The Gift of Words Part 8
The Gift of Words Part 8
Rose/Ten
Spoilers: For Children in Need and Christmas Invasion.
Rating: M (very very M)
Disclaimer: I certainly do not own these people. They belong to the BBC
Previous parts 1-7 can be found on my lj
http://nogbad.livejournal.com/
Bows to my all my fab beta’s who put up with so much rubbish and yammering that it’s a miracle that they ever email me back. And apologies as I tweaked again after I got it back. I won’t say how many drafts this has gone through so I’m posting it before I really start pulling out my hair. I hope everyone thinks it was worth all the time spent on it. As always please let me know what you think.
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The obscene, twisted, and desperate respite that this visit, this confrontation has given him ends before the Doctor even makes it out of the cell. With each step he takes he can feel everything that it was used to smother, and contain scrabble and claw its way back through his blood, slithering and twisting around his hearts, curling, tightening around his throat. Control is slipping, falling through his grasp like sand, and he can feel the insanity and the ruthless hunger for her in his blood start to whisper again…start to giggle and he worries for her safety.
The Doctor presses his lips tight together as if somehow that would silence the voice in his head, as if it could still the desperate violence moving beneath his skin. The wind howls and cuts knife-like across the open space of the prison courtyard, the walls of the prison and its inmate behind him and far from his mind.
He feels cold and empty but he knows that the ache in his bones has nothing to do with the weather. Like his suit, his coat doesn’t fit him as well as it used to. He wraps it around himself tightly the heavy wool doubling over twice what it did previously. But the Doctor still shivers as that voice in his mind drips slow steady words of vitriolic acid, taunts eroding his tattered control with each syllable, temptation seeping through.
He walks past the transport that is waiting, his strides long, pushing, stretching muscle and bone. His body tired reminding him that he is not fully healed but his mind refuses to stop. He can’t run from himself, but he knows that he’s trying. He can still hear the words of his tormentor so clearly and he shivers knowing how close it came to Rose being put in that cell with him. The drugs the he had been force fed, exhaustion, starvation, dehydration and torture, combined with the tranquiliser that she gave him, kept her safe that first time, kept that part of himself contained, that part of himself that spoke those words.
But now away from those prying eyes the memories that linger under his skin move and rise, pulling forbidden pleasure and temptation in their wake. His splinted hand jerks in his coat pocket as he can feel so clearly the softness of the skin at her throat. He remembers stealing into her dream, her small nimble fingers travelling over his skin, mapping, marking. Lips that he had discovered were feather soft, teeth that nipped and her tongue like warm hot satin moving with hunger, with desire as her hands fisted in his hair. And he can’t stop won’t stop; and he feels his body shudder with the seductive memory of the scalding heat of her sex. Just how soft how liquid, tight and enveloping as she folded him inside her body.
His steps slow almost to a stop and the Doctor fights the need to tip his head back and close his eyes; he swallows the moan he can feel hiding in his throat. The memories almost drown him; he craves so badly to let himself be consumed by them. But he has to stop this, he can’t and he mustn’t give into this. He must remember his training, his education, and ignore the temptation that whispers in his blood.
How he wishes that this need for her, this compulsion to return to her, to take and touch was just a simple biological response. He’s shaking with the need of it and he has to stop, to lean against a wall of a building as his body trembles.
Time is running short, and part of him wants to laugh. But he scrambles desperately for some kind of plan. And runs back to the thing that they always do. He makes the choice never to talk about what happened, about what he did, what she did, knowing that if he makes the choice to be silent that she will follow. Her behaviour, her avoidance of being alone with him up until yesterday already tells that she has no desire to talk about what happened. It’s a coward’s way out, but then he has always been a coward. And he allows his lips to twist into a bitter and soulless smile.
Yes. Better that they forget. They almost have it down to a fine art now. Forgetting ignoring, pretending. Better that she never understands the words he said and the meaning behind them. The Doctor lets the smile grow wider, sharper; he can taste the blood as his lips begin to bleed. The thought of just what the council would do to him if they still existed. Just for even knowing the words, let alone saying them to a human. Yes, if they still existed being held responsible for genocide would be the least of his problems.
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The decision is made; all he can do is hope with this choice that control finds him somewhere between here and her room.
The exercise in beyond simplistic, the very first thing taught, and he falls back on it but feels no comfort of its familiarity. The Doctor forces himself to blink, to focus on the here and now, to flood his senses, drowning out the memories that cling, that tempt, with the white noise of everything around him. He separates each of his senses, forcing them to focus on everything: the fall and spin of the planet that he’s on, the weather and temperature, controlling the sudden and quick triple beat that his hearts give.
The Doctor lets his eyes focus on Rose’s guardian as he lets himself be coaxed away from the support of the wall. He lets himself lean into the support of the feathered arm around his waist as they begin to walk again. He can see how the light refracts off his feathers, the small markings around his beak that indicate the battles he has been in, the soft fluttery beats of his smaller single heart.
His exercise in distractions continues as the Doctor lets himself focus on how the young guardian is speaking. The simple physics of vibration created and travelling though flesh and bone with pitch and fall. His accent, and how it is indicative of the level of education he has received, of the background he had, where on the planet his family resided and where his parents came from. How the words are formed, the words themselves and how their individual meaning can sometimes be separate from the collective meaning of the sentence. And how, just sometimes, the translation circuit in the TARDIS can have the most minor of hiccups when…
“She is resting. Even though he is incarcerated I was worried about her safety, he hates her so much. He never got a response from her either. He sat there and told her everything and never got a response. I’ve looked after her for all of this. I thought, especially with that taunt about a final test.”
