DW Fic: Relative Humanity (3/10)
Title: Relative Humanity (3/10)
Author: irishlullaby / RamblingRose
Rated: R
Warnings: Will contain adult content in later chapter
Summary: (Nine/Rose) The Doctor takes on a human form to hide from the Family of Blood… He thinks he’s a writer and Rose is his assistant. AU of Human Nature/Family of Blood
Chapter One | Chapter Two |
The Doctor pushed a button to end recording. Once all was done, Rose knew how to activate the recording. At least she wasn't alone. She'd have Jack to keep her company and in a pinch she could go see Jackie and Mickey. The Doctor just hoped that the little time he would be human she wouldn't forget about him, that she would still travel with him after all of this.
He didn't know what the chameleon arc would do to him. The Doctor held the device in his hands and drew in a deep breath. For all he knew, he would see Rose and treat her like she had some sort of fatal disease. He already liked to treat Jack as though he were a living, breathing, fatal disease so The Doctor doubted that would change much once he was in human form.
Part of him was curious as to what he would be. Would he be a teacher? Would he be a soldier? Would he be an artist? This process was about as dodgy as regeneration. The only thing that would stay the same was his face. His personality and reactions to things could be different. They could be the same. He might hate leather jackets. Or he may take to leather trousers as well. he might grow his hair out. Or he might shave it off even more and become completely bald.
He just... he just hoped some tiny part of him would remember Rose. Maybe something of her would remain. She was too big of a part of him for her to not have some sort of residual effect on his human mind.
The Doctor released the breath he had been holding and slipped the device over his head. It was now or never. He didn't have long before The Family would find him. He turned the knobs and set the dials. He typed the commands in and watched the thirty second countdown commence. Sitting back in the jump seat, the Doctor braced himself for the worst feeling in his life.
"No!" he heard Rose's voice echo down the corridor. Jack must have broke the worst part of the news to her. That there was a chance he might fall in love and if that happened, they were to not interfere. The Doctor could hear her feet pounding against the grates. "Doctor... you can't!"
A faint tingling made the hair on the back of the Doctor's arms stand on end. The pain hit fast and hard. It wasn't long before he couldn’t repress the screams as every ounce of his time lord existence was filtered into a fob watch and replaced with human DNA. The first thing he saw with his human eyes, before losing consciousness, was Rose's tear strained face as she reached for him, and was being restrained by Jack.
#
Rose cowered against the locked doors. This wasn't how things were supposed to go! She was only nineteen. She was working at a shop. She wasn't supposed to meet her demise like this! Shops were supposed to be the most mundane and safe jobs on the planet. She wasn't supposed to die at the hands of whatever group of psychopaths were after her. That's when she realized dying here was a fear.
She thought of her mum and her boyfriend. Would they ever know she was dead or would she just be one of those cases of a girl gone missing?
As fate would have it, the door latch popped open. Rose's heart froze as cool hand slipped into her. She could explain that sudden feeling that everything was going to be okay. She would see her mum again, her boyfriend. In that split second she could see that her life would be going on.
Rose looked at the source of the hand. But all she was able to process at that second was the solitary word that came from his mouth. "Run."
John typed away furiously on his typewriter. He had been doing so since about half an hour after getting home the night before. It had come to him, completely crystal clear, at one of the most inopportune moments. Maybe if he got the billions of ideas out of his head and onto paper by Saturday he could give his readers a small sample of the next series and drum up some excitement for it.
Jack had mentioned, not too long ago, that there was a producer sniffing about to possibly turn his the new series into a show for the telly. John had explicitly informed Jack he would only allow it if he was able to have input. He didn't want to go having the BBC mucking up the books him and his father had put so much work into.
After all, he had done plenty of damage to the franchise and was trying to fix it.
John continued to punch at the keys with one hand as he reached for his coffee mug. It had been a gift from Rose. It was black and featured the picture of a blue police box. She had said it was because Jack had told her that's what the character's space ship looked like. But the shy little grin she'd had when she had gifted it to him said otherwise. It said she had actually taken time to look up the series and taken great care in selecting the gift based on what she had found.
And she had chosen well. He was quite fond of the TARDIS. And it even moved to the other side of the mug if his coffee was hot.
He wrapped his fingers around the mug and brought it to his lips, tilting it up to have a drink.
It was empty. And so was the pot he had brought to his desk.
