Boxing Day 1/9
AUTHOR:
sensiblecat
SHOW/SPOILERS Dr Who S2
CHARACTERS Ten/Rose, Sarah Jane, Harriet Jones, Jackie, Mickey
RATING : FRT (sex, mild swearing)
DISCLAIMER : The Usual
SUMMARY: My first multi-chapter, this story begins the day after TCI. A visit from an old friend, and an impulsive, well-meaning mistake, leads the Doctor to reassess his feelings for Rose.
The Doctor woke up on the control room floor and realised he’d been there all night. He sat up, cradling his aching head, and felt the pattern of the metal grille on which he’d been lying indented on his face. On his left temple was a throbbing lump, and his mouth felt unpleasantly lived in. Around him, he could sense the disapproval of the TARDIS.
Okay, so where was he? Blinking as his eyes adjusted to the light, he began to recall his movements since eight o’clock the previous evening. Eight o’clock - great moment that had been. Rose and him, gazing up at the stars, planning all their future adventures. Now he wished they’d followed his instinct, fired the TARDIS up and headed off. By now, they’d be on Barcelona without a care in the world.
But Rose had wanted to nip back home and collect her Christmas presents. The whole universe to play with, and she’d lingered for a few CDs, a make-up mirror and some socks. Half an hour later, she hadn’t returned. So, hiding behind bins and lurking in corners to dodge the journalists who had begun to gather on the estate, the Doctor had made his way up to the flat. There he’d found Jackie in tears, pleading with Rose to stay another night. Rose had agreed, the booze had come out, and the rest was a bit of a blur.
Normally he could drink like a fish and rarely suffered ill effects. But not right after a regeneration. His next clear memory was one of weaving back to the TARDIS in the early hours of the morning, to find two coppers guarding it with a “Would you mind just blowing into the bag, sir?” expression on their faces. Then, an undignified fumbling for the keyhole and tripping up over a cable trailing across the control room floor. No more Leibfraumilch and cheap sherry for him.
Someone was buzzing to be let in. It was probably Rose, but just in case it happened to be a TV crew, he flicked on the webcam to see how he looked. Oh, great. He was rude, not ginger, and now he looked as if he had been in a street fight as well. Must remember to go to the medical room and get something for that bruise.
He pressed the intercom. “TARDIS here!”
The answering voice was a pleasant surprise. “Hello, Doctor. It’s Sarah Jane Smith. Remember me?”
“Sarah Jane!” he cried, delighted, his hangover forgotten. “Of course I remember! It’s not been that long.”
“It’s been thirty years. Anyway, can I come in?”
“Of course! Oh, hang on. How many people are out there?”
“Not many. Just CNN and Al Jaziera.”
“Right.” Quickly, he ran his fingers through his straggling fringe, opened the door, treated everyone to his megawatt smile and hauled in Sarah Jane with a movement perfected by years of practice.
They stood there, weighing each other up. She was the first to speak.
“Long time, no see.”
“First, did I get it right that day when I dropped you off? Was it Croyden?”
“Actually, it was Aberdeen.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I’m so very sorry. Hmm - “ He stopped, wondering where that phrase had come from. On the whole, he preferred “Fantastic”.
Sarah Jane was looking motherly. “Are you all right? That’s a nasty bump.”
He shrugged. “Just a bit of trouble with some aliens.”
She was still doubtful. “You do look a bit………dishevelled.”
“Must be the new body. I’ve only just regenerated.”
“How long ago was that?”
“Two days.”
“Goodness. Was that the first time since we - “
“Oh, goodness, no. I’ve begun to lose count. Anyway, what have you been up to?
Great to see you again.”
“You never came back. Never even called?”
“Didn’t I? Well, you know how it was. I had to go home.”
“For thirty years?”
“Has it really been that long?” he asked. He supposed that was quite a long time for a human.
“How are things on Gallifrey?” she asked, in a pleasant, conversational tone.
The Doctor’s smile vanished. He turned away and fiddled with a lever on the console.