The Doctor feels his feet stop, as the words break through, his face, his blood beginning to freeze, as other words that were spoken to him come back and are unclouded with hindsight. He feels his hearts struggle, each contraction, jagged, and each relaxation choked. He has never reacted well when her life has been threatened, But this time its worse. He feels that something dangerous and ancient that he has struggled with since he woke with his memories unfold in his blood and glare out with violent eyes and bared teeth.
And the whispering, the giggling become a scream.
No. NO!
Scattered and occupied senses all come flooding back to focus on one thing. And the thing inside him roars in rage and fury, like it never did when he was locked in his cell. Control is a façade as he has to force whispering breath past frozen lips.
“What did you say?” His throat feels like parchment, his breathing tight because the increasingly small part of him that is clinging to logic wants to beg: to plead with her guardian that what he’s thinking, the connection that his mind is making is impossible. That he’s finally gone insane.
But he doesn’t. The guardian’s liquid eyes blink slowly and sharply at the Doctor, head tilted to the side and feathers slightly fluffed, more quizzical rather than angry, as he speaks, repeating what he said.
“This is the first time I’ve been away from Companion Rose. I was worried because his hate for her, for you was so evident; he took so much delight in baiting you about the length of your recovery, about how he tried to kill her that I called to check with her guard that she was….” The guardian’s eyes become sharp and dangerous, and a small part of the Doctor’s mind observes and admires the effect of adrenaline spiking in the guardian, as his pupils change, contracting to that of the hunter seeking prey.
“He knew you had been unwell until yesterday. HE WAS TOLD!” The soft stilted words escalate to a muted roar as realisation dawns.
The Doctor hears a very short, sharp, extremely vulgar and vernacular curse telling him that her guardian is unsuccessful as he shouts for a response from the one who should be at the other end of his communicator, to the one who should be outside her room, protecting her in his stead.
He knows that the guardian is looking at him as he speaks to those he can reach, as reports started to come in. The Doctor watches as the guardian’s pupils shift again, emotions flickering there showing so much; wide and sympathetic, furious. More lives have been lost and he wonders with remoteness did the guardian’s eyes look the same just before he told Rose about finding him?
His voice of logic is still and silent as he starts to bleed from wounds both old and new. And the warning peal of the cloister bell that begins again to reverberate through his bones is pointless, because all he can hear is that primitive voice, now a hushed whisper, wield the words that finally decimate his control. His hearts’ blood drips with each word, with each beat, with each toll.
Stupid, so stupid; ape stupid in fact. Pain and control; disobedience and punishment. Bad, naughty little lab rat didn’t lie down and die like a good little lab rat. And she, she took away his power, she took away his toys, all his little lab rats and exposed him, she destroyed everything, she destroyed his life’s work.
And as he plays back the conversation, the Doctor can hear the triumph, the smugness of that tone: retribution, recompense for his, for their action. It lurked just beneath the vitriol, using those words, knowing that they were important, using them to cloud him, to make him angry, to force him to struggle for control and not to hear. He shouldn’t have gotten so angry; he shouldn’t have let himself get lost in his anger while he was being all but told that Rose was about to be killed.
Coward! You ran from her. You left her!
And quietly, without any kind of struggle or fight, the Doctor becomes the violence in his blood, the very thing that they unlocked inside him in that cell. Primeval, dominant and merciless instincts that once made his people so feared, so unforgiving, now totally consume the last vestige of his control, his last shred of logic. Knowledge is retained but all restraint is gone. He is back to what he was in that cell, only there are no drugs to inhibit, nothing to hold him back. Gone is all feeling of weakness and all remnant of sanity is lost to the cold rage that focuses everything on just one thing.
Rose.
Silence screams loudly as the bell stops. And the Doctor’s moving before her guardian can speak, he’s running before he can be caught.
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The air screams with death and violence as he bursts on to her floor, but there is no sound; silence reigns mixing with the smell of smoke and blood choking the corridor. He ignores the weapons that are suddenly turned on him by the figures that almost line the hall, each one standing over a body, guarding them, sentinels to this carnage. But to him at this moment they are immaterial, not worth acknowledging.
His eyes register the scene of utter butchery, but he does not care. Blood covers the floor in dark sticky pools, leeching from those lying too still, too silent. His hands reach out to grab the wall as he turns the corner so he doesn’t slip, doesn’t lose precious seconds with lost balance. His broken, splinted hand jars with pain, but he does not feel. None of the blood is human, so he pays the gore no attention, so he continues to move. And then he’s in her room.
Here the slaughter continues…..and ends. Two dead bodies litter the floor with appalling abandonment. The arching splatter of arterial spray paints a horrific picture across two walls: the air is heavy and saturated with fresh blood, fear and hate.
The one who was supposed to protector her is dead in the lee between the door and the window, his weapon still in his hand. Something that at one time might have been breakfast covers the floor with jagged broken crockery, and something that smells like tea hides behind the stink of blood.
But again the Doctor is blind to it; all he can see is Rose, slumped like a doll between the wall and the floor by her bed, her eyes fixed and glassy. The Doctor blinks sharply, his breathing loud and laboured; his eyes drinking her. The storm inside that has carried him this far steals complete control as all he sees are pale grey feathers looking so dark, almost like the hand of death, against the blooded and torn skin of her throat.
He all but yanks her up into his arms, away from the medic that is trying to tend to her, his throat and chest tight. A vibration, a growl works its way loose as he stares at the medic, daring him to just try and stop him. He thinks he might be whispering her name as he clutches at her, his senses singing, absorbing the fact that she’s alright, that her heart is still beating, that she’s still breathing.
