Fic - Nutters
AUTHOR:
sensiblecat
CHARACTERS: Ten/Rose, Martha and various Lancashire extras.
AUTHOR’S NOTES: The Britannia Cocoanutters are not a figment of my imagination, unlikely though it may seem.
This story was written for an Easter prompt at dwliterotica non-members’ challenge. The inspiration, apart from that, was the song quoted, originally, I believe, from the movie “The Bandwagon” starring Fred Astaire. The Judy Garland version, in particular, is jaunty, heartbreaking and highly recommended.
Thank you to
kalleah and
joely_jo for beta reading.
I'll go my way by myself
This is the end of romance
I'll go my way by myself
Love is only a dance
I'll try to apply myself
And teach my heart how to sing
I'll go my way by myself like a bird on the wing
I'll face the unknown
I'll build a world of my own
No one knows better than I myself
I'm by myself alone.
The Doctor lay wide-eyed on the lumpy mattress, uncomfortably aware of the pointedly turned back of his bedfellow, Martha Jones. He had offended her without quite knowing why, and although it didn’t really matter whether Martha got on with him or not, since this was in no way a permanent arrangement. it just felt sort of uncomfortable to be lying next to someone who was so obviously cross with him. And tiring. When Rose used to get annoyed with him, even before… everything… he had seemed, instinctively, to know how to talk her out of it. Known what was annoying her, in fact. Now, whoever he ended up travelling with in the future (and it would not, of course, be Martha - they both knew exactly what the situation was there, and permanent was not the right word to describe it) - he would have to begin afresh, figuring out what upset them, which buttons not to press, and when an innocent joke spiralled into a minefield of hurt feelings.
He seriously wondered whether he could face making the effort. Also, it bugged him no end that she’d already adopted the habit of pushing in front of him whenever they encountered a medical emergency and announcing that she was a doctor. She wasn’t even qualified yet, but she seemed determined to prove herself his equal, at least in that respect. He’d mentioned it once already, and of course she’d asked him whether he was qualified, and he’d gone through his nineteenth-century credentials, and she’d said, “Oh, you’ll really have a grasp of modern medicine then, won’t you?”
Flipping heck. What mouth on her! Worse than Jackie Tyler, in fact. On the other hand, to survive in that family, you’d have to be.
He wondered what had prompted him to ask her along in the first place, when his vague restlessness had coalesced into the decision to take such a step. It could have been the looming presence of Easter.. He’d always rather liked Easter. And it wasn’t just because of the prospect of taking the top off a Cadbury crème egg and eating the inside with his finger; oh no, it was the freshness of everything, the feeling of a new seasonal cycle beginning. It was a positive time.
A good time to move on. She’d have wanted that. She’d hate him to be moping around on his own for the rest of his life; he’d read that in her eyes when she’d asked him if he was travelling alone, that day on the beach.
What had they been doing last Easter? Oh yes, the Bacup Nutters. Bit of a joke, really. She would keep calling him a nutter, so in the end he took her to see a troupe of them. It was their first visit to the North of England, and a little Lancashire mill town was throwing her in at the deep end rather, but she handled it okay. It wouldn’t have been good with Martha. Morris dancers with blacked-up faces clattering through the streets; wouldn’t matter how long he spouted on about it all being to do with the Cornish miners who’d come to work in Rossendale, it would have gone down like a lead balloon, he was quite sure. But with Rose…..well, by that stage he’d known, pretty much without having to think about it, what would make an enjoyable outing.
He folded his arms behind his neck - at least, that would keep the worst of the bedbugs out of his hair, gazed at the moonlight pouring in through the diamond-leaded window of the stuffy room, and followed his memories back to the cobbled streets of Bacup.
***************
“What did you say this place was called? Backup?”
“No,” he corrected her. “Bacup. Bay-cup. That’s how they talk round here. This is the North of England, Rose. Lots of planets have a North, remember.”
Rose stood still and looked around her, picking up the vibes of communal celebration. A plodding musical “Diddle om pom pom,” started up in the distance.
