Fic Commentary: The One True Free Life Chapter 19
And continuing with the fic commentary meme (this is like crack, seriously)! If you'd like to get in on it as well and request a fic for me to comment on, here's the original post.
Hallo faithful readers! Welcome to the commentary of Chapter 19 of The One True Free Life, entitled "The still point of the turning world." Fair warning, it contains a relatively soft-focus sex scene. I'm doing this commentary for afraid_of_darkCheers!
So, just to set the scene (and if you haven't read the whole fic yet, obviously there's going to be spoilers here): This chapter takes place as the Alt!Doctor (hereafter known as the Doctor because there's no other Doctor around) and Rose have fled to Wales. If you'll recall, the Doctor was kidnapped, detained and tortured by a shadowy organisation who are up to no good using some sort of pilfered alien technology. Rose takes it upon herself to rescue him and together they go on the run, stopping at the home of Alis Jones in Wales, a name given to them by Pete Tyler.
An important thing to remember with this whole story and this chapter in particular is that Alt!Doctor has only been alive for less than a week. The events of this story take place immediately upon his arrival in England. He and Rose have had only two "normal" nights together before the shit hits the fan.
The cry Rose heard from the bathroom wasn't really a word necissarily, though she thought she heard "No way!" in among the rest of the nonsense. She got up from where she'd been sitting chatting with Alis while the older woman put a hamper of food together and lined up some spare wellies by the door.
"I'd better go see what his deal is," Rose laughed and excused herself. "Though I think I already know."
When she pushed the door open, the Doctor was staring at himself in the mirror, poking at the wild tangle of his hair and trying to get a good look at his profile.
"You didn't mention I looked like a troll!" he whined.
The Doctor is just as vain as ever. He's had a pretty shitty couple of days so imagine him with his hair just a complete wreck (and not a perfectly quoiffed artful wreck, either) and he's got several days worth of stubble. Yes, in this fic the Doctor grows a beard. A lot of people mentioned to me throughout this story how Doctorish my Alt!Doctor is. I am one of those who is of the opinion that Handy Doc is essentially the same man as original recipe Doctor. He's not evil or twisted, and by that same token he's not a moron. He doesn't talk like Donna (much, though his "No way!" exclamation is a bit of her influence), he doesn't call himself John and he makes it very clear in the first chapter that he sees himself as the Doctor.
She just mocked his look of horror while she turned the water on and set the temperature. "Come on, nothing a little soap can't solve. Besides, don't you like it when your hair looks like it's been done with egg beaters?"
He remained pouting in front of the mirror, brow furrowed and looking ever so serious. "Only when I do it on purpose," he mumbled.
"All right, let's go. I don't imagine there's a whole lot of hot water to be had here, so let's make it snappy, yeah? Off with the clothes."
He didn't move, but stood in front of the fogging mirror stroking his chin again. "This feels a lot better than it looks."
Beardy Doctor kind of gets me moist. I'll admit it.
"Shift it, Doctor!" Rose cried, sounding alarmingly like her mum.
He nearly jumped out of both his clothes and his skin at that and began to disrobe hastily, Rose following behind him to pick up his jeans and shirt, hanging them up over an old style jumper-drying rack in the corner. "We won't be able to wash them, but let's give everything a good airing out."
When you write Epic Adventures, little things tend to pop up that you'd never really think about normally. Like: they've been wearing these clothes for how long? Like: shouldn't they change their underware (well, it's been established already in this fic that the Doctor doesn't wear any pants because he's being a Sexy Rebel)? Like: if they're going to have sex, I hope they've had some time to bathe.
When the Doctor opened his eyes again after rinsing the shampoo out of his hair for the second time (the bottle did say rinse, repeat, after all), Rose was standing rather predictably naked in the shower with him, nibbling on her pinky nail and waiting her turn. Seeing her in the harsh fluorescent light of the bathroom, in such a normal every-day context was unexpectedly intimate and arousing despite the lack of overtly romantic trappings. There was a little mole above her right breast, and the polish was peeling off of her toenails, leaving uneven blots of pink. One of them sort of looked like a butterfly, or maybe a skull. Tiny droplets of water began to collect on her hair and eyelashes, and the Doctor momentarily forgot about everything that had happened to bring them to a small little shower in Snowdonia, which was quickly running out of hot water.
"Budge over," she said and placed a hand on his hip to move him to the side, modestly averting her eyes from the evidence of his distracted thoughts. "The water's getting cold."
My memories of living in England seem to hinge a lot on a lack of sufficient hot water for bathing.
By the time Rose was done washing, and explaining to the Doctor why the water running down the drain was an unflattering colour of mousy brown, they were both freezing and it took a good bit of time standing under the heat lamp rubbing themselves vigorously with towels before their teeth stopped chattering. That put an end to any romantic ardour only briefly, before the Doctor realised that there was one very warm place that would probably solve all of his thermal regulation problems in a much more pleasurable way. In his mind, he reprimanded himself for thinking such base thoughts at such a time.
Do bathrooms in the UK often have heating lamps in them? Ours did, but it's not really something I ever made a study of while there. The Doctor here is sort of acknowledging something that often troubles me about action stories (not just fanfic, any action story or film) that also contain sex. When the situation is dire and you're running for your lives, are you really thinking about sex? Having never run for my life before, I can't really give an answer, but I wanted the Doctor to sort of acknowledge that there were bigger things afoot for he and Rose than just his hard-on.