“I’m fine, Doctor.” Her voice isn’t even a croak, her larynx too badly damaged. Blood trickles down her throat where her attacker’s claws punctured the skin as he tried to strangle her and the Doctor thinks that it might just be the most pathetic lie that she’s ever told him. His rage has nowhere to go as he watches her blood pool slightly at her clavicle, her voiceless words and dead eyes lacking emotion. She feels distant in his arms and he despises it.
“I’m fine. Let them finish.” Her smile is beyond shallow, not even skin deep and he wonders just which of them she is trying to fool with it. But still he surrenders her back to the medic’s care solely because she asks, because he now recognises the figure as the one who bested his teacher by saving him. The blood soaks her clothes, that covers her is not all hers, the taste of it on the air is wrong, too much iron, not enough copper, the red just a bit too bright to be human, but still there is so much of it….too much of it here and in the hall outside.
Out of the corner of his eyes the Doctor sees her hand flex, as she twists, worries something between her blood slick fingertips. He looks carefully just at what Rose is clutching in her right hand; looks in turn at the body at their feet, and he feels himself blink sharply at what the evidence tells him. That somehow she had managed to kill the one who had tried to kill her; killed the one who murdered six innocents to get to her. And she is still clutching the bloody shard of a plate that she had used to defend herself.
The regenerator that the medic waves in small circles just above her skin starts to glow a deep purple, telling the Doctor just how severe the trauma is. Any harder, any longer that the six-taloned paw had remained around her throat and she…..
The Doctor struggles to control his hearts, his breathing, and the dangerous impulses that sing through his veins screaming for blood, for vengeance for what was done to her …for what she was forced to do. The need for retaliation, for retribution, to follow through with the threat he made to the prisoner screams through him. But he has learn from his mistake he will not leave her; he can’t; so he focuses on his breathing as the medic carefully, quietly continues to repair her bruises and torn skin.
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Others now have come into the room and the Doctor can feel them holding back, watching them both and he wonders have they ever heard of Hera and her peacock. In the distance the Doctor can hear her guardian speak to those standing in the hall. Timidly they are approached, voices are tentative as they’re moved, herded almost, away from her room leaving the bodies, the blood to the medical and forensic constabulary.
As he walks through the hall he looks again at the bodies and this time sees, everything reminding him how close he came again to losing her. His eyes tracing the vulnerable line of her neck, which is now is smooth and pale and looks just as it should.
This is not the first time that Rose has been forced to defend herself. His mind calls forth each incident, explicit in detail of how each case was very much his fault rather than hers. He remembers the tears that she shed when…..and the Doctor pauses as memory and reality jar, because beneath the bruises that are no longer there and blood covered skin, she is pale, too pale.
They have been walked across the length of the building and down two floors. Features and feathers that he remembers from his own time, from his own examination are in the room. Some of them dare to meet his eyes…others do not. There is the hushed sense of failure, of sorrow and penitence that echoes over each and every one of them, staining the air, taking the guilt of a few on their shoulders. The Doctor looks at each of them, feeling disconnected and at the same time filled with a kind of understanding they would never comprehend. And he almost wants to smile at them when they look at him with shocked astonishment.
The mood of the room shifts, the tone moving from contrition to anger and questions as Rose’s protector makes his way towards them. His head is cocked as he silently listens to reports that are coming through his ear piece: the Doctor can see the rage and guilt settle over the guardian, lighting his eyes. And it’s he and not the Doctor who asks her what happened.
Her voice is almost bell-like, but it lacks tone and pitch, any semblance of emotion. There is no emphasis or punctuation; she pauses only for breath. With chilling lack of emotion she describes how her guard lost his life and how she fought and won her own. But there is no reaction, no attempt at a smile, no tears, no anger, no grief, no sorrow, and no rage: nothing. No emotions play across her face or in the shadows of her eyes; there is nothing. This is not shock.
He’s stopped hearing what she’s saying, because it’s what she’s not that is more important. For the first time since he was taken, since he woke up, he sees her face, her body stark in clear unfiltered morning light, and with each breath he sees a little more.
He sees the depth and darkness of the circles that rim her eyes, just how pale and wan her skin is, whispering to him telltale signs of dehydration. Her cheeks are hollow; he’s not the only one who has lost too much weight.
The air seems to be full of needles, his breath sticking sharply in his throat, as Rose just sits there saying words, that seem to mean nothing to her, her eyes fixed vacuously at a spot on the far wall. He remembers so clearly now the coldness that radiated off of her, when she came and pulled him away from the emotional ledge. How for the few seconds before he slept it worried him, the ice that he saw just beneath her skin. A worry that was then drowned by what he remembered as he slept, by confirmation of his suspicions, and the painful jagged understanding of what he had done, of what he had said.
She’s running away from you again. Only this time it’s in her mind…. her heart.
The barb finds its target, the vitriol of his internal voice bringing bitter clarity, and he finds himself moving back into the depth and shadows of the room. He needs the even this short distance between them to think. Her coldness, the total lack, of her being empty of everything he knows and cares about as Rose, worry and fear for her mind, for her soul seep in replacing the fury, and stilling the storm. With slow painful precision he can feel logic try to steal back quietly what was lost, as Rose’s words continue to flow over the room.
Part of him thinks it’s hilarious and at the same time, not, because so much within refuses to be ignored anymore, the seething mass inside refuses to give up, to given back logic and training. He does not have the strength….no; he does not have the enough equilibrium to reach her mind the way he should be able to. So all he is left with is guessing at her reasons for this lack.
