fic: finis principium est, 1/1
title: finis principium est
characters: Rose Tyler, Tenth Doctor II, the First Doctor.
rating: teen.
warnings: character death.
spoilers: journey's end.
summary: the beginning is the end. written for the then_theres_us ficathon. prompt by burnmybridges.
++
The communicator clipped to her belt hisses with static. “Rose,” he says, and she can hear his white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel, miles away and speeding closer. “Rose, are you-”
She isn’t. He saw the explosion, felt it - a shudder under his feet as the brief, brilliant light seared across the sky. He doesn’t expect her to answer.
“I’m coming,” he says, fear turning his voice hard. “I’m almost there.” The communicator goes silent. She reaches for it, straining; her hand doesn’t leave the concrete.
She can't feel anything below the still line of her shoulders. She hasn't since she fell.
Torchwood Tower shifts above her as the wreckage settles, easing into a tenuous stillness. The concrete is cold beneath her head, and she can taste the dust, the ash that falls from the charred hollow of the floors above. Somewhere the fires are still burning; she closes her eyes, grateful for the darkness.
“Young woman,” a voice says, “I think you’ll find that, generally speaking, any attempt to escape from a collapsed building is best undertaken with one’s eyes open.”
A faint light skims across her eyelids; she opens them and sees a white shock of hair, a rather pronounced nose, and a thin electric torch. She licks her lips. “I evacuated the building. You shouldn’t be here.”
“Oh, I’m not, I assure you.” The man runs the torchlight along the length of her prone body, pausing as he comes again to her face. He looks up, shining the torch into the darkness above them. Dust hangs in the air, suspended in light. “How far did you fall?”
“Far enough.” She coughs, and the sound echoes through the rubble. “You aren’t injured?”
“Not at all,” the man says. “I was in another universe entirely when the explosion occurred.” He kneels by her side, moving with the stiff hesitancy of age. She watches as his fingers brush the inside of her wrist, the pulse at her throat. His skin is dry, unnaturally cool; his eyes dark, keen and familiar. He frowns down at her, lines deep around his mouth and the corners of his eyes. “You cannot move your arms or legs.”
“No,” she says. “I can’t.” She takes a thin, thready breath. “Which universe were you in?”
He arches an eyebrow. “One that smells considerably less like a recently detonated Chula massive impact grenade.” He unwinds a paisley silk scarf from around his neck and ties it tightly around her right thigh, just below her hip - a makeshift tourniquet. She watches him with an almost polite disinterest, as if the broken body under his hands were a stalled automobile engine or a particularly stubborn toaster oven. Nothing of relevance to her - not anymore.
“Is that what it was?" she says. "Thought I would’ve recognised Chula technology when I saw it.” She smiles, and it turns sharp at the edges. “The grenade bit we sorted out for ourselves.”
He sits back and pulls a handkerchief from his coat pocket. He has her blood on his hands. “What is your name, my dear?”
She swallows. “Rose Tyler.”
The man nods once, and the torchlight dips across the hard planes of his face. Then slowly, as she watches, he reaches down and folds her nerveless hand into his. “Rose Tyler, you are dying.”
“Yeah,” she says softly. “I know.” She imagines tightening her fingers around his, feeling the singular pressure of bones and muscle and skin. The hard pulse at his wrist and the well-worn linen of his shirt cuff. Instead she looks up and meets his eyes. “Is the TARDIS here?”
There is an airless pause. The Doctor stares down at her, his face unreadable. Like a stranger’s. Like his. He clears his throat, softly. “Your injuries are too severe. Even if you survived the move to the infirmary-”
“No,” she says. “That’s not what I meant.” Her breath runs thin; she lies still for a moment, watching the shallow, alien rise of her own chest. “You should go. The building is unstable.”
“I’m aware of that,” he says, an impatient edge to his voice. “I’m not an imbecile.”
“No. But you will get a bit…” She stops. Breathes. “…jeopardy-friendly. In your old age.” She grins. “Suppose I shouldn’t tell you that sort of thing, should I?”
He scowls down at her. “The Laws of Time, Miss Tyler-”
“Oh yes,” she says, still smiling. “You told me about those once. What was it…the First Law of Time states...that it’s never a Time Lord’s turn to do the washing up, though he would of course be perfectly brilliant at it…if he ever decided to give it a try.” She closes her eyes. “You’ll lose that fight. Just so you know.”
He’s quiet for a long moment. “I’m sure you were a worthy opponent.” She opens her eyes and watches as his thumb settles on her naked ring finger, just above the knuckle. “Rose-”
There’s a crackle of static from the communicator on her hip. “Rose,” he says, and the ragged desperation in his voice burns in her throat - a phantom, sympathetic pain. “Rose, I know you can hear me. I’m outside the Tower; I’m coming in.”
