Pages from a Broken Book - The Very Center of Being
Title: Page Five: The Very Center of Being
Author: azriona
Beta: the ever lovely jlrpuck
Rating: PG
Warning: Spoilery like crazy for Journey’s End.
Page Five of the Pages from a Broken Book series
Page One ~ Page Two ~ Page Three ~ Page Four
Summary: At heart, he is a coward. At heart, he knows what is true. Told from 10.5’s POV.
Characters: Rose & 10.5
A/N: The location herein actually exists; this page will give you some images. I continue to be blown away by the response to this story; clearly, I need to write more angst!
The Very Center of Being
He wakes to the shudders of the zeppelin landing. Rose stands at the windows, peering through the curtains with a frown on her face. He is groggy, his stomach unsettled, but the first thing he notices is the humming of the engines that haunted his dreams has changed. It is no longer a smooth, steady susurration but a choppy whine. He should lay his hand on the walls, murmur to the ship soothingly, and then remembers it won’t work.
“Are we there?” he asks stupidly, knowing he couldn’t have possibly slept that long, but he doesn’t care. Rose lets the curtains fall back and joins him on the bed, tucking one leg under the other.
“No - there’s a problem with one of the thrusters - it’s not working properly, so we’re making an unscheduled landing in Chartres. A few hours, the steward said.” She bites her lip in the worrying way she has, trying to decide if she should continue. The ship gives a lurch, and his hands grip on the bedclothes. “Enough time to go into the city, if you want. A little break?”
“Yes,” he says quickly, and swings his legs off the opposite side of the bed. His head hasn’t stopped aching, even with the sleep, though his stomach has at least stopped churning, for the moment. Only now it is his thoughts that race, nearly tripping over themselves in their anxious sprint to escape. “Is the cathedral still here? In this world? Beautiful thing - we should see it. And we aren’t too far from Paris - is Paris still here? We should go. Did I ever take you to Paris, Rose? We could walk, or find a taxi. Let’s go to Paris, Rose.”
He lifts his head; there is a mirror opposite him, and he can see himself in it. His rumpled shirt, his hair standing on end. Behind him, Rose on the bed, her eyes open in a sort of shock. Her lips might be trembling; in the reflection, she sits a thousand miles away from him.
“You - you want to stop traveling? You don’t want to come back to the ship?”
“We should go to Paris,” he repeats, a little more firmly this time. “We should go to the cathedral, and then go on to Paris.”
“But-"
“I’ll pay you back for the tickets.”
Her breath catches. “That’s not it,” she whispers, and scrambles off the bed, pulling further away from him. “I don’t care about the tickets. You’re running away again.”
He grips the edge of the bed. The throbbing in his head grows. “I want you to see Paris.”
“You want to get off this ship,” she retorts. “It reminds you of the TARDIS.”
The ship gives another lurch; his stomach rises and falls. He pushes himself off the bed, trying to find his balance on unsteady feet. “No, I-"
“You’re running away,” she says bitterly. “Oh, God. You are. You don’t want to go to Paris, you’ll just think of another excuse. The first mode of transport you can find, we’ll be back to London, and you’ll hide away in your bedroom forever, won’t you?”
“No,” he says, not even he himself believing his protest, and she laughs.
“You’re a coward. Just like him.”
It’s as though she knows the words that would rouse him the most. “I’m not him. I’m everything that isn’t him. He wouldn’t let me be.”
“Oh, this is his fault?” Rose laughs without humor. “Is that what you’ve been doing all week? Trying to figure out how to blame the fact you exist on him?”
“I exist because of Donna,” he says, feeling the anger rise from his heart to his head. “I’m here because of him.”
“You’re here because I dragged you out of the house and onto a ship,” counters Rose, and then takes a step back, her eyes going wide. “Oh, God. It’s not that you don’t want to be on this ship. You don’t want to be with me.”
“That’s not true.”
“Isn’t it?” Rose falls back against the dresser on the far wall. The tears threaten to spill from her eyes, and he walks to her, every step another heavy anvil on his heart. Rose, upset. Rose, in despair. Rose, who has been nothing but kind, is aching, because of him.
“I need you,” he whispers. “I wake up and you’re not there, and the silence crushes me in the dark. It’s the sound of your heart beating that puts me back to sleep.”
“Need me, sure,” she says softly, without looking at him. “But that’s different.”
She hurts, he can see it in the way her shoulders curve in, the way she won’t look at him. He can feel the heat and sorrow radiate from her skin. He reaches for her cheek, but she jerks away from his hand. “You want me to be him.”
She bites her lip. “No.”
