(no subject)
The Most Terrible Monsters, Ten/Rose, Adult
Gift for: stillxmyxheart
Beta: malicehaughton
Nothing was ever going to come between them now, not ever, ever again. He knew that, could see it quite clearly in the timelines. All he had to do was ignore them. He was the Lord of Time, now, not just the Last Time Lord. Time obeyed him - it had no choice. 2,044 words
The Most Terrible Monsters
The Doctor closed a small, ornately illustrated storybook and ran a reverent hand over the stylized spiral of the golden Omniscate on the cover. "And now it's time for tiny Time Lords to sleep," he murmured very softly.
He'd already gotten his wish, after all, so he had to be quiet. His little son was curled up in an unlikely corner of the big bed, one fist caught in his own dark, springy curls, the other wrapped around his even smaller sister's hand. His golden-haired baby, her mother again in miniature, was sprawled all over every spare inch of space she could manage to occupy.
The Doctor stood from the antique rocker and placed the ancient storybook on an out-of-reach shelf. The joy in his hearts was overwhelming, nearly overflowing, as he contentedly watched his beautiful babies in their undisturbed and innocent slumber. He'd believed they were impossible, never going to happen, for so very long, and now here they were, everything he had ever dared to imagine.
He refrained from brushing their minds tonight, so as not to wake them. Beyond the miracle of their mere presence was the greater miracle they offered, that he would never be alone again. They would bring a future for his lost race, a tomorrow that he had long believed beyond hope.
He kissed each soft, sweet forehead, placing a benediction of love and devotion upon their needed rest. Then, almost reluctant, but not quite, he left them with the comforting knowledge that he would never have to leave them really.
The children's mother slept, too, and her sleep only looked as innocent. Clad in white linen and bundled in a nest of down and satin, she made him feel too old and impossibly young, and lucky beyond his worth besides. That she was here, with him, after everything he had done (in fear and in guilt) to send her away, was a gift even brighter than the two precious gifts she had borne into the world for him.
There had been a time when he would have been astounded merely to find that she wanted to stay with him. That had been so very long ago, before he'd asked and she'd promised to stay with him forever.
Nothing was ever going to come between them now, not ever, ever again. He knew that, could see it quite clearly in the timelines. All he had to do was ignore them. He was the Lord of Time, now, not just the Last Time Lord. Time obeyed him - it had no choice.
The Doctor removed his clothes in silence and climbed into the bed he shared with his young, human bride. Her heat was like the light of the sun on her world, warmer than anything he'd known in his life without her. He touched her softly, reverently, remembering how easily and how often he could have broken her, sometimes by accident, more than once on purpose.
There'd been so many times he could have made the wrong choices, but that was over and done with, now. Even if all of reality had been bent to bring them here, that was his right, and his privilege. The universe was clay in his artist's hands now, and he never had to pick the least wrong thing for someone else's sake, not any more. He could do what he needed to do to make everything right at once, to make Time do as he willed it.
She woke gently, her eyes drifting dreamily open, almost black in the dim light of their room, fathomless. He spooned against her, kissed her shoulders, kissed her neck, tasting the salt and the sweat and the sleep on her skin. She whispered his name and he answered her, reminding her that she was his with the soft possessive.
He made love to her slowly, so very slowly, stretching her endurance, putting off her pleasure for as long as her body could bear it. When he brought her at last, he tumbled easily after her, having taken both of them to their physical and emotional limits. Wrung out and spent, they slept.
**
"You cannot do this."
The Doctor woke alone to that voice, foreign and unreal, drifting in the silences of his room. He frowned at his inability to recognize it, frowned more when it did not stop there.
It carried on, instead, to tell him, "No one should have that kind of power."
Tough, he thought, and dressed to check on his family.
**
There was laughter in the TARDIS corridors, soft and musical laughter, and the Doctor grinned widely as he followed it. The nursery, just as the end of the hallway, had to be the source, where all the light in his world could be found.
