Five Times Rose Married the Doctor, and the Very Last Time Too
Nine/Rose, Ten/Rose, TenToo/Rose
Teen
2738 words
Author’s notes: I’m pretty new to writing Who, and I’m crushing this in between two kids and a job and special education politics and other parts of a series I’m working on that I’m very slowly posting at Teaspoon. It’s full of clichés and tropes but I still love it, even if it needs a lot of TLC. This isn’t as fleshed out as I would like, and I’m desperately in need of a beta (any volunteers? MY run-on sentences are begging you to help), but I wanted to at least get this up as some of the pictures were so evocative! Thank all of your for this wonderful place and your wonderful work!!!
“Are you excited to be getting married again, Miss Rose?”
Rose smiled in the mirror at Jane’s reflection, brushing Rose’s honey blonde hair. The once demure Neo-Victorian maid who had become her friend, and she was happy to answer freely. “Jane, I’ve been married to the Doctor for years and years. What’s one more wedding?”
Jane pouted, and Rose giggled like a girl. “Nah - it’s always a thrill, seeing him waiting for me, knowing that the love of my life is gonna tell me again he wants to spend his life with me. And this time is special. It might even become one of my favorites.”
The brunette set down the brush and worked to finish knotting the intricate buttons on the back of the vermillion gown Rose wore. “You look so lovely, Miss Rose. But truly, you have favorite weddings? Just how many times have you gotten married? I mean, you haven’t spoken of any other men. Or women. Or aliens. Or…”
Rose bit her lip to keep from breaking up entirely. “I’ve only every married the Doctor, Jane. It’s been married dozens of times, some of which I’m sure he’s never even told me about. In some places and times it seems like all you had to do was sneeze on the right person and you were hitched.”
Jane’s four skillful hands began the process of dressing Rose’s hair, and Rose spoke wistfully of the long ago past. “The first time we got married, the Doctor held my hand in the ruddy middle of the marketplace on Elbsie XI. Nothing fancy - I was wearing a red hoodie and trainers and baggy jeans, looked a right mess. But they ended up locking us up in jail for a day for undocumented matrimonial celebration.”
Jane broke out into a fit of giggles, and Rose laughed lightly. It was funny, but it wasn’t one of her favorites. It was hard to pick any single favorite, each had their charms, but there were a few that shone particularly brightly in her memory. As Jane finished the intricate hairdo and left Rose to meditate for a minute on the coming ceremony, a first for this planet, Rose thought about some of the most remarkable weddings she’d shared with her Doctor.
Her first favorite wedding had been on the planet Avalon, where purple-feathered birds had evolved to sentience on a planet once occupied by a medieval tourist outfit from the 32nd century. To the TS’ELPE’K, the arrival of three humanoids in the middle of their holiest day was a religious epiphany. She’d been frog-marched off, and the Doctor had shouted after her in his rough Northern accent to just do what they said and she’d be treated well.
She was pampered, no matter how much she protested. She was bathed, perfumed and gussied up in what still to-date had been the most beautiful, romantic wedding gown she’d ever worn. Silver-edged lace. Cathedral length train. Diamond tiara. The works. In the mirror, she was breathtaking. Unrecognizable.
She was carried in an ornate sedan chair by giant walking birds toward their holiest site. Really, the castle had been a bit of a let down - a reclaimed relic that was lit up in brilliant blue and pink fairy lights and looked a fair bit like Euro-Disney. But the interior was lush, and before she could say Bob’s-Your-Uncle, she was walking down a long burgundy carpet in an immense throne room, holding a cascading bouquet of fragrant lilies, which made her want to sneeze. And her groom was, of course, the Doctor. Miracle of miracles, they’d gotten him out of his beloved leather armor and into a real metal one. His great big ears were suited to holding up that heavy-looking crown, that was certain. He looked distinctly uncomfortable and it took everything in her not to stop in the middle of her complex processional of tiny purple feathered birds in pink and white dresses throwing flower petals made of solid gold with their wing claws.
They hadn’t gotten to exchange vows or anything. Mostly they got a sermon. The beauteous story of R-Tur the great king and Gone-a-vair, the sweet young queen who will betray the great king and kill off his soul and the entire kingdom with her Last Breath. You could hear the capitals in that phrase. And read them in the supertitles displayed over the surprisingly tasteful altar.
