(no subject)
the turning of the moon, rose/eleven, pg.
Rose has learned that with the Doctor, with this Doctor, almost everything has a time limit. 971words.
She just happens to look up right when she does; it is a habit - a habit of wandering eyes and wandering thoughts and a heart that wanders among the stars. Rose likes to remind herself of how huge the world is, of the vast expanse of sky and the celestial bodies that litter the horizons like pearls, just for the sake of reminding herself.
The lithe, thin stroke of brown wavers precariously on a rooftop and her breath catches. It steadies itself, stilling, watching the world pass by ignorantly below it. Nothing explains the sense of fear racing through her veins, bursting across the delicate lacework web of her human nerves like lightning. She dashes into the apartment with all of her old speed, briefly spouting off some nonsense about official business and flashing her somewhat official badge at anyone who dares stop her.
As long as she knows what she is doing (which she doesn't), no one really stops her. It is luck and luck alone that two of the rooms on the highest floor are vacant and she wastes no time in spilling through the door, clambering out a window.
"Stop!" Her voice is strained, fragile and brushed by the lightness of breath since her lungs and muscles are no longer used to the daily dash from danger. "Stop," she begs, because she cannot bear to see someone throw their life away. Rose Tyler has seen more than enough death. The figure, so abstract and unfamiliar from afar, is a man, a man in brown tweed and a bowtie. His spine stiffens at her voice and she curses herself for being so rash - you are never supposed to startle someone posed on the brink of suicide.
All she sees for a second is his rather long - girlish, really - hair and the column of his throat as he swallows down the words burning away on his tongue. Something unfamiliar, something strange and improbable and devastating storms in his green eyes and her breath catches the moment she sees them.
Over the thunder of her frantic mortal pulse, she finally feels the glow of a key in the valley of her chest (Rose has forgotten how it burns and burns and burns for the Doctor and his Tardis, so much like her own heart).
A million and five questions - of things she has been waiting to say, to ask, to scream and yell and beg for - disappear into nothing. Rose has learned that with the Doctor, with this Doctor, almost everything has a time limit.
"Doctor?" The sounds, the syllables, the corners and curves and lines of the word scratch their way out of her throat and he is coiled, waiting for her, waiting for them.
"Rose Tyler," he says, smiling broadly and sweeping his arms out for an embrace, like he is greeting an old friend. A colleague. Someone unexpected and faintly familiar by virtue of an excellent memory.
"You are standing on a roof," is the only thing that pops to her lips and for the life of her she cannot think why.
"Oh. Quite right."
And just like that he leaps onto the thin ledge outside of the window and climbs in, helped by her grasping fingers and ready hands - always, always ready to catch the Doctor when he falls. She doesn't really expect to be able to touch him and the rough whisper of tweed is a shock.
"You regenerated," she accuses.
"I did." He fidgets a bit with the bow tie and never realizes how his hair is falling into his eyes (he never did). "How is it?"
"Different."
"Good different or bad different?"
God, how he has missed her laugh, the way her eyes half close and her pink tongue teases his thoughts, the way her entire body just thrums with the sound. "We've done this before."
Yes, we have, he thinks, but this is not the same.
He wants to ask where he is - or rather, the other him. He wants to ask if she has been happy, if they have been happy, if he has made the right decision, if she hates him, if he hates him. She breaks through this vicious chain with a touch, an invitation as she brushes the hair out of his eyes.
"I've missed you," she says, in place of the why and the how and the how could you. The Doctor is the Time Lord that never has time, she knows, so she tries to say everything that matters, everything that really, really matters in however many seconds she has left.
"You can come with me you know. One last trip for old time's sake."
She shoots him a look from underneath her trembling lashes, a patented Rose Tyler look that no one should ever take for granted ever again.
"You know that I would leave everything and everyone behind for you," she whispers, tracing the new contours of his face, relearning him, remapping him. "Anything and anyone as long as it was for my Doctor."
He leans his face into her fingers, into her hands, like he would pour himself through this bare, minimal connection and never have to live without her again.
How can such a tiny, girlish hand support his entire weight?
"I miss you, Rose." There is none of his flattened sorrow now, not when she smiles and shakes her head and shows him how he still breaks her, his precious, beautiful Rose, by not saying those damning words.
"I know. And you know that I could never leave you, not for anything or anyone. Not for all the stars and the planets in the sky."
