Fic [Doctor Who]: Things You Need (5/14)
Chapter Title: Too Much to Hold
Story: Things You Need
Series: Love in Time
Rating: PG (aaaangst, passing mention of religion [banned on Platform One])
Characters: Tenth Doctor, Rose Tyler, Mickey Smith
Beta: annissag!
Summary: They were a knife's edge from starving on an abandoned space freighter, so it really deserves a better answer: why her? Set, obviously, right after "The Girl in the Fireplace".
His eyes are wide and beautiful
My own feel dull and old
They can’t recall some buoyancy
They’ve had too much to hold
Let them go
“Mickey, wait!”
He doesn’t stop.
Asking for a TARDIS tour was just a distraction, an easy way out. He knows the most important spots already, and she can tell by the stiff angle of his back and his furious stride that he wouldn’t be interested anyway. After all, she has known Mickey her whole life.
Mickey the idiot. Only not today. God, what a cock-up.
They’re in the galley now, and he’s crashing through the cabinets like he can’t find what he wants and doesn’t really know what it is anyway. The slams are beginning to knock things off the counter.
Rose takes his hand and squeezes gently; it brings him back to Earth. Or wherever. He allows himself to be drawn over to sit at the table. While she puts the kettle on for tea and fetches mugs, his head sinks down to his folded arms. Silence, a tense silence, pulled tight like a bowstring.
She jumps when he slams his fist nearly through the tabletop, even though she’s been expecting it.
“How. How can you just go off with this bloke-this alien-and leave everybody behind, when he would do this?”
She doesn’t know what to say.
“He left you, left us, on a dead spaceship that for all he knew could still have been full of bloody clock robots. Left us for some French girl who died three hundred years ago, who he’d known for a day. Not even one day. Through the fucking looking glass. Drink me, who knows if you’ll come back? How can you trust a bloke like that?”
No, still nothing. There is no answer to this that would satisfy him. Mainly because there’s no answer that would satisfy her. However keenly Mickey felt those five and a half hours-and she knows it was terrible for him, not being used to time travel-she felt every second. Every single second that she didn’t know if he’d ever come back, while every minute he was gone could have been days with her. Reinette.
Why her?
Rose doesn’t know who to hate more right now. The snotty bitch, just for existing; Mickey for not shutting it for nearly six hours; or the Doctor, for spending God knows how long showing off his Jesus complex while trailing around after the king’s mistress.
“Rose. You’re not answering me.”
“No. No, I’m not. He’s not answering me and I haven’t got any answers for you either. Just stop.”
“No! I followed you up here-I thought this Doctor took care of you-and we would have starved. Really starved and died, if he hadn’t had one tiny bit of luck. You have to think about what you’re doing. Your mum wouldn’t ever have even known. Just for some bloody alien running around with a dead French girl.”
“Stop!”
She takes a deep breath. “If I told you you’re right, everything is horrible, what would you say? Wouldn’t you tell me to come back home with you, go back to work, live with Mum again?”
“Rose-”
“You would. And it’s like I told you at Christmas. I can’t go back to riding the bus and living at the Powell Estate and working in the shop now.”
“So that’s it, then. You don’t care that he left you. You don’t care that you nearly died. Don’t you even care that you’re in love with him, and he left you here to go have a fling with some dead woman?”
“I-”
But there’s really no possible answer to that. Because she does, and she is, and it’s not something Mickey’s going to understand. And-
Oh, God, it hurts. Five and a half hours. Every minute. Every second. Stuck, and not knowing-
She doesn’t even realize that she’s crying until Mickey’s arms are already around her, and then suddenly she’s bawling into his shirt.
“God, Mickey, he said he wouldn’t leave me like Sarah Jane. And he did. I mean, I wouldn’t even have minded if Sarah Jane had come, I like her, but he left, went to…with this…. He meant to bring her back, on the TARDIS, like he didn’t even care about history and timelines. With us. After one day.”
