The One True Free Life (4/26)
Title: The One True Free Life (4/26)
Characters: Alt!Ten/Rose, and everyone else I can cram in to the Alt!Verse, plus several OCs
Rating: Teen for smoochin'!
Spoilers: Everything
Disclaimer: It would be a very different, and possibly quite upsetting, world if I owned these characters. For the sake of the world's children, I don't.
This chapter is as of yet unbeta'd, so read at your own risk.
Summary: When Rose and Alt!Ten return to Pete's World, after a much longer absence than planned, they find that things have begun to go a bit pear-shaped there. Can Our Heroes save the British Republic while at the same time working out their own Byzantinely complicated personal issues?
Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9 | Chapter 10 | Chapter 11 | Chapter 12 | Chapter 13 | Chapter 14 | Chapter 15 | Chapter 16 | Chapter 17 | Chapter 18 | Chapter 19 | Chapter 20 | Chapter 21 | Chapter 22 | Chapter 23 | Chapter 24 | Chapter 25 | Chapter 26/ Epilogue | Whole story on Teaspoon
A/N: No blue suits were actually harmed in the writing of this chapter. Much as I may have wanted to.
Rose attempted to speak through teeth stuck together in a pasted-on grin. "Cybermen? Death and destruction? Ring a bell?"
The Tyler family house staff were descending upon them from all directions, but then found themselves looking around uselessly for non-existent luggage to carry. Deepa at least got handed Tony to take for a bath and to dress for tea, but that left the groundskeeper and housekeeper fluttering about trying to look glad for the return of the lady of the house. The Doctor introduced himself to anyone who came within a ten foot radius and began to make loud pronouncements about this not being the same house he remembered from his previous visit. It was at this point that Rose elbowed him squarely in the ribs, still maintaining a smile for public consumption.
It had taken her quite some time to get used to having staff in the house. They always seemed to be around, listening, watching, and anything Rose did that struck them as odd seemed to make its way back to Jackie and Pete eventually. She finally had to learn to use that stiff upper lip, and realized why posh people had to have one. It wasn't for Queen or Country or Rule Britannia, it was because of the bloody staff.
The Doctor looked down at her, brows knit. She rolled her eyes and tugged his sleeve to bring his head down to her level (she didn't seem to remember him being quite so tall).
"Bad memories," she whispered in to his ear and he nodded.
The new Tyler house was a staid brick Victorian affair in Surrey, and even though he had the memory of thinking about it on a near-daily basis since Canary Wharf, he still couldn't picture his Rose living in a place like this, or anywhere other than on the TARDIS or at the Powell Estates. Yet here she was, leading him in to the foyer, showing him the drawing room and kitchen, taking him upstairs and pointing out the bathrooms and ending in an extremely floral bedroom.
"So, you really live here," he said finally, having remained silent and wide-eyed throughout most of the grand tour.
"Well, not here exactly. This is the guest room. I'm sorry it's so...girly. You should have seen mum with the decorator, I thought it was going to come to blows!"
He smiled and sat on the bed, bouncing a little on it.
"I'll tell you though," she continued, sitting next to him, "it was the first thing that made me smile after I got here. Seeing mum terrorize that poor, poor man.... But then I felt like I was betraying him by being happy." She rested her head on his shoulder and he was still able to smell the salt air of the ocean in her hair.
"I always just wanted you to be happy. And he's out there somewhere right now, wanting us both to be happy. I think we owe it to him to give this whole happiness thing a go, don't you?"
"Do we have a choice?" she asked in a small voice.
"Not really. Or at least, I'm not personally prepared to be a party to one."
They sat in silence, the room dim behind heavy velveteen curtains, the sounds of the rest of the house settling back in to a very domestic existance seemingly miles off.
"I don't know, though, Doctor. I feel like I want to laugh and cry at the same time."
He put his arm around her and she seemed so small, so much not the Defender of the Earth any more, but just Dame Rose Tyler of the Powell Estates. "Nothing's stopping you."
He felt her stiffen a little and she shook her head and sighed. "I'm dying for a shower, and I know mum wants us all to have tea as a family again. Family tea is so important to her, it'll kill her if we skive off." She stood and looked at him appraisingly. "We'll need to find you some new clothes."
"How come nobody likes the blue? What's wrong with blue?"
Rose put the tip of her thumb in her mouth and nibbled it a little to keep from laughing too hard. "I reckon you'll want to bathe as well, yeah? You need something to put on after. Donna told me you had your kit off in the TARDIS and she didn't seem pleased by what she saw, so I don't think it'll do to have you show up for tea starkers. I'll ask Lucy to pull something out for you."