When they emerged again from the bathroom, pink and scrubbed, though wearing their old unwashed clothing, Alis was standing in the kitchen in a pair of wellies, holding a food hamper in one hand and a torch in the other while her terriers yapped and ran circles around her in their excitement for a walk.
"I'm sorry but you can't stay here," she said apologetically. "This will be one of the first places Heths and his lot will look once they figure out you've left the Home Counties, if they haven't done already."
The Doctor's heart sank at the thought of getting back on the cursed bike, again with no sleep and little food, and this time with no actual destination.
"There's an old shepherd's cot, it's not far. You can stay there for the night." She handed the Doctor a torch and Rose took up their bags and other gear.
I spent an utterly ridiculous amount of time on the internet researching how Alis would refer to what we in America would call "that old cabin up in the woods." I mean, a completley silly amount of time. Over an hour I am sure. So if I'm wrong about "shepherd's cot" please do not tell me. Let me die happy.
"What about our motorbike?" he asked as they exited, the dogs taking off at top speed in to the night.
"Bring it in to the barn." She threw a set of keys to him over her shoulder, which fell on to the ground so that the Doctor had to turn his torch on and search for a moment. "You'll need a new vehicle."
Rose made some sounds of protest, while all the Doctor could do was look up and thank any and all lucky stars that may still have been shining above for this unforeseen gift.
This world does not have its full compliment of stars. Many of them went out due to the reality bomb and I see no reason to assume they'd magically reappear.
"Do shut up, Miss Tyler. Of course you will take it. I've got no use for two cars anyway."
They rounded to the rear of the house and approached an old wooden barn that doubled as a garage. A Range Rover was parked in front of it, and the Doctor doubled back to get the bike and walk it in as Alis opened the barn doors to reveal a car covered by a large canvass sheet.
Rose tentative began to pull the sheet off. "A...Morris Minor?" Her face fell.
"Take it or leave it," huffed Alis, removing the rest of the cover and tossing it over the bike instead. "It was Ianto's car to take to uni. He fixed it up himself."
The Doctor peered in to the windows and blew some dust off the bonnet. "Not going to be winning any drag races, I see. Still, could be worse! I think it will do quite nicely, thank you Alis Jones."
Yay! The Doctor gets his TARDIS-replacement! I have absolutely no idea how I got the idea to put the Doctor in to a vintage Morris Minor, except that it's an incredibly British car, it's totally cute, and retro, like the police box. I knew I wanted something that could become iconic in this universe should I write more stories in it.
Beep beep! Tell me you can not see the Doctor riding around in one of those.
In the dirt-floored old cottage they found a random assortment of old furniture, which Alis explained as being left over from summer holidays, when it was the teenaged Ianto's favourite place to go and have a sulk. She was sternly efficient at putting up a coal fire in the shallow hearth, which filled the single room with an eerie red glow. As she did so, she spoke at length of her lost son, while the Doctor and Rose exchanged sympathetic looks.
After she left it was Rose who finally spoke first. "Ianto Jones, wasn't that one of Jack's mates in Cardiff?"
The Doctor nodded. "There's probably about five thousand Ianto Joneses in Wales, though. I hate to see a mother in mourning like that. Parents shouldn't outlive their children. What do you suppose happened?"
Its never made completely certain in the story whether this Ianto Jones is *the* Ianto Jones. I wanted to leave it a bit open, especially for Ianto-fanciers, but I might as well come out and say it: Yeah, it is *that* Ianto Jones. Sorry guys.
Rose moved over to the hamper and began to root through it, handing various food stuffs to the Doctor as she spoke. "Upgraded, I imagine. It wasn't even two years since the Cybermen when I first got here, and you've no idea the kind of trauma people were still suffering from. No one talks about it very much any more, I think people are trying so hard to forget, but nearly everyone lost someone they loved. Some people lost their whole families."
"I know," muttered the Doctor, feeling pangs of loss over the wife and children who were not his.
This is a call-back to the scene where he's being tested by Liberty and recieves the memories of the man who's wife and children are taken by teh Cybermen, but actualy reading it now I think that I haven't made that clear at all here. Also, I'd been waiting for some time in this story to get an opportunity to talk about the fact that in this Universe, hundreds of thousands of people were mass-murdered in this incredibly horrific way. That is not something a society gets over in a few years, which I think that all Americans and Brits and Spaniards reading this know about quite intimately now. People are still incredibly traumitised, which is why the eventual reveal of the plans that Liberty has is a legitimate moment of "Well, it's not really that bad of an idea, is it?" I mean, the Doctor is horrified by it, but he didn't have to live through that, and anyway, he's the Doctor. But if normal people could have their grief and their terrible traumatic memories removed so they could just get on with their lives? That's tempting.
"It affected everything. The way people talk and think, the way they vote, most definitely. No one will really admit it--we're British after all--but everyone is still terrified, deep down." She handed him some grapes and a bit of cucumber sandwich. "That's something that we never saw, when we traveled; what happens after we leave, how people have to pick up the pieces. We just of swanned off and figured everyone would be all right. But everyone is not all right here. Not by a long shot. There are a lot of Alis Joneses walking around out there. I think that's why Pete and my mum got on with it so quickly. It was a way out of the grief."
