Flowers on Air 5/11
TITLE: Flowers on Air
CHARACTERS: Ten/Rose, OC (lots)
RATING: PG/Teen
SPOILERS: None past mid-series-2
SUMMARY: After being temporarily stranded in 1999, the Doctor is faced with a temptation he may not be able to turn from. Can Rose save him from himself?
DISCLAIMER: If I owned any of these characters, I'd have already released a collectors edition of Until the End of the World on region 1 DVD. BBC, RTD, Wim Wenders, full props.
A/N: This is a crossover fic between Doctor Who and the mid-90's film Until the End of the World. Knowing anything about the movie is not required (besides, I'm taking some liberties, and then the Doctor shows up and the timeline's all shot to hell anyway).
This chapter: At this point, things start to veer away from the actual time-line of the movie in fairly significant ways. I am just finding it too difficult to be completely faithful to two canons simultaneously and have the story still remain interesting. But at least if you haven't seen the movie, you won't be quite so spoiled by this fic should you take my advice and go watch it immediately (or vice-versa, if you've seen the movie, you will not necessarily know how this story is going to go). In this chapter, Rose makes a new friend and the Doctor utters some Famous Last Words.
New arrivals were trickling in to the centre, a half dozen or so at a time. Residents shifted their accommodations around, pup-tents were pitched, acoustic instruments were produced and suddenly it was the best End of the World Party ever. And Rose knew from End of the World Parties.
Neither the Doctor nor Dr. Farber had reemerged from the lab, though the pastel desert dusk had quickly become a nighttime filled with milky stars. Rose was unable to enter again even if she had wanted to, not having the code for the door nor a handy-dandy sonic device. The company around the fire was enjoyable enough though, and the music quite fine. The evening air was at first refreshing, prickling her skin where she’d gotten too much sun, and then downright cold, sending her back to the tent to grab the sweatshirt she’d flung off in the heat of the day.
But there was that nagging feeling that the sooner she could tell the Doctor of her misgivings, the sooner he could reassure her that she was mistaken, and that everything was perfectly safe and normal, and the sooner she could completely feel at ease to mix and mingle. She didn’t feel like very good company at present. At least twenty people had introduced themselves and told them their names, but she hadn’t been able to pay close enough attention to remember even a fraction of them.
Her most recent new friend sat on a bench beside her, sipping some coffee. She did still recall his name-Gene Fitzpatrick-and the basics of what he’d told her regarding his arrival. He was in a very large group that had turned up with a caravan; a very mixed bag of Aborigines and non-indigenous Australians, along with a smattering of Europeans, of which Mr. Fitzpatrick was one. Rose thought him quite a handsome older man, dressed to the nines in a linen suit and hat, expensive designer sunglasses and classy leather messenger bag.
“Are you a friend of the Farbers, then?” Rose asked, wanting to keep the conversation going so as to try and forget the nagging throb at the pit of her stomach. She gestured to Edith Farber, who was seated like a queen on the far side of the fire, with friends and admirers bringing her water, or a morsel of food, or asking her to suggest the next song.
“You might say that, Miss Tyler.” Mr. Fitzpatrick replied quite formally. Rose rather liked the sound of being referred to by her surname and let it stand. “Though, it's their son, Sam, that is my reason for being here.”
The mysterious Sam Farber. There was a strange mix of intimacy and antipathy in his voice that made Rose wonder if they were lovers who had quarreled, grumbling from Dr. Farber about it always being about a woman with Sam notwithstanding
Add to that data his quick changing of the subject: “And how did you come to be here? You’ll pardon my forwardness, but you do seem to be here alone. We’re a long way away from where you come from, I can tell.”
“I’m here with a friend.” She tried to keep her tone light and casual.
Mr. Fitzpatrick looked around the assembled gathering, waiting for her to point her friend out to him.
“He’s not here right now. He’s with Dr. Farber…” and Rose trailed off, not knowing quite how to finish that. Not being able to really explain the details of her life was an occupational hazard that she had never really gotten that good at dealing with. “They’re…a bit busy at the mo’. And you? You’re on holiday here in Australia, yeah? Got caught up in all this satellite business?”
