(no subject)
Daughter of Eve, Eleven/Rose (PG)
Rose could have never known that this very closet had once been the start of a wonderful story, but she should have expected it. The unpredictable and impossible always seemed to accompany innocent looking boxes. 2, 044.
A/N: Crossover with The Chronicles of Narnia.
Of all the things Tony could have asked to play, it had been hide and seek in their new townhouse, and of all the places she could have hidden, it had been a closet. Not just any closet though, oh no. This was a special closet. In fact, had the Doctor had been there, he would have launched into a rather tangential lecture about the minute and varying differences between a closet and a wardrobe. Rose could have never known that this very closet had once been the start of a wonderful story, but she should have expected it. The unpredictable and impossible always seemed to accompany innocent looking boxes. Instead, she shrank against the paneled wood when she heard the patter of feet, pressing as tightly as she could without rattling the old, loose doors.
"Rose? Are you here? Mum says it's time for tea!"
But Tony's beloved older sister could not have heard him. He pressed his lips tightly together, struggling not to pout or cry (his Dad had informed him quite seriously one Sunday, that brave little boys did not pout or cry) when he did not receive an answer. He had looked everywhere and so if she was not here, that meant she was nowhere, which meant he would never find her because how was a little boy supposed to find nowhere? He grasped the handles of the creaking doors and threw them open as strongly as his small arms could.
Tony found some dusty ties and a hanger or two. He thought perhaps that was a spider's web in the corner and a dirty marble gleaming at him.
But there was no Rose Tyler when he looked inside the wardrobe.
-------------------------
The TARDIS might have been bigger on the inside, Rose thought, but it could not have prepared her for this. This was an entire forest inside of a wardrobe. She gaped at the flickering lamp post and endless treetops, instinctively reaching for a hand that was not there.
"Welcome, Daughter."
Rose spun on her heels, prepared to run, prepared to fight or barter and negotiate for whatever it would take to send her home. Only... was that a giant, talking lion? She had seen worse, she supposed - she'd been to the end of the world and back, fought Cyberman and seen talking cats, so why in the world a talking lion still surprised her, she had no idea. If anything, she should have been afraid. When Rose had been a little girl, all pink and yellow and pigtails, she had been delighted by and desperately scared of the lions at the zoo. They were so large and so exotic, creatures that seemed utterly out of place in her neat, human world of dolls and tiny, mewling kittens. Their mouths always stretched open very widely and she used to half suspect they were plotting ways to swallow her whole.
But the lion purred his words and stepped as if the weight of the universe rode upon his back. His eyes, deep and dark and filled with light, reminded her too intensely of gentle hearts that loved too much and not enough.
"Come, walk with me, Daughter of Eve."
She knew better than to trust strangers, but long, long ago, a plain, mundane shopgirl had taken a leap of faith and that one step had echoed throughout time. So she walked with the Lion of Gold and Dawn, walked by his side as he spoke and she felt the rumble of his words resonating in the marrow of her bones.
"Where am I?"
"This is Narnia," he said, "I have been waiting for you." His gaze pierced through her, lancing her startled mind and the walls of Time and Space, finding once again the quivering nineteen year old that wandered through life on an invisible path. "I will not harm you, child. I am going to tell you a story about how the Sons of Adam and the Daughters of Eve saved Narnia."
-------------------------
The Doctor stared blankly at the dark haired girl in front of him. She was - she was just - it couldn't - she was impossible! Impossible like Jack had been impossible, impossible like Rose (bleeding sunlight and stardust, her heart stitched onto her sleeve) had been; she simply could not be. He grabbed her shoulders abruptly, startling her, and proceeded to shake her quite firmly.
"What are you? Who are you? Where are you really from?" He asked, rapidly feeling his irritation rise. He had just wanted one, one, peaceful trip, and what did he get? Alien invasion of the cemetery, of course! Amy would most likely kill him (or at the very least nag him right through the next century) if he got caught up in full out adventure while she was still enjoying the millennial festival at the Gardens of Arcadia. He'd promised to "be back in a second."
Pale, but trembling with anger, the woman snapped back, ripping herself from his hands. "You are mad!"
"Oh, no doubt about that," he returned, amiable, but jaw clenched a tad too tight. "Very mad, in fact. I'm the Doctor, by the way. And trust me when I say that I am really, really not in the mood with deal with another alien." He paused to study her and added, thoughtfully. "Or a Time Agent."
"A what?"
"I'm a Time Lord you know, so I can tell. It's all... tangled around you in a proper timey-wimey wibbly-wobbly knot." He frowned at her, his young face and young voice out of place with the centuries passing in his eyes. She had thought him rather charming at first, nice enough to look at with his long and rebellious hair and ridiculous bow-tie, but now she could not quite fathom how she had mistaken him for a young man her own age. He seemed built for pain, his bony shoulders slumped, his too-white skin stretched taunt and high across the bones of his face. She had wondered who he was mourning; now she struggled to remember that he too had a reason for being here, struggled against the instinct to shout and rail at him.
