Echoes of Summer - Chapter Thirty-Seven: Burn Gold
Disclaimer: Neither Doctor Who nor any characters, items or materials of any kind pertaining to Doctor Who or the Whoniverse belong to me. I’m just looking for a good time. Hee. Trying them out for a bit, see how they fit.
Plot Summary: He was left with his lips against her jaw, her figure pressed to him as if she belonged there. One of many moments between the Tenth Doctor and Rose Tyler after he breaks his own rules to retrieve her from Bad Wolf Bay. The walls between worlds begin to fall, two different realities merging. And on the horizon a threat rises that threatens to destroy everything the Doctor holds dear.
Pairing: Ten/Rose
Beta: bratflorida
Rating: Starts at PG. Runs the gamut straight through to NC-17.
Spoilers: Oh yes. Series One through Series 4 Specials.
Timeline: AU after the end of Series 2. Spoilers up to, including and going past Series 4 though. I’ve seen all of Series 1 through 4, including the series 4 specials but am not very familiar with the Classic Who much. As such, if I happen to include anything that really touches upon Classic Who, other than it being unintentional, I’ll be surprised out of my head. Really. You’ll probably see a lot of familiar things in the fic that play into the series of DW. Bear with me, it all ties in together.
Chapter Thirty-Seven: Burn Gold
When she entered the console room of the TARDIS that night, the air was thick with tension. She knew it had nothing to do with her. He was in one of his melancholic moods, dark and silent. She could feel it, hovering over him like a dark gray cloud. She paused at the entrance, resting her weary frame against the doorway. “You’re thinking again.”
He didn’t respond for the moment but he did turn slightly in her direction, his face mysterious in the light of the TARDIS console. Blue and gold flashing across his ominous eyes as he turned them on to her. “Yes, I am,” he replied quietly a moment later, gaze coasting over her lips then trailing down to her button shirt and jean skirt. They halted on her bandaged hands momentarily before flying to her face.
She flashed a slow, tired smile. “You’ll get smoke coming from your ears. Set off the sprinklers like last time. That was…unexpected.”
He smiled also, a lopsided one as he turned to face the console once more. “Did I never tell you I had those installed in the TARDIS? After the last time on the-“
“Second moon of Axis,” she nodded as if she had heard the story many times. She lifted a hand and fiddled with the edges of the bandages absentmindedly. “You still blame me for that after all this time?”
“You were to blame!”
Coming into the room slowly but laughing to herself, her limbs dragging, she floated up behind him like a ghost. She paused for a moment as she glanced down at the console to see what he was doing. After a pause though she merely leaned forward, her forehead resting into the dip between his shoulder blades. She could hear his hearts, feel his tension, his own weariness. It rivaled hers. “What are you thinking?” she asked into his suit, smelling him through it, his own natural scent. Alien and unearthly. Beautiful.
He lifted his head, the gesture bringing him to straighten his back a bit. “I’m thinking…Barcelona,” he stated with a definitive nod.
She felt a frown cross her face slightly, her eyes closing as she rested her head against his back, her shoulders heavy. She was still so very tired. That fluid he had administered must have been very powerful. “Barcelona?” she questioned with a bemused smirk, his suit smooth under her skin.
He didn’t reply for a long time, his breath rolling in and out, his head held up as his eyes darted across the ceiling of the console room. She smelled of gardenia, of honey. Of wild flowers waving in the twilight on a summer night. And of something drawing to an end. The mere thought caused the air to tangle in his chest painfully, his lips parting. “Do…do you remember? I’ve wanted to take you for so long.” His voice was wistful, almost yearning, his hearts beating gently in time.
“We should go, then,” she said with a small decisive nod, rubbing her forehead against his back. “We’ll go and check out those dogs with no noses. I’m sure they’re adorable.”
He chuckled, the sound reverberating through him and into her, bringing her a small measure of comfort. “You’ve never seen them. If you had, you wouldn’t say that.” And he laughed once more but there was a certain catch in the laughter, a certain stiffness to his frame. He turned his head a bit, eyes flying over the console controls blindly.
She tilted her head, pressing her cheek to his back instead, her breathing a bit difficult. There was something in the air. Something she didn’t understand but something that was familiar. As if he had decided something while she had been asleep. Shaking the feeling away she instead continued on casually, fighting down the feeling that something bad was coming. “You don’t know me well enough,” she disagreed. “There were times, when I wasn’t running for my life, mind you, that I thought even the Daleks were cute little pepper shakers.”