“He left us on the beach, didn’t he? Tossed us at each other and left without saying goodbye. Do you really want me to be him?”
“Aren’t you, though?” She covers her mouth with a hand, still trembling. “You-"
“Rose.”
“No, it’s fine,” she manages to say, but the throb in her voice belies it. “You want to leave the ship, we’ll leave. You want to show me Paris, we’ll see Paris. I went once. It was awful. It’ll be better with you.”
“It’s that-" He can’t find the words. She wipes the unshed tears from her eyes with the back of her hand. “I know you tried, but-"
“It’s fine,” she insists, stubborn. He rests his hands on her shoulders, but she shrugs them away. “There’s a bus, they’re taking us to the cathedral. We can go from there.”
He follows her out of the stateroom, his heart numbly beating in his chest. The zeppelin has landed, and the buzzing of the engines dies away. Most of the other passengers are heading out to the waiting bus; their incomprehensible chatter fills the air. He cannot understand the words, but he hears their excitement at the unscheduled stop. He remembers feeling the adventurous joy that came with unexpected journeys. The way his thoughts would bubble over with glee, flow out of his mouth and infect those around him with the excitement of new experiences. He could pretend, he knows. He could rattle on to Rose about the history of the cathedral, the people who built it, the people who burned it down. He could take her hand and point out the corners and crannies, and tell her fantastic stories, pull her into one of the forgotten corners and kiss her lips beneath the stained glass, her eyelids, her nose, and they could come back on the bus with the others, hide away in their stateroom, and spend the rest of the week exploring sacred spaces of a different variety.
Rose returns to his side, a duffel bag in either hand. She does not look at him, but rests her head briefly against his shoulder, in a quiet, unspoken show of support. He cannot tell if she is angry or disappointed. He supposes it doesn’t matter. They board the bus with the other passengers, setting the duffels at their feet, and as soon as they are seated, Rose turns away from him, curling into herself.
“It’s ten minutes to the cathedral,” she says, her voice flat. “And there’s a train station down the street, we can take that into Paris. The steward told me.”
“Are they angry?”
“No.” Her voice is short; he thinks she might be angry herself. “I...I’m sorry. I thought this - I thought it would really work. I thought this would make you better.”
“I-" He sighs. His head falls back against his seat. “I don’t know how to be better.”
“You don’t have to instantly be better. You just have to try.”
“I am trying.”
“No, you’re not,” she says quietly. “The first frightening thing that happens to you, and you run from it. You used to face things head on. You used to stand tall and shout at the wind. You were the wind! Now you’re letting the wind blow you over.”
“I’m a coward.”
“A coward couldn’t have killed the Daleks.”
He remembers the moment, the adrenaline running through his veins. The height of laughter and the rush of certainty. “A coward couldn’t have done any differently.”
She turns back to him, rests her head on his shoulder, and he leans back against the seat, letting his gaze fall out the window. The French countryside rushes past them, rambling and wild, round and green, and it isn’t long before the green grass fades into brown stone, the city, with people on the sidewalks in brightly colored blurs.
He and Rose follow the other passengers to the cathedral. He’s carrying their bags now, slung over a shoulder. The cathedral rises high above them, spires floating up to the sky. It is beautiful and terrible all at the same time; for the first time, he feels small and insignificant as they approach. The cathedral grows only more imposing, looming over them.
“A rose window,” he says without thinking, his heart thudding, and Rose glances at him.
“Yeah?”
“The big circular stained glass window there, that’s a rose window,” he tells her, and his hand automatically reaches for hers. She takes it, twisting her fingers with his. His heart still thumps, but his mind races to something familiar; a history, a story, his old way of running without taking a step.
“Doesn’t look like a rose, really.”
“Well, it’s not, really. Comes from the French word roué, means round. Somewhere along the way, someone mistranslated-" His heart skips a beat, but has the audacity to continue beating. “You see them quite a lot in medieval architecture, there’re three in Chartres cathedral. Should have been four, but there was a bit of a problem with the mason.”
“Oh?”
“Plasmavore. He was eating the priests.”
Rose laughs, and squeezes his hand. He glances at her, almost shy suddenly. He hasn’t heard her laugh since - oh.
“Not my memory, is it?” he asks as they reach the steps, and the rest of the zeppelin passengers stream into the cathedral. “It’s his.”
She grips his hand to keep him next to her in the doorway. “It’s yours, too.”
“Only - I haven’t heard you laugh since he left. Not really. I haven’t heard you laugh since that day when I lost you. If I’m not him, I’ve never heard you laugh, Rose.”
“It doesn’t matter,” says Rose fiercely, and she goes up on her toes to press her lips to his. “Let’s go inside, right? Show me where the other rose window was meant to be.”