“Don’t you just love a brass band?” he asked Rose with a hint of enthusiastic nostalgia, as they milled around in the slightly inebriated crowd, enjoying the Spring sunshine, the yeasty aroma from the pails of beer being set down on the pavements outside the pubs and the broad Lancashire accents of the cheerful crowd.
“So what’s all this about, then?” Rose asked. “Lancashire clog dancing?”
“More like Morris dancing,” he explained. “Easter fertility ceremony, but with a bit of a twist. Rather than big sticks and flowery hats, this lot wear bits of coconuts on their knees and elbows, black up their faces and dance through the streets to a brass band.”
“Eh up,” said Rose. “Ee by gum and all that.”
“I’ve told you before about doing that,” he complained. “Anyway, this tradition’s from Cornwall, not Lancashire.”
“So what are they doing up here?” she asked.
“Their ancestors were Cornish tin miners. When the tin industry collapsed, they moved up here. And to remind them of their roots, they blacked up their faces. Or, if that story isn’t colourful enough for you, they come from a long line of Moorish pirates.”
“More-ish?” Rose repeated, and he could tell that she was conjuring up an image of second helpings. Probably of a certain Jack Sparrow.
“Moors were black people,” he explained. “Very exotic around here back then.”
“Were they really pirates, do you think?” she asked. “I mean, why give up being a pirate just to come up here and work in the mines?”
“Bottom falling out of high adventure on the seven seas?” he suggested. “Crippling VAT on pieces of eight?”
“Maybe they got the Black Spot,” she suggested. “I remember that from ‘Treasure Island.’ ”
“Didn’t you used to read old-fashioned books?” he observed. “Or did you see the Muppet movie?”
“My gran gave me all her old paperbacks,” said Rose. “They were the only books around when I was little and I didn’t know what was good and what wasn’t, so I just sort of sucked them up like blotting paper. If your life was as boring as mine was then, you’d grab at anything to get into a different world.”
It was hard for him to imagine living with such limited horizons. For as long as he could remember, he’d had the universe to pick and mix his stimulation from. And he’d never stayed anywhere for very long. He looked around at the solid little stone houses and then up to the green rolling hills a few miles away, visible from the ends of steep alleys where people still hung laundry out across the street, tying to put himself into a mindset where that was the limit of your world. And he found it quite impossible to do so.
A flurry of excitement rippled through the crowd and people lifted toddlers onto their shoulders as the dancers approached. “I can’t see,” Rose complained.
“Hang on a minute. I’ll give you a piggyback,” he offered, and a moment later she was on his shoulders, giggling, as if they were watching a rock concert, and he was hanging onto her ankles to keep her steady.
“Stop pulling my hair!” he ordered her. “No need for that, I’m not going to drop you.”
“All right for some,” the woman standing next to them muttered.
“Sorry,” he said, “there’s only room for one up here.”
“You must be stronger than you look,” she said.
“I work out,” he told her.
“Liar,” hissed Rose. He let go of her foot to teach her a lesson, but all she did was grab onto his tie on her way down and almost choked him. He hadn’t been expecting to need his respiratory bypass system in darkest Lancashire.
“Sorry,” she said, unconvincingly, heaving herself back up, her hands tangled in his hair.
“I put up with a lot from you,” he said, “but there are limits. Watch it.”
“’Ere they come,” their neighbour said. A troupe of around a dozen strapping male dancers formed themselves into a line beside the band in the middle of the market square. They presented an extraordinary sight in their tight-fitting caps, horizontally-striped red and white skirts and black leggings, their elbows, ears and knees adorned with circles of dried coconut, and began to bang together the long poles they were carrying in a repetitive routine of circling sedately around each other. It all reminded the Doctor more than a little of Tyrolean Schuhplattler. He recognised the blend of Teutonic seriousness with faintly ridiculous folklore, and fought the urge to chuckle. The same suppressed mirth was quivering through Rose’s body and down into his shoulders.
“This is just mental,” she whispered into his ear.
He nodded. “Yep. Kind of brilliant, though, don’t you think? Sometimes I think you humans are the weirdest species of the lot.”