“Gallifrey’s gone. I’m the only one left.” He tried to sound more cheerful, but it wasn’t working; that was obvious from her expression. “Last TARDIS, last of the Time Lords, everything. No wonder they all want to interview me. Including you, I suppose. Are you still investigating?”
“It was the Daleks, wasn’t it?” said Sarah Jane.
They’d done a lot of Dalek stuff together, him and Sarah Jane. She’d been there in the room with him when he’d thrown away his chance to finish them at birth. He shoved his hands deep into his pockets, and frowned. “Yes, it was the Daleks. It’s a difficult thing to murder a race. Especially if you’re planning to hang around and try living with yourself afterwards.”
“I’m sorry.” Sarah Jane stood watching him, and he wished that he found it easier to hide his feelings. This new face of his was so transparent.
“Don’t bite my head off,” said Sarah Jane, “but if you want to talk - “
And funnily enough, he did. Not the off-the-top-of-your-head banter he’d indulged himself in yesterday, but a long, offloading session with someone who understood him. “They always come back,” he said. “Every time you think you’ve finished off the bastards, they turn up somewhere else and it turns out you did it all for nothing. I lost my last body, fighting against them. Now they’ve got an Emperor, and a concept of blasphemy, of all things.”
“Fundamentalist Daleks,” observed Sarah Jane. “That’s all the universe needs.” And then, more carefully, “So what happened?”
He told her about the Gamestation, and Rose and Jack. About sending Rose home, and the Delta Wave he’d had neither the time to refine nor the ruthlessness to use. His horror, mixed with wonder, when the TARDIS had returned with the Time Vortex possessing Rose. His agonizing regeneration and the way that Jackie Tyler, who had every reason to dislike him, had tucked him up in bed and saved him with a flask of tea. About the Sycorax, and Harriet Jones, and how he found it so difficult to think of Rose without factoring Jackie and Mickey in as well.
“You’ve changed,” said Sarah Jane.
“Have I? I suppose you can’t go through something like the Time War without changing, but I never stop to think about it.” He sighed deeply. “I used to have so much mercy. I’d weigh things up for days on end before I made a move. Not now. Sometimes I just do the first thing that comes into my head. Rose, for instance. Just asked her aboard. It was meant to be a twelve-hour trip. I fixed her phone up for her, got the cover story sorted out, she phoned her mother, everything. Then I got back and found I’d made a mistake. It wasn’t twelve hours, it was twelve months. Her mother slapped my face and had me interviewed by the police.”
“Ah, yes. I saw that story in the files,” said Sarah Jane.
“What story?”
“I’m a journalist. It may not be much in the vast scheme of things, but when a teenage girl vanishes it gets into the local papers. That’s where they got her picture from.”
His eyes narrowed, suspiciously. “ ‘They’? Who’s ‘They’?”
Sarah Jane removed the laptop case from her shoulder, put it on the console, opened it and took out a file. “Doctor,” she said, “I really wish I didn’t have to show you this. I want you to know I had nothing to do with it, professionally or otherwise. In fact, I’ve been on the phone to our legal people half the night. We managed to get an injunction put on it. It’s only twelve hours, but at least that bought me time to track you down.”
He took a deep breath and took out his glasses. “Whatever you have there, I think you’d better show me.”
Silently, she opened out a mock-up page before his eyes. He thought nothing could shock him, but this did. In fact, the shock made him feel physically sick. A photograph of Rose, and a banner headline, “I Was an Alien’s Sex Slave.”
“Right,” he said, suddenly murderous. “I’m going to find out who wrote this stuff and make him pay. And nothing - NOTHING - in heaven or on earth is going to stop me.”
She pulled him away from the door. “Listen to me. You need more than a sonic screwdriver to fight the British tabloid press. You need good PR from somebody who knows the background. Me.”
“I don’t understand what all the fuss is about!” he protested. “Why do they all want to read about us?”
She laughed harshly at that. “Oh, come on! First high-profile alien contact, mysterious stranger saves the world and lambasts the Prime Minister - and all in his pyjamas! Do you really think that’s not a memorable story?”
“Depends on your perspective.”
“It’s the story of the century.”
“A century’s not all that long. And I still don’t see what they hope to gain by dragging Rose into all this.”
