Touching Time 6/7
TITLE: Touching Time
CHARACTERS: Ten/Rose, nothing but Ten/Rose
RATING: Teen
SPOILERS: Up to Idiots Lantern, but very nonspecifically
SUMMARY: You want talky, angsty, witty-banter Ten? You've got him. Now with 30% more romance and UST!
DISCLAIMER: Insert humorous note about how I don't own the characters nor make any money off them right here.
BETA: The lovely and talented jaradel, but at the end of the day any errors and all silliness are entirely my fault.
A/N: A sequel to Flowers on Air . Not vital to have read that, but references are made to the action in that story.
This Chapter: "Again with the 'can't' and the 'never ever.' For a man who does the impossible on a daily basis, you do have a lot of rules. Don't you trust me?"
"Do you want to talk about it, Doctor?"
There was no answer from the other side of the wall at first, so Rose tapped lightly with her now perfectly manicured finger nails. "Hello over there?"
She heard some movement, footsteps, which grew louder after she spoke.
"What's that?" came his voice finally.
"I said, do you want to talk about it?" Rose settled in on the bed, munching on one of the food puck things. They didn't taste as bad as they looked, a little like dates and chocolate and peanuts.
"Talk about what? I didn't say anything."
"Exactly," she smiled. "I haven't heard a peep out of you since I got up, and I know you know I've been awake. Besides, I can hear you brooding from here."
"What, me? Brood?" His attempts to sound offended were failing. "I never brood," he sniffed.
"Ha!" Rose almost spat out her mouthful of alien food.
"Pardon?"
"I said, ha! I catch you brooding all the time. You think you can slink off and have a sulk and I'll never know, but we live together and you can't hide from me as much as you think you can." Lord, how she loved teasing. Every word was true--she did catch him sometimes in various places on the TARDIS staring off in to space and looking quite stormy. And she knew she shouldn't take the mick but she couldn't help herself.
"Well, our flat, if you'll remember, is dimensionally transcendent. I suspect collusion on the part of my ship." He was annoyed.
"Maybe the TARDIS thinks that instead of brooding, you should talk to me."
"What does the TARDIS know?" he shot back.
Rose took another nibble off her food pod. "So there's nothing you want to get off your chest? Nothing that's been getting you down? Every little thing's just ticketyboo with you?"
"Of course. I'm fine."
Rose sighed and hugged a pillow. "Doctor, I miss you."
She heard him chuckle a little. "I'm right here. I thought you were just carping about how I never shut up. Well, now I've shut up and you miss me! A bloke can't win, can he?"
"I know. But not being able to see you, not being able to touch you, I miss it. I feel like it's been forever since we...I dunno, since we had a proper old hug." She rested her head on the pillow she was embracing and closed her eyes, trying to remember how he smelled.
"Five point six eight six standard Earth days," he said, automatically.
Rose's eyes shot open again. "Wow. Doctor, that's...you're.... Sometimes you really freak me out."
"What? That's just Time. I'm a Time Lord, it's sort of part of the job description." He hated when it became so clear that she did not usually see him as he really was, but as just a man. That man was not him, or rather maybe it was a small part of him, but these reminders that she could not understand him in the same way that one of his own people would, it was a pain for each of his hearts in turn.
"What's it like," she asked thoughtfully.
"What, being a Time Lord?"
"Just knowing all that, having it all in your head."
"But it's not in my head. It's right here." She clearly did not remember what it had been like to be the Bad Wolf, to experience Time and Space as he did, or she wouldn't need to ask. He sometimes wondered what it might have been like to exist with her in that state for a while, but then hated himself for wishing her to be other than she was.
"I don't understand," she replied slowly, prompting him to explain.
"I wouldn't expect you to. But everything has its Time and I feel it. All of it."
"Everything...me?"
"Of course you." He tried not to sound too pedantic. Naturally she wanted to know about herself. These humans, trapped inside their own skulls, they were so wonderfully self-centered. There was such purity in their inability to see outside their own personal spheres.
"So, you can, like, see my future?" She sounded excited at the prospect, not at all trepidatious, as one less innocent would be.
"It doesn't work like that. That's like me asking you if you could describe the taste of the colour blue."
