Only Time (2/4)
Title: Only Time
Fandom: Doctor Who
Characters: 10/Rose
Rating: PG-13 or soft-R for non-explicit sexual content
Spoilers: Doomsday, Last of the Time Lords
Summary: When the Doctor crosses his timeline, he is given the chance to spend three days with Rose . . . After Doomsday.
Chapter One
Chapter Two - Why Your Heart Sighs
“Who can say why your heart sighs as your love flies? Only time.” -Enya
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
The next morning, Rose came around the corner just in time to see the TARDIS materialize. Something about the rise and fall of the engines sounded a bit off, so she tightened her grip on the two mugs of hot tea and sped up her pace. She'd thought that she might have a hard time with Mickey-she didn't want to explain about the tightly-controlled paradox, lest his curiosity led him to accompany her to see this future Doctor for himself-but he'd seemed content enough to be at home with a week's worth of recorded football matches to watch and half a dozen leftover cartons of Chinese take-away.
Juggling the mugs of tea against one arm, Rose slid her key into the lock. This time the door opened easily. She wondered if the Doctor had changed the keys after he'd lost her. That might explain why, when she'd visited yesterday, the door had refused to open until she'd pressed her hand against the TARDIS. Since she'd become the Bad Wolf, she and the TARDIS had developed a bond, and Rose knew that the ship would never keep her locked out, even if she had the wrong key.
Once inside the TARDIS, Rose noticed that the Doctor was nowhere in sight. She also noticed a lot of extra cables looped across the floor around the console, and bare wiring that dangled from the ceiling. She had to step carefully to avoid tripping up.
“What happened, girl?” She set the mugs of tea onto a flat section of the console and then reached up to touch the time rotor. “Looks like you've had a rough time of it. Is the Doctor taking care of you, then?”
She ran her hands over the organic fins that radiated downward from the time rotor. Her fingers dipped into a small hole-roughly the size of a bullet, she realized with unease. And where was the Doctor?
“Oh,” said the Time Lord in question.
Rose spun around to find him standing in the doorway that led deeper into the TARDIS. He looked uncertain, as though he hadn't expected her to be there. He looked . . . tired. Worn out, she thought. His dark blue suit hung on him as though he'd lost weight recently. He held a small towel in his hands and his hair still dripped from a shower. The Doctor hardly ever needed to bathe-something about his superior biology-so it made Rose even more concerned about what had been going on. Bullet holes in the console, the funny whine in the TARDIS's materialisation sequence, all the obvious repair work, and a Doctor freshly bathed and smelling of vanilla soap.
“Oh,” she responded, upon blinking and finding the Doctor less than a foot away from her. This close, she could see a haze of beard on his jawline, something that usually took months without shaving to grow. She could see shadows under his eyes, and when she met his gaze, she recognized the depth of exhaustion there, accompanied by despair, longing, and misery. Without even thinking, she cupped his cheek. “What happened?”
From the lower edge of her vision, she saw his Adam's apple jump as he swallowed. He reached up to where her hand touched his face and when his fingers covered hers, he squeezed his eyes shut. His breath began to come raggedly, and Rose grew apprehensive.
“Doctor?” she said softly, worried.
His eyes jerked open and he looked almost startled. Again, he said, “Oh.”
And before she could ask again, he'd closed the remaining inches between them. Their hips bumped together and a hand at the small of her back sent shivers through her. She heard the hand-towel drop to the grating at her feet and then both of the Doctor's hands tugged at her. His cheek pressed against hers, rough with stubble, and then the whole length of his body trembled against her. She wrapped her arms around him as tightly as she could, troubled at the idea of anything being able to distress the Doctor like this. She opened her mouth to ask once more what had happened, only to realize that the back beneath her hands was heaving as the Doctor silently cried.
It broke Rose's heart and, as her eyes filled with tears of empathy, she vowed to extract revenge on whoever had done this to the Doctor. She'd never seen him cry, not once in the eighteen months they'd spent together. The old him, before he'd regenerated, used to get distant and sad-looking if something had reminded him of his lost home, but not even when he'd run into the “last” Dalek had he come close to actually weeping. And when they'd discovered the Dalek fleet hiding at the edge of the solar system, he'd got cross enough to mask his fear and melancholy.
Had it been Daleks, again, then? Surely not! They'd destroyed the Emperor and his fleet-she had destroyed the last Daleks in this universe, turned them to dust with a wave of her hand and the power of the Bad Wolf. With such power at her disposal, why then, hadn't she looked into the future and foreseen this? Surely the Bad Wolf had known what would happen, this inevitable separation, and could have made arrangements to prevent it-or at the very least, to protect the Doctor.
But then, maybe she had.
An unexpected frisson shot through her at the idea that Bad Wolf had foreseen, and had arranged for this three day period: three chances for the Doctor to be with her again, three chances for him to breathe and convalesce and heal.
The first time, only yesterday for her, had been shortly after he'd lost her, when he'd been so alone and miserable. She'd seen the difference in his eyes as the day went on and knew that even the short allotment of time with her had helped him to gain perspective and had given him the strength to face the universe once more. He'd said that he would wait as long as he could before returning to her, to make the most of a limited opportunity. So why was he here at this time? Obviously something terrible had happened-to him, and to the TARDIS. She hoped he hadn't lost a companion, but she couldn't imagine what else could be so heart-rending . . . unless it had something to do with his world or his people. But he'd already lost all of them, by his own hand. How much worse could it get?
Rose waited until the Doctor finally stilled against her. She ran one comforting hand down his back and in a low voice, asked, “What is it? What's happened?”
He straightened, still clinging to Rose, but would not look at her. She could hear tiny vocalizations as he tried to speak, but finally he exhaled in defeat and lowered his head to her shoulder. What could be so bad that the Doctor-famous for his gob-couldn't even find words to describe it? Rose felt helpless, and terrified on his behalf. Her hand rose to his neck; she stroked the cool, damp skin above his collar and whispered, “I'm here, Doctor. It's all right.”
His grasp tightened briefly around her in response. Then he raised his head and looked at her for a long, intense moment. During that moment, his hands curved along either side of her face, as though to keep her from vanishing. Then, the grief in his eyes dimmed, overshadowed by an avid blaze of passion. She barely had time to inhale before he dropped his head and found her mouth. As his lips touched hers, a barrage of alien-tinged emotions flooded through her. Need-not flaming or burning but as cold as ice. Yearning-violent, yet tempered by love. Hunger-exquisite and frantic . . . not a matter of want or desire, but of desperate, all-consuming need. He had to have her-or be forever lost.