"Is that what I am, for you?" The Doctor surprised himself with his own question, the words falling dead in to the space between them before he could stop himself or even think about it.
Rose, however, seemed completely unfazed. "Yeah, a bit."
Ouch. I do feel it was incumbent upon me to explain a little why Rose so quickly accepts the new new new Doctor. A lot of people were upset by her apparent lack of agency in Journey's End: the Doctor makes the decision for her and kind of forces Alt!Doctor on her and then runs away. So part of my explanation is this: it's a way out of her grief. He offers her a legitimate reason to stop grieving and she takes it, by her own choice.
"Oh."
She caught the look on the Doctor's face by the glow of the fire--that kicked-puppy face she'd seen once or twice before. "It's not a bad thing. You make me forget. You've always made me forget."
"That's not necessarily a good thing either."
"No, maybe not. But all the same, when I'm with you, I forget that I was ever not with you. And this version of you seems to be just as good at that as the other one." She leaned over the small plank table and kissed him on his nose.
I kind of love that bit of dialogue. One of the things I love about Doctor/Rose is how utterly wrapped up in each other they are. It's not always healthy, or rational, or a good idea, but what about love is always those things? He does have this power over her, to draw her in to his world and to make her forget everything and everyone that came before him. I imagine in her mind she categorises things as "Before Doctor" and "After Doctor".
After they cleaned up the wreckage of their meal, the Doctor excused himself to get some air (though Rose suspected that might be code for "use the loo"), and didn't come back for a long while. Her annoyance turned to alarm very quickly, and then back to annoyance again when she found him outside sitting on a rock, tracing the craggy mountain tops in the distance with his nine hundred year old gaze.
"Probably not the best of times for you to go disappearing on me," she said quietly as she sat down next to him. "I'm sorry if what I said upset you. It is the truth, though."
"It's not that. Well, not entirely that."
"Well, go on then." She nestled up to him a bit, found a more comfortable spot on the rock and braced herself to hear from him all of the ways that he'd been disappointed with his new life. No TARDIS, no time and space, too much in the domestics arena, and then of course the people trying to capture and do him bodily harm. She'd run over each of these scenarios in her mind multiple times as she clung to the back of the motorbike for all of those hours--all of the ways he'd be inevitably disappointed by things and situations that she herself could do nothing to remedy.
I think perhaps a bit too much has been made in fic of all the ways that the Alt!Doctor will totally hate the "normal" life he now has with Rose. I don't think it's a complete non-issue, but I don't think it's going to be that enormous of a deal for them. He was not dragged kicking and screaming out of the TARDIS at Bad Wolf Bay. He wants to have that normal life with Rose, the "one adventure he could never have."
"I'm scared," he said at last, and defied Rose's expectations yet again.
"Me too."
"No, I mean really." He drew his knees up to his chest and rested his cheek on them, looking over at Rose, sitting placidly next to him.
"I know," she whispered, and she thought she did know.
"Is that okay?" he finally asked.
"Why wouldn't it be?"
"It's not how I'm supposed to be," he sighed and took in the vista of the mountains in the scant moonlight again. He felt stabilised by their presence, held on to the Earth despite spinning around the sun at sixty-seven thousand miles an hour.
I perhaps was a little clumy about this set of themes in this fic. All of the human Doctor's emotions are now motivated by some very different things. He's having trouble dealing with his feelings because being scared when you're a 900 year old quasi-immortal is a bit different than being scared when you're just a bloke. Different things are frigtening, and the fear feels different. Same goes for his anger in a previous chapter. The Fury of the Time Lord is a different thing than just this guy being royally pissed off and out for revenge. And he is also feeling insecure that Rose won't love him any more with these new human feelings and weaknesses.
"Well, that's the silliest thing I've ever heard," she said as she playfully smacked his knee. "Go ahead and be scared. But there is one thing that I learned, travelling with you: don't let the fear rule you. You taught me that. Don't let the fear make your choices for you. So, learn from yourself, yeah?"
He didn't know quite what to say to that and let her words slip off in to the night, to be met by the cries of foxes lower down in the valley.
Is it just me or in every British television show ever are there foxes crying every time the characters are outside at night?
"Well," she said, standing, "I'm trying to be sensitive to your mood here, but come morning we will need to face our fears and, what's the saying? Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we may die? We've taken care of the eating and drinking, and I'd sort of like to be merry for a while. Just to tick that off the list."
She held out a hand to him and when he took it, he felt like he'd not necessarily found another answer to the human mystery, but had at least the inkling of a clue. "Well, if we're all going to die anyway, might as well," he said.
"We're all dying, Doctor. Some just slower than others."
Rose is doing a very good Master/Grasshopper thing here with the Doctor. They both learn from each other in this story at various times. This is Rose's turn to teach the Doctor a bit about being human and mortal. I have to think that when she first took up with the Doctor she spent some time contemplating the fact that mortality is not something he really has to worry about, and perhaps how that made him quite different from her in some pretty fundamental ways. The reality of our inevitable death forms a tremendous amount of the basis for our emotions and ways of thinking.
He opened the door to the cottage for her and drank in the sight of her outlined with the orange glow of the fire. "Did you learn that from me as well?"