She meets the white-haired Doctor’s eyes. “He can’t. If he dies-”
The Doctor gives a small half-shrug. “He’ll regenerate.”
“No,” she says. “He won’t.” She lets the pleading slip into her eyes. “Please. I-”
He holds up a hand to stop her. “Yes, my dear, I know. I am old, not blind.” He unclips the communicator from her belt, raises it to his lips and presses the transmitter down with his thumb. “Doctor? Do you recognise my voice?”
There’s a silence. Then, sharply: “Where’s Rose?”
“She’s here.” He pauses and turns away, his face in shadow. “I’m sorry, my boy. You won’t reach her in time.”
“You can’t know that.”
“I’m afraid I can.” He reaches for the holster at her belt and draws out her gun. “Miss Tyler is determined to keep you a safe distance from the wreckage; if you insist on putting yourself in harm’s way, she’s asked that I use her firearm to hasten the inevitable, thus rendering futile any attempt at rescue.” He holds the gun close to the communicator and releases the safety with an audible click. “You know I’m quite capable, my boy. I’d do as she asks.”
Silence. The Doctor slips her gun neatly back into its holster, and Rose smiles. “Ruthless,” she says, her voice fading. “Wish I’d thought of it.”
“Oh, he’s still coming. Found a way to trace your communicator’s signal, I should think.” The wreckage overhead shifts in the darkness; they listen in silence, waiting for a collapse. None comes. “You should speak to him.”
“You should leave.”
“I have time,” he says, and she laughs a little, heartbroken. The laugh turns to a cough, the cough to a bitter sharp sting at the back of her throat. Blood touches her lips; he wipes it away, gently, with the clean corner of his handkerchief.
“I’ve loved you since I was nineteen,” she says. “There’s never enough time.”
The communicator hisses to life in the Doctor’s hand. “Let me speak to her,” it says, harshly, out of breath, and his voice - she closes her eyes. Nods.
The Doctor holds the communicator to her lips and she hears its low hum as he presses the button down and it begins to transmit.
“Hello, darling,” she says. She grins, her eyes stinging. “You won’t believe the day I’ve had.”
“Listen, please,” he says. “I’m nearly there. You need to hold on, Rose. I need you to-”
She meets the white-haired Doctor’s eyes; he presses the button again. She takes a deep, rattling breath. “Doctor, I caught Cunningham stealing the grenade from a stasis storage chamber on sublevel one. He’s dead; you need to go to his flat and make sure he didn’t take anything else. If he did-”
“Fuck that,” he says, a dangerous, human fury in his voice. “You can’t possibly think I care-”
“I care,” she says, too sharply. “I care, and as I’m the one whose spine’s just been snapped in two, I think I’ll be directing the conversation, thank you.”
He says something, soft and wrenching; the communicator hisses, and the words are swallowed by static. One of them sounds like her name.
She swallows hard. “Tell my mum it didn’t hurt,” she says. “Tell her I wasn’t alone.”
“You aren’t dying,” he says, and there’s nothing human in his voice now. “I won’t let you.”
“Speaking of,” she says. “Are you or are you not running through a…collapsing building right now?” She breathes, lips pressed thin to stop them shaking. “You idiot.”
“I beg your pardon?” the white-haired Doctor says, eyebrows raised.
“Yeah, you too,” she says. “Both of you. All of you. Idiots.” She gasps through the pressure on her chest - not pain, not panic, but a slow suffocation she cannot fight. Last breaths, she thinks. I could count them, if I had the time. The white-haired Doctor takes her hand and holds it to his chest, between his hearts. “Please,” she says. “He can’t-”
Torchwood Tower buckles above them, slowly, showering their faces in a hail of dust and ash. Metal beams twist in concrete, groaning as their weight bears them down. The sound is strange, unearthly - she thinks, incredibly, of whale-song. Of something beautiful in the darkness.
His torchlight shines still, but she cannot see it.
“If I go now,” the white-haired Doctor says, “if I leave you, I can save him.”
She nods, her mouth deathly dry. “Tell him-”
“Hush, child.” His lips touch hers, briefly. “He knows.”
She does not feel his hand release hers; she hears his footsteps, steady and soft, as he walks away. Her pulse ebbs, an easing tide, and she thinks: I wouldn’t have missed it. Not for the world.
She hears the TARDIS in the distance, and when she opens her eyes to the dark she sees his face. Feels the heat of a single heartbeat against her palm.
