Moirae
Moirae, Multi Doctor/Rose, R, 3127 words.
She is Lachesis. Clotho. Atropos. Once she was Rose and a valiant child.
This is the endless web.
She wakes slowly, sitting upright stiffly in the stark sunlight. She brings palms to her eyes and rubs away the crust of sleep, the ache of her eyeballs that marks how they fluttered during her dreaming. She forgets which century she is in. Traces a golden hand along the windowsill until it collides with the soft rustling pages of the books she read last night, A Quiet Contemplation of Quantum Mechanics and Cooking with Aphrodisiacs: Sex and Lust in the Kitchen. They are old books she had left over from the 22nd century, dusty things acquired idly in a second hand shop smelling of foamy aftershave.
She thinks its silly figs are supposed to be sexy.
She stands. The down duvet falls from her body in frothy waves of warmth, and she is bare but for a white button up that is crooked, two more on the left side, no knickers. The air prickles her into gooseflesh, and she shivers. Smiles. Makes tea, earl grey, the bergamot suddenly a thick taste like the fabric of his trousers.
Curling the fingers of one hand neatly around her white mug, the other threading into her tangled forest of hair, she closes her eyes and plucks at the strands of her web. A fingerprint pulls at one string and the rebound cascades through seven other universes, technology increasing the frequency of microwave ovens develops sooner, a prime minister is changed to a president, a lovely redhead curls her toes as she comes and stares wide at the speckled ceiling, a Flutterwing dies, and the flushed heat of tea races down her throat, amber and water and fate swirling down into her stomach.
She tickles her fingers along the limited web of his life, and decides which piece of him she will visit today.
She thinks about lunch, too.
***
Scarlet grass shivers on Wild Endeavor, the Citadel gleaming with such pride in the twin suns as to rival the forests in the fires of dawn. He sits inside the dome and looks up into the sky, his mother not twenty feet behind him speaking in hushed tones to the President. His mind is light years away, gazing longingly at space but shaking as violently as the grass in the tumultuous winds; he hugs his bare knees to his chest, though he is not cold.
He does not understand why he has to go. He likes his little house with his family halfway up the ruddy mountain, thank you very much. He never said he wanted to be a Time Lord, and Prydon Academy is far.
"Theta?"
He slowly shifts his eyes to his mother, standing over him in a thick billowing gown of emerald. She looks lovely against the grass, but he would never tell her so. It was embarrassing enough when she insisted on kissing him in front of the other boys. He's eight, for Rassilon's sake. (She'd frown at him swearing, too.)
He turns on the most magnificent doe eyes he can muster.
She is, as always, unimpressed.
"It's time to go, darling."
He scrunches his face until his eyes begin to water, and does not waver in his eye contact. He hugs himself tighter. Sticks out his bottom lip just a smidge for good measure.
"Closer," she teases, her eyes crinkling with mirth. "But I'm no fool, young man. This is the first step to the Academy, and being a Time Lord is in your blood. You're going to be a man of vast things."
"I'd rather be a doctor," he pouts, no longer bothering to use his charms on her. Instead, he sulks and plucks a long strand of grass. Splits it down the middle, squishes the moisture between his fingers.
"You will be a Time Lord," she says firmly, and tugs him to stand by his hand. He does not let go of the grass, and she pretends her heart does not clench at the trembling of her son's hand. They take their comforts where they can.
"Go. The Vortex does not wait for anyone. It is time."
"I thought Time Lords had all the time they wanted," he mutters to the ground, kicking it until patches of dirt scuff his fancy shoes. The wind ruffles his hair, and his eyes lift to the tangerine sky. He feels something new stirring in his blood, coiling in his stomach like a beast waiting to pull him apart. He wonders if his mother felt this sullen when her mother made her go stare into the big bad vortex. He doubted it. His mother was fearless.
Later, a mile of walking and cursing as extensively as his young vocabulary can allow away, he is before the Untempered Schism.
As one peers over the edge of a chasm and waits for a rock to hit bottom, he looks inside the ebony depths. Gallifrey quakes under him, his knees shake and give way, wetness streams unabashedly from his eyes. His mind expands, and there is an empty woman inside the Vortex wrapping herself around his mind, trying to soften the violence of raw power, but he is terrified. Panic swells inside him as energy he does not understand reaches for him.
Paths of choice burst into his consciousness, and he sees the beginnings and ends of all things. He sees gold and the power rattles him. It is bright and burning, and he thinks she is fate itself. She whispers to him that she is, and he does not see her face. A hand that already knows him reaches from the deep dark and caresses his face.
"Why does it hurt?" he chokes, hands at his temples numb, nerves feeling nothing but the roaring in his mind.
Everything ends with her.
No. Wrong, not. Everything. Not.
He. Him. Theta. He ends. With her. They circle.
Circle. Burns. It burns!
I think you need a Doctor.