Those around him are oblivious to his internal struggle, for the first time since he landed on this planet, no one is watching him. They are asking questions now, mummers, anger begins to fill the air, replacing the contrition and her voice is still dead and devoid as she replies.
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The Doctor walks the edges of the room, watching her, moving around those listening to her so attentively. His guesses make him think that maybe she sees remoteness as a form of preservation. Emotions and feelings hurt too much shutting them off, turning them down is protection.
He had tried the same thing after the war. And he had been nearly there. Numb, dead inside no matter if the flesh was still alive. Until the TARDIS had landed on Earth; until he kept running into a human girl called Rose.
She reminded him that he needed to feel, she forced him to think, reminding him of how once he had lived a better life, that he was better than a Dalek. He had never told her how she had given back to him his emotions; that eventually she had been the crucible for what he now was.
He thought he had control; he did have control until that cell. Now he is drowning in everything, all the barriers gone to dust. And those words, those tempting forbidden words that had lingered at the back of his mind since Christmas, now spoken, can’t be unspoken. How can he have all these emotions, these feelings to deal with, when she seems to have locked hers away? He needs her to feel, he needs her emotions. She needs her emotions; the human body and mind do not cope very well with having every single feeling numbed, deadened and locked away.
But what can he do? He doesn’t know how to help her. He can barely help himself. His plans of ignoring, of pretending, have been shattered. How to reach her; how to stop this ice before she becomes nothing but a shadow, a frigid ghost of what she should be, of who she should be he is barely holding himself together, he isn’t ready for this. And hysteria pushes with a heavy tight fist, enticing him to laugh, to scream, so Doctor has to blink sharply as the small grey medic comes to him and presents him with bathing apparel.
Hysteria recedes and knowledge seeps through the gaps, understanding replacing confusion. And his bow to the small grey figure is stilted and more awkward than it should be, but that’s nothing to what he feels as he turns to face Rose. And as the rest are swept from the room, leaving them alone, the Doctor can’t help but wonder what she thought when they asked her to do the same for him.
Before, he would have viewed this as a temptation and a test, and if this had been before the night he was taken, before what almost happened on her bed, he would have refused. He should refuse; he can still feel the need to touch her, the compulsion. A ludicrous thought that maybe, just maybe this will shatter the ice around her fills his head and is then chased away; logic is clawing and fighting its way back into his system and it struggles to find some kind of dominance.
He turns slowly to her, letting his arm hover just above her elbow; the sleeve of her top is now stiff with dried blood. She walks forward, but doesn’t stop him as he walks into the bathroom; she turns to face him, almost waiting instructions. Coppelia, he thinks, the automaton doll waiting with perfect complacence for instructions. And suddenly he’s swamped with the need to shake her, he aches to scream at her, to vent this rage that has risen again, but he can’t, he won’t. He can remember her compassion the last time they were in this room, how carefully she washed him, how vigilantly she tried for nothing to happen that either of them might feel shame or regret over.
So he struggles to hold himself together, to give back what she gave to him. But he can’t, he’s too brittle, control again slipping all his feeble tethers. And again he takes the coward’s way out, chooses the lesser and guides her carefully to the sink. Wetting the facecloth and using the cleaning bar, he takes her left hand in his and slowly begins to clean the blood away. They have taken away the shard of delftware, her chosen weapon of defence, for evidence. But it cut her as well as her assailant, and he can see remnants that have become embedded in the wound.
The Doctor makes slow, gentle brushes with the cloth; he knows that pain must flare in her senses, but her hand is compliant in his, she shows no indication of pain, no indication of any sensation whatsoever. Part of him wishes that it was shock, wants to fool himself into believing that what she is suffering from is nothing more than simple human shock. But the ice under her skin is like a beacon to him now, the wrongness of it blaring out, making his bones vibrate and his teeth ache.
“You need to get clean, Rose.” And he doesn’t know where the words come from as he turns from her, moving away, reaching out to turn on the shower. Turning his back, he tells himself that it’s nothing more than his imagination as soft rustling sound of cloth against skin reaches him. When he turns back, hearts lungs and brain seem to freeze. Everything within seems to struggle, seems to fight, but to what end? He’s almost too frightened to think.
He should close his eyes, but he can’t, too much of him refuses too. And even though he thought every detail from the dream that they shared that had been engraved in his memory, it has now been vividly wiped clean by what he sees.
So easy to reach out and touch. So easy to reach out and take. Skin so soft, so warm, promises made and given. She belongs to him, the declaration already made, accepted, reciprocated. All that they have shared together, all that they have held together. She came for him, she saved him. They are bonded, they are joined.
And his conscience begins to crumble, all that is the Time Lord in him quakes as he can’t break the force of her gaze. In the corner of his eye he sees his hand, his finger tips hovering at the gentle curve of her hips, hovering over her pale skin, temptation radiating out, itching, teasing, and stretching his nerves. Those forbidden words claw back up his throat; pressure builds as he presses his lips together, forcing himself into silence. But still the feelings behind the words can’t be as easily contained, sending pricked heat lapping over him, until it pools low in his belly, the muscles in his stomach becoming tight, hot, taut with the forbidden.
He still isn’t even touching her, no brush, no glide of skin on skin, his fingers still hovering, his hands are trembling and he is back to the repeating litany of ‘can’t’ ‘mustn’t’. The Doctor isn’t surprised when it comes to it that he’s not as brave as she, he’s not as strong as she. And he is running away as he walks out the door, those contained unspoken words scalding tongue and lips, leaving her untouched, clothed in nothing more than a cloud of steam.