Rose couldn't give herself to the Doctor, for she'd always been his. But she could meet his subliminal craving with a fierce longing of her own, and as though that triggered a signal of some sort, he began tugging at her clothes, boldly seeking skin. One by one he began to dispatch any obstacles; her hooded jumper ended up somewhere across the room. The lace-trimmed camisole he simply pushed up and out of the way. Her jeans ended up around her ankles. In response, she worked at his pinstriped jacket. Two, three buttons . . . a dozen more on his shirt, and then she made him let go of her for a brief moment in order to slide the clothing off his narrow shoulders. Once the jacket and shirt fell to the ground, he pressed her against the angled side of the console and resumed his interrupted work with a panicked fervour.
“It's all right. I'm not going anywhere,” she assured him quietly, as he tried to touch her everywhere at once: the length of her back, the curve of her waist, the slight roundness of her stomach. His fingers and lips kept moving, leaving trails of icy fire in their wake. The searingly cold caress of the Doctor's body left Rose shivering and burning and wanting so much more. She'd never felt this before-this compulsion to merge so completely with another person; it should have frightened her, but like any other adventure with the Doctor, she felt no fear as long as he held her hand.
She could feel his emotions changing with her touch, pulsing just beneath his skin, his desire contradictorily both tempered and unleashed. Another kiss, this time with nothing between them but bare flesh, came with another onslaught of pure thought from the Doctor. Her mind interpreted the alien wash of emotion as colour: the glowing crimson of need; the deep violet of loneliness, tinged with the yellow-green of guilt and the blue-black of grief; and the brilliant pink of love, pulsing with the lavender of sorrow and the liquid gold of . . . of . . . Time itself, immortal and surging about them.
From the fringes of her awareness, Rose felt the Doctor moving within her, body and mind. And then her perceptions expanded, and she felt herself falling . . . falling into the universe that surrounded them. She watched as galaxies spun through the great blackness of space, as stars winked into existence then collapsed into tiny flares of light. One of those stars pulled her in, and then went nova; she flew across the universe, a thousand colours blazing around her-through her-and for the space of a heartbeat she could see everything. . . .
For few dizzy seconds, Rose felt a serrated ledge supporting her, and the rapid double beat of the Doctor's pulse against her cheek. She gasped for breath, vaguely aware and annoyed that his breathing remained steady and slow. Respiratory bypass, she remembered. Handy in situations like running for your life, or . . . this, which felt oddly the same.
She could feel the Doctor trembling against her, but she lacked the strength to hold him any more tightly. Her muscles felt weak and quivery, and she nearly panicked when he started to pull away from her, certain she would fall, but he kept his arms around her and only leaned back enough to look down at her. A huge relief made breathing easier when, for the first time today, she could see the spark of life in his eyes-the Doctor she knew and loved.
“Hello,” he murmured, and she clung to him.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Sometime later, Rose woke to the awareness that her pillow seemed to be alive. It rose and fell beneath her head, leaving her to wonder at her sanity. She opened and closed her eyes a few times and tried to move, but her body refused to cooperate. When she blinked, her pillow vibrated and then spoke.
“That tickles,” it said, in a familiar voice.
“What?” she replied incredulously. And then her sleepy mind made the connections and she realized where she was, and more importantly, why her pillow seemed alive.
“That tickles,” the Doctor repeated.
“Sorry.” She turned her face so that her eyelashes wouldn't brush against the Doctor's bare skin. The ceiling of the console room curved far above them, so she realized that they must be on the floor. A thick layer of blankets padded the metal grating below them, and another soft blanket kept most of the air's chill away. Still, it seemed as though she'd just run through a blizzard; her muscles felt stiff and numb and cold. Clumsily, she rubbed at her eyes and tried to remember how, exactly, she'd ended up on the floor of the console room under a blanket with a very naked Doctor. She remembered him kissing her . . . needing her. And then. . . .
She allowed a small, satisfied smirk. “Is it just me or did the world move?”
“Well . . . we could quote clichés at each other all day, but the truth is, I always feel the turn of the Earth.” His arm tightened around her and his voice grew serious. “You saved me. Again.”
Rose lifted her head and looked down at the Doctor. “Did I?”
“Oh, yes! I'd say so.”
“Well then, that's a new one, yeah? Saved by shagging. Jack would approve.” She laughed nervously and ducked her head. This presented her with a grand view of the Doctor's chest, bare and sprinkled with hair and freckles. She began to move her hand across that fine expanse, but he stopped her with a finger to her chin, compelling her to look back up.
“It was more than that,” he said, quite solemnly.
And she had to agree. She hadn't been a virgin when she'd met the Doctor, and yet she almost felt like one now. What they'd done had been urgent and desperate, and lacked all of the qualities she normally associated with making love, as opposed to a quick shag . . . and yet, it didn't feel that way.
It felt as though he'd given her his soul for safekeeping, and taken hers in return.
“It was so much more,” he repeated, and pressing two of his fingers against her temple, he whispered, “Let me show you.”
And a familiar touch moved through her like a river of emotions-a whirlpool of feelings and sensations that pulled her once more into the Doctor's mind. Suddenly she could see herself through his eyes, and she gasped at the wonder of it. All around she could feel a dreadful storm, black and vengeful and deadly, but there at the heart of it all, the winds stood still and the warmth of the sun broke through. That was her, she understood, the eye of the storm-his anchor, his lifeline. Only the fragile touch of her memory stood between the universe and the terrible power of the Oncoming Storm.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Astonished and humbled, Rose opened her eyes and looked at the Doctor.
“You see?” His hand caressed the side of her face as it dropped from her temple. “I need you, Rose. When you came on board this morning, I was a broken man. What I'd been through . . . the things I'd seen, the things I'd done. . . . I wasn't sure any more if you were real, or if I'd just imagined you-a romantic figure to see me through the terrible times. Someone to remind me of the difference between right and wrong. A reason to keep going on, even when I wanted to die.”
Rose had no idea what to say. She murmured his name, but her voice broke midway.
“I'm sorry for being so abrupt with you. I shouldn't have been so . . . demanding,” he said, his mood changing in the blink of an eye, as it tended to do. The soft expression on his face began to harden as he recalled the circumstances of their lovemaking. “When I saw you standing beside the console, I truly thought that if I didn't have you-all of you, right then and there-I'd . . . I'd-” he stopped, clearly struggling with himself. “I didn't even stop to question what you wanted.”
