Fic: Caterpillar. (Rose/Ten, PG, Challenge 25.)
Caterpillar. Rose/Ten, PG-ish, Challenge 25 (photos.) This is set just after the Doctor's regeneration into Ten.
One side-effect of traveling so long is that you begin to see patterns in things: drips and swirls of ice-cream, bootprints in snow, grooves in the Victrola.
One side-effect of traveling so long is that you begin to see patterns in things: drips and swirls of ice-cream, bootprints in snow, grooves in the Victrola. Jitterbug. This new body is either gaining or losing its mind. He looks down at her feet and she is standing in leaves, only it isn't leaves, it's the Horsehead Nebula, and just behind her heel is Sigma Orionis glowing away.
"That's a caterpillar," says Rose.
"It's a lot of things," he insists. He plucks it off the ground and lets it caress his knuckle with its unsettlingly hairy feet. "It's a member of the order lepidoptera. It's lunch, if you're a bird- no pun intended." Rose grins. "It's a predator if you're a leaf. Also, it's green."
"You're green."
"Only the once," he says.
He reads the steam from coffee cups and the back covers of other people's books when they are stuck riding the train, trapped on earth for fifteen nail-biting hours after the TARDIS is stolen by giant sentient ferrets from Geltis Four. Rose is beside him in sensible shoes and her hands are warm where he's been holding them. "There's a zero-gravity train that does the route on Ursa Minor, with a dining car and everything," he tells the commuter beside them. "Wonderful views. Even better sandwiches." The lady pats his knee and goes on reading Dorothy Sayers. The skull trembles silently beneath the skin, happy to be noticed.
Rose drops her soda in front of a waffle stand at Coney Island, circa nineteen-forty-three, and the ice on the boards scatters like an asteroid belt: fragments in a hundred glittering pieces, water disappearing into warmer air. He watches the cubes sweat and melt and vanish. They'll go up into the atmosphere and fall someday as rain.
"Doctor, when you stare at ice cubes like that," says Rose, "I start to get nervous. What's happening ?"
"Nothing," he says.
Everything.
He watches her sleep.
He sees cobwebs forming in the tangles of her braids, atoms of dust on her eyelids, blanket weave pressed into the flesh of her hands, spit on her lips. She's sleeping with her mouth open. There are moles on her arms: tea leaves, morse code, little omens. She breathes evenly and wheezes a little through her nose. When she gets up he'll want to take her places, show her a different-colored sky, whirl her around in his arms until she can see the world the way he sees it. In his old body he always used to be able to remember exactly how long it was since the war, how many ticks, how many grains. When she looks at him he forgets what day it is. What time.
Things are different now.
When she's woken up and had her tea, Rose starts a servants' rebellion on Capraxis. Later she helps him save Marie Curie from getting run over by a horse and visits the Galactic Senate and wins a game of jacks against John Philip Sousa, age seven.
"When you can't find trouble, you knit it yourself, by hand," he complains. Rose smiles and pulls him closer by the belt loops. She makes him hungry, thirsty, awake, giddy, all the things he should be far past feeling. He should learn a lesson from the caterpillar and concentrate on leaves, foliage, healthy green things that grow in dirt and sunlight. He dreams he is crawling around on the skin of a tree.
"They wrap themselves up in cocoons," she says. They're lying in bed for the first time, together, and he can't help but appreciate the sentiment. He could stay a season like this. "How long do they have to wait ?"
"Not long," he says. "One day they wake up and that's it, things have changed, no going back. They wriggle out, all new."
She's asleep before he can extend the metaphor.
He knows she can't stay forever. He knows she'll go, and change him again, put a pin in his hearts to hold him still.
But not yet.
There is a bridge over the Gap of Worlds, the darkness like a waterfall and ten thousand galaxies swimming beneath them. He tells her about it when they are standing on the hill above Cautley Spout.
"What holds it up ?" she asks. Below them, the river drops and drops again, as it's supposed to. It carries green leaves on the surface of the water, touches roots, makes them grow. And rushes by again, just as quickly, and is gone.