She turned around to face him in the centre of the room. "You should have guessed by now, I nick all my best bits from you."
And I nick all my best bits from other fic writers.
When he laid her down on the threadbare blanket in front of the fire, it was to seek completion rather than release. He wanted to remember the feel of every part of her, should they be separated again, perhaps by the veil that can't be crossed even by the Time Lords. To that end he undressed her slowly and carefully, pausing just to look and to touch, and she let him take his time. If this was a comfort for him, that is what she wanted to provide, the look in her eye telling him what he needed to know about how to understand this moment.
Comfort sex: it's a Good Thing. I knew I wanted to include another sex scene in this fic, but what with all the running and driving and breaking-and-entering, it was hard to find the appropriate moment. To a large degree, this little side-trip to Wales was created specifically with this bit of erotica in mind. I needed to get them out of the whirlwind for a few hours so they could calm the hell down and focus on what's truly important: turning my readers on.
The glow from the fire reminded him of how she'd looked when she risked her own life to save his, her skin a matte golden, her eyes shining in the light, all the little soft hairs of her body forming a ghost image around her. Humans did this, didn't they? They remembered these things, these moments, and used them as a way out of fear and grief.
I use this image of Rose as the Bad Wolf a lot in my writing. I just...I love it. Billie was just gorgeous in that scene, and it's just so incredibly moving. It really embodies a lot of what I love about the show. It could have been a wham-bam sci fi cgi action extravaganza very very easily. Instead it's this beautiful, emotional perfect pearl of a scene.
When she responded to his touch, it was as one surprised rather than expectant, and when she sat up and helped him undress as well, it was with a reverence that had been absent in their previous times together. The experience felt wholly new to him yet again, as if there was no end point to their story, just a circle, an orbit. Her kisses were sweet, even tangibly rather than metaphorically so, and when she giggled at how his new beard felt against her skin, he laughed along with her. Eat, drink and be merry, for we're all dying. Some just faster than others.
Entering her, he let go of desire and felt the still point of the turning world. They remained joined and unmoving for a time that stretched on forever and then returned to the beginning again. What they could do together was greater than the sum of their individual lives, and moving as one just proved that. He could be scared and give that to her, and she would return to him courage. She could feel grief and give that to him and he would return to her comfort.
I think that I mentioned in the comments for this chapter that "the still point of the turning world" is from Eliot (I'm really racking up those early 20th century poets, aren't I?) via, like everyone and everything. It comes up a lot in Zen practice and in fact the first meditation group I sat with in Pittsburgh was called Stillpoint. Anyhoo, that's reall neither here nor there. This is about the Doctor finidng peace by embracing his mortality and his humanness and by fully reconciling with how much he needs Rose and how much she needs him. Codependent? Eh, I don't think so. We all bring things to the table in our partnerships that the other person really needs. If we didn't, there'd be no reason to stay together.
He pressed in to her and she wrapped her arms around his back, drawing him close, connecting as much skin as possible, as if where they were already one was not enough. They both shuddered with mutual pleasure, and she whispered his name to herself, eyes closed, head thrown back, dark hair spread across the blanket. She moved her hands down to guide his hips, gently encouraging him to just take the moment as given and enjoy himself, moaning words of approval and incitement. She was smiling and happy as she shifted under him and found satisfaction in his increased pace, and she laughed with her release.
Yay laughing sex! The faster you can arrive at laughing sex in your relationship the better as far as I am concerned. Sex is not always such srs bznss, and even when it is, it's the good kind of srs bznss, the kind that makes you happy and want to laugh. I don't know really when or how I decided to make with the mirth here, but it just seemed like the right moment for it in their relationship, with all they've been through in such a short time, and with them both making some pretty major breakthroughs along the way.
It surprised him and he stopped, looking down at her as she was racked with giggles that made her inner muscles continue to grip him. "Oh, don't stop now!" she grinned up at him. "Don't you laugh when you're happy?"
"I suppose I do." He felt a smile break out on his own face, and she gave him a playful little smack on the rear.
"Be happy," she sighed as her giggles subsided in to a sensual smile of pleasure again as he quickened his pace and drove in to her unapologetically for his own sake. It's like that too, sometimes, he thought.
And he was happy. He came with her name on his smiling lips, and at long last not a single other thought in his head. They collapsed in to a panting, sweaty heap of giggles, poking and smacking one another like children, before growing quiescent and falling asleep entwined together in front of the fire.
Verily, they are adorable. I must confess that this is largely based on the bedtime shenanigans of me and Mr. Tenzo. We're both just incredibly immature. Anyway, this scene does mark the realisation that the Doctor has that he communicates more fully to Rose in the last chapter, about happiness and choices. The irony is that its an epiphany inspired by her and her words, but he's the one that needs to articulate it and convince her of it when the time comes. As I say, they need each other.
When Rose woke to a drizzly grey dawn, she felt around for her bag and drew out some key items. Prodding the Doctor on his bare, freckled shoulder, she waited for him to open his eyes and held the sudoku book open in front of him. He mumbled out a number and she entered it in to her mobile, pressing "send" on a message reading:
STILL ALIVE. STILL FREE. NEWS?