Of course, all throughout this, she’d been trying very hard not to smile, laugh, or notice how the Doctor’s eyes kept moving over her, how they lit up with what looked suspiciously like longing.
So, Arthur and Guinivere got hitched, and then they got locked in a sumptuous bedroom to wait for the inevitable betrayal and the ominous Last Breath, which sounded like bad news for Rose. They were trapped without access to screwdriver or bottomless pockets at the top of a turret. So, instead of indulging in a properly interesting wedding night, she managed to get him out of the armor and he taught her Artraxian gin rummy while they sat on the bed, her in the sad wreck of her dress with the train ripped off, and him in a vest and black boxer briefs. Jack ended up being Lance-a-lot, complete with silver embossed codpiece, and barged in to “abscond with the fair, ethereal queen”. Instead, Lance-way-too-much absconded with king and queen and sonic and precious leather coat.
Her second favorite wedding? Oh, the Doctor hated this one. This was just after they’d been banished by Queen Victoria, and the Tardis had landed them on Lupercalia against the Doctor’s express wishes. It was a beautiful crisp fall day, and Rose really had enjoyed the scenery the moment they’d stepped out of the Tardis.
Of course, the next minute they’d both been turned into wolves.
The Doctor later explained that it was all some kind of virtual reality psychic manifestation, but at the time, it certainly felt completely real. One moment she was a human girl, and after a blinding flash of golden light and a truly horrid amount of bodily pain and disorientation, she was a wolf. So was the Doctor. Her mind was still a bit human, but more than a bit wolfy, so that when a huge gathering of other strange wolves arrived she was growling and barking, commanding to be obeyed as the alpha she was. The Doctor was doing the same, pushing her behind him and barking in a truly sinister and powerful manner than aroused her to an impossible degree. She was angry and horny and unbearable powerful and all the other wolves yipped and pawed but soon circled warily, waiting for a fight or a mating or something to break out. She turned to face the Doctor as they were sealed in the center of this ring of wolves. She howled to the wind in the trees, declaring him her mate and father of her future pups. He stared at her with golden eyes, struck silent. She bowled into him, knocking him backwards, and his paws wrapped around her neck as her nose came under his jaw. He was silent a moment longer, embracing her in a way half-wolf, half-Time Lord, before he too bayed at the sky that she was his.
She knew that they would mate, that their children would be strong and powerful and she drew back, turning to present her sleek sides, her beautiful tail, waiting for him to mount her and take what was his. And the Doctor picked up the sonic in his teeth, slapped at the side with his paw, and they were human again, with her bent over, arse in the air, skirt pushed up far too high for comfort. At least she’d worn pretty knickers for the Doctor to get an eyeful.
The surrounding crowd of suddenly-humans were very upset as their fertility rights had been curtailed, and the two of them had had to run to the Tardis very very quickly.
She’d laughed about how they both had something of the wolf about them now and he’d looked at her with haunted eyes and a fair amount of awe. It was only in her dreams, years later, that she recalled the memories of her other time as a wolf. Bad Wolf.
Her third favorite time was bittersweet, because it haunted her so much during their separation. Walking down that purple tunnel toward him, knowing that their survival depended on the constancy of her love - it was the easiest thing and the hardest thing she’d ever done. She’d never told him how she felt - she still wasn’t sure if he could love her the way she loved him - if he was capable of that domestic human emotion. But it was easy to be confident that she loved him. The Mirror of Erised wasn’t something that only existed in Harry Potter. The shards of the original had been made over on the Moon of Gowar in the year 1,000,052. The Tunnel of Trust was their harshest test, to knowing the deepest desire of your heart was the only way to enter the Tunnel and come out again. But it was nothing to Rose. For at the end of that Tunnel, she could see her Doctor.
Stepping through to the other side, she’d run into his arms and he’d looked overwhelmed, overjoyed. He’d come so close to kissing her, so close, she was sure of it.
When the warden had pronounced them husband and wife, a moment later, the Doctor had looked up, shocked, and the moment was broken. They’d continued on to negotiate a Peace that would last a hundred thousand years across this galaxy. But Rose still wondered what would have happened if he had kissed her in that silent shout of a moment.
There had been no witnesses to mark the occasion of her fourth favorite wedding to the Doctor. Just a tiny attic room in an inn in Norway, filled with the soft light of an early summer morning. She’d woken from collapsing on the beach, and he was still there. He was alone out there, somewhere in another universe, but he was here. Forever her Doctor.