Mr. Fitzpatrick turned the question around back to Rose. “I could well ask you the same.”
“You could do.”
Rose noted: Does not like to talk about self or reason for being here. This could be an interesting conversation indeed.
“My friend and I, we’re just travelers. We go here and there, meet new people, see new things. ‘Cept our…our vehicle broke down because of the EMP, so we’re going to have to stay here for a few days.”
She paused. What was the next logical question one would ask during a normal, polite, human conversation? She was somewhat out of practice. “What do you do, Mr. Fitzpatrick? When you’re not becoming stranded in the desert, I mean.”
“I’m a writer. A novelist, actually. Though without a novel now.” He patted his messenger bag. “The EMP wiped my hard drive. Hundreds of pages, gone.”
He seemed rather sanguine given the circumstances.
“Oh, I’m so sorry!”
“Don’t be, it was rubbish.” The edges of Mr. Fitzpatrick’s mouth twitched upwards ever so slightly and Rose thought she caught a little sparkle in his eye.
“I’m sure it wasn’t rubbish. But all the same, no use crying over spilt milk, eh?” She touched him lightly on his arm, making a bit of human contact to drive her point home.
She stared off towards the fire and there was an awkward silence. Now would be as good a time as any to extricate herself and see if there’d be any sleep to be had from that uncomfortable-looking army cot.
“It was lovely meeting you, Mr. Fitzpatrick. You’ll have to excuse me, it’s been a long day.” She tried her best to match the formality of his own speech, and stood and shook his hand. He also rose to stand as she left. Quite gentlemanly, that.
The paths and rocks were shimmering silver in the moonlight, and no torch was necessary to find her way back to the tent. There was no need to light the lantern-Rose had nothing to read, no paper to write on, no nightclothes to change in to. She placed her shoes and socks on the table, not trusting for a moment the net walls of the tent to keep out critters who might find a nice, warm, dark trainer to be the pinnacle of four-star accommodation. Lying down on the cot, she could see a bright belt of stars, in between the canvas roof of the tent and the rock wall on the other side of the path.
The Doctor would surely come up for air soon. He might not need sleep, but the technicians working the lab were human and would need to take a break. The fact that he had not come to check on her, to make sure she was getting on alright, she felt perhaps could be attributable to his great confidence in her abilities to take care of herself. Or he could just be a self-centered git.
She must have dozed off thinking those thoughts, as the next thing she knew, she heard the sound of trainers on gravel right outside the tent, and awoke with a start. The centre was quiet, the party apparently over for the night. The Doctor entered, clutching a cup of tea and a couple of biscuits. Not noticing that she had awoken and was looking at him, he sat on the edge of the other cot and began to munch pensively. Rose took an extra couple of moments to take advantage of the opportunity to look fully at him without him seeing what she was doing. The dark pools of his eyes twinkled, though were looking a bit heavily-rimmed and lidded from, she supposed, staring at a computer all day. His hair was mussed due to his habit of running his hands through it while thinking deeply. The desire Rose had to do the same was almost a physical tingle in her hands. And she knew, she could do. She could go right ahead and fix his hair and he’d sit like a petulant toddler while she did and make a joke about his mum, or her mum, or someone’s mum. And he’d remain totally oblivious to the intimacy that humans ascribe to that kind of touching.
“Hallo stranger.” Rose whispered, sleep still heavy in her voice, the “H” a little raspier than normal.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you,” he said between crunches.
“Hoping I’d miss you completely and you could just disappear again?” She meant it to come out as a friendly tease, but it seems that it had sounded rather more accusatory in execution.
“Well…,” he began in a way that made Rose instantly aware that he was about to dissemble, “I thought you’re so brilliant at getting on with new people, you wouldn’t want to have me around, mucking about and saying the wrong thing all the time.”
Rose drew her mouth in to a perfectly straight line.
“Get off it, Doctor.”
“Oi!” The Doctor peered over his cup of tea at her, looking hurt.
“No, really. Just admit that you were too excited about all that business in the lab and you lost track of time. ‘S okay, I understand. Just….don’t lie to me. I hate it when you lie to me, and I can always tell.”