"Fair point. But if you can...do whatever it is you do with Time, why couldn't you.... I mean, couldn't this whole situation have been avoided?" She was trying to work it out, sounded determined to probe until she got answers to her satisfaction.
"Mistakes are just as much a part of Time as anything else. There's no good or bad, just what is and was and could be and might be. Besides, just because something's there, doesn't mean I'm paying any attention to it. Do you see every water molecule in a stream? They're still there, even if you don't see them."
"But if you choose to look at a molecule, you can." It was not a question, but a statement, an expression of her faith in his ability to do the impossible.
"Yes."
"What about me, then?"
"Oh." He swallowed hard, involuntarily, which made him make a strangled gulping sound.
"What? What is it? Do I die a horrible death or something?" There was an edge of panic to her voice that the Doctor just found irrationally maddening.
"I told you, it doesn't work like that. I'm not a fortune teller, this isn't a party trick."
"Sorry," she said, her voice small and contrite. "I'm sorry. I guess I just don't get it."
"No, you don't," he snapped, and then instantly regretted it. "I mean, you couldn't. And you wouldn't want to."
"But I want to try to at least. As much as I can. I know I'm just a stupid ape, but I want to know everything I can about you. It sounds silly, I know it does, but you don't volunteer this stuff, Doctor. I have to ask. So, is it terrible, seeing...sensing Time? You said I wouldn't want to understand it, but I do. Especially if it's terrible for you."
Who else but Rose Tyler would want this? Would want to know intimately the things that were so terrible they forced him to always keep going and going forever lest they catch up to him. She didn't know what she asked, but it was the innocence and the empathy of the question, her complete lack of guile, it made him see his life anew every time she touched him.
"It can be terrible. And it can be wonderful. A Time Lord who can't rise above both, well, madness is not--was not--unheard of in my people." He paused for a second and thought better of going in to too much detail. "It's not on my agenda any time soon, though, I assure you."
"I think you're already a little mad. In the best possible way, of course." Her little laugh was like every single cliche about the sun and the rain clouds and the calm sea after the storm and various other nautical things. "So, with me, yeah? Tell me what it's like, is it wonderful or horrible?"
"You have no idea." He was still reeling form her laugh, which made him want to go to the fountain of her Time again.
"Tell me," she demanded. That was a demand, wasn't it?
"I can't," he lied.
"Again with the 'can't' and the 'never ever.' For a man who does the impossible on a daily basis, you do have a lot of rules. Don't you trust me?"
"Yes, of course. More than anyone."
"Then trust me to understand. When you look at me, what do you see?"
He was powerless to deny her anything she wanted this much. He'd always been and likely always would be. "I see the same as any human. Just you, all...pink and yellow." And luminous and beautiful. "You sound like, well...you. And smell, and touch." Like the ocean, like jasmine in a night garden, and smooth, soft and vital. He was glad he was already sitting down. "I've got a bit more in the taste department, at least in this body. Not like I've ever...would ever.... Um. Anyway."
"So, you're like us, with all that."
"Yes, of course. We've got all that same stuff, biologically speaking. But you know how I'm so clever I can tell the time without a watch? It's really not so much about being clever, actually. When you and I look around, we see three dimensions. It's all about the physical location of something in space, it's height and depth and all that. But there are other dimensions too that can't be seen with the eye but they're still there." Excellent. A dry academic discussion to steer this conversation in a different direction. "When I see you, I see your location in space and the physical evidence of where you have been and can infer where you are going, and it's the same with your Time, though I don't literally see it."
He heard her make a mildly exasperated little huffing sound. "This'll all probably do my head in, thinking about it."
"It almost did."
"What's that, Doctor?"
He shrugged reflexively. "I suppose there's no harm telling you. What do you remember from the Game Station, before I changed?"
"Well, let's see," she said thoughtfully. "It's all sort of fuzzy. I remember being on Earth, and then in the TARDIS--mom and Mickey, they helped, and I remember being frantic, searching for anything that might get me back to there to help you. But after that, it's all just kind of missing. Until right before you changed. I always meant to ask but I guess once things calmed down enough for me to remember it didn't seem that important anymore. Did the Daleks hurt you, and that's why you had to change? I just assumed you'd destroyed them with your ray thingie and I just arrived to pick you back up. Or, is that not what happened?"
