Flowers on Air 9/11
TITLE: Flowers on Air
CHARACTERS: Ten/Rose, OC (lots)
RATING: PG/Teen
SPOILERS: None past mid-series-2
SUMMARY: After being temporarily stranded in 1999, the Doctor is faced with a temptation he may not be able to turn from. Can Rose save him from himself?
DISCLAIMER: If I owned any of these characters, I'd have already released a collectors edition of Until the End of the World on region 1 DVD. BBC, RTD, Wim Wenders, full props.
A/N: This is a crossover fic between Doctor Who and the mid-90's film Until the End of the World. Knowing anything about the movie is not required (besides, I'm taking some liberties, and then the Doctor shows up and the timeline's all shot to hell anyway).
This Chapter: “If you love him, pick him up. I just have my words. What do you have?”
In the lab, Dr. Farber sat bleary-eyed in front of a bank of monitors. Claire lay sleeping on the table in the other room, having her dreams recorded to feed her growing addiction, Sam at her side holding her hand as she slept.
“Miss Tyler, to what do I owe the pleasure at this late hour?” Dr. Farber spun slightly in his office chair towards her.
“I’m leaving, but before I go, I wanted to tell you that you’ve stolen my dreams from me. All you lot here, you’re all sick, and mad, and I can’t stay here.”
Dr. Farber raised an eyebrow but didn’t seem upset or shocked or incredulous or any of the emotions Rose was expecting. “Progress, Miss Tyler. My life’s work. I haven’t been able to make an omelet without breaking a few eggs. I believe that’s the expression.”
“You’re an evil man.” Rose glanced around the lab, for what she thought might be the last time. The centre of the maelstrom of her broken heart. The three monitors behind Dr. Farber were swimming with images, blurry, two of them in black and white, and one in color. The monitor in color suddenly cleared, like a fog lifting, and she found herself staring at her own face. Her image on the screen was smiling, looking directly at the viewer and saying something, or perhaps just laughing. Dr. Farber saw that her eye had been drawn and chuckled.
“Oho! Miss Tyler, please, such an invasion of privacy!” He stood from his desk chair and took her elbow, making to escort her out of the room. “Well, I do apologize for the sentiment but I can’t say I will be sorry to see you go. You’ve been skulking about for long enough. I believe there’s a group leaving for Cooby Pedy tomorrow-“ He paused, watching her face, her eyes fixed on the monitor, even as he attempted to turn her towards the door. Hypocrisy is always the primary ailment of the young, he thought.
For Rose’s part, she barely heard a word Dr. Farber had said. Her blood buzzed in her ears and if she had been paying any attention she would have felt her cheeks grow hot. Her doppelganger, in the monitor, was now clearly and silently mouthing the word “Doctor” and laughing again. Her image blurred slightly as a thin, elegant hand came in to frame, touching her hair tenderly and stroking her cheek as she continued to smile gaily. The hand, the Doctor’s hand, took her chin gently and tipped her face upwards, and she closed her eyes softly.
The screen went dark and static rose up from the bottom, eventually taking over the entire monitor, until it finally went completely dead.
Rose realized that she had forgotten to breathe as she watched and took a gulping, gasping breath, finding Dr. Farber clutching her elbow like the Angel of Death, and smirking.
She ripped her arm from his grasp and fled the cave once again as Dr. Farber turned on his heel and ejected a minidisc from a slot underneath the dark monitor and labeled it with the date and the words “Session 1, the ‘Doctor’.”
Standing out in the cold night air, she was in fact sweating and gasping for breath. The gravel path seemed to branch out in a hundred different directions and she couldn’t decide which one to take, where to go, how far or how fast she should run. In one direction she saw a gas lantern flickering inside a tent, and could hear the faint tap-tap-tap of Gene Fitzpatrick’s typewriter. He continued his novel, amidst the madness of the centre, seemingly unaware of what was going on around him. Rose began to walk, following the sound.
“Mr. Fitzpatrick?”
Rose stood at the threshold of the mosquito netting that made up the wall of the tent.
“Miss Tyler,” he rose and smiled warmly. He was so formal in his movements and his words, like a man from the last century.
He drew back the netting and gestured for her to enter. Faced with the prospect of having to tell someone everything that was wrong, Rose found she could not and instead for the first time in this whole adventure truly broke down sobbing. Gene hesitated for a brief moment and then folded her in his arms and held her tightly as she wept. Rose thought that this must be what it feels like to have a father, a regular father, a real one, who makes you feel safe when you’re really not safe at all.
Rose began to feel desiccated, and a certain numbness crept in to her limbs as she was able to finally regain control of herself and disengage from Gene’s embrace, sitting on a camp chair and wiping her nose with her sleeve.
