Title: 18 Seconds to Make Old Things New Again - Chapter 4
Author:
amberwindCharacter/Pairing: Nine/Rose, OC
Rating: PG-13
Warning: Angst, mild language
Disclaimer: I own nothing, and I make no money from this.
Spoilers: Spoilers for Rise of the Cybermen if you squint.
Summary:He'd just left Rose Tyler behind in an alley. So what was she doing nearly a hundred years in her relative future? And what's with all the Zeppelins?
Chapter 4: Tempers, Steel, and Sympathy - "I could spend days counting off the number of times we've gotten into trouble because you went and ran your gob! And don't even get me started on your driving..."
AU, missing scene from Rose and post-DD. Nine/Rose fluffy bits.
Chapter 1 -
Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 - Tempers, Steel, and Sympathy
“Truth must necessarily be stranger than fiction, for fiction is the creation of the human mind and therefore congenial to it.” - G. K. Chesterton
Rose shook her head in bemusement as the Doctor let go of her hand and stepped away from the TARDIS, spinning in a circle to take in his surroundings. As he stood gazing up at the passing zeppelin, though, her heart stopped for a split second. In that instant, with his arms hanging by his sides and his head tilted back, he looked exactly as he did in her dreams. Okay, now I know ‘complicated’ doesn’t even begin to cover it.
The Doctor turned to her again, and fixed her with a stern gaze. "This is wrong."
Rose sighed and folded her arms, leaning against the TARDIS door as she did so and adopting the same pose he had often assumed when lecturing her, long ago. "Actually, all of this," she explained, making a sweeping hand gesture at the zeppelins, "is right. It's supposed to be like this. Here, it's you and me that are all wrong. We don't belong here. 'S why the TARDIS shut herself down."
Rose allowed herself a small smile as the Doctor narrowed his eyes at her, processing the information. It hadn't been often that she had known something the Doctor didn’t, aside from his inclination to be utterly oblivious to his immediate surroundings, and she felt a sort of perverse joy in her temporary advantage.
In spite of this, though, Rose felt herself beginning to squirm a bit under the Doctor’s scrutiny. True, he hadn’t turned the full “Oncoming Storm” glare on her yet, but it was only a matter of time if she kept prodding him. Maybe it was time to stop playing around.
The Doctor’s voice was low and icy as he replied, “The TARDIS didn’t shut herself down. She died.”
Rose allowed her own voice to become steely, adopting a tone she had used to reign in difficult recruits and talk down invading aliens for years. The Doctor wasn’t the only one who could be intimidating when angered. “You said that last time too, and you were wrong then as well. As hard as it can be for you to accept, you do not know everything!”
The Doctor took a step forward, looming over her as his voice rose in volume. “Well then, why don’t you enlighten me?”
Rose stepped up, inches from the Doctor, her face a mask of fury. “I can’t!”
Rose met the Doctor’s gaze for a tense moment, before her expression crumpled in defeat and she leaned back against the TARDIS doors, rubbing her hand over her forehead in frustration. Her voice was quiet again when she finally spoke. “You know better than anyone that I can’t. It’s my past, but it’s your future. Gingerbread houses, you said. Wasn’t about this, but it’s the same principle in the end. While I’ve done a lot of stupid things over the years, you were always very clear that no one should know too much about their own futures, Doctor. I’ve already said more than I should have.”
Rose let her hand drop, and leaned her head back against the TARDIS, her eyes drifting to follow the flight of a passing zeppelin before settling back on the Doctor’s face. She knew the Doctor was studying her, gauging her reaction, testing her-it was something he had done often, in both incarnations, and even after 93 years of separation (for her, at least) it was second nature to just leave him to it.
Rose felt a quiet sense of relief as the Doctor seemed to find whatever he was looking for in her, and his own angry expression softened. While she had no problem calling the Doctor on his mistakes and bullheadedness, Rose had never liked actually fighting with him. It was exhausting.
The Doctor rested a hand on her shoulder, and he sounded apologetic as he said, “You’re right, you have. But I pushed you into it, and I’m going to have to keep pushing. If what you said is true, and we don’t belong here, then it could cause all sorts of merry chaos if I can’t figure out what happened and fix it. Which means at the very least I need to know how you got here, and where ‘here’ is.”
Rose arched an eyebrow at him skeptically. "How am I supposed to know that letting you know stuff about your future won't cause a whole different kind of chaos? You change any of it, and it's not just your life changing, it's mine too, and while God knows there are things I would love to change about my life..." Rose shook her head. "It's risky, and I'd rather not get any more familiarity with Reapers than I have to."
Shock registered on the Doctor's features as he squeaked out, "How do you know about Reapers?" Before Rose could reply, though, he held up a hand to cut her off. "Actually, nevermind. That's a good thing. You're thinking out consequences, which is more than I'd expect of most of you apes."
Rose allowed herself a snort of derisive laughter. That comment had just been so Doctorish of him, she couldn't help herself. She'd almost forgotten how much of an arrogant sod he could be, when given the leeway. "Half the time, Doctor, it's more than we can expect out of you."
"Oi!"
"'S true, though!" Rose gave the Doctor a grin, tongue poking out slightly. "I could spend days counting off the number of times we've gotten into trouble because you went and ran your gob! And don't even get me started on your driving..."
~0~0~0~
The Doctor felt the tips of his ears heating up. "There is nothing wrong with how I pilot the TARDIS!" he replied indignantly, crossing his arms over his chest in a defensive gesture.
He saw Rose shoot him an amused look, and just knew his ears were turning pink. "Oh, and you were planning on crash landing in the middle of Cardiff in an alternate universe, then?"
