In Love and War, 7/16
Chapter 7
Rose wanted to hold the Doctor’s hand but the medics were swarming around him and lifting the stretcher up from the ground.
Saor hastily finished attaching an IV bag to the Doctor’s wrist before motioning to the medics to follow him. “Let’s get to the operating room!” he said.
Ema reached out to stop Rose when she tried to follow.
“We need to let them work,” he said as gently as he could. Rose nodded before collapsing into his arms.
She was startled by the sound of a female voice behind her, amplified by the acoustics of the cave.
“Which way?” she was saying angrily.
“You can’t go in there!” a shocked guard was yelling after her. “Stop her!”
Ema stared up in surprise as a hooded figure approached him and Rose with the whole of his royal guard falling in behind her.
“Sir!” Tate was shouting.
Ema stepped forward and tucked Rose behind him as the stranger approached. “Who are you?” he asked cautiously. “You’re obviously very clever for evading my guards,” he added sarcastically as he surveyed his embarrassed team of soldiers.
The woman threw off her hood and smirked at him. “Imagine that,” she answered.
Ema gasped in surprise. “Azoden!” he whispered in disbelief.
Her long brown hair was plaited back into a braid down her back. Her face was smudged with the grime of the battlefield, but he could still count the numberless freckles on her skin. Seeing her again was like stepping back in time, before the war and chaos tore their planet apart. It was a bittersweet feeling.
Azoden clasped his hand, willing her good intentions through the empathic connection.
“I wouldn’t have assumed otherwise,” Ema responded to her wordless message. “Why have you risked coming here?”
Azoden jerked her head in the direction Saor had gone. “That man, the Doctor,” she explained. “We met when he was a prisoner of my father’s. Where his arguments failed to convince the King to action, they very much motivated me. I met him in his cell one night and gave him his freedom when he promised to help our people find peace once more.”
Rose was startled out of her shock. “You met with the Doctor?” she asked.
Azoden nodded. “I asked him to keep it in confidence,” she said. “I couldn’t take the chance of my arrival here becoming known. My father is not above hanging his own child these days, and what I’m planning is little more than treason. I was supposed to meet with the Doctor on the field this morning, but when he didn’t show up, I became concerned. I found him standing in the clearing not fifty meters from our agreed upon meeting spot when a shell detonated beside him. I called over your guard to save his life,” she said, addressing Ema. “I only hope Saor can act quickly.”
Rose crossed her arms as if to hug herself. “Thank you,” she said sincerely.
Rose turned to the prince. “Ema, I must go to him,” she pleaded.
“Take the fourth tunnel on your right,” he directed her. “The hospital bay is through there.”
Rose left him with Azoden, hoping that they could work together to find a solution to their planet’s troubles. But more importantly, she hoped that their war hadn’t just cost the Doctor his life. She raced down the tunnel Ema had pointed her to, praying that the Doctor would be awake and nonplussed when she arrived, even if it had only been a few minutes. For once, she wanted nothing more than to hear him boast about his superior Time Lord physiognomy.
When she reached the makeshift hospital wing, she was distressed to see Ydaravo standing outside of the door as if he were guarding it. As she ran up, the soldier simply shook his head, indicating that she wouldn’t be allowed inside.
“Please,” she begged, grasping his arm.
Ydaravo was startled by the connection, and before he could prevent it, the two were locked in an empathic connection. Rose saw things that she shouldn’t, things that she knew a stoic man like him would have died to keep secret, but she couldn’t stop the link. She felt the intense pain of a man who had lost everything. She felt his sorrow translated into hollowness, as if nothing mattered to him anymore because there wasn’t anything left to mourn for. Rose gasped, knowing that he was seeing her own pain for the Doctor, and her sympathy for his people at the same time.
Ydaravo broke contact with her, stumbling back against the hospital doors. Rose was breathing heavily, embarrassed about what she had unrightfully taken from him. To her surprise, Ydaravo didn’t look angry, but sad.