“Doctor,” she said, trying to interrupt his swiftly falling mood before it could get any darker. “You didn't exactly hear me complaining, did you?”
“I didn't give you the chance.” He sat up and turned away from her, his face twisted into a mask of self-loathing and regret. “This is who I am now, Rose: the sort of person who takes what he wants and doesn't care about the consequences. I don't save people any more-I hurt them. Everywhere I go. . . .”
“Don't be stupid,” she said. “A minute ago, you were going on about how what we did was so much more than just shagging, and now look at you! You won't even face me.”
She knelt behind him and placed her hands on his shoulders. He flinched, but she kept touching him, moving her fingers in small circles across the back of his shoulders. After a minute, she began adding gentle kisses to his back as she caressed. She could feel his muscles twitching just below his skin, and the shallow expansion of his ribcage as he breathed. When she finally felt him begin to relax, just a little, she spoke again. “I wanted you, Doctor. I've always wanted you, even when you had big ears and a nose Caesar would be proud of.”
“Oi,” he protested, half-heartedly.
“You said that after we get separated I'll tell you I love you. That hasn't happened yet for me, but I'll say it again, all the same: I love you, Doctor. I always have and I always will. You're part of me, for better or for worse, and I wouldn't change a thing.” She kissed the base of his neck, and continued the gentle rhythm of stroking his skin. “When I came in this morning and saw you . . . I don't think I've ever been so scared. Not of you,” she added firmly, when she felt him start to pull away, “but for you. You looked so lost-so alone that it broke my heart. I would have done anything to see you smile again.”
“Ah, a pity shag, was it?”
She smacked the centre of his back with her palm. “Git! Why can't you just accept that maybe I wanted you every bit as much as you wanted me?”
“Maybe because I don't merit anything of the sort. It's the only thing I can figure, after all-that I'm alone because it's what I deserve.” His voice sounded detached as he spoke.
“How can you say that? After everything you've done, after all the good you've done?” Rose hitched the blanket about her body and crawled around to sit in front of the Doctor. He turned his head away, but she refused to let that intimidate her. “You've saved the entire universe how many times, now? Not to mention the Earth! Everyone owes you their lives, a hundred times over.”
“And how many saved lives does it take to make up for the deaths?” He finally looked right at her, his eyes dark and angry. “I've killed billions, Rose. Billions! You-you have no idea who I am-what I'm capable of. I make decisions every day that impact the lives of every living being on your planet. The thing of it is, even when things work out, even when I stop the villains and save the day, someone always pays the price. Someone always has to be sacrificed for the greater good. Someone always has to die, before I can sort everything.”
“You're right,” she said, and she saw his lips part in surprise, but she kept on. “People die. Innocent people are killed before you can stop things from happening. Brave people give their lives for the greater good, so that their friends and families have a chance at a better life. People die all the time. But d'you know what? That's been happening since the beginning of time. I guarantee it-take me back to the beginning of the universe and I'll show you! People have always been killed by those more vicious and more powerful than they are, and people have always died for what they believe. It's nothing to do with you! But then you come along, and yeah, maybe some people die while you're busy saving the world. But even more would've died if you hadn't come along, and the universe would be a lot worse off, I can tell you that.”
He shook his head, his jaw set. “You've no idea what you're talking about, Rose.”
“Haven't I? Then tell me: how have you been negligent? How could you do any better than you're doing right now? You're just one man! A Time Lord, yeah, but there's no one else helping you. You do it all on your own. And for all that, you still manage to save a dozen galaxies every day before tea.”
“Stop it, Rose. Just . . . stop. You don't know.”
“Then tell me,” she repeated, softening her voice. “I've never seen you like this, Doctor. Even when we faced the Daleks, you still had hope. You still believed in yourself.”
“That's because when we faced the Daleks, you were there alongside me.” He spoke with a flat, searing edge to his words. “I still had hope, because you were my hope. You saw-I showed you, the image of the storm. All of that rage inside me-so much darkness. Without you, there's nothing to hold me back. Nothing to keep me sane.”
“Nah,” she answered, folding her arms stubbornly. “I'm not buying that. When I saw you yesterday, you were lost, but you hadn't given up. Not like this. And what about all those years before you met me? Nine hundred years old, you are. Bit late to be developing a dependence.”
“Before you, I had my people. Not the most supportive family, I admit, but I wasn't alone.”
Rose lifted her eyebrows. “You're not travelling with anybody?”
“No. Well . . . no. It's not worth it, anymore.” He caught her concerned expression and groaned theatrically in response. “I pick up people, now and again, just like always. But you know how humans are! So fragile. So stupid. Always getting themselves abducted, or hurt, or killed. Gets tiresome, it really does. Besides, they're just . . . companions. They're not . . . they're not family.”
“I hate to be the one to tell you this, but,” she leaned forward a bit and lowered her voice, “I'm human, y'know. Born and raised on good ol' planet Earth.”
“Maybe, but you're not like the rest of your species,” he said, daring a quick glance at her. “You may run off and get yourself in trouble, but just as often you're the one rescuing me. Always brimming with questions, you are-good ones. And when the monsters attack, you don't stand there like a lump and scream. Not Rose Tyler! No, you're . . . different.”
Rose reached over, took his hand, and squeezed it. The Doctor let out a shuddering breath, but didn't protest when she moved right up alongside him. With a gentle touch, she turned his head toward her. “What's happened to you? What's happened to make you give up?”
For a long moment, she thought he would refuse to answer. But then she recognized the set of his shoulders, stubborn but yielding. He breathed in and out a few times, and then he started talking. He told her about Utopia. He told her about the brilliant spark of hope that he'd had on discovering another Time Lord had survived the War, and how that hope had drowned in the blood of nearly every life on Earth. He told her about Harold Saxon and he told her about the Master.
As the story came rushing out, he moved closer to Rose. Unshed tears filled his eyes, testament to the emotion he wouldn't let himself feel. His voice began to crack as he told her about being utterly helpless, trapped in his own withered body. And he folded in on himself when he told her about the Master dying in his arms, how the only other Time Lord in existence had refused to regenerate out of spite and a twisted sense of triumph.