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Well please, please what do you think?
Rose/Ten
Spoilers: For Children in Need and Christmas Invasion.
Rating: M (very very M)
Disclaimer: I certainly do not own these people. They belong to the BBC
Previous parts 1-7 can be found on my lj
http://nogbad.livejournal.com/
Bows to my all my fab beta’s who put up with so much rubbish and yammering that it’s a miracle that they ever email me back. And apologies as I tweaked again after I got it back. I won’t say how many drafts this has gone through so I’m posting it before I really start pulling out my hair. I hope everyone thinks it was worth all the time spent on it. As always please let me know what you think.
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The obscene, twisted, and desperate respite that this visit, this confrontation has given him ends before the Doctor even makes it out of the cell. With each step he takes he can feel everything that it was used to smother, and contain scrabble and claw its way back through his blood, slithering and twisting around his hearts, curling, tightening around his throat. Control is slipping, falling through his grasp like sand, and he can feel the insanity and the ruthless hunger for her in his blood start to whisper again…start to giggle and he worries for her safety.
The Doctor presses his lips tight together as if somehow that would silence the voice in his head, as if it could still the desperate violence moving beneath his skin. The wind howls and cuts knife-like across the open space of the prison courtyard, the walls of the prison and its inmate behind him and far from his mind.
He feels cold and empty but he knows that the ache in his bones has nothing to do with the weather. Like his suit, his coat doesn’t fit him as well as it used to. He wraps it around himself tightly the heavy wool doubling over twice what it did previously. But the Doctor still shivers as that voice in his mind drips slow steady words of vitriolic acid, taunts eroding his tattered control with each syllable, temptation seeping through.
He walks past the transport that is waiting, his strides long, pushing, stretching muscle and bone. His body tired reminding him that he is not fully healed but his mind refuses to stop. He can’t run from himself, but he knows that he’s trying. He can still hear the words of his tormentor so clearly and he shivers knowing how close it came to Rose being put in that cell with him. The drugs the he had been force fed, exhaustion, starvation, dehydration and torture, combined with the tranquiliser that she gave him, kept her safe that first time, kept that part of himself contained, that part of himself that spoke those words.
But now away from those prying eyes the memories that linger under his skin move and rise, pulling forbidden pleasure and temptation in their wake. His splinted hand jerks in his coat pocket as he can feel so clearly the softness of the skin at her throat. He remembers stealing into her dream, her small nimble fingers travelling over his skin, mapping, marking. Lips that he had discovered were feather soft, teeth that nipped and her tongue like warm hot satin moving with hunger, with desire as her hands fisted in his hair. And he can’t stop won’t stop; and he feels his body shudder with the seductive memory of the scalding heat of her sex. Just how soft how liquid, tight and enveloping as she folded him inside her body.
His steps slow almost to a stop and the Doctor fights the need to tip his head back and close his eyes; he swallows the moan he can feel hiding in his throat. The memories almost drown him; he craves so badly to let himself be consumed by them. But he has to stop this, he can’t and he mustn’t give into this. He must remember his training, his education, and ignore the temptation that whispers in his blood.
How he wishes that this need for her, this compulsion to return to her, to take and touch was just a simple biological response. He’s shaking with the need of it and he has to stop, to lean against a wall of a building as his body trembles.
Time is running short, and part of him wants to laugh. But he scrambles desperately for some kind of plan. And runs back to the thing that they always do. He makes the choice never to talk about what happened, about what he did, what she did, knowing that if he makes the choice to be silent that she will follow. Her behaviour, her avoidance of being alone with him up until yesterday already tells that she has no desire to talk about what happened. It’s a coward’s way out, but then he has always been a coward. And he allows his lips to twist into a bitter and soulless smile.
Yes. Better that they forget. They almost have it down to a fine art now. Forgetting ignoring, pretending. Better that she never understands the words he said and the meaning behind them. The Doctor lets the smile grow wider, sharper; he can taste the blood as his lips begin to bleed. The thought of just what the council would do to him if they still existed. Just for even knowing the words, let alone saying them to a human. Yes, if they still existed being held responsible for genocide would be the least of his problems.
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The decision is made; all he can do is hope with this choice that control finds him somewhere between here and her room.
The exercise in beyond simplistic, the very first thing taught, and he falls back on it but feels no comfort of its familiarity. The Doctor forces himself to blink, to focus on the here and now, to flood his senses, drowning out the memories that cling, that tempt, with the white noise of everything around him. He separates each of his senses, forcing them to focus on everything: the fall and spin of the planet that he’s on, the weather and temperature, controlling the sudden and quick triple beat that his hearts give.
The Doctor lets his eyes focus on Rose’s guardian as he lets himself be coaxed away from the support of the wall. He lets himself lean into the support of the feathered arm around his waist as they begin to walk again. He can see how the light refracts off his feathers, the small markings around his beak that indicate the battles he has been in, the soft fluttery beats of his smaller single heart.
His exercise in distractions continues as the Doctor lets himself focus on how the young guardian is speaking. The simple physics of vibration created and travelling though flesh and bone with pitch and fall. His accent, and how it is indicative of the level of education he has received, of the background he had, where on the planet his family resided and where his parents came from. How the words are formed, the words themselves and how their individual meaning can sometimes be separate from the collective meaning of the sentence. And how, just sometimes, the translation circuit in the TARDIS can have the most minor of hiccups when…
“She is resting. Even though he is incarcerated I was worried about her safety, he hates her so much. He never got a response from her either. He sat there and told her everything and never got a response. I’ve looked after her for all of this. I thought, especially with that taunt about a final test.”