**********
A sneaky breeze was beginning to sharpen the thin early spring sunshine, reminding him that Bacup was East Lancashire’s highest town. They sat together on a bench in the market square enjoying gooey meat pies filled with steaming gravy. Rose had come out without enough sensible layers of clothing on - she was always doing that, typical young woman - so they were huddled together with his big coat around their combined shoulders.
Sometimes it seemed as if that coat was dimensionally transcendent like the TARDIS, or perhaps they just liked being very close together. Either way, he loved his coat more than anybody ought to love a non-sentient object; he wore it even when the weather was warm, and without it he felt bereft.
“D’you think they were really pirates?” Rose asked, through a mouthful of something that claimed to be steak, and was probably not very good for her.
“Nah, they were probably just pilchard packers from Penzance,” he replied, cynical as ever. “But why spoil a good story?”
A woman with short blonde hair plonked her solid buttocks on the bench besides them, glancing at them as they involuntarily moved along the seat to fit her in. “Aye, it’s a bit parky today, in’t it?” she observed. “Come far?”
Rose glanced at him. It was a little game of theirs, sometimes, to claim all kinds of wild places as home, secure in the knowledge that the truth outdid any fiction. They’d become skilled at sizing up how far the other was prepared to go. He winked at Rose, just at the point where the TARDIS translator came up with a database match between “parky” and “chilly”.
“Barnsley,” he replied; the first place that came into his head. “And my friend’s from Down South.”
“Barnsley?” The woman’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “That’s Yorkshire, isn’t it?”
He nodded, knowing that only Rose would be able to detect the mischievous glint in his eyes. “Yes. I’m an alien.”
Their neighbour hesitated, then frowned and moved away from them. They relaxed into the newly vacated gap.
“Aye,” she muttered. “Reckon that’s far enough, all right.”
*********
The two of them wandered back to the TARDIS, giggling as if they’d just met Queen Victoria.
“Aye,” Rose spluttered. “Alpha Centauri. Reckon that’s far enough all right.”
“One person’s alien is another’s next door neighbour,” he reminded her. It was a point he’d made before. “All it means is a person is from somewhere else.”
Rose licked the back of her front teeth. “I s’pose that back in the old days, round here, they’d have thought of black people as aliens,” she said.
“Or just Cornish people,” he added.
“And everybody likes to tell stories about aliens,” she said. “Little green men and all that.”
“Just don’t mention tentacles. Always rubs me up the wrong way, that does.”
They reached the TARDIS. The moment before they stepped inside, he slipped his arm around her waist and kissed the end of her nose. Her response was a little less restrained. Her lips still tasted of Oxo-cube gravy.
“D’you mind people calling you an alien?” she asked, resting her cheek on his shoulder.
“I’ve been called worse things,” he replied, squeezing her with his arm. “What matters isn’t where you come from, it’s where you make your home.”
Eyes closed, she breathed in the smell of his coat. It hadn’t been cleaned for a while, but she wasn’t complaining. “I think it’s rather sweet,” she murmured.
“What is?” he asked.
“The Bacup Aliens. They must have felt as if they’d landed on another planet, when they wound up here. People pointing at them, making remarks, all that stuff. And instead of feeling sorry for themselves, they made up an Aliens’ Dance, and there’s still people dancing it today.”
“Thought for the day from Rose Tyler,” he quipped, to disguise the fact that what she’d just said had, for some reason, made him feel rather emotional.
“Maybe,” she went on, “somewhere, in a galaxy far away, there’s people telling stories about us and doing a Rose and Doctor dance.”
“And what would that be like?” he asked, smiling down at her.
“Oh, lots of running. Licking things. Having a laugh. Acting like nutters.”
“Sounds about right,” he agreed. “Better than feeling sorry for yourself, anyway.”
“Yep.”
**********
He couldn’t sleep. That wasn’t unusual, but there was something about this particular situation that seemed awkward. Being in a confined space, lying on his back inches away from a woman he’d only just met, unable to get up and tinker with anything to pass the time. He looked towards the door and noticed the soft glow of candlelight seeping underneath it onto the rush-strewn floor. Looked like old Will was making a night of it. Late deadline and all that. Probably slept in until lunchtime like most theatrical types, too wired to drop off for hours after the show.
