Fic: The Narrow Path (2/4?, PG 13, Ten/Rose)
Title: The Narrow Path
Author: slpy650
Characters/Pairings: Ten/Rose
Rating: PG 13
Disclaimer: Doctor Who is the property of the BBC, not me.
Summary: She went deep into the ship. Further than she’d ever gone. She didn’t know what she was expecting.
Author's Note: Rose puts her foot in her mouth.
Previous Chapters: One (ichi)
II.
The Doctor stood not ten feet from the doorway, a large, black umbrella sheltering him from the rain. His eyes were like saucers as he stared at her. She was sure hers looked much the same. The sky and the hut were still dark, but she could see the flush in his face, and she could feel the one beginning to burn in hers.
Oh. God.
Rose couldn’t look away. The Doctor was watching her in a kind of fascinated horror, his mouth parted slightly, eyebrows drawn. Cool air ran up her robe, caressing her bare legs, and she’d never been more aware of her state of dress - or undress.
Blood pulsed through her veins, rushing to her head and she reeled, mind racing. He’d seen her. She knew he had with the look that was on his face, but how much had he seen? Had she given him the full show, or did he just make the finale? Did it matter? The Doctor had just seen her naked. Oh, God. She nearly choked. The Doctor had just seen her naked.
This, Rose thought, was the most embarrassing moment of her life. It surpassed Jackie practically announcing to everyone in the chemist’s that her daughter was becoming a woman when Rose had gotten her first period at twelve. The moment she’d discovered Jimmy Stone had played her for the naïve fool she’d been didn’t compare. Because this was the Doctor.
The Doctor - who didn’t do domestics, who didn’t dance even though he danced. Who’d do whatever it’d take to save her just as much as if he was trying to save a planet, a civilization, or a servant girl. Who held above all else, above her and even himself, the safety of the universe. The Doctor - who despite all this (and because of all this), she loved.
But the shock Rose felt left her nearly as quick as it had come when she realized why the Doctor had just seen her in the buff. The TARDIS.
That damn, scheming TARDIS.
Just like it’d gotten inside her head without permission the first time she’d traveled with the Doctor, it’d gone and done this.
Bitch.
Anger replacing cold shock, Rose broke her gaze from the frozen Time Lord, stooping to gather up her wet clothes from the floor. She slipped on her trainers, not bothering to lace them up, and satisfied she’d gotten everything she’d come in with, she walked out of the hut.
Rose wasn’t sure if it had stopped abruptly or if it had tapered off, but she realized the rain had ceased, the sky remaining dark and overcast as a cold wind blew. The Doctor stood motionless, wide eyes watching cautiously as she neared.
“Guess the door’s working,” Rose said as she passed him to head back down the narrow path.
“Rose - what…?”
“Your bloody ship, that’s what,” she called over her shoulder without stopping.
Sure enough, the door the TARDIS had seen fit to deny her stood innocently open at the foot of the path. Withholding even a glance back at the wood, she headed into the hall, managing to find her room relatively quickly. With her door firmly slammed shut, she fell backwards onto the bed.
“Satisfied?” she asked the ship, but it didn’t answer.
-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-
Rose was trying to convince herself that the Doctor probably hadn’t been able to really see her since it’d been so dark - and wasn’t having much success - when there was a quiet knock at her door. Well of course the TARDIS would never hide a door from him.
She took a good minute to answer, hoping he’d think she was asleep and leave. She was still in her robe, never having moved from the bed in the past half-hour. When she didn’t hear him move away from the door she sighed, made sure the robe was covering her properly, and called him in.
The door opened a crack, but he didn’t enter.
“I, er - I just wanted to make sure you were okay…”
She waited.
“Rose,” he paused. “Are you okay?”
She propped herself up on her elbows. “Aren’t you gonna come in?”
“Do you want me to?” He sounded surprised.
She rolled her eyes. “Feel like m’ talking to the wall.”
After a breath, the door opened wider and the Doctor stepped fully into her room, closing the door behind him. Turning, his eyes fell to her form draped along the length of the bed, wrapped in her robe, and he stopped short.
“Ah - you’re not dressed. I’ll, er - come back…later…” He turned to leave when Rose sat up with a scoff.
