(no subject)
Eeek, I hope this isn't late; I've literally been writing it up to the last minute.
the view from the other side, pg-13, Ten II/Rose
He grabs her hand, crushing his forgotten fork between their fingers, eyes lighting up with an excitement she hadn't yet realised she missed.
“Let's run away.”
And so they do.
Here when I say "I never want to be without you,"
somewhere else I am saying
"I never want to be without you again." And when I touch you
in each of the places we meet
in all of the lives we are, it's with hands that are dying
and resurrected.
When I don't touch you it's a mistake in any life,
in each place and forever.
It takes only three days of vaguely uncomfortable family meals, restless pacing and sleepless nights for the Doctor to snap.
It is 12pm, the 7th of July, and they are silently eating lunch alongside baby Tony at the unnecessarily expansive dinner table. Jackie and Pete are out at a publicity function. Tony gurgles and happily mashes his carrots, but otherwise the house is still.
And he looks at her, really looks at her for the first time in three days, without pretence or fear or self-defence, and his mouth opens in the widest smile she has seen grace the face of this man (human or otherwise) in longer than she cares to remember.
He grabs her hand, crushing his forgotten fork between their fingers, eyes lighting up with an excitement she hadn't yet realised she missed.
“Let's run away.”
And so they do.
--
At the airport, he flashes his ID and Rose flashes a smile and somehow they're at the front of the customs line, no visas or passports necessary, and without looking at the times or the boards or the destinations, they hop on the first plane they have to run to catch.
He watches the clouds, too excited to sleep. He's never travelled this way before. She tries to stay awake for him, to witness and share in his thrill, but it's not long before her eyelids are drooping, years of late evenings at Torchwood and sleepless nights at home finally taking their toll. When she wakes up four hours later, the pilot is announcing their descent in a language she doesn't understand.
“St Petersburg,” the Doctor supplies helpfully, giving her a little nudge when her sleep-addled brain doesn't prompt her to respond. “We're in Russia.”
--
She was obsessed with the Anastasia cartoon as a little girl, she tells him as they walk, crossing the river for a third time without ever seeming to have changed direction. Watched it every day for a month, she admits, and drove her mum mad.
“Have you heard there's a rumour in St Petersburg?” he laughs, hailing a taxi in a very un-Russian manner. The locals - stoic, grey, polite - stare openly, unabashed, at his exuberance as they hurry past. The snowflakes struggle to settle in his hair.
He won't tell her where they're going, or why. She laughs it off, accepting both his mystery and his hand into the taxi, just glad that they've ended up somewhere where he can have a plan, rather than deepest Peru or Birmingham or something.
“Business or pleasure?” the driver asks, his breath forming clouds as he laughs.
“Romance,” he replies in a language he knows she won't know, fingers finding their places between hers in the backseat of a taxi that smells like crisp, clean frost and old tobacco.
--
There is a pushing, anxious crowd of fifty, maybe a hundred people. Instinctively, Rose begins to elbow her way forward, but the Doctor pulls her back.
“There's something more here than what they're seeing,” he says quietly. “I want you to see it when it's quiet. Still. Without the ceremony and the tourists.”
Even now, there is still something of loneliness echoing in his voice. Only half-faking a shiver, she bundles closer into his side, her eager curiosity heightened, if a little more sedate.
Eventually, group by group the crowd disperses until only a few stragglers are left, craning their necks for another spectacle. When they leave, disappointed, the Doctor smiles slightly and moves forward.
Bit by bit, the departing crowd has revealed a row of square after enormous square of red granite, each inscribed with a gold star and letters in an alphabet Rose cannot read. One or two are topped with flowers. Most are cold, still. Silent. Snow has started to gather in the crevices of the golden words.
Ahead of her, the Doctor has ascended some stairs to the very middle of the row, standing some ten or so metres before a coffin draped with a bronze sheet, helmet and spear. A rich red rope separates him from the two guards standing at their respectful posts either side of the coffin, a small pit and an eternal flame marking the middle point between them.
