?”
“Box?” The Doctor looked slightly horrified. “The TARDIS is so much more than a box.”
“And yet, paradoxically,” the Captain said, stepping out behind him, “that's exactly what she is.”
“Do you need this box to help your friend?” Kenshin asked cautiously.
“Yep!” The Doctor rocked back on his heels. “She's the only one who's got a prayer of helping me figure this out.”
“Hey, Doc, I can...”
“Go check on Rose.” The Doctor was firm, his hands seated in his pockets. “Get her vitals and bring that information back to me, yeah?”
“Yeah, of course.” Jack, knowing an order when he heard one, snapped off a half-mocking salute and walked back into the dojo.
“Miss Kaoru, Mr. Himura, I would invite you inside but I'm afraid I have quite a bit of work to do, so...”
“Of course.” Kenshin bowed. “This humble one apologizes. The best of luck to you, Doctor.”
“Thank you.” The Doctor bowed, and firmly shut the door.
“How did they fit in there?” Miss Kaoru asked Kenshin.
He laughed. “This humble one does not know, Miss Kaoru. Perhaps it's larger on the inside!”
They headed back into the dojo, chuckling comfortably together.
**
Rose blinked her eyes open when she felt the steady pressure of someone's fingers against her wrist. She swallowed past the lump in her throat. “Jack?”
“Hey there, stranger. Welcome back to the land of the living.”
Rose grimaced. “Must be some fever I've picked up.”
“Feel pretty nasty, eh?”
“Yeah. I took a bath with Miss Kaoru but I still feel gross.” Rose coughed and turned her head to the side. “Where's the Doctor?”
“In the TARDIS,” Jack said.
Rose looked confused. “But he was just here, wasn't he?”
Jack shook his head. “Sorry, Rosie. We went and got the TARDIS and came back. He hasn't been in to check on you in a couple of hours.”
“I could have sworn he was here.” Rose's eyes widened, and then she bit her lip. “Oh.”
“Oh what?”
“Just a dream. Silly me.” Hastily, she wiped her eyes. “It's fine.”
“Are you sure?” Jack marked one last thing down on the notepad he'd marked her vitals on, and then stared at her with ice-blue eyes that always seemed to cut to the quick of her. “Rosie. You know you can tell me what's hurting you.”
She shook her head. “It's not fair to the Doctor.”
“Feelings aren't fair,” Jack said, somehow remembering that he'd said something exactly like this to Alice once. “They just are.”
“I was dreaming about the other Doctor when you woke me up.”
Jack grinned lecherously at her. “Good dream?”
“The best kind,” Rose said, smiling at him. “Sunlight on a white satin bed, everything happening on slow motion...”
Jack beamed. “My wet dreams never come with mood lighting.”
“It was just different,” Rose said helplessly. “He was his own man. He made love to me. He told me loved me. And then he was gone.”
Throughout the dojo, the smell of tea began to waft, and Jack had to shake himself to prevent the memory of Ianto holding a tray, wearing one of his suits and being very, very droll.
“Yeah.” Jack swallowed, and squeezed her hand. “I'm sorry. I know how you feel.”
Rose opened her arms. “I'll let you cry on me if you'll let me cry on you.”
“Absolutely.” He laid down with her, wrapping himself around her until he could feel the course of the blood through her veins. Neither one of them really cried.
Author: ladychi
Graphic: amyxaphania
Rating: Older Teen
Characters: Ten/Jack/Rose
Summary: Written to the prompt "Ten, Jack and Rose figure out how to have a relationship together". Just after Children of Earth, Ten, Jack and Rose must heal their individual wounds and come together.
Author's Note: The angst level on this chapter is... pretty high. Just so you know. Happy Easter! Oh, and thanks to plaid_slytherin for talking me down off the cliff with this one.
Previous Chapters: Prologue | Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three
Chapter Four: Trinity
In her dream, Rose languished with the Doctor. The low light of evening filtered in through the blinds, red and hot. Summer was sticky and thick and laid on their skin just as tangibly as the sweat they'd earned from the pleasure they'd given each other.
“Do you miss me?” the Doctor asked, kissing her hand and rolling over onto his stomach to stare at her with serious brown eyes.
“Like I'd miss my own hand,” Rose answered honestly, but somehow without the crushing weight of grief she'd mostly managed to hide during the day. “Do you miss me?”
“Like I'd miss my own heart,” the Doctor assured her, his hand sliding across the skin of her thighs. “I miss this, too.”