His laugh this time was genuine. And sorrowful. Plainly wounded. She grimaced against his back at the sound, feeling his pain wash over her as well but not understanding where it came from. Only that she could taste his distress almost on her tongue, taste his moonlight.
“So many places,” he whispered then, his voice sounding far off. Distant. Soft light across an alien landscape. She saw many things when she heard his voice and when she breathed him in. She saw so much. “So many places.”
She inhaled, remembering this talk, having heard it once before. “Then…why can’t we go?”
His frame relaxed slowly, and she lifted her arms, wrapping them under his arms and around his torso, meeting close to his hearts. Merely hovering there, feeling the palpitations clear through his chest and being oddly comforted by the gentle thumps, the way a baby was surrounded by a mother’s own heartbeat.
“Maybe you will,” he murmured and his hands lifted, closing over hers gingerly, his head bowing against his chest. “And maybe I will. But not like this.”
The last time he had said that to her, she had lost him. His last incarnation. Rugged, bitter and dark. And so lonely. He had regenerated into the man she now held in her arms. The one who covered up his pain with a smile that reminded her of those silver trees and that red, red sun he’d spoken to her about. What she had always pictured Gallifrey looked like after his description. Her arms tightened around him, bringing him to lift his head once more. “Don’t go again,” she pleaded quietly, her breath hitching at the thought that he would leave her once more. It was more than she could bear and she just couldn’t do it again. “You’re the same person, I know. But I…” she broke off, wishing to make more sense. “Just don’t go again.”
Pausing for a long moment, their breathing seeming to synchronize, he loosened her hands from his hearts and then cautiously turned, leaving her arms locked around him but now facing her in their circle. “I won’t,” he said to her quietly. And he gazed at her for a long moment, his eyes flying across her face. He registered the circles under her eyes, the weakness to her embrace. The summer dying in her eyes. Would autumn make a home there now? He lifted a hand and trailed fingers across her forehead, brushing aside blond bangs, gold spun into silk.
Daleks turning into golden ash behind the horizon in her eyes.
She lifted her head, closing those eerie eyes as his fingertips shadowed a path along her forehead, brushing her hairline almost faintly. In the back of her head she heard his voice, when it had still been alien to her, that new and egotistical tone.
“Am I ginger?”
A laughing smile crossed her face at the memory, her head lifted to his and she felt his breath brush her mouth as he bent a little bit, his other arm lifting to wind around her shoulder and back, resting there comfortably. “What was that smile there?” he asked her and she sensed the smile in his own voice as he asked her, sensed at times when he emerged from the black shell of his former incarnation to play with her for a bit.
“Just thinking,” she replied softly, her eyes opening to gaze up at him. “Remembering a certain someone. Rude and not ginger.” She sent him a sympathetic look, lower lip pouting faintly. “You were heartbroken.”
His expression contorted, mouth curling as he pulled his head back a bit at her words. “Oh, I wouldn’t say heartbroken. Strong word there. More like…disappointed. Disenchanted. Embittered,” he growled in a husky tone, stressing the word with his lips comically and almost pouting back at her.
“Let down then,” she supplied for him, a smile quirking the corner of her soft lips.
“To say the least.” And he settled once more, his fingertips still brushing her hairline and temple gently. For a moment there had been a lightness in his face, in his voice. But now as he gazed at her, the heaviness seemed to return. He pulled his head back more, focused entirely on her dark roots, on his fingers trailing across her skin. And she could hear both his hearts, pressed to him as she was. Felt almost sandwiched between each pounding beat.
She opened her mouth to say something, to say anything to rid his face of that sadness.
But then he was speaking instead, his low voice reverberating through her as he said quietly, “You look a bit knackered. Why not take a nap?”
She tilted her head at him in an attempt to catch his gaze. “I’m fine.”
And even as she looked at him, even as her eyes assured him that she was indeed fine, she could tell he didn’t believe it. He remained wordless for another long moment, gaze seeming to be chained to her hairline, to his fingertips trailing back and forth along her temple as they played along the darkened roots. Hair almost the color of his, trailing out into a golden halo.
