DW/FF crossover fic: The Engineer's Gift (23/27)
Title: The Engineer's Gift
Author: shan21non
Rating: R (just this chapter)
Beta Readers: buffyaddict13 and inkhand, who were extra amazing with this chapter.
Warnings: Swearing in Mandarin! And some explicit sexual content, in this chapter only
Pairings: Ten/Rose, Mal/Inara, a bit of Simon/Kaylee
Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who or Firefly. How is that fair?Summary: When the Doctor takes a wrong turn, he and Rose find themselves aboard Serenity. Confusion, explosions, mystery, romance, and adventure ensue!
Chapter one Two Three Four Five Six Seven Eight Nine Ten Eleven Twelve Thirteen Fourteen Fifteen Sixteen 17A 17B Eighteen Nineteen Twenty Twenty-one Twenty-two
A/N: Please note the change to the rating and warnings. There is some explicit sexual content in this chapter. It's definitely not smutty enough to earn it an NC-17 or M rating, but I'm guessing it's a bit closer to R-rated than PG-13.
And on that note, an extra thank you is in order for my two beta readers, without whom this chapter could have really, really sucked. Now I think I like it :)
Chapter Twenty-Three
The Doctor fairly stumbled out of the kitchen. He made his way to the only room that might be empty now; the engine room. Inara said that Kaylee was in her shuttle with Simon, and sure enough, he found the warm room uninhabited. He leaned back against the curved metal wall and slid down it until he was seated, long legs splayed out in front of him like a child.
It was embarrassing, how easily flustered he was by the mere mention of Rose now. But flustered wasn't really the right word, because it implied a sort of lighthearted fumbling. There wasn't anything lighthearted about what the Doctor was feeling. This was full-blown torment. He'd gone and done something he'd never done with another companion. Now he had to figure out what exactly to do next.
He'd kissed her. And not just once either. There was no mistaking his intentions, no taking them back. And the thought of that terrified him, because all the same complications were still there. He saw her being pulled into the Void some time in the future, and he had no way of stopping it.
And now she was waiting downstairs. In their room. In their bed. Waiting for him to come and…
But she had given him an easy out, if he chose to take it. She told him that it was up to him whether or not he joined her tonight. She said that either way they'd be back in the TARDIS tomorrow. He knew what she meant. They could go back to the way things were. She wasn't going to push him. That was something.
But it wasn't anything, really. Because he didn't want to go back to the way things were. He wasn't even sure he could. How could he hold her close again and not dip down to capture her lips with his?
"This is very problematic," a female voice stated.
The Doctor looked up to see River clutching at the doorframe. She seemed to be holding on for dear life, despite the fact that Serenity had broken through Paquin's atmosphere several minutes ago, and it'd been smooth flying ever since.
"What's problematic, River?" he asked.
She pinned him with a look of deep disappointment, and he felt very much like a child who had just given the professor a wrong answer in class.
"Can't you feel it?" she asked.
The Doctor squinted at her, trying to discern her meaning. He knew now that River's ramblings were never nonsense. So if the girl was trying to tell him that something was awry, he was going to do his best to figure out what it was.
"I'm sorry, I can't. What should I feel?" he asked.
She let out a frustrated sigh, but carefully unwound her arms from the doorway. She took a moment to steady herself, holding out her hands for balance, before taking a few tentative steps into the engine room. She toddled like a child, but she spoke as she moved, and her words sounded anything but childish.
"You should know, Lord of Time. Thoughts so attached to the Bad Wolf that you can't tell the universe has shifted. The stream of blue twists and turns and branches off from itself, multiplying in ways that not even you can predict." She ended with a familiar refrain. "It's problematic."
He was about to ask her what was so problematic about it, when she lost her footing and tumbled forward. She was close enough to him that he was able to lunge upwards and catch her in his arms. Rather than attempting to stand, he pulled her down next to him.
"It's problematic for balance," she clarified.
He sat absolutely still for a moment and opened his senses. He heard the hum of the engine, felt the rumbling of a thousand moving parts propelling them through space, tasted the faint ion residue produced by breaking through the atmosphere. But there was nothing that should throw a teenaged girl to the ground.
Suddenly, slender fingers closed around his arm in a fierce grip. He looked at River in alarm, and she stared back with wide eyes.
"Can't you feel it? Everything's changed," she whispered.