But he can’t. The interior of the cathedral takes his breath away. He’d forgotten how tall it is, the buttresses flying overhead, like curved fingertips touching on outstretched arms. Rose stands next to him, waiting, expectant.
The group of passengers mill nearby; their chattering dies down when the docent begins to speak.
“Welcome to Chartres Cathedral. Begun in the 12th century, it was considered an architectural marvel of the time...”
Rose pulls on his hand. “Come on, you can tell me which bits she has wrong.”
“You go on,” he says, still lost in the space above. She hesitates. “It’s all right. I’ll join you, I just - I need a moment.”
“All right,” she says after a moment, and his hand is cool when she lets go. The light plays on the ceiling, gold and brown. He thinks he sees the shadows move in the dim light; he knows it’s a trick, because time is not accelerating for him, nor does it slow down.
The group begins to move further into the cathedral; Rose trails behind. He glances and watches her walk away with them; he wants to follow her, take her hand, whisper the inconsistencies of the docent’s stories in her ear. They would be horribly rude and giggle together, and might end up being thrown out of the holy space on their ears. He could go, put one foot in front of the other, the easiest thing, but he is stuck like stone to where he stands.
“Attendez-vous pour marcher le labyrinthe?”
The words fall heavy. They could be familiar enough to recognize, he thinks. But he’s only able to catch the last word; the rest is a jumble. “I’m sorry, I...”
The woman smiles at him apologetically. She is small, thin as a bird; her eyes shine brightly and her hair is frosted white. She reminds him of a dove. “Oh, no, I am sorry. Do you wait for the labyrinth? I’ll have it uncovered in a moment.”
“Labyrinth.” He looks down at the floor, under the chairs laid out in rows. The lines along the stone are visible, once he knows to look, and the woman quickly begins to move the chairs from the pattern. She is spry, he thinks, despite her white hair. “I’d forgotten.”
“Then you’ve not walked it before?”
“No.” He hadn’t walked it before - him, the Other Him, neither of them could be bothered. Several other docents begin to scurry, quick to remove the chairs as efficiently as possible, now that a pilgrim awaits.
“Ah!” She sets a chair down by the side, and returns to him. “You must set down your baggage - just over there will do. There are many ways to walk a labyrinth; shall I tell you my favorite?”
“Yes.”
She smiles; it’s a lovely smile, nothing like Rose’s, but warm and generous. “Such a calming thing, to walk the labyrinth. I start there, where the path begins, and I follow it in, thinking about my life so far, every person I’ve loved, every place I’ve been, everything I’ve done.”
“That would take me a while,” he says, almost dryly, and she chuckles, touching her grey hair.
“Do you think? Perhaps. Your eyes are old. When I reach the center - you see it now, there? That is my now. What I have, who I am, those who love me, those whom I love.”
He says nothing. His eyes focus on the center of the labyrinth, now nearly cleared of the chairs. It is a circle a few meters wide, with curves like petals around it.
“When I am ready to leave the labyrinth, I follow the same path, only now the past is behind me, and I focus on where I am going, how I will live my life when I am done.” She pauses. “What do you think? Will you try it?”
He cannot pull his eyes from the center of the labyrinth; in truth, he’s barely heard the woman’s advice. “There are things - I’d rather not remember.”
“All the more reason to remember, so that you can let them go,” she says gently, and takes his arm. His feet move with her, and then he stands at the entrance. Her hands are cool and gentle on his arms. “I’ll be near. Go on.”
He nearly falls on his first step, and she releases his arm. For a moment, he thinks he will fall, and then he steadies himself with his other foot, and before he realizes, he is walking.
Where I have been...
The memories flood without warning. Gallifrey and deep red grass, New Earth and apples. The sun beating down on an Aztec garden, the moon twinkling above stormy seas. The pit of Hell, the clouds of Heaven, the End of Time, the Beginning of everything else.
He stood on a beach, once, while he burned a star in the sky. It was years before he felt the sand beneath his feet.
He turns the corner as the path twists around. His feet move easily now, one in front of the other. He is in two places, he thinks: all the wheres he has visited in his life, and here, walking the labyrinth, careful not to stray.
Who I have loved...
Susan. Romana. Ace. Sarah Jane. Adric. Joan. Tegan. Jamie. Peri. Jack. Martha.
Donna.
TARDIS.
Rose.
She is there, somewhere in the cathedral, the only one he has left. The path turns him; and his eyes search her out, finding her with the tour, examining sets of statues in the nave. She stands apart from the rest, hands clasped behind her back, and he knows she only half listens to the docent’s lecture. It’s as though she’s waiting for something else to happen, for him to join her or to race away, and she wants to be ready for either.