“You have no idea what it's like to be alone, inside your head,” he whispered. “It's . . . it's like wandering through a deserted city in the middle of the night. It's huge-all around you-with so many buildings and roadways, bridges and paths, houses, and shops, and skyscrapers. All of that, and you know it should be filled with life-there should be cars and pedestrians moving about; there should be children shouting and playing; there should be music and laughter. But there isn't, because the whole place is abandoned and lifeless. Not just empty, but dark and still. There's no lights showing anywhere-no traffic signals, or street lamps, not even any stars overhead. So dark. So silent, for so long. And then you see a bit of light in the distance. Just a single candle, flickering in someone's window on the other side of town. It's far away, just this one tiny light, but it's so beautiful . . . it's extraordinary to see it there, to know that someone is out there, that you're not alone after all.”
“That one candle . . . you've no idea.” He paused, letting out his breath without making a sound. “And then he blew out that tiny little flame, deliberately extinguished it, and left me alone in the dark, again.”
Rose held the Doctor with his head cradled on her lap and cried tears of her own.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
When she woke again, she found the Doctor leaning against the wall, watching her. She made an incoherent sound and rubbed at her eyes. A yawn forced its way out of her, and she cupped her hands over her mouth to hide it. Finally she sat up, pulling the blanket around her, and ran her fingers through her hair. This was her in the morning, every bit as bad as the Doctor when he'd woken up . . . the difference being that he only had to experience it once every few weeks, while she had to sleep, and therefore wake up, every single day. Entirely unfair.
However, as much as she hated waking up, doing so with the Doctor nearby almost made up for it. Doing so while naked, with an equally naked Doctor nearby . . . well. She could wake up happy every morning for the rest of her life if she had that sort of view to greet her. Even if it did mean that he'd spent the entire night staring at her.
Except, wait. It hadn't been night, had it? It had been morning when she'd arrived. After their long, emotionally-wrought discussion about why the TARDIS had bullet holes in the console, the Doctor had fallen asleep in her lap. The poor thing had been suffering from physical exhaustion on top of everything else, no doubt afraid to sleep alone for fear of being pulled into nightmares with no one to wake him. Rose didn't have a Time Lord's perfect sense of time, but she knew that he'd slept for several hours while she watched over him. And once awake, he'd proceeded to exhaust her once more.
No one had told her that making love with a Time Lord could be so demanding.
“Is that gonna happen every time?” she demanded, feeling the ache in every muscle in her body.
“Oh, I should think so.” His voice sounded seductively low, but his eyes glimmered with humour. “Wouldn't be much of a lover, otherwise, would I?”
“Not that!” She chucked her pillow in his direction. “I mean the . . . passing out afterwards.”
He raised an eyebrow. “D'you mean that isn't normal for humans?”
“Not where I come from. Well, not unless you're a bloke. Mickey used to snore something awful, afterwards.” She paused, screwing her face up. “Is this some sort of gender reversal, then? Where I fall asleep and leave you unsatisfied?”
The Doctor crawled over to her, his expression quite serious. “Does this look like the face of an unsatisfied man?”
“Mmmh.” Rose reached over and brushed her fingers against his chin. “Now that you mention it, you do look rather smug.”
“There you go, then.”
They grinned at each other, and Rose felt a huge relief at the sight of the Doctor's giddy smile. All traces of his earlier trauma had vanished, though she realised that he couldn't possibly have healed so completely in just a few hours. At least he'd regained a bit of armour around his soul, though. He'd be able to deal with the rest on his own-most likely in typical Doctor-fashion, by shoving the memories into the deepest corner of his mind and ignoring their existence.
“So,” the Doctor said, “Shall we move somewhere more comfortable? I've kept your room, if that wouldn't be too weird for you. Or . . . we could go to mine. I do have one, you know. A bedroom. Hardly used, but it's there.”
“So many parts. . . .” With a smirk, Rose lifted her arms above her head and stretched. As a result, the blanket she'd been holding modestly around her chest fell. “But hold on. Have we time?”
“Time machine,” he said vaguely, distracted.
“Yes, but. . . .” She shivered from the light touch of his hand. And then she noticed the quiet hum that hovered on the edge of her senses, and looked at the Doctor accusingly. “We're in the Vortex!”
“Hmm? Yes, that's right. I dematerialised the TARDIS whilst you were sleeping. That all right?”
She stared at him, her mouth opening in disbelief. With fear paralysing her thoughts, she could only get out one word, “Paradox!”
“Oh, right.” Uneasily, he withdrew his hand and used it to scratch behind his ear. “Shouldn't be a problem. So long as I return you to the right time, everything'll be fine. Better than fine. Grand! Brilliant, even.”
“You don't look very confident,” she pointed out. “I know all your tells, remember? Running your hand thorough your hair, scratching the back of your neck, pulling on your ear. It means you're nervous.”
“It doesn't matter,” he said, an urgent edge to his voice. “I need you here, with me. We won't go anywhere, I promise. No risks, no changes to the timeline. Just a little extra time to be together. Please, Rose . . . please.”
She reached out and pulled him into a hug. With her head resting on his bare shoulder, she said, “You're the Time Lord. If you say it's all right, then it's all right. Just be careful setting the return coordinates, yeah?”
He sighed gratefully in response, and buried his face in the crook of her neck. After a moment, Rose felt something cool and wet against her skin . . . a tongue, lips, kissing, nuzzling, sucking, nibbling her neck and shoulder. The nerves tingled with every nip and lick, sending pleasant sparks of desire through her body. She could feel his need again, as though it were her own-churning waves of crimson and pink, no longer desperate, but urgent and demanding all the same.
This time, she made him go slow enough that she could explore his body. Her fingers danced over his too-prominent ribs, the flat planes of his stomach, around to the curve of his arse. She memorised every detail of his body, knowing that he had been doing the same to her. After all, once she returned to her own Doctor, she wouldn't get the chance to see him in all his naked splendour, to touch him in all the intimate places that made him gasp-just like that-or to feel the weight of his body above her. Her Doctor still thought they had all the time in the world, and so he would keep his distance, flirtatious but ever-so-chaste, until the day that he would lose her to another universe. She had to remember everything, she had to make these few moments last forever. . . .
The Doctor brushed his lips against her temple; the world rippled and Rose felt herself pulled into that river once more.
(To Be Continued. . . .)
Chapter Three
Author's Note: You may notice that I've done something here that I thought I'd never do-write a sexual encounter where the scene does not end before things get too intimate. The emotional content of the chapter required that things progress a certain way; it would have been wrong to skip over things, and so I didn't. However, I attempted to manipulate things in such a way that the scene is emotional and sensual, but not explicit. Whether or not I succeeded is up to you-any feedback in that regard will be sincerely appreciated!
