Fic: Sentire (8/9)
Title: Sentire (8/9)
Author: Ella Jane
Characters: Nine/Rose, Jack
Chapter Rating: PG-13
Series Rating: NC-17
Timeline: AU from The Doctor Dances
A/N: I have learned so many things over the last week or so, not the least of which is that I might not have the stomach to post a multi-part series again! I have LOVED reading all of your comments, but I am feeling the pressure that this story resolves in a way that is satisfying to everyone. *keeps fingers crossed* I have a feeling that what everyone is looking for happens in Part Nine, but I hope you enjoy tonight's episode as well. :) I'm really looking forward to doing a reaction post in a few days, and I hope you all will come back for that! You can believe that
invisible_lift tried to talk me out of anything that doesn't work for you. ;)
PSA: Light text on a dark background can make you crazier than supervisors who make you stay at work until 7:30, for CRYING OUT LOUD. Click here to read the entry in your own journal format.
x-posted to
dwfiction,
time_and_chips, and
better_with_3, and archived at Teaspoon.
* * * * * * *
part one | part two | part three | interlude | part four | part five | part six | part seven
* * * * * * *
sentire: (L.) experience, feel, perceive, see, think, realize, understand.
* * * * * * *
The list of things he didn't understand grew longer every day of his life. She teased him about superior intellect, and he let her because it amused him, but the truth was different. Yes, his brain worked faster than a human's, but that didn't mean he understood everything it tried to process.
For one thing, he didn't understand stillness. The state of being stationary. Why it served to slow human minds, either through meditative choice or sedentary laziness.
That's never how it was for him. Stillness, silence, sped everything up, to the brink of madness. He needed a counterbalance. Thus the constant, perpetual motion.
So now he walked, and walked, and walked, navigating the endless corridors of his ship, but no matter how many twists and turns he took seemingly at random, he could only be aware of the wing he was obviously trying very hard to avoid. He slammed his fists against the narrow walls in frustration and moved outside, and kept walking along the shore he found there. When that still didn't work, he ran, pounding the sand with his heavy boots, chased by monsters he conjured himself.
He wondered if he would have to circumnavigate this planet before he reached equilibrium. He wondered how long that would take.
He didn't understand why she hadn't come and told him to take her home. Or sent Jack with the same message, given that she probably could no longer stand the sight of him.
The fact that she hadn't made it worse. It made it worse.
He ran until he couldn't run anymore, and he gave up, and there was nothing left to do but walk back, and try to explain. And then, let her go.
* * * * * * *
He found her curled into Jack on the sofa in the telly room, the remains of their dinner on the table in front of them. Her eyes were fixed at the flickering images, but it was a blank stare. He could tell she wasn't engaged in whatever they had found to watch.
When Jack saw the Doctor, he lowered a kiss to the top of Rose's head and gently began to maneuver out from under her. She seemed momentarily confused by his movements, and when she looked up and saw the Doctor, she almost immediately returned her gaze to the television. "You don't have to leave," she said to Jack, her voice flat and disinterested.
"You're right, he doesn't," the Doctor said, walking over to stand between her and the screen. Jack got up anyway, and Rose sat defiantly back into the couch, refusing to meet the Doctor's eyes.
The Doctor took a deep breath. "I'm sorry about what happened in the bath. We do need to talk. I wasn't ready before, and I should have explained that better, but I am ready now, if you could indulge me." He held his hand out to her, his eyes dark and serious. "Will you take a walk with me?"
Rose looked at the ground for a long moment, then glanced up at him, anger and hurt still very much evident in her red-rimmed eyes. She said nothing as she eased herself up off the sofa and started toward the door, ignoring his hand.
His breath caught. He wasn't sure she had ever refused his hand before. He was surprised how much it stung, but there was no question he deserved it.
He turned to Jack. "I'm taking her outside for a bit. There's nothing out there for you to do, by the way, and frankly it would help if you didn't leave the ship. She may want to go home quite as soon as we're done, and I don't want a delay if that's the case."
"No problem." Jack brought his hand to the back of the Doctor's neck. "She's stronger than you think," he said seriously.
The Doctor smiled as though he'd been reassured by what Jack had said, then turned to follow Rose out the door.