The labyrinth turns him again.
What I have done...
He nearly stumbles. He stops and closes his eyes.
It washes over him, an ocean wave of screaming. The smell of burnt cotton, the quick intake of breath, the cold touch of last moments. The fires burn brightly and the rain falls around him. He shivers, growing cold in a way he doesn’t remember.
He never grew cold before. There was never colder to grow.
He never walked the labyrinth, either.
Again, he walks. He remembers the red grass, running his fingers through it. Sipping chocolate in a garden in South America. Offering the enemy a jelly baby at the worst possible moment. Providing words of comfort to a frightened bride and groom when all hope was lost. And laughter - always laughter.
He finds himself in the center of the labyrinth.
The pattern stretches as he stands at the epicenter, unfolding itself like a flower, smooth and organic. He does not remember quite how he got there, only that he feels strangely at peace. He did these things - he, the one standing in the center. Loved those people, those places, long ago, in different lifetimes, as different men, along a path he’ll never walk again.
But it is him, only him, human him, who stands here now, waiting.
What I have.
It isn’t much. Some clothes, a blue suit tucked away in a drawer. The pair of glasses he finds he needs to read after all. Donna’s voice. The memorized schematics on how to build a sonic screwdriver, tucked with a hundred thousand other memories.
Who I am.
He is...himself. Not John Noble, whoever that is, not yet. He is a man, a human man, who has all the best parts of a Time Lord - or so Donna said. He is growing older every day, one step closer to the last day he’ll ever have, a day much closer than it used to be. He remembers what it is like to hold all of time and space in his head - he wonders what his other self would think.
Only...he knows, doesn’t he? He’s always known what he would want, if given the chance to follow a path long since denied. He nearly took it, once, with a woman who almost reminded him of Rose. A woman who was kind, and gentle, and had also lost the love of her life to something she couldn’t control.
Another woman waits for him, somewhere in the cathedral, somewhere in the shadows. She has followed him every step of the way. But he thinks he can see the disappointment in her eyes - the sorrow and the pain, and he wonders, oh so briefly - if she would suffer him, as he is, to follow him forever.
He won’t let her follow him into hell. He might not owe the Other Him much, but if nothing else, he owes that. The only way to keep her from following him there is to simply not go.
He walks.
Who loves me. Whom I love.
He winds his way through the petals, each step more certain. The past rolls up behind him, tucking itself neatly away, but he doesn’t bother with it. He barely notices it. His eyes scan the cathedral, looking for her.
Where am I going.
The docent’s voice becomes clear as the tour group nears the labyrinth. “Now as we return to the entrance, please turn your attention to just here...”
He glances at the group, and sees Rose. She stands apart from the rest, who are clearly unable to hold her attention. Her gaze is focused on the rose window above them, and he follows to see the sun shine through the glass, throwing colored shapes upon the floor. He stops as the colors scatter across his path. It’s difficult to see the markings, and his eyes dart back and forth, trying to determine his next step.
Instinctively, he looks up, and sees Rose watching him. The tour has moved on, but she remains in her spot, chest heaving.
He wants to run to her, to pull her into his arms then and there. His feet begin to move - and turn him abruptly away, continuing the labyrinth. He feels his breath catch.
And he is turned back again, to Rose. But now she has begun to move, clockwise on the edge of the path, and when he turns, she is still there, in the periphery.
He picks up his pace.
What kind of man I will be.
She is waiting for him. He thinks she might have been waiting her entire life.
She stands at the entrance to the labyrinth, and when he finally steps out, she wraps her arms around his waist and holds him tight. He rests his head in the crook of her neck, breathes her in. She smells of salt and soap.
When she pulls away to look at him, her eyes are shining with tears. “Hello.”
“Hello,” he replies, his voice strangely hoarse. “Are you ready to go back to the ship?”
He can see the amazement in her eyes - she tries to laugh, and cannot. “You - you want to go back?”
“Yeah.”
She hugs him again. He can feel her damp cheeks through his shirt, and he kisses the top of her head. He isn’t better, he knows. He won’t ever be better, not when he can still feel the empty burn where the TARDIS used to be, when Donna’s voice threatens to spill out in his words. His other self couldn’t have known what it felt like, to be human and not have these things to hold him steady.
He thinks the nightmares will come again, when he lays down to sleep aboard a ship that sounds wrong, floating high above the ground. But Rose will be there, and the steady beat of their hearts together will lull him back to sleep.
“Yes,” she whispers into his chest, and they race for the bus together, carrying their bags and holding hands.