“She’s a blonde, teenage girl and she’s sexy. Put that on your front page, and yours is the paper they’ll all want to buy. They don’t want analysis, they don’t even want truth. They want innuendo and scandal, lots of it.”
“Oh, for the sake of Rassilon!” he snapped. “They’ve just been a hair’s breadth away from being enslaved by galactic thugs! Isn’t that a little more important? Just what is it with the human race?”
“Do you really want to know? I’ll tell you. First contact is too big for them. Their minds can’t cope with it yet. They want a human story.”
“Well, tough. If they won’t come out and meet the neighbours, then the neighbours will come out to them. And it probably won’t be the ones you’d like to have in your back garden.”
“Let’s concentrate on Rose,” said Sarah Jane. “I’d like to help her if I can.”
For some reason, this enraged him even more. Helping Rose Tyler was his job, and it looked as if he’d done it badly. And Sarah Jane, with whatever personal axe she had to grind, was the last person he wanted to have standing here reminding him of it. “The most helpful thing I could do right now is to materialize around her and take her a million light years away.”
“Oh yes?” Sarah Jane had obviously not forgotten the effect of raising a quizzical eyebrow. “And will you be taking her mother as well?”
“Is that why you came here? To lecture me on my private life?”
“Your private life on Earth is public. That is the reality. Putting a gag on this stuff costs money. My editor’s only prepared to pay out if he gets something in return. And what he has in mind is a exclusive on you and the Tylers.”
Now he was really furious. “I don’t have to talk to anybody!” He marched around the control room swishing his coat like a matador’s cape. “I could leave this nasty, sordid, trivial little world right now!”
None of this rattled Sarah Jane. She’d seen it all before. The hat, the scarf, the coat, the jelly babies. The woman knew him too damned well.
“Well, you could,” she agreed. “But would Rose really be happy with you if she’d left her mother to cope with all this? The woman who put you up after you’d stolen her daughter?”
“I DID NOT STEAL ROSE!”
Now even Sarah Jane backed off. “I’m sorry, I just meant, that’s how it must have felt to her.” A flicker of warmth returned to her eyes. “You didn’t steal any of us. I know that. We all came with you of our own free will, because you could offer us more than any human being ever could. But the problem with us humans - well, us human women, anyway - is that we come for the adventure, and then we want to stay because…..”
“Go on,” he said, looking at her very hard.
“Oh, Doctor.” She sighed and turned away. “I can say it now, because it’s such a long time ago, and however you react, it doesn’t matter. Well, not to me, anyway.”
“Say what?” He towered over her, one arm above his shoulder leaning casually on the console, their faces just a few inches apart. He knew he was being intimidating, but she’d brought that on herself, the silly woman. Hadn’t she?
“I loved you,” she confessed, at last. “Not the TARDIS, and the space stuff, though that was great too. Just you. It happens. I’m not very proud of it, and I haven’t come back here today to throw myself into your arms and expect you to feel sorry for me.”
“So why are you here, then? Because it’s a good career move?”
“No. Although it is.” He smiled, admiring her honesty. “No, I suppose it’s because I can guess what Rose is dealing with right now.”
“You’ve never met her. I’ve a lot of respect for Rose. She’s young, but I’d never insult her intelligence by imagining she saved my life because she had a crush on me. She risked her life to fight the Daleks. That’s what she told me, and I believe her.”
“But of course she’d say that!” snapped Sarah Jane. “And she probably believes it. But why do you think she cared so much? The Daleks were thousands of years in her future - what possible difference could that make to her? She came back because she didn’t want you dying on your own.”
“No!” He shook his head violently. “No!”
“Oh, come on! Is it so awful to be loved?”
And now, he’d no thought of intimidating her. The conversastion had become far too serious for that, and all he felt was rage. “Yes!” he shouted. “I don’t go around loving people, because if I did I couldn’t do my job! And what else have I got left?”
At that moment, his cellphone rang. Rose at last. He answered without checking the number.
It wasn’t Rose, though. It was Jackie, and he knew right away from her tone of voice that something serious was wrong.