Fandom: Doctor Who
Characters: 10/Rose
Rating: PG-13 or soft-R for non-explicit sexual content
Spoilers: Doomsday, Last of the Time Lords
Summary: When the Doctor crosses his timeline, he is given the chance to spend three days with Rose . . . After Doomsday.
Chapter One
Chapter Two - Why Your Heart Sighs
“Who can say why your heart sighs as your love flies? Only time.” -Enya
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
The next morning, Rose came around the corner just in time to see the TARDIS materialize. Something about the rise and fall of the engines sounded a bit off, so she tightened her grip on the two mugs of hot tea and sped up her pace. She'd thought that she might have a hard time with Mickey-she didn't want to explain about the tightly-controlled paradox, lest his curiosity led him to accompany her to see this future Doctor for himself-but he'd seemed content enough to be at home with a week's worth of recorded football matches to watch and half a dozen leftover cartons of Chinese take-away.
Juggling the mugs of tea against one arm, Rose slid her key into the lock. This time the door opened easily. She wondered if the Doctor had changed the keys after he'd lost her. That might explain why, when she'd visited yesterday, the door had refused to open until she'd pressed her hand against the TARDIS. Since she'd become the Bad Wolf, she and the TARDIS had developed a bond, and Rose knew that the ship would never keep her locked out, even if she had the wrong key.
Once inside the TARDIS, Rose noticed that the Doctor was nowhere in sight. She also noticed a lot of extra cables looped across the floor around the console, and bare wiring that dangled from the ceiling. She had to step carefully to avoid tripping up.
“What happened, girl?” She set the mugs of tea onto a flat section of the console and then reached up to touch the time rotor. “Looks like you've had a rough time of it. Is the Doctor taking care of you, then?”
She ran her hands over the organic fins that radiated downward from the time rotor. Her fingers dipped into a small hole-roughly the size of a bullet, she realized with unease. And where was the Doctor?
“Oh,” said the Time Lord in question.
Rose spun around to find him standing in the doorway that led deeper into the TARDIS. He looked uncertain, as though he hadn't expected her to be there. He looked . . . tired. Worn out, she thought. His dark blue suit hung on him as though he'd lost weight recently. He held a small towel in his hands and his hair still dripped from a shower. The Doctor hardly ever needed to bathe-something about his superior biology-so it made Rose even more concerned about what had been going on. Bullet holes in the console, the funny whine in the TARDIS's materialisation sequence, all the obvious repair work, and a Doctor freshly bathed and smelling of vanilla soap.
“Oh,” she responded, upon blinking and finding the Doctor less than a foot away from her. This close, she could see a haze of beard on his jawline, something that usually took months without shaving to grow. She could see shadows under his eyes, and when she met his gaze, she recognized the depth of exhaustion there, accompanied by despair, longing, and misery. Without even thinking, she cupped his cheek. “What happened?”
From the lower edge of her vision, she saw his Adam's apple jump as he swallowed. He reached up to where her hand touched his face and when his fingers covered hers, he squeezed his eyes shut. His breath began to come raggedly, and Rose grew apprehensive.
“Doctor?” she said softly, worried.
His eyes jerked open and he looked almost startled. Again, he said, “Oh.”
And before she could ask again, he'd closed the remaining inches between them. Their hips bumped together and a hand at the small of her back sent shivers through her. She heard the hand-towel drop to the grating at her feet and then both of the Doctor's hands tugged at her. His cheek pressed against hers, rough with stubble, and then the whole length of his body trembled against her. She wrapped her arms around him as tightly as she could, troubled at the idea of anything being able to distress the Doctor like this. She opened her mouth to ask once more what had happened, only to realize that the back beneath her hands was heaving as the Doctor silently cried.
It broke Rose's heart and, as her eyes filled with tears of empathy, she vowed to extract revenge on whoever had done this to the Doctor. She'd never seen him cry, not once in the eighteen months they'd spent together. The old him, before he'd regenerated, used to get distant and sad-looking if something had reminded him of his lost home, but not even when he'd run into the “last” Dalek had he come close to actually weeping. And when they'd discovered the Dalek fleet hiding at the edge of the solar system, he'd got cross enough to mask his fear and melancholy.
Had it been Daleks, again, then? Surely not! They'd destroyed the Emperor and his fleet-she had destroyed the last Daleks in this universe, turned them to dust with a wave of her hand and the power of the Bad Wolf. With such power at her disposal, why then, hadn't she looked into the future and foreseen this? Surely the Bad Wolf had known what would happen, this inevitable separation, and could have made arrangements to prevent it-or at the very least, to protect the Doctor.
But then, maybe she had.
An unexpected frisson shot through her at the idea that Bad Wolf had foreseen, and had arranged for this three day period: three chances for the Doctor to be with her again, three chances for him to breathe and convalesce and heal.
The first time, only yesterday for her, had been shortly after he'd lost her, when he'd been so alone and miserable. She'd seen the difference in his eyes as the day went on and knew that even the short allotment of time with her had helped him to gain perspective and had given him the strength to face the universe once more. He'd said that he would wait as long as he could before returning to her, to make the most of a limited opportunity. So why was he here at this time? Obviously something terrible had happened-to him, and to the TARDIS. She hoped he hadn't lost a companion, but she couldn't imagine what else could be so heart-rending . . . unless it had something to do with his world or his people. But he'd already lost all of them, by his own hand. How much worse could it get?
Rose waited until the Doctor finally stilled against her. She ran one comforting hand down his back and in a low voice, asked, “What is it? What's happened?”
He straightened, still clinging to Rose, but would not look at her. She could hear tiny vocalizations as he tried to speak, but finally he exhaled in defeat and lowered his head to her shoulder. What could be so bad that the Doctor-famous for his gob-couldn't even find words to describe it? Rose felt helpless, and terrified on his behalf. Her hand rose to his neck; she stroked the cool, damp skin above his collar and whispered, “I'm here, Doctor. It's all right.”
His grasp tightened briefly around her in response. Then he raised his head and looked at her for a long, intense moment. During that moment, his hands curved along either side of her face, as though to keep her from vanishing. Then, the grief in his eyes dimmed, overshadowed by an avid blaze of passion. She barely had time to inhale before he dropped his head and found her mouth. As his lips touched hers, a barrage of alien-tinged emotions flooded through her. Need-not flaming or burning but as cold as ice. Yearning-violent, yet tempered by love. Hunger-exquisite and frantic . . . not a matter of want or desire, but of desperate, all-consuming need. He had to have her-or be forever lost.