She pulls back, looks him in the face. He looks so unbearably sad. She’s spent a year believing he was just upset for himself when she left, but it’s not true. It’s like he’s always known it was going to end up this way. She swipes at her eyes: no good.
“D’you think he even knows? I came all this way, and I don’t even…does it matter? Or am I just like that too, some girl, in and out of his life in a day. After nine hundred years, we probably are just a day.”
Her laugh’s dry and empty. A desert, choking on sand.
“Rose-”
“No. Don’t say it. Don’t say you were right. I’m not going back with you, I’m just not. I don’t know why not, but I’m not.”
A heavy sigh pushes out of him, and she feels it too. There’s no right way out here. She’s lost, doesn’t know where to put her feet or whether the ground will be solid or even if there is ground. Mickey will leave. And all she can think of is the Doctor’s eyes, when he escaped from Versailles. The glow in them when he went back for Reinette, and the darkness after he returned from watching her hearse drive away.
She feels washed up and wrung out, like an old shirt.
Rose isn’t a churchgoer, except on Christmases when she’s not saving the world, and Jackie’s not either, but she dated one once and dragged Rose along to some kind of service. It was faintly scary: remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.
It’s terrifying, today, how much dust she can find in herself, like some kind of relic that will pass, forgotten. He’s not, and while she’s always known that, in the back of her mind, she never thought he would forget.
The water’s boiling. Mickey sits her down, drops sugars into her mug and pours, presses the tea into her hands. He leans on the counter, sipping, and watches her.
An infusion of tannins, a clouded head. She stares unseeing at the table and tries to think what to do.
Neither of them hear the soft tread of trainers retreating up the corridor.
*
Notes:
Inspired by The Weepies' "Empty Your Hands" as quoted above.
So I had this eureka moment back in the spring about "The Girl in the Fireplace" and Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass, the second installment of the Alice in Wonderland stories. I've made it my mission to actually read the book this summer, but the Wikipedia article alone was a bit of a revelation...
I own nothing, blah blah blah.
Previously in Things You Need: Chapter One, Chapter Two, Chapter Three, Chapter Four
Story: Things You Need
Series: Love in Time
Rating: PG (aaaangst, passing mention of religion [banned on Platform One])
Characters: Tenth Doctor, Rose Tyler, Mickey Smith
Beta: annissag!
Summary: They were a knife's edge from starving on an abandoned space freighter, so it really deserves a better answer: why her? Set, obviously, right after "The Girl in the Fireplace".
His eyes are wide and beautiful
My own feel dull and old
They can’t recall some buoyancy
They’ve had too much to hold
Let them go
“Mickey, wait!”
He doesn’t stop.
Asking for a TARDIS tour was just a distraction, an easy way out. He knows the most important spots already, and she can tell by the stiff angle of his back and his furious stride that he wouldn’t be interested anyway. After all, she has known Mickey her whole life.
Mickey the idiot. Only not today. God, what a cock-up.
They’re in the galley now, and he’s crashing through the cabinets like he can’t find what he wants and doesn’t really know what it is anyway. The slams are beginning to knock things off the counter.
Rose takes his hand and squeezes gently; it brings him back to Earth. Or wherever. He allows himself to be drawn over to sit at the table. While she puts the kettle on for tea and fetches mugs, his head sinks down to his folded arms. Silence, a tense silence, pulled tight like a bowstring.
She jumps when he slams his fist nearly through the tabletop, even though she’s been expecting it.
“How. How can you just go off with this bloke-this alien-and leave everybody behind, when he would do this?”
She doesn’t know what to say.
“He left you, left us, on a dead spaceship that for all he knew could still have been full of bloody clock robots. Left us for some French girl who died three hundred years ago, who he’d known for a day. Not even one day. Through the fucking looking glass. Drink me, who knows if you’ll come back? How can you trust a bloke like that?”
No, still nothing. There is no answer to this that would satisfy him. Mainly because there’s no answer that would satisfy her. However keenly Mickey felt those five and a half hours-and she knows it was terrible for him, not being used to time travel-she felt every second. Every single second that she didn’t know if he’d ever come back, while every minute he was gone could have been days with her. Reinette.