There’d been a couple of pretty girls on the fringes of their little group this evening. Who’d be keeping Will warm in his bed tonight, he wondered?
As for Martha, she’d dropped off the moment she’d turned his back to him. Medical students knew better than to waste the chance of sleep.
“Oh Rose,” he sighed, to no-one in particular.
He mustn’t get maudlin. He had to look forward now, that was more important than it had ever been. Just like the Cornish pirates, if that’s what they really were, they’d both wound up in an alien place that was not of their choosing, the raw materials of the rest of their life. It didn’t have to be all that bad. In fact, he had a wonderful life. He’d just seen a Shakespeare play, live, in real time. Tomorrow he might be at the fall of Troy, or the Liberation of the Shadian Nebula in Prexetales 9. Or just pottering about in the TARDIS. After he’d dropped Martha off home, of course. It was all go, just the way he liked it.
Life was definitely what you made it. Either you felt sorry for yourself, and faded away, or you painted on a silly face and danced through it like a nutter. They’d dance your dance through the streets of their little town, with a brass band and plenty of beer, and people would come from miles around, and have a good time, and remember you, fondly if inaccurately.
Suddenly, a scream of terror pierced the night air. Martha was awake in a heartbeat, bolt upright, primed for action alongside him.
Rose would never have done that, he reflected. She was hopeless at getting out of bed, even in the direst peril. Used to drive him crazy, hanging around waiting for her in the mornings. The make-up lying around everywhere when she looked so beautiful to start with, the bras she hung up to dry in the shower, the way she always said she was ‘nearly ready’ and then took another twenty minutes to get out of the door……
Good old Martha. A medical student - he’d not had one of those before. Given his lifestyle, having someone on hand who knew how to do mouth-to-mouth resuscitation could be very handy. She’d asked intelligent questions last night. And he had to admit, watching her whooping and cheering after the performance had given him a buzz. It was nice to be able to do that for somebody.
“I’m still dancing, Rose,” he thought, as they hurried out of the door. “Still fighting. You won’t get rid of me that easily.”
Her voice wove lovingly into his consciousness, warming his hearts. “You nutter.”
The End.
sensiblecat
CHARACTERS: Ten/Rose, Martha and various Lancashire extras.
AUTHOR’S NOTES: The Britannia Cocoanutters are not a figment of my imagination, unlikely though it may seem.
This story was written for an Easter prompt at dwliterotica non-members’ challenge. The inspiration, apart from that, was the song quoted, originally, I believe, from the movie “The Bandwagon” starring Fred Astaire. The Judy Garland version, in particular, is jaunty, heartbreaking and highly recommended.
Thank you to
kalleah and
joely_jo for beta reading.
I'll go my way by myself
This is the end of romance
I'll go my way by myself
Love is only a dance
I'll try to apply myself
And teach my heart how to sing
I'll go my way by myself like a bird on the wing
I'll face the unknown
I'll build a world of my own
No one knows better than I myself
I'm by myself alone.
The Doctor lay wide-eyed on the lumpy mattress, uncomfortably aware of the pointedly turned back of his bedfellow, Martha Jones. He had offended her without quite knowing why, and although it didn’t really matter whether Martha got on with him or not, since this was in no way a permanent arrangement. it just felt sort of uncomfortable to be lying next to someone who was so obviously cross with him. And tiring. When Rose used to get annoyed with him, even before… everything… he had seemed, instinctively, to know how to talk her out of it. Known what was annoying her, in fact. Now, whoever he ended up travelling with in the future (and it would not, of course, be Martha - they both knew exactly what the situation was there, and permanent was not the right word to describe it) - he would have to begin afresh, figuring out what upset them, which buttons not to press, and when an innocent joke spiralled into a minefield of hurt feelings.
He seriously wondered whether he could face making the effort. Also, it bugged him no end that she’d already adopted the habit of pushing in front of him whenever they encountered a medical emergency and announcing that she was a doctor. She wasn’t even qualified yet, but she seemed determined to prove herself his equal, at least in that respect. He’d mentioned it once already, and of course she’d asked him whether he was qualified, and he’d gone through his nineteenth-century credentials, and she’d said, “Oh, you’ll really have a grasp of modern medicine then, won’t you?”