Rose couldn't give herself to the Doctor, for she'd always been his. But she could meet his subliminal craving with a fierce longing of her own, and as though that triggered a signal of some sort, he began tugging at her clothes, boldly seeking skin. One by one he began to dispatch any obstacles; her hooded jumper ended up somewhere across the room. The lace-trimmed camisole he simply pushed up and out of the way. Her jeans ended up around her ankles. In response, she worked at his pinstriped jacket. Two, three buttons . . . a dozen more on his shirt, and then she made him let go of her for a brief moment in order to slide the clothing off his narrow shoulders. Once the jacket and shirt fell to the ground, he pressed her against the angled side of the console and resumed his interrupted work with a panicked fervour.
“It's all right. I'm not going anywhere,” she assured him quietly, as he tried to touch her everywhere at once: the length of her back, the curve of her waist, the slight roundness of her stomach. His fingers and lips kept moving, leaving trails of icy fire in their wake. The searingly cold caress of the Doctor's body left Rose shivering and burning and wanting so much more. She'd never felt this before-this compulsion to merge so completely with another person; it should have frightened her, but like any other adventure with the Doctor, she felt no fear as long as he held her hand.
She could feel his emotions changing with her touch, pulsing just beneath his skin, his desire contradictorily both tempered and unleashed. Another kiss, this time with nothing between them but bare flesh, came with another onslaught of pure thought from the Doctor. Her mind interpreted the alien wash of emotion as colour: the glowing crimson of need; the deep violet of loneliness, tinged with the yellow-green of guilt and the blue-black of grief; and the brilliant pink of love, pulsing with the lavender of sorrow and the liquid gold of . . . of . . . Time itself, immortal and surging about them.
From the fringes of her awareness, Rose felt the Doctor moving within her, body and mind. And then her perceptions expanded, and she felt herself falling . . . falling into the universe that surrounded them. She watched as galaxies spun through the great blackness of space, as stars winked into existence then collapsed into tiny flares of light. One of those stars pulled her in, and then went nova; she flew across the universe, a thousand colours blazing around her-through her-and for the space of a heartbeat she could see everything. . . .
For few dizzy seconds, Rose felt a serrated ledge supporting her, and the rapid double beat of the Doctor's pulse against her cheek. She gasped for breath, vaguely aware and annoyed that his breathing remained steady and slow. Respiratory bypass, she remembered. Handy in situations like running for your life, or . . . this, which felt oddly the same.
She could feel the Doctor trembling against her, but she lacked the strength to hold him any more tightly. Her muscles felt weak and quivery, and she nearly panicked when he started to pull away from her, certain she would fall, but he kept his arms around her and only leaned back enough to look down at her. A huge relief made breathing easier when, for the first time today, she could see the spark of life in his eyes-the Doctor she knew and loved.
“Hello,” he murmured, and she clung to him.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Sometime later, Rose woke to the awareness that her pillow seemed to be alive. It rose and fell beneath her head, leaving her to wonder at her sanity. She opened and closed her eyes a few times and tried to move, but her body refused to cooperate. When she blinked, her pillow vibrated and then spoke.
“That tickles,” it said, in a familiar voice.
“What?” she replied incredulously. And then her sleepy mind made the connections and she realized where she was, and more importantly, why her pillow seemed alive.
“That tickles,” the Doctor repeated.
“Sorry.” She turned her face so that her eyelashes wouldn't brush against the Doctor's bare skin. The ceiling of the console room curved far above them, so she realized that they must be on the floor. A thick layer of blankets padded the metal grating below them, and another soft blanket kept most of the air's chill away. Still, it seemed as though she'd just run through a blizzard; her muscles felt stiff and numb and cold. Clumsily, she rubbed at her eyes and tried to remember how, exactly, she'd ended up on the floor of the console room under a blanket with a very naked Doctor. She remembered him kissing her . . . needing her. And then. . . .
She allowed a small, satisfied smirk. “Is it just me or did the world move?”
“Well . . . we could quote clichés at each other all day, but the truth is, I always feel the turn of the Earth.” His arm tightened around her and his voice grew serious. “You saved me. Again.”
Rose lifted her head and looked down at the Doctor. “Did I?”
“Oh, yes! I'd say so.”
“Well then, that's a new one, yeah? Saved by shagging. Jack would approve.” She laughed nervously and ducked her head. This presented her with a grand view of the Doctor's chest, bare and sprinkled with hair and freckles. She began to move her hand across that fine expanse, but he stopped her with a finger to her chin, compelling her to look back up.
“It was more than that,” he said, quite solemnly.
And she had to agree. She hadn't been a virgin when she'd met the Doctor, and yet she almost felt like one now. What they'd done had been urgent and desperate, and lacked all of the qualities she normally associated with making love, as opposed to a quick shag . . . and yet, it didn't feel that way.
It felt as though he'd given her his soul for safekeeping, and taken hers in return.
“It was so much more,” he repeated, and pressing two of his fingers against her temple, he whispered, “Let me show you.”
And a familiar touch moved through her like a river of emotions-a whirlpool of feelings and sensations that pulled her once more into the Doctor's mind. Suddenly she could see herself through his eyes, and she gasped at the wonder of it. All around she could feel a dreadful storm, black and vengeful and deadly, but there at the heart of it all, the winds stood still and the warmth of the sun broke through. That was her, she understood, the eye of the storm-his anchor, his lifeline. Only the fragile touch of her memory stood between the universe and the terrible power of the Oncoming Storm.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Astonished and humbled, Rose opened her eyes and looked at the Doctor.
“You see?” His hand caressed the side of her face as it dropped from her temple. “I need you, Rose. When you came on board this morning, I was a broken man. What I'd been through . . . the things I'd seen, the things I'd done. . . . I wasn't sure any more if you were real, or if I'd just imagined you-a romantic figure to see me through the terrible times. Someone to remind me of the difference between right and wrong. A reason to keep going on, even when I wanted to die.”
Rose had no idea what to say. She murmured his name, but her voice broke midway.
“I'm sorry for being so abrupt with you. I shouldn't have been so . . . demanding,” he said, his mood changing in the blink of an eye, as it tended to do. The soft expression on his face began to harden as he recalled the circumstances of their lovemaking. “When I saw you standing beside the console, I truly thought that if I didn't have you-all of you, right then and there-I'd . . . I'd-” he stopped, clearly struggling with himself. “I didn't even stop to question what you wanted.”