The Doctor feels his feet stop, as the words break through, his face, his blood beginning to freeze, as other words that were spoken to him come back and are unclouded with hindsight. He feels his hearts struggle, each contraction, jagged, and each relaxation choked. He has never reacted well when her life has been threatened, But this time its worse. He feels that something dangerous and ancient that he has struggled with since he woke with his memories unfold in his blood and glare out with violent eyes and bared teeth.
And the whispering, the giggling become a scream.
No. NO!
Scattered and occupied senses all come flooding back to focus on one thing. And the thing inside him roars in rage and fury, like it never did when he was locked in his cell. Control is a façade as he has to force whispering breath past frozen lips.
“What did you say?” His throat feels like parchment, his breathing tight because the increasingly small part of him that is clinging to logic wants to beg: to plead with her guardian that what he’s thinking, the connection that his mind is making is impossible. That he’s finally gone insane.
But he doesn’t. The guardian’s liquid eyes blink slowly and sharply at the Doctor, head tilted to the side and feathers slightly fluffed, more quizzical rather than angry, as he speaks, repeating what he said.
“This is the first time I’ve been away from Companion Rose. I was worried because his hate for her, for you was so evident; he took so much delight in baiting you about the length of your recovery, about how he tried to kill her that I called to check with her guard that she was….” The guardian’s eyes become sharp and dangerous, and a small part of the Doctor’s mind observes and admires the effect of adrenaline spiking in the guardian, as his pupils change, contracting to that of the hunter seeking prey.
“He knew you had been unwell until yesterday. HE WAS TOLD!” The soft stilted words escalate to a muted roar as realisation dawns.
The Doctor hears a very short, sharp, extremely vulgar and vernacular curse telling him that her guardian is unsuccessful as he shouts for a response from the one who should be at the other end of his communicator, to the one who should be outside her room, protecting her in his stead.
He knows that the guardian is looking at him as he speaks to those he can reach, as reports started to come in. The Doctor watches as the guardian’s pupils shift again, emotions flickering there showing so much; wide and sympathetic, furious. More lives have been lost and he wonders with remoteness did the guardian’s eyes look the same just before he told Rose about finding him?
His voice of logic is still and silent as he starts to bleed from wounds both old and new. And the warning peal of the cloister bell that begins again to reverberate through his bones is pointless, because all he can hear is that primitive voice, now a hushed whisper, wield the words that finally decimate his control. His hearts’ blood drips with each word, with each beat, with each toll.
Stupid, so stupid; ape stupid in fact. Pain and control; disobedience and punishment. Bad, naughty little lab rat didn’t lie down and die like a good little lab rat. And she, she took away his power, she took away his toys, all his little lab rats and exposed him, she destroyed everything, she destroyed his life’s work.
And as he plays back the conversation, the Doctor can hear the triumph, the smugness of that tone: retribution, recompense for his, for their action. It lurked just beneath the vitriol, using those words, knowing that they were important, using them to cloud him, to make him angry, to force him to struggle for control and not to hear. He shouldn’t have gotten so angry; he shouldn’t have let himself get lost in his anger while he was being all but told that Rose was about to be killed.
Coward! You ran from her. You left her!
And quietly, without any kind of struggle or fight, the Doctor becomes the violence in his blood, the very thing that they unlocked inside him in that cell. Primeval, dominant and merciless instincts that once made his people so feared, so unforgiving, now totally consume the last vestige of his control, his last shred of logic. Knowledge is retained but all restraint is gone. He is back to what he was in that cell, only there are no drugs to inhibit, nothing to hold him back. Gone is all feeling of weakness and all remnant of sanity is lost to the cold rage that focuses everything on just one thing.
Rose.
Silence screams loudly as the bell stops. And the Doctor’s moving before her guardian can speak, he’s running before he can be caught.
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The air screams with death and violence as he bursts on to her floor, but there is no sound; silence reigns mixing with the smell of smoke and blood choking the corridor. He ignores the weapons that are suddenly turned on him by the figures that almost line the hall, each one standing over a body, guarding them, sentinels to this carnage. But to him at this moment they are immaterial, not worth acknowledging.
His eyes register the scene of utter butchery, but he does not care. Blood covers the floor in dark sticky pools, leeching from those lying too still, too silent. His hands reach out to grab the wall as he turns the corner so he doesn’t slip, doesn’t lose precious seconds with lost balance. His broken, splinted hand jars with pain, but he does not feel. None of the blood is human, so he pays the gore no attention, so he continues to move. And then he’s in her room.
Here the slaughter continues…..and ends. Two dead bodies litter the floor with appalling abandonment. The arching splatter of arterial spray paints a horrific picture across two walls: the air is heavy and saturated with fresh blood, fear and hate.
The one who was supposed to protector her is dead in the lee between the door and the window, his weapon still in his hand. Something that at one time might have been breakfast covers the floor with jagged broken crockery, and something that smells like tea hides behind the stink of blood.
But again the Doctor is blind to it; all he can see is Rose, slumped like a doll between the wall and the floor by her bed, her eyes fixed and glassy. The Doctor blinks sharply, his breathing loud and laboured; his eyes drinking her. The storm inside that has carried him this far steals complete control as all he sees are pale grey feathers looking so dark, almost like the hand of death, against the blooded and torn skin of her throat.
He all but yanks her up into his arms, away from the medic that is trying to tend to her, his throat and chest tight. A vibration, a growl works its way loose as he stares at the medic, daring him to just try and stop him. He thinks he might be whispering her name as he clutches at her, his senses singing, absorbing the fact that she’s alright, that her heart is still beating, that she’s still breathing.