“I’m decent enough, Doctor,” she said. She wasn’t in the mood for teasing him, and she certainly didn’t have the patience for his trying to sidestep the fact that she was a living, breathing, human female. She wouldn’t give him that satisfaction. If he wanted to talk then he could talk, but she wasn’t going to make a special effort not to offend his delicate Time Lord sensibilities. “And anyways,” she continued. “Not like you haven’t seen it before.”
The Doctor reddened at that, but he stood his ground. He looked slightly ruffled. His suit jacket had disappeared since the last time she’d seen him just outside the hut. His tie hung a little loose from his neck, his hair rumpled like he’d been messing it. The bottoms of his trousers were wet from the rain, and mud still clung to the edges of his plimsolls.
“Rose, you know - I, er…I had no idea - I didn’t mean to,” he fumbled.
“’S not your fault,” she said after a moment. “I suppose you’ll just forget whatever you saw, yeah?” She watched him from beneath her lashes. He was fidgeting again, biting the inside of his cheek and looking everywhere except at her. “And anyways, don’t blame you entirely.” With that he looked at her.
“What do you mean, entirely?” Frowning.
“Well, it’s your fault I got mad - was you who took us to the monastery.”
“What - and it’s my fault the monks forbade women?”
“You told them I was your companion!”
“Well, you are!”
“No - not your companion,” she emphasized, and the Doctor looked at her in confusion. She rolled her eyes. Seriously, how could he be so thick? “Brother Dermot thought I had…loose morals.”
The Doctor sniffed.
“They were a small sect - on the fringe of their religion. I didn’t realize they were so prudish, let alone misogynistic. And anyways,” he put his hands in his trouser pockets defensively, “I had to get you in the monastery somehow. Since when did being my plus one become a four-letter word?”
“Since you never corrected the S.O.B.s,” Rose ground out, and he grimaced (at the term or her tone she didn’t know), “that I’m your equal!” She folded her arms across her chest, sat back against the headboard, and glared at him.
The Doctor scowled, scuffing the carpet with the toe of his shoe. “Suppose I didn’t. But that doesn’t explain why you think I had anything to do with,” he waved his hand in her direction, glancing quickly at her robe-clad body.
“The TARDIS decided to lock me in there,” anger flushed her cheeks at the memory. “Payback, I assume, because I was insulted when you introduced me as your whore,” she hissed.
The Doctor blanched, his eyes hardening instantly at her words, and Rose immediately wished she could take them back. Jaw clenched, he took a slow, deep breath, and she winced at the pain and anger in his eyes. She bit her lip nervously, heart suddenly beating very fast.
He blinked. “Right! Well - I’ll leave you to it then,” he said almost casually, but his features remained hard, his body tense. He turned to leave.
Her stomach was churning. Her heart had lodged itself in her throat. All she wanted to do was stop him. Take back the hurt she’d caused. Tell him how sorry she was. But she sat unmoving on the bed, her limbs numb as she watched his back. Finally, her lips parted and she managed a choked, “Doctor.”
But he ignored her, slipping from the room as quietly as he’d entered. Rose stared uselessly at the closed door, willing him to return, but it remained shut.
She’d really cocked that up good and proper.
-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-
It was really only a few beats after he’d left that she’d finally found her momentum, hurling herself from the bedroom and into the hallway. But the Time Lord had already disappeared.
“Fuck,” Rose spat at herself, heart still pounding as she remembered the hurt on the Doctor’s face. She’d gone too far. No matter how annoyed she might have been at the Doctor for subjecting her to the bigoted likes of Brother Dermot and the Sons of Bernie, she knew he’d never thought of her in any way but as his friend, and he’d always treated her as an equal. And it certainly hadn’t been fair to blame him for the TARIDS’ actions.
Rose had to find the Doctor and apologize - something she suspected he’d been about to do to her before she’d bit his head off. She didn’t suppose the TARDIS was about to help her find him, though. If the ship had been annoyed with her before, it was probably livid now.
She wasn’t hopeful but decided to check the obvious places anyways. The console room, kitchen, study, second-study, and his bedroom were all empty. She started with random doors next. Checked the wardrobe room, seven or eight different bathrooms, an English garden, a dozen different bedrooms she’d never seen, what looked like a doll museum (she’d have to ask him about that one), and the swimming pool he liked best, but still nothing.