“Doctor,” she said, trying to interrupt his swiftly falling mood before it could get any darker. “You didn't exactly hear me complaining, did you?”
“I didn't give you the chance.” He sat up and turned away from her, his face twisted into a mask of self-loathing and regret. “This is who I am now, Rose: the sort of person who takes what he wants and doesn't care about the consequences. I don't save people any more-I hurt them. Everywhere I go. . . .”
“Don't be stupid,” she said. “A minute ago, you were going on about how what we did was so much more than just shagging, and now look at you! You won't even face me.”
She knelt behind him and placed her hands on his shoulders. He flinched, but she kept touching him, moving her fingers in small circles across the back of his shoulders. After a minute, she began adding gentle kisses to his back as she caressed. She could feel his muscles twitching just below his skin, and the shallow expansion of his ribcage as he breathed. When she finally felt him begin to relax, just a little, she spoke again. “I wanted you, Doctor. I've always wanted you, even when you had big ears and a nose Caesar would be proud of.”
“Oi,” he protested, half-heartedly.
“You said that after we get separated I'll tell you I love you. That hasn't happened yet for me, but I'll say it again, all the same: I love you, Doctor. I always have and I always will. You're part of me, for better or for worse, and I wouldn't change a thing.” She kissed the base of his neck, and continued the gentle rhythm of stroking his skin. “When I came in this morning and saw you . . . I don't think I've ever been so scared. Not of you,” she added firmly, when she felt him start to pull away, “but for you. You looked so lost-so alone that it broke my heart. I would have done anything to see you smile again.”
“Ah, a pity shag, was it?”
She smacked the centre of his back with her palm. “Git! Why can't you just accept that maybe I wanted you every bit as much as you wanted me?”
“Maybe because I don't merit anything of the sort. It's the only thing I can figure, after all-that I'm alone because it's what I deserve.” His voice sounded detached as he spoke.
“How can you say that? After everything you've done, after all the good you've done?” Rose hitched the blanket about her body and crawled around to sit in front of the Doctor. He turned his head away, but she refused to let that intimidate her. “You've saved the entire universe how many times, now? Not to mention the Earth! Everyone owes you their lives, a hundred times over.”
“And how many saved lives does it take to make up for the deaths?” He finally looked right at her, his eyes dark and angry. “I've killed billions, Rose. Billions! You-you have no idea who I am-what I'm capable of. I make decisions every day that impact the lives of every living being on your planet. The thing of it is, even when things work out, even when I stop the villains and save the day, someone always pays the price. Someone always has to be sacrificed for the greater good. Someone always has to die, before I can sort everything.”
“You're right,” she said, and she saw his lips part in surprise, but she kept on. “People die. Innocent people are killed before you can stop things from happening. Brave people give their lives for the greater good, so that their friends and families have a chance at a better life. People die all the time. But d'you know what? That's been happening since the beginning of time. I guarantee it-take me back to the beginning of the universe and I'll show you! People have always been killed by those more vicious and more powerful than they are, and people have always died for what they believe. It's nothing to do with you! But then you come along, and yeah, maybe some people die while you're busy saving the world. But even more would've died if you hadn't come along, and the universe would be a lot worse off, I can tell you that.”
He shook his head, his jaw set. “You've no idea what you're talking about, Rose.”
“Haven't I? Then tell me: how have you been negligent? How could you do any better than you're doing right now? You're just one man! A Time Lord, yeah, but there's no one else helping you. You do it all on your own. And for all that, you still manage to save a dozen galaxies every day before tea.”
“Stop it, Rose. Just . . . stop. You don't know.”
“Then tell me,” she repeated, softening her voice. “I've never seen you like this, Doctor. Even when we faced the Daleks, you still had hope. You still believed in yourself.”
“That's because when we faced the Daleks, you were there alongside me.” He spoke with a flat, searing edge to his words. “I still had hope, because you were my hope. You saw-I showed you, the image of the storm. All of that rage inside me-so much darkness. Without you, there's nothing to hold me back. Nothing to keep me sane.”
“Nah,” she answered, folding her arms stubbornly. “I'm not buying that. When I saw you yesterday, you were lost, but you hadn't given up. Not like this. And what about all those years before you met me? Nine hundred years old, you are. Bit late to be developing a dependence.”
“Before you, I had my people. Not the most supportive family, I admit, but I wasn't alone.”
Rose lifted her eyebrows. “You're not travelling with anybody?”
“No. Well . . . no. It's not worth it, anymore.” He caught her concerned expression and groaned theatrically in response. “I pick up people, now and again, just like always. But you know how humans are! So fragile. So stupid. Always getting themselves abducted, or hurt, or killed. Gets tiresome, it really does. Besides, they're just . . . companions. They're not . . . they're not family.”
“I hate to be the one to tell you this, but,” she leaned forward a bit and lowered her voice, “I'm human, y'know. Born and raised on good ol' planet Earth.”
“Maybe, but you're not like the rest of your species,” he said, daring a quick glance at her. “You may run off and get yourself in trouble, but just as often you're the one rescuing me. Always brimming with questions, you are-good ones. And when the monsters attack, you don't stand there like a lump and scream. Not Rose Tyler! No, you're . . . different.”
Rose reached over, took his hand, and squeezed it. The Doctor let out a shuddering breath, but didn't protest when she moved right up alongside him. With a gentle touch, she turned his head toward her. “What's happened to you? What's happened to make you give up?”
For a long moment, she thought he would refuse to answer. But then she recognized the set of his shoulders, stubborn but yielding. He breathed in and out a few times, and then he started talking. He told her about Utopia. He told her about the brilliant spark of hope that he'd had on discovering another Time Lord had survived the War, and how that hope had drowned in the blood of nearly every life on Earth. He told her about Harold Saxon and he told her about the Master.
As the story came rushing out, he moved closer to Rose. Unshed tears filled his eyes, testament to the emotion he wouldn't let himself feel. His voice began to crack as he told her about being utterly helpless, trapped in his own withered body. And he folded in on himself when he told her about the Master dying in his arms, how the only other Time Lord in existence had refused to regenerate out of spite and a twisted sense of triumph.