John's heart stumbled over itself. Normally he would call out to Rose to come get him a fresh pot. But it was four in the morning and she was currently curled up in his bed, burrowed under the sheets. She had been since about an hour after they got back to his place.
His trepidation didn't come from fear of waking her. It came from the fear of having to deal with her possibly avoiding him. Things had become awkward after they arrived to his place. They had flirted with each other the entire way there. Then, as soon as they got inside she had turned, he had run into her, grabbed hold of her to make sure she didn't fall, and he ended up pinning her against the wall. She'd given all the signals... so he had kissed her.
To start with, that had been all he had been after. But then she had clutched the front of his shirt and made it obvious what she wanted. And he had fancied her from some time so he was more than willing to give it to her. Things had gone along fantastic until she had slid her hands under his jumper and pressed them against his chest.
And something had made her stop and push him away. She didn't give a reason, he hadn't asked for one because she didn't need a reason. But the second he had retreated from his bed and looked at her--her eyes so full of conflicted emotions--it had hit him. He knew precisely how to start out his series!
So he had quickly made his apologies and retreated to his typewriter. It hadn't been long before he realized Rose was asleep because he could hear her snoring from his bedroom.
John pushed his chair back from the desk and stood. Cradling his mug in his hands, he made his way to the kitchen and tried to remember what all he needed for his coffee. Once he did, he realized he should have brought the pot instead of the mug. He eyed his opened bed room door for a moment, then set down his mug, and went into the room.
Rose was still huddled under the duvet, her face buried in his favourite pillow. She looked so tiny in his big bed. Her face twitched and she frowned in her sleep, her fingers grasped an item that was resting in her hand then released it. It fell onto the mattress.
John strode over and picked the item up to put it back into her hand. As soon as he reached for it, he could hear soft whispers. The closer his hand got the louder the voices. John picked it up and cradled it in his hand. It was an old fob watch. He delicately stroked the intricate designs on the cover. They weren't all that different from the designs the main character in his book understood as being his native language.
There were several items Jack had said were licensed as "official" products associated with the book. The watch certainly looked like it could be one. Slowly, John sat on the edge of the bed and continued to caress the watch. Why would Rose have something like this, he wondered.
Soul of a Time Lord, one of this whispers said, John finally able to understand them. Prior they had only sounded as a bunch of gibberish. Hidden away... Danger.
John tentatively reached for the latch to pop it open. He looked back at Rose as images flashed across his mind. Most of the time he associated the whispering and visions as being ideas for his book. But something felt different as he sat there. They felt more like... memories. Honest to goodness, memories.
Rose's eyes popped open, wide and alert. She sat up and snatched away the watch before he could open it, clutching it to her chest. "Don't touch that," she said sharply, with a faint tremble in her voice.
"Sorry," John apologized. "I didn't realize it was important to you." Rose cradled the watch in her hand and stroked it tenderly. It suddenly dawned on John that the watch must have been given to her by someone she cared about very deeply. "You love him," he said plainly. Rose looked at him in confusion. "The person that gave you the watch. It was someone you love."
He had chosen his words carefully. Not only for Rose's sake, but because her response would let him know where things stood with his "competitor". Blimey he hated that term. It made it sound like Rose was a prize to be won and displayed with pride rather than a woman with feelings.
Rose tucked her hair behind her ear. "Nineteen days," she said after a false start. "We both know My being your assistant was supposed to be temporary." When she looked up at him, John could see tears being held back. "Nineteen more days, six hours, and twenty three minutes. I can hand him this watch and... he'll be back."
John drew in a breath and held it. That certainly explained why she almost always looked a bit guilty when their flirty banter became too intense. It also explained why she had pushed him away earlier. She was counting down every minute until her love returned... and he had no doubts she loved the mystery man. One didn't count down to the minute unless they loved someone.
Although...
"Does he love you?"
That seemed to strike a nerve. Rose glared at him but then the hardness faded away as she smiled weakly. "I'd like to think he does," she whispered. She softly kissed the watch and set it on the bedside table. "It's... complicated. And I may only be foolin' myself but... I think he does... I think he loves me and needs me."
John smiled kindly. "Well if he doesn't think you're the most important person in the universe... he doesn't deserve you." He tilted her chin up just enough to have her look him in the eyes. "You deserve to be the absolute centre of someone's universe."
"And you would do that?" Rose asked quietly.
"Let's just say... if I had a choice between saving the world and losing you or just letting the world burn..." John said. "I'd let the world burn if it saved you."