"I don't have time for this," she murmured quietly, voice flat and horribly thin. "I am going to - to..."
Any fire in her died, doused by an unseen hand. "To see my brothers and sister. I can't be late. I haven't missed it once for the past five years."
His eyes were fixed on a stone slab, the curl of the 'y' in Nancy beginning to fade. Something was wriggling in the back of his head, like if he could just tilt it the slightest bit, things would start shifting around - knots would start untying. If only he could think a bit faster, a bit clearer (if only self-recrimination did not sit so heavily on his chest) it would come to him, he knew. He tried not to think of Amy, waiting in the TARDIS, of Rory's hands as they had pushed him out of the way, of another child dying in his place, and only on her, on this impossible girl that tickled his Time Lord senses. He chased the thought around his head, lunged for the trailing end of it as it swerved, and found himself crashing into the answer. Another time he might have cheered his success, detailed the complex and triumphant workings of his own genius, but with his ghosts so near, he did not dare to tempt fate. The world had a cruel and unusually consistent way of punishing him.
"Have you ever imagined anything impossible? Traveling through the stars, or strange, magnificent new worlds? Places you have never seen and never will? Places that aren't real?" He looked so gentle and so sad when he asked, so much like a Lion that did not (could not) exist, that her heart creaked in sympathy.
"Yes," she whispered, grasping for those faraway edges that were fast receding, falling from the corners of her fragile heart. After a decade of denying it, of watching her life fall to shambles all around her, she could finally confess to those long ago dreams and yet no one who really mattered to her was there hear it anymore. Only a stranger, a stranger with suns blazing in his gaze and storms in his voice.
The Doctor stared blankly at the dark haired girl in front of him.
"What's your name?"
"Susan Pevensie."
"Susan Pevensie," he repeated slowly, tasting the syllables, weighing them (weighing her). "That's a brilliant name! It just the sort of name a queen would have," he sang brightly, not catching the ashen tinge of her cheeks or the panic that bubbled in her eyes. The flowers, three large and lovingly chosen bouquets, fell soundlessly to the ground. "I'm no queen," she insisted, feeling all at once the familiar rush of confusion and fear and the deep, aching emptiness of being left behind.
The Doctor caught her eye and she suddenly realized that there hadn't been a single moment of this conversation that had not been in complete seriousness. It was illogical and irrational and just childishly foolish, but right then, she knew that he knew everything. So when he offered his hand - one trip anywhere she wanted in Time and Space - Susan rather thought it was time for her to start believing in things again, even if they were just hallucinations of grief (of guilt and sorrow and the clawing, bitter coals of regret). Even if it was five years too late.
"Anywhere?" she challenged.
"Anywhere."
"Anytime?"
"Anytime."
She leaned in and whispered three syllables into his ear. The grin that split his face made it almost worthwhile.
-------------------------
"Thank you, old friend."
"For what?"
"For finding her."
"She would have found her way back to you eventually."
Aslan smiled and it was a smile the Doctor knew too well and wore too often.
"Her brothers and sister have missed her. Susan always did take the slower path."
"She would have found her way back to you eventually," the Doctor repeated and tried not to think of those words for too long.
-------------------------
"And Susan came back? To here I mean. To Narnia and you?"
"Yes, dear one."
"Were you ... I mean, were you ever upset at her? Angry that she lost faith, sometimes?"
"Rose, she came back. What could make my heart gladder? Every child does things in their own way and some need to travel different roads before they come back to me."
"You know him, don't you? The Doctor."
"I think the time for stories has passed, Daughter of Eve."
And from behind the King of Beasts, stepped a man with floppy hair and old words rising to his tongue. She cried into the brown tweed of his jacket, for despite this new skin and this new body, she had found her way back to him again. He held her like she had been his phantom third heart, the air missing from his lungs; he held her like he could live without her, but it would be something less and dark and incomplete.
( Rose Tyler, I love you. )
They had a lifetime (or three or four, depending on how you counted it, he was always quick to remind her) of happiness and joy there in Narnia, until the morning came that Rose did not draw breath anymore and the Doctor's hearts well and truly stopped from the loss.
-------------------------
Tony closed the doors and counted impatiently to ten before opening them again.
Rose spilled out of the wardrobe with laughter on her lips and tears in her eyes, a secret guiding the beat of her heart.
"Are you tha' happy for tea?"
She spoke to Pete the next day about building the dimension canon.
-------------------------
( Rose Tyler, I love you. )
"Right then! Where to next, Amy?"