* * * * * * *
Rose paused in the console room, unsure whether the Doctor had meant a walk to some other room in the TARDIS or if they were actually going outside, until he moved politely by her and opened the front door. He held it for her, not looking at her, but silently waiting for her to go out.
She moved down the gangplank and stepped outside. She was in no mood to be impressed, but it was quite a beautiful scene. They were in the middle of a vast beach. The night sky was filled with more stars than she had ever seen back on Earth, and the light from three gorgeous, giant full moons, hanging low on the horizon, reflected the deep indigo of the ocean's water. Small, frothy white waves crashed ashore in a soothing rhythm.
She made her way over an outcropping of rocks, well-lit by moonlight, to the smooth, flat sands of the beach, and stood facing the water. Despite her tightly held indignation, she allowed her eyes to fall closed for a moment, absorbing her surroundings with her other senses, inhaling the distinctive scents, feeling the light breeze on her skin.
"Where are we?" she asked, glancing back in the Doctor's direction, adopting a normal conversational tone for the moment.
The Doctor followed her lead, his manner as lively as it usually was when he introducing her to a new place. "It's called Roha-mir-Anzila. We're not too far from Earth, actually. In the same galaxy and everything."
Rose gestured toward the sky. "So that's the Milky Way up there, then?"
"Yep. And if I can find..." His voice trailed off as he spun around a couple of times, his eyes darting intently overhead. "Yeah, there we go." Keeping his eyes upward, he moved toward Rose, reaching an arm out to turn her a bit, then pull her into his back. He crouched down over her shoulder to put his eyes at the same level as hers, so they were almost cheek to cheek. "See that cluster of five stars, arranged in almost a perfect pentagram?" He extended an arm right next to her head, trying to get her to look at the same spot he was focused on.
"Yeah." Rose's arm came up as well, almost as a reflex, connecting with the star of stars.
"Okay, now look straight down from the star on the lower left point. See the one star there, by itself? Now go to the next one down, slightly to the left. It's a little bit brighter than the one above. See that?"
"Yeah, got it," Rose said, smiling in spite of herself.
"That's your sun," the Doctor said, straightening up, his arms wrapping instinctively around her shoulders. He found himself inordinately proud that he had been able to make her smile, showing her such a familiar part of her life on Earth from this distant perspective. He looked down at her face and saw the wonder, but he could not keep the wolves in his mind at bay. He closed his eyes against them.
Rose stood still, transfixed not by the small bright dot, but by the sudden change in the Doctor's body behind her. It was as though all his enthusiasm and energy of the previous moments had dropped to his feet and escaped, and the backdraft was palpable to her.
The Doctor let go of her and stepped away, turning to face the ocean. "Rose, I'm not human," he said simply.
"Yeah, Doctor, that much, I actually knew." Rose crossed her arms in front of her, perhaps against a chill, perhaps in defiance.
"I wonder, sometimes, if you do know it."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that I walk like you, and I talk like you, and I look like you. Human, I mean. I look human." He turned to look at her now. "But I'm not."
"Doctor, I know..." she started, impatient.
"I'm not human, Rose, not on the inside, not by a long shot. And it's not just biology. I don't think like you, and I don't feel like you."
Rose had to admit that she did, in fact, willfully ignore this part. She was constantly reminded of his physical differences; the cool skin next to hers, the double heartbeat she could hear and feel when she lay against his chest. But the fact that his mind was different was harder to see, harder to feel, and harder for her to understand.
The Doctor continued. "Humans are one of only a very few species I've ever come across who place a value on sex, or its alien-to-you equivalent, as something other than either procreation or recreation. You don't have to look off your own planet to find thousands of species who mate only when it is necessary to make more of themselves. And there are certainly plenty of species who view sex as a purely social interaction -- Jack's no doubt got a little black book full of their coordinates. To them, sex is as commonplace an activity as watching telly is to you lot. The overwhelming majority of advanced life forms attaches little to no emotional meaning to the act of physically interlocking a few body parts now and again."
Rose cringed a bit at the clinical description. "So it means nothing at all, what we do?"
"Rose," he said with a sigh, "please try to keep from jumping to the worst possible interpretation of everything I say. I'm trying to explain, I really am, as best I can. I promise."
She glowered. "Fine."
