Fic: Lapis Philosophorum, Chapters Eighteen through Twenty
TITLE: ‘Lapis Philosophorum’
AUTHOR: QKellie
FANDOM: Doctor Who (and Torchwood to a lesser extent)
CHARACTERS: Rose Tyler, the Doctor, the Doctor ‘10.5’, Donna Noble, Jackie Tyler, Pete Tyler, Jake Simmonds, John Hart, Lucy Saxon, Harold Saxon, others
PAIRINGS: Rose/Doctor 10.5, Lucy Saxon/Harold Saxon (implied), Jake/Mickey (implied), others
RATING: PG-13
GENRE: Gen/drama/romance
WARNINGS: Spoilers for DW through series 4 and TW series 2x01. OCs present but not used to ship with anyone besides other OCs. Moderate to extreme Doctor/Rose shippiness abounds. Discussions of angst, action, violence, and bisexuality, but at heart this is a genfic, honestly.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: This story takes a cut scene from DW’s series 4 finale as canon, but it does not depict it with a complete adherence to accuracy as it actually took place. TW spoilers spring up only after Chapter 23.
Prologues and Chapter One | Chapters Two and Three | Chapters Four through Six | Chapters Seven through Nine | Chapters Ten through Twelve | Interlude through Chapter Fourteen | Chapters Fifteen through Seventeen
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Once upon a time, a centuries-old being sat at a table across from a human female not two decades old, and he felt love. For the first time in he couldn’t remember how long, the Time Lord had felt true, grin-inducing, giddy-as-a-schoolboy, unconditional, chaste and yet not necessarily so chaste true genuine affection toward and from this woman, this girl, this Rose… The Doctor had sat there with her beaming at him, wanting him in the face of danger and calamity, worrying herself not over whether or not the future was doomed or if they’d find their spacecraft again. Rose Tyler had been content so long as he was with her, however he was with her. But now… they were both different, weren’t they?
He composed himself quickly and turned to Lucy. ‘Are you to tell me this Jeremy is the real menace here? That you don’t want…’ He faltered slightly, unsure of how to refer to the Master.
Lucy took the problem from him. ‘You think I don’t want Harold back?’ she asked. ‘Of course I do. But not if I’m being used.’
‘Does it matter at all to you if bringing him back is simply not the right thing to do?’
Lucy seemed to actually consider his words carefully. After several agonizingly long moments, she finally nodded slowly. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘it does matter. And I won’t do it, not like this, and not if you can help me out of this mess.’
‘I want everything you have on this Jeremy fellow, who he is, where he comes from, how you got mixed up with him in the first place, and what any of this has to do with.. well, anything, really.’
She blathered on to him for the next few minutes, and the Doctor glanced occasionally (and nervously) back up to the staircase, both hoping and dreading to spot Rose there glaring down at them once more. Perhaps fortunately, she didn’t make another appearance until Lucy had finished her tale. Once marginally satisfied that the Doctor had badgered her sufficiently into helping their side instead of Jeremy’s, he sent her on her way.
Ensuring you’d done the right thing was a spot more difficult without the inherent, instinctual insight of the entire universe’s history-backwards and forwards-in your DNA. Made it all the easier to know whether or not people were trustworthy.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Tony Tyler had blond, wispy hair just like his big sister and mum had at his age. Unlike the women in his family, however, Tony would not grow up to bleach his back to his baby shade after it had begun to grow darker. Rose giggled to herself as she combed the little boy’s cowlick into submission, admiring how free of unsightly brown roots the child’s hair was. ‘Wish I could take you to my colourist to match a dye shade for me,’ Rose cooed to the baby. ‘Don’t I? Yes I do!’
Cuddling Tony to her as the infant rubbed his cheek against her shoulder, Rose considered that, even for someone with as adventurous and strange a life as she’d had, today rather took the cake. Particularly as everything related to her being shunted aside and treated like an unimportant child more vociferously than she had in years.
‘I’ll tell you this, little brother. Torchwood treated me right. Gave me responsibilities. Let me lead missions. Didn’t shut me out of things like those two’re doing right now. Her, I get. She’s not one of the good guys and all. Fine. But for him to treat me like this, no. Not acceptable by half.’