She was about to give up and just hope he’d come out sooner rather than later when she came to a dead end, much like when she’d earlier roamed the TARDIS in her aggravation. This time, though, she knew it wasn’t the end of the ship’s maze but the TARDIS finally directing her to the elusive Time Lord. And she thought she knew where the door would lead. A pink umbrella and a matching pair of Wellington boots were propped up in the corner.
-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-
The wood was not as she’d left it. Even with the umbrella and wellies rain bombarded without mercy, driven by the force of a relentless wind. “Could’a done with a raincoat,” she grumbled at the TARDIS. It was almost pitch black, her path lighted only by the near-continuous lightning strikes that came with earsplitting crashes. She scoffed at having considered the earlier rain a storm. Carefully, she began up the hill, battling with the wind to keep a hold on the umbrella while fighting for a firm foothold on the slippery path.
“Can’t you stop it?!” she yelled at the ship after losing her balance for the third time and doing a good semblance of the splits. Gathering herself up, she tried to cinch her robe tighter. Surely the TARDIS wouldn’t intentionally harm her. But the lightning strikes seemed too close for comfort, and she wasn’t entirely convinced she wouldn’t end up electrified on her back.
If the Doctor wasn’t in that hut she’d kill him.
But as Rose finally reached the top of the hill, thankful the TARDIS wasn’t making her go up it more than once, she saw the Doctor’s form sat framed in the doorway, electrified by lightning. He was slumped forward, elbows on the stone table and hands covering his face.
Fingers slackening while she watched him, a gust of wind took the opportunity to snatch the umbrella from her grasp. She gasped, seeing just a glimpse of pink flying through the trees before it was lost to the dark. She made a quick dash to the little hut, her squelching boots drawing the Doctor’s attention, and he turned to see her in the doorway.
Still in her robe, pink rain boots, and drenched to the bone. Again.
His eyes widened in shock, Rose thought, at her state.
“I lost my brolly,” she tried to explain, and then noticed the redness of his eyes. The wetness on his face.
“Are you -” she looked at him in confusion. “Have you been crying?”
-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-
Three (san)
Author: slpy650
Characters/Pairings: Ten/Rose
Rating: PG 13
Disclaimer: Doctor Who is the property of the BBC, not me.
Summary: She went deep into the ship. Further than she’d ever gone. She didn’t know what she was expecting.
Author's Note: Rose puts her foot in her mouth.
Previous Chapters: One (ichi)
II.
The Doctor stood not ten feet from the doorway, a large, black umbrella sheltering him from the rain. His eyes were like saucers as he stared at her. She was sure hers looked much the same. The sky and the hut were still dark, but she could see the flush in his face, and she could feel the one beginning to burn in hers.
Oh. God.
Rose couldn’t look away. The Doctor was watching her in a kind of fascinated horror, his mouth parted slightly, eyebrows drawn. Cool air ran up her robe, caressing her bare legs, and she’d never been more aware of her state of dress - or undress.
Blood pulsed through her veins, rushing to her head and she reeled, mind racing. He’d seen her. She knew he had with the look that was on his face, but how much had he seen? Had she given him the full show, or did he just make the finale? Did it matter? The Doctor had just seen her naked. Oh, God. She nearly choked. The Doctor had just seen her naked.
This, Rose thought, was the most embarrassing moment of her life. It surpassed Jackie practically announcing to everyone in the chemist’s that her daughter was becoming a woman when Rose had gotten her first period at twelve. The moment she’d discovered Jimmy Stone had played her for the naïve fool she’d been didn’t compare. Because this was the Doctor.
The Doctor - who didn’t do domestics, who didn’t dance even though he danced. Who’d do whatever it’d take to save her just as much as if he was trying to save a planet, a civilization, or a servant girl. Who held above all else, above her and even himself, the safety of the universe. The Doctor - who despite all this (and because of all this), she loved.
But the shock Rose felt left her nearly as quick as it had come when she realized why the Doctor had just seen her in the buff. The TARDIS.
That damn, scheming TARDIS.
Just like it’d gotten inside her head without permission the first time she’d traveled with the Doctor, it’d gone and done this.
Bitch.