“I haven’t shared the link with anybody in a long time,” he said, his voice cracking with disuse from years of silence.
“I’m sorry,” Rose rushed to explain, “I didn’t mean to!”
Ydaravo shook his head. “Don’t apologize,” he said. “I’d forgotten what it meant to be understood by others.”
He stood stonily for a moment before continuing. “Your Doctor, you love him so much, and I know you would do anything for him. I felt the same way about my wife…and our child before they died in a bombing brought on by this damned war. I felt like it was my fault for so long, as if I could have protected them somehow.”
Rose ached internally, still sharing the memory of his pain. She nodded her head because no words could express it.
“I think you should go in,” he said. “But know this, Rose Tyler. If he doesn’t make it, it’s not your fault. There are things in this world that are out of our control. I don’t know if it’s the way they’re supposed to be, but it is how they are. Don’t take it on. It’s not yours to own.”
He paused before continuing. “Funny that someone so alien to my people could be the one to remind me what I’ve left behind.”
Ydaravo walked off, still considering his own words as he left the doors for Rose to contemplate uneasily.
The urgency of her mission had gone with her courage to confront what lie on the other side of those doors. She stood with her hand up against one of them as she thought over what Ydaravo had said. She didn’t need to imagine a world without the Doctor because she’d glimpsed that future through the frame of the soldier’s broken heart. The pain was unbearable, and it shook her so badly that she almost turned around. Would it be better not to know?
She was surprised to find herself pushing the door open anyways.
She shouldn’t have been surprised by the endless rows of beds filled with moaning, battered men. Outside of the room, only the Doctor had mattered, and to her he was the only man in this hospital. As she walked up the aisles searching for his face, her sorrow for him transferred into grief for the young men dying around her. There were so many of them. She could hardly bare it. She stood locked in place as one of them reached out for her like a ghost.
She started when a gentle hand rested on her shoulder, and was relieved to find Saor looking in her eyes with a confident expression.
“The surgery was successful,” he told her. “Would you like to come see him?”
Rose didn’t say anything but walked beside Saor as he led her down the aisle. He followed her gaze as it flicked to the numerous prostrate soldiers and felt her pain implicitly.
“What’s funny is that for all the medical intervention…the drugs, the advanced equipment, and the care of our doctors, none of it as efficacious as the power of our empathic connection.” Saor mused.
“Really?” Rose asked.
“Yes,” Saor responded. “I’ve seen the difference between those who get treatment without the link and those who do. The results speak for themselves. Bodies can mend and scars can fade, but the internal mark of trauma, the emotional effect is something that may never heal without intervention.”
“I think that’s what Ydaravo meant,” Rose said absently. “Perspective can mean the difference between life and death, not just for our bodies but for our soul. That’s the power of your people.”
Saor paused for a moment before resuming his course. “You…spoke with Ydaravo?”
“Yeah,” Rose said numbly. “I kind of caught him off guard.”
Saor took her hand in his as they approached a curtained section of the room.
“It’s my belief, Ms. Tyler, that someone who can reach a man like Ydaravo has the capability to accomplish anything she sets her mind to. You must be an extraordinary woman,” Saor added. He let his fingers linger on the curtain before he continued.
“The Doctor sustained massive internal and external injuries, so I don’t want you to expect too much. But the amount of trauma he’s experienced would have surely killed one of our own kind.”
Rose smiled with tears in her eyes at his words. “He’s an extraordinary man,” she said.
“Then you are well suited,” Saor said kindly. “Why don’t you go tell him I said that?”
“I will,” she replied, stepping beyond the medic into the intensive care unit.
The Doctor was lying in a sparse bed with too many tubes sticking out of him, making Rose tear up before she even realized it. She went to his side and clasped his hand that was colder than ice. Rubbing it vigorously between her palms, she blew hot air onto his fingers and kissed each one in succession.
