Doctor Who Fic: Spark of Life
Title: Spark of LifeAuthor: silverlunarstar
Characters/Pairings: 9/Rose
Rating: PG
Genre: Romance/Fluff/Dash-of-Angst
Warnings/Spoilers: Post-The End of the World
Words: 695
Summary: One-shot. After chips, Rose wonders about telepathy.
Disclaimer: I claim no ownership.
Author's Note: I had quite a few ideas for this one, but this is the one Manni decided to go with. This was inspired by the 3rd picture prompt. Also, please forgive my rough explanation of the origins of the TARDIS. It didn't come out exactly as planned, but I think it's still too early for them for what passed through my head; Manni agreed so it's jotted down for another time. Anyway, hope you enjoy!
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Fish and chips were a girl's best friend, Rose Tyler decided. At the end of it all, she had decided to leave with the Doctor instead of taking a bus home. However, once they were back inside his ship, something nagged her mind. Hearing the ship hum lowly, she remembered. "Doctor?"
"Yeah?" he answered without looking up from whatever he was fiddling with.
"What exactly did you mean when you said the ship's telepathic and she gets inside your head to translate?"
Pausing what he was doing, he looked at her, contemplating what the simplest way to answer her was. He'd tell her because she deserved some answers. He knew she'd freaked out quite a bit on Platform One, but, as he'd told her in the beginning: culture shock; it's understandable. Deciding to be his usual blunt self, he said, "The ship's alive."
"Alive? How?" she demanded.
He tried to hide his grin. One of the fantastic things he caught about her early on was how she always asked questions, wanting to know who a person was, how something worked, why it worked the way it did, and, in the end, accepted it as it was. "My people were telepathic and they were able to create, what most referred to, a ‘TT capsule.’ They're slightly sentient so the Time Lord and ship can work together. Of course, this old girl is a bit…independent sometimes." He patted the console fondly.
"So…she can think, on her own?"
"Sort of, yeah. It only goes so far, though. She still needs a pilot."
"So that's where you come in? You drive, but she directs?" She grinned, her tongue slightly prodding out and tried not to widen her smile when he scowled. "So she can't do anything without your…permission?" she rushed out.
"She can, actually, but it's very limited. She can't travel without me, but there are little things. She once withheld all the hot water because we'd landed in a marsh."
This time she laughed out loud.
"You're asking an awful lot of questions, aren't you?" Okay, so maybe he didn't find that quality about her so endearing.
"Well, I'm just trying to understand. You're telepathic too." She hesitated briefly, before asking, "What does that mean, exactly?"
"It means, if I come in contact with another telepathic species, we can communicate. Sort of like your primitive devices, but in here." He tapped his temple.
"And non-telepathic?"
"Usually a telepath has to have physical contact with the non-telepath."
"Like…like when you told me about the turn of the Earth?"
Something in her tone made him wary. His eyes widened in realization. "You felt that?"
"I thought it was my imagination at first, but now it makes sense." She shrugged.
"I'm sorry," he said sincerely. "Without my people…I left my thoughts loose," he ended lamely, unable to find another way to explain it to her.
She smiled. "It's alright, I'd been wondering what that spark was."
"Spark?"
"It was like I was holding a star in my hands. I didn't really the make the connection until later, though. When I came in the ship, I didn't feel anything so it sort of freaked me out."
"What, did you think my ship went inside your head and messed around in there? Brainwashed you into coming with me?" he teased.
She's ashamed to admit, even to herself, that the thought did cross her mind, if only briefly; so there was no way she was going to admit it to him. "No, of course not. I came because I wanted to." She took a deep breath and admitted, "I wanted to say yes the first time around."
"Why didn't you?" he asked curiously. There were not many people he knew who would turn down the offer of traveling through space
At the end of the Time War, he felt as if his will had been broken. He had lost sight of the reason to go on. He'd simply gone about blundering in, not really caring. Looking at the pink and yellow girl grinning beside him, accepting him, he thought he might have just found the person to remind him of why he continued to.