So who was this Harold person then? There was no one else alive from the Doctor’s home planet, not last she knew. And who was he to this not-quite-a-nanny person? Information was important to Rose. She spent too many years before she met the Doctor feeling a bit of a dolt, especially at her old job. Mightn’t not’ve had much interest in formal education, but she knew Heidi thought she was bright enough to have a prime spot on the Torchwood team. Did this new Doctor not… wouldn’t he know how valuable she could be to him?
Tony gurgled in Rose’s arms. ‘Oh, hush, you,’ she said amiably. ‘I shouldn’t care if he respects me, should I? He may look the same, but he’s not.’
CHAPTER TWENTY
The Doctor had watched the funeral pyre burn brightly, staring deeply into the flames as the last vestiges of the Master burned. He’d refused regeneration, not wanting to live as the prisoner of his arch nemesis, but he’d failed to acknowledge what this refusal would do to anyone but himself.
Now, months later, the human Doctor wondered if that was the mark of someone corrupted by evil, to fail to do what would give people around him the least amount of grief, including saving his own life so that his loved ones would not suffer. And, damn it all, but the Doctor loved the Master as a fallen brother, as much as he also hated him. Watching him die was harder than even experiencing his own death many times over.
If Lucy Saxon suffered so at the loss of her abusive, evil bastard of a husband, if she were willing to go through all this to get him back… what must Rose have gone through without him? No, they weren’t married, but he knew she loved him. And he’d certainly never raised a hand to her. Was it even worse to lose someone who’d treated you well?
‘Sod that,’ a small voice inside his head sniped. ‘You didn’t treat her well, or rather, he didn’t. The he that isn’t quite you. If you love someone, do you hold them at arm’s length for two years and never tell them, even when it matters most, that you love them?’
He could’ve argued with this spiteful little part of himself even longer, but as he watched Lucy exit the Tylers’ home and make her way to her tiny car parked by the side of the road, he knew he had work to do. If he didn’t bring Rose up to speed with everything-absolutely everything-she’d have his head.
‘Got to keep this one,’ he remarked aloud as he climbed the stairs. ‘No more coming back from such a thing in this body.’
AUTHOR: QKellie
FANDOM: Doctor Who (and Torchwood to a lesser extent)
CHARACTERS: Rose Tyler, the Doctor, the Doctor ‘10.5’, Donna Noble, Jackie Tyler, Pete Tyler, Jake Simmonds, John Hart, Lucy Saxon, Harold Saxon, others
PAIRINGS: Rose/Doctor 10.5, Lucy Saxon/Harold Saxon (implied), Jake/Mickey (implied), others
RATING: PG-13
GENRE: Gen/drama/romance
WARNINGS: Spoilers for DW through series 4 and TW series 2x01. OCs present but not used to ship with anyone besides other OCs. Moderate to extreme Doctor/Rose shippiness abounds. Discussions of angst, action, violence, and bisexuality, but at heart this is a genfic, honestly.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: This story takes a cut scene from DW’s series 4 finale as canon, but it does not depict it with a complete adherence to accuracy as it actually took place. TW spoilers spring up only after Chapter 23.
Prologues and Chapter One | Chapters Two and Three | Chapters Four through Six | Chapters Seven through Nine | Chapters Ten through Twelve | Interlude through Chapter Fourteen | Chapters Fifteen through Seventeen
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Once upon a time, a centuries-old being sat at a table across from a human female not two decades old, and he felt love. For the first time in he couldn’t remember how long, the Time Lord had felt true, grin-inducing, giddy-as-a-schoolboy, unconditional, chaste and yet not necessarily so chaste true genuine affection toward and from this woman, this girl, this Rose… The Doctor had sat there with her beaming at him, wanting him in the face of danger and calamity, worrying herself not over whether or not the future was doomed or if they’d find their spacecraft again. Rose Tyler had been content so long as he was with her, however he was with her. But now… they were both different, weren’t they?
He composed himself quickly and turned to Lucy. ‘Are you to tell me this Jeremy is the real menace here? That you don’t want…’ He faltered slightly, unsure of how to refer to the Master.