The Doctor took a deep breath. "I don't know how else to say this, but what we do together, you and me, and Jack, is, well... alien to me. This body I have, it works very much like every other human male's. Certain stimuli cause certain reactions, but I experience them from a bit of a distance, a detachment. Which is not to say that what we do isn't pleasurable to me, that it doesn't feel good physically. But Rose, you must have noticed by now that I'm always much more interested in what's going on with you than I ever am in what's going on with me."
Rose closed her eyes as the fuzzy, uncertain edges of scattered memories came into focus. She supposed she had known it all along, but hadn't wanted to acknowledge it.
The Doctor continued. "It has absolutely nothing to do with you, or how much I want you. It's just different for me."
Rose shook her head. "No, I know that. And I understand what you're saying, I do. That there are things I just can't do for you, because I'm human." She laughed ruefully. "It's like I'm not quite sonic enough, yeah?" She kept smiling but couldn't fight the tears that jumped to her eyes. She turned away from him, tried to hide them, because that part wasn't his fault, and she knew that, and she didn't want to punish him just when he was finally telling her the truth. After all, Mickey wasn't enough for her, and that wasn't her fault, but she had never had the courage to say it out loud.
The Doctor looked at her, almost inquisitively. "I don't know, Rose. Considering what happened last night, you just might be."
Rose stopped breathing for a second. She was almost afraid to ask. "What did happen last night?"
The Doctor took a deep breath. "There isn't an easy answer to that. I'm sorry. It's why I'm telling you all of this, telling you about me, about my species. I'm trying to..." He exhaled, running a hand over his head. "There's more I need to explain first."
"Okay," Rose said, shaking her head a bit. "I guess... I mean, I believe that you're trying."
"See, there isn't a word in your language, in any Earth-based language, to properly explain how Time Lords connected on an emotional level. Merging, combining, commingling. Melding. They're all in the neighborhood, but none of them is entirely accurate."
Rose looked at him, trying to put the pieces together. "You're always watching me. When we're in bed together, by ourselves or with Jack, it doesn't matter. You watch me."
"Yes. I watch you, I watch your face, every time."
"Is that part of it?"
"Yes."
He held her gaze for a long moment, then spoke again.
"Have you ever sat with anyone and just looked into their eyes for five straight minutes? Not talking, not doing anything else, just staring directly into each other's eyes. For even one minute, sixty short seconds. Have you ever done that?"
Rose thought about it, then wondered why the answer surprised her. "No, I really haven't."
"Not even with me, not even when we're in bed, when I'm inside you, you still don't look me in the eye for more than a few seconds at a time, right?"
She smiled, a bit sheepish. "No, I guess I don't. Is that weird?"
"Not for you humans, it isn't. Have you ever thought about why you look away?"
Rose shrugged. "Get self-conscious, I guess."
The Doctor rolled his eyes. "See what I mean? You get self-conscious making eye contact with me for more than a few seconds, yet you have no shame letting me watch you when you're making all kinds of faces, all kinds of noises..."
She could feel the color filling her cheeks. "Okay! I get it."
"Oh, please. It's fantastic. My point is, something happens when you look directly into someone else's eyes for an extended period of time. You can see things, learn things, feel things you can't see or learn or feel any other way, not through language or physical contact or any other kind of expression. And what makes it scary for you humans is that you have no control over what someone else sees in you. Eye contact makes extraordinarily complex connections between living creatures in ways that humans don't yet understand."
"But you, your people, they do." She caught herself. "They did."
He nodded seriously. "It's more than understanding, Rose. It's how we had our equivalent of sex. It's what made the meld possible."
She looked at him now, almost curiously. "Last night... that's the last thing I remember. Your eyes."
The Doctor was afraid to move, afraid to breathe. "Yes."
"So you... you tried it..."
"Yes."
"With me."
"Yes."
"And it worked?"
The Doctor almost, almost, could not bear to answer her. "Sort of. Rose, I didn't..."
"Wait," she said sharply. "Just give me a minute."
He dropped his head, staring at the ground, and stood there in silence, waiting for whatever she would unleash on him. He wanted it.
Instead, he heard her take one deep breath, then another, then start moving toward him. He knew she was standing in front of him, but did not look up, not until he felt her hand under his chin, raising his eyes to hers.
She stared at him, stared directly into his eyes, for a long, long time.
He didn't hide anything from her.