Rose chuckled, feeling for all the world like a sex goddess - like Grace Kelley or perhaps Audrey Hepburn, with her whip-thin leading man in a strategically wrapped sheet. Dream her had sexily tousled hair and glowed with sun-kissed skin, although part of her knew that the real her lay dying in a dojo in Kyoto. “You would,” she said, arching into his touch. “You're very... tactile.”
“You're very soft,” the Doctor countered in a low voice. “Bit of a cliché, that. The softness of a woman against the hardness of a man, but there's something elemental about that dichotomy, don't you think?”
Rose hmmed, more content to listen to the rhythms of his voice, soothing and predictable as the sun. “Something, yeah.”
“You're not listening to me,” the Doctor chided, his hand sliding across her stomach and drawing a complex set of circles she recognized as his language.
“What are you writing on me?”
“It's a blessing,” the Doctor said absently.
Rose wrinkled her forehead. “I didn't know you believed in anything.”
“I believe in Time,” the Doctor said. “I believe in the tangible. I believe in you.” He smiled.
“So what's the blessing for?”
“Swift feet,” the Doctor said. “Where I am, there's no Time. But somehow it seems endless, waiting for you.”
“Do we go to the same place, if we die in different universes?” Rose fought the lump of panic that rose in her throat.
The Doctor soothed her with a look and a brush of his hand against her temple. “No matter where you go, Rose, wherever you end up, that's where I'll be.”
“I wanted to stay with you forever,” Rose said, kissing his hand and drawing him close. “I would have been content, you and me. Traveling Europe and saving the world. Torchwood and babysitting and fixing the washing machine and running for our lives.”
“I wanted to stay with you forever.” The Doctor swallowed and kissed her cheek. “I wanted existence.”
Her heart broke in her chest. “I miss you so much. The Doctor, he's you but he's not you.”
“You've said that before,” the Doctor said, and before her eyes he seemed to flash back and forth - a man with a Roman nose and the man with tall hair. “He's me. I'm him.”
She squeezed his hand and rolled him over onto his back, crawling on top of him until she straddled his stomach. “He's you. But he's got two hearts. And a shield over both of them ten feet thick. He gave me you because he couldn't give me everything. Now I'm here, trying to force...” She shook her head. “What if I break his heart again?”
“Rose.” The Doctor smiled at her - but there was little joy in it. More sad understanding. “I would never deny you the chance to break my hearts. It's the sweetest pain I know.”
“I want them to be happy together, when I leave,” Rose said. “I want so much for them both.”
The Doctor arched his back and rubbed his eyes, threatening to dislodge Rose. “Immortality's a tricky business, Rose. So is near-immortality. They'll be as happy as they can be.”
“I should tell them to leave me here. I should tell them to go on.”
“Don't give up yet, Rose. I want you with me but I want you with him.” The Doctor chuckled. “I want us both to have you. There's no Time where I am, remember.”
“So you want me to keep fighting?” Rose arched her eyebrows.
“Of course. You're my heart, Rose. I'd never want you to stop.”
**
The two men walked much more quickly together than they had when Rose was with them. They'd fallen into a sort of rhythm, through all of the adventures they'd had together. The Doctor's lanky strides carried him with grace over the ground that the Captain powered through, but they were somehow equal.
They didn't speak, for the most part, except to warn each other of the hazards of the terrain they were passing over. At least, until they opened the TARDIS door, and the Doctor stepped inside. He threw his coat off and rubbed his eyes. He let out a string of words that the TARDIS refused to translate.
“Hey, Doc. Slow down.” Jack crossed the console room and stood next to the man who suddenly seemed broken in half, leaning over the console.
“There has to be a way to fix this,” the Doctor snarled. “There has to be.”
“Yeah, and we're going to figure it out.” Jack's arms folded across his chest and he smiled brightly. “We're going to set it right. Just like we always do.”
“Except for when we don't.” The Doctor ran his hands through his hair. “You know, she was supposed to go off with... the other... you know, the one, and get to do all of those human things that she deserves to be able to do and...”
“Yeah, well. Shit happens, Doc.” Jack rolled up his sleeves. “We don't always get to lead the lives we planned to lead. We don't get to keep our wives or our husbands or our kids or our... lovers.”
“Jack, I'm sorry...”
“I've already hit my quota on grief this year, Doc. I can't lose Ianto and Alice and Steven and...” Jack swallowed. “Rose gets to live.'
“You're absolutely right.” The Doctor pulled himself up and seemed to stand straighter - seemed as tall as he was in Jack's imagination. A fire lit in his eyes. “Rose gets to live.”
He threw a switch, twisted a knob, pumped a pump, stapled a stapler, swung a hammer, stomped a foot pedal, whistled a tune, and piloted the TARDIS up the hill to the edge of the dojo property.