“Can you come over right away? It’s Rose. She won’t wake up.”
sensiblecat
SHOW/SPOILERS Dr Who S2
CHARACTERS Ten/Rose, Sarah Jane, Harriet Jones, Jackie, Mickey
RATING : FRT (sex, mild swearing)
DISCLAIMER : The Usual
SUMMARY: My first multi-chapter, this story begins the day after TCI. A visit from an old friend, and an impulsive, well-meaning mistake, leads the Doctor to reassess his feelings for Rose.
The Doctor woke up on the control room floor and realised he’d been there all night. He sat up, cradling his aching head, and felt the pattern of the metal grille on which he’d been lying indented on his face. On his left temple was a throbbing lump, and his mouth felt unpleasantly lived in. Around him, he could sense the disapproval of the TARDIS.
Okay, so where was he? Blinking as his eyes adjusted to the light, he began to recall his movements since eight o’clock the previous evening. Eight o’clock - great moment that had been. Rose and him, gazing up at the stars, planning all their future adventures. Now he wished they’d followed his instinct, fired the TARDIS up and headed off. By now, they’d be on Barcelona without a care in the world.
But Rose had wanted to nip back home and collect her Christmas presents. The whole universe to play with, and she’d lingered for a few CDs, a make-up mirror and some socks. Half an hour later, she hadn’t returned. So, hiding behind bins and lurking in corners to dodge the journalists who had begun to gather on the estate, the Doctor had made his way up to the flat. There he’d found Jackie in tears, pleading with Rose to stay another night. Rose had agreed, the booze had come out, and the rest was a bit of a blur.
Normally he could drink like a fish and rarely suffered ill effects. But not right after a regeneration. His next clear memory was one of weaving back to the TARDIS in the early hours of the morning, to find two coppers guarding it with a “Would you mind just blowing into the bag, sir?” expression on their faces. Then, an undignified fumbling for the keyhole and tripping up over a cable trailing across the control room floor. No more Leibfraumilch and cheap sherry for him.
Someone was buzzing to be let in. It was probably Rose, but just in case it happened to be a TV crew, he flicked on the webcam to see how he looked. Oh, great. He was rude, not ginger, and now he looked as if he had been in a street fight as well. Must remember to go to the medical room and get something for that bruise.
He pressed the intercom. “TARDIS here!”
The answering voice was a pleasant surprise. “Hello, Doctor. It’s Sarah Jane Smith. Remember me?”
“Sarah Jane!” he cried, delighted, his hangover forgotten. “Of course I remember! It’s not been that long.”
“It’s been thirty years. Anyway, can I come in?”
“Of course! Oh, hang on. How many people are out there?”
“Not many. Just CNN and Al Jaziera.”
“Right.” Quickly, he ran his fingers through his straggling fringe, opened the door, treated everyone to his megawatt smile and hauled in Sarah Jane with a movement perfected by years of practice.
They stood there, weighing each other up. She was the first to speak.
“Long time, no see.”
“First, did I get it right that day when I dropped you off? Was it Croyden?”
“Actually, it was Aberdeen.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I’m so very sorry. Hmm - “ He stopped, wondering where that phrase had come from. On the whole, he preferred “Fantastic”.
Sarah Jane was looking motherly. “Are you all right? That’s a nasty bump.”
He shrugged. “Just a bit of trouble with some aliens.”
She was still doubtful. “You do look a bit………dishevelled.”
“Must be the new body. I’ve only just regenerated.”
“How long ago was that?”
“Two days.”
“Goodness. Was that the first time since we - “
“Oh, goodness, no. I’ve begun to lose count. Anyway, what have you been up to?
Great to see you again.”
“You never came back. Never even called?”
“Didn’t I? Well, you know how it was. I had to go home.”
“For thirty years?”
“Has it really been that long?” he asked. He supposed that was quite a long time for a human.
“How are things on Gallifrey?” she asked, in a pleasant, conversational tone.
The Doctor’s smile vanished. He turned away and fiddled with a lever on the console.
“Gallifrey’s gone. I’m the only one left.” He tried to sound more cheerful, but it wasn’t working; that was obvious from her expression. “Last TARDIS, last of the Time Lords, everything. No wonder they all want to interview me. Including you, I suppose. Are you still investigating?”