The room, however, when he flung open the door to surprise them, was empty. It wasn't just "no one here right now" empty, though. It was "nothing has ever been here" empty. There was a cigarette-burned, tea-stained, dusty, musty, and bedraggled excuse for a mauve carpet in the middle of the floor. A dust mop and an old chessboard occupied one corner. Another corner had a rusted iron bed frame, minus the side slats, and also an empty deodorant can.
There was nothing else, not even the funny coat-hanger mobile they found in here when they picked this room to make a haven for their children. The laughter continued, young and carefree, and the Doctor frowned. Wrong turning, he decided, and chose another room.
This one was full to overflowing with spare parts and bits and bobs. He barely got it closed before everything in it tumbled out onto his head. Confusion was giving way to anger. His TARDIS shouldn't be doing this to him.
He stormed up the corridor to the kitchen, his wife's own little command center. He expected to find her and their children, playing happily together. Perhaps they would be ducked behind a counter, expecting to catch him out with some wonderful surprise. He slowed in his approach, a smile hovering at the edge of his frown.
There was trepidation in his steps, however. Something just didn't feel right. Laughter bubbled out from under the door. He allowed his grin to venture back onto his face, so sure he was worried for nothing.
It wasn't her kitchen. This was the one that had grown in its place, after she had fallen, before she had come back. It was colder, somehow, lifeless, like he had been when she was gone, though it was a secret he kept too close to his hearts for anyone to see.
Anger turned to fear as the laughter he had been following rang through the corridors again, differently familiar this time, the sound of distant madness playing wicked games with him. He turned from the wrong place and found himself in cobbled streets under a smoky, inky sky, and fear turned altogether to panic.
He ran, desperately looking for his children, for her, chasing ghostly dark laughter and shadowy figures. Someone had dared - dared! - to take them from him.
The corridors turned from cobbles to slate and plate steel, a steampunk gothic horror, and then to burnt out, blackened shells. The laughter that rang out everywhere was vicious, cold, ancient, like those things that he had locked away forever, come to torment him anyway.
This was a nightmare, from which he could not wake, and as a sparkling shadow dashed across his path to vanish into a stark white corridor ahead of him, the Doctor knew that everything had gone wrong. He had fixed it, all of it; that was within his power now!
He turned down the blindingly white, roundel-covered corridor, making a wild dash through a very distant past toward the door standing open at the end. He'd just seen a shape step inside, something made, he hoped, of more light than wishful thinking.
**
She stood next to a very old console, tidy brass and carved hardwood, looking at the monitor and out onto the surface of a planet. The Doctor paused to admire her slim shape, to fight down the terror and the heavy breathing.
She was wearing exactly what she'd worn when last he'd seen her: a leather jacket over black jeans. Viciously, he fought that impression off. She was not. There had been no last time; he'd fixed it all, fixed everything. There were no clones, no tumbles into parallel universes, none of that.
There was rain, pouring down on his head, pouring from somewhere he couldn't explain. All the same, he knew what rain it was, from the day he'd made everyone's choices for them, from erasing Donna's memories, to not allowing anyone to really say goodbye, to convincing a conjured him to take the punishment for all their sins.
Only that hadn't happened, and it never would, and she would never, ever leave him, just like she'd promised. Just like he'd promised her, too.
He reached for her, his hearts pounding, rage and fear and fight-or-flight hormones battling for control of his body. As his hand closed on her upper arm, his mind dredged up a memory of finding her alone and faceless, and he held his breath. "Rose?" he whispered.
She turned toward him, her dark gaze batting up to meet him, and the Doctor felt momentarily drained by the strength of his relief. Then, their eyes met.
As he had the first time he'd seen this, he recoiled from her, but the console stopped him from falling before her this time. Her face blazed impossible gold, Vortex light and eternity. The light reflected from her time-drenched eyes, from her starlit hands, pouring the beginnings and endings of things out over the course of history with every breath she took.