Her chest stills.
characters: Rose Tyler, Tenth Doctor II, the First Doctor.
rating: teen.
warnings: character death.
spoilers: journey's end.
summary: the beginning is the end. written for the then_theres_us ficathon. prompt by burnmybridges.
++
The communicator clipped to her belt hisses with static. “Rose,” he says, and she can hear his white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel, miles away and speeding closer. “Rose, are you-”
She isn’t. He saw the explosion, felt it - a shudder under his feet as the brief, brilliant light seared across the sky. He doesn’t expect her to answer.
“I’m coming,” he says, fear turning his voice hard. “I’m almost there.” The communicator goes silent. She reaches for it, straining; her hand doesn’t leave the concrete.
She can't feel anything below the still line of her shoulders. She hasn't since she fell.
Torchwood Tower shifts above her as the wreckage settles, easing into a tenuous stillness. The concrete is cold beneath her head, and she can taste the dust, the ash that falls from the charred hollow of the floors above. Somewhere the fires are still burning; she closes her eyes, grateful for the darkness.
“Young woman,” a voice says, “I think you’ll find that, generally speaking, any attempt to escape from a collapsed building is best undertaken with one’s eyes open.”
A faint light skims across her eyelids; she opens them and sees a white shock of hair, a rather pronounced nose, and a thin electric torch. She licks her lips. “I evacuated the building. You shouldn’t be here.”
“Oh, I’m not, I assure you.” The man runs the torchlight along the length of her prone body, pausing as he comes again to her face. He looks up, shining the torch into the darkness above them. Dust hangs in the air, suspended in light. “How far did you fall?”
“Far enough.” She coughs, and the sound echoes through the rubble. “You aren’t injured?”
“Not at all,” the man says. “I was in another universe entirely when the explosion occurred.” He kneels by her side, moving with the stiff hesitancy of age. She watches as his fingers brush the inside of her wrist, the pulse at her throat. His skin is dry, unnaturally cool; his eyes dark, keen and familiar. He frowns down at her, lines deep around his mouth and the corners of his eyes. “You cannot move your arms or legs.”
“No,” she says. “I can’t.” She takes a thin, thready breath. “Which universe were you in?”
He arches an eyebrow. “One that smells considerably less like a recently detonated Chula massive impact grenade.” He unwinds a paisley silk scarf from around his neck and ties it tightly around her right thigh, just below her hip - a makeshift tourniquet. She watches him with an almost polite disinterest, as if the broken body under his hands were a stalled automobile engine or a particularly stubborn toaster oven. Nothing of relevance to her - not anymore.
“Is that what it was?" she says. "Thought I would’ve recognised Chula technology when I saw it.” She smiles, and it turns sharp at the edges. “The grenade bit we sorted out for ourselves.”
He sits back and pulls a handkerchief from his coat pocket. He has her blood on his hands. “What is your name, my dear?”
She swallows. “Rose Tyler.”
The man nods once, and the torchlight dips across the hard planes of his face. Then slowly, as she watches, he reaches down and folds her nerveless hand into his. “Rose Tyler, you are dying.”
“Yeah,” she says softly. “I know.” She imagines tightening her fingers around his, feeling the singular pressure of bones and muscle and skin. The hard pulse at his wrist and the well-worn linen of his shirt cuff. Instead she looks up and meets his eyes. “Is the TARDIS here?”
There is an airless pause. The Doctor stares down at her, his face unreadable. Like a stranger’s. Like his. He clears his throat, softly. “Your injuries are too severe. Even if you survived the move to the infirmary-”
“No,” she says. “That’s not what I meant.” Her breath runs thin; she lies still for a moment, watching the shallow, alien rise of her own chest. “You should go. The building is unstable.”
“I’m aware of that,” he says, an impatient edge to his voice. “I’m not an imbecile.”
“No. But you will get a bit…” She stops. Breathes. “…jeopardy-friendly. In your old age.” She grins. “Suppose I shouldn’t tell you that sort of thing, should I?”
He scowls down at her. “The Laws of Time, Miss Tyler-”
“Oh yes,” she says, still smiling. “You told me about those once. What was it…the First Law of Time states...that it’s never a Time Lord’s turn to do the washing up, though he would of course be perfectly brilliant at it…if he ever decided to give it a try.” She closes her eyes. “You’ll lose that fight. Just so you know.”
He’s quiet for a long moment. “I’m sure you were a worthy opponent.” She opens her eyes and watches as his thumb settles on her naked ring finger, just above the knuckle. “Rose-”
There’s a crackle of static from the communicator on her hip. “Rose,” he says, and the ragged desperation in his voice burns in her throat - a phantom, sympathetic pain. “Rose, I know you can hear me. I’m outside the Tower; I’m coming in.”