Blah blah blah, the actual plot, whatever. Boring. And yes, we all hate the Doctor for being able to do sudoku in his head while half asleep. The bastard.
Hallo faithful readers! Welcome to the commentary of Chapter 19 of The One True Free Life, entitled "The still point of the turning world." Fair warning, it contains a relatively soft-focus sex scene. I'm doing this commentary for afraid_of_darkCheers!
So, just to set the scene (and if you haven't read the whole fic yet, obviously there's going to be spoilers here): This chapter takes place as the Alt!Doctor (hereafter known as the Doctor because there's no other Doctor around) and Rose have fled to Wales. If you'll recall, the Doctor was kidnapped, detained and tortured by a shadowy organisation who are up to no good using some sort of pilfered alien technology. Rose takes it upon herself to rescue him and together they go on the run, stopping at the home of Alis Jones in Wales, a name given to them by Pete Tyler.
An important thing to remember with this whole story and this chapter in particular is that Alt!Doctor has only been alive for less than a week. The events of this story take place immediately upon his arrival in England. He and Rose have had only two "normal" nights together before the shit hits the fan.
The cry Rose heard from the bathroom wasn't really a word necissarily, though she thought she heard "No way!" in among the rest of the nonsense. She got up from where she'd been sitting chatting with Alis while the older woman put a hamper of food together and lined up some spare wellies by the door.
"I'd better go see what his deal is," Rose laughed and excused herself. "Though I think I already know."
When she pushed the door open, the Doctor was staring at himself in the mirror, poking at the wild tangle of his hair and trying to get a good look at his profile.
"You didn't mention I looked like a troll!" he whined.
The Doctor is just as vain as ever. He's had a pretty shitty couple of days so imagine him with his hair just a complete wreck (and not a perfectly quoiffed artful wreck, either) and he's got several days worth of stubble. Yes, in this fic the Doctor grows a beard. A lot of people mentioned to me throughout this story how Doctorish my Alt!Doctor is. I am one of those who is of the opinion that Handy Doc is essentially the same man as original recipe Doctor. He's not evil or twisted, and by that same token he's not a moron. He doesn't talk like Donna (much, though his "No way!" exclamation is a bit of her influence), he doesn't call himself John and he makes it very clear in the first chapter that he sees himself as the Doctor.
She just mocked his look of horror while she turned the water on and set the temperature. "Come on, nothing a little soap can't solve. Besides, don't you like it when your hair looks like it's been done with egg beaters?"
He remained pouting in front of the mirror, brow furrowed and looking ever so serious. "Only when I do it on purpose," he mumbled.
"All right, let's go. I don't imagine there's a whole lot of hot water to be had here, so let's make it snappy, yeah? Off with the clothes."
He didn't move, but stood in front of the fogging mirror stroking his chin again. "This feels a lot better than it looks."
Beardy Doctor kind of gets me moist. I'll admit it.
"Shift it, Doctor!" Rose cried, sounding alarmingly like her mum.
He nearly jumped out of both his clothes and his skin at that and began to disrobe hastily, Rose following behind him to pick up his jeans and shirt, hanging them up over an old style jumper-drying rack in the corner. "We won't be able to wash them, but let's give everything a good airing out."
When you write Epic Adventures, little things tend to pop up that you'd never really think about normally. Like: they've been wearing these clothes for how long? Like: shouldn't they change their underware (well, it's been established already in this fic that the Doctor doesn't wear any pants because he's being a Sexy Rebel)? Like: if they're going to have sex, I hope they've had some time to bathe.
When the Doctor opened his eyes again after rinsing the shampoo out of his hair for the second time (the bottle did say rinse, repeat, after all), Rose was standing rather predictably naked in the shower with him, nibbling on her pinky nail and waiting her turn. Seeing her in the harsh fluorescent light of the bathroom, in such a normal every-day context was unexpectedly intimate and arousing despite the lack of overtly romantic trappings. There was a little mole above her right breast, and the polish was peeling off of her toenails, leaving uneven blots of pink. One of them sort of looked like a butterfly, or maybe a skull. Tiny droplets of water began to collect on her hair and eyelashes, and the Doctor momentarily forgot about everything that had happened to bring them to a small little shower in Snowdonia, which was quickly running out of hot water.
"Budge over," she said and placed a hand on his hip to move him to the side, modestly averting her eyes from the evidence of his distracted thoughts. "The water's getting cold."
My memories of living in England seem to hinge a lot on a lack of sufficient hot water for bathing.
By the time Rose was done washing, and explaining to the Doctor why the water running down the drain was an unflattering colour of mousy brown, they were both freezing and it took a good bit of time standing under the heat lamp rubbing themselves vigorously with towels before their teeth stopped chattering. That put an end to any romantic ardour only briefly, before the Doctor realised that there was one very warm place that would probably solve all of his thermal regulation problems in a much more pleasurable way. In his mind, he reprimanded himself for thinking such base thoughts at such a time.
Do bathrooms in the UK often have heating lamps in them? Ours did, but it's not really something I ever made a study of while there. The Doctor here is sort of acknowledging something that often troubles me about action stories (not just fanfic, any action story or film) that also contain sex. When the situation is dire and you're running for your lives, are you really thinking about sex? Having never run for my life before, I can't really give an answer, but I wanted the Doctor to sort of acknowledge that there were bigger things afoot for he and Rose than just his hard-on.