* * * * * * *
end of part eight
* * * * * * *
part nine
* * * * * * *
Author: Ella Jane
Characters: Nine/Rose, Jack
Chapter Rating: PG-13
Series Rating: NC-17
Timeline: AU from The Doctor Dances
A/N: I have learned so many things over the last week or so, not the least of which is that I might not have the stomach to post a multi-part series again! I have LOVED reading all of your comments, but I am feeling the pressure that this story resolves in a way that is satisfying to everyone. *keeps fingers crossed* I have a feeling that what everyone is looking for happens in Part Nine, but I hope you enjoy tonight's episode as well. :) I'm really looking forward to doing a reaction post in a few days, and I hope you all will come back for that! You can believe that
invisible_lift tried to talk me out of anything that doesn't work for you. ;)
PSA: Light text on a dark background can make you crazier than supervisors who make you stay at work until 7:30, for CRYING OUT LOUD. Click here to read the entry in your own journal format.
x-posted to
dwfiction,
time_and_chips, and
better_with_3, and archived at Teaspoon.
* * * * * * *
part one | part two | part three | interlude | part four | part five | part six | part seven
* * * * * * *
sentire: (L.) experience, feel, perceive, see, think, realize, understand.
* * * * * * *
The list of things he didn't understand grew longer every day of his life. She teased him about superior intellect, and he let her because it amused him, but the truth was different. Yes, his brain worked faster than a human's, but that didn't mean he understood everything it tried to process.
For one thing, he didn't understand stillness. The state of being stationary. Why it served to slow human minds, either through meditative choice or sedentary laziness.
That's never how it was for him. Stillness, silence, sped everything up, to the brink of madness. He needed a counterbalance. Thus the constant, perpetual motion.
So now he walked, and walked, and walked, navigating the endless corridors of his ship, but no matter how many twists and turns he took seemingly at random, he could only be aware of the wing he was obviously trying very hard to avoid. He slammed his fists against the narrow walls in frustration and moved outside, and kept walking along the shore he found there. When that still didn't work, he ran, pounding the sand with his heavy boots, chased by monsters he conjured himself.
He wondered if he would have to circumnavigate this planet before he reached equilibrium. He wondered how long that would take.
He didn't understand why she hadn't come and told him to take her home. Or sent Jack with the same message, given that she probably could no longer stand the sight of him.
The fact that she hadn't made it worse. It made it worse.
He ran until he couldn't run anymore, and he gave up, and there was nothing left to do but walk back, and try to explain. And then, let her go.
* * * * * * *
He found her curled into Jack on the sofa in the telly room, the remains of their dinner on the table in front of them. Her eyes were fixed at the flickering images, but it was a blank stare. He could tell she wasn't engaged in whatever they had found to watch.
When Jack saw the Doctor, he lowered a kiss to the top of Rose's head and gently began to maneuver out from under her. She seemed momentarily confused by his movements, and when she looked up and saw the Doctor, she almost immediately returned her gaze to the television. "You don't have to leave," she said to Jack, her voice flat and disinterested.
"You're right, he doesn't," the Doctor said, walking over to stand between her and the screen. Jack got up anyway, and Rose sat defiantly back into the couch, refusing to meet the Doctor's eyes.
The Doctor took a deep breath. "I'm sorry about what happened in the bath. We do need to talk. I wasn't ready before, and I should have explained that better, but I am ready now, if you could indulge me." He held his hand out to her, his eyes dark and serious. "Will you take a walk with me?"
Rose looked at the ground for a long moment, then glanced up at him, anger and hurt still very much evident in her red-rimmed eyes. She said nothing as she eased herself up off the sofa and started toward the door, ignoring his hand.
His breath caught. He wasn't sure she had ever refused his hand before. He was surprised how much it stung, but there was no question he deserved it.
He turned to Jack. "I'm taking her outside for a bit. There's nothing out there for you to do, by the way, and frankly it would help if you didn't leave the ship. She may want to go home quite as soon as we're done, and I don't want a delay if that's the case."
"No problem." Jack brought his hand to the back of the Doctor's neck. "She's stronger than you think," he said seriously.
The Doctor smiled as though he'd been reassured by what Jack had said, then turned to follow Rose out the door.
* * * * * * *
Rose paused in the console room, unsure whether the Doctor had meant a walk to some other room in the TARDIS or if they were actually going outside, until he moved politely by her and opened the front door. He held it for her, not looking at her, but silently waiting for her to go out.