She meets the white-haired Doctor’s eyes. “He can’t. If he dies-”
The Doctor gives a small half-shrug. “He’ll regenerate.”
“No,” she says. “He won’t.” She lets the pleading slip into her eyes. “Please. I-”
He holds up a hand to stop her. “Yes, my dear, I know. I am old, not blind.” He unclips the communicator from her belt, raises it to his lips and presses the transmitter down with his thumb. “Doctor? Do you recognise my voice?”
There’s a silence. Then, sharply: “Where’s Rose?”
“She’s here.” He pauses and turns away, his face in shadow. “I’m sorry, my boy. You won’t reach her in time.”
“You can’t know that.”
“I’m afraid I can.” He reaches for the holster at her belt and draws out her gun. “Miss Tyler is determined to keep you a safe distance from the wreckage; if you insist on putting yourself in harm’s way, she’s asked that I use her firearm to hasten the inevitable, thus rendering futile any attempt at rescue.” He holds the gun close to the communicator and releases the safety with an audible click. “You know I’m quite capable, my boy. I’d do as she asks.”
Silence. The Doctor slips her gun neatly back into its holster, and Rose smiles. “Ruthless,” she says, her voice fading. “Wish I’d thought of it.”
“Oh, he’s still coming. Found a way to trace your communicator’s signal, I should think.” The wreckage overhead shifts in the darkness; they listen in silence, waiting for a collapse. None comes. “You should speak to him.”
“You should leave.”
“I have time,” he says, and she laughs a little, heartbroken. The laugh turns to a cough, the cough to a bitter sharp sting at the back of her throat. Blood touches her lips; he wipes it away, gently, with the clean corner of his handkerchief.
“I’ve loved you since I was nineteen,” she says. “There’s never enough time.”
The communicator hisses to life in the Doctor’s hand. “Let me speak to her,” it says, harshly, out of breath, and his voice - she closes her eyes. Nods.
The Doctor holds the communicator to her lips and she hears its low hum as he presses the button down and it begins to transmit.
“Hello, darling,” she says. She grins, her eyes stinging. “You won’t believe the day I’ve had.”
“Listen, please,” he says. “I’m nearly there. You need to hold on, Rose. I need you to-”
She meets the white-haired Doctor’s eyes; he presses the button again. She takes a deep, rattling breath. “Doctor, I caught Cunningham stealing the grenade from a stasis storage chamber on sublevel one. He’s dead; you need to go to his flat and make sure he didn’t take anything else. If he did-”
“Fuck that,” he says, a dangerous, human fury in his voice. “You can’t possibly think I care-”
“I care,” she says, too sharply. “I care, and as I’m the one whose spine’s just been snapped in two, I think I’ll be directing the conversation, thank you.”
He says something, soft and wrenching; the communicator hisses, and the words are swallowed by static. One of them sounds like her name.
She swallows hard. “Tell my mum it didn’t hurt,” she says. “Tell her I wasn’t alone.”
“You aren’t dying,” he says, and there’s nothing human in his voice now. “I won’t let you.”
“Speaking of,” she says. “Are you or are you not running through a…collapsing building right now?” She breathes, lips pressed thin to stop them shaking. “You idiot.”
“I beg your pardon?” the white-haired Doctor says, eyebrows raised.
“Yeah, you too,” she says. “Both of you. All of you. Idiots.” She gasps through the pressure on her chest - not pain, not panic, but a slow suffocation she cannot fight. Last breaths, she thinks. I could count them, if I had the time. The white-haired Doctor takes her hand and holds it to his chest, between his hearts. “Please,” she says. “He can’t-”
Torchwood Tower buckles above them, slowly, showering their faces in a hail of dust and ash. Metal beams twist in concrete, groaning as their weight bears them down. The sound is strange, unearthly - she thinks, incredibly, of whale-song. Of something beautiful in the darkness.
His torchlight shines still, but she cannot see it.
“If I go now,” the white-haired Doctor says, “if I leave you, I can save him.”
She nods, her mouth deathly dry. “Tell him-”
“Hush, child.” His lips touch hers, briefly. “He knows.”
She does not feel his hand release hers; she hears his footsteps, steady and soft, as he walks away. Her pulse ebbs, an easing tide, and she thinks: I wouldn’t have missed it. Not for the world.
She hears the TARDIS in the distance, and when she opens her eyes to the dark she sees his face. Feels the heat of a single heartbeat against her palm.
Her chest stills.