Ninth Doctor Ficathon piece -- "Fair Trade"
Finally, it's done -- my entry in
lafemmedarla's Ninth Doctor Ficathon, written for
cathica.
Fic and A/N under the cut. Apologies for the lateness -- the artiste in me would like to give this another editing run, but then, if I didn't stop fiddling with my stories, I'd never get 'em posted! :D
TITLE: "Fair Trade"
AUTHOR: dameruth
WRITTEN FOR: cathica
RATING: PG, I guess, for mild language.
PROMPT USED:
"REQUEST 2: 9th Doctor Pairing/ Other characters you'd like to see in the story: Doctor/ Rose ...surprise me
Up to three things you want in your fic: a pot of good soup, the end of a long day
Up to three things you don't want in your fic: OTP, Mickey, Jackie"
CHARACTERS: Nine, Rose, the TARDIS
WORD COUNT: Dunno, but over 600. :)
A/N: Set early in S1 -- I'm figuring sometime not long after "The Unquiet Dead." Ubeta'd, any errors are mine alone.
The Doctor clicked a toggle switch on the control panel -- not one he used much anymore --and looked up with a grin so he could watch the dome of the control room dissolve into a perfect, three-dimensional simulation of what lay outside the TARDIS.
They hovered in the heart of a nebula. By the light of the hot new stars in its heart, the streamers of cosmic dust and gas glowed gold and amber, flowing in delicate swirls, punctuated by denser, brighter puffs where the thin material was compacting in on itself --new stars in the making.
"There you go," the Doctor told Rose, still grinning fit to split his face as he gazed up into the spectacle. "What d'you think of that?"
"Lovely," Rose responded, right on cue . . . followed by a low gurgling sound that caught the Doctor's startled attention. Glowering, he snapped his head down and around to glare at Rose.
"Sorry," she told him, somewhat sheepishly. "That was my stomach. It really is lovely,"she waved at the ceiling simulation, "But it makes me think of . . ." she hesitated, ". . . egg-flower soup." She grinned, trying to make it into a joke.
The Doctor was still stung, however. "I show you the wonders of the Universe, an' you're thinkin' about Chinese takeaway?"
"It's been six hours since breakfast," Rose shot back, refusing to be intimidated. "An' I can think about the Universe and egg flower soup at the same time. I'm not that one-track!"
The Doctor rolled his eyes towards the rich amber glory overhead. "So I suppose you'd like to get some lunch somewhere.?"
"That'd be nice, yeah," Rose told him, undaunted, and he had to grin a little, inside.
"All right, then," he huffed, and toggled the roof display off. "I guess we're going for Chinese. I know a lovely place, in the City Of a Thousand Perfumed Terraces on New Beijing . . ." He began typing in coordinates.
--
The Doctor confidently swung open the TARDIS door . . . and was greeted with a blast of hot, humid, vegetation-scented air that brought him up short.
Rose bumped into him from behind, and then craned her neck to look round his shoulder at what lay outside.
As far as the eye could see, open, semitropical woodland surrounded them. The heavily buttressed tree trunks soared up into a distant canopy, and there was very little understory growing in the dim light that filtered through. Dry leaves littered the ground in an even layer, and the only sounds audible were the faint chirps and hums of distant animal life.
"So," Rose said, conversationally, "This is the City of a Thousand Perfumed Terraces, is it?"
The Doctor blew out an irritated breath. "No, 'course not," he told her, and stepped out onto the leaf litter, which crunched crisply under his boot sole. He wasn't worried about heading outside -- the TARDIS wouldn't have let him do so if the basic environmental parameters weren't safe.
Rose, in total trust, followed him out. "Bucolic," she commented wryly, "But I'm not seein' any takeaway places . . ."
She was cut off as a cool breeze riffled towards them through the trees, bringing a unique, unmistakable freshness with it.
Both of them inhaled appreciatively.
"That's the ocean," Rose said, naming the scent, and her face brightened. "C'mon!"