"You did it," he stated quietly.
"I did what?"
"You defeated the Daleks. You looked in to the heart of the TARDIS and absorbed its power. You became this...this other thing. The Bad Wolf." He made no attempt to keep the awe and admiration out of his voice.
"Bad Wolf? Those were the words we kept seeing. That's what made me know I could get back to you somehow. I just...I knew that's what they meant."
"You knew that because you put those words there. Or the Bad Wolf did. You saw all of time and space, just like I do. Well, better. My perception's not perfect, no one's is. But you, or this other being you helped create, you saw it all perfectly and had the power to manipulate it. No one is meant to do that, least of all a human. I took it from you and put it back where it belongs, and that's why I had to change."
Rose remained quiet, allowing the Doctor to continue, or perhaps shocked or angry at him for keeping this from her for so long.
"That took some serious doing, working with that kind of power. But if I hadn't, you--the human you--would have died. We saved each other I guess." He was growing worried at her silence. "Are you alright over there?"
"Yeah," she said dreamily. And then more solidly: "Yeah, I'm just having a think about it. Do go on. You were saying then, about what I did and about Time and all that?"
"Well, what you did, it left its mark on your Time. You, Rose Tyler, are unique. Well, everyone's unique. But you're uniquely unique. Especially special. Extraordinarily extraordinary." He grinned at his own silly wordplay, probably enough that she could hear his laugh lines crinkle.
"Is that in a good way or a bad way?"
"Oh, the very best of ways. Your Time, well, it's beautiful, if I can borrow a wholly inappropriate word. Dangerously so." He hadn't meant his manner to darken as he said this, but it did automatically.
"How do you mean," she said in measured tones. She was still thinking, deeply.
"Let's just say that if I wasn't the last Time Lord, there'd be a queue outside this door right now to wanting to see you, wanting to touch it. Your Time, I mean. And when I touch it--"
"Touch it," she interrupted. "Touch it? How do you, I mean, is that...?"
He hadn't meant to actually bring that up. To Rose, he was sure the practice sounded as intimate as it in fact actually was, given the importance of physical touch to her species. He was sure it sounded quite creepy, that he'd been availing himself of little opportunities to take a draft, and prepared to mount a defense of himself.
"It's not really like that." It's so much more. "I mean, I know it sounds positively--"
"No, it's okay," she interjected. "But I have to know, when you see me, when you think about me, is it this other thing, the Bad Wolf?"
"No." He closed his eyes and nibbled on his bottom lip. "And yes. You're not separate. The Bad Wolf was created because of who you are. That thing you did, it was reckless and foolish and incredibly brave, and you did it out of loyalty, and that is so you. It's also terrifying, the Bad Wolf, an impossible thing that was never meant to be. And that makes it even more...." Intoxicating, alluring, perilous, awe-inspiring. "I'm afraid there's no words in any language but my own that really can describe it."
"Are you...I mean, right now, touching it...me?" Her voice was as hushed as it could be and still allow him to hear her with his ear pressed up against the wall.
"No."
"Do you want to?"
He swallowed and his mouth went completely dry. "Yes."
"You can. I don't mind." There was a tremor in her voice, quiet as it was.
"I shouldn't."
"I want you to," she all but whispered.
He groaned and literally felt his will dissolving as his muscles all contracted at once. "It wouldn't be a good idea, especially with you...wanting me to."
"What's the worst that could happen?" Rose's question was more sincere than that phrase usually was. She'd learned that sometimes the worst that could happen was all life as we know it ceasing to exist. "Something bad?"
"Maybe. I don't know. I just...." His voice caught in his throat. "I don't know." He turned the possibilities over in his head. With her offering her Time up to him like this, willing him to mingle his with hers freely, he might take from it the power of the Bad Wolf and become the vengeful god he so feared. Or he could lose himself completely, ridding the Universe at last of Time Lords, forever. Or perhaps nothing bad would happen, it would be purest bliss, the most intimate closeness of two souls, the way it was meant to be when there was not a dimension-transcending shadow-being involved.
"And what's the best that could happen?" she asked, mirroring his thoughts uncannily.
The long and rather turgid silence that descended on their two rooms at that time was broken moments later by a sharp metallic click, and a humming sound faded in through the now wide open aperture of the doorway.