“It was the Daleks, wasn’t it?” said Sarah Jane.
They’d done a lot of Dalek stuff together, him and Sarah Jane. She’d been there in the room with him when he’d thrown away his chance to finish them at birth. He shoved his hands deep into his pockets, and frowned. “Yes, it was the Daleks. It’s a difficult thing to murder a race. Especially if you’re planning to hang around and try living with yourself afterwards.”
“I’m sorry.” Sarah Jane stood watching him, and he wished that he found it easier to hide his feelings. This new face of his was so transparent.
“Don’t bite my head off,” said Sarah Jane, “but if you want to talk - “
And funnily enough, he did. Not the off-the-top-of-your-head banter he’d indulged himself in yesterday, but a long, offloading session with someone who understood him. “They always come back,” he said. “Every time you think you’ve finished off the bastards, they turn up somewhere else and it turns out you did it all for nothing. I lost my last body, fighting against them. Now they’ve got an Emperor, and a concept of blasphemy, of all things.”
“Fundamentalist Daleks,” observed Sarah Jane. “That’s all the universe needs.” And then, more carefully, “So what happened?”
He told her about the Gamestation, and Rose and Jack. About sending Rose home, and the Delta Wave he’d had neither the time to refine nor the ruthlessness to use. His horror, mixed with wonder, when the TARDIS had returned with the Time Vortex possessing Rose. His agonizing regeneration and the way that Jackie Tyler, who had every reason to dislike him, had tucked him up in bed and saved him with a flask of tea. About the Sycorax, and Harriet Jones, and how he found it so difficult to think of Rose without factoring Jackie and Mickey in as well.
“You’ve changed,” said Sarah Jane.
“Have I? I suppose you can’t go through something like the Time War without changing, but I never stop to think about it.” He sighed deeply. “I used to have so much mercy. I’d weigh things up for days on end before I made a move. Not now. Sometimes I just do the first thing that comes into my head. Rose, for instance. Just asked her aboard. It was meant to be a twelve-hour trip. I fixed her phone up for her, got the cover story sorted out, she phoned her mother, everything. Then I got back and found I’d made a mistake. It wasn’t twelve hours, it was twelve months. Her mother slapped my face and had me interviewed by the police.”
“Ah, yes. I saw that story in the files,” said Sarah Jane.
“What story?”
“I’m a journalist. It may not be much in the vast scheme of things, but when a teenage girl vanishes it gets into the local papers. That’s where they got her picture from.”
His eyes narrowed, suspiciously. “ ‘They’? Who’s ‘They’?”
Sarah Jane removed the laptop case from her shoulder, put it on the console, opened it and took out a file. “Doctor,” she said, “I really wish I didn’t have to show you this. I want you to know I had nothing to do with it, professionally or otherwise. In fact, I’ve been on the phone to our legal people half the night. We managed to get an injunction put on it. It’s only twelve hours, but at least that bought me time to track you down.”
He took a deep breath and took out his glasses. “Whatever you have there, I think you’d better show me.”
Silently, she opened out a mock-up page before his eyes. He thought nothing could shock him, but this did. In fact, the shock made him feel physically sick. A photograph of Rose, and a banner headline, “I Was an Alien’s Sex Slave.”
“Right,” he said, suddenly murderous. “I’m going to find out who wrote this stuff and make him pay. And nothing - NOTHING - in heaven or on earth is going to stop me.”
She pulled him away from the door. “Listen to me. You need more than a sonic screwdriver to fight the British tabloid press. You need good PR from somebody who knows the background. Me.”
“I don’t understand what all the fuss is about!” he protested. “Why do they all want to read about us?”
She laughed harshly at that. “Oh, come on! First high-profile alien contact, mysterious stranger saves the world and lambasts the Prime Minister - and all in his pyjamas! Do you really think that’s not a memorable story?”
“Depends on your perspective.”
“It’s the story of the century.”
“A century’s not all that long. And I still don’t see what they hope to gain by dragging Rose into all this.”