Flipping heck. What mouth on her! Worse than Jackie Tyler, in fact. On the other hand, to survive in that family, you’d have to be.
He wondered what had prompted him to ask her along in the first place, when his vague restlessness had coalesced into the decision to take such a step. It could have been the looming presence of Easter.. He’d always rather liked Easter. And it wasn’t just because of the prospect of taking the top off a Cadbury crème egg and eating the inside with his finger; oh no, it was the freshness of everything, the feeling of a new seasonal cycle beginning. It was a positive time.
A good time to move on. She’d have wanted that. She’d hate him to be moping around on his own for the rest of his life; he’d read that in her eyes when she’d asked him if he was travelling alone, that day on the beach.
What had they been doing last Easter? Oh yes, the Bacup Nutters. Bit of a joke, really. She would keep calling him a nutter, so in the end he took her to see a troupe of them. It was their first visit to the North of England, and a little Lancashire mill town was throwing her in at the deep end rather, but she handled it okay. It wouldn’t have been good with Martha. Morris dancers with blacked-up faces clattering through the streets; wouldn’t matter how long he spouted on about it all being to do with the Cornish miners who’d come to work in Rossendale, it would have gone down like a lead balloon, he was quite sure. But with Rose…..well, by that stage he’d known, pretty much without having to think about it, what would make an enjoyable outing.
He folded his arms behind his neck - at least, that would keep the worst of the bedbugs out of his hair, gazed at the moonlight pouring in through the diamond-leaded window of the stuffy room, and followed his memories back to the cobbled streets of Bacup.
***************
“What did you say this place was called? Backup?”
“No,” he corrected her. “Bacup. Bay-cup. That’s how they talk round here. This is the North of England, Rose. Lots of planets have a North, remember.”
Rose stood still and looked around her, picking up the vibes of communal celebration. A plodding musical “Diddle om pom pom,” started up in the distance.
“Don’t you just love a brass band?” he asked Rose with a hint of enthusiastic nostalgia, as they milled around in the slightly inebriated crowd, enjoying the Spring sunshine, the yeasty aroma from the pails of beer being set down on the pavements outside the pubs and the broad Lancashire accents of the cheerful crowd.
“So what’s all this about, then?” Rose asked. “Lancashire clog dancing?”
“More like Morris dancing,” he explained. “Easter fertility ceremony, but with a bit of a twist. Rather than big sticks and flowery hats, this lot wear bits of coconuts on their knees and elbows, black up their faces and dance through the streets to a brass band.”
“Eh up,” said Rose. “Ee by gum and all that.”
“I’ve told you before about doing that,” he complained. “Anyway, this tradition’s from Cornwall, not Lancashire.”
“So what are they doing up here?” she asked.
“Their ancestors were Cornish tin miners. When the tin industry collapsed, they moved up here. And to remind them of their roots, they blacked up their faces. Or, if that story isn’t colourful enough for you, they come from a long line of Moorish pirates.”
“More-ish?” Rose repeated, and he could tell that she was conjuring up an image of second helpings. Probably of a certain Jack Sparrow.
“Moors were black people,” he explained. “Very exotic around here back then.”
“Were they really pirates, do you think?” she asked. “I mean, why give up being a pirate just to come up here and work in the mines?”
“Bottom falling out of high adventure on the seven seas?” he suggested. “Crippling VAT on pieces of eight?”
“Maybe they got the Black Spot,” she suggested. “I remember that from ‘Treasure Island.’ ”
“Didn’t you used to read old-fashioned books?” he observed. “Or did you see the Muppet movie?”
“My gran gave me all her old paperbacks,” said Rose. “They were the only books around when I was little and I didn’t know what was good and what wasn’t, so I just sort of sucked them up like blotting paper. If your life was as boring as mine was then, you’d grab at anything to get into a different world.”
It was hard for him to imagine living with such limited horizons. For as long as he could remember, he’d had the universe to pick and mix his stimulation from. And he’d never stayed anywhere for very long. He looked around at the solid little stone houses and then up to the green rolling hills a few miles away, visible from the ends of steep alleys where people still hung laundry out across the street, tying to put himself into a mindset where that was the limit of your world. And he found it quite impossible to do so.