The Doctor inched slightly forward, so he was sitting right on the edge of the cot, and leaned over towards Rose.
“It really is quite extraordinary what Dr. Farber is doing. His work will absolutely revolutionize….well, everything!” He was having a hard time keeping his voice to a whisper, and Rose noticed the distinct lack of an apology.
“Well, see, that’s just the thing. This is 1999, right? I was around in 1999, and 2000, and 2001 and, well, you get the idea. And I’ve never heard of this camera that takes pictures that blind people can see. I never heard anything about it. And Mickey’s gran, she’s blind, yeah? I would have known if this existed, but it never did. It never happened, Doctor.”
Saying all that out loud made Rose feel only marginally more at ease. She waited for the Doctor’s inevitable water-tight reassurance that this slight temporal inconsistency was really not anything to worry about.
“Oh, it exists now. I’ve seen the prototype, and the real thing is on its way here via Dr. Farber’s son.”
Not the answer Rose was really looking for. This was becoming a bit of an argument.
“But Doctor, it doesn’t exist anywhere but here, and now. Something happens. Mickey’s gran never gets to see pictures. No one in 2005, or whatever, has ever heard of it.” Now it was Rose having problems keeping her voice low.
“Well, time isn’t always a straight line and not everything is fixed, Rose.”
God, she hated that patronizing Time Lord tone in his voice. It was, in fact, the answer she’d wanted to hear, but did he have to talk down to her while saying it?
“In this timeline, Dr. Farber is successful, and this device is created,” the Doctor said and finished his last biscuit.
“Doctor, you’re not…you’re not helping him do something…different? Are you?” Rose caught the look on the Doctor’s face. “You are! You’re up to something in there and doing what you always told me not to do. You could be creating a paradox or whatever you call it in there!”
The Doctor brushed the biscuit crumbs off his shirt and rose again from the cot, unintentionally (or perhaps quite intentionally) looming over her.
“Oh, pish-posh, Rose. I’m the Time Lord here, remember? I know what I’m doing. Trust me.”
(To Chapter 6)
CHARACTERS: Ten/Rose, OC (lots)
RATING: PG/Teen
SPOILERS: None past mid-series-2
SUMMARY: After being temporarily stranded in 1999, the Doctor is faced with a temptation he may not be able to turn from. Can Rose save him from himself?
DISCLAIMER: If I owned any of these characters, I'd have already released a collectors edition of Until the End of the World on region 1 DVD. BBC, RTD, Wim Wenders, full props.
A/N: This is a crossover fic between Doctor Who and the mid-90's film Until the End of the World. Knowing anything about the movie is not required (besides, I'm taking some liberties, and then the Doctor shows up and the timeline's all shot to hell anyway).
This chapter: At this point, things start to veer away from the actual time-line of the movie in fairly significant ways. I am just finding it too difficult to be completely faithful to two canons simultaneously and have the story still remain interesting. But at least if you haven't seen the movie, you won't be quite so spoiled by this fic should you take my advice and go watch it immediately (or vice-versa, if you've seen the movie, you will not necessarily know how this story is going to go). In this chapter, Rose makes a new friend and the Doctor utters some Famous Last Words.
New arrivals were trickling in to the centre, a half dozen or so at a time. Residents shifted their accommodations around, pup-tents were pitched, acoustic instruments were produced and suddenly it was the best End of the World Party ever. And Rose knew from End of the World Parties.
Neither the Doctor nor Dr. Farber had reemerged from the lab, though the pastel desert dusk had quickly become a nighttime filled with milky stars. Rose was unable to enter again even if she had wanted to, not having the code for the door nor a handy-dandy sonic device. The company around the fire was enjoyable enough though, and the music quite fine. The evening air was at first refreshing, prickling her skin where she’d gotten too much sun, and then downright cold, sending her back to the tent to grab the sweatshirt she’d flung off in the heat of the day.
But there was that nagging feeling that the sooner she could tell the Doctor of her misgivings, the sooner he could reassure her that she was mistaken, and that everything was perfectly safe and normal, and the sooner she could completely feel at ease to mix and mingle. She didn’t feel like very good company at present. At least twenty people had introduced themselves and told them their names, but she hadn’t been able to pay close enough attention to remember even a fraction of them.