She moved down the gangplank and stepped outside. She was in no mood to be impressed, but it was quite a beautiful scene. They were in the middle of a vast beach. The night sky was filled with more stars than she had ever seen back on Earth, and the light from three gorgeous, giant full moons, hanging low on the horizon, reflected the deep indigo of the ocean's water. Small, frothy white waves crashed ashore in a soothing rhythm.
She made her way over an outcropping of rocks, well-lit by moonlight, to the smooth, flat sands of the beach, and stood facing the water. Despite her tightly held indignation, she allowed her eyes to fall closed for a moment, absorbing her surroundings with her other senses, inhaling the distinctive scents, feeling the light breeze on her skin.
"Where are we?" she asked, glancing back in the Doctor's direction, adopting a normal conversational tone for the moment.
The Doctor followed her lead, his manner as lively as it usually was when he introducing her to a new place. "It's called Roha-mir-Anzila. We're not too far from Earth, actually. In the same galaxy and everything."
Rose gestured toward the sky. "So that's the Milky Way up there, then?"
"Yep. And if I can find..." His voice trailed off as he spun around a couple of times, his eyes darting intently overhead. "Yeah, there we go." Keeping his eyes upward, he moved toward Rose, reaching an arm out to turn her a bit, then pull her into his back. He crouched down over her shoulder to put his eyes at the same level as hers, so they were almost cheek to cheek. "See that cluster of five stars, arranged in almost a perfect pentagram?" He extended an arm right next to her head, trying to get her to look at the same spot he was focused on.
"Yeah." Rose's arm came up as well, almost as a reflex, connecting with the star of stars.
"Okay, now look straight down from the star on the lower left point. See the one star there, by itself? Now go to the next one down, slightly to the left. It's a little bit brighter than the one above. See that?"
"Yeah, got it," Rose said, smiling in spite of herself.
"That's your sun," the Doctor said, straightening up, his arms wrapping instinctively around her shoulders. He found himself inordinately proud that he had been able to make her smile, showing her such a familiar part of her life on Earth from this distant perspective. He looked down at her face and saw the wonder, but he could not keep the wolves in his mind at bay. He closed his eyes against them.
Rose stood still, transfixed not by the small bright dot, but by the sudden change in the Doctor's body behind her. It was as though all his enthusiasm and energy of the previous moments had dropped to his feet and escaped, and the backdraft was palpable to her.
The Doctor let go of her and stepped away, turning to face the ocean. "Rose, I'm not human," he said simply.
"Yeah, Doctor, that much, I actually knew." Rose crossed her arms in front of her, perhaps against a chill, perhaps in defiance.
"I wonder, sometimes, if you do know it."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that I walk like you, and I talk like you, and I look like you. Human, I mean. I look human." He turned to look at her now. "But I'm not."
"Doctor, I know..." she started, impatient.
"I'm not human, Rose, not on the inside, not by a long shot. And it's not just biology. I don't think like you, and I don't feel like you."
Rose had to admit that she did, in fact, willfully ignore this part. She was constantly reminded of his physical differences; the cool skin next to hers, the double heartbeat she could hear and feel when she lay against his chest. But the fact that his mind was different was harder to see, harder to feel, and harder for her to understand.
The Doctor continued. "Humans are one of only a very few species I've ever come across who place a value on sex, or its alien-to-you equivalent, as something other than either procreation or recreation. You don't have to look off your own planet to find thousands of species who mate only when it is necessary to make more of themselves. And there are certainly plenty of species who view sex as a purely social interaction -- Jack's no doubt got a little black book full of their coordinates. To them, sex is as commonplace an activity as watching telly is to you lot. The overwhelming majority of advanced life forms attaches little to no emotional meaning to the act of physically interlocking a few body parts now and again."
Rose cringed a bit at the clinical description. "So it means nothing at all, what we do?"
"Rose," he said with a sigh, "please try to keep from jumping to the worst possible interpretation of everything I say. I'm trying to explain, I really am, as best I can. I promise."
She glowered. "Fine."