A flurry of excitement rippled through the crowd and people lifted toddlers onto their shoulders as the dancers approached. “I can’t see,” Rose complained.
“Hang on a minute. I’ll give you a piggyback,” he offered, and a moment later she was on his shoulders, giggling, as if they were watching a rock concert, and he was hanging onto her ankles to keep her steady.
“Stop pulling my hair!” he ordered her. “No need for that, I’m not going to drop you.”
“All right for some,” the woman standing next to them muttered.
“Sorry,” he said, “there’s only room for one up here.”
“You must be stronger than you look,” she said.
“I work out,” he told her.
“Liar,” hissed Rose. He let go of her foot to teach her a lesson, but all she did was grab onto his tie on her way down and almost choked him. He hadn’t been expecting to need his respiratory bypass system in darkest Lancashire.
“Sorry,” she said, unconvincingly, heaving herself back up, her hands tangled in his hair.
“I put up with a lot from you,” he said, “but there are limits. Watch it.”
“’Ere they come,” their neighbour said. A troupe of around a dozen strapping male dancers formed themselves into a line beside the band in the middle of the market square. They presented an extraordinary sight in their tight-fitting caps, horizontally-striped red and white skirts and black leggings, their elbows, ears and knees adorned with circles of dried coconut, and began to bang together the long poles they were carrying in a repetitive routine of circling sedately around each other. It all reminded the Doctor more than a little of Tyrolean Schuhplattler. He recognised the blend of Teutonic seriousness with faintly ridiculous folklore, and fought the urge to chuckle. The same suppressed mirth was quivering through Rose’s body and down into his shoulders.
“This is just mental,” she whispered into his ear.
He nodded. “Yep. Kind of brilliant, though, don’t you think? Sometimes I think you humans are the weirdest species of the lot.”
**********
A sneaky breeze was beginning to sharpen the thin early spring sunshine, reminding him that Bacup was East Lancashire’s highest town. They sat together on a bench in the market square enjoying gooey meat pies filled with steaming gravy. Rose had come out without enough sensible layers of clothing on - she was always doing that, typical young woman - so they were huddled together with his big coat around their combined shoulders.
Sometimes it seemed as if that coat was dimensionally transcendent like the TARDIS, or perhaps they just liked being very close together. Either way, he loved his coat more than anybody ought to love a non-sentient object; he wore it even when the weather was warm, and without it he felt bereft.
“D’you think they were really pirates?” Rose asked, through a mouthful of something that claimed to be steak, and was probably not very good for her.
“Nah, they were probably just pilchard packers from Penzance,” he replied, cynical as ever. “But why spoil a good story?”
A woman with short blonde hair plonked her solid buttocks on the bench besides them, glancing at them as they involuntarily moved along the seat to fit her in. “Aye, it’s a bit parky today, in’t it?” she observed. “Come far?”
Rose glanced at him. It was a little game of theirs, sometimes, to claim all kinds of wild places as home, secure in the knowledge that the truth outdid any fiction. They’d become skilled at sizing up how far the other was prepared to go. He winked at Rose, just at the point where the TARDIS translator came up with a database match between “parky” and “chilly”.
“Barnsley,” he replied; the first place that came into his head. “And my friend’s from Down South.”
“Barnsley?” The woman’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “That’s Yorkshire, isn’t it?”
He nodded, knowing that only Rose would be able to detect the mischievous glint in his eyes. “Yes. I’m an alien.”
Their neighbour hesitated, then frowned and moved away from them. They relaxed into the newly vacated gap.
“Aye,” she muttered. “Reckon that’s far enough, all right.”
*********
The two of them wandered back to the TARDIS, giggling as if they’d just met Queen Victoria.
“Aye,” Rose spluttered. “Alpha Centauri. Reckon that’s far enough all right.”
“One person’s alien is another’s next door neighbour,” he reminded her. It was a point he’d made before. “All it means is a person is from somewhere else.”
Rose licked the back of her front teeth. “I s’pose that back in the old days, round here, they’d have thought of black people as aliens,” she said.