Jump to Page Six - A Journey in Three Stops
Author: azriona
Beta: the ever lovely jlrpuck
Rating: PG
Warning: Spoilery like crazy for Journey’s End.
Page Five of the Pages from a Broken Book series
Page One ~ Page Two ~ Page Three ~ Page Four
Summary: At heart, he is a coward. At heart, he knows what is true. Told from 10.5’s POV.
Characters: Rose & 10.5
A/N: The location herein actually exists; this page will give you some images. I continue to be blown away by the response to this story; clearly, I need to write more angst!
The Very Center of Being
He wakes to the shudders of the zeppelin landing. Rose stands at the windows, peering through the curtains with a frown on her face. He is groggy, his stomach unsettled, but the first thing he notices is the humming of the engines that haunted his dreams has changed. It is no longer a smooth, steady susurration but a choppy whine. He should lay his hand on the walls, murmur to the ship soothingly, and then remembers it won’t work.
“Are we there?” he asks stupidly, knowing he couldn’t have possibly slept that long, but he doesn’t care. Rose lets the curtains fall back and joins him on the bed, tucking one leg under the other.
“No - there’s a problem with one of the thrusters - it’s not working properly, so we’re making an unscheduled landing in Chartres. A few hours, the steward said.” She bites her lip in the worrying way she has, trying to decide if she should continue. The ship gives a lurch, and his hands grip on the bedclothes. “Enough time to go into the city, if you want. A little break?”
“Yes,” he says quickly, and swings his legs off the opposite side of the bed. His head hasn’t stopped aching, even with the sleep, though his stomach has at least stopped churning, for the moment. Only now it is his thoughts that race, nearly tripping over themselves in their anxious sprint to escape. “Is the cathedral still here? In this world? Beautiful thing - we should see it. And we aren’t too far from Paris - is Paris still here? We should go. Did I ever take you to Paris, Rose? We could walk, or find a taxi. Let’s go to Paris, Rose.”
He lifts his head; there is a mirror opposite him, and he can see himself in it. His rumpled shirt, his hair standing on end. Behind him, Rose on the bed, her eyes open in a sort of shock. Her lips might be trembling; in the reflection, she sits a thousand miles away from him.
“You - you want to stop traveling? You don’t want to come back to the ship?”
“We should go to Paris,” he repeats, a little more firmly this time. “We should go to the cathedral, and then go on to Paris.”
“But-"
“I’ll pay you back for the tickets.”
Her breath catches. “That’s not it,” she whispers, and scrambles off the bed, pulling further away from him. “I don’t care about the tickets. You’re running away again.”
He grips the edge of the bed. The throbbing in his head grows. “I want you to see Paris.”
“You want to get off this ship,” she retorts. “It reminds you of the TARDIS.”
The ship gives another lurch; his stomach rises and falls. He pushes himself off the bed, trying to find his balance on unsteady feet. “No, I-"
“You’re running away,” she says bitterly. “Oh, God. You are. You don’t want to go to Paris, you’ll just think of another excuse. The first mode of transport you can find, we’ll be back to London, and you’ll hide away in your bedroom forever, won’t you?”
“No,” he says, not even he himself believing his protest, and she laughs.
“You’re a coward. Just like him.”
It’s as though she knows the words that would rouse him the most. “I’m not him. I’m everything that isn’t him. He wouldn’t let me be.”
“Oh, this is his fault?” Rose laughs without humor. “Is that what you’ve been doing all week? Trying to figure out how to blame the fact you exist on him?”
“I exist because of Donna,” he says, feeling the anger rise from his heart to his head. “I’m here because of him.”
“You’re here because I dragged you out of the house and onto a ship,” counters Rose, and then takes a step back, her eyes going wide. “Oh, God. It’s not that you don’t want to be on this ship. You don’t want to be with me.”
“That’s not true.”
“Isn’t it?” Rose falls back against the dresser on the far wall. The tears threaten to spill from her eyes, and he walks to her, every step another heavy anvil on his heart. Rose, upset. Rose, in despair. Rose, who has been nothing but kind, is aching, because of him.
“I need you,” he whispers. “I wake up and you’re not there, and the silence crushes me in the dark. It’s the sound of your heart beating that puts me back to sleep.”
“Need me, sure,” she says softly, without looking at him. “But that’s different.”
She hurts, he can see it in the way her shoulders curve in, the way she won’t look at him. He can feel the heat and sorrow radiate from her skin. He reaches for her cheek, but she jerks away from his hand. “You want me to be him.”
She bites her lip. “No.”
“He left us on the beach, didn’t he? Tossed us at each other and left without saying goodbye. Do you really want me to be him?”