(To Chapter 7)
CHARACTERS: Ten/Rose, nothing but Ten/Rose
RATING: Teen
SPOILERS: Up to Idiots Lantern, but very nonspecifically
SUMMARY: You want talky, angsty, witty-banter Ten? You've got him. Now with 30% more romance and UST!
DISCLAIMER: Insert humorous note about how I don't own the characters nor make any money off them right here.
BETA: The lovely and talented jaradel, but at the end of the day any errors and all silliness are entirely my fault.
A/N: A sequel to Flowers on Air . Not vital to have read that, but references are made to the action in that story.
This Chapter: "Again with the 'can't' and the 'never ever.' For a man who does the impossible on a daily basis, you do have a lot of rules. Don't you trust me?"
"Do you want to talk about it, Doctor?"
There was no answer from the other side of the wall at first, so Rose tapped lightly with her now perfectly manicured finger nails. "Hello over there?"
She heard some movement, footsteps, which grew louder after she spoke.
"What's that?" came his voice finally.
"I said, do you want to talk about it?" Rose settled in on the bed, munching on one of the food puck things. They didn't taste as bad as they looked, a little like dates and chocolate and peanuts.
"Talk about what? I didn't say anything."
"Exactly," she smiled. "I haven't heard a peep out of you since I got up, and I know you know I've been awake. Besides, I can hear you brooding from here."
"What, me? Brood?" His attempts to sound offended were failing. "I never brood," he sniffed.
"Ha!" Rose almost spat out her mouthful of alien food.
"Pardon?"
"I said, ha! I catch you brooding all the time. You think you can slink off and have a sulk and I'll never know, but we live together and you can't hide from me as much as you think you can." Lord, how she loved teasing. Every word was true--she did catch him sometimes in various places on the TARDIS staring off in to space and looking quite stormy. And she knew she shouldn't take the mick but she couldn't help herself.
"Well, our flat, if you'll remember, is dimensionally transcendent. I suspect collusion on the part of my ship." He was annoyed.
"Maybe the TARDIS thinks that instead of brooding, you should talk to me."
"What does the TARDIS know?" he shot back.
Rose took another nibble off her food pod. "So there's nothing you want to get off your chest? Nothing that's been getting you down? Every little thing's just ticketyboo with you?"
"Of course. I'm fine."
Rose sighed and hugged a pillow. "Doctor, I miss you."
She heard him chuckle a little. "I'm right here. I thought you were just carping about how I never shut up. Well, now I've shut up and you miss me! A bloke can't win, can he?"
"I know. But not being able to see you, not being able to touch you, I miss it. I feel like it's been forever since we...I dunno, since we had a proper old hug." She rested her head on the pillow she was embracing and closed her eyes, trying to remember how he smelled.
"Five point six eight six standard Earth days," he said, automatically.
Rose's eyes shot open again. "Wow. Doctor, that's...you're.... Sometimes you really freak me out."
"What? That's just Time. I'm a Time Lord, it's sort of part of the job description." He hated when it became so clear that she did not usually see him as he really was, but as just a man. That man was not him, or rather maybe it was a small part of him, but these reminders that she could not understand him in the same way that one of his own people would, it was a pain for each of his hearts in turn.
"What's it like," she asked thoughtfully.
"What, being a Time Lord?"
"Just knowing all that, having it all in your head."
"But it's not in my head. It's right here." She clearly did not remember what it had been like to be the Bad Wolf, to experience Time and Space as he did, or she wouldn't need to ask. He sometimes wondered what it might have been like to exist with her in that state for a while, but then hated himself for wishing her to be other than she was.
"I don't understand," she replied slowly, prompting him to explain.
"I wouldn't expect you to. But everything has its Time and I feel it. All of it."
"Everything...me?"
"Of course you." He tried not to sound too pedantic. Naturally she wanted to know about herself. These humans, trapped inside their own skulls, they were so wonderfully self-centered. There was such purity in their inability to see outside their own personal spheres.
"So, you can, like, see my future?" She sounded excited at the prospect, not at all trepidatious, as one less innocent would be.
"It doesn't work like that. That's like me asking you if you could describe the taste of the colour blue."