Her most recent new friend sat on a bench beside her, sipping some coffee. She did still recall his name-Gene Fitzpatrick-and the basics of what he’d told her regarding his arrival. He was in a very large group that had turned up with a caravan; a very mixed bag of Aborigines and non-indigenous Australians, along with a smattering of Europeans, of which Mr. Fitzpatrick was one. Rose thought him quite a handsome older man, dressed to the nines in a linen suit and hat, expensive designer sunglasses and classy leather messenger bag.
“Are you a friend of the Farbers, then?” Rose asked, wanting to keep the conversation going so as to try and forget the nagging throb at the pit of her stomach. She gestured to Edith Farber, who was seated like a queen on the far side of the fire, with friends and admirers bringing her water, or a morsel of food, or asking her to suggest the next song.
“You might say that, Miss Tyler.” Mr. Fitzpatrick replied quite formally. Rose rather liked the sound of being referred to by her surname and let it stand. “Though, it's their son, Sam, that is my reason for being here.”
The mysterious Sam Farber. There was a strange mix of intimacy and antipathy in his voice that made Rose wonder if they were lovers who had quarreled, grumbling from Dr. Farber about it always being about a woman with Sam notwithstanding
Add to that data his quick changing of the subject: “And how did you come to be here? You’ll pardon my forwardness, but you do seem to be here alone. We’re a long way away from where you come from, I can tell.”
“I’m here with a friend.” She tried to keep her tone light and casual.
Mr. Fitzpatrick looked around the assembled gathering, waiting for her to point her friend out to him.
“He’s not here right now. He’s with Dr. Farber…” and Rose trailed off, not knowing quite how to finish that. Not being able to really explain the details of her life was an occupational hazard that she had never really gotten that good at dealing with. “They’re…a bit busy at the mo’. And you? You’re on holiday here in Australia, yeah? Got caught up in all this satellite business?”
Mr. Fitzpatrick turned the question around back to Rose. “I could well ask you the same.”
“You could do.”
Rose noted: Does not like to talk about self or reason for being here. This could be an interesting conversation indeed.
“My friend and I, we’re just travelers. We go here and there, meet new people, see new things. ‘Cept our…our vehicle broke down because of the EMP, so we’re going to have to stay here for a few days.”
She paused. What was the next logical question one would ask during a normal, polite, human conversation? She was somewhat out of practice. “What do you do, Mr. Fitzpatrick? When you’re not becoming stranded in the desert, I mean.”
“I’m a writer. A novelist, actually. Though without a novel now.” He patted his messenger bag. “The EMP wiped my hard drive. Hundreds of pages, gone.”
He seemed rather sanguine given the circumstances.
“Oh, I’m so sorry!”
“Don’t be, it was rubbish.” The edges of Mr. Fitzpatrick’s mouth twitched upwards ever so slightly and Rose thought she caught a little sparkle in his eye.
“I’m sure it wasn’t rubbish. But all the same, no use crying over spilt milk, eh?” She touched him lightly on his arm, making a bit of human contact to drive her point home.
She stared off towards the fire and there was an awkward silence. Now would be as good a time as any to extricate herself and see if there’d be any sleep to be had from that uncomfortable-looking army cot.
“It was lovely meeting you, Mr. Fitzpatrick. You’ll have to excuse me, it’s been a long day.” She tried her best to match the formality of his own speech, and stood and shook his hand. He also rose to stand as she left. Quite gentlemanly, that.
The paths and rocks were shimmering silver in the moonlight, and no torch was necessary to find her way back to the tent. There was no need to light the lantern-Rose had nothing to read, no paper to write on, no nightclothes to change in to. She placed her shoes and socks on the table, not trusting for a moment the net walls of the tent to keep out critters who might find a nice, warm, dark trainer to be the pinnacle of four-star accommodation. Lying down on the cot, she could see a bright belt of stars, in between the canvas roof of the tent and the rock wall on the other side of the path.
