Fic [Doctor Who]: Things You Need (10/14)
Chapter Title: Hope You Find
Story: Things You Need
Series: Love in Time
Rating: G (some angst, still pretty happy)
Characters: Tenth Doctor/Rose Tyler
Beta: annissag!
Summary: He's losing his balance. Perhaps it will turn out that that's meant to be. Set not long after Chapter 9.
I’m not yours
You’re not mine
I hope you find
Love in time
There is no preparation for falling off a cliff. He finds he doesn’t mind the falling, actually, except he’s fairly sure there’s supposed to be flying involved too and he can’t quite figure out how.
Forty-nine hours since the night in the cloister, since time actually stopped and he saw everything that ever was, or could be, through her eyes. Twice more they have almost…
Two years ago he promised himself this wouldn’t happen, that he had his footing at the top of this cliff. There have been an infinite number of moments that could have changed everything since then, moments that could have prevented this day from ever coming or made it come much faster.
The terrifying thing is that regardless of promises, he wouldn’t change a single second, no matter what the creature in the pit said or what he saw in Chloe’s sky. Even though all that ever could be seems to be coalescing like that wisp of cloud on the mountain, around something invisible and unknown.
Yes. Terrifying. Not to mention tense, sort of like the atmosphere in the TARDIS.
The problem with beautiful things, beautiful moments, is that nothing gold can ever stay. Even humans know it, at least the poets; even the one human who will always carry the golden glow. Who is increasingly annoyed with him.
He’ll figure it out eventually, like he always does. Dawn will go down to day. But in the meantime he’ll probably spend a lot of time like this, staring at the console and trying to remember how to fly.
An arm wraps around his shoulder and she’s there, leaning against him. He jumps in surprise-this is still always a surprise-and then settles, smiling. She smiles back, but there are shadows in her eyeliner, her clothes, the set of her lips. Uncertainty.
“Can we go to London today? My London, I mean. I’d like to see Mum.”
And he really, really doesn’t. Not Jackie-well, he doesn’t mind Jackie quite so much these days, but not Jackie today. Not when he’ll have to be biting his tongue not to say hello Jacks, snogged your daughter, scared witless. Help?
No, that’s not a good idea. Not at all.
“Aw, Rose, let’s go to Barcelona instead. We still haven’t been there. Just you and me and dogs with no noses! Your mum will be there tomorrow. In fact, she’ll be there today-we’ll just be there tomorrow. How’s that? I love time travel, don’t you?”
Judging by the look on her face, this was a grave miscalculation.
“No!” Then the fury’s gone, as if she never meant it to be. “No, Doctor. I just…I need to see her. I’m trying not to mind, really, but you’re so distracted.” She moves to the jumpseat and draws her knees up.
“I’m always distracted. What’s new about that?” Funny: he sounds a little squeaky to himself.
She just looks at him, somewhere between angry and achingly lonely, an expression he’s never seen on her face before. She doesn’t have to answer.
“Please, Rose? Not…not today.”
There’s a long silence. Her face is a mask; so is his.
“Doctor, I’m sorry. I’m sorry you hate her. I’m sorry you won’t talk to me. I’m sorry….” She swats angrily at a tear welling from the corner of her eye. “I’m not sorry I want to talk to my mum. There’s something…I have a terrible feeling, I don’t know… Like something awful’s going to happen. Or maybe,” she looks up at him, unreadable, “maybe it already has, and I can’t stop it now.”
He wants so desperately to reassure her, to tell her he doesn’t hate Jackie, that he wants to talk to her but he can’t find words in five million languages that are the right ones, that nothing terrible has happened. Problem is, he can’t, won’t tell her that it may simply not have happened yet. There is still that cloud growing on the horizon: a fixed point to which they come inexorably closer every day.
It looks a lot like a cloud on Earth. It looks a lot like a cloud in 2006.
He won’t tell her. She kissed him or he kissed her and he can’t see his way, and she needs her mum. Maybe she’ll pretend that it’s all okay; maybe she’ll cry on Jackie’s shoulder and Jackie will break all his bones. But add this complication and he’s fairly sure he won’t be able to figure it all out.
“Rose…” but he can’t stop it, can’t change her, wouldn’t, and exactly for the reasons she’s shouting at him right now:
“No! I chose to come with you and stay with you, because I-because I thought I could always go back. My mum's thought I was dead, that you were gonna get me killed, that you were gonna get her killed, and you don’t think about it, any of it! You don’t own me, Doctor! You don’t own my life. I chose. I left, but I still have a family. You told me I’d go on having one.”