He knew that she was trying her hardest to be understood, and he ran through her words again in his mind to meet her halfway. Universe shifted, stream of blue energy branching off, everything's changed.
He inhaled sharply as her meaning finally hit him. He clenched his eyes shut and opened his senses again, not the boring five that humans have, but the dozens ingrained in Gallifreyan physiology.
And then he did feel it.
There wasn't any such thing as fate; the Doctor knew that. But there were fixed events in time and space. Usually they were the big ones: Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo, the assassination of Caesar on the Ides of March, the invention of the waffle cone; those sorts of things. But there were also tiny events within an individual person's life that were just as immovable; events like the death of Rose's father when she was a baby.
It was like every person goes through life inside the tube of a waterslide, and occasionally they come upon a junction in the tube with a multitude of options, sometimes infinite. They drift towards one open tube or another either through direct choice or simply because they are pushed ahead by a combination of factors in their lives, and on they go. When it comes to a fixed event, there is no junction; only hard plastic tubing all around and rushing water from behind, forcing a person down one specific path.
But the Doctor could feel now that the future had changed. Not in the usual way, with big events. Usually it worked something like this: Go back in time, meet Charles Dickens, change the man's outlook on life, but then he dies before he can put that change to good use in ways that will change the biographies you've read on him in the future.
This was different. This was distinct. This was all about them, the people on this ship. Serenity was in a waterslide and everyone in it was about to have some new options. The physical properties of the tube changed and allowed the hard plastic to shift. Junctions were appearing where they never existed before, sometimes for the group as a whole, and sometimes for the individual passengers. Although, that really didn't mesh with the metaphor.
All right, so it really wasn't like a waterslide at all, but it was the best way he'd come up with to temporalize it for normal human comprehension.
"You were never meant to come here," River said, her voice low and solemn.
"The TARDIS brought me here. She never makes a mistake. Well, not a mistake that she didn't intend," the Doctor amended.
"This wasn't written in the stars, but now it is, burning, permanent, and it changes everything. Things have started much sooner than they were meant to," she went on.
He could feel that too. The revelation of the beetles, the riots on Paquin, even the kiss. It was all too soon. But 'too soon' was a relative term and it no longer applied. Now all of those things had happened at exactly the appropriate time, and everything to follow was slightly different. Like a wormhole connecting two tubes of the waterslide through a shortcut that hadn't been there before.
His brain faltered again. Okay, scratch the waterslide metaphor completely. It was much bigger than that, now. He could see the vortex molding and shifting like a Rubik's Cube made of rising bread dough, messily and without any discernible pattern.
The next logical question hit him with earth-shaking force.
"River, can you still see it? The vision that you showed me of the Void?"
River paused. Her eyes moved to the ceiling as she searched her thoughts. Then her eyes were back on his, and she said one word.
"No."
He wanted to leap up and run about the room. He wanted to gather River up in a tight hug and shout joyfully at the top of his lungs. He wanted to be with Rose, right this very instant. For all he knew, he could step out of the TARDIS next week, slip on a banana peel and regenerate into a hideous old man with warts on his toes. But the Void was no longer inevitable, and the relief of that was enough. It was.
He was on his feet and out the door before he realized that he'd left River behind. He poked his head back around the corner and saw her, standing warily, clutching at steel beam for balance.
"Go," she said, waving him off. "Tomorrow, Miranda."
He blinked in surprise. That she would trust him to share this, her most feared memory, was something he hadn't quite believed would happen.
"Tomorrow?" he repeated.
She nodded and made her way to the hammock. She stumbled like a baby fawn learning to walk, but lifted herself into the fabric swing without too much trouble.
"Tonight you have other things to do," she said, closing her eyes.
The Doctor's breathing sped up, but he managed to keep his voice even when he replied.
"Yes, I suppose I do."
It was amazing that he didn't trip over his trainers as he raced down the stairs. He noted with vague curiosity that the last few notes of Beethoven's Für Elise were drifting out from Inara's shuttle, but he didn't give it a second thought. He needed Rose. Now.
He passed Shepherd Book and Jayne in the cargo bay, and bounded down the steps to the guest wing. In another second, he was in front of their door. The door was made of a kind of light-diffusing plastic that emulated the rice-paper walls of traditional Japanese dwellings. He could tell from the outline of the shapes that Rose was in bed and that the light above the desk had been left on.