She turned to leave but then turned back again. "And honestly? Earth tones from now on. Nobody likes the blue because it looks ghastly on you." She brought only half of her mouth up in to a wry smile and left him alone with this indictment of his fashion sense. Donna's name continued to echo long after Rose had fled down the hallway to her own room.
When the Doctor joined the family for tea in the drawing room wearing a set of Pete's old striped pyjamas and a dressing gown, both Rose and Jackie's mouths fell open and stayed that way for a very long time. So long that he finally had to suggest that there were possibly better ways of catching flies.
"I like a good swatter myself. I don't know how people can stand flypaper with all those wee fly corpses all over it, staring at you with their tiny little dead compound eyes. Ugh," he shuddered. "Isn't anyone going to offer me a cuppa?"
~o0o~
Tony pestered the Doctor persistently for more magic tricks, even after he confessed that he only knew the one, right up until the moment he had to be dragged, literally kicking and screaming (which the Doctor found quite amusing) off to bed. It was not soon after that Jackie and Pete also retired, and the big house was silent again.
"D'you reckon we ought to give them some privacy?" the Doctor asked Rose as she put a few of Tony's toys away.
"What? Oi Doctor, that's my mum." She made a face and did an adorable little quivering dance.
"Right," he drawled. "Well, would I get a better reaction if I just came out and asked if you'd like to go have a nice snog in the garden?"
"So not at all presumptuous and arrogant, then?" She strode up to within just a few tantalizing inches.
"When have I ever been?"
She reached out and put her hand to his chest. Her lovely, honey-smooth hand that was just begging to be captured and kissed, to thread through his hair, to touch all of the parts of this new body that had yet to be touched.
"What does it mean? That you just have one heart?"
He grabbed her wrist, gently he hoped, but he felt like he wasn't completely in control of his actions, like he was just a copilot. Bringing her hand up to his face, he whispered against it, "It means I'm free." He took a shuddering breath and let her hand go again.
She stepped back and a coy little twitch played around her lips. "The garden you say? In your pyjamas?"
"You'd be amazed what a man in his jim-jams can do, if he puts his mind to it."
She turned and walked towards the set of french doors leading to the back garden from the dining room. "Would I now?"
Rose Tyler, the flirt. He'd seen that before, but it had been so long. So many years, and he wasn't sure if it was his new situation or the fact that she'd grown from a sprightly girl in to a captivating woman during their time apart, but their banter seemed so much more salacious now. He liked it. He liked it very much. He even fancied he felt his single heart skip a beat and finally understood what all of those trashy human romance novelists that Rose liked to read were on about. And then he realized that his mouth was gaping open and he was drooling a bit. He shut it with a click and followed Rose out to the garden, where she was already sitting on a bench, looking up at the sky.
The moon was new and it took a moment for the Doctor, much to his own surprise, to comprehend what was wrong with what he was seeing.
"The stars."
"They went out. We saved the other universe, but not all of this one." She gave an unfunny little chuckle. "Jack's world. You were right on time for that, but we already saw what was coming long before it happened there."
"Of course." All those worlds, all those civilizations, those lives. Gone. If he had to put an estimate on it he'd say a full third of the stars in the night sky of Pete's World had gone missing. The ones that remained looked much diminished for their lack of companions. As we all are.
"Doctor, are you okay?" She patted the spot next to her, inviting him to put aside thoughts of life and death, and he wanted to. In that moment he wanted to never have to think about good, or evil, or infinity, or why we live and who decrees we die. What could he do about those things now anyway?
The way he kissed her then could not be described as tender, or sweet, or chaste, and he was most certainly kissing her and not the other way around. There were teeth and tongues, there was gasping for air and low inaudible vibrations from their throats. Hands flew around each other's heads and necks, looking for purchase, grabbing and pulling.
When one travels in time, one knows infinity, and that is a very long time indeed to wait to fulfil desire. Nevertheless, Rose began to turn her head, panting and dodging the Doctor's attempts to seek the end of an endless wait.
"No, hang on," she breathed in to where she'd rested her head on his chest. "We should stop."
He swallowed hard and almost burst in to tears. "We should what?" he yelped, a little louder than intended.
"We've got time, yeah? To kind of ease in to things? I'm a bit...overwhelmed."
"Overwhelmed? Is that what they're calling it now?" His hand, completely of it's own accord, continued to rub Rose's shoulder, so she felt that he might actually wear a hole there.
She made a very indignant and shocked sound and smacked him on the arm, though not hard. "I'm serious! We could be making a huge mistake by going too fast. I want to do things right, with you. Besides, you know that when I really want something, I get it."
"My Rose. That you do." He sighed and looked up at the Rorschach sky. "That you do."