He’s moving in a dream now, around and around the console. They’re all in his mind: Jackie, Mickey (gone), Pete (dead), and also many others she never met, the long dead written out of time. He doesn’t remember how to fly; the TARDIS is guiding his hands around the controls. How many of her family and friends, the ones he promised she could keep forever, are gone? He enters coordinates: the Powell Estates, London, England, 2006. The rings and loops of Gallifreyan on the screen spiral out before him. Circles are infinite, but they can be broken.
“Do you want to go?” It’s nearly a whisper; he’s not even sure it will carry to where she’s sitting behind him. He stares at the compass sphere.
“Yes. I want to see-” She stops abruptly. Her trainers squeak on the grating, and then she’s back with him, hands sliding between the edge of the console and his white-knuckled grip on it.
“No.” She wraps her arms around his waist and leans into him, one ear between his hearts. “No. Never.”
He realizes abruptly that he hasn’t been breathing, lets the stale air out in one long ragged rush, and sinks into the way she’s holding him, holding him up. Just like this, how it was apparently meant to be: he feels the fixed point draw around them and smiles like his face will split. Flying is just like this, one arm around her shoulders, one hand splayed against the small of her back, his chin on the crown of her head, tilting down to brush his lips through her hair. Inevitable, beautiful, a moment that is not over yet and that nothing can ever change.
Jackie can’t ruin this day, not even if she tried to snog him (although…ugh). Sontarans couldn’t spoil it, or Cybermen or Daleks. Nothing can alter it, ever.
“Do you want to call ahead and let her know we’re coming?”
“What?”
“Your mum. I don’t mind her, you know.”
She laughs. “Let’s surprise her. Okay?”
“Better than.”
London, with Rose, just like this. There’ll be family for her, and for him, simply a place where he doesn’t have to remember the ghosts that haunt him. An inviolable time to learn to fly, to leave the Earth behind.
--
Notes:
Inspired by The Weepies' "Red Red Rose", as quoted above.
In case you didn't catch it, in the next scene Rose and the Doctor step out of the TARDIS into the park at the Powell Estate, and Jackie invites them to see Grandpa Prentiss. Things You Need will resume after "Doomsday" and the Year That Never Was.
Catching up? Use the "Things You Need" tag below, or find the whole story at AO3.
Story: Things You Need
Series: Love in Time
Rating: G (some angst, still pretty happy)
Characters: Tenth Doctor/Rose Tyler
Beta: annissag!
Summary: He's losing his balance. Perhaps it will turn out that that's meant to be. Set not long after Chapter 9.
I’m not yours
You’re not mine
I hope you find
Love in time
There is no preparation for falling off a cliff. He finds he doesn’t mind the falling, actually, except he’s fairly sure there’s supposed to be flying involved too and he can’t quite figure out how.
Forty-nine hours since the night in the cloister, since time actually stopped and he saw everything that ever was, or could be, through her eyes. Twice more they have almost…
Two years ago he promised himself this wouldn’t happen, that he had his footing at the top of this cliff. There have been an infinite number of moments that could have changed everything since then, moments that could have prevented this day from ever coming or made it come much faster.
The terrifying thing is that regardless of promises, he wouldn’t change a single second, no matter what the creature in the pit said or what he saw in Chloe’s sky. Even though all that ever could be seems to be coalescing like that wisp of cloud on the mountain, around something invisible and unknown.
Yes. Terrifying. Not to mention tense, sort of like the atmosphere in the TARDIS.
The problem with beautiful things, beautiful moments, is that nothing gold can ever stay. Even humans know it, at least the poets; even the one human who will always carry the golden glow. Who is increasingly annoyed with him.
He’ll figure it out eventually, like he always does. Dawn will go down to day. But in the meantime he’ll probably spend a lot of time like this, staring at the console and trying to remember how to fly.
An arm wraps around his shoulder and she’s there, leaning against him. He jumps in surprise-this is still always a surprise-and then settles, smiling. She smiles back, but there are shadows in her eyeliner, her clothes, the set of her lips. Uncertainty.
“Can we go to London today? My London, I mean. I’d like to see Mum.”
And he really, really doesn’t. Not Jackie-well, he doesn’t mind Jackie quite so much these days, but not Jackie today. Not when he’ll have to be biting his tongue not to say hello Jacks, snogged your daughter, scared witless. Help?
No, that’s not a good idea. Not at all.