What he couldn't tell was whether she was awake. Was she lying there, staring at his outline on the other side of the door, holding her breath like he was? Steeling himself, he took a deep breath and opened the door.
She was asleep.
He had to admit he had taken an awfully long time to make his way down there. She might have tried to stay awake, but it was a long day, and just getting out of her green ball gown must have taken considerable energy. He smiled when he saw her choice of attire. Kaylee's cartoon pajamas swallowed her up. She hadn't pulled on one of the tank tops that River had lent her, or stripped down to nothing at all and slip under the covers. His Rose would never be so presumptuous.
She was wonderful, and he'd be damned if he was going to let her continue to snooze there and not tell her that.
"Rose," he said softly.
She shifted slightly, stretching her limbs out to take up even more of the bed, something he didn't think was possible.
"Rose," he repeated.
She inhaled deeply and her eyes flew open. When she caught sight of him, she sat up abruptly, supporting her weight on her elbows.
"I thought you weren't coming," she said.
He felt a pang of warmth rush down to his belly at the huskiness of her voice, rough from sleep. The power of it shocked him. He hadn't felt his way in lifetimes. In fact, he wasn't sure that he had ever felt quite this way.
"Doctor?"
He realized that he was still standing in the doorway, and she was still waiting for him to say something. Letting out a shaky breath, he stepped inside and slid the door shut behind him.
"I'm here," he said.
"I can see that," she noted.
He toed out of his trainers and left them at the foot of the bed. Then he pulled his suit jacket off and draped it over the desk chair. He could feel Rose's eyes on him, waiting for him to say something, but he remained silent.
How did one start a conversation in this case? He had no idea. He'd never done this with a human before. Perhaps norms here were something other than what he expected. Back on Gallifrey, it was all very clinical: Shall we perform coitus in order to produce offspring now? Yes. Excellent. Commence with the disrobing. And then there was no need for sex at all, with the advent of the looms. He knew that humans were different, and he'd seen enough romantic films to know the gist. But when it came down to it, he was as nervous as… well, as a virgin, he supposed.
"So, are you just here to do some work, or sleep, or…"
She swallowed the rest of her sentence, nervously toying with the edge of the blanket. All of her calm bravado from the cargo bay seemed to have abandoned her, and he didn't want to see her suffer in anxiety for a moment longer.
"I'm here because I want to be with you," he said honestly.
"Oh," she whispered. She pulled herself up against the headboard so that she was seated upright.
For someone who talked nonstop, his gob was certainly failing him now. So instead of speaking, he moved to the bed and sat on the edge of it. He reached for her, his hands seeming to move on their own accord, until he was cupping her face. He heard her release a shaky breath, and her eyes darted down to his lips. Taking his cue from her, he slowly brought his face down to hers. Their eyes met once more. There were no goofy grins, just a quiet moment to acknowledge that this was really happening.
He moved closer, and they both shut their eyes. His lips met hers in the chastest of kisses. His fingers slid through her hair, which was, thankfully, down from its pins. She tilted her head and pulled back the tiniest bit. His eyes started to flutter open, but before he could open them completely, she brought her lips up to his again, slanting them to cover just his lower lip. She sucked it gently into her mouth, and the sensation was enough to make him gasp.
She took the opportunity to cover his mouth completely, and before he could think twice about his actions, his tongue was running along the seam of her lips. She opened her mouth to give him access, and he greedily took it. His tongue explored her mouth, causing her to make the most delicious noises in the back of her throat. He doubted they would be audible to a human male, but they made his blood pound in his veins.
He felt light pressure on his chest. It took him a moment to realize that she was working the buttons on his vest, but once his brain caught up to his eyes, he reached down to help her. This required removing his hands from her hair, but it was a small sacrifice, and in seconds the garment was unfastened. He slipped it off his shoulders and let her push it the rest of the way to the floor. When his hands moved to his tie, she pulled back and stopped him.
"No, don't," she murmured.
He froze. With a rush of panic, he wondered if he'd somehow misinterpreted things. It didn't seem like there was any other way to interpret what had happened, but he'd never claim to understand humans.
"I've fantasized about doing that for ages. I won't have you doing it for yourself," she explained.
A smile appeared on his face. He dropped his hands to his sides and watched as she replaced them with her own. She started on the knot, and he couldn't help himself.
"Fantasized for ages, have you?" he said smugly.