Gene, of course, immediately produced a cotton handkerchief and pressed it in to her hand.
“Do you love Claire? Miss Tourneur?” Rose finally asked, dabbing at her eyes.
Gene sat down with a sigh and looked thoughtful. “Yes, I believe I do. Yes.”
“And does she love you, do you think?”
“No. Yes. Maybe. I’m not sure it matters.” Gene sat behind his small desk again and moved the typewriter off to the side.
For the first time that Rose had seen, he looked less than sunny, and she felt guilty for bringing him down in this way.
“But you’re not fighting for her,” Rose said through some sniffles.
“I’m not?” He smiled wryly. “Miss Tyler, when I was your age, I thought that love was always so dramatic and indeed I’ve had my moments, even recently. But I can’t stop Claire from making these mistakes. I can only help pick her up after she falls.”
“These mistakes though, they’re terrible-really terrible. What she’s doing….” Rose stopped for a moment and decided to drop the pretense. “What the Doctor’s doing, it’s killing him, and me. He is going to give up everything he loves, for a fantasy, and I don’t understand it and I can’t seem to stop it from happening.” The tears began to fall again and her eyes felt like they were going to burn up, right where she sat. She didn’t know how to begin to tell him how desperately she wanted to watch the Doctor’s dreams as well, and how hurt she felt, not because the Doctor had abandoned her for a fantasy, but because he had not invited her to share in it.
Gene moved forward in his seat, looking for a moment as if he was going to stand up, but instead he placed his elbows on his desk and looked grave.
“I don’t have anything else to give you, Miss Tyler.” He placed a hand on his typewriter and stroked it. “I’m waiting for her to fall, so I can pick her up. It’s all I can do.”
“Well, thank you. I think everyone here really is going mad. The Aborigines are leaving, and maybe I’ll leave with them. Start a new life, without him-“ her breath hitched as she said this.
“He’s falling,” Said Gene, darkly, his bright disposition now completely gone. “If you love him, pick him up. I just have my words.” He glanced to the stack of paper next to his typewriter. “What do you have?”
~o0o~
It was only a 20 minute walk through the desert back to the TARDIS. Perhaps it was foolhardy to do so in the middle of the night, but to be completely safe one might have just stayed back at the Powell Estates and not followed the man who could feel the turning of the Earth.
Arriving at the familiar doors, Rose plucked the key from where it hung around her neck and entered tentatively. The TARDIS systems appeared to be back on line, the lights on and casting a soft orange glow. Something, however, seemed not quite right. Rose stroked the coral of the walls, as she’d seen the Doctor do many times.
“You can tell, can’t you?”
Talking to the TARDIS, another habit of the Doctor’s.
“You can tell he’s leaving you. He said to me once that a Time Lord and his TARDIS are one entity; you can’t live without each other. I dunno, maybe it’s just a metaphor. But I don’t know what else to do and I need help.” She put her check to a column and sighed. “Please help him. Help me.”
She didn’t really know what she’d been expecting, but nothing happened. No movement from the rotor, no hologram projections, no emergency protocols. Just this forlorn hum and a general feeling of sadness. She slid down to sit on the floor, her back to the wall. At least this place felt familiar and safe. It smelled the same as always, looked the same and sounded the same for the most part. But it wasn’t the same, without the Doctor.
What did she have? How could she pick him up now that he’d fallen?
~o0o~
Rose Tyler walked back across the desert as dawn began to peep from the Eastern horizon. Her jaw ever so slightly set forward, and in her arms a bundle that she hugged tightly to her chest.
Entering the centre grounds again, she strode past the entrance to the subterranean labs, and her own quarters, her mouth a grim straight line, her eyes hard. She spared only a short look for the door to the cave as she marched by, deciding that the alien sleep cycle of the Doctor would mean that he would not be able to sleep deeply enough to dream for another 48 hours at least. What he’d always deemed a gift (“You humans sleep so much, you miss all of the good stuff!”) turned now in to a curse.
She found the Doctor exactly where she had left him, though now he had removed his coat, balled it up and was using it as a pillow as he laid on the dirt in his shirt-sleeves and held the minidisc player up before him. He looked up as she approached, his eyes heavy with the strain of watching a video monitor for hours, his cheeks hollow and skin sallow.
Without a word, Rose calculated where the sun would rise and what path it would take across the sky, and came to stand at a spot about 30 feet from the Doctor, next to a high wall of rock. Putting her bundle down, she unwrapped its contents: a blanket, an umbrella, a wide straw hat, and a canteen. She spread the blanket and sat down cross-legged on it, facing the Doctor.
“This is what I have, Doctor.” She said and then fell silent again.
She could see the Doctor watching her out of the corner of his eye suspiciously, but then saw his gaze return again to the flickering light emanating from the screen before him.