“I’m fine, Doctor.” Her voice isn’t even a croak, her larynx too badly damaged. Blood trickles down her throat where her attacker’s claws punctured the skin as he tried to strangle her and the Doctor thinks that it might just be the most pathetic lie that she’s ever told him. His rage has nowhere to go as he watches her blood pool slightly at her clavicle, her voiceless words and dead eyes lacking emotion. She feels distant in his arms and he despises it.
“I’m fine. Let them finish.” Her smile is beyond shallow, not even skin deep and he wonders just which of them she is trying to fool with it. But still he surrenders her back to the medic’s care solely because she asks, because he now recognises the figure as the one who bested his teacher by saving him. The blood soaks her clothes, that covers her is not all hers, the taste of it on the air is wrong, too much iron, not enough copper, the red just a bit too bright to be human, but still there is so much of it….too much of it here and in the hall outside.
Out of the corner of his eyes the Doctor sees her hand flex, as she twists, worries something between her blood slick fingertips. He looks carefully just at what Rose is clutching in her right hand; looks in turn at the body at their feet, and he feels himself blink sharply at what the evidence tells him. That somehow she had managed to kill the one who had tried to kill her; killed the one who murdered six innocents to get to her. And she is still clutching the bloody shard of a plate that she had used to defend herself.
The regenerator that the medic waves in small circles just above her skin starts to glow a deep purple, telling the Doctor just how severe the trauma is. Any harder, any longer that the six-taloned paw had remained around her throat and she…..
The Doctor struggles to control his hearts, his breathing, and the dangerous impulses that sing through his veins screaming for blood, for vengeance for what was done to her …for what she was forced to do. The need for retaliation, for retribution, to follow through with the threat he made to the prisoner screams through him. But he has learn from his mistake he will not leave her; he can’t; so he focuses on his breathing as the medic carefully, quietly continues to repair her bruises and torn skin.
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Others now have come into the room and the Doctor can feel them holding back, watching them both and he wonders have they ever heard of Hera and her peacock. In the distance the Doctor can hear her guardian speak to those standing in the hall. Timidly they are approached, voices are tentative as they’re moved, herded almost, away from her room leaving the bodies, the blood to the medical and forensic constabulary.
As he walks through the hall he looks again at the bodies and this time sees, everything reminding him how close he came again to losing her. His eyes tracing the vulnerable line of her neck, which is now is smooth and pale and looks just as it should.
This is not the first time that Rose has been forced to defend herself. His mind calls forth each incident, explicit in detail of how each case was very much his fault rather than hers. He remembers the tears that she shed when…..and the Doctor pauses as memory and reality jar, because beneath the bruises that are no longer there and blood covered skin, she is pale, too pale.
They have been walked across the length of the building and down two floors. Features and feathers that he remembers from his own time, from his own examination are in the room. Some of them dare to meet his eyes…others do not. There is the hushed sense of failure, of sorrow and penitence that echoes over each and every one of them, staining the air, taking the guilt of a few on their shoulders. The Doctor looks at each of them, feeling disconnected and at the same time filled with a kind of understanding they would never comprehend. And he almost wants to smile at them when they look at him with shocked astonishment.
The mood of the room shifts, the tone moving from contrition to anger and questions as Rose’s protector makes his way towards them. His head is cocked as he silently listens to reports that are coming through his ear piece: the Doctor can see the rage and guilt settle over the guardian, lighting his eyes. And it’s he and not the Doctor who asks her what happened.
Her voice is almost bell-like, but it lacks tone and pitch, any semblance of emotion. There is no emphasis or punctuation; she pauses only for breath. With chilling lack of emotion she describes how her guard lost his life and how she fought and won her own. But there is no reaction, no attempt at a smile, no tears, no anger, no grief, no sorrow, and no rage: nothing. No emotions play across her face or in the shadows of her eyes; there is nothing. This is not shock.
He’s stopped hearing what she’s saying, because it’s what she’s not that is more important. For the first time since he was taken, since he woke up, he sees her face, her body stark in clear unfiltered morning light, and with each breath he sees a little more.
He sees the depth and darkness of the circles that rim her eyes, just how pale and wan her skin is, whispering to him telltale signs of dehydration. Her cheeks are hollow; he’s not the only one who has lost too much weight.
The air seems to be full of needles, his breath sticking sharply in his throat, as Rose just sits there saying words, that seem to mean nothing to her, her eyes fixed vacuously at a spot on the far wall. He remembers so clearly now the coldness that radiated off of her, when she came and pulled him away from the emotional ledge. How for the few seconds before he slept it worried him, the ice that he saw just beneath her skin. A worry that was then drowned by what he remembered as he slept, by confirmation of his suspicions, and the painful jagged understanding of what he had done, of what he had said.
She’s running away from you again. Only this time it’s in her mind…. her heart.
The barb finds its target, the vitriol of his internal voice bringing bitter clarity, and he finds himself moving back into the depth and shadows of the room. He needs the even this short distance between them to think. Her coldness, the total lack, of her being empty of everything he knows and cares about as Rose, worry and fear for her mind, for her soul seep in replacing the fury, and stilling the storm. With slow painful precision he can feel logic try to steal back quietly what was lost, as Rose’s words continue to flow over the room.
Part of him thinks it’s hilarious and at the same time, not, because so much within refuses to be ignored anymore, the seething mass inside refuses to give up, to given back logic and training. He does not have the strength….no; he does not have the enough equilibrium to reach her mind the way he should be able to. So all he is left with is guessing at her reasons for this lack.