"Do I have to fight you, too?" he demanded.
She smiled and reached a hand to touch his face. He tried to escape her but could not. "This way lies madness," she breathed, softly. She was ethereal and strange, her hand brushing him but passing through him all the same.
"What have you done?" he insisted. Time was going to obey him, from now on, do what he said.
Fiery tears streaked down her cheeks, every bit as realistic as the rain he felt falling on his head, dripping from his clothes. He ached to hold her, to comfort her. She had created herself, after all, made herself for him, to be with him. "I want my family," he pleaded with her, because she had to understand, surely, the ache of their little ones' absence.
"Doctor," she said, her voice as broken as his hearts.
"Please, Rose," he said. "It isn't fair." It was his turn to have things his way, at last, surely. The Universe took and took and took from him, was saved and patched together and perfected by his hand a thousand times over. Surely it owed him something; surely he had a right to it this time.
"The most terrible monsters, Doctor, are the ones inside one's own mind."
He shook his head, vehemently. The terrible monsters were the things he destroyed, the atrocities he prevented, the evil he punished.
"This way lies madness," she repeated.
"Well, let it come," he thundered back.
**
The Doctor came to himself sore, cold, and lying in a mud-puddle in one of the natural gardens. Oddly enough, he was actually being rained on.
He was wholly aware that his nightmares were stranger than usual, but he wasn't absolutely certain how far he'd run around the TARDIS in his brief descent into insanity. He was also completely aware of how utterly alone he really was.
He didn't know the man he'd been in his dream. That man was the sort to go around clicking his fingers at his time machine, the Doctor supposed, the sort whose rage was powerful enough to frighten off whole armies.
The Doctor would never be that man: he'd been warned on more than one occasion. He had no idea why his subconscious was worried enough about the scenario to pull the Big Bad Wolf out of his memory to remind him the repercussions of changing time forever.
That morning, the TARDIS landed on Mars.
Gift for: stillxmyxheart
Beta: malicehaughton
Nothing was ever going to come between them now, not ever, ever again. He knew that, could see it quite clearly in the timelines. All he had to do was ignore them. He was the Lord of Time, now, not just the Last Time Lord. Time obeyed him - it had no choice. 2,044 words
The Most Terrible Monsters
The Doctor closed a small, ornately illustrated storybook and ran a reverent hand over the stylized spiral of the golden Omniscate on the cover. "And now it's time for tiny Time Lords to sleep," he murmured very softly.
He'd already gotten his wish, after all, so he had to be quiet. His little son was curled up in an unlikely corner of the big bed, one fist caught in his own dark, springy curls, the other wrapped around his even smaller sister's hand. His golden-haired baby, her mother again in miniature, was sprawled all over every spare inch of space she could manage to occupy.
The Doctor stood from the antique rocker and placed the ancient storybook on an out-of-reach shelf. The joy in his hearts was overwhelming, nearly overflowing, as he contentedly watched his beautiful babies in their undisturbed and innocent slumber. He'd believed they were impossible, never going to happen, for so very long, and now here they were, everything he had ever dared to imagine.
He refrained from brushing their minds tonight, so as not to wake them. Beyond the miracle of their mere presence was the greater miracle they offered, that he would never be alone again. They would bring a future for his lost race, a tomorrow that he had long believed beyond hope.
He kissed each soft, sweet forehead, placing a benediction of love and devotion upon their needed rest. Then, almost reluctant, but not quite, he left them with the comforting knowledge that he would never have to leave them really.
The children's mother slept, too, and her sleep only looked as innocent. Clad in white linen and bundled in a nest of down and satin, she made him feel too old and impossibly young, and lucky beyond his worth besides. That she was here, with him, after everything he had done (in fear and in guilt) to send her away, was a gift even brighter than the two precious gifts she had borne into the world for him.