Anger replacing cold shock, Rose broke her gaze from the frozen Time Lord, stooping to gather up her wet clothes from the floor. She slipped on her trainers, not bothering to lace them up, and satisfied she’d gotten everything she’d come in with, she walked out of the hut.
Rose wasn’t sure if it had stopped abruptly or if it had tapered off, but she realized the rain had ceased, the sky remaining dark and overcast as a cold wind blew. The Doctor stood motionless, wide eyes watching cautiously as she neared.
“Guess the door’s working,” Rose said as she passed him to head back down the narrow path.
“Rose - what…?”
“Your bloody ship, that’s what,” she called over her shoulder without stopping.
Sure enough, the door the TARDIS had seen fit to deny her stood innocently open at the foot of the path. Withholding even a glance back at the wood, she headed into the hall, managing to find her room relatively quickly. With her door firmly slammed shut, she fell backwards onto the bed.
“Satisfied?” she asked the ship, but it didn’t answer.
-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-
Rose was trying to convince herself that the Doctor probably hadn’t been able to really see her since it’d been so dark - and wasn’t having much success - when there was a quiet knock at her door. Well of course the TARDIS would never hide a door from him.
She took a good minute to answer, hoping he’d think she was asleep and leave. She was still in her robe, never having moved from the bed in the past half-hour. When she didn’t hear him move away from the door she sighed, made sure the robe was covering her properly, and called him in.
The door opened a crack, but he didn’t enter.
“I, er - I just wanted to make sure you were okay…”
She waited.
“Rose,” he paused. “Are you okay?”
She propped herself up on her elbows. “Aren’t you gonna come in?”
“Do you want me to?” He sounded surprised.
She rolled her eyes. “Feel like m’ talking to the wall.”
After a breath, the door opened wider and the Doctor stepped fully into her room, closing the door behind him. Turning, his eyes fell to her form draped along the length of the bed, wrapped in her robe, and he stopped short.
“Ah - you’re not dressed. I’ll, er - come back…later…” He turned to leave when Rose sat up with a scoff.
“I’m decent enough, Doctor,” she said. She wasn’t in the mood for teasing him, and she certainly didn’t have the patience for his trying to sidestep the fact that she was a living, breathing, human female. She wouldn’t give him that satisfaction. If he wanted to talk then he could talk, but she wasn’t going to make a special effort not to offend his delicate Time Lord sensibilities. “And anyways,” she continued. “Not like you haven’t seen it before.”
The Doctor reddened at that, but he stood his ground. He looked slightly ruffled. His suit jacket had disappeared since the last time she’d seen him just outside the hut. His tie hung a little loose from his neck, his hair rumpled like he’d been messing it. The bottoms of his trousers were wet from the rain, and mud still clung to the edges of his plimsolls.
“Rose, you know - I, er…I had no idea - I didn’t mean to,” he fumbled.
“’S not your fault,” she said after a moment. “I suppose you’ll just forget whatever you saw, yeah?” She watched him from beneath her lashes. He was fidgeting again, biting the inside of his cheek and looking everywhere except at her. “And anyways, don’t blame you entirely.” With that he looked at her.
“What do you mean, entirely?” Frowning.
“Well, it’s your fault I got mad - was you who took us to the monastery.”
“What - and it’s my fault the monks forbade women?”
“You told them I was your companion!”
“Well, you are!”
“No - not your companion,” she emphasized, and the Doctor looked at her in confusion. She rolled her eyes. Seriously, how could he be so thick? “Brother Dermot thought I had…loose morals.”
The Doctor sniffed.
“They were a small sect - on the fringe of their religion. I didn’t realize they were so prudish, let alone misogynistic. And anyways,” he put his hands in his trouser pockets defensively, “I had to get you in the monastery somehow. Since when did being my plus one become a four-letter word?”
“Since you never corrected the S.O.B.s,” Rose ground out, and he grimaced (at the term or her tone she didn’t know), “that I’m your equal!” She folded her arms across her chest, sat back against the headboard, and glared at him.
The Doctor scowled, scuffing the carpet with the toe of his shoe. “Suppose I didn’t. But that doesn’t explain why you think I had anything to do with,” he waved his hand in her direction, glancing quickly at her robe-clad body.