“You have no idea what it's like to be alone, inside your head,” he whispered. “It's . . . it's like wandering through a deserted city in the middle of the night. It's huge-all around you-with so many buildings and roadways, bridges and paths, houses, and shops, and skyscrapers. All of that, and you know it should be filled with life-there should be cars and pedestrians moving about; there should be children shouting and playing; there should be music and laughter. But there isn't, because the whole place is abandoned and lifeless. Not just empty, but dark and still. There's no lights showing anywhere-no traffic signals, or street lamps, not even any stars overhead. So dark. So silent, for so long. And then you see a bit of light in the distance. Just a single candle, flickering in someone's window on the other side of town. It's far away, just this one tiny light, but it's so beautiful . . . it's extraordinary to see it there, to know that someone is out there, that you're not alone after all.”
“That one candle . . . you've no idea.” He paused, letting out his breath without making a sound. “And then he blew out that tiny little flame, deliberately extinguished it, and left me alone in the dark, again.”
Rose held the Doctor with his head cradled on her lap and cried tears of her own.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
When she woke again, she found the Doctor leaning against the wall, watching her. She made an incoherent sound and rubbed at her eyes. A yawn forced its way out of her, and she cupped her hands over her mouth to hide it. Finally she sat up, pulling the blanket around her, and ran her fingers through her hair. This was her in the morning, every bit as bad as the Doctor when he'd woken up . . . the difference being that he only had to experience it once every few weeks, while she had to sleep, and therefore wake up, every single day. Entirely unfair.
However, as much as she hated waking up, doing so with the Doctor nearby almost made up for it. Doing so while naked, with an equally naked Doctor nearby . . . well. She could wake up happy every morning for the rest of her life if she had that sort of view to greet her. Even if it did mean that he'd spent the entire night staring at her.
Except, wait. It hadn't been night, had it? It had been morning when she'd arrived. After their long, emotionally-wrought discussion about why the TARDIS had bullet holes in the console, the Doctor had fallen asleep in her lap. The poor thing had been suffering from physical exhaustion on top of everything else, no doubt afraid to sleep alone for fear of being pulled into nightmares with no one to wake him. Rose didn't have a Time Lord's perfect sense of time, but she knew that he'd slept for several hours while she watched over him. And once awake, he'd proceeded to exhaust her once more.
No one had told her that making love with a Time Lord could be so demanding.
“Is that gonna happen every time?” she demanded, feeling the ache in every muscle in her body.
“Oh, I should think so.” His voice sounded seductively low, but his eyes glimmered with humour. “Wouldn't be much of a lover, otherwise, would I?”
“Not that!” She chucked her pillow in his direction. “I mean the . . . passing out afterwards.”
He raised an eyebrow. “D'you mean that isn't normal for humans?”
“Not where I come from. Well, not unless you're a bloke. Mickey used to snore something awful, afterwards.” She paused, screwing her face up. “Is this some sort of gender reversal, then? Where I fall asleep and leave you unsatisfied?”
The Doctor crawled over to her, his expression quite serious. “Does this look like the face of an unsatisfied man?”
“Mmmh.” Rose reached over and brushed her fingers against his chin. “Now that you mention it, you do look rather smug.”
“There you go, then.”
They grinned at each other, and Rose felt a huge relief at the sight of the Doctor's giddy smile. All traces of his earlier trauma had vanished, though she realised that he couldn't possibly have healed so completely in just a few hours. At least he'd regained a bit of armour around his soul, though. He'd be able to deal with the rest on his own-most likely in typical Doctor-fashion, by shoving the memories into the deepest corner of his mind and ignoring their existence.
“So,” the Doctor said, “Shall we move somewhere more comfortable? I've kept your room, if that wouldn't be too weird for you. Or . . . we could go to mine. I do have one, you know. A bedroom. Hardly used, but it's there.”
“So many parts. . . .” With a smirk, Rose lifted her arms above her head and stretched. As a result, the blanket she'd been holding modestly around her chest fell. “But hold on. Have we time?”
“Time machine,” he said vaguely, distracted.
“Yes, but. . . .” She shivered from the light touch of his hand. And then she noticed the quiet hum that hovered on the edge of her senses, and looked at the Doctor accusingly. “We're in the Vortex!”
“Hmm? Yes, that's right. I dematerialised the TARDIS whilst you were sleeping. That all right?”
She stared at him, her mouth opening in disbelief. With fear paralysing her thoughts, she could only get out one word, “Paradox!”
“Oh, right.” Uneasily, he withdrew his hand and used it to scratch behind his ear. “Shouldn't be a problem. So long as I return you to the right time, everything'll be fine. Better than fine. Grand! Brilliant, even.”
“You don't look very confident,” she pointed out. “I know all your tells, remember? Running your hand thorough your hair, scratching the back of your neck, pulling on your ear. It means you're nervous.”
“It doesn't matter,” he said, an urgent edge to his voice. “I need you here, with me. We won't go anywhere, I promise. No risks, no changes to the timeline. Just a little extra time to be together. Please, Rose . . . please.”
She reached out and pulled him into a hug. With her head resting on his bare shoulder, she said, “You're the Time Lord. If you say it's all right, then it's all right. Just be careful setting the return coordinates, yeah?”
He sighed gratefully in response, and buried his face in the crook of her neck. After a moment, Rose felt something cool and wet against her skin . . . a tongue, lips, kissing, nuzzling, sucking, nibbling her neck and shoulder. The nerves tingled with every nip and lick, sending pleasant sparks of desire through her body. She could feel his need again, as though it were her own-churning waves of crimson and pink, no longer desperate, but urgent and demanding all the same.
This time, she made him go slow enough that she could explore his body. Her fingers danced over his too-prominent ribs, the flat planes of his stomach, around to the curve of his arse. She memorised every detail of his body, knowing that he had been doing the same to her. After all, once she returned to her own Doctor, she wouldn't get the chance to see him in all his naked splendour, to touch him in all the intimate places that made him gasp-just like that-or to feel the weight of his body above her. Her Doctor still thought they had all the time in the world, and so he would keep his distance, flirtatious but ever-so-chaste, until the day that he would lose her to another universe. She had to remember everything, she had to make these few moments last forever. . . .
The Doctor brushed his lips against her temple; the world rippled and Rose felt herself pulled into that river once more.
(To Be Continued. . . .)
Chapter Three
Author's Note: You may notice that I've done something here that I thought I'd never do-write a sexual encounter where the scene does not end before things get too intimate. The emotional content of the chapter required that things progress a certain way; it would have been wrong to skip over things, and so I didn't. However, I attempted to manipulate things in such a way that the scene is emotional and sensual, but not explicit. Whether or not I succeeded is up to you-any feedback in that regard will be sincerely appreciated!