“My Doctor,” she whispered miserably. She hadn’t seen him like this since the Christmas invasion, when his vortex-prompted regeneration left him bedridden and unconscious for a few days. She watched his chest rise and fall gently, trying to console herself with the fact that he was alive, although not unscathed.
His face was covered with tiny cuts where shrapnel bits had sliced through his skin. Bruises were creeping up around his neck where rocks had impacted, and as her hand pulled back the covers from his chest, she wept at the sight of stitches lacing up and around his torso.
She sunk her face into the bedding beside him, unable to confront the image of her beloved Doctor in pain.
“Oh please!” she begged him, “Please be alright!”
She shot up when the shock of his voice met her ears.
“I’m always alright,” he moaned quietly, regarding her with half-open lids.
“Oh Doctor!” Rose cried, her eyes so swollen she could barely make him out. The joy in her heart was palpable. She could barely restrain herself from jumping on top of him.
“Look like bloody Frankenstein,” he muttered unhappily. “Or…Frankenstein’s monster I mean. I always get them confused.” His head had craned up slightly to review his condition before dropping back with an exhausted effort to the pillow.
“Don’t strain yourself!” Rose commanded. “And…you don’t look like Frankenstein. A Sycorax maybe…”
The Doctor moaned more audibly.
“Are you okay? Does it hurt?” Rose asked anxiously as she traced her hand over his cheek.
“Oh…no. The drugs are superb, really. But do I really look like a Sycorax? Am I…hideous?” the Doctor eeked out.
Rose laughed tremendously at his statement, half-hysteric from the recent stress of seeing him so close to death. “You are the most vain sodding alien I’ve ever met!” she cried, wiping away tears from her eyes.
When the Doctor continued to regard her with pursed lips, Rose calmed herself and grasped his hand tightly. “You are as beautiful as you ever were,” she said solemnly. “Maybe more so, now that you can’t talk as much.”
“Oi!” the Doctor protested weakly, but he squeezed her hand back gently. “Rose, I’m so, so sorry about what I said earlier. I wish I could unsay it!”
“Okay,” Rose said, frowning and nodding her head. “You just did. You never said it. I never heard it. You’re not the only one with power over time anymore, see?”
Rose kissed his palm and brought it between her hands as she leaned forward.
The Doctor stared at her like she was a marvel. “You didn’t tell me you were a Time Lord,” he joked, but cut off with a short coughing fit as Rose hastened to fill up a glass of water.
She brought the drink to his lips and he sipped gratefully. “You don’t know all my secrets,” she teased him. She stroked the bed sheets around him, smoothing out the errant wrinkles.
“I remember a time not so long ago when you were laid up like this on my mum’s bed. Mickey dragged you in and left you flopped across her comforter, insisting that I take it from there.”
The Doctor let the tip of his tongue rest on one of his canine teeth as he considered this. “I-I hadn’t really thought about that before,” he stuttered, “but somehow I got turned over from my leather-clad ninth’s gear into a pair of domestic jimjams. Was that you, cheeky minx?”
Rose let her head fall into her hand as she half-covered her face. “Somebody had to!” she said. “I don’t suppose you would have preferred my mum!”
The Doctor made a grossed-out face that left his opinion in no uncertain terms, but then he raised his eyebrows.
“We’re you just in the middle of confessing a secret Rose Tyler?”
She blushed a fiery red beyond her namesake at his words. “Well,” she started, “I guess I kind of...enjoyed it,” she spilled out, watching his face for a reaction.
He gave her a half smile that sent a warm spinning current through her body. “Is that right?” he replied, in a voice that deepened the burning of her skin.
“The truth is,” Rose continued, “when you were lyin’ there all incapacitated, I swept down and stole a kiss off of you.” She felt her heart slamming in her chest as she told him this, her most guarded secret. She wasn’t even sure why she was telling him now, but it seemed like he was flirting with her. “And I did it…because…I fancied you.”