She grabbed the Doctor's hand and towed him, in the direction of the enticing fragrance. He followed willingly.
"A day on the beach might just make up for missing out on the Universe's best Chinese," she told him, glancing up over her shoulder with her tongue between her teeth. "I could work on my tan!"
That simple statement put such images into the Doctor's head he stumbled slightly, but he caught himself in time to keep up with Rose as she increased her pace to a near-jog.
The undergrowth thickened as they reached the edge of the trees and the available light levels increased. They pushed their way through, and broke out into bright sunlight at the edge of a broad, white-sand beach. The sky was a fair, green-blue, decorated with wispy clouds. Everything looked idyllic and inviting.
Except for the water. The Doctor frowned. Something was wrong with the water. It wasn't lapping against the beach the way it should. In fact, it was getting further away as he watched, revealing more and more white sand . . . and then the darker, jutting lumps of offshore coral reefs. Fish and other sea life lay flopping and stranded.
Beside him, Rose breathed out, in a voice of reverent horror, "Oooooh, that's not good . . ."
Even as she finished speaking, a dark line appeared on the horizon, far out to sea, growing and thickening with every second.
The Doctor didn't even need to tell Rose to run, this time. Her hand tightened on his, and then they were tearing back through the forest the way they'd come.
The TARDIS was clearly in sight when the tsunami hit the beach and began rushing through the forest with a roar of water peppered by explosions of splintering wood. The Doctor had his key in hand, and fitted it deftly into the lock of the TARDIS door without actually stopping. A twist to open the door, and the two of them fell through . . . accompanied by several hundred gallons of murky seawater.
Startled out of her usual somnolence by their entrance, the TARDIS reacted instantly by creating a bubble of force, cutting off the rush of water. Rose, who had been thrown facedown on the deck when the water swept her feet out from under her, was completely soaked and gasping for breath. She flipped over to look out the door, and saw a solid wall of swirling brown water filled with twigs, leaves, fish, and less identifiable debris.
The Doctor had kept his feet, but he was soaked to mid-thigh, and his expression was dazed, and a little wild. He reached down, and Rose grasped his hand so he could haul her to her feet. Distracted, he handled her as if she weighed next to nothing, she noticed with some surprise.
He looked over his shoulder at the swirling water outside the door . . . and then down, at the muck, leaves, and water that pooled far below, under the mesh decking, where it had drained after the burst of their entrance.
"Oh," he said, in a surprisingly small voice. "Bugger."
A rattle from the direction of the central column caused both Rose and the Doctor to look in that direction, startled. A motley collection of buckets, shovels, towels and mops that hadn't been there before were now stacked and propped along the railing of the rampway.
"Right," the Doctor sighed, and went to close the door.
--
It took hours, though not as long as Rose would have thought. Apparently, the TARDIS was able to do at least some self-cleaning, but she needed her crew to speed up the process.
They set up a bucket brigade, with the Doctor scooping up water in buckets, and boosting them up to Rose through an opening in the deck grating. She dumped the bucket contents outside, into the forcefield bubble the TARDIS created for her each time the door opened, and returned the empty buckets to the Doctor to be refilled.
It went slowly at first, since the Doctor placed priority on finding and capturing the collection of fish and other sea life that had followed them inside, to be liberated as safely as possible. Once he couldn't find any more ocean creatures, the bailing sped up considerably.
Once, as the Doctor slogged to where Rose waited, lugging two filled buckets, he was startled to hear a muffled giggle from overhead. He looked up, and there was Rose, lying sprawled on the metal mesh overhead, looking down at thim through the rectangular gap where one of the deck panels had been lifted aside. She was grinning.
"It's never anything little with you, is it?" she asked.
"What d'you mean?" he asked, frowning as he carefully boosted the first bucket towards her, careful not to slop any of it out onto himself. Experience was a good teacher.