And he does know.
Rose has learned that with the Doctor, with this Doctor, almost everything has a time limit. 971words.
She just happens to look up right when she does; it is a habit - a habit of wandering eyes and wandering thoughts and a heart that wanders among the stars. Rose likes to remind herself of how huge the world is, of the vast expanse of sky and the celestial bodies that litter the horizons like pearls, just for the sake of reminding herself.
The lithe, thin stroke of brown wavers precariously on a rooftop and her breath catches. It steadies itself, stilling, watching the world pass by ignorantly below it. Nothing explains the sense of fear racing through her veins, bursting across the delicate lacework web of her human nerves like lightning. She dashes into the apartment with all of her old speed, briefly spouting off some nonsense about official business and flashing her somewhat official badge at anyone who dares stop her.
As long as she knows what she is doing (which she doesn't), no one really stops her. It is luck and luck alone that two of the rooms on the highest floor are vacant and she wastes no time in spilling through the door, clambering out a window.
"Stop!" Her voice is strained, fragile and brushed by the lightness of breath since her lungs and muscles are no longer used to the daily dash from danger. "Stop," she begs, because she cannot bear to see someone throw their life away. Rose Tyler has seen more than enough death. The figure, so abstract and unfamiliar from afar, is a man, a man in brown tweed and a bowtie. His spine stiffens at her voice and she curses herself for being so rash - you are never supposed to startle someone posed on the brink of suicide.
All she sees for a second is his rather long - girlish, really - hair and the column of his throat as he swallows down the words burning away on his tongue. Something unfamiliar, something strange and improbable and devastating storms in his green eyes and her breath catches the moment she sees them.
Over the thunder of her frantic mortal pulse, she finally feels the glow of a key in the valley of her chest (Rose has forgotten how it burns and burns and burns for the Doctor and his Tardis, so much like her own heart).
A million and five questions - of things she has been waiting to say, to ask, to scream and yell and beg for - disappear into nothing. Rose has learned that with the Doctor, with this Doctor, almost everything has a time limit.
"Doctor?" The sounds, the syllables, the corners and curves and lines of the word scratch their way out of her throat and he is coiled, waiting for her, waiting for them.
"Rose Tyler," he says, smiling broadly and sweeping his arms out for an embrace, like he is greeting an old friend. A colleague. Someone unexpected and faintly familiar by virtue of an excellent memory.
"You are standing on a roof," is the only thing that pops to her lips and for the life of her she cannot think why.
"Oh. Quite right."
And just like that he leaps onto the thin ledge outside of the window and climbs in, helped by her grasping fingers and ready hands - always, always ready to catch the Doctor when he falls. She doesn't really expect to be able to touch him and the rough whisper of tweed is a shock.
"You regenerated," she accuses.
"I did." He fidgets a bit with the bow tie and never realizes how his hair is falling into his eyes (he never did). "How is it?"
"Different."
"Good different or bad different?"
God, how he has missed her laugh, the way her eyes half close and her pink tongue teases his thoughts, the way her entire body just thrums with the sound. "We've done this before."
Yes, we have, he thinks, but this is not the same.
He wants to ask where he is - or rather, the other him. He wants to ask if she has been happy, if they have been happy, if he has made the right decision, if she hates him, if he hates him. She breaks through this vicious chain with a touch, an invitation as she brushes the hair out of his eyes.
"I've missed you," she says, in place of the why and the how and the how could you. The Doctor is the Time Lord that never has time, she knows, so she tries to say everything that matters, everything that really, really matters in however many seconds she has left.
"You can come with me you know. One last trip for old time's sake."
She shoots him a look from underneath her trembling lashes, a patented Rose Tyler look that no one should ever take for granted ever again.
"You know that I would leave everything and everyone behind for you," she whispers, tracing the new contours of his face, relearning him, remapping him. "Anything and anyone as long as it was for my Doctor."
He leans his face into her fingers, into her hands, like he would pour himself through this bare, minimal connection and never have to live without her again.
How can such a tiny, girlish hand support his entire weight?
"I miss you, Rose." There is none of his flattened sorrow now, not when she smiles and shakes her head and shows him how he still breaks her, his precious, beautiful Rose, by not saying those damning words.
"I know. And you know that I could never leave you, not for anything or anyone. Not for all the stars and the planets in the sky."
And he does know.