The Doctor took a deep breath. "I don't know how else to say this, but what we do together, you and me, and Jack, is, well... alien to me. This body I have, it works very much like every other human male's. Certain stimuli cause certain reactions, but I experience them from a bit of a distance, a detachment. Which is not to say that what we do isn't pleasurable to me, that it doesn't feel good physically. But Rose, you must have noticed by now that I'm always much more interested in what's going on with you than I ever am in what's going on with me."
Rose closed her eyes as the fuzzy, uncertain edges of scattered memories came into focus. She supposed she had known it all along, but hadn't wanted to acknowledge it.
The Doctor continued. "It has absolutely nothing to do with you, or how much I want you. It's just different for me."
Rose shook her head. "No, I know that. And I understand what you're saying, I do. That there are things I just can't do for you, because I'm human." She laughed ruefully. "It's like I'm not quite sonic enough, yeah?" She kept smiling but couldn't fight the tears that jumped to her eyes. She turned away from him, tried to hide them, because that part wasn't his fault, and she knew that, and she didn't want to punish him just when he was finally telling her the truth. After all, Mickey wasn't enough for her, and that wasn't her fault, but she had never had the courage to say it out loud.
The Doctor looked at her, almost inquisitively. "I don't know, Rose. Considering what happened last night, you just might be."
Rose stopped breathing for a second. She was almost afraid to ask. "What did happen last night?"
The Doctor took a deep breath. "There isn't an easy answer to that. I'm sorry. It's why I'm telling you all of this, telling you about me, about my species. I'm trying to..." He exhaled, running a hand over his head. "There's more I need to explain first."
"Okay," Rose said, shaking her head a bit. "I guess... I mean, I believe that you're trying."
"See, there isn't a word in your language, in any Earth-based language, to properly explain how Time Lords connected on an emotional level. Merging, combining, commingling. Melding. They're all in the neighborhood, but none of them is entirely accurate."
Rose looked at him, trying to put the pieces together. "You're always watching me. When we're in bed together, by ourselves or with Jack, it doesn't matter. You watch me."
"Yes. I watch you, I watch your face, every time."
"Is that part of it?"
"Yes."
He held her gaze for a long moment, then spoke again.
"Have you ever sat with anyone and just looked into their eyes for five straight minutes? Not talking, not doing anything else, just staring directly into each other's eyes. For even one minute, sixty short seconds. Have you ever done that?"
Rose thought about it, then wondered why the answer surprised her. "No, I really haven't."
"Not even with me, not even when we're in bed, when I'm inside you, you still don't look me in the eye for more than a few seconds at a time, right?"
She smiled, a bit sheepish. "No, I guess I don't. Is that weird?"
"Not for you humans, it isn't. Have you ever thought about why you look away?"
Rose shrugged. "Get self-conscious, I guess."
The Doctor rolled his eyes. "See what I mean? You get self-conscious making eye contact with me for more than a few seconds, yet you have no shame letting me watch you when you're making all kinds of faces, all kinds of noises..."
She could feel the color filling her cheeks. "Okay! I get it."
"Oh, please. It's fantastic. My point is, something happens when you look directly into someone else's eyes for an extended period of time. You can see things, learn things, feel things you can't see or learn or feel any other way, not through language or physical contact or any other kind of expression. And what makes it scary for you humans is that you have no control over what someone else sees in you. Eye contact makes extraordinarily complex connections between living creatures in ways that humans don't yet understand."
"But you, your people, they do." She caught herself. "They did."
He nodded seriously. "It's more than understanding, Rose. It's how we had our equivalent of sex. It's what made the meld possible."
She looked at him now, almost curiously. "Last night... that's the last thing I remember. Your eyes."
The Doctor was afraid to move, afraid to breathe. "Yes."
"So you... you tried it..."
"Yes."
"With me."
"Yes."
"And it worked?"
The Doctor almost, almost, could not bear to answer her. "Sort of. Rose, I didn't..."
"Wait," she said sharply. "Just give me a minute."
He dropped his head, staring at the ground, and stood there in silence, waiting for whatever she would unleash on him. He wanted it.
Instead, he heard her take one deep breath, then another, then start moving toward him. He knew she was standing in front of him, but did not look up, not until he felt her hand under his chin, raising his eyes to hers.
She stared at him, stared directly into his eyes, for a long, long time.
He didn't hide anything from her.
* * * * * * *
end of part eight
* * * * * * *
part nine
* * * * * * *