The Doctor would surely come up for air soon. He might not need sleep, but the technicians working the lab were human and would need to take a break. The fact that he had not come to check on her, to make sure she was getting on alright, she felt perhaps could be attributable to his great confidence in her abilities to take care of herself. Or he could just be a self-centered git.
She must have dozed off thinking those thoughts, as the next thing she knew, she heard the sound of trainers on gravel right outside the tent, and awoke with a start. The centre was quiet, the party apparently over for the night. The Doctor entered, clutching a cup of tea and a couple of biscuits. Not noticing that she had awoken and was looking at him, he sat on the edge of the other cot and began to munch pensively. Rose took an extra couple of moments to take advantage of the opportunity to look fully at him without him seeing what she was doing. The dark pools of his eyes twinkled, though were looking a bit heavily-rimmed and lidded from, she supposed, staring at a computer all day. His hair was mussed due to his habit of running his hands through it while thinking deeply. The desire Rose had to do the same was almost a physical tingle in her hands. And she knew, she could do. She could go right ahead and fix his hair and he’d sit like a petulant toddler while she did and make a joke about his mum, or her mum, or someone’s mum. And he’d remain totally oblivious to the intimacy that humans ascribe to that kind of touching.
“Hallo stranger.” Rose whispered, sleep still heavy in her voice, the “H” a little raspier than normal.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you,” he said between crunches.
“Hoping I’d miss you completely and you could just disappear again?” She meant it to come out as a friendly tease, but it seems that it had sounded rather more accusatory in execution.
“Well…,” he began in a way that made Rose instantly aware that he was about to dissemble, “I thought you’re so brilliant at getting on with new people, you wouldn’t want to have me around, mucking about and saying the wrong thing all the time.”
Rose drew her mouth in to a perfectly straight line.
“Get off it, Doctor.”
“Oi!” The Doctor peered over his cup of tea at her, looking hurt.
“No, really. Just admit that you were too excited about all that business in the lab and you lost track of time. ‘S okay, I understand. Just….don’t lie to me. I hate it when you lie to me, and I can always tell.”
The Doctor inched slightly forward, so he was sitting right on the edge of the cot, and leaned over towards Rose.
“It really is quite extraordinary what Dr. Farber is doing. His work will absolutely revolutionize….well, everything!” He was having a hard time keeping his voice to a whisper, and Rose noticed the distinct lack of an apology.
“Well, see, that’s just the thing. This is 1999, right? I was around in 1999, and 2000, and 2001 and, well, you get the idea. And I’ve never heard of this camera that takes pictures that blind people can see. I never heard anything about it. And Mickey’s gran, she’s blind, yeah? I would have known if this existed, but it never did. It never happened, Doctor.”
Saying all that out loud made Rose feel only marginally more at ease. She waited for the Doctor’s inevitable water-tight reassurance that this slight temporal inconsistency was really not anything to worry about.
“Oh, it exists now. I’ve seen the prototype, and the real thing is on its way here via Dr. Farber’s son.”
Not the answer Rose was really looking for. This was becoming a bit of an argument.
“But Doctor, it doesn’t exist anywhere but here, and now. Something happens. Mickey’s gran never gets to see pictures. No one in 2005, or whatever, has ever heard of it.” Now it was Rose having problems keeping her voice low.
“Well, time isn’t always a straight line and not everything is fixed, Rose.”
God, she hated that patronizing Time Lord tone in his voice. It was, in fact, the answer she’d wanted to hear, but did he have to talk down to her while saying it?
“In this timeline, Dr. Farber is successful, and this device is created,” the Doctor said and finished his last biscuit.
“Doctor, you’re not…you’re not helping him do something…different? Are you?” Rose caught the look on the Doctor’s face. “You are! You’re up to something in there and doing what you always told me not to do. You could be creating a paradox or whatever you call it in there!”
The Doctor brushed the biscuit crumbs off his shirt and rose again from the cot, unintentionally (or perhaps quite intentionally) looming over her.
“Oh, pish-posh, Rose. I’m the Time Lord here, remember? I know what I’m doing. Trust me.”
(To Chapter 6)