“Aren’t you, though?” She covers her mouth with a hand, still trembling. “You-"
“Rose.”
“No, it’s fine,” she manages to say, but the throb in her voice belies it. “You want to leave the ship, we’ll leave. You want to show me Paris, we’ll see Paris. I went once. It was awful. It’ll be better with you.”
“It’s that-" He can’t find the words. She wipes the unshed tears from her eyes with the back of her hand. “I know you tried, but-"
“It’s fine,” she insists, stubborn. He rests his hands on her shoulders, but she shrugs them away. “There’s a bus, they’re taking us to the cathedral. We can go from there.”
He follows her out of the stateroom, his heart numbly beating in his chest. The zeppelin has landed, and the buzzing of the engines dies away. Most of the other passengers are heading out to the waiting bus; their incomprehensible chatter fills the air. He cannot understand the words, but he hears their excitement at the unscheduled stop. He remembers feeling the adventurous joy that came with unexpected journeys. The way his thoughts would bubble over with glee, flow out of his mouth and infect those around him with the excitement of new experiences. He could pretend, he knows. He could rattle on to Rose about the history of the cathedral, the people who built it, the people who burned it down. He could take her hand and point out the corners and crannies, and tell her fantastic stories, pull her into one of the forgotten corners and kiss her lips beneath the stained glass, her eyelids, her nose, and they could come back on the bus with the others, hide away in their stateroom, and spend the rest of the week exploring sacred spaces of a different variety.
Rose returns to his side, a duffel bag in either hand. She does not look at him, but rests her head briefly against his shoulder, in a quiet, unspoken show of support. He cannot tell if she is angry or disappointed. He supposes it doesn’t matter. They board the bus with the other passengers, setting the duffels at their feet, and as soon as they are seated, Rose turns away from him, curling into herself.
“It’s ten minutes to the cathedral,” she says, her voice flat. “And there’s a train station down the street, we can take that into Paris. The steward told me.”
“Are they angry?”
“No.” Her voice is short; he thinks she might be angry herself. “I...I’m sorry. I thought this - I thought it would really work. I thought this would make you better.”
“I-" He sighs. His head falls back against his seat. “I don’t know how to be better.”
“You don’t have to instantly be better. You just have to try.”
“I am trying.”
“No, you’re not,” she says quietly. “The first frightening thing that happens to you, and you run from it. You used to face things head on. You used to stand tall and shout at the wind. You were the wind! Now you’re letting the wind blow you over.”
“I’m a coward.”
“A coward couldn’t have killed the Daleks.”
He remembers the moment, the adrenaline running through his veins. The height of laughter and the rush of certainty. “A coward couldn’t have done any differently.”
She turns back to him, rests her head on his shoulder, and he leans back against the seat, letting his gaze fall out the window. The French countryside rushes past them, rambling and wild, round and green, and it isn’t long before the green grass fades into brown stone, the city, with people on the sidewalks in brightly colored blurs.
He and Rose follow the other passengers to the cathedral. He’s carrying their bags now, slung over a shoulder. The cathedral rises high above them, spires floating up to the sky. It is beautiful and terrible all at the same time; for the first time, he feels small and insignificant as they approach. The cathedral grows only more imposing, looming over them.
“A rose window,” he says without thinking, his heart thudding, and Rose glances at him.
“Yeah?”
“The big circular stained glass window there, that’s a rose window,” he tells her, and his hand automatically reaches for hers. She takes it, twisting her fingers with his. His heart still thumps, but his mind races to something familiar; a history, a story, his old way of running without taking a step.
“Doesn’t look like a rose, really.”
“Well, it’s not, really. Comes from the French word roué, means round. Somewhere along the way, someone mistranslated-" His heart skips a beat, but has the audacity to continue beating. “You see them quite a lot in medieval architecture, there’re three in Chartres cathedral. Should have been four, but there was a bit of a problem with the mason.”
“Oh?”
“Plasmavore. He was eating the priests.”
Rose laughs, and squeezes his hand. He glances at her, almost shy suddenly. He hasn’t heard her laugh since - oh.
“Not my memory, is it?” he asks as they reach the steps, and the rest of the zeppelin passengers stream into the cathedral. “It’s his.”
She grips his hand to keep him next to her in the doorway. “It’s yours, too.”
“Only - I haven’t heard you laugh since he left. Not really. I haven’t heard you laugh since that day when I lost you. If I’m not him, I’ve never heard you laugh, Rose.”
“It doesn’t matter,” says Rose fiercely, and she goes up on her toes to press her lips to his. “Let’s go inside, right? Show me where the other rose window was meant to be.”