She tugged the knot loose and glanced up at him, frowning at his smirk.
"You shouldn't test the woman who currently has a silk noose around your neck," she warned him.
"If you want to take your chances that I won't regenerate into a hideous blobby lump, go ahead" he teased back.
She pulled the two ends of the tie apart and slid it from his neck.
"I loved you with big ears and that daft nose, didn't I?"
He frowned.
"Oi, that was a classical roman nose! That nose was brilliant."
He was pouting, and he knew it. But she wasn't having any of it. Her hands were at his face, forcing him to look at her.
"It was brilliant. But I don't care. You could look hideous and blobby, and I'd still love you," she said.
Her thumbs gently rubbed up and down his sideburns. She shocked him, the way she'd so casually dropped that word twice now. Did she expect him to return it? Should he? His heart jumped and his nerves abandoned him. He was so desperate not to ruin this, but it was inevitable, wasn't it? He wasn't human. He didn't dance, no matter what his ninth self had told her. He wanted her, badly, but he was going to say the wrong thing.
"I'm not going to lose you," he said.
The words surprised him. They surprised her too, by the looks of things. Her thumbs stopped moving and that wrinkle appeared between her brows.
"Of course not," she said.
He took a second to steady his breathing, and then he explained.
"I mean it. Something fundamental changed in our timeline. The thing that River showed me, it's not fixed anymore. You're safe."
She gave him a sad smile then, and he was confused by it.
"I'm not safe, Doctor. I'm still mortal," she said.
He shook his head.
"I'd never let anything-"
She stopped him with a finger on his lips.
"Don't make promises you can't keep," she said. "You need to accept it. I won't be around forever."
He shook his head again, and started to speak.
"No, I-"
"Shhh," she stopped him again. "You've promised me the moon and the stars and adventure, and you've delivered on all of it. You can't promise me eternal life too."
Her fingers were stroking the sides of his face, and she brought her forehead to his. She spoke in a whisper, still stroking him as she would an anxious child.
"It's okay. Doctor, it doesn't mean that this isn't right. No relationship lasts forever. But you can't go on lying to yourself. When I'm gone-"
"Rose, no-"
"-When I'm gone," she continued over him. "I need to know that you'll be okay. And you won't be okay if you go on pretending that that moment's never going to come."
She pulled back slightly to look at him, but her hands continued their gentle ministrations.
"I know it's hard. But it's worth it, isn't it?"
He stared. He'd been so overjoyed by the knowledge that she wasn't going to be lost to the Void that he'd allowed himself to forget that eventually he would lose her to something.
He couldn't find the words that she wanted to hear, couldn't admit aloud yet that he was going to lose her someday, that he would have to let her die. So instead, he closed his eyes and nodded his head. He was rewarded with a kiss, and he felt her hands move down to the buttons on his shirt as her lips continued to move softly over his.
She opened his shirt and slid it off his lanky frame. She reached for the button on his trousers, but he stopped her. He was naked now from the waist up, and she was still covered in cartoon pajamas. It hardly seemed fair.
He reached for the buttons on her top, but she shook her head, smiling at him. He obediently pulled his hands away, but gave her a curious look. In one quick motion, she pulled the top off over her head and threw it to the side.
"So you get to undo my buttons, but I don't get any of my own fun?" he asked, but his heart wasn't in it.
He tried to fix her with a pout, but it was impossible to keep his eyes from her chest now that it was exposed. He'd never been particularly fixated on human breasts. They were simple mammalian glands that excreted nutrition for offspring. They weren't even unique to humans. Pigs had eighteen of them, so shouldn't they been seen as the sexiest of all the mammals? It had always struck him as such an odd sexual fixation.
But now, seeing Rose's nude form, he was beginning to understand it. There was a specific beauty to the delicate swelling of a woman's body. To watch her, hair mussed, lips reddened, tiny goose bumps standing out on her flesh in anticipation of his touch, he understood it completely. He had never wanted another being so badly in his long life.
He reached for the drawstring on her bottoms and she lifted her bum to help him slide them off her legs. Without hesitation he reached back up and did the same with her simple cotton briefs. He stood back to stare again, not bothering to hide his appreciation. She indulged him in his visual exploration, lying still for him. But after a few seconds, she grew impatient and reached once more for the button on his trousers.