“The TARDIS decided to lock me in there,” anger flushed her cheeks at the memory. “Payback, I assume, because I was insulted when you introduced me as your whore,” she hissed.
The Doctor blanched, his eyes hardening instantly at her words, and Rose immediately wished she could take them back. Jaw clenched, he took a slow, deep breath, and she winced at the pain and anger in his eyes. She bit her lip nervously, heart suddenly beating very fast.
He blinked. “Right! Well - I’ll leave you to it then,” he said almost casually, but his features remained hard, his body tense. He turned to leave.
Her stomach was churning. Her heart had lodged itself in her throat. All she wanted to do was stop him. Take back the hurt she’d caused. Tell him how sorry she was. But she sat unmoving on the bed, her limbs numb as she watched his back. Finally, her lips parted and she managed a choked, “Doctor.”
But he ignored her, slipping from the room as quietly as he’d entered. Rose stared uselessly at the closed door, willing him to return, but it remained shut.
She’d really cocked that up good and proper.
-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-
It was really only a few beats after he’d left that she’d finally found her momentum, hurling herself from the bedroom and into the hallway. But the Time Lord had already disappeared.
“Fuck,” Rose spat at herself, heart still pounding as she remembered the hurt on the Doctor’s face. She’d gone too far. No matter how annoyed she might have been at the Doctor for subjecting her to the bigoted likes of Brother Dermot and the Sons of Bernie, she knew he’d never thought of her in any way but as his friend, and he’d always treated her as an equal. And it certainly hadn’t been fair to blame him for the TARIDS’ actions.
Rose had to find the Doctor and apologize - something she suspected he’d been about to do to her before she’d bit his head off. She didn’t suppose the TARDIS was about to help her find him, though. If the ship had been annoyed with her before, it was probably livid now.
She wasn’t hopeful but decided to check the obvious places anyways. The console room, kitchen, study, second-study, and his bedroom were all empty. She started with random doors next. Checked the wardrobe room, seven or eight different bathrooms, an English garden, a dozen different bedrooms she’d never seen, what looked like a doll museum (she’d have to ask him about that one), and the swimming pool he liked best, but still nothing.
She was about to give up and just hope he’d come out sooner rather than later when she came to a dead end, much like when she’d earlier roamed the TARDIS in her aggravation. This time, though, she knew it wasn’t the end of the ship’s maze but the TARDIS finally directing her to the elusive Time Lord. And she thought she knew where the door would lead. A pink umbrella and a matching pair of Wellington boots were propped up in the corner.
-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-
The wood was not as she’d left it. Even with the umbrella and wellies rain bombarded without mercy, driven by the force of a relentless wind. “Could’a done with a raincoat,” she grumbled at the TARDIS. It was almost pitch black, her path lighted only by the near-continuous lightning strikes that came with earsplitting crashes. She scoffed at having considered the earlier rain a storm. Carefully, she began up the hill, battling with the wind to keep a hold on the umbrella while fighting for a firm foothold on the slippery path.
“Can’t you stop it?!” she yelled at the ship after losing her balance for the third time and doing a good semblance of the splits. Gathering herself up, she tried to cinch her robe tighter. Surely the TARDIS wouldn’t intentionally harm her. But the lightning strikes seemed too close for comfort, and she wasn’t entirely convinced she wouldn’t end up electrified on her back.
If the Doctor wasn’t in that hut she’d kill him.
But as Rose finally reached the top of the hill, thankful the TARDIS wasn’t making her go up it more than once, she saw the Doctor’s form sat framed in the doorway, electrified by lightning. He was slumped forward, elbows on the stone table and hands covering his face.
Fingers slackening while she watched him, a gust of wind took the opportunity to snatch the umbrella from her grasp. She gasped, seeing just a glimpse of pink flying through the trees before it was lost to the dark. She made a quick dash to the little hut, her squelching boots drawing the Doctor’s attention, and he turned to see her in the doorway.
Still in her robe, pink rain boots, and drenched to the bone. Again.
His eyes widened in shock, Rose thought, at her state.
“I lost my brolly,” she tried to explain, and then noticed the redness of his eyes. The wetness on his face.
“Are you -” she looked at him in confusion. “Have you been crying?”
-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-
Three (san)