She allowed him, her stare roaming over his dark eyes as he seemed to zone out on her. It was adorable at times, the expressions that crossed his face. Very vivid expressions, full of hot emotion, almost boiling over with them. As if he couldn’t do anything without being flamboyant. It was how this regeneration was. So full of life, so cheeky and loud. Filled to the brim with excitement, wonder, and at times rage and sorrow. Just so full. Dry heat blowing across a desert. Black shadows vanishing in moonlight. The frothy lip of the sea. He was all of it and more, all in one person.
“Enjoying the view?” he murmured to her with a small smile threatening the corners of his lips.
“Very much,” she replied with a firm nod, feeling his fingers leave her head with the gesture.
This time the smile did come out, gentle and wistful. “So am I,” he said. With an air of sadness about him, he wound his free hand around her neck and pulled her close to him with a deep breath, allowing her to turn her head to rest her cheek against his collar. Dropping his chin onto her head, he lifted his eyes, staring blankly out over the console room as the core pulsed behind him. She was quiet, the TARDIS. Waiting, it seemed.
This was what it felt like to love someone. To feel as if one’s very core shook and swelled almost painfully. Rose closed her eyes heavily, her embrace tightening even as his did, as his scent seemed to overpower her. Everything about him made her feel more, more pain, more passion, somehow more alive. He made her feel it all with a simple hug. She had never felt like this with anyone else. And she knew, deep inside, she never would again.
“Have you seen anything else? Anyone else?” he asked her slowly through a haze, attempting nonchalance.
She stiffened for a small moment in his embrace, silent. Then, relaxing and forcing a light tone she shook her head as well as she could, trapped against him as she was. “Nope. All quiet on the forefront.”
He nodded imperceptibly, blankly. “Good.” Gently, pulling back a bit from her and her scent, he bowed his head as she raised her face to his, her eyes slightly wide as he hesitated in asking.
“What, Doctor?”
Eyes still averted, he took a moment, seeming to search for the proper words. “Would you…allow me?” he asked tentatively, his eyes caught on her lips and then further sliding down to her collar. As if somehow ashamed. It was a new expression, one she’d caught a few times but was still not used to when it flashed across his face.
“Allow you?” she asked him. “Allow you to do what?” And then, as if it was a given anyway she went on, “I mean, yes. It’s a yes. Whatever it is. What am I agreeing to again?”
He smiled faintly at her gestures. “Would you allow me to have a look at your thoughts?”
She stared at him for a moment, stunned into silence at his words. Did he know? Had he stumbled across the mysterious blond girl? Had she given him a warning to the message hidden inside her mind? Her eyes trailing away for a moment at the implications, she gave it a second’s thought. Of course he could look at her thoughts. She would offer them to him even if he hadn’t wanted to see them. Everything she was, everything she thought, it would always be open to him. Especially now that it was in the open, the visits from Martha and Jack. From Donna Noble. True, she hadn’t told him about the visit from the blond girl but she wanted this, this intrusion. Only from him though. There would be no secrets with this. Nothing left to hide.
“Yes,” she whispered.
His eyes darted up to meet hers, looking from one dark eye to the other as she maintained her gaze. Nodding slightly at her he took a step back and then another, his arms slipping from around her to take hold of her hands, pulling on them gently. She followed, her gaze caught on his face even though he had allowed it to drop, looking behind himself until they reached the jump seat. Turning himself and her with the gesture, he coaxed her onto the seat which she took wordlessly, still looking at him. There was a strange feeling emanating from him but not a sinister one. As if she were about to become a science experiment, more like. But one that would be handled with all the care in the world. Sitting down slowly she continued to watch him, even as he seemed to avoid her gaze.
“Will it hurt?” she asked him to which he quickly looked at her.
“No, no. Not one bit,” he reassured her. And he seated himself beside her, his hands still clutching hers, his eyes now trained on hers intently. “You can close your eyes if you want.”
She gazed at him. “I’d rather keep them open, thanks,” she replied to that. And she couldn’t help thinking it was because she wanted to continue to meet his gaze. But the second she thought it, she instantly flamed, realizing that thinking thoughts like that would soon become easily decipherable to the Doctor. And as she thought more about it she felt the earlier blush fall away to paleness. He would see all of it. He would know all of it. How she felt, how powerfully she felt, about him.