There had been a time when he would have been astounded merely to find that she wanted to stay with him. That had been so very long ago, before he'd asked and she'd promised to stay with him forever.
Nothing was ever going to come between them now, not ever, ever again. He knew that, could see it quite clearly in the timelines. All he had to do was ignore them. He was the Lord of Time, now, not just the Last Time Lord. Time obeyed him - it had no choice.
The Doctor removed his clothes in silence and climbed into the bed he shared with his young, human bride. Her heat was like the light of the sun on her world, warmer than anything he'd known in his life without her. He touched her softly, reverently, remembering how easily and how often he could have broken her, sometimes by accident, more than once on purpose.
There'd been so many times he could have made the wrong choices, but that was over and done with, now. Even if all of reality had been bent to bring them here, that was his right, and his privilege. The universe was clay in his artist's hands now, and he never had to pick the least wrong thing for someone else's sake, not any more. He could do what he needed to do to make everything right at once, to make Time do as he willed it.
She woke gently, her eyes drifting dreamily open, almost black in the dim light of their room, fathomless. He spooned against her, kissed her shoulders, kissed her neck, tasting the salt and the sweat and the sleep on her skin. She whispered his name and he answered her, reminding her that she was his with the soft possessive.
He made love to her slowly, so very slowly, stretching her endurance, putting off her pleasure for as long as her body could bear it. When he brought her at last, he tumbled easily after her, having taken both of them to their physical and emotional limits. Wrung out and spent, they slept.
**
"You cannot do this."
The Doctor woke alone to that voice, foreign and unreal, drifting in the silences of his room. He frowned at his inability to recognize it, frowned more when it did not stop there.
It carried on, instead, to tell him, "No one should have that kind of power."
Tough, he thought, and dressed to check on his family.
**
There was laughter in the TARDIS corridors, soft and musical laughter, and the Doctor grinned widely as he followed it. The nursery, just as the end of the hallway, had to be the source, where all the light in his world could be found.
The room, however, when he flung open the door to surprise them, was empty. It wasn't just "no one here right now" empty, though. It was "nothing has ever been here" empty. There was a cigarette-burned, tea-stained, dusty, musty, and bedraggled excuse for a mauve carpet in the middle of the floor. A dust mop and an old chessboard occupied one corner. Another corner had a rusted iron bed frame, minus the side slats, and also an empty deodorant can.
There was nothing else, not even the funny coat-hanger mobile they found in here when they picked this room to make a haven for their children. The laughter continued, young and carefree, and the Doctor frowned. Wrong turning, he decided, and chose another room.
This one was full to overflowing with spare parts and bits and bobs. He barely got it closed before everything in it tumbled out onto his head. Confusion was giving way to anger. His TARDIS shouldn't be doing this to him.
He stormed up the corridor to the kitchen, his wife's own little command center. He expected to find her and their children, playing happily together. Perhaps they would be ducked behind a counter, expecting to catch him out with some wonderful surprise. He slowed in his approach, a smile hovering at the edge of his frown.
There was trepidation in his steps, however. Something just didn't feel right. Laughter bubbled out from under the door. He allowed his grin to venture back onto his face, so sure he was worried for nothing.
It wasn't her kitchen. This was the one that had grown in its place, after she had fallen, before she had come back. It was colder, somehow, lifeless, like he had been when she was gone, though it was a secret he kept too close to his hearts for anyone to see.
Anger turned to fear as the laughter he had been following rang through the corridors again, differently familiar this time, the sound of distant madness playing wicked games with him. He turned from the wrong place and found himself in cobbled streets under a smoky, inky sky, and fear turned altogether to panic.
He ran, desperately looking for his children, for her, chasing ghostly dark laughter and shadowy figures. Someone had dared - dared! - to take them from him.
The corridors turned from cobbles to slate and plate steel, a steampunk gothic horror, and then to burnt out, blackened shells. The laughter that rang out everywhere was vicious, cold, ancient, like those things that he had locked away forever, come to torment him anyway.