"Nothing," he says. "Everything."
He takes her hand.
One side-effect of traveling so long is that you begin to see patterns in things: drips and swirls of ice-cream, bootprints in snow, grooves in the Victrola.
One side-effect of traveling so long is that you begin to see patterns in things: drips and swirls of ice-cream, bootprints in snow, grooves in the Victrola. Jitterbug. This new body is either gaining or losing its mind. He looks down at her feet and she is standing in leaves, only it isn't leaves, it's the Horsehead Nebula, and just behind her heel is Sigma Orionis glowing away.
"That's a caterpillar," says Rose.
"It's a lot of things," he insists. He plucks it off the ground and lets it caress his knuckle with its unsettlingly hairy feet. "It's a member of the order lepidoptera. It's lunch, if you're a bird- no pun intended." Rose grins. "It's a predator if you're a leaf. Also, it's green."
"You're green."
"Only the once," he says.
He reads the steam from coffee cups and the back covers of other people's books when they are stuck riding the train, trapped on earth for fifteen nail-biting hours after the TARDIS is stolen by giant sentient ferrets from Geltis Four. Rose is beside him in sensible shoes and her hands are warm where he's been holding them. "There's a zero-gravity train that does the route on Ursa Minor, with a dining car and everything," he tells the commuter beside them. "Wonderful views. Even better sandwiches." The lady pats his knee and goes on reading Dorothy Sayers. The skull trembles silently beneath the skin, happy to be noticed.
Rose drops her soda in front of a waffle stand at Coney Island, circa nineteen-forty-three, and the ice on the boards scatters like an asteroid belt: fragments in a hundred glittering pieces, water disappearing into warmer air. He watches the cubes sweat and melt and vanish. They'll go up into the atmosphere and fall someday as rain.
"Doctor, when you stare at ice cubes like that," says Rose, "I start to get nervous. What's happening ?"
"Nothing," he says.
Everything.
He watches her sleep.
He sees cobwebs forming in the tangles of her braids, atoms of dust on her eyelids, blanket weave pressed into the flesh of her hands, spit on her lips. She's sleeping with her mouth open. There are moles on her arms: tea leaves, morse code, little omens. She breathes evenly and wheezes a little through her nose. When she gets up he'll want to take her places, show her a different-colored sky, whirl her around in his arms until she can see the world the way he sees it. In his old body he always used to be able to remember exactly how long it was since the war, how many ticks, how many grains. When she looks at him he forgets what day it is. What time.
Things are different now.
When she's woken up and had her tea, Rose starts a servants' rebellion on Capraxis. Later she helps him save Marie Curie from getting run over by a horse and visits the Galactic Senate and wins a game of jacks against John Philip Sousa, age seven.
"When you can't find trouble, you knit it yourself, by hand," he complains. Rose smiles and pulls him closer by the belt loops. She makes him hungry, thirsty, awake, giddy, all the things he should be far past feeling. He should learn a lesson from the caterpillar and concentrate on leaves, foliage, healthy green things that grow in dirt and sunlight. He dreams he is crawling around on the skin of a tree.
"They wrap themselves up in cocoons," she says. They're lying in bed for the first time, together, and he can't help but appreciate the sentiment. He could stay a season like this. "How long do they have to wait ?"
"Not long," he says. "One day they wake up and that's it, things have changed, no going back. They wriggle out, all new."
She's asleep before he can extend the metaphor.
He knows she can't stay forever. He knows she'll go, and change him again, put a pin in his hearts to hold him still.
But not yet.
There is a bridge over the Gap of Worlds, the darkness like a waterfall and ten thousand galaxies swimming beneath them. He tells her about it when they are standing on the hill above Cautley Spout.
"What holds it up ?" she asks. Below them, the river drops and drops again, as it's supposed to. It carries green leaves on the surface of the water, touches roots, makes them grow. And rushes by again, just as quickly, and is gone.
"Nothing," he says. "Everything."
He takes her hand.