How she was in love with him.
Sensing her sudden uneasiness, she felt his hands on hers tighten, his face darkening with worry. “What? What is it?” he asked her.
“Nothing,” she answered much too quickly.
He looked from one of her eyes to the other, a frown on his face. “You’re lying. Tell me.” And as if understanding, he leaned away from her slightly, the frown fading a bit. “We don’t have to do this. I understand it’s an enormous intrusion. If you feel uncomfortable-“
“No,” she cut him off. And bringing her eyes down to their clasped hands, seeing the bandages circling her palms and wrists and still strengthening her grip on his, she shook her head with a subdued, “No.”
He hesitated still, silently. But he felt the forcefulness of her grip, his eyes trained on hers even though she had them averted. Looking down at their clasped hands also, he merely held them for a long moment, his jaw clicking faintly.
“It’s ok,” she said to him quietly. “You know everything anyway. And if you don’t then…you’re about to.” And he didn’t mistake the small grimace that flashed across her face.
He looked at her for another moment before slowly loosening his grip on her hands. “Then I think we should do this another time, one that-“
“No,” she repeated. And she tightened her grasp on his hands even as he loosened his grip more. “No. We’re going to do this now. I want you to do this. You should know. You should know-” And her sentence came from her powerfully, emotionally, the strain in her voice.
He stared at her, his frown slowly returning once more. “Know what?” he asked her quietly.
Hesitating, her eyes fixed on their hands, her head bowed, she exhaled breathlessly, “Everything.”
His own breath held in confusion, his eyes focused so intently on her that he almost felt them waver slightly. He stood stock still for another moment before gently shaking off her hands from his and lifting them to her face. She followed his hands, raising her eyes with them, her lips parted gently. And when he spread his fingers and placed them lightly on either side of her face, she met his eyes, her features smooth of lines. As if waiting for him to discover everything she was.
“If there’s anything you don’t want me to see,” he said to her quietly, gazing at her soothingly, “just turn it from me. Like a door. Just close the door on it and I won’t see.”
She maintained his eyes, her shoulders firm. “I want you to see,” she stated. “All of it.”
Rearing his head back a bit at her words, he forgot for a small moment what it was he was doing, instead holding her face gently between his hands. Slipping a bit, he dragged a thumb along the corner of her mouth, his eyes following its path. And even as he did so she was turning her face the slightest bit, her eyes falling closed, her parted lips brushing the pad of his thumb softly. He stared at the gesture, his own lips parting as he trailed his eyes over her mouth, and then sliding up the side of her face as she pressed her cheek into his palm.
“What have you been hiding from me?” he asked her softly, not unkindly. His breath caught as she raised her mouth yet again to his thumb, as she caught it between her lips gently.
She opened her eyes at his halting question. “Nothing anymore.” And at her words he did not imagine the small scrape of her tongue against the pad of his thumb, his eyes trained on her lips and lost there.
Gazing at her, swallowing imperceptibly, he managed a small nod, his thumb dragging across her bottom lip before curving once more into place. Then he closed his own eyes, head bowing forward toward hers and she did the same. His breath hovered around her, mingling with her own and he felt her heat coming off in waves. His skin was always cold when he held her hands, when he embraced her. It was his own biology, his own genetic makeup and she had never complained of it but when she was close she seemed to burn. Burn with what seemed to be a golden light, sparking against his skin. All humans he had encountered had that heat emanating from them but she was different. Hot, scalding. Searing, almost. And golden. Her heat was always golden.
Bad Wolf.
Next Chapter - Chapter Thirty-Eight: Whispers
“I’m still here,” he said to her softly, his mouth close enough that his lips brushed hers involuntarily, her breath stolen from her by him. His fingers has slipped as he had searched her mind, as he had bathed in her thoughts and he held her now tightly, his palms pressed to her jaw, her face upturned to his. And she wanted. She needed. The same way he did, the way he needed her breath, her thoughts, her very self. Even as he mindlessly held himself before her, hovering in her golden thoughts and emotions, he realized that he did indeed need her. Physically, mentally. He needed all of her, every thought she had, every emotion she felt, he needed to feel it, needed to see with his own mental eyes. He needed to know the way humans saw, how they viewed love and anger, the world outside and inside. He needed to see it all.