"Oof." She reached down and took hold of the bucket's handle, and pulled it up through the hole and set it on the grating next to her, still grinning. "I mean, it's not like you get the address a little wrong and we end up doin' Italian instead of Chinese. No, we get a jungle and a tsunami. You don't get me home twelve hours late, it's twelve months late. We go for Christmas in Venice and get Charles Dickens and zombies . . ."
"All right, you've made your point," he said, a trifle grumpily, raising the second bucket in her direction. "Yeah, that's my life -- I told you, I don't do domestic. Thought I was pretty clear about that. Problem?"
She caught the handle and pulled the second bucket through the hole, then stood -- which looked a little odd from the Doctor's persepctive.
"No problem," Rose told him, in good humor. "Just . . . it suits you, s'all."
He mulled that over while he filled the next two buckets.
--
With the water gone, then the solid debris needed to be swept up. Finally the solid floor of the lower decking needed to be mopped.
Towards the end, Rose was visibly flagging, though she never once complained -- more out of sheer stubbornness than anything else, the Doctor thought. If he wasn't going to slow down, she wasn't, either.
"I'm down to the last," he told her. "Why don't you let me finish it up?"
Her jaw tightened, and he saw the beginnings of a stubborn glare, so he added, "I'm guessin' you'll want a shower after this."
Rose, still in her muddy, damp clothes, nodded, looking a little taken aback.
"Well, so will I, an' I want to make sure there's hot water enough. So, you go on first."
Not that the TARDIS couldn't have generated hot water all the livelong day, but Rose didn't know that, and he assumed it was an excuse she'd accept -- one that wouldn't have her losing face.
A moment's consideration, and she nodded in acceptance. "All right, but let me know if you need any more help."
"Will do," he told her, slapping the mop down onto the floor yet again, secretly pleased at having won without actually needing to argue.
--
Some time later, the last of the cleanup finished, he was dragging down the hallway, figuring even Rose couldn't possibly be still in the shower, and realizing that the idea of hot water on tired muscles was genuinely appealing, when an unexpected scent drew him short just before he passed the galley doorway.
He smelled . . . soup?
Frowning, he glanced into the galley, and there was Rose. Her damp hair was pulled loosely back from her face, and she wore a fluffy pink bathrobe and a pair of flip-flops. She was gazing into a pot on the stove with a critical expression, a large spoon held at the ready in one hand.
She must have heard him, because she looked up and raised her dark eyebrows in acknowledgement.
"Good timing," she told him. "It's nearly ready. I was wonderin' if I should go find you."
The Doctor stepped into the galley, curious. "What's almost ready?"
"The soup," she told him, matter-of-factly. "I got thinkin' about egg-flower soup when you showed me that nebula, and I couldn't get it out of my head. If we couldn't get any at a restaurant . . ." she shrugged, "I figured I might as well make some. I was too keyed up to sleep, anyway."
She turned her attention to the soup and gave it a stir. Without looking back at the Doctor, she nodded in satisfaction, and commented, "I made enough for both of us. Have a seat."
Her tone was one of complete confidence, and the Doctor found himself obeying without realizing he was doing so until he was sitting at the galley's small table. For the first time he could recall, he felt like a visitor in his own ship.
Disconcerted, he cleared his throat. "I didn't know you could . . ."
"Cook?" she finished, tartly, looking over her shoulder at him, and cocking a dark eyebrow. "Nah, you were too quick to make your jokes about beans on toast, weren't you?"
She picked up a small bowl, and swirled it speculatively before dumping the contents into the steaming pot. Watching it, she commented, "I couldn't find any regular eggs, just some blue, bumpy ones. They looked all right when I broke 'em open, though . . . and don't tell me what they came out of, I'm happier not knowing," she finished.
The Doctor closed his mouth, and held his peace.
Rose gave the pot a final stir, and nodded in satisfaction. "Now, if we just had . . ." she murmured, and closed her eyes and ran a hand along the countertop. "Ha!"