They’d argued a bit, worked out things that needed to be said. Made discoveries of what made them, as ever, uniquely suited to each other.
This time, there was no where else to run and they found each other, the bliss of skin on skin, the embrace of two minds that had been reaching out across universes to reconnect. In this universe, in this incarnation with her, Rose’s Doctor had a different name - one that couldn’t break the skies apart if he whispered it in her ear - the emotion, the meaning of it was different, but no less beautiful.
Time stood still when their bond was woven. Two hearts and two souls breathing as one in ecstasy.
Her fifth favorite wedding may or may not have saved the universes once again. She was never certain about it, and all in all, she didn’t really care. It had been bad enough when her Doctor had writhed in pain when the other one had regenerated. Then the next year he’d had flashes of connection with his other self through cracks been the universe. Fortunately, no Dalek invasions again, but the Cybermen had claimed many more after falling out of a crack in Jakarta, and global warming had reared it’s ugly head again. He’d learned the fate of the Master, the evils of Rassilon, met new companions and the mysterious River Song, of whom Rose was both jealous and intensely grateful. For a tremulous moment her Doctor had disappeared from existence, her own heart almost stopped, but she would not, could not forget him. When he was back in her arms and the cracks had sealed, the visions ceased. The Tardis was safe, the other Doctor existed again, and her Doctor no longer dreamt of weeping angels and forgotten Romans.
Three years later, time itself began to fracture, chipping away at the sanity of everyone but the two of them. Ghosts of those long dead appeared whole and hearty and in 10 Downing Street, and no one questioned why. The Doctor had dragged her and her mother and Pete and Tony on to the Orient Express of all things, even as Torchwood was clamoring for advice and direction. Rose was more surprised he’d left their baby Tardis in her growing pool.
They’d sped along a countryside that couldn’t make up its mind if it was winter or spring or summer, with trees that held flowers and frost and fruit all at the same time. Cars flew and legions marches, and Jackie Tyler began to screech louder and louder as they approached Istanbul.
Then it was the fastest zeppelin to Cairo and a nervous Doctor pacing back and forth in the small confines, fingers in his great hair, muttering under his breath about stupid Time Lords and fixed points and terribly, terrible timing. He’d gone down on one knee and given her a lovely ring, platinum engraved in circular Gallifreyan around a brilliant orange-pink stone with a name she still couldn’t pronounce. Jackie had declared, “About damn time!”
And Pete shook his hand, declaring, “You have a terrible sense of timing, waiting until the world’s about to end. Suppose you have a plan to stop it?” And then they were hanging above the largest of the Giza pyramids, the stars out and the sun shining and flocks of pterodactyl spinning in the sky above. He dragged her out on to the observation deck, her in black trousers and a simple white shirt, not a bouquet to be seen.
He had Pete and Jackie repeat words to give her away to him.“I consent and gladly give.”
And the very air seemed to shiver for a moment, like a silent bell ringing. He wrapped a tie around their hands, a swirly tie that he’d found at Henrik’s - one that he hadn’t managed to blow up in this universe.
“How long are you going to be with me, Rose Tyler?”
“Forever.”
“Marry me?”
“Every time, my Doctor.”
He’d leaned close to her, whispering in her ear, “I will always be your Doctor, Rose Tyler.”
And then he’d kissed her, kissed her like the universe depended on that kiss being perfect. It was.
Time heaved a sigh of relief, and Tony made noises of disgust at the public display of affection. Jackie began ranting about not having the right kind of clothes packed for the heat of Egypt, and the circling pterodactyls had returned to the Jurassic period in peace.
Whatever was going on in the other universe seemed to have been worked out as well. That night they created something beautiful. Their impossible miracle of a little girl.
“It’s time, Miss Rose. The Doctor’s waiting.”
“Of course, Jane.” She rose from the vanity table and made her way to the door, looking out into the orange sky of her home. The first wedding on this planet. Perhaps one of her favorites. Mostly likely not her last, knowing the Doctor.
Epilogue -
The very last wedding of Rose Tyler and her Doctor was many, many years later, as both of them were too busy to bother growing old. When it did happen, there was also a need for a new Eye of Harmony to power the many young Tardis that were growing into maturity. Once, an Eye had been forced into being, leading to insanity and tragedy that almost ended time itself. This Eye was birthed in celebration, the supernova of two souls that would be joined together within it for all time, giving life to the protectors of Time ever after.