When they emerged again from the bathroom, pink and scrubbed, though wearing their old unwashed clothing, Alis was standing in the kitchen in a pair of wellies, holding a food hamper in one hand and a torch in the other while her terriers yapped and ran circles around her in their excitement for a walk.
"I'm sorry but you can't stay here," she said apologetically. "This will be one of the first places Heths and his lot will look once they figure out you've left the Home Counties, if they haven't done already."
The Doctor's heart sank at the thought of getting back on the cursed bike, again with no sleep and little food, and this time with no actual destination.
"There's an old shepherd's cot, it's not far. You can stay there for the night." She handed the Doctor a torch and Rose took up their bags and other gear.
I spent an utterly ridiculous amount of time on the internet researching how Alis would refer to what we in America would call "that old cabin up in the woods." I mean, a completley silly amount of time. Over an hour I am sure. So if I'm wrong about "shepherd's cot" please do not tell me. Let me die happy.
"What about our motorbike?" he asked as they exited, the dogs taking off at top speed in to the night.
"Bring it in to the barn." She threw a set of keys to him over her shoulder, which fell on to the ground so that the Doctor had to turn his torch on and search for a moment. "You'll need a new vehicle."
Rose made some sounds of protest, while all the Doctor could do was look up and thank any and all lucky stars that may still have been shining above for this unforeseen gift.
This world does not have its full compliment of stars. Many of them went out due to the reality bomb and I see no reason to assume they'd magically reappear.
"Do shut up, Miss Tyler. Of course you will take it. I've got no use for two cars anyway."
They rounded to the rear of the house and approached an old wooden barn that doubled as a garage. A Range Rover was parked in front of it, and the Doctor doubled back to get the bike and walk it in as Alis opened the barn doors to reveal a car covered by a large canvass sheet.
Rose tentative began to pull the sheet off. "A...Morris Minor?" Her face fell.
"Take it or leave it," huffed Alis, removing the rest of the cover and tossing it over the bike instead. "It was Ianto's car to take to uni. He fixed it up himself."
The Doctor peered in to the windows and blew some dust off the bonnet. "Not going to be winning any drag races, I see. Still, could be worse! I think it will do quite nicely, thank you Alis Jones."
Yay! The Doctor gets his TARDIS-replacement! I have absolutely no idea how I got the idea to put the Doctor in to a vintage Morris Minor, except that it's an incredibly British car, it's totally cute, and retro, like the police box. I knew I wanted something that could become iconic in this universe should I write more stories in it.
Beep beep! Tell me you can not see the Doctor riding around in one of those.
In the dirt-floored old cottage they found a random assortment of old furniture, which Alis explained as being left over from summer holidays, when it was the teenaged Ianto's favourite place to go and have a sulk. She was sternly efficient at putting up a coal fire in the shallow hearth, which filled the single room with an eerie red glow. As she did so, she spoke at length of her lost son, while the Doctor and Rose exchanged sympathetic looks.
After she left it was Rose who finally spoke first. "Ianto Jones, wasn't that one of Jack's mates in Cardiff?"
The Doctor nodded. "There's probably about five thousand Ianto Joneses in Wales, though. I hate to see a mother in mourning like that. Parents shouldn't outlive their children. What do you suppose happened?"
Its never made completely certain in the story whether this Ianto Jones is *the* Ianto Jones. I wanted to leave it a bit open, especially for Ianto-fanciers, but I might as well come out and say it: Yeah, it is *that* Ianto Jones. Sorry guys.
Rose moved over to the hamper and began to root through it, handing various food stuffs to the Doctor as she spoke. "Upgraded, I imagine. It wasn't even two years since the Cybermen when I first got here, and you've no idea the kind of trauma people were still suffering from. No one talks about it very much any more, I think people are trying so hard to forget, but nearly everyone lost someone they loved. Some people lost their whole families."
"I know," muttered the Doctor, feeling pangs of loss over the wife and children who were not his.
This is a call-back to the scene where he's being tested by Liberty and recieves the memories of the man who's wife and children are taken by teh Cybermen, but actualy reading it now I think that I haven't made that clear at all here. Also, I'd been waiting for some time in this story to get an opportunity to talk about the fact that in this Universe, hundreds of thousands of people were mass-murdered in this incredibly horrific way. That is not something a society gets over in a few years, which I think that all Americans and Brits and Spaniards reading this know about quite intimately now. People are still incredibly traumitised, which is why the eventual reveal of the plans that Liberty has is a legitimate moment of "Well, it's not really that bad of an idea, is it?" I mean, the Doctor is horrified by it, but he didn't have to live through that, and anyway, he's the Doctor. But if normal people could have their grief and their terrible traumatic memories removed so they could just get on with their lives? That's tempting.
"It affected everything. The way people talk and think, the way they vote, most definitely. No one will really admit it--we're British after all--but everyone is still terrified, deep down." She handed him some grapes and a bit of cucumber sandwich. "That's something that we never saw, when we traveled; what happens after we leave, how people have to pick up the pieces. We just of swanned off and figured everyone would be all right. But everyone is not all right here. Not by a long shot. There are a lot of Alis Joneses walking around out there. I think that's why Pete and my mum got on with it so quickly. It was a way out of the grief."