He allowed her to unfasten them and stood to let them drop to his ankles. He toed them off, along with his socks, and then his thumbs went to the band of his pants and tugged them down as well.
Kicking them off as he moved, he covered her body with his. His mouth found hers immediately. His hands were occupied holding some of his weight off of her, but her hands freely wandered his body. He jumped a bit when her fingers skimmed down his ribs and felt her chuckle into his mouth.
Two could play at this game, he decided. Without warning, he slid hands under her shoulders and rolled them over so that she was on top of him, loving her little yelp of surprise.
This was much better, he decided as Rose settled her knees on either side of his hips. He could feel her above him, her heat radiating down on him. He resisted the urge to strain up against her and instead enjoyed the new freedom of his hands. He slid them up from her waist to her ribs and rested them there. Glancing up at her face, he saw that her eyes were closed, her back arched in pleasure at the sensation, and he felt that gave him permission to go further. He brought his hands down to her breasts and relished in the soft gasp that escaped her lips. He gave them another caress before easing up to capture the tip of one in his mouth. He was rewarded with another gasp, and he pulled away to enjoy the look on her face.
"Don't know what I was thinking. Human breasts are amazing. Pigs have got nothing on you," he intimated.
Her eyes snapped open then, and to his surprise, she burst out laughing. Her laughter shook her entire frame, unintentionally bumping parts of her body into his again and again. He was left trying to figure out whether he was more aroused or insulted.
"Why are you laughing?" he asked.
"Are you serious?" she asked, through her giggles. Off his confused look, she continued. "You just expressed shock that my breasts are more pleasing than a sow's!" she guffawed.
He blinked. He hadn't thought of it that way, of course. He risked a small chuckle.
"Wrong thing to say?" he ventured.
"Oh, not at all! I'm relieved to know that I rank slightly higher than Miss Piggy," she exclaimed, grinning.
"Sorry," he said sheepishly.
"Don't be. You're mad, and I love it," she said before pressing her lips to his again.
His hand left her breasts and found her hair again. He indulged in a serious bit of snogging, letting out a moan of his own that he would have found embarrassing if he wasn't suddenly taken off guard by the feel of her grinding down on a certain part of his lower anatomy. Then, just as suddenly, she pulled away and fixed him with a look of alarm.
"Hang on," she blurted out, slightly breathless. "Do you have protection?"
He was taken aback by the question.
"Why? Did Mickey give you an STD?"
She jerked back even further.
"What? No, of course not! Why would you think that?" she demanded.
"Why else would you need protection? Surely you don't think I have anything," he replied reasonably.
"Well, I mean, it's not like I'm still on the pill. Trying to keep on that regularly on the TARDIS is impossible. Can't tell when an Earth day has passed, and I'm convinced that time travel does something funny to my hormones anyway."
He stared at her blankly, and she faltered a bit.
"I mean-I just assumed-is it even possible for me to get pregnant?"
His eyebrows shot up in comprehension.
"Oh! Is that what you're worried about?" he asked.
She squinted at him, as if to say, 'What else would I be worried about?'
"It is possible, but not right now. You're not fertile at the moment," he said matter-of-factly.
If anything, she looked even more confused by his response.
"You keep track of when I'm fertile?" she asked.
"Of course," he replied cheerfully. "Can't help it. Time Lord senses."
The wrinkle between her brows deepened.
"And they can't be wrong, these Time Lord senses? No chance of a, uh, happy little accident?" she asked.
"Wellll, I suppose there's a slight chance-"
"Maybe someone in the crew has a condom?" she interrupted.
The Doctor squinted up at Rose, bewildered by her sudden anxiety. He could be certain within 99.99% that she wasn't capable of conceiving at the moment, and yet she seemed entirely unconvinced. He tried to figure out who was most likely to carry condoms, and the name that sprung to the top of the list was Jayne. He did not enjoy the idea of knocking on Jayne Cobb's door to ask for contraceptives.
"The sonic screwdriver!" he exclaimed.
"What about it?" she asked.
"In my jacket pocket, get it," he gestured to the desk chair where his jacket was draped.
She reached over without getting off of him, and came back with the small silver tool.
"Setting 2338," he said.
She twisted the sonic and waited for further instruction.
"Mammal fertility detector," he proudly announced.
She seemed dumbstruck, so he took the sonic from her and gave her a quick scan. The blue light gave her pale skin a strange look. A second later, he showed her the readout.