“Or just Cornish people,” he added.
“And everybody likes to tell stories about aliens,” she said. “Little green men and all that.”
“Just don’t mention tentacles. Always rubs me up the wrong way, that does.”
They reached the TARDIS. The moment before they stepped inside, he slipped his arm around her waist and kissed the end of her nose. Her response was a little less restrained. Her lips still tasted of Oxo-cube gravy.
“D’you mind people calling you an alien?” she asked, resting her cheek on his shoulder.
“I’ve been called worse things,” he replied, squeezing her with his arm. “What matters isn’t where you come from, it’s where you make your home.”
Eyes closed, she breathed in the smell of his coat. It hadn’t been cleaned for a while, but she wasn’t complaining. “I think it’s rather sweet,” she murmured.
“What is?” he asked.
“The Bacup Aliens. They must have felt as if they’d landed on another planet, when they wound up here. People pointing at them, making remarks, all that stuff. And instead of feeling sorry for themselves, they made up an Aliens’ Dance, and there’s still people dancing it today.”
“Thought for the day from Rose Tyler,” he quipped, to disguise the fact that what she’d just said had, for some reason, made him feel rather emotional.
“Maybe,” she went on, “somewhere, in a galaxy far away, there’s people telling stories about us and doing a Rose and Doctor dance.”
“And what would that be like?” he asked, smiling down at her.
“Oh, lots of running. Licking things. Having a laugh. Acting like nutters.”
“Sounds about right,” he agreed. “Better than feeling sorry for yourself, anyway.”
“Yep.”
**********
He couldn’t sleep. That wasn’t unusual, but there was something about this particular situation that seemed awkward. Being in a confined space, lying on his back inches away from a woman he’d only just met, unable to get up and tinker with anything to pass the time. He looked towards the door and noticed the soft glow of candlelight seeping underneath it onto the rush-strewn floor. Looked like old Will was making a night of it. Late deadline and all that. Probably slept in until lunchtime like most theatrical types, too wired to drop off for hours after the show.
There’d been a couple of pretty girls on the fringes of their little group this evening. Who’d be keeping Will warm in his bed tonight, he wondered?
As for Martha, she’d dropped off the moment she’d turned his back to him. Medical students knew better than to waste the chance of sleep.
“Oh Rose,” he sighed, to no-one in particular.
He mustn’t get maudlin. He had to look forward now, that was more important than it had ever been. Just like the Cornish pirates, if that’s what they really were, they’d both wound up in an alien place that was not of their choosing, the raw materials of the rest of their life. It didn’t have to be all that bad. In fact, he had a wonderful life. He’d just seen a Shakespeare play, live, in real time. Tomorrow he might be at the fall of Troy, or the Liberation of the Shadian Nebula in Prexetales 9. Or just pottering about in the TARDIS. After he’d dropped Martha off home, of course. It was all go, just the way he liked it.
Life was definitely what you made it. Either you felt sorry for yourself, and faded away, or you painted on a silly face and danced through it like a nutter. They’d dance your dance through the streets of their little town, with a brass band and plenty of beer, and people would come from miles around, and have a good time, and remember you, fondly if inaccurately.
Suddenly, a scream of terror pierced the night air. Martha was awake in a heartbeat, bolt upright, primed for action alongside him.
Rose would never have done that, he reflected. She was hopeless at getting out of bed, even in the direst peril. Used to drive him crazy, hanging around waiting for her in the mornings. The make-up lying around everywhere when she looked so beautiful to start with, the bras she hung up to dry in the shower, the way she always said she was ‘nearly ready’ and then took another twenty minutes to get out of the door……
Good old Martha. A medical student - he’d not had one of those before. Given his lifestyle, having someone on hand who knew how to do mouth-to-mouth resuscitation could be very handy. She’d asked intelligent questions last night. And he had to admit, watching her whooping and cheering after the performance had given him a buzz. It was nice to be able to do that for somebody.
“I’m still dancing, Rose,” he thought, as they hurried out of the door. “Still fighting. You won’t get rid of me that easily.”
Her voice wove lovingly into his consciousness, warming his hearts. “You nutter.”
The End.