But he can’t. The interior of the cathedral takes his breath away. He’d forgotten how tall it is, the buttresses flying overhead, like curved fingertips touching on outstretched arms. Rose stands next to him, waiting, expectant.
The group of passengers mill nearby; their chattering dies down when the docent begins to speak.
“Welcome to Chartres Cathedral. Begun in the 12th century, it was considered an architectural marvel of the time...”
Rose pulls on his hand. “Come on, you can tell me which bits she has wrong.”
“You go on,” he says, still lost in the space above. She hesitates. “It’s all right. I’ll join you, I just - I need a moment.”
“All right,” she says after a moment, and his hand is cool when she lets go. The light plays on the ceiling, gold and brown. He thinks he sees the shadows move in the dim light; he knows it’s a trick, because time is not accelerating for him, nor does it slow down.
The group begins to move further into the cathedral; Rose trails behind. He glances and watches her walk away with them; he wants to follow her, take her hand, whisper the inconsistencies of the docent’s stories in her ear. They would be horribly rude and giggle together, and might end up being thrown out of the holy space on their ears. He could go, put one foot in front of the other, the easiest thing, but he is stuck like stone to where he stands.
“Attendez-vous pour marcher le labyrinthe?”
The words fall heavy. They could be familiar enough to recognize, he thinks. But he’s only able to catch the last word; the rest is a jumble. “I’m sorry, I...”
The woman smiles at him apologetically. She is small, thin as a bird; her eyes shine brightly and her hair is frosted white. She reminds him of a dove. “Oh, no, I am sorry. Do you wait for the labyrinth? I’ll have it uncovered in a moment.”
“Labyrinth.” He looks down at the floor, under the chairs laid out in rows. The lines along the stone are visible, once he knows to look, and the woman quickly begins to move the chairs from the pattern. She is spry, he thinks, despite her white hair. “I’d forgotten.”
“Then you’ve not walked it before?”
“No.” He hadn’t walked it before - him, the Other Him, neither of them could be bothered. Several other docents begin to scurry, quick to remove the chairs as efficiently as possible, now that a pilgrim awaits.
“Ah!” She sets a chair down by the side, and returns to him. “You must set down your baggage - just over there will do. There are many ways to walk a labyrinth; shall I tell you my favorite?”
“Yes.”
She smiles; it’s a lovely smile, nothing like Rose’s, but warm and generous. “Such a calming thing, to walk the labyrinth. I start there, where the path begins, and I follow it in, thinking about my life so far, every person I’ve loved, every place I’ve been, everything I’ve done.”
“That would take me a while,” he says, almost dryly, and she chuckles, touching her grey hair.
“Do you think? Perhaps. Your eyes are old. When I reach the center - you see it now, there? That is my now. What I have, who I am, those who love me, those whom I love.”
He says nothing. His eyes focus on the center of the labyrinth, now nearly cleared of the chairs. It is a circle a few meters wide, with curves like petals around it.
“When I am ready to leave the labyrinth, I follow the same path, only now the past is behind me, and I focus on where I am going, how I will live my life when I am done.” She pauses. “What do you think? Will you try it?”
He cannot pull his eyes from the center of the labyrinth; in truth, he’s barely heard the woman’s advice. “There are things - I’d rather not remember.”
“All the more reason to remember, so that you can let them go,” she says gently, and takes his arm. His feet move with her, and then he stands at the entrance. Her hands are cool and gentle on his arms. “I’ll be near. Go on.”
He nearly falls on his first step, and she releases his arm. For a moment, he thinks he will fall, and then he steadies himself with his other foot, and before he realizes, he is walking.
Where I have been...
The memories flood without warning. Gallifrey and deep red grass, New Earth and apples. The sun beating down on an Aztec garden, the moon twinkling above stormy seas. The pit of Hell, the clouds of Heaven, the End of Time, the Beginning of everything else.
He stood on a beach, once, while he burned a star in the sky. It was years before he felt the sand beneath his feet.
He turns the corner as the path twists around. His feet move easily now, one in front of the other. He is in two places, he thinks: all the wheres he has visited in his life, and here, walking the labyrinth, careful not to stray.
Who I have loved...
Susan. Romana. Ace. Sarah Jane. Adric. Joan. Tegan. Jamie. Peri. Jack. Martha.
Donna.
TARDIS.
Rose.
She is there, somewhere in the cathedral, the only one he has left. The path turns him; and his eyes search her out, finding her with the tour, examining sets of statues in the nave. She stands apart from the rest, hands clasped behind her back, and he knows she only half listens to the docent’s lecture. It’s as though she’s waiting for something else to happen, for him to join her or to race away, and she wants to be ready for either.