She would find her way back to him eventually.
Rose could have never known that this very closet had once been the start of a wonderful story, but she should have expected it. The unpredictable and impossible always seemed to accompany innocent looking boxes. 2, 044.
A/N: Crossover with The Chronicles of Narnia.
Of all the things Tony could have asked to play, it had been hide and seek in their new townhouse, and of all the places she could have hidden, it had been a closet. Not just any closet though, oh no. This was a special closet. In fact, had the Doctor had been there, he would have launched into a rather tangential lecture about the minute and varying differences between a closet and a wardrobe. Rose could have never known that this very closet had once been the start of a wonderful story, but she should have expected it. The unpredictable and impossible always seemed to accompany innocent looking boxes. Instead, she shrank against the paneled wood when she heard the patter of feet, pressing as tightly as she could without rattling the old, loose doors.
"Rose? Are you here? Mum says it's time for tea!"
But Tony's beloved older sister could not have heard him. He pressed his lips tightly together, struggling not to pout or cry (his Dad had informed him quite seriously one Sunday, that brave little boys did not pout or cry) when he did not receive an answer. He had looked everywhere and so if she was not here, that meant she was nowhere, which meant he would never find her because how was a little boy supposed to find nowhere? He grasped the handles of the creaking doors and threw them open as strongly as his small arms could.
Tony found some dusty ties and a hanger or two. He thought perhaps that was a spider's web in the corner and a dirty marble gleaming at him.
But there was no Rose Tyler when he looked inside the wardrobe.
-------------------------
The TARDIS might have been bigger on the inside, Rose thought, but it could not have prepared her for this. This was an entire forest inside of a wardrobe. She gaped at the flickering lamp post and endless treetops, instinctively reaching for a hand that was not there.
"Welcome, Daughter."
Rose spun on her heels, prepared to run, prepared to fight or barter and negotiate for whatever it would take to send her home. Only... was that a giant, talking lion? She had seen worse, she supposed - she'd been to the end of the world and back, fought Cyberman and seen talking cats, so why in the world a talking lion still surprised her, she had no idea. If anything, she should have been afraid. When Rose had been a little girl, all pink and yellow and pigtails, she had been delighted by and desperately scared of the lions at the zoo. They were so large and so exotic, creatures that seemed utterly out of place in her neat, human world of dolls and tiny, mewling kittens. Their mouths always stretched open very widely and she used to half suspect they were plotting ways to swallow her whole.
But the lion purred his words and stepped as if the weight of the universe rode upon his back. His eyes, deep and dark and filled with light, reminded her too intensely of gentle hearts that loved too much and not enough.
"Come, walk with me, Daughter of Eve."
She knew better than to trust strangers, but long, long ago, a plain, mundane shopgirl had taken a leap of faith and that one step had echoed throughout time. So she walked with the Lion of Gold and Dawn, walked by his side as he spoke and she felt the rumble of his words resonating in the marrow of her bones.
"Where am I?"
"This is Narnia," he said, "I have been waiting for you." His gaze pierced through her, lancing her startled mind and the walls of Time and Space, finding once again the quivering nineteen year old that wandered through life on an invisible path. "I will not harm you, child. I am going to tell you a story about how the Sons of Adam and the Daughters of Eve saved Narnia."
-------------------------
The Doctor stared blankly at the dark haired girl in front of him. She was - she was just - it couldn't - she was impossible! Impossible like Jack had been impossible, impossible like Rose (bleeding sunlight and stardust, her heart stitched onto her sleeve) had been; she simply could not be. He grabbed her shoulders abruptly, startling her, and proceeded to shake her quite firmly.
"What are you? Who are you? Where are you really from?" He asked, rapidly feeling his irritation rise. He had just wanted one, one, peaceful trip, and what did he get? Alien invasion of the cemetery, of course! Amy would most likely kill him (or at the very least nag him right through the next century) if he got caught up in full out adventure while she was still enjoying the millennial festival at the Gardens of Arcadia. He'd promised to "be back in a second."
Pale, but trembling with anger, the woman snapped back, ripping herself from his hands. "You are mad!"
"Oh, no doubt about that," he returned, amiable, but jaw clenched a tad too tight. "Very mad, in fact. I'm the Doctor, by the way. And trust me when I say that I am really, really not in the mood with deal with another alien." He paused to study her and added, thoughtfully. "Or a Time Agent."
"A what?"
"I'm a Time Lord you know, so I can tell. It's all... tangled around you in a proper timey-wimey wibbly-wobbly knot." He frowned at her, his young face and young voice out of place with the centuries passing in his eyes. She had thought him rather charming at first, nice enough to look at with his long and rebellious hair and ridiculous bow-tie, but now she could not quite fathom how she had mistaken him for a young man her own age. He seemed built for pain, his bony shoulders slumped, his too-white skin stretched taunt and high across the bones of his face. She had wondered who he was mourning; now she struggled to remember that he too had a reason for being here, struggled against the instinct to shout and rail at him.