His eyes closed slowly and he breathed so deeply for a few moments that Rose was afraid he’d fallen asleep, but then he opened one eye and gave her the sauciest look she’d ever seen.
“I know you did,” he said.
Rose straightened up like an arrow.
“Well,” the Doctor corrected himself, “I know you kissed me, that is. I didn’t know that you fancied me.”
Rose looked crossly at him. “How did you know I kissed you?!!” she asked in an accusing voice. “You were supposed to be asleep!”
“Oh,” the Doctor laughed, “I was. Sorry to spy on you taking advantage of me while I was passed out!” He couldn’t help the gleeful smile that was spreading across his face, and although Rose wanted to feel injured, she felt more alive than ever.
“Oi!” she shot back. “I wasn’t taking advantage!” Her smile was now matching her own as she wildly raced for a way to defend her actions. “I was…uh…”
She cursed her inability to think up an excuse, but decided not to bother with it. He looked happy and she was happy. What else mattered?
“But how did you know?” she asked suspiciously.
“Genetic transfer!” the Doctor replied easily. “You could say I…tasted you on my lips when I woke up.”
Rose blushed profusely at the innuendo. “That so?” she asked, trying to hide the desire welling in her eyes.
“Yup,” the Doctor said, deliciously popping the p. “Best regeneration I’ve had in a long time,” he confided. “I got to end one life and begin another with the perfection of your kiss.” His voice was fading out a little and Rose realized how tired he was becoming. “I considered it quite an achievement,” he added stubbornly as he fought against his desire to sleep.
Rose watched his eyes droop and stared at the dark lashes fluttering against his skin, longing to press a thousand kisses there.
“I love you Doctor,” she whispered, when she knew he’d finally drifted to sleep. “Against all of time’s will and war’s brutality. Nothing will ever change that.”
The Doctor muttered in his dreams, and Rose could just make out what he was saying.
“Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, but bears it out even to the edge of doom…”
Rose rested her head against his chest as he continued.
“If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved…"
(Next Chapter)
Rose wanted to hold the Doctor’s hand but the medics were swarming around him and lifting the stretcher up from the ground.
Saor hastily finished attaching an IV bag to the Doctor’s wrist before motioning to the medics to follow him. “Let’s get to the operating room!” he said.
Ema reached out to stop Rose when she tried to follow.
“We need to let them work,” he said as gently as he could. Rose nodded before collapsing into his arms.
She was startled by the sound of a female voice behind her, amplified by the acoustics of the cave.
“Which way?” she was saying angrily.
“You can’t go in there!” a shocked guard was yelling after her. “Stop her!”
Ema stared up in surprise as a hooded figure approached him and Rose with the whole of his royal guard falling in behind her.
“Sir!” Tate was shouting.
Ema stepped forward and tucked Rose behind him as the stranger approached. “Who are you?” he asked cautiously. “You’re obviously very clever for evading my guards,” he added sarcastically as he surveyed his embarrassed team of soldiers.
The woman threw off her hood and smirked at him. “Imagine that,” she answered.
Ema gasped in surprise. “Azoden!” he whispered in disbelief.
Her long brown hair was plaited back into a braid down her back. Her face was smudged with the grime of the battlefield, but he could still count the numberless freckles on her skin. Seeing her again was like stepping back in time, before the war and chaos tore their planet apart. It was a bittersweet feeling.
Azoden clasped his hand, willing her good intentions through the empathic connection.
“I wouldn’t have assumed otherwise,” Ema responded to her wordless message. “Why have you risked coming here?”
Azoden jerked her head in the direction Saor had gone. “That man, the Doctor,” she explained. “We met when he was a prisoner of my father’s. Where his arguments failed to convince the King to action, they very much motivated me. I met him in his cell one night and gave him his freedom when he promised to help our people find peace once more.”
Rose was startled out of her shock. “You met with the Doctor?” she asked.