(To Chapter 10)
CHARACTERS: Ten/Rose, OC (lots)
RATING: PG/Teen
SPOILERS: None past mid-series-2
SUMMARY: After being temporarily stranded in 1999, the Doctor is faced with a temptation he may not be able to turn from. Can Rose save him from himself?
DISCLAIMER: If I owned any of these characters, I'd have already released a collectors edition of Until the End of the World on region 1 DVD. BBC, RTD, Wim Wenders, full props.
A/N: This is a crossover fic between Doctor Who and the mid-90's film Until the End of the World. Knowing anything about the movie is not required (besides, I'm taking some liberties, and then the Doctor shows up and the timeline's all shot to hell anyway).
This Chapter: “If you love him, pick him up. I just have my words. What do you have?”
In the lab, Dr. Farber sat bleary-eyed in front of a bank of monitors. Claire lay sleeping on the table in the other room, having her dreams recorded to feed her growing addiction, Sam at her side holding her hand as she slept.
“Miss Tyler, to what do I owe the pleasure at this late hour?” Dr. Farber spun slightly in his office chair towards her.
“I’m leaving, but before I go, I wanted to tell you that you’ve stolen my dreams from me. All you lot here, you’re all sick, and mad, and I can’t stay here.”
Dr. Farber raised an eyebrow but didn’t seem upset or shocked or incredulous or any of the emotions Rose was expecting. “Progress, Miss Tyler. My life’s work. I haven’t been able to make an omelet without breaking a few eggs. I believe that’s the expression.”
“You’re an evil man.” Rose glanced around the lab, for what she thought might be the last time. The centre of the maelstrom of her broken heart. The three monitors behind Dr. Farber were swimming with images, blurry, two of them in black and white, and one in color. The monitor in color suddenly cleared, like a fog lifting, and she found herself staring at her own face. Her image on the screen was smiling, looking directly at the viewer and saying something, or perhaps just laughing. Dr. Farber saw that her eye had been drawn and chuckled.
“Oho! Miss Tyler, please, such an invasion of privacy!” He stood from his desk chair and took her elbow, making to escort her out of the room. “Well, I do apologize for the sentiment but I can’t say I will be sorry to see you go. You’ve been skulking about for long enough. I believe there’s a group leaving for Cooby Pedy tomorrow-“ He paused, watching her face, her eyes fixed on the monitor, even as he attempted to turn her towards the door. Hypocrisy is always the primary ailment of the young, he thought.
For Rose’s part, she barely heard a word Dr. Farber had said. Her blood buzzed in her ears and if she had been paying any attention she would have felt her cheeks grow hot. Her doppelganger, in the monitor, was now clearly and silently mouthing the word “Doctor” and laughing again. Her image blurred slightly as a thin, elegant hand came in to frame, touching her hair tenderly and stroking her cheek as she continued to smile gaily. The hand, the Doctor’s hand, took her chin gently and tipped her face upwards, and she closed her eyes softly.
The screen went dark and static rose up from the bottom, eventually taking over the entire monitor, until it finally went completely dead.
Rose realized that she had forgotten to breathe as she watched and took a gulping, gasping breath, finding Dr. Farber clutching her elbow like the Angel of Death, and smirking.
She ripped her arm from his grasp and fled the cave once again as Dr. Farber turned on his heel and ejected a minidisc from a slot underneath the dark monitor and labeled it with the date and the words “Session 1, the ‘Doctor’.”
Standing out in the cold night air, she was in fact sweating and gasping for breath. The gravel path seemed to branch out in a hundred different directions and she couldn’t decide which one to take, where to go, how far or how fast she should run. In one direction she saw a gas lantern flickering inside a tent, and could hear the faint tap-tap-tap of Gene Fitzpatrick’s typewriter. He continued his novel, amidst the madness of the centre, seemingly unaware of what was going on around him. Rose began to walk, following the sound.
“Mr. Fitzpatrick?”
Rose stood at the threshold of the mosquito netting that made up the wall of the tent.
“Miss Tyler,” he rose and smiled warmly. He was so formal in his movements and his words, like a man from the last century.
He drew back the netting and gestured for her to enter. Faced with the prospect of having to tell someone everything that was wrong, Rose found she could not and instead for the first time in this whole adventure truly broke down sobbing. Gene hesitated for a brief moment and then folded her in his arms and held her tightly as she wept. Rose thought that this must be what it feels like to have a father, a regular father, a real one, who makes you feel safe when you’re really not safe at all.
Rose began to feel desiccated, and a certain numbness crept in to her limbs as she was able to finally regain control of herself and disengage from Gene’s embrace, sitting on a camp chair and wiping her nose with her sleeve.
Gene, of course, immediately produced a cotton handkerchief and pressed it in to her hand.