Why her?
Rose doesn’t know who to hate more right now. The snotty bitch, just for existing; Mickey for not shutting it for nearly six hours; or the Doctor, for spending God knows how long showing off his Jesus complex while trailing around after the king’s mistress.
“Rose. You’re not answering me.”
“No. No, I’m not. He’s not answering me and I haven’t got any answers for you either. Just stop.”
“No! I followed you up here-I thought this Doctor took care of you-and we would have starved. Really starved and died, if he hadn’t had one tiny bit of luck. You have to think about what you’re doing. Your mum wouldn’t ever have even known. Just for some bloody alien running around with a dead French girl.”
“Stop!”
She takes a deep breath. “If I told you you’re right, everything is horrible, what would you say? Wouldn’t you tell me to come back home with you, go back to work, live with Mum again?”
“Rose-”
“You would. And it’s like I told you at Christmas. I can’t go back to riding the bus and living at the Powell Estate and working in the shop now.”
“So that’s it, then. You don’t care that he left you. You don’t care that you nearly died. Don’t you even care that you’re in love with him, and he left you here to go have a fling with some dead woman?”
“I-”
But there’s really no possible answer to that. Because she does, and she is, and it’s not something Mickey’s going to understand. And-
Oh, God, it hurts. Five and a half hours. Every minute. Every second. Stuck, and not knowing-
She doesn’t even realize that she’s crying until Mickey’s arms are already around her, and then suddenly she’s bawling into his shirt.
“God, Mickey, he said he wouldn’t leave me like Sarah Jane. And he did. I mean, I wouldn’t even have minded if Sarah Jane had come, I like her, but he left, went to…with this…. He meant to bring her back, on the TARDIS, like he didn’t even care about history and timelines. With us. After one day.”
She pulls back, looks him in the face. He looks so unbearably sad. She’s spent a year believing he was just upset for himself when she left, but it’s not true. It’s like he’s always known it was going to end up this way. She swipes at her eyes: no good.
“D’you think he even knows? I came all this way, and I don’t even…does it matter? Or am I just like that too, some girl, in and out of his life in a day. After nine hundred years, we probably are just a day.”
Her laugh’s dry and empty. A desert, choking on sand.
“Rose-”
“No. Don’t say it. Don’t say you were right. I’m not going back with you, I’m just not. I don’t know why not, but I’m not.”
A heavy sigh pushes out of him, and she feels it too. There’s no right way out here. She’s lost, doesn’t know where to put her feet or whether the ground will be solid or even if there is ground. Mickey will leave. And all she can think of is the Doctor’s eyes, when he escaped from Versailles. The glow in them when he went back for Reinette, and the darkness after he returned from watching her hearse drive away.
She feels washed up and wrung out, like an old shirt.
Rose isn’t a churchgoer, except on Christmases when she’s not saving the world, and Jackie’s not either, but she dated one once and dragged Rose along to some kind of service. It was faintly scary: remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.
It’s terrifying, today, how much dust she can find in herself, like some kind of relic that will pass, forgotten. He’s not, and while she’s always known that, in the back of her mind, she never thought he would forget.
The water’s boiling. Mickey sits her down, drops sugars into her mug and pours, presses the tea into her hands. He leans on the counter, sipping, and watches her.
An infusion of tannins, a clouded head. She stares unseeing at the table and tries to think what to do.
Neither of them hear the soft tread of trainers retreating up the corridor.
*
Notes:
Inspired by The Weepies' "Empty Your Hands" as quoted above.
So I had this eureka moment back in the spring about "The Girl in the Fireplace" and Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass, the second installment of the Alice in Wonderland stories. I've made it my mission to actually read the book this summer, but the Wikipedia article alone was a bit of a revelation...
I own nothing, blah blah blah.
Previously in Things You Need: Chapter One, Chapter Two, Chapter Three, Chapter Four