Azoden nodded. “I asked him to keep it in confidence,” she said. “I couldn’t take the chance of my arrival here becoming known. My father is not above hanging his own child these days, and what I’m planning is little more than treason. I was supposed to meet with the Doctor on the field this morning, but when he didn’t show up, I became concerned. I found him standing in the clearing not fifty meters from our agreed upon meeting spot when a shell detonated beside him. I called over your guard to save his life,” she said, addressing Ema. “I only hope Saor can act quickly.”
Rose crossed her arms as if to hug herself. “Thank you,” she said sincerely.
Rose turned to the prince. “Ema, I must go to him,” she pleaded.
“Take the fourth tunnel on your right,” he directed her. “The hospital bay is through there.”
Rose left him with Azoden, hoping that they could work together to find a solution to their planet’s troubles. But more importantly, she hoped that their war hadn’t just cost the Doctor his life. She raced down the tunnel Ema had pointed her to, praying that the Doctor would be awake and nonplussed when she arrived, even if it had only been a few minutes. For once, she wanted nothing more than to hear him boast about his superior Time Lord physiognomy.
When she reached the makeshift hospital wing, she was distressed to see Ydaravo standing outside of the door as if he were guarding it. As she ran up, the soldier simply shook his head, indicating that she wouldn’t be allowed inside.
“Please,” she begged, grasping his arm.
Ydaravo was startled by the connection, and before he could prevent it, the two were locked in an empathic connection. Rose saw things that she shouldn’t, things that she knew a stoic man like him would have died to keep secret, but she couldn’t stop the link. She felt the intense pain of a man who had lost everything. She felt his sorrow translated into hollowness, as if nothing mattered to him anymore because there wasn’t anything left to mourn for. Rose gasped, knowing that he was seeing her own pain for the Doctor, and her sympathy for his people at the same time.
Ydaravo broke contact with her, stumbling back against the hospital doors. Rose was breathing heavily, embarrassed about what she had unrightfully taken from him. To her surprise, Ydaravo didn’t look angry, but sad.
“I haven’t shared the link with anybody in a long time,” he said, his voice cracking with disuse from years of silence.
“I’m sorry,” Rose rushed to explain, “I didn’t mean to!”
Ydaravo shook his head. “Don’t apologize,” he said. “I’d forgotten what it meant to be understood by others.”
He stood stonily for a moment before continuing. “Your Doctor, you love him so much, and I know you would do anything for him. I felt the same way about my wife…and our child before they died in a bombing brought on by this damned war. I felt like it was my fault for so long, as if I could have protected them somehow.”
Rose ached internally, still sharing the memory of his pain. She nodded her head because no words could express it.
“I think you should go in,” he said. “But know this, Rose Tyler. If he doesn’t make it, it’s not your fault. There are things in this world that are out of our control. I don’t know if it’s the way they’re supposed to be, but it is how they are. Don’t take it on. It’s not yours to own.”
He paused before continuing. “Funny that someone so alien to my people could be the one to remind me what I’ve left behind.”
Ydaravo walked off, still considering his own words as he left the doors for Rose to contemplate uneasily.
The urgency of her mission had gone with her courage to confront what lie on the other side of those doors. She stood with her hand up against one of them as she thought over what Ydaravo had said. She didn’t need to imagine a world without the Doctor because she’d glimpsed that future through the frame of the soldier’s broken heart. The pain was unbearable, and it shook her so badly that she almost turned around. Would it be better not to know?
She was surprised to find herself pushing the door open anyways.
She shouldn’t have been surprised by the endless rows of beds filled with moaning, battered men. Outside of the room, only the Doctor had mattered, and to her he was the only man in this hospital. As she walked up the aisles searching for his face, her sorrow for him transferred into grief for the young men dying around her. There were so many of them. She could hardly bare it. She stood locked in place as one of them reached out for her like a ghost.
She started when a gentle hand rested on her shoulder, and was relieved to find Saor looking in her eyes with a confident expression.