He turns tail and flees, feet pumping into the ground, lungs and chest heaving. He cannot see beyond the future in his eyes, and runs along the red plain blindly, trips, his knobby knees slamming into the grass and staining the same color as his blood. He wants his mother, and she is waiting. Her glittering green dress is cool against his face, but the reek of the Vortex still beats violently against him. Oranges, sharp tang with back of the throat sweetness. It soaks his skin.
It will be three hundred and two years before he goes to Earth and learns what oranges are. It will be nine hundred and two before he understands why he craves them so.
***
She knits.
Snick, snick, snick. Clink. Tap. Her needles weave against each other, soft sounds lighting the air as they caress yarn into shape.
She fancies a scarf. She sips her tea.
***
Consider marmalade.
Thick, warm honey amber that catches the sunlight in the morning. Sweetness licking the inside of a locked jar that fingers itch to twist open, golden lid cool and smooth. The dulcet sugar inside curls its arms around the fruit, which is dulcet as well but like an older step-sister brought into the family just late enough she wants to know if her new father has noticed her pretty little lips.
Consider this jar, on an empty expanse of white counter, taking residence in the vacant company of ghosts.
Consider the older step sister, the peach with parted lips and wispy breath as she demands he keep his fingers from the sticky, thick, sucking, heady depths of the marmalade. She shakes her head as his fingers are inside and he wonders if he swirled the preserve in her mouth if she would say no then.
She gave Adam her key. His mind reels at the audacity.
He wants her in this jar, clearly labeled with nutritional facts, to put on his tongue and greedily suck at his leisure.
Consider, if she were neatly labeled, how prettily he could shelve her safely away.
This biological ship which holds this jar which holds this fruit (but does not hold his succulent companion, who will be held by no limits) is missing something. He thinks it is a sound, but he wouldn't know it until he heard it, and he certainly can't hear it until it decides to rush from her mouth and pour over him like the thickest honey, leaving him dazed and hungry and clumsy.
He wants her to confess every truth he already knows. To collide with her and ride her and suck her sugar away until she is the bitter, gnarled pit that has nothing to give, no skin, no tree from which she grew, no home but his mouth and belly; what a lie time is, to tie him down with supple leather and watch as he begs and falsely soothes her fear. He is a stupid old man.
He wants to hear her say it. That she lied. That she will leave him.
Angrily, he shoves the jar deep into the pantry, not bothering to see if the lid is closed tightly enough. He reckons the sugary treat will escape its confines and make a mess of his life anyway.
***
It is two days before she comes to him.
He hasn't spoken to her since she begged to see her father. He had turned sharply on his heel and left the console room.
He could hear her silence through the walls. Still missing the sound, still eating the lie.
This small young creature is in his doorway, shyly resting the ball of one foot atop the other. He is on his bed, splayed as if to be waiting. She chews the tip of a finger and leans on the deep oak frame, wearing one of his navy jumpers and red lace knickers.
She is brazen. She is not a natural blonde.
"Is... is that... mine?" he chokes out, roughly. You'd think he'd never seen a pretty girl before. In his clothes. And her knickers. In the bedroom doorway she had somehow managed to find that was most definitely supposed to remain hidden so companions could not find him when he was pouting and wanted to be alone, thank you very much, you silly git of a time machine.
She quirks an eyebrow. "Which part?"
"You cheeky little..."
The silence hangs like wet laundry as he does not finish the sentence. She drops her eyes to her toes, curls them, admires the shine of the brown polish, stares at the hallway light glinting off the very fine hairs on the top of her foot.
"I'm sorry," she whispers to the space in front of her chest.
"Oh? Does the little human know what she is sorry for?"
She winces and he feels like a magnificent ass. Reckons she'd agree with him. But how else is she going to learn to not wander, to not break rules, to stop liking those damn boys until his blood runs hot?
He pretends for a moment he doesn't adore her so because she breaks rules.
Point in case, his damn jumper holding her breasts so lovingly he can see her nipples. (How did she get into his clothes, anyway? Was it even clean?) His mind reels as his scent soaks into her skin.
Saturated. He wants to clean everything out and begin again.
"I do."
"What's that now?"
"Know what I'm sorry for."
"Oh, this should be good then!" He leans back onto his bed leisurely, the picture of arrogance. He sets his 3,298 page book (Synchronized Swimming in the Gelatinous Waters of Klexia, the TARDIS tells her) to the side, laces his hands against his stomach, and prays to gods he doesn't believe in that his duvet is thick enough to hide how much he loves being angry with her while she's in her knickers.
He is daft. And old. And hard. And has only glanced at her breasts once. Twice.
Twice and a half.
She saunters to the bed, one foot in front of the other, the barest of whispers on the cream, plush carpet. Sits, her hips making a dip in the bed that gravity is more than happy to pull him into. Her heat licks at him through the duvet.
In a very grown up moment for her nineteen years, Rose tells the truth.
"I should have told you that I wanted you, Doctor. But I'm a silly little girl in this great big box, and you've just got so much history clinging to you like skin. M'not stupid. M'not someone for you to love. But I don't have to have more boys 'round neither."