"See? Not fertile right now," he proclaimed.
To his surprise, she didn't look impressed, or even relieved. She looked suspicious.
"The sonic has a mammal fertility detection setting?" she asked. "When have you ever needed that before?"
"Oh, you'd be surprised," he said offhandedly.
She arched an eyebrow.
"I bet I would."
He sensed something suggestive in her tone, and rushed to correct any misinterpretations.
"Did I mention it works on all mammals? Never had to use it on a human before. Many species have fertility issues and sometimes they require the expertise of-"
"A Doctor?" she suggested.
He glanced up and saw her smirk. So, she didn't think he'd been hopping around all of time and space trying to impregnate women. That was good. Also good was the fact that she no longer seemed so nervous about the issue of protection.
"Tease," he chided. Then showing her the sonic readout once more he asked, "Are you satisfied now?"
If anything, her smirk only grew. She pulled the sonic from his grasp and laid it carefully on the floor. Then she settled her weight back onto him, increasing the pressure where their bodies touched.
"Not even close," she said, grinning.
He grinned back and reached for her at the exact same moment that she leaned down. Their lips met in a bruising kiss. He could feel all of the heat from her body as if she was on fire. Any arousal that had dissipated during their discussion of contraception was back in full force. He needed her. Now.
His tongue found hers and she moaned into his mouth. He took her distraction as the perfect opportunity to flip their positions again. She didn't seem to mind the change. She kept right on kissing him while her hands found his shoulders and traced the lines of his muscles. They trailed down his back until she reached the curve of his ass, and then, to his surprise, she gave him a two-handed squeeze.
"I love this bum," she murmured into the kiss.
He smiled against her mouth and pulled back enough to murmur back.
"Cassandra was right."
"Hmm?" she mumbled.
He pulled back a little more and gave her a wink.
"You've been looking. You do think I'm a little bit foxy."
She arched an eyebrow again.
"You really think now's the best time to bring up another woman? In bed?" she asked.
He squinted down at her.
"You can't tell me you're jealous of a flap of skin. A dead flap of skin."
She shrugged.
"I don't know. You're the man who was just weighing the sexual attractiveness of pigs versus humans."
She tried to give him an irritated glare, but she couldn't quite hide her smile. He pressed a soft kiss to her forehead. Then another one to her nose. Two more, one on each corner of her mouth. Then, finally, a gentle press against her lips.
"I'm mad about you, Rose Tyler, and only you," he breathed.
"Really?" she sighed happily.
"Really," he confirmed, kissing her again.
When he pulled back she spoke again.
"Not 18th century French aristocrats?"
This time the kiss was much slower. He opened his mouth against hers, and his tongue lazily explored hers before he replied. He was pleased to see that when he pulled away, she looked thoroughly dazed.
"No one else."
He started trailing kisses down to her chin, then her neck. His lips followed the path down past her clavicles, between her breasts, straight to the dip of her belly button. She involuntarily arched up to meet him when his lips traveled further south, his breath hot against her skin.
Then he stopped. He waited for her to react, and soon enough she inched back onto her elbows to look at him.
"And you?" he asked, his mouth hovering over her skin. "No other pretty boys?"
She shook her head with a hint of impatience.
"None."
He tilted his head to the side.
"And what about our friend Jayne?"
She reached down with both hands and buried her fingers in his hair, using her purchase there to pull him back up to her face.
"Shut it," she growled, just before she claimed his lips with her own.
He did as he was told, for once, and stopped talking. Their eyes slipped shut as they moved together. How he'd functioned without her in the past, he'd never know, but right now, with her clinging to him, breath coming in soft pants against his ear, he knew that this was right. Finally, the terrible ache of loneliness that he'd come to regard as an essential piece of him was gone. He'd never felt so complete.
When they finally parted, she kept her arms wrapped around him.
"I love you," she whispered.
She had her chin on his chest, and her eyes, half-lidded as sleep took hold, were on his face.
"Quite right, too," he said breathlessly.
She smiled, and he felt something in his chest unwind. It was enough for her, it seemed. He was enough for her. With all of his limitations and complications, they could do this. He gathered her into his arms, and held her while she fell asleep.
A/N: So… that was my first attempt at writing that sort of a scene. I tried to keep the focus on the emotional impact of things, and I hope I succeeded. Please let me know what you think of the chapter as a whole!
On to chapter 24!