"Is that what I am, for you?" The Doctor surprised himself with his own question, the words falling dead in to the space between them before he could stop himself or even think about it.
Rose, however, seemed completely unfazed. "Yeah, a bit."
Ouch. I do feel it was incumbent upon me to explain a little why Rose so quickly accepts the new new new Doctor. A lot of people were upset by her apparent lack of agency in Journey's End: the Doctor makes the decision for her and kind of forces Alt!Doctor on her and then runs away. So part of my explanation is this: it's a way out of her grief. He offers her a legitimate reason to stop grieving and she takes it, by her own choice.
"Oh."
She caught the look on the Doctor's face by the glow of the fire--that kicked-puppy face she'd seen once or twice before. "It's not a bad thing. You make me forget. You've always made me forget."
"That's not necessarily a good thing either."
"No, maybe not. But all the same, when I'm with you, I forget that I was ever not with you. And this version of you seems to be just as good at that as the other one." She leaned over the small plank table and kissed him on his nose.
I kind of love that bit of dialogue. One of the things I love about Doctor/Rose is how utterly wrapped up in each other they are. It's not always healthy, or rational, or a good idea, but what about love is always those things? He does have this power over her, to draw her in to his world and to make her forget everything and everyone that came before him. I imagine in her mind she categorises things as "Before Doctor" and "After Doctor".
After they cleaned up the wreckage of their meal, the Doctor excused himself to get some air (though Rose suspected that might be code for "use the loo"), and didn't come back for a long while. Her annoyance turned to alarm very quickly, and then back to annoyance again when she found him outside sitting on a rock, tracing the craggy mountain tops in the distance with his nine hundred year old gaze.
"Probably not the best of times for you to go disappearing on me," she said quietly as she sat down next to him. "I'm sorry if what I said upset you. It is the truth, though."
"It's not that. Well, not entirely that."
"Well, go on then." She nestled up to him a bit, found a more comfortable spot on the rock and braced herself to hear from him all of the ways that he'd been disappointed with his new life. No TARDIS, no time and space, too much in the domestics arena, and then of course the people trying to capture and do him bodily harm. She'd run over each of these scenarios in her mind multiple times as she clung to the back of the motorbike for all of those hours--all of the ways he'd be inevitably disappointed by things and situations that she herself could do nothing to remedy.
I think perhaps a bit too much has been made in fic of all the ways that the Alt!Doctor will totally hate the "normal" life he now has with Rose. I don't think it's a complete non-issue, but I don't think it's going to be that enormous of a deal for them. He was not dragged kicking and screaming out of the TARDIS at Bad Wolf Bay. He wants to have that normal life with Rose, the "one adventure he could never have."
"I'm scared," he said at last, and defied Rose's expectations yet again.
"Me too."
"No, I mean really." He drew his knees up to his chest and rested his cheek on them, looking over at Rose, sitting placidly next to him.
"I know," she whispered, and she thought she did know.
"Is that okay?" he finally asked.
"Why wouldn't it be?"
"It's not how I'm supposed to be," he sighed and took in the vista of the mountains in the scant moonlight again. He felt stabilised by their presence, held on to the Earth despite spinning around the sun at sixty-seven thousand miles an hour.
I perhaps was a little clumy about this set of themes in this fic. All of the human Doctor's emotions are now motivated by some very different things. He's having trouble dealing with his feelings because being scared when you're a 900 year old quasi-immortal is a bit different than being scared when you're just a bloke. Different things are frigtening, and the fear feels different. Same goes for his anger in a previous chapter. The Fury of the Time Lord is a different thing than just this guy being royally pissed off and out for revenge. And he is also feeling insecure that Rose won't love him any more with these new human feelings and weaknesses.
"Well, that's the silliest thing I've ever heard," she said as she playfully smacked his knee. "Go ahead and be scared. But there is one thing that I learned, travelling with you: don't let the fear rule you. You taught me that. Don't let the fear make your choices for you. So, learn from yourself, yeah?"
He didn't know quite what to say to that and let her words slip off in to the night, to be met by the cries of foxes lower down in the valley.
Is it just me or in every British television show ever are there foxes crying every time the characters are outside at night?
"Well," she said, standing, "I'm trying to be sensitive to your mood here, but come morning we will need to face our fears and, what's the saying? Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we may die? We've taken care of the eating and drinking, and I'd sort of like to be merry for a while. Just to tick that off the list."
She held out a hand to him and when he took it, he felt like he'd not necessarily found another answer to the human mystery, but had at least the inkling of a clue. "Well, if we're all going to die anyway, might as well," he said.
"We're all dying, Doctor. Some just slower than others."
Rose is doing a very good Master/Grasshopper thing here with the Doctor. They both learn from each other in this story at various times. This is Rose's turn to teach the Doctor a bit about being human and mortal. I have to think that when she first took up with the Doctor she spent some time contemplating the fact that mortality is not something he really has to worry about, and perhaps how that made him quite different from her in some pretty fundamental ways. The reality of our inevitable death forms a tremendous amount of the basis for our emotions and ways of thinking.
He opened the door to the cottage for her and drank in the sight of her outlined with the orange glow of the fire. "Did you learn that from me as well?"