“Aw, Rose, let’s go to Barcelona instead. We still haven’t been there. Just you and me and dogs with no noses! Your mum will be there tomorrow. In fact, she’ll be there today-we’ll just be there tomorrow. How’s that? I love time travel, don’t you?”
Judging by the look on her face, this was a grave miscalculation.
“No!” Then the fury’s gone, as if she never meant it to be. “No, Doctor. I just…I need to see her. I’m trying not to mind, really, but you’re so distracted.” She moves to the jumpseat and draws her knees up.
“I’m always distracted. What’s new about that?” Funny: he sounds a little squeaky to himself.
She just looks at him, somewhere between angry and achingly lonely, an expression he’s never seen on her face before. She doesn’t have to answer.
“Please, Rose? Not…not today.”
There’s a long silence. Her face is a mask; so is his.
“Doctor, I’m sorry. I’m sorry you hate her. I’m sorry you won’t talk to me. I’m sorry….” She swats angrily at a tear welling from the corner of her eye. “I’m not sorry I want to talk to my mum. There’s something…I have a terrible feeling, I don’t know… Like something awful’s going to happen. Or maybe,” she looks up at him, unreadable, “maybe it already has, and I can’t stop it now.”
He wants so desperately to reassure her, to tell her he doesn’t hate Jackie, that he wants to talk to her but he can’t find words in five million languages that are the right ones, that nothing terrible has happened. Problem is, he can’t, won’t tell her that it may simply not have happened yet. There is still that cloud growing on the horizon: a fixed point to which they come inexorably closer every day.
It looks a lot like a cloud on Earth. It looks a lot like a cloud in 2006.
He won’t tell her. She kissed him or he kissed her and he can’t see his way, and she needs her mum. Maybe she’ll pretend that it’s all okay; maybe she’ll cry on Jackie’s shoulder and Jackie will break all his bones. But add this complication and he’s fairly sure he won’t be able to figure it all out.
“Rose…” but he can’t stop it, can’t change her, wouldn’t, and exactly for the reasons she’s shouting at him right now:
“No! I chose to come with you and stay with you, because I-because I thought I could always go back. My mum's thought I was dead, that you were gonna get me killed, that you were gonna get her killed, and you don’t think about it, any of it! You don’t own me, Doctor! You don’t own my life. I chose. I left, but I still have a family. You told me I’d go on having one.”
He’s moving in a dream now, around and around the console. They’re all in his mind: Jackie, Mickey (gone), Pete (dead), and also many others she never met, the long dead written out of time. He doesn’t remember how to fly; the TARDIS is guiding his hands around the controls. How many of her family and friends, the ones he promised she could keep forever, are gone? He enters coordinates: the Powell Estates, London, England, 2006. The rings and loops of Gallifreyan on the screen spiral out before him. Circles are infinite, but they can be broken.
“Do you want to go?” It’s nearly a whisper; he’s not even sure it will carry to where she’s sitting behind him. He stares at the compass sphere.
“Yes. I want to see-” She stops abruptly. Her trainers squeak on the grating, and then she’s back with him, hands sliding between the edge of the console and his white-knuckled grip on it.
“No.” She wraps her arms around his waist and leans into him, one ear between his hearts. “No. Never.”
He realizes abruptly that he hasn’t been breathing, lets the stale air out in one long ragged rush, and sinks into the way she’s holding him, holding him up. Just like this, how it was apparently meant to be: he feels the fixed point draw around them and smiles like his face will split. Flying is just like this, one arm around her shoulders, one hand splayed against the small of her back, his chin on the crown of her head, tilting down to brush his lips through her hair. Inevitable, beautiful, a moment that is not over yet and that nothing can ever change.
Jackie can’t ruin this day, not even if she tried to snog him (although…ugh). Sontarans couldn’t spoil it, or Cybermen or Daleks. Nothing can alter it, ever.
“Do you want to call ahead and let her know we’re coming?”
“What?”
“Your mum. I don’t mind her, you know.”
She laughs. “Let’s surprise her. Okay?”
“Better than.”
London, with Rose, just like this. There’ll be family for her, and for him, simply a place where he doesn’t have to remember the ghosts that haunt him. An inviolable time to learn to fly, to leave the Earth behind.
--
Notes:
Inspired by The Weepies' "Red Red Rose", as quoted above.
In case you didn't catch it, in the next scene Rose and the Doctor step out of the TARDIS into the park at the Powell Estate, and Jackie invites them to see Grandpa Prentiss. Things You Need will resume after "Doomsday" and the Year That Never Was.
Catching up? Use the "Things You Need" tag below, or find the whole story at AO3.