Doctor Who fic: PTFD
Title: Post-Traumatic Flower Disorder
Author: rustydog
Characters: Rose, Tenth Doctor
Rating: PG
Words: 1610
Beta: mad_jaks, wonderful as always. Any awkwardness that remains is mine.
Summary: Rose finds that the local flora is both beautiful and dangerous, just like life with the Doctor.
Rose had seen so much while travelling with the Doctor - some of it terrible, even if he never meant it to be. Their recent escape from the rubble of Surighat 4, for instance, would haunt her. But somehow she knew the hurtful parts of those memories would be soothed with time, as long as she was still with him.
And he showed her such amazing things, vastness beyond her comprehension, beauty that couldn't be expressed in human language. (She should see if she could take some lessons in that empathic musical brush painting the Watasarahs did.)
Take this field of flowers, for instance. He had led her here eagerly; when she'd gasped and stood with her mouth open, he'd squeezed her hand and let her wander off without a word, which was something for him. There were so many colours here, and a feeling - maybe it was a wavelength of light? - that some of what made the field so lovely couldn't be registered by her earth eyes. There were mats of short, iridescent blue flowers, a patch of orangey red ones like poppies that seemed to be waving on their own, all in unison, and most impressively, scattered throughout the field, sunflower-sized stalks topped by purple bells all etched with white veins. She wondered if their fragrance matched their looks. She stepped closer to the nearest of the giant stalks.
The plant was taller than her. She was careful not to touch - that blossom looked like it could swallow her head, and if it didn't? Well, for all she knew, touching it might be infringing on its culture, and then with their luck, they'd face a tribunal, if they weren't executed by a mob of plant worshippers or something first. She stood on tiptoes, her face turned up to the flower's face, and inhaled deeply. In an instant, the flower reared back on its stalk, then she was aware of three things at once: a muffled boom, a shout from the Doctor, and something slamming into her face with the force of a cannonball wrapped in wool. Her vision turned brown, and...
She woke completely disoriented. It was dark, and her mind reached for the time and place and found nothing. Where was her mother? Was this her bed in the TARDIS? Where had they been? She scaled back her attempts to orient herself and just thought about the space immediately around her. It felt like the Doctor was there. She became aware of a low, steady, tapping sound beneath her.
She tried to raise her head, but couldn't. It felt three sizes too large. She groaned and then realized that her eyelids were just as heavy as her head. Well, that explained the dark.
"Oh! There you are," said the Doctor's voice near her head. The tapping stopped and his clothing rustled. When he spoke again, his voice was above her. "Told them you were a tough one. I'd have taken you back to the TARDIS" - he sounded apologetic - "but they said they have a specialized new treatment here. And I rather think they wanted to study you. Science, hey?"
Although it hurt, she managed to get her eyes part way open and turn her head. There was a chair near to her bed, empty, and the Doctor was standing next to her, grinning. If he had been worried, it wasn't showing now.
"It was brilliant, Rose! You happened to be standing there at the exact moment a Helioblom ejected its pollen, do you remember?"
He thought this was brilliant?
"They've always made an impressive poof, but I don't remember them being that athletic! They've obviously done some evolving in the past six hundred years. Maybe a little too much. I wonder if someone's been helping them out...."
Fortunately it felt like it was only her head that was swollen. As the Doctor spoke, Rose untangled one of her legs from the bedclothes and aimed a good kick at his knee.
“Ow! What was that for?" he asked, as if she had wounded him.
She grunted in frustration.
"Don't worry, your head will be back to its normal size in a day at the most!"
So her head was literally swollen? She moaned, but it came out as more of a squeak.
"The Helioblom pollen is making your body reject painkillers. I'm sorry." His voice was softer. She just wished someone would hold her hand.
"But on the bright side, the staff have repaired your spinal injury completely" - she squeaked again - "and, even better, apparently this pollen in this dramatic a dose is going to make you immune to nearly every other potential allergen in the universe! So you won't have to worry about eating Neo-Orbian shellfish anymore. You're going to love them, Rose, we'll go straight there tomorrow. Sixty-second century, none of that fortieth century revolution rubbish we stumbled onto last time."
She sighed. Like everything else she did, it hurt.
The Doctor was silent for a moment, but just as she was about to risk turning her head to see what was the matter, he exclaimed, "Oh! Got something for you. They haven't got a little shop here, but this is better than a shop-bought gift." From the sound of his voice, she knew he was bouncing on the balls of his feet.
There was a scraping sound at the edge of the room, coming closer, and into her line of sight came a bright, multi-coloured... bell? It looked very familiar. Following it was the Doctor. She half expected him to throw his arm around the "shoulders" of the thick stalk and pose as if for a cheesy tourist photo.
"It changes colours after it ejects its pollen!" The Doctor grinned with delight. "Well?"
Rose tried to glare.
"All right, all right, yes, it's the same flower that hurt you, but that was just an unlucky accident. And look! Have you ever seen colours like this in your life? No, wait, let me get the lights!"
And he sprang to the light board near the door, passed his hand over it. As soon as the glow emanating from the ceiling and walls dimmed, well, she had to admit... it was worth seeing.