"Fair point. But if you can...do whatever it is you do with Time, why couldn't you.... I mean, couldn't this whole situation have been avoided?" She was trying to work it out, sounded determined to probe until she got answers to her satisfaction.
"Mistakes are just as much a part of Time as anything else. There's no good or bad, just what is and was and could be and might be. Besides, just because something's there, doesn't mean I'm paying any attention to it. Do you see every water molecule in a stream? They're still there, even if you don't see them."
"But if you choose to look at a molecule, you can." It was not a question, but a statement, an expression of her faith in his ability to do the impossible.
"Yes."
"What about me, then?"
"Oh." He swallowed hard, involuntarily, which made him make a strangled gulping sound.
"What? What is it? Do I die a horrible death or something?" There was an edge of panic to her voice that the Doctor just found irrationally maddening.
"I told you, it doesn't work like that. I'm not a fortune teller, this isn't a party trick."
"Sorry," she said, her voice small and contrite. "I'm sorry. I guess I just don't get it."
"No, you don't," he snapped, and then instantly regretted it. "I mean, you couldn't. And you wouldn't want to."
"But I want to try to at least. As much as I can. I know I'm just a stupid ape, but I want to know everything I can about you. It sounds silly, I know it does, but you don't volunteer this stuff, Doctor. I have to ask. So, is it terrible, seeing...sensing Time? You said I wouldn't want to understand it, but I do. Especially if it's terrible for you."
Who else but Rose Tyler would want this? Would want to know intimately the things that were so terrible they forced him to always keep going and going forever lest they catch up to him. She didn't know what she asked, but it was the innocence and the empathy of the question, her complete lack of guile, it made him see his life anew every time she touched him.
"It can be terrible. And it can be wonderful. A Time Lord who can't rise above both, well, madness is not--was not--unheard of in my people." He paused for a second and thought better of going in to too much detail. "It's not on my agenda any time soon, though, I assure you."
"I think you're already a little mad. In the best possible way, of course." Her little laugh was like every single cliche about the sun and the rain clouds and the calm sea after the storm and various other nautical things. "So, with me, yeah? Tell me what it's like, is it wonderful or horrible?"
"You have no idea." He was still reeling form her laugh, which made him want to go to the fountain of her Time again.
"Tell me," she demanded. That was a demand, wasn't it?
"I can't," he lied.
"Again with the 'can't' and the 'never ever.' For a man who does the impossible on a daily basis, you do have a lot of rules. Don't you trust me?"
"Yes, of course. More than anyone."
"Then trust me to understand. When you look at me, what do you see?"
He was powerless to deny her anything she wanted this much. He'd always been and likely always would be. "I see the same as any human. Just you, all...pink and yellow." And luminous and beautiful. "You sound like, well...you. And smell, and touch." Like the ocean, like jasmine in a night garden, and smooth, soft and vital. He was glad he was already sitting down. "I've got a bit more in the taste department, at least in this body. Not like I've ever...would ever.... Um. Anyway."
"So, you're like us, with all that."
"Yes, of course. We've got all that same stuff, biologically speaking. But you know how I'm so clever I can tell the time without a watch? It's really not so much about being clever, actually. When you and I look around, we see three dimensions. It's all about the physical location of something in space, it's height and depth and all that. But there are other dimensions too that can't be seen with the eye but they're still there." Excellent. A dry academic discussion to steer this conversation in a different direction. "When I see you, I see your location in space and the physical evidence of where you have been and can infer where you are going, and it's the same with your Time, though I don't literally see it."
He heard her make a mildly exasperated little huffing sound. "This'll all probably do my head in, thinking about it."
"It almost did."
"What's that, Doctor?"
He shrugged reflexively. "I suppose there's no harm telling you. What do you remember from the Game Station, before I changed?"
"Well, let's see," she said thoughtfully. "It's all sort of fuzzy. I remember being on Earth, and then in the TARDIS--mom and Mickey, they helped, and I remember being frantic, searching for anything that might get me back to there to help you. But after that, it's all just kind of missing. Until right before you changed. I always meant to ask but I guess once things calmed down enough for me to remember it didn't seem that important anymore. Did the Daleks hurt you, and that's why you had to change? I just assumed you'd destroyed them with your ray thingie and I just arrived to pick you back up. Or, is that not what happened?"
"You did it," he stated quietly.