“The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier,” he informs her, barely audible, as she reaches the top of the stairs and stands at his side. “Russia's memorial to the unnamed soldiers who died for their country during World War II.”
To their far right, a still-living soldier is leaning against a red square marked Сталинград, praying.
Rose's throat is dry. “How many?” she manages.
“Almost eleven million. The Soviet Union lost over 14% of its population to this war.” There is a deep pause in which even the birds seem to stop breathing, and then: “There's a real soldier buried in there, you know,” he says, gesturing to the coffin. It comes out lightly enough - almost conversational, like an interesting fact about the weather she might care to be told - for her to know what he's really thinking. War, no matter which battle, always has hit a little too close to home for him.
She steps silently closer and slides her hand into his. “No-one ever knew his name.”
Without a word, his fingers move once over hers. Too close to home indeed.
The praying soldier leaves. They are alone.
The snow is making the flame flicker.
“What does it say?” she whispers, gesturing with their joined hands to the Russian letters surrounding the bronze star that forms the base of the flame.
He tells her in Russian first, a searching question in his eyes that she's not sure she knows the answer to. “Your name is unknown,” he quotes finally, looking away. “Your deed is immortal.”
From across the square, a woman in an enormous, pure white wedding dress and a grey-suited man who is presumably her groom make their way slowly towards the memorial. Rose tears her eyes from the flame and frowns slightly at them, her eyes taking a moment to adjust to the sudden lack of orange light.
“How comes there are so many women in wedding dresses all over the place?” she asks him, tugging on his hand in an effort to lighten to mood, make him smile again. “Runaway brides?”
The Doctor rouses himself from his thoughts and turns to her, looking livelier with the chance to explain something. “It's a Russian tradition. Newlyweds visit the war memorials nearest to their home and lay flowers there.” His eyes slip away from her and land on the bride, now stepping away from her husband towards the memorial. She has three blood-red flowers in her hand.
“It's a thank you,” he murmurs, both of their eyes fixed on the flowers being lowered to one of the many granite squares. “A thank you from the people of Russia for the chances these soldiers have given them. Life, happiness.” When his eyes return to Rose, she is too absorbed with the sight of the bride and her flowers to realise that he is confessing the real reason he brought her here.
“It's a thank you for giving them the chance to love.”
--
He is worried, he confesses in little more than a whisper across the vast expanse of bed and sheets between them, that he cannot give her the right sort of life. The window open, the rain pouring, she is standing with her back to him. The bright lights of Nevsky Prospekt beyond the glass light the solitary droplet rolling down between her shoulder blades and disappearing below the back of her towel, her hair still damp from the shower.
He has been trying so hard today to make this life like her old one, like their old one, but he's never been a fan of lying and they both know there is no point pretending that either of them are who they used to be.
She remains at the window in silent contemplation, the noises of the city beginning to fade around her. In the gathering light, he rises from the bed and comes to stand beside her.
“Would you go back?” he asks quietly. “If you could, would you go back?”
When she turns to face him, the lightest of smiles playing around her mouth, the warmth in her eyes is more than the light from the feeble morning sun.
And then, three little words, ones that mean even more than those torn from her on a beach in Norway all those years ago: “He's not you.”
She turns bodily towards him and steps closer, toe to toe, but the look in her eyes is very clear: it's up to him now. When she hesitates, new to this, new to him, he knows that she is unsure even after all the I love yous of exactly what he wants.
He decides to hell with it. To hell with nerves and Time Lord rules and his own awkwardness. Alright, so she's in a towel and her hair is wet and they just had to fly to a foreign country because the TARDIS will take many more years to grow. But what does any of that matter, really? The tiny details, he has come to realise, aren't nearly as important when you won't let yourself see the bigger picture. He has lived three lives with this girl and he still hasn't got it right.
To hell with it, he decides, and kisses her right there, in a towel in the window of a St Petersburg hotel, the Russian rain streaming off the streets below, the blinding lights of Nevsky Prospekt lighting his way home.
It's not conventional. It's not Paris or Rome. It's not sitting at home, living their lives, waiting for all this happen. But what better way is there for them to fall in love?