“Do you love Claire? Miss Tourneur?” Rose finally asked, dabbing at her eyes.
Gene sat down with a sigh and looked thoughtful. “Yes, I believe I do. Yes.”
“And does she love you, do you think?”
“No. Yes. Maybe. I’m not sure it matters.” Gene sat behind his small desk again and moved the typewriter off to the side.
For the first time that Rose had seen, he looked less than sunny, and she felt guilty for bringing him down in this way.
“But you’re not fighting for her,” Rose said through some sniffles.
“I’m not?” He smiled wryly. “Miss Tyler, when I was your age, I thought that love was always so dramatic and indeed I’ve had my moments, even recently. But I can’t stop Claire from making these mistakes. I can only help pick her up after she falls.”
“These mistakes though, they’re terrible-really terrible. What she’s doing….” Rose stopped for a moment and decided to drop the pretense. “What the Doctor’s doing, it’s killing him, and me. He is going to give up everything he loves, for a fantasy, and I don’t understand it and I can’t seem to stop it from happening.” The tears began to fall again and her eyes felt like they were going to burn up, right where she sat. She didn’t know how to begin to tell him how desperately she wanted to watch the Doctor’s dreams as well, and how hurt she felt, not because the Doctor had abandoned her for a fantasy, but because he had not invited her to share in it.
Gene moved forward in his seat, looking for a moment as if he was going to stand up, but instead he placed his elbows on his desk and looked grave.
“I don’t have anything else to give you, Miss Tyler.” He placed a hand on his typewriter and stroked it. “I’m waiting for her to fall, so I can pick her up. It’s all I can do.”
“Well, thank you. I think everyone here really is going mad. The Aborigines are leaving, and maybe I’ll leave with them. Start a new life, without him-“ her breath hitched as she said this.
“He’s falling,” Said Gene, darkly, his bright disposition now completely gone. “If you love him, pick him up. I just have my words.” He glanced to the stack of paper next to his typewriter. “What do you have?”
~o0o~
It was only a 20 minute walk through the desert back to the TARDIS. Perhaps it was foolhardy to do so in the middle of the night, but to be completely safe one might have just stayed back at the Powell Estates and not followed the man who could feel the turning of the Earth.
Arriving at the familiar doors, Rose plucked the key from where it hung around her neck and entered tentatively. The TARDIS systems appeared to be back on line, the lights on and casting a soft orange glow. Something, however, seemed not quite right. Rose stroked the coral of the walls, as she’d seen the Doctor do many times.
“You can tell, can’t you?”
Talking to the TARDIS, another habit of the Doctor’s.
“You can tell he’s leaving you. He said to me once that a Time Lord and his TARDIS are one entity; you can’t live without each other. I dunno, maybe it’s just a metaphor. But I don’t know what else to do and I need help.” She put her check to a column and sighed. “Please help him. Help me.”
She didn’t really know what she’d been expecting, but nothing happened. No movement from the rotor, no hologram projections, no emergency protocols. Just this forlorn hum and a general feeling of sadness. She slid down to sit on the floor, her back to the wall. At least this place felt familiar and safe. It smelled the same as always, looked the same and sounded the same for the most part. But it wasn’t the same, without the Doctor.
What did she have? How could she pick him up now that he’d fallen?
~o0o~
Rose Tyler walked back across the desert as dawn began to peep from the Eastern horizon. Her jaw ever so slightly set forward, and in her arms a bundle that she hugged tightly to her chest.
Entering the centre grounds again, she strode past the entrance to the subterranean labs, and her own quarters, her mouth a grim straight line, her eyes hard. She spared only a short look for the door to the cave as she marched by, deciding that the alien sleep cycle of the Doctor would mean that he would not be able to sleep deeply enough to dream for another 48 hours at least. What he’d always deemed a gift (“You humans sleep so much, you miss all of the good stuff!”) turned now in to a curse.
She found the Doctor exactly where she had left him, though now he had removed his coat, balled it up and was using it as a pillow as he laid on the dirt in his shirt-sleeves and held the minidisc player up before him. He looked up as she approached, his eyes heavy with the strain of watching a video monitor for hours, his cheeks hollow and skin sallow.
Without a word, Rose calculated where the sun would rise and what path it would take across the sky, and came to stand at a spot about 30 feet from the Doctor, next to a high wall of rock. Putting her bundle down, she unwrapped its contents: a blanket, an umbrella, a wide straw hat, and a canteen. She spread the blanket and sat down cross-legged on it, facing the Doctor.
“This is what I have, Doctor.” She said and then fell silent again.
She could see the Doctor watching her out of the corner of his eye suspiciously, but then saw his gaze return again to the flickering light emanating from the screen before him.
(To Chapter 10)