"I did what?"
"You defeated the Daleks. You looked in to the heart of the TARDIS and absorbed its power. You became this...this other thing. The Bad Wolf." He made no attempt to keep the awe and admiration out of his voice.
"Bad Wolf? Those were the words we kept seeing. That's what made me know I could get back to you somehow. I just...I knew that's what they meant."
"You knew that because you put those words there. Or the Bad Wolf did. You saw all of time and space, just like I do. Well, better. My perception's not perfect, no one's is. But you, or this other being you helped create, you saw it all perfectly and had the power to manipulate it. No one is meant to do that, least of all a human. I took it from you and put it back where it belongs, and that's why I had to change."
Rose remained quiet, allowing the Doctor to continue, or perhaps shocked or angry at him for keeping this from her for so long.
"That took some serious doing, working with that kind of power. But if I hadn't, you--the human you--would have died. We saved each other I guess." He was growing worried at her silence. "Are you alright over there?"
"Yeah," she said dreamily. And then more solidly: "Yeah, I'm just having a think about it. Do go on. You were saying then, about what I did and about Time and all that?"
"Well, what you did, it left its mark on your Time. You, Rose Tyler, are unique. Well, everyone's unique. But you're uniquely unique. Especially special. Extraordinarily extraordinary." He grinned at his own silly wordplay, probably enough that she could hear his laugh lines crinkle.
"Is that in a good way or a bad way?"
"Oh, the very best of ways. Your Time, well, it's beautiful, if I can borrow a wholly inappropriate word. Dangerously so." He hadn't meant his manner to darken as he said this, but it did automatically.
"How do you mean," she said in measured tones. She was still thinking, deeply.
"Let's just say that if I wasn't the last Time Lord, there'd be a queue outside this door right now to wanting to see you, wanting to touch it. Your Time, I mean. And when I touch it--"
"Touch it," she interrupted. "Touch it? How do you, I mean, is that...?"
He hadn't meant to actually bring that up. To Rose, he was sure the practice sounded as intimate as it in fact actually was, given the importance of physical touch to her species. He was sure it sounded quite creepy, that he'd been availing himself of little opportunities to take a draft, and prepared to mount a defense of himself.
"It's not really like that." It's so much more. "I mean, I know it sounds positively--"
"No, it's okay," she interjected. "But I have to know, when you see me, when you think about me, is it this other thing, the Bad Wolf?"
"No." He closed his eyes and nibbled on his bottom lip. "And yes. You're not separate. The Bad Wolf was created because of who you are. That thing you did, it was reckless and foolish and incredibly brave, and you did it out of loyalty, and that is so you. It's also terrifying, the Bad Wolf, an impossible thing that was never meant to be. And that makes it even more...." Intoxicating, alluring, perilous, awe-inspiring. "I'm afraid there's no words in any language but my own that really can describe it."
"Are you...I mean, right now, touching it...me?" Her voice was as hushed as it could be and still allow him to hear her with his ear pressed up against the wall.
"No."
"Do you want to?"
He swallowed and his mouth went completely dry. "Yes."
"You can. I don't mind." There was a tremor in her voice, quiet as it was.
"I shouldn't."
"I want you to," she all but whispered.
He groaned and literally felt his will dissolving as his muscles all contracted at once. "It wouldn't be a good idea, especially with you...wanting me to."
"What's the worst that could happen?" Rose's question was more sincere than that phrase usually was. She'd learned that sometimes the worst that could happen was all life as we know it ceasing to exist. "Something bad?"
"Maybe. I don't know. I just...." His voice caught in his throat. "I don't know." He turned the possibilities over in his head. With her offering her Time up to him like this, willing him to mingle his with hers freely, he might take from it the power of the Bad Wolf and become the vengeful god he so feared. Or he could lose himself completely, ridding the Universe at last of Time Lords, forever. Or perhaps nothing bad would happen, it would be purest bliss, the most intimate closeness of two souls, the way it was meant to be when there was not a dimension-transcending shadow-being involved.
"And what's the best that could happen?" she asked, mirroring his thoughts uncannily.
The long and rather turgid silence that descended on their two rooms at that time was broken moments later by a sharp metallic click, and a humming sound faded in through the now wide open aperture of the doorway.
(To Chapter 7)