“The surgery was successful,” he told her. “Would you like to come see him?”
Rose didn’t say anything but walked beside Saor as he led her down the aisle. He followed her gaze as it flicked to the numerous prostrate soldiers and felt her pain implicitly.
“What’s funny is that for all the medical intervention…the drugs, the advanced equipment, and the care of our doctors, none of it as efficacious as the power of our empathic connection.” Saor mused.
“Really?” Rose asked.
“Yes,” Saor responded. “I’ve seen the difference between those who get treatment without the link and those who do. The results speak for themselves. Bodies can mend and scars can fade, but the internal mark of trauma, the emotional effect is something that may never heal without intervention.”
“I think that’s what Ydaravo meant,” Rose said absently. “Perspective can mean the difference between life and death, not just for our bodies but for our soul. That’s the power of your people.”
Saor paused for a moment before resuming his course. “You…spoke with Ydaravo?”
“Yeah,” Rose said numbly. “I kind of caught him off guard.”
Saor took her hand in his as they approached a curtained section of the room.
“It’s my belief, Ms. Tyler, that someone who can reach a man like Ydaravo has the capability to accomplish anything she sets her mind to. You must be an extraordinary woman,” Saor added. He let his fingers linger on the curtain before he continued.
“The Doctor sustained massive internal and external injuries, so I don’t want you to expect too much. But the amount of trauma he’s experienced would have surely killed one of our own kind.”
Rose smiled with tears in her eyes at his words. “He’s an extraordinary man,” she said.
“Then you are well suited,” Saor said kindly. “Why don’t you go tell him I said that?”
“I will,” she replied, stepping beyond the medic into the intensive care unit.
The Doctor was lying in a sparse bed with too many tubes sticking out of him, making Rose tear up before she even realized it. She went to his side and clasped his hand that was colder than ice. Rubbing it vigorously between her palms, she blew hot air onto his fingers and kissed each one in succession.
“My Doctor,” she whispered miserably. She hadn’t seen him like this since the Christmas invasion, when his vortex-prompted regeneration left him bedridden and unconscious for a few days. She watched his chest rise and fall gently, trying to console herself with the fact that he was alive, although not unscathed.
His face was covered with tiny cuts where shrapnel bits had sliced through his skin. Bruises were creeping up around his neck where rocks had impacted, and as her hand pulled back the covers from his chest, she wept at the sight of stitches lacing up and around his torso.
She sunk her face into the bedding beside him, unable to confront the image of her beloved Doctor in pain.
“Oh please!” she begged him, “Please be alright!”
She shot up when the shock of his voice met her ears.
“I’m always alright,” he moaned quietly, regarding her with half-open lids.
“Oh Doctor!” Rose cried, her eyes so swollen she could barely make him out. The joy in her heart was palpable. She could barely restrain herself from jumping on top of him.
“Look like bloody Frankenstein,” he muttered unhappily. “Or…Frankenstein’s monster I mean. I always get them confused.” His head had craned up slightly to review his condition before dropping back with an exhausted effort to the pillow.
“Don’t strain yourself!” Rose commanded. “And…you don’t look like Frankenstein. A Sycorax maybe…”
The Doctor moaned more audibly.
“Are you okay? Does it hurt?” Rose asked anxiously as she traced her hand over his cheek.
“Oh…no. The drugs are superb, really. But do I really look like a Sycorax? Am I…hideous?” the Doctor eeked out.
Rose laughed tremendously at his statement, half-hysteric from the recent stress of seeing him so close to death. “You are the most vain sodding alien I’ve ever met!” she cried, wiping away tears from her eyes.
When the Doctor continued to regard her with pursed lips, Rose calmed herself and grasped his hand tightly. “You are as beautiful as you ever were,” she said solemnly. “Maybe more so, now that you can’t talk as much.”
“Oi!” the Doctor protested weakly, but he squeezed her hand back gently. “Rose, I’m so, so sorry about what I said earlier. I wish I could unsay it!”