The labyrinth turns him again.
What I have done...
He nearly stumbles. He stops and closes his eyes.
It washes over him, an ocean wave of screaming. The smell of burnt cotton, the quick intake of breath, the cold touch of last moments. The fires burn brightly and the rain falls around him. He shivers, growing cold in a way he doesn’t remember.
He never grew cold before. There was never colder to grow.
He never walked the labyrinth, either.
Again, he walks. He remembers the red grass, running his fingers through it. Sipping chocolate in a garden in South America. Offering the enemy a jelly baby at the worst possible moment. Providing words of comfort to a frightened bride and groom when all hope was lost. And laughter - always laughter.
He finds himself in the center of the labyrinth.
The pattern stretches as he stands at the epicenter, unfolding itself like a flower, smooth and organic. He does not remember quite how he got there, only that he feels strangely at peace. He did these things - he, the one standing in the center. Loved those people, those places, long ago, in different lifetimes, as different men, along a path he’ll never walk again.
But it is him, only him, human him, who stands here now, waiting.
What I have.
It isn’t much. Some clothes, a blue suit tucked away in a drawer. The pair of glasses he finds he needs to read after all. Donna’s voice. The memorized schematics on how to build a sonic screwdriver, tucked with a hundred thousand other memories.
Who I am.
He is...himself. Not John Noble, whoever that is, not yet. He is a man, a human man, who has all the best parts of a Time Lord - or so Donna said. He is growing older every day, one step closer to the last day he’ll ever have, a day much closer than it used to be. He remembers what it is like to hold all of time and space in his head - he wonders what his other self would think.
Only...he knows, doesn’t he? He’s always known what he would want, if given the chance to follow a path long since denied. He nearly took it, once, with a woman who almost reminded him of Rose. A woman who was kind, and gentle, and had also lost the love of her life to something she couldn’t control.
Another woman waits for him, somewhere in the cathedral, somewhere in the shadows. She has followed him every step of the way. But he thinks he can see the disappointment in her eyes - the sorrow and the pain, and he wonders, oh so briefly - if she would suffer him, as he is, to follow him forever.
He won’t let her follow him into hell. He might not owe the Other Him much, but if nothing else, he owes that. The only way to keep her from following him there is to simply not go.
He walks.
Who loves me. Whom I love.
He winds his way through the petals, each step more certain. The past rolls up behind him, tucking itself neatly away, but he doesn’t bother with it. He barely notices it. His eyes scan the cathedral, looking for her.
Where am I going.
The docent’s voice becomes clear as the tour group nears the labyrinth. “Now as we return to the entrance, please turn your attention to just here...”
He glances at the group, and sees Rose. She stands apart from the rest, who are clearly unable to hold her attention. Her gaze is focused on the rose window above them, and he follows to see the sun shine through the glass, throwing colored shapes upon the floor. He stops as the colors scatter across his path. It’s difficult to see the markings, and his eyes dart back and forth, trying to determine his next step.
Instinctively, he looks up, and sees Rose watching him. The tour has moved on, but she remains in her spot, chest heaving.
He wants to run to her, to pull her into his arms then and there. His feet begin to move - and turn him abruptly away, continuing the labyrinth. He feels his breath catch.
And he is turned back again, to Rose. But now she has begun to move, clockwise on the edge of the path, and when he turns, she is still there, in the periphery.
He picks up his pace.
What kind of man I will be.
She is waiting for him. He thinks she might have been waiting her entire life.
She stands at the entrance to the labyrinth, and when he finally steps out, she wraps her arms around his waist and holds him tight. He rests his head in the crook of her neck, breathes her in. She smells of salt and soap.
When she pulls away to look at him, her eyes are shining with tears. “Hello.”
“Hello,” he replies, his voice strangely hoarse. “Are you ready to go back to the ship?”
He can see the amazement in her eyes - she tries to laugh, and cannot. “You - you want to go back?”
“Yeah.”
She hugs him again. He can feel her damp cheeks through his shirt, and he kisses the top of her head. He isn’t better, he knows. He won’t ever be better, not when he can still feel the empty burn where the TARDIS used to be, when Donna’s voice threatens to spill out in his words. His other self couldn’t have known what it felt like, to be human and not have these things to hold him steady.
He thinks the nightmares will come again, when he lays down to sleep aboard a ship that sounds wrong, floating high above the ground. But Rose will be there, and the steady beat of their hearts together will lull him back to sleep.
“Yes,” she whispers into his chest, and they race for the bus together, carrying their bags and holding hands.
Jump to Page Six - A Journey in Three Stops