Lucy took the problem from him. ‘You think I don’t want Harold back?’ she asked. ‘Of course I do. But not if I’m being used.’
‘Does it matter at all to you if bringing him back is simply not the right thing to do?’
Lucy seemed to actually consider his words carefully. After several agonizingly long moments, she finally nodded slowly. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘it does matter. And I won’t do it, not like this, and not if you can help me out of this mess.’
‘I want everything you have on this Jeremy fellow, who he is, where he comes from, how you got mixed up with him in the first place, and what any of this has to do with.. well, anything, really.’
She blathered on to him for the next few minutes, and the Doctor glanced occasionally (and nervously) back up to the staircase, both hoping and dreading to spot Rose there glaring down at them once more. Perhaps fortunately, she didn’t make another appearance until Lucy had finished her tale. Once marginally satisfied that the Doctor had badgered her sufficiently into helping their side instead of Jeremy’s, he sent her on her way.
Ensuring you’d done the right thing was a spot more difficult without the inherent, instinctual insight of the entire universe’s history-backwards and forwards-in your DNA. Made it all the easier to know whether or not people were trustworthy.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Tony Tyler had blond, wispy hair just like his big sister and mum had at his age. Unlike the women in his family, however, Tony would not grow up to bleach his back to his baby shade after it had begun to grow darker. Rose giggled to herself as she combed the little boy’s cowlick into submission, admiring how free of unsightly brown roots the child’s hair was. ‘Wish I could take you to my colourist to match a dye shade for me,’ Rose cooed to the baby. ‘Don’t I? Yes I do!’
Cuddling Tony to her as the infant rubbed his cheek against her shoulder, Rose considered that, even for someone with as adventurous and strange a life as she’d had, today rather took the cake. Particularly as everything related to her being shunted aside and treated like an unimportant child more vociferously than she had in years.
‘I’ll tell you this, little brother. Torchwood treated me right. Gave me responsibilities. Let me lead missions. Didn’t shut me out of things like those two’re doing right now. Her, I get. She’s not one of the good guys and all. Fine. But for him to treat me like this, no. Not acceptable by half.’
So who was this Harold person then? There was no one else alive from the Doctor’s home planet, not last she knew. And who was he to this not-quite-a-nanny person? Information was important to Rose. She spent too many years before she met the Doctor feeling a bit of a dolt, especially at her old job. Mightn’t not’ve had much interest in formal education, but she knew Heidi thought she was bright enough to have a prime spot on the Torchwood team. Did this new Doctor not… wouldn’t he know how valuable she could be to him?
Tony gurgled in Rose’s arms. ‘Oh, hush, you,’ she said amiably. ‘I shouldn’t care if he respects me, should I? He may look the same, but he’s not.’
CHAPTER TWENTY
The Doctor had watched the funeral pyre burn brightly, staring deeply into the flames as the last vestiges of the Master burned. He’d refused regeneration, not wanting to live as the prisoner of his arch nemesis, but he’d failed to acknowledge what this refusal would do to anyone but himself.
Now, months later, the human Doctor wondered if that was the mark of someone corrupted by evil, to fail to do what would give people around him the least amount of grief, including saving his own life so that his loved ones would not suffer. And, damn it all, but the Doctor loved the Master as a fallen brother, as much as he also hated him. Watching him die was harder than even experiencing his own death many times over.
If Lucy Saxon suffered so at the loss of her abusive, evil bastard of a husband, if she were willing to go through all this to get him back… what must Rose have gone through without him? No, they weren’t married, but he knew she loved him. And he’d certainly never raised a hand to her. Was it even worse to lose someone who’d treated you well?
‘Sod that,’ a small voice inside his head sniped. ‘You didn’t treat her well, or rather, he didn’t. The he that isn’t quite you. If you love someone, do you hold them at arm’s length for two years and never tell them, even when it matters most, that you love them?’
He could’ve argued with this spiteful little part of himself even longer, but as he watched Lucy exit the Tylers’ home and make her way to her tiny car parked by the side of the road, he knew he had work to do. If he didn’t bring Rose up to speed with everything-absolutely everything-she’d have his head.
‘Got to keep this one,’ he remarked aloud as he climbed the stairs. ‘No more coming back from such a thing in this body.’