“Okay,” Rose said, frowning and nodding her head. “You just did. You never said it. I never heard it. You’re not the only one with power over time anymore, see?”
Rose kissed his palm and brought it between her hands as she leaned forward.
The Doctor stared at her like she was a marvel. “You didn’t tell me you were a Time Lord,” he joked, but cut off with a short coughing fit as Rose hastened to fill up a glass of water.
She brought the drink to his lips and he sipped gratefully. “You don’t know all my secrets,” she teased him. She stroked the bed sheets around him, smoothing out the errant wrinkles.
“I remember a time not so long ago when you were laid up like this on my mum’s bed. Mickey dragged you in and left you flopped across her comforter, insisting that I take it from there.”
The Doctor let the tip of his tongue rest on one of his canine teeth as he considered this. “I-I hadn’t really thought about that before,” he stuttered, “but somehow I got turned over from my leather-clad ninth’s gear into a pair of domestic jimjams. Was that you, cheeky minx?”
Rose let her head fall into her hand as she half-covered her face. “Somebody had to!” she said. “I don’t suppose you would have preferred my mum!”
The Doctor made a grossed-out face that left his opinion in no uncertain terms, but then he raised his eyebrows.
“We’re you just in the middle of confessing a secret Rose Tyler?”
She blushed a fiery red beyond her namesake at his words. “Well,” she started, “I guess I kind of...enjoyed it,” she spilled out, watching his face for a reaction.
He gave her a half smile that sent a warm spinning current through her body. “Is that right?” he replied, in a voice that deepened the burning of her skin.
“The truth is,” Rose continued, “when you were lyin’ there all incapacitated, I swept down and stole a kiss off of you.” She felt her heart slamming in her chest as she told him this, her most guarded secret. She wasn’t even sure why she was telling him now, but it seemed like he was flirting with her. “And I did it…because…I fancied you.”
His eyes closed slowly and he breathed so deeply for a few moments that Rose was afraid he’d fallen asleep, but then he opened one eye and gave her the sauciest look she’d ever seen.
“I know you did,” he said.
Rose straightened up like an arrow.
“Well,” the Doctor corrected himself, “I know you kissed me, that is. I didn’t know that you fancied me.”
Rose looked crossly at him. “How did you know I kissed you?!!” she asked in an accusing voice. “You were supposed to be asleep!”
“Oh,” the Doctor laughed, “I was. Sorry to spy on you taking advantage of me while I was passed out!” He couldn’t help the gleeful smile that was spreading across his face, and although Rose wanted to feel injured, she felt more alive than ever.
“Oi!” she shot back. “I wasn’t taking advantage!” Her smile was now matching her own as she wildly raced for a way to defend her actions. “I was…uh…”
She cursed her inability to think up an excuse, but decided not to bother with it. He looked happy and she was happy. What else mattered?
“But how did you know?” she asked suspiciously.
“Genetic transfer!” the Doctor replied easily. “You could say I…tasted you on my lips when I woke up.”
Rose blushed profusely at the innuendo. “That so?” she asked, trying to hide the desire welling in her eyes.
“Yup,” the Doctor said, deliciously popping the p. “Best regeneration I’ve had in a long time,” he confided. “I got to end one life and begin another with the perfection of your kiss.” His voice was fading out a little and Rose realized how tired he was becoming. “I considered it quite an achievement,” he added stubbornly as he fought against his desire to sleep.
Rose watched his eyes droop and stared at the dark lashes fluttering against his skin, longing to press a thousand kisses there.
“I love you Doctor,” she whispered, when she knew he’d finally drifted to sleep. “Against all of time’s will and war’s brutality. Nothing will ever change that.”
The Doctor muttered in his dreams, and Rose could just make out what he was saying.
“Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, but bears it out even to the edge of doom…”
Rose rested her head against his chest as he continued.
“If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved…"
(Next Chapter)