(To Chapter 5)
Characters: Alt!Ten/Rose, and everyone else I can cram in to the Alt!Verse, plus several OCs
Rating: Teen for smoochin'!
Spoilers: Everything
Disclaimer: It would be a very different, and possibly quite upsetting, world if I owned these characters. For the sake of the world's children, I don't.
This chapter is as of yet unbeta'd, so read at your own risk.
Summary: When Rose and Alt!Ten return to Pete's World, after a much longer absence than planned, they find that things have begun to go a bit pear-shaped there. Can Our Heroes save the British Republic while at the same time working out their own Byzantinely complicated personal issues?
Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9 | Chapter 10 | Chapter 11 | Chapter 12 | Chapter 13 | Chapter 14 | Chapter 15 | Chapter 16 | Chapter 17 | Chapter 18 | Chapter 19 | Chapter 20 | Chapter 21 | Chapter 22 | Chapter 23 | Chapter 24 | Chapter 25 | Chapter 26/ Epilogue | Whole story on Teaspoon
A/N: No blue suits were actually harmed in the writing of this chapter. Much as I may have wanted to.
Rose attempted to speak through teeth stuck together in a pasted-on grin. "Cybermen? Death and destruction? Ring a bell?"
The Tyler family house staff were descending upon them from all directions, but then found themselves looking around uselessly for non-existent luggage to carry. Deepa at least got handed Tony to take for a bath and to dress for tea, but that left the groundskeeper and housekeeper fluttering about trying to look glad for the return of the lady of the house. The Doctor introduced himself to anyone who came within a ten foot radius and began to make loud pronouncements about this not being the same house he remembered from his previous visit. It was at this point that Rose elbowed him squarely in the ribs, still maintaining a smile for public consumption.
It had taken her quite some time to get used to having staff in the house. They always seemed to be around, listening, watching, and anything Rose did that struck them as odd seemed to make its way back to Jackie and Pete eventually. She finally had to learn to use that stiff upper lip, and realized why posh people had to have one. It wasn't for Queen or Country or Rule Britannia, it was because of the bloody staff.
The Doctor looked down at her, brows knit. She rolled her eyes and tugged his sleeve to bring his head down to her level (she didn't seem to remember him being quite so tall).
"Bad memories," she whispered in to his ear and he nodded.
The new Tyler house was a staid brick Victorian affair in Surrey, and even though he had the memory of thinking about it on a near-daily basis since Canary Wharf, he still couldn't picture his Rose living in a place like this, or anywhere other than on the TARDIS or at the Powell Estates. Yet here she was, leading him in to the foyer, showing him the drawing room and kitchen, taking him upstairs and pointing out the bathrooms and ending in an extremely floral bedroom.
"So, you really live here," he said finally, having remained silent and wide-eyed throughout most of the grand tour.
"Well, not here exactly. This is the guest room. I'm sorry it's so...girly. You should have seen mum with the decorator, I thought it was going to come to blows!"
He smiled and sat on the bed, bouncing a little on it.
"I'll tell you though," she continued, sitting next to him, "it was the first thing that made me smile after I got here. Seeing mum terrorize that poor, poor man.... But then I felt like I was betraying him by being happy." She rested her head on his shoulder and he was still able to smell the salt air of the ocean in her hair.
"I always just wanted you to be happy. And he's out there somewhere right now, wanting us both to be happy. I think we owe it to him to give this whole happiness thing a go, don't you?"
"Do we have a choice?" she asked in a small voice.
"Not really. Or at least, I'm not personally prepared to be a party to one."
They sat in silence, the room dim behind heavy velveteen curtains, the sounds of the rest of the house settling back in to a very domestic existance seemingly miles off.
"I don't know, though, Doctor. I feel like I want to laugh and cry at the same time."
He put his arm around her and she seemed so small, so much not the Defender of the Earth any more, but just Dame Rose Tyler of the Powell Estates. "Nothing's stopping you."
He felt her stiffen a little and she shook her head and sighed. "I'm dying for a shower, and I know mum wants us all to have tea as a family again. Family tea is so important to her, it'll kill her if we skive off." She stood and looked at him appraisingly. "We'll need to find you some new clothes."
"How come nobody likes the blue? What's wrong with blue?"
Rose put the tip of her thumb in her mouth and nibbled it a little to keep from laughing too hard. "I reckon you'll want to bathe as well, yeah? You need something to put on after. Donna told me you had your kit off in the TARDIS and she didn't seem pleased by what she saw, so I don't think it'll do to have you show up for tea starkers. I'll ask Lucy to pull something out for you."