Rose opened her mouth to say something. All that came out was a faint, "I--" She closed her eyes and looked away, pulling her chin from John's loose grip. "Never in a billion years thought it would be me..." she said, barely above a whisper. She sighed heavily. "Doing the right thing, at this moment, feels wrong. But what I want to do is so the wrong thing and it... feels right. And... I don't know what to do."
His Rose was at the fine line of right and wrong. Although he wondered when he had started to refer to her as his Rose in his head. It couldn't have been too long because they had only known each other a little over two months.
"I may be saying this only because it would benefit myself greatly," John said, stroking her cheek with his knuckles. "But in my experience, one can never go wrong if they go with what feels right." He hoped she didn't mind his touching her so much. She hadn't complained before about his needlessly touching her or holding her hand...
Rose eyed him curiously. "You're so..." She shook her head and laughed softly.
"What?" John huffed. "I'm so what?"
Rose gave him a smile. "You. It's so weird. How you you are." She leaned in and placed a soft kiss on his cheek. "I'm guessing you want coffee?"
"Last I checked I could only be me," John commented, somewhat confused. He looked down at his hands bashfully. "And, if it's not too much of a bother, I do need more coffee."
Rose laughed and kicked off the blankets. She blushed and quickly pulled them back onto her lap, but not before John caught a glimpse of blue cotton knickers. "Um... could you... hand me my jeans?"
John reached down and picked said jeans up from the floor. "You didn't remember taking them off?" he asked as he handed them over to her.
Her hand grasped his in the process. John was taken aback by the images that danced through his head from that simple point of contact. Images of a brief and rather passionate courtship, their marriage, three children -- two girls and a strapping boy that was the image of his father -- and finally his growing old and weary with Rose still at his side, holding his hand.
"I wish I could stay and keep you safe," he rasped. "My Rose... My perfect Rose."
Rose squeezed his hand. Time had treated her kindly enough but she was showing her age. "There is one way..." she said, taking a fob watch from the drawer. "You just have to open this fob watch."
Rose gasped and she looked up at him. He wasn't sure of what she had seen in his eyes at that very moment but whatever it was, he made a mental note of trying to do it again because she released his hand. Then she promptly lunged, wrapping her arms around his neck, and kissed him.
Author: irishlullaby / RamblingRose
Rated: R
Warnings: Will contain adult content in later chapter
Summary: (Nine/Rose) The Doctor takes on a human form to hide from the Family of Blood… He thinks he’s a writer and Rose is his assistant. AU of Human Nature/Family of Blood
Chapter One | Chapter Two |
The Doctor pushed a button to end recording. Once all was done, Rose knew how to activate the recording. At least she wasn't alone. She'd have Jack to keep her company and in a pinch she could go see Jackie and Mickey. The Doctor just hoped that the little time he would be human she wouldn't forget about him, that she would still travel with him after all of this.
He didn't know what the chameleon arc would do to him. The Doctor held the device in his hands and drew in a deep breath. For all he knew, he would see Rose and treat her like she had some sort of fatal disease. He already liked to treat Jack as though he were a living, breathing, fatal disease so The Doctor doubted that would change much once he was in human form.
Part of him was curious as to what he would be. Would he be a teacher? Would he be a soldier? Would he be an artist? This process was about as dodgy as regeneration. The only thing that would stay the same was his face. His personality and reactions to things could be different. They could be the same. He might hate leather jackets. Or he may take to leather trousers as well. he might grow his hair out. Or he might shave it off even more and become completely bald.
He just... he just hoped some tiny part of him would remember Rose. Maybe something of her would remain. She was too big of a part of him for her to not have some sort of residual effect on his human mind.
The Doctor released the breath he had been holding and slipped the device over his head. It was now or never. He didn't have long before The Family would find him. He turned the knobs and set the dials. He typed the commands in and watched the thirty second countdown commence. Sitting back in the jump seat, the Doctor braced himself for the worst feeling in his life.
"No!" he heard Rose's voice echo down the corridor. Jack must have broke the worst part of the news to her. That there was a chance he might fall in love and if that happened, they were to not interfere. The Doctor could hear her feet pounding against the grates. "Doctor... you can't!"
A faint tingling made the hair on the back of the Doctor's arms stand on end. The pain hit fast and hard. It wasn't long before he couldn’t repress the screams as every ounce of his time lord existence was filtered into a fob watch and replaced with human DNA. The first thing he saw with his human eyes, before losing consciousness, was Rose's tear strained face as she reached for him, and was being restrained by Jack.