The flower had changed from its deep violet to a kaleidoscope of colours. At first she thought each of its petals was a different colour, but then they kept shifting, and sometimes each petal was a dozen hues all at once, a whole palette swimming madly around the curve of the bell and lapping at the edges of the petals. Not only that, it was luminescing, throwing splashes of red and green and yellow and violet light on the ceiling, on the Doctor's face and, she could just see, on the foot of her bed.
"It's changing its chemical composition," the Doctor explained avidly. "After it spreads its own pollen, it has to get ready to receive other flowers' pollen, so it alters itself." He turned so that he could look up at the blossom better and, to Rose's surprise, sighed.
"This one was injured, though. They're not meant to hit something when they eject. Nobody knew that before. It didn't really have a chance. Sorry," he finished, addressing, Rose assumed, the flower. Then he turned back to her. "It wasn't going to survive long, whether I left it in the field or brought it here, and I thought you'd like to see it."
But he could never leave the mood solemn for long. He waggled his eyebrows at Rose, playfully.
Rose wasn't so ready to cheer up. She had nearly been killed by a flower - and it was going to die because of her, instead. She almost wanted to cry. In their travels, they never meant any harm, but harm seemed to always happen. Did the Doctor even remember the creatures on Surighat 4 now? He hadn't been able to save them, only her. It wasn't his fault, or her fault, or anyone's fault, but they had watched the planet die, they had felt the violence of its death as their heads rattled and the heat nearly seared through the TARDIS's cool walls.
The Doctor never seemed fazed. He still went bounding around the universe, laughing with delight, saving worlds, getting out of trouble, making sure Rose bore witness to wonders beyond imagination. It was what she loved, yet sometimes it felt wrong.
She tilted her chin just so and managed to sneak a look at him, unobserved. His hands were stuffed in his pockets, and his shoulders were slumped. For a moment he was staring off, somewhere, his face relaxed. Then he looked up. He met her eyes - Rose was sure he hadn't meant to, because for half a second, before he moulded his face back into the taut, boyish one again, he looked old. So old, and small... and lost. Did he look like that often when she wasn't around? Had he looked like it before she had woken up today?
He needed to save someone. She crinkled her eyes into what she hoped looked like the rudiments of a smile and gave him a thumbs up.
"Ahhh, I knew you were all right!" he exclaimed. "Right, about those clams, you'll need to know before you eat them that they may turn your tongue green. But it's completely harmless, quite pretty actually..."
She crinkled her eyes again then closed them. It wouldn't hurt to get some rest before testing out her new universal allergy resistance. The Doctor's voice went on, lulling her, making her feel safe no matter where they were.
Author: rustydog
Characters: Rose, Tenth Doctor
Rating: PG
Words: 1610
Beta: mad_jaks, wonderful as always. Any awkwardness that remains is mine.
Summary: Rose finds that the local flora is both beautiful and dangerous, just like life with the Doctor.
Rose had seen so much while travelling with the Doctor - some of it terrible, even if he never meant it to be. Their recent escape from the rubble of Surighat 4, for instance, would haunt her. But somehow she knew the hurtful parts of those memories would be soothed with time, as long as she was still with him.
And he showed her such amazing things, vastness beyond her comprehension, beauty that couldn't be expressed in human language. (She should see if she could take some lessons in that empathic musical brush painting the Watasarahs did.)
Take this field of flowers, for instance. He had led her here eagerly; when she'd gasped and stood with her mouth open, he'd squeezed her hand and let her wander off without a word, which was something for him. There were so many colours here, and a feeling - maybe it was a wavelength of light? - that some of what made the field so lovely couldn't be registered by her earth eyes. There were mats of short, iridescent blue flowers, a patch of orangey red ones like poppies that seemed to be waving on their own, all in unison, and most impressively, scattered throughout the field, sunflower-sized stalks topped by purple bells all etched with white veins. She wondered if their fragrance matched their looks. She stepped closer to the nearest of the giant stalks.
The plant was taller than her. She was careful not to touch - that blossom looked like it could swallow her head, and if it didn't? Well, for all she knew, touching it might be infringing on its culture, and then with their luck, they'd face a tribunal, if they weren't executed by a mob of plant worshippers or something first. She stood on tiptoes, her face turned up to the flower's face, and inhaled deeply. In an instant, the flower reared back on its stalk, then she was aware of three things at once: a muffled boom, a shout from the Doctor, and something slamming into her face with the force of a cannonball wrapped in wool. Her vision turned brown, and...
She woke completely disoriented. It was dark, and her mind reached for the time and place and found nothing. Where was her mother? Was this her bed in the TARDIS? Where had they been? She scaled back her attempts to orient herself and just thought about the space immediately around her. It felt like the Doctor was there. She became aware of a low, steady, tapping sound beneath her.
She tried to raise her head, but couldn't. It felt three sizes too large. She groaned and then realized that her eyelids were just as heavy as her head. Well, that explained the dark.
"Oh! There you are," said the Doctor's voice near her head. The tapping stopped and his clothing rustled. When he spoke again, his voice was above her. "Told them you were a tough one. I'd have taken you back to the TARDIS" - he sounded apologetic - "but they said they have a specialized new treatment here. And I rather think they wanted to study you. Science, hey?"