She turned around to face him in the centre of the room. "You should have guessed by now, I nick all my best bits from you."
And I nick all my best bits from other fic writers.
When he laid her down on the threadbare blanket in front of the fire, it was to seek completion rather than release. He wanted to remember the feel of every part of her, should they be separated again, perhaps by the veil that can't be crossed even by the Time Lords. To that end he undressed her slowly and carefully, pausing just to look and to touch, and she let him take his time. If this was a comfort for him, that is what she wanted to provide, the look in her eye telling him what he needed to know about how to understand this moment.
Comfort sex: it's a Good Thing. I knew I wanted to include another sex scene in this fic, but what with all the running and driving and breaking-and-entering, it was hard to find the appropriate moment. To a large degree, this little side-trip to Wales was created specifically with this bit of erotica in mind. I needed to get them out of the whirlwind for a few hours so they could calm the hell down and focus on what's truly important: turning my readers on.
The glow from the fire reminded him of how she'd looked when she risked her own life to save his, her skin a matte golden, her eyes shining in the light, all the little soft hairs of her body forming a ghost image around her. Humans did this, didn't they? They remembered these things, these moments, and used them as a way out of fear and grief.
I use this image of Rose as the Bad Wolf a lot in my writing. I just...I love it. Billie was just gorgeous in that scene, and it's just so incredibly moving. It really embodies a lot of what I love about the show. It could have been a wham-bam sci fi cgi action extravaganza very very easily. Instead it's this beautiful, emotional perfect pearl of a scene.
When she responded to his touch, it was as one surprised rather than expectant, and when she sat up and helped him undress as well, it was with a reverence that had been absent in their previous times together. The experience felt wholly new to him yet again, as if there was no end point to their story, just a circle, an orbit. Her kisses were sweet, even tangibly rather than metaphorically so, and when she giggled at how his new beard felt against her skin, he laughed along with her. Eat, drink and be merry, for we're all dying. Some just faster than others.
Entering her, he let go of desire and felt the still point of the turning world. They remained joined and unmoving for a time that stretched on forever and then returned to the beginning again. What they could do together was greater than the sum of their individual lives, and moving as one just proved that. He could be scared and give that to her, and she would return to him courage. She could feel grief and give that to him and he would return to her comfort.
I think that I mentioned in the comments for this chapter that "the still point of the turning world" is from Eliot (I'm really racking up those early 20th century poets, aren't I?) via, like everyone and everything. It comes up a lot in Zen practice and in fact the first meditation group I sat with in Pittsburgh was called Stillpoint. Anyhoo, that's reall neither here nor there. This is about the Doctor finidng peace by embracing his mortality and his humanness and by fully reconciling with how much he needs Rose and how much she needs him. Codependent? Eh, I don't think so. We all bring things to the table in our partnerships that the other person really needs. If we didn't, there'd be no reason to stay together.
He pressed in to her and she wrapped her arms around his back, drawing him close, connecting as much skin as possible, as if where they were already one was not enough. They both shuddered with mutual pleasure, and she whispered his name to herself, eyes closed, head thrown back, dark hair spread across the blanket. She moved her hands down to guide his hips, gently encouraging him to just take the moment as given and enjoy himself, moaning words of approval and incitement. She was smiling and happy as she shifted under him and found satisfaction in his increased pace, and she laughed with her release.
Yay laughing sex! The faster you can arrive at laughing sex in your relationship the better as far as I am concerned. Sex is not always such srs bznss, and even when it is, it's the good kind of srs bznss, the kind that makes you happy and want to laugh. I don't know really when or how I decided to make with the mirth here, but it just seemed like the right moment for it in their relationship, with all they've been through in such a short time, and with them both making some pretty major breakthroughs along the way.
It surprised him and he stopped, looking down at her as she was racked with giggles that made her inner muscles continue to grip him. "Oh, don't stop now!" she grinned up at him. "Don't you laugh when you're happy?"
"I suppose I do." He felt a smile break out on his own face, and she gave him a playful little smack on the rear.
"Be happy," she sighed as her giggles subsided in to a sensual smile of pleasure again as he quickened his pace and drove in to her unapologetically for his own sake. It's like that too, sometimes, he thought.
And he was happy. He came with her name on his smiling lips, and at long last not a single other thought in his head. They collapsed in to a panting, sweaty heap of giggles, poking and smacking one another like children, before growing quiescent and falling asleep entwined together in front of the fire.
Verily, they are adorable. I must confess that this is largely based on the bedtime shenanigans of me and Mr. Tenzo. We're both just incredibly immature. Anyway, this scene does mark the realisation that the Doctor has that he communicates more fully to Rose in the last chapter, about happiness and choices. The irony is that its an epiphany inspired by her and her words, but he's the one that needs to articulate it and convince her of it when the time comes. As I say, they need each other.
When Rose woke to a drizzly grey dawn, she felt around for her bag and drew out some key items. Prodding the Doctor on his bare, freckled shoulder, she waited for him to open his eyes and held the sudoku book open in front of him. He mumbled out a number and she entered it in to her mobile, pressing "send" on a message reading:
STILL ALIVE. STILL FREE. NEWS?
Blah blah blah, the actual plot, whatever. Boring. And yes, we all hate the Doctor for being able to do sudoku in his head while half asleep. The bastard.