#
Rose cowered against the locked doors. This wasn't how things were supposed to go! She was only nineteen. She was working at a shop. She wasn't supposed to meet her demise like this! Shops were supposed to be the most mundane and safe jobs on the planet. She wasn't supposed to die at the hands of whatever group of psychopaths were after her. That's when she realized dying here was a fear.
She thought of her mum and her boyfriend. Would they ever know she was dead or would she just be one of those cases of a girl gone missing?
As fate would have it, the door latch popped open. Rose's heart froze as cool hand slipped into her. She could explain that sudden feeling that everything was going to be okay. She would see her mum again, her boyfriend. In that split second she could see that her life would be going on.
Rose looked at the source of the hand. But all she was able to process at that second was the solitary word that came from his mouth. "Run."
John typed away furiously on his typewriter. He had been doing so since about half an hour after getting home the night before. It had come to him, completely crystal clear, at one of the most inopportune moments. Maybe if he got the billions of ideas out of his head and onto paper by Saturday he could give his readers a small sample of the next series and drum up some excitement for it.
Jack had mentioned, not too long ago, that there was a producer sniffing about to possibly turn his the new series into a show for the telly. John had explicitly informed Jack he would only allow it if he was able to have input. He didn't want to go having the BBC mucking up the books him and his father had put so much work into.
After all, he had done plenty of damage to the franchise and was trying to fix it.
John continued to punch at the keys with one hand as he reached for his coffee mug. It had been a gift from Rose. It was black and featured the picture of a blue police box. She had said it was because Jack had told her that's what the character's space ship looked like. But the shy little grin she'd had when she had gifted it to him said otherwise. It said she had actually taken time to look up the series and taken great care in selecting the gift based on what she had found.
And she had chosen well. He was quite fond of the TARDIS. And it even moved to the other side of the mug if his coffee was hot.
He wrapped his fingers around the mug and brought it to his lips, tilting it up to have a drink.
It was empty. And so was the pot he had brought to his desk.
John's heart stumbled over itself. Normally he would call out to Rose to come get him a fresh pot. But it was four in the morning and she was currently curled up in his bed, burrowed under the sheets. She had been since about an hour after they got back to his place.
His trepidation didn't come from fear of waking her. It came from the fear of having to deal with her possibly avoiding him. Things had become awkward after they arrived to his place. They had flirted with each other the entire way there. Then, as soon as they got inside she had turned, he had run into her, grabbed hold of her to make sure she didn't fall, and he ended up pinning her against the wall. She'd given all the signals... so he had kissed her.
To start with, that had been all he had been after. But then she had clutched the front of his shirt and made it obvious what she wanted. And he had fancied her from some time so he was more than willing to give it to her. Things had gone along fantastic until she had slid her hands under his jumper and pressed them against his chest.
And something had made her stop and push him away. She didn't give a reason, he hadn't asked for one because she didn't need a reason. But the second he had retreated from his bed and looked at her--her eyes so full of conflicted emotions--it had hit him. He knew precisely how to start out his series!
So he had quickly made his apologies and retreated to his typewriter. It hadn't been long before he realized Rose was asleep because he could hear her snoring from his bedroom.
John pushed his chair back from the desk and stood. Cradling his mug in his hands, he made his way to the kitchen and tried to remember what all he needed for his coffee. Once he did, he realized he should have brought the pot instead of the mug. He eyed his opened bed room door for a moment, then set down his mug, and went into the room.
Rose was still huddled under the duvet, her face buried in his favourite pillow. She looked so tiny in his big bed. Her face twitched and she frowned in her sleep, her fingers grasped an item that was resting in her hand then released it. It fell onto the mattress.
John strode over and picked the item up to put it back into her hand. As soon as he reached for it, he could hear soft whispers. The closer his hand got the louder the voices. John picked it up and cradled it in his hand. It was an old fob watch. He delicately stroked the intricate designs on the cover. They weren't all that different from the designs the main character in his book understood as being his native language.
There were several items Jack had said were licensed as "official" products associated with the book. The watch certainly looked like it could be one. Slowly, John sat on the edge of the bed and continued to caress the watch. Why would Rose have something like this, he wondered.
Soul of a Time Lord, one of this whispers said, John finally able to understand them. Prior they had only sounded as a bunch of gibberish. Hidden away... Danger.