"I don't have time for this," she murmured quietly, voice flat and horribly thin. "I am going to - to..."
Any fire in her died, doused by an unseen hand. "To see my brothers and sister. I can't be late. I haven't missed it once for the past five years."
His eyes were fixed on a stone slab, the curl of the 'y' in Nancy beginning to fade. Something was wriggling in the back of his head, like if he could just tilt it the slightest bit, things would start shifting around - knots would start untying. If only he could think a bit faster, a bit clearer (if only self-recrimination did not sit so heavily on his chest) it would come to him, he knew. He tried not to think of Amy, waiting in the TARDIS, of Rory's hands as they had pushed him out of the way, of another child dying in his place, and only on her, on this impossible girl that tickled his Time Lord senses. He chased the thought around his head, lunged for the trailing end of it as it swerved, and found himself crashing into the answer. Another time he might have cheered his success, detailed the complex and triumphant workings of his own genius, but with his ghosts so near, he did not dare to tempt fate. The world had a cruel and unusually consistent way of punishing him.
"Have you ever imagined anything impossible? Traveling through the stars, or strange, magnificent new worlds? Places you have never seen and never will? Places that aren't real?" He looked so gentle and so sad when he asked, so much like a Lion that did not (could not) exist, that her heart creaked in sympathy.
"Yes," she whispered, grasping for those faraway edges that were fast receding, falling from the corners of her fragile heart. After a decade of denying it, of watching her life fall to shambles all around her, she could finally confess to those long ago dreams and yet no one who really mattered to her was there hear it anymore. Only a stranger, a stranger with suns blazing in his gaze and storms in his voice.
The Doctor stared blankly at the dark haired girl in front of him.
"What's your name?"
"Susan Pevensie."
"Susan Pevensie," he repeated slowly, tasting the syllables, weighing them (weighing her). "That's a brilliant name! It just the sort of name a queen would have," he sang brightly, not catching the ashen tinge of her cheeks or the panic that bubbled in her eyes. The flowers, three large and lovingly chosen bouquets, fell soundlessly to the ground. "I'm no queen," she insisted, feeling all at once the familiar rush of confusion and fear and the deep, aching emptiness of being left behind.
The Doctor caught her eye and she suddenly realized that there hadn't been a single moment of this conversation that had not been in complete seriousness. It was illogical and irrational and just childishly foolish, but right then, she knew that he knew everything. So when he offered his hand - one trip anywhere she wanted in Time and Space - Susan rather thought it was time for her to start believing in things again, even if they were just hallucinations of grief (of guilt and sorrow and the clawing, bitter coals of regret). Even if it was five years too late.
"Anywhere?" she challenged.
"Anywhere."
"Anytime?"
"Anytime."
She leaned in and whispered three syllables into his ear. The grin that split his face made it almost worthwhile.
-------------------------
"Thank you, old friend."
"For what?"
"For finding her."
"She would have found her way back to you eventually."
Aslan smiled and it was a smile the Doctor knew too well and wore too often.
"Her brothers and sister have missed her. Susan always did take the slower path."
"She would have found her way back to you eventually," the Doctor repeated and tried not to think of those words for too long.
-------------------------
"And Susan came back? To here I mean. To Narnia and you?"
"Yes, dear one."
"Were you ... I mean, were you ever upset at her? Angry that she lost faith, sometimes?"
"Rose, she came back. What could make my heart gladder? Every child does things in their own way and some need to travel different roads before they come back to me."
"You know him, don't you? The Doctor."
"I think the time for stories has passed, Daughter of Eve."
And from behind the King of Beasts, stepped a man with floppy hair and old words rising to his tongue. She cried into the brown tweed of his jacket, for despite this new skin and this new body, she had found her way back to him again. He held her like she had been his phantom third heart, the air missing from his lungs; he held her like he could live without her, but it would be something less and dark and incomplete.
( Rose Tyler, I love you. )
They had a lifetime (or three or four, depending on how you counted it, he was always quick to remind her) of happiness and joy there in Narnia, until the morning came that Rose did not draw breath anymore and the Doctor's hearts well and truly stopped from the loss.
-------------------------
Tony closed the doors and counted impatiently to ten before opening them again.
Rose spilled out of the wardrobe with laughter on her lips and tears in her eyes, a secret guiding the beat of her heart.
"Are you tha' happy for tea?"
She spoke to Pete the next day about building the dimension canon.
-------------------------
( Rose Tyler, I love you. )
"Right then! Where to next, Amy?"
She would find her way back to him eventually.