Those around him are oblivious to his internal struggle, for the first time since he landed on this planet, no one is watching him. They are asking questions now, mummers, anger begins to fill the air, replacing the contrition and her voice is still dead and devoid as she replies.
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The Doctor walks the edges of the room, watching her, moving around those listening to her so attentively. His guesses make him think that maybe she sees remoteness as a form of preservation. Emotions and feelings hurt too much shutting them off, turning them down is protection.
He had tried the same thing after the war. And he had been nearly there. Numb, dead inside no matter if the flesh was still alive. Until the TARDIS had landed on Earth; until he kept running into a human girl called Rose.
She reminded him that he needed to feel, she forced him to think, reminding him of how once he had lived a better life, that he was better than a Dalek. He had never told her how she had given back to him his emotions; that eventually she had been the crucible for what he now was.
He thought he had control; he did have control until that cell. Now he is drowning in everything, all the barriers gone to dust. And those words, those tempting forbidden words that had lingered at the back of his mind since Christmas, now spoken, can’t be unspoken. How can he have all these emotions, these feelings to deal with, when she seems to have locked hers away? He needs her to feel, he needs her emotions. She needs her emotions; the human body and mind do not cope very well with having every single feeling numbed, deadened and locked away.
But what can he do? He doesn’t know how to help her. He can barely help himself. His plans of ignoring, of pretending, have been shattered. How to reach her; how to stop this ice before she becomes nothing but a shadow, a frigid ghost of what she should be, of who she should be he is barely holding himself together, he isn’t ready for this. And hysteria pushes with a heavy tight fist, enticing him to laugh, to scream, so Doctor has to blink sharply as the small grey medic comes to him and presents him with bathing apparel.
Hysteria recedes and knowledge seeps through the gaps, understanding replacing confusion. And his bow to the small grey figure is stilted and more awkward than it should be, but that’s nothing to what he feels as he turns to face Rose. And as the rest are swept from the room, leaving them alone, the Doctor can’t help but wonder what she thought when they asked her to do the same for him.
Before, he would have viewed this as a temptation and a test, and if this had been before the night he was taken, before what almost happened on her bed, he would have refused. He should refuse; he can still feel the need to touch her, the compulsion. A ludicrous thought that maybe, just maybe this will shatter the ice around her fills his head and is then chased away; logic is clawing and fighting its way back into his system and it struggles to find some kind of dominance.
He turns slowly to her, letting his arm hover just above her elbow; the sleeve of her top is now stiff with dried blood. She walks forward, but doesn’t stop him as he walks into the bathroom; she turns to face him, almost waiting instructions. Coppelia, he thinks, the automaton doll waiting with perfect complacence for instructions. And suddenly he’s swamped with the need to shake her, he aches to scream at her, to vent this rage that has risen again, but he can’t, he won’t. He can remember her compassion the last time they were in this room, how carefully she washed him, how vigilantly she tried for nothing to happen that either of them might feel shame or regret over.
So he struggles to hold himself together, to give back what she gave to him. But he can’t, he’s too brittle, control again slipping all his feeble tethers. And again he takes the coward’s way out, chooses the lesser and guides her carefully to the sink. Wetting the facecloth and using the cleaning bar, he takes her left hand in his and slowly begins to clean the blood away. They have taken away the shard of delftware, her chosen weapon of defence, for evidence. But it cut her as well as her assailant, and he can see remnants that have become embedded in the wound.
The Doctor makes slow, gentle brushes with the cloth; he knows that pain must flare in her senses, but her hand is compliant in his, she shows no indication of pain, no indication of any sensation whatsoever. Part of him wishes that it was shock, wants to fool himself into believing that what she is suffering from is nothing more than simple human shock. But the ice under her skin is like a beacon to him now, the wrongness of it blaring out, making his bones vibrate and his teeth ache.
“You need to get clean, Rose.” And he doesn’t know where the words come from as he turns from her, moving away, reaching out to turn on the shower. Turning his back, he tells himself that it’s nothing more than his imagination as soft rustling sound of cloth against skin reaches him. When he turns back, hearts lungs and brain seem to freeze. Everything within seems to struggle, seems to fight, but to what end? He’s almost too frightened to think.
He should close his eyes, but he can’t, too much of him refuses too. And even though he thought every detail from the dream that they shared that had been engraved in his memory, it has now been vividly wiped clean by what he sees.
So easy to reach out and touch. So easy to reach out and take. Skin so soft, so warm, promises made and given. She belongs to him, the declaration already made, accepted, reciprocated. All that they have shared together, all that they have held together. She came for him, she saved him. They are bonded, they are joined.
And his conscience begins to crumble, all that is the Time Lord in him quakes as he can’t break the force of her gaze. In the corner of his eye he sees his hand, his finger tips hovering at the gentle curve of her hips, hovering over her pale skin, temptation radiating out, itching, teasing, and stretching his nerves. Those forbidden words claw back up his throat; pressure builds as he presses his lips together, forcing himself into silence. But still the feelings behind the words can’t be as easily contained, sending pricked heat lapping over him, until it pools low in his belly, the muscles in his stomach becoming tight, hot, taut with the forbidden.
He still isn’t even touching her, no brush, no glide of skin on skin, his fingers still hovering, his hands are trembling and he is back to the repeating litany of ‘can’t’ ‘mustn’t’. The Doctor isn’t surprised when it comes to it that he’s not as brave as she, he’s not as strong as she. And he is running away as he walks out the door, those contained unspoken words scalding tongue and lips, leaving her untouched, clothed in nothing more than a cloud of steam.
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Well please, please what do you think?