“She’s a blonde, teenage girl and she’s sexy. Put that on your front page, and yours is the paper they’ll all want to buy. They don’t want analysis, they don’t even want truth. They want innuendo and scandal, lots of it.”
“Oh, for the sake of Rassilon!” he snapped. “They’ve just been a hair’s breadth away from being enslaved by galactic thugs! Isn’t that a little more important? Just what is it with the human race?”
“Do you really want to know? I’ll tell you. First contact is too big for them. Their minds can’t cope with it yet. They want a human story.”
“Well, tough. If they won’t come out and meet the neighbours, then the neighbours will come out to them. And it probably won’t be the ones you’d like to have in your back garden.”
“Let’s concentrate on Rose,” said Sarah Jane. “I’d like to help her if I can.”
For some reason, this enraged him even more. Helping Rose Tyler was his job, and it looked as if he’d done it badly. And Sarah Jane, with whatever personal axe she had to grind, was the last person he wanted to have standing here reminding him of it. “The most helpful thing I could do right now is to materialize around her and take her a million light years away.”
“Oh yes?” Sarah Jane had obviously not forgotten the effect of raising a quizzical eyebrow. “And will you be taking her mother as well?”
“Is that why you came here? To lecture me on my private life?”
“Your private life on Earth is public. That is the reality. Putting a gag on this stuff costs money. My editor’s only prepared to pay out if he gets something in return. And what he has in mind is a exclusive on you and the Tylers.”
Now he was really furious. “I don’t have to talk to anybody!” He marched around the control room swishing his coat like a matador’s cape. “I could leave this nasty, sordid, trivial little world right now!”
None of this rattled Sarah Jane. She’d seen it all before. The hat, the scarf, the coat, the jelly babies. The woman knew him too damned well.
“Well, you could,” she agreed. “But would Rose really be happy with you if she’d left her mother to cope with all this? The woman who put you up after you’d stolen her daughter?”
“I DID NOT STEAL ROSE!”
Now even Sarah Jane backed off. “I’m sorry, I just meant, that’s how it must have felt to her.” A flicker of warmth returned to her eyes. “You didn’t steal any of us. I know that. We all came with you of our own free will, because you could offer us more than any human being ever could. But the problem with us humans - well, us human women, anyway - is that we come for the adventure, and then we want to stay because…..”
“Go on,” he said, looking at her very hard.
“Oh, Doctor.” She sighed and turned away. “I can say it now, because it’s such a long time ago, and however you react, it doesn’t matter. Well, not to me, anyway.”
“Say what?” He towered over her, one arm above his shoulder leaning casually on the console, their faces just a few inches apart. He knew he was being intimidating, but she’d brought that on herself, the silly woman. Hadn’t she?
“I loved you,” she confessed, at last. “Not the TARDIS, and the space stuff, though that was great too. Just you. It happens. I’m not very proud of it, and I haven’t come back here today to throw myself into your arms and expect you to feel sorry for me.”
“So why are you here, then? Because it’s a good career move?”
“No. Although it is.” He smiled, admiring her honesty. “No, I suppose it’s because I can guess what Rose is dealing with right now.”
“You’ve never met her. I’ve a lot of respect for Rose. She’s young, but I’d never insult her intelligence by imagining she saved my life because she had a crush on me. She risked her life to fight the Daleks. That’s what she told me, and I believe her.”
“But of course she’d say that!” snapped Sarah Jane. “And she probably believes it. But why do you think she cared so much? The Daleks were thousands of years in her future - what possible difference could that make to her? She came back because she didn’t want you dying on your own.”
“No!” He shook his head violently. “No!”
“Oh, come on! Is it so awful to be loved?”
And now, he’d no thought of intimidating her. The conversastion had become far too serious for that, and all he felt was rage. “Yes!” he shouted. “I don’t go around loving people, because if I did I couldn’t do my job! And what else have I got left?”
At that moment, his cellphone rang. Rose at last. He answered without checking the number.
It wasn’t Rose, though. It was Jackie, and he knew right away from her tone of voice that something serious was wrong.
“Can you come over right away? It’s Rose. She won’t wake up.”