When she said that, some of the puzzle pieces jiggled and settled in the Doctor's mind, and his embarrassment over her teasing dissipated as curiosity and his natural inclination to try and fix things reasserted themselves. "But safe travel between universes is impossible. Has been since...," he let the sentence trail off.
The grin dropped from Rose's face as he spoke, and she finished for him. "The Time War," she whispered, sympathy and what looked like remorse creasing her brow. "I know."
The Doctor felt a wave of pain and remorse of his own over her words. If she knew about the Time War, that meant at some point he'd had reason to burden her with his secrets. And now, all the tiny differences between this Rose and the Rose he had left behind in that alley became startlingly apparent. Her hair was darker and shorter, yes, but it was also unkempt, like she hadn't the will to style it any longer. Where before she had worn too much makeup, now she wore almost none. The tweed jacket she was wearing was too big for her frame, and both it and the purple wool scarf bundled over her chest were darkened in places by old stains, some of which resembled blood. Her eyes, which had sparkled with innocence while running from Autons, still held life, but the innocence had fled and been replaced with a deep-seated pain that he recognized far too well. Oh Rassilon, what have I done to her?
Rose looked up at him through her lashes, and he felt his hearts melt a little under her gaze. In that instant, he knew that whatever else happened here, he would do everything in his power to fix what he had allowed to happen to this girl, and he was a bit startled by the realization. Perhaps Rose was right, and he didn't think about consequences enough.
"Doctor," Rose began, her voice small and pleading. "Can you promise me that whatever I tell you, you won't change what's going to happen? If I tell you how I got here, and what's happened to the both of us, you won't try to alter events?"
When he hesitated, her voice became more forceful. "Please, Doctor, this is important. As painful as my past is, especially where you're concerned, neither of us can afford even the tiniest change. There is a lot more riding on events than you could know from where you are in your timeline, and I can't tell you what happens unless you can swear to me that you won't change any of it."
The Doctor nodded, secretly impressed with her insistence on keeping the timeline steady. Most humans would have begged him to change history, if just hinting at events could bring as much pain as he was hearing Rose's voice now. "There's something I can do, if I need to. Once this is sorted, I can block the memories, set up a trigger so I don't remember anything you've told me until it's safe to do so."
Rose sighed heavily, and made a study of her trainers as she scuffed one toe against the concrete. "Okay. Let's get the TARDIS sorted, and then I'll take you down into the Hub and you can sit down with a cuppa and listen to the whole sad story. Don't say I didn't warn you."
The Doctor felt a little wave of anger again at her mention of fixing the TARDIS. "What do you mean, sort the TARDIS? There's nothing to sort--she's dead, simple as that."
He saw Rose roll her eyes at him, and reach underneath the scarf on her neck. She pulled a chain out and over her head, holding it up in the light. At the end was a key, a very familiar one. "Told you before, Doctor. You were wrong last time, too."
He watched as Rose turned and unlocked the TARDIS, letting herself in without hesitation. The Doctor made to follow her, and then stopped up abruptly, nearly tripping over Rose as she turned and reached into his jacket, plucking the sonic screwdriver from his breast pocket and checking the setting, using it as a torch as she strode into the console room. Well, she certainly acts like she knows what she's doing.
"Hey now," the Doctor exclaimed as Rose lifted up a panel and swung her legs down to go below the console, "you can't just go poking around under there! You could break something!"
Rose shone the light from the sonic screwdriver up at him, and then around the pitch black console room. "Well, at this point, I don't think I can do too much more damage than is already done. Just give me a mo' to poke around, at least. Couldn't hurt, right?"
The Doctor's gaze followed the path the torch light had taken, before settling back on Rose's dim outline. "No, I suppose not," he ground out, trying not to let his annoyance come through in his tone.
Apparently, he failed in that goal, as Rose gave an annoyed huff of her own before dropping down. He tried not to wince as he heard the beginnings of crashing electronics and metal as Rose dug down through the bits and bobs he kept stored underneath the console, although he was surprised after hearing a particularly loud crash to hear Rose start swearing in perfect Mandarin Chinese. "You know," Rose's voice drifted up from below the decking, "you might want to consider a bit of housekeeping every few centuries."
"Generally don't let anyone else poke about down there," he shot back, becoming distinctly worried as the feeble light of the sonic screwdriver disappeared from view. A moment later, though, the TARDIS's emergency lighting finally blinked into existence, and a disheveled Rose appeared at the opening, holding up a power crystal, already whirring in its recharging cycle. At the edges of his mind, the Doctor felt the vaguest whisper of the TARDIS's normal telepathic murmur resuming.
Rose handed him the power cell and sonic screwdriver, giving him a small smile before pulling herself up to perch on the edge of the gap in the grating. "See? The old girl just needed some TLC."
The Doctor gave Rose a skeptical look as she leaned over and gave the console an affectionate stroke. He knew damn well what it took to push over a power cell into a recharging cycle like this, even when it was working properly. And he was certain this one hadn't been--there had been nothing until Rose crawled under the console, not even emergency lighting. It would have taken a decade off of his life, perhaps more, if he had tried to do get the power cell working, with no guarantee that it would.
And in spite of the amount of energy she would have had to pour into the power cell to get it recharging, Rose was sitting in front of him, seemingly completely unaffected. The explanation she had promised him suddenly seemed that much more urgent.
"Well, it seems as though I have a day or so of waiting. I believe you promised me a story?" The Doctor offered Rose a hand up, which she accepted, swaying a bit unsteadily on her feet. Not so unaffected, then.
Rose changed her grip, slipping her fingers between his as she led him back down the ramp to the TARDIS doors. "Yes, I suppose I did."