John tentatively reached for the latch to pop it open. He looked back at Rose as images flashed across his mind. Most of the time he associated the whispering and visions as being ideas for his book. But something felt different as he sat there. They felt more like... memories. Honest to goodness, memories.
Rose's eyes popped open, wide and alert. She sat up and snatched away the watch before he could open it, clutching it to her chest. "Don't touch that," she said sharply, with a faint tremble in her voice.
"Sorry," John apologized. "I didn't realize it was important to you." Rose cradled the watch in her hand and stroked it tenderly. It suddenly dawned on John that the watch must have been given to her by someone she cared about very deeply. "You love him," he said plainly. Rose looked at him in confusion. "The person that gave you the watch. It was someone you love."
He had chosen his words carefully. Not only for Rose's sake, but because her response would let him know where things stood with his "competitor". Blimey he hated that term. It made it sound like Rose was a prize to be won and displayed with pride rather than a woman with feelings.
Rose tucked her hair behind her ear. "Nineteen days," she said after a false start. "We both know My being your assistant was supposed to be temporary." When she looked up at him, John could see tears being held back. "Nineteen more days, six hours, and twenty three minutes. I can hand him this watch and... he'll be back."
John drew in a breath and held it. That certainly explained why she almost always looked a bit guilty when their flirty banter became too intense. It also explained why she had pushed him away earlier. She was counting down every minute until her love returned... and he had no doubts she loved the mystery man. One didn't count down to the minute unless they loved someone.
Although...
"Does he love you?"
That seemed to strike a nerve. Rose glared at him but then the hardness faded away as she smiled weakly. "I'd like to think he does," she whispered. She softly kissed the watch and set it on the bedside table. "It's... complicated. And I may only be foolin' myself but... I think he does... I think he loves me and needs me."
John smiled kindly. "Well if he doesn't think you're the most important person in the universe... he doesn't deserve you." He tilted her chin up just enough to have her look him in the eyes. "You deserve to be the absolute centre of someone's universe."
"And you would do that?" Rose asked quietly.
"Let's just say... if I had a choice between saving the world and losing you or just letting the world burn..." John said. "I'd let the world burn if it saved you."
Rose opened her mouth to say something. All that came out was a faint, "I--" She closed her eyes and looked away, pulling her chin from John's loose grip. "Never in a billion years thought it would be me..." she said, barely above a whisper. She sighed heavily. "Doing the right thing, at this moment, feels wrong. But what I want to do is so the wrong thing and it... feels right. And... I don't know what to do."
His Rose was at the fine line of right and wrong. Although he wondered when he had started to refer to her as his Rose in his head. It couldn't have been too long because they had only known each other a little over two months.
"I may be saying this only because it would benefit myself greatly," John said, stroking her cheek with his knuckles. "But in my experience, one can never go wrong if they go with what feels right." He hoped she didn't mind his touching her so much. She hadn't complained before about his needlessly touching her or holding her hand...
Rose eyed him curiously. "You're so..." She shook her head and laughed softly.
"What?" John huffed. "I'm so what?"
Rose gave him a smile. "You. It's so weird. How you you are." She leaned in and placed a soft kiss on his cheek. "I'm guessing you want coffee?"
"Last I checked I could only be me," John commented, somewhat confused. He looked down at his hands bashfully. "And, if it's not too much of a bother, I do need more coffee."
Rose laughed and kicked off the blankets. She blushed and quickly pulled them back onto her lap, but not before John caught a glimpse of blue cotton knickers. "Um... could you... hand me my jeans?"
John reached down and picked said jeans up from the floor. "You didn't remember taking them off?" he asked as he handed them over to her.
Her hand grasped his in the process. John was taken aback by the images that danced through his head from that simple point of contact. Images of a brief and rather passionate courtship, their marriage, three children -- two girls and a strapping boy that was the image of his father -- and finally his growing old and weary with Rose still at his side, holding his hand.
"I wish I could stay and keep you safe," he rasped. "My Rose... My perfect Rose."
Rose squeezed his hand. Time had treated her kindly enough but she was showing her age. "There is one way..." she said, taking a fob watch from the drawer. "You just have to open this fob watch."
Rose gasped and she looked up at him. He wasn't sure of what she had seen in his eyes at that very moment but whatever it was, he made a mental note of trying to do it again because she released his hand. Then she promptly lunged, wrapping her arms around his neck, and kissed him.