This was a nightmare, from which he could not wake, and as a sparkling shadow dashed across his path to vanish into a stark white corridor ahead of him, the Doctor knew that everything had gone wrong. He had fixed it, all of it; that was within his power now!
He turned down the blindingly white, roundel-covered corridor, making a wild dash through a very distant past toward the door standing open at the end. He'd just seen a shape step inside, something made, he hoped, of more light than wishful thinking.
**
She stood next to a very old console, tidy brass and carved hardwood, looking at the monitor and out onto the surface of a planet. The Doctor paused to admire her slim shape, to fight down the terror and the heavy breathing.
She was wearing exactly what she'd worn when last he'd seen her: a leather jacket over black jeans. Viciously, he fought that impression off. She was not. There had been no last time; he'd fixed it all, fixed everything. There were no clones, no tumbles into parallel universes, none of that.
There was rain, pouring down on his head, pouring from somewhere he couldn't explain. All the same, he knew what rain it was, from the day he'd made everyone's choices for them, from erasing Donna's memories, to not allowing anyone to really say goodbye, to convincing a conjured him to take the punishment for all their sins.
Only that hadn't happened, and it never would, and she would never, ever leave him, just like she'd promised. Just like he'd promised her, too.
He reached for her, his hearts pounding, rage and fear and fight-or-flight hormones battling for control of his body. As his hand closed on her upper arm, his mind dredged up a memory of finding her alone and faceless, and he held his breath. "Rose?" he whispered.
She turned toward him, her dark gaze batting up to meet him, and the Doctor felt momentarily drained by the strength of his relief. Then, their eyes met.
As he had the first time he'd seen this, he recoiled from her, but the console stopped him from falling before her this time. Her face blazed impossible gold, Vortex light and eternity. The light reflected from her time-drenched eyes, from her starlit hands, pouring the beginnings and endings of things out over the course of history with every breath she took.
"Do I have to fight you, too?" he demanded.
She smiled and reached a hand to touch his face. He tried to escape her but could not. "This way lies madness," she breathed, softly. She was ethereal and strange, her hand brushing him but passing through him all the same.
"What have you done?" he insisted. Time was going to obey him, from now on, do what he said.
Fiery tears streaked down her cheeks, every bit as realistic as the rain he felt falling on his head, dripping from his clothes. He ached to hold her, to comfort her. She had created herself, after all, made herself for him, to be with him. "I want my family," he pleaded with her, because she had to understand, surely, the ache of their little ones' absence.
"Doctor," she said, her voice as broken as his hearts.
"Please, Rose," he said. "It isn't fair." It was his turn to have things his way, at last, surely. The Universe took and took and took from him, was saved and patched together and perfected by his hand a thousand times over. Surely it owed him something; surely he had a right to it this time.
"The most terrible monsters, Doctor, are the ones inside one's own mind."
He shook his head, vehemently. The terrible monsters were the things he destroyed, the atrocities he prevented, the evil he punished.
"This way lies madness," she repeated.
"Well, let it come," he thundered back.
**
The Doctor came to himself sore, cold, and lying in a mud-puddle in one of the natural gardens. Oddly enough, he was actually being rained on.
He was wholly aware that his nightmares were stranger than usual, but he wasn't absolutely certain how far he'd run around the TARDIS in his brief descent into insanity. He was also completely aware of how utterly alone he really was.
He didn't know the man he'd been in his dream. That man was the sort to go around clicking his fingers at his time machine, the Doctor supposed, the sort whose rage was powerful enough to frighten off whole armies.
The Doctor would never be that man: he'd been warned on more than one occasion. He had no idea why his subconscious was worried enough about the scenario to pull the Big Bad Wolf out of his memory to remind him the repercussions of changing time forever.
That morning, the TARDIS landed on Mars.