**
“Our visitors are very strange,” Miss Kaoru said, kneeling next to Kenshin in the garden, where they companionably pulled weeds.
“They're from the West,” Kenshin said succinctly. “They're bound to be a bit different.”
“Yes, of course.” There was silence for many moments as they worked. “I'm very sorry for Miss Rose, though. She seems terribly young to be so ill, and to have suffered so much.”
Kenshin nodded, his long hair obscuring the view to his eyes. “It is never fair that the young suffer.”
They both bowed their heads silently, ignoring their own pasts to acknowledge a greater truth. A sound interrupted their conversation - grinding and harsh. Kenshin jumped to his feet. He'd heard the sound before.
“What's that?” Miss Kaoru followed closely on his heels.
“This humble one is going to try to see,” Kenshin said softly, and they walked to the edge of the property where there stood a tall blue box with POLICE PUBLIC CALL BOX written on it in kanji.
“What is it?” Kaoru asked, laying her hand on Kenshin's forearm. He rested his palm against his sword and shrugged his shoulders.
“This humble one has no idea, Miss Kaoru.”
The door swung open with a bang and out marched the Doctor, coat sweeping out behind him. He whirled and faced them. “Oh, hallo!”
“Hello, Doctor,” Kaoru said, bowing politely. “Is this your... box?”
“Box?” The Doctor looked slightly horrified. “The TARDIS is so much more than a box.”
“And yet, paradoxically,” the Captain said, stepping out behind him, “that's exactly what she is.”
“Do you need this box to help your friend?” Kenshin asked cautiously.
“Yep!” The Doctor rocked back on his heels. “She's the only one who's got a prayer of helping me figure this out.”
“Hey, Doc, I can...”
“Go check on Rose.” The Doctor was firm, his hands seated in his pockets. “Get her vitals and bring that information back to me, yeah?”
“Yeah, of course.” Jack, knowing an order when he heard one, snapped off a half-mocking salute and walked back into the dojo.
“Miss Kaoru, Mr. Himura, I would invite you inside but I'm afraid I have quite a bit of work to do, so...”
“Of course.” Kenshin bowed. “This humble one apologizes. The best of luck to you, Doctor.”
“Thank you.” The Doctor bowed, and firmly shut the door.
“How did they fit in there?” Miss Kaoru asked Kenshin.
He laughed. “This humble one does not know, Miss Kaoru. Perhaps it's larger on the inside!”
They headed back into the dojo, chuckling comfortably together.
**
Rose blinked her eyes open when she felt the steady pressure of someone's fingers against her wrist. She swallowed past the lump in her throat. “Jack?”
“Hey there, stranger. Welcome back to the land of the living.”
Rose grimaced. “Must be some fever I've picked up.”
“Feel pretty nasty, eh?”
“Yeah. I took a bath with Miss Kaoru but I still feel gross.” Rose coughed and turned her head to the side. “Where's the Doctor?”
“In the TARDIS,” Jack said.
Rose looked confused. “But he was just here, wasn't he?”
Jack shook his head. “Sorry, Rosie. We went and got the TARDIS and came back. He hasn't been in to check on you in a couple of hours.”
“I could have sworn he was here.” Rose's eyes widened, and then she bit her lip. “Oh.”
“Oh what?”
“Just a dream. Silly me.” Hastily, she wiped her eyes. “It's fine.”
“Are you sure?” Jack marked one last thing down on the notepad he'd marked her vitals on, and then stared at her with ice-blue eyes that always seemed to cut to the quick of her. “Rosie. You know you can tell me what's hurting you.”
She shook her head. “It's not fair to the Doctor.”
“Feelings aren't fair,” Jack said, somehow remembering that he'd said something exactly like this to Alice once. “They just are.”
“I was dreaming about the other Doctor when you woke me up.”
Jack grinned lecherously at her. “Good dream?”
“The best kind,” Rose said, smiling at him. “Sunlight on a white satin bed, everything happening on slow motion...”
Jack beamed. “My wet dreams never come with mood lighting.”
“It was just different,” Rose said helplessly. “He was his own man. He made love to me. He told me loved me. And then he was gone.”
Throughout the dojo, the smell of tea began to waft, and Jack had to shake himself to prevent the memory of Ianto holding a tray, wearing one of his suits and being very, very droll.
“Yeah.” Jack swallowed, and squeezed her hand. “I'm sorry. I know how you feel.”
Rose opened her arms. “I'll let you cry on me if you'll let me cry on you.”
“Absolutely.” He laid down with her, wrapping himself around her until he could feel the course of the blood through her veins. Neither one of them really cried.