Although it hurt, she managed to get her eyes part way open and turn her head. There was a chair near to her bed, empty, and the Doctor was standing next to her, grinning. If he had been worried, it wasn't showing now.
"It was brilliant, Rose! You happened to be standing there at the exact moment a Helioblom ejected its pollen, do you remember?"
He thought this was brilliant?
"They've always made an impressive poof, but I don't remember them being that athletic! They've obviously done some evolving in the past six hundred years. Maybe a little too much. I wonder if someone's been helping them out...."
Fortunately it felt like it was only her head that was swollen. As the Doctor spoke, Rose untangled one of her legs from the bedclothes and aimed a good kick at his knee.
“Ow! What was that for?" he asked, as if she had wounded him.
She grunted in frustration.
"Don't worry, your head will be back to its normal size in a day at the most!"
So her head was literally swollen? She moaned, but it came out as more of a squeak.
"The Helioblom pollen is making your body reject painkillers. I'm sorry." His voice was softer. She just wished someone would hold her hand.
"But on the bright side, the staff have repaired your spinal injury completely" - she squeaked again - "and, even better, apparently this pollen in this dramatic a dose is going to make you immune to nearly every other potential allergen in the universe! So you won't have to worry about eating Neo-Orbian shellfish anymore. You're going to love them, Rose, we'll go straight there tomorrow. Sixty-second century, none of that fortieth century revolution rubbish we stumbled onto last time."
She sighed. Like everything else she did, it hurt.
The Doctor was silent for a moment, but just as she was about to risk turning her head to see what was the matter, he exclaimed, "Oh! Got something for you. They haven't got a little shop here, but this is better than a shop-bought gift." From the sound of his voice, she knew he was bouncing on the balls of his feet.
There was a scraping sound at the edge of the room, coming closer, and into her line of sight came a bright, multi-coloured... bell? It looked very familiar. Following it was the Doctor. She half expected him to throw his arm around the "shoulders" of the thick stalk and pose as if for a cheesy tourist photo.
"It changes colours after it ejects its pollen!" The Doctor grinned with delight. "Well?"
Rose tried to glare.
"All right, all right, yes, it's the same flower that hurt you, but that was just an unlucky accident. And look! Have you ever seen colours like this in your life? No, wait, let me get the lights!"
And he sprang to the light board near the door, passed his hand over it. As soon as the glow emanating from the ceiling and walls dimmed, well, she had to admit... it was worth seeing.
The flower had changed from its deep violet to a kaleidoscope of colours. At first she thought each of its petals was a different colour, but then they kept shifting, and sometimes each petal was a dozen hues all at once, a whole palette swimming madly around the curve of the bell and lapping at the edges of the petals. Not only that, it was luminescing, throwing splashes of red and green and yellow and violet light on the ceiling, on the Doctor's face and, she could just see, on the foot of her bed.
"It's changing its chemical composition," the Doctor explained avidly. "After it spreads its own pollen, it has to get ready to receive other flowers' pollen, so it alters itself." He turned so that he could look up at the blossom better and, to Rose's surprise, sighed.
"This one was injured, though. They're not meant to hit something when they eject. Nobody knew that before. It didn't really have a chance. Sorry," he finished, addressing, Rose assumed, the flower. Then he turned back to her. "It wasn't going to survive long, whether I left it in the field or brought it here, and I thought you'd like to see it."
But he could never leave the mood solemn for long. He waggled his eyebrows at Rose, playfully.
Rose wasn't so ready to cheer up. She had nearly been killed by a flower - and it was going to die because of her, instead. She almost wanted to cry. In their travels, they never meant any harm, but harm seemed to always happen. Did the Doctor even remember the creatures on Surighat 4 now? He hadn't been able to save them, only her. It wasn't his fault, or her fault, or anyone's fault, but they had watched the planet die, they had felt the violence of its death as their heads rattled and the heat nearly seared through the TARDIS's cool walls.
The Doctor never seemed fazed. He still went bounding around the universe, laughing with delight, saving worlds, getting out of trouble, making sure Rose bore witness to wonders beyond imagination. It was what she loved, yet sometimes it felt wrong.
She tilted her chin just so and managed to sneak a look at him, unobserved. His hands were stuffed in his pockets, and his shoulders were slumped. For a moment he was staring off, somewhere, his face relaxed. Then he looked up. He met her eyes - Rose was sure he hadn't meant to, because for half a second, before he moulded his face back into the taut, boyish one again, he looked old. So old, and small... and lost. Did he look like that often when she wasn't around? Had he looked like it before she had woken up today?
He needed to save someone. She crinkled her eyes into what she hoped looked like the rudiments of a smile and gave him a thumbs up.
"Ahhh, I knew you were all right!" he exclaimed. "Right, about those clams, you'll need to know before you eat them that they may turn your tongue green. But it's completely harmless, quite pretty actually..."
She crinkled her eyes again then closed them. It wouldn't hurt to get some rest before testing out her new universal allergy resistance. The Doctor's voice went on, lulling her, making her feel safe no matter where they were.