She opened a stasis drawer and pulled out a bunch of greenery. A sniff, and she nodded in appreciation. Another pass with closed eyes yielded a knife and cutting board, and she neatly chopped a bit of greenery.
"Close enough to scallions," she said, pleased, after nibbling a small piece.
Deftly, she rounded up two bowls and two spoons, taking the TARDIS's silent directions with natural ease. Once she'd gotten over the idea of a ship that got into one's head, she'd adapted beautifully -- even gleefully -- to the advantages.
Rose spooned soup into a bowl. "Scallions? Or whatever they are?" she asked him.
"Nah, can't stand 'em," he told her, without thinking.
Fortunately, his bluntness didn't bother her. She just shrugged, and said, "More for me, then."
She slid the first bowl at him across the table. "Go on, eat up," she said, gentling the order with an affectionate smile.
He might be a Lord of Time, but he meekly took the spoon she offered . . . possibly as a result of the effect Rose's smile had on him.
Or possibly because the soup did smell surprisingly tasty. The Doctor might have a more efficient metabolism than a human, but it had been many hours since he'd eaten.
The soup was still hot, so he blew on a spoonful to cool it, and Rose continued talking as she scooped out a bowlful for herself.
"I've always had a thing for egg flower soup," she said, by way of explanation. "When I was little, eating out was a big treat, since we didn't have much money. But when Mum could afford it, I loved Chinese, and I always ordered egg flower soup."
She scattered chopped scallions generously across the top of her soup, and moved to sit down at the table with him.
"In fact," she continued, "I was always goin' on about the stuff so much, Mum learned to make it for me. I thought she was some kind of genius -- wasn't till I learned how to cook myself that I realized how easy it was. Still love it, though. Guess you could call it comfort food. Just what I need after nearly getting walloped by a tsunami," she added, with a grin to make it a joke rather than an accusation.
The Doctor finished blowing on his soup, and downed the spoonful. He raised his eyebrows in appreciation.
"S' good," he told Rose.
"You could sound a little less surprised," she said, still teasing, and blew on a spoonful of her own. It was hard for her to smile as she did so, but her brown eyes sparkled across the table at him.
She looked much nicer without the heavy makeup she usually favored, he couldn't help thinking, but was wise enough not to say so out loud. After all, Jackie'd probably taught her daughter all about slapping as well as cooking.
Suppressing a grin, he looked down into his bowl as he stirred the soup to help cool the bulk of it. Clear amber broth glowed against the white ceramic, and ragged bits of pale denatured protein swirled in graceful suspension.
It really did look like a nebula, in miniature.
Here he was, the sworn enemy of domesticity, in the most painfully domestic situation possible -- late night, kitchen, comfort soup, a companion in her bathrobe . . . and right in front of him was a reflection of the greater universe.
Although, he thought, if one might see a world in a grain of sand, a nebula in a bowl of soup wasn't that much of a stretch.
Bemused, he sipped another spoonful, and glanced across the table at Rose, who was working on her own soup with happy determination. She was completely at home in the moment, and . . . it suited her.
He'd gone and picked her up out of her world, her life, and made her a part of his. What he hadn't thought about before was that for every action, there is an equal an opposite reaction. If she was part of his world now, he was a part of hers.
Soup for nebulas. Right then, he couldn't help but think it an eminently fair trade.
"Blimey, you're quiet. You aren't coming down with something, are you?" Rose asked, noticing his reflective silence.
"I'm eating, Rose," he said, logically. That was how he meant it anyway, but it came out a little prickly even to his own ears. "I can't talk while I eat."
Completely undaunted, Rose snorted with amusement. "If anyone could, you could."
"Dunno. Think you could give me a run for my money in that department," he told her, suppressing a smile.
Rose laughed. "Just for that, you can get your own seconds," she told him, and started back on her soup.
"Don't mind if I do," he said, and took his bowl over to the pot on the stove to do just that.