She turned to leave but then turned back again. "And honestly? Earth tones from now on. Nobody likes the blue because it looks ghastly on you." She brought only half of her mouth up in to a wry smile and left him alone with this indictment of his fashion sense. Donna's name continued to echo long after Rose had fled down the hallway to her own room.
When the Doctor joined the family for tea in the drawing room wearing a set of Pete's old striped pyjamas and a dressing gown, both Rose and Jackie's mouths fell open and stayed that way for a very long time. So long that he finally had to suggest that there were possibly better ways of catching flies.
"I like a good swatter myself. I don't know how people can stand flypaper with all those wee fly corpses all over it, staring at you with their tiny little dead compound eyes. Ugh," he shuddered. "Isn't anyone going to offer me a cuppa?"
~o0o~
Tony pestered the Doctor persistently for more magic tricks, even after he confessed that he only knew the one, right up until the moment he had to be dragged, literally kicking and screaming (which the Doctor found quite amusing) off to bed. It was not soon after that Jackie and Pete also retired, and the big house was silent again.
"D'you reckon we ought to give them some privacy?" the Doctor asked Rose as she put a few of Tony's toys away.
"What? Oi Doctor, that's my mum." She made a face and did an adorable little quivering dance.
"Right," he drawled. "Well, would I get a better reaction if I just came out and asked if you'd like to go have a nice snog in the garden?"
"So not at all presumptuous and arrogant, then?" She strode up to within just a few tantalizing inches.
"When have I ever been?"
She reached out and put her hand to his chest. Her lovely, honey-smooth hand that was just begging to be captured and kissed, to thread through his hair, to touch all of the parts of this new body that had yet to be touched.
"What does it mean? That you just have one heart?"
He grabbed her wrist, gently he hoped, but he felt like he wasn't completely in control of his actions, like he was just a copilot. Bringing her hand up to his face, he whispered against it, "It means I'm free." He took a shuddering breath and let her hand go again.
She stepped back and a coy little twitch played around her lips. "The garden you say? In your pyjamas?"
"You'd be amazed what a man in his jim-jams can do, if he puts his mind to it."
She turned and walked towards the set of french doors leading to the back garden from the dining room. "Would I now?"
Rose Tyler, the flirt. He'd seen that before, but it had been so long. So many years, and he wasn't sure if it was his new situation or the fact that she'd grown from a sprightly girl in to a captivating woman during their time apart, but their banter seemed so much more salacious now. He liked it. He liked it very much. He even fancied he felt his single heart skip a beat and finally understood what all of those trashy human romance novelists that Rose liked to read were on about. And then he realized that his mouth was gaping open and he was drooling a bit. He shut it with a click and followed Rose out to the garden, where she was already sitting on a bench, looking up at the sky.
The moon was new and it took a moment for the Doctor, much to his own surprise, to comprehend what was wrong with what he was seeing.
"The stars."
"They went out. We saved the other universe, but not all of this one." She gave an unfunny little chuckle. "Jack's world. You were right on time for that, but we already saw what was coming long before it happened there."
"Of course." All those worlds, all those civilizations, those lives. Gone. If he had to put an estimate on it he'd say a full third of the stars in the night sky of Pete's World had gone missing. The ones that remained looked much diminished for their lack of companions. As we all are.
"Doctor, are you okay?" She patted the spot next to her, inviting him to put aside thoughts of life and death, and he wanted to. In that moment he wanted to never have to think about good, or evil, or infinity, or why we live and who decrees we die. What could he do about those things now anyway?
The way he kissed her then could not be described as tender, or sweet, or chaste, and he was most certainly kissing her and not the other way around. There were teeth and tongues, there was gasping for air and low inaudible vibrations from their throats. Hands flew around each other's heads and necks, looking for purchase, grabbing and pulling.
When one travels in time, one knows infinity, and that is a very long time indeed to wait to fulfil desire. Nevertheless, Rose began to turn her head, panting and dodging the Doctor's attempts to seek the end of an endless wait.
"No, hang on," she breathed in to where she'd rested her head on his chest. "We should stop."
He swallowed hard and almost burst in to tears. "We should what?" he yelped, a little louder than intended.
"We've got time, yeah? To kind of ease in to things? I'm a bit...overwhelmed."
"Overwhelmed? Is that what they're calling it now?" His hand, completely of it's own accord, continued to rub Rose's shoulder, so she felt that he might actually wear a hole there.
She made a very indignant and shocked sound and smacked him on the arm, though not hard. "I'm serious! We could be making a huge mistake by going too fast. I want to do things right, with you. Besides, you know that when I really want something, I get it."
"My Rose. That you do." He sighed and looked up at the Rorschach sky. "That you do."
(To Chapter 5)