"Rose."
"No. M'sorry. I don't need anythin' from you, so don't bother offerin'. You're beautiful, you are. Its enough just to be with you."
"You found me, in my bed, in those little things and my bloody shirt and you want to tell me you don't need anything."
She laughs. "Wanted to apologize. And, well, maybe hoped a little."
He raises an eyebrow.
"What's the place between a little bit and a little bit that's a lie, Doctor?"
He cups her cheeks with his calloused hands, leverages his body weight against her and flips them. She gasps, and her hair haloes over his pillows, his sheets, his skin; the fancies the gold against his dark arm hairs. He pushes his face deep against her skin and breathes.
Oranges, sharp tang with back of the throat sweetness.
Tentatively, he licks. Her mouth opens wide and she sucks in mouthfuls of air as his cold tongue laps at her skin, tasting hormone levels and blood pressure and a little bit of her mind. His hands grip her wrists roughly, pinning them above her head and deep into the mattress.
She offers no protest, and her heart rate has skyrocketed. Could beat out of her tiny little chest, her marvels; a rabbit in the woods frozen in time while the wolf stares.
He does not know how her ribs can hold her, but he wants to find out.
***
This is motion.
Waves rocking in on each other, frothing in their might. They collide with breath stealing swiftness. Inky blackness punctured by stars, roaring in the sound of the universe over her head.
She hears singing.
She thinks it may be coming from him as he plunges inside her, icy eyes closed and teeth biting into her shoulder. He draws blood and it feel like a gift. She holds the back of his head and rocks in his lap, tugs at the tightly cropped hair and sighs a million little breaths.
The song grows louder and she is close, so blindingly achingly close. It climbs inside of her, deeper than he is; it makes room inside of her eyelids and her belly and under the arches of her feet. Her skin crawls and itches and screams to get out getout getoutgetoutgeout and he keeps his fingers sliding over her clit and she shatters.
The room glows like it is on fire. He's blinded by the shining creature in his arms, sheathing him, and he can't, doesn't, won't look away. Her luminescent skin lights every corner of his bedroom, reflecting off knicks and knacks and bits and bobs and lighting all of the memories of his life.
She looks at him with soft, golden eyes, a warm and crinkling smile. She is older and farther away than the little body of his Rose. The smell of oranges is overwhelming.
"Theta," she whispers against his mouth. She is ethereal. "The consort of fate."
***
She remembers nothing but wakes in his bed. Her knickers are wet and her skin has the clammy tackiness that comes with high fevers and a good strong cuppa. He is long and lean beside her, naked from the waist up and jim jammed in black flannel pants. He looks so cozy she forgets to be alarmed at where she is; hell, she hadn't even known he'd had a bed, with how he goes off on superior Time Lord this and superior Time Lord that.
He is cheeky as he tells her she should watch herself on frozen planets. He doesn't fancy a companion with no toes, or letting the enemy know how much chest hair he has just because he had to keep her warm. He is exactly as good at hiding his fear as he thinks he is.
She swallows the weight in his eyes as truth, and lets the lie rest.
He never tells her.
***
She wishes she had written her story down. She likes the brittle musty pages of the old books she finds, wouldn't mind one for herself. Likes how they feel under her hands.
Sometimes, she ventures out of her flat for chips; they amuse her, the nostalgia that bites as deliciously as malt vinegar. For the most part, people don't notice her. She is a frail woman with wicked eyes, ghosting the streets, missing nothing. She makes people of all species uncomfortable. Her mind carries so much, but she has forgotten how old she is. The year. Which planet she is on. The color his eyes were when he was born for the twelfth time.
Sometimes, she visits Jack Harkness. He will live until he is ready to die; she does not know if that day will ever come for her. But when he is Boe or when he is Jack, he always loves her; they watch the star whales, and the destruction of Gallifrey, and the first and fifth annual intergalactic firework shows from Earth.
She tells him the shining lights remind her of the Doctor. Jack tells her the Universe feels it, too.
She knows.
***
Bile rises in her throat as the TARDIS doors close. Her thick boots sink into the tawny sand, and her new new new Doctor slides his hand inside hers; fingerprints rustle as new bodies say hello. She feels a grim calm, and at the corner of her heart, a tickle of the life ahead. A fire in her belly.
Her home vanishes. I'll see you again.
He knows.
***
She is Lachesis. Clotho. Atropos. Once she was Rose and a valiant child. Once she died in battle.
She is the loom, and the thread; the needle and skein. The blade that ends what was, is, will be.
She measures every length so carefully, and savors the texture of them as they slide between her fingertips; beautiful, shining, slippery things. She holds every one of them inside her endless heart.
Long ago and in this very moment, she fell in love with a man so tied into the universe she could not find his thread to cut it. It has long since been his time, and longer still been hers.
She swallows the last of her tea, and hears him knocking on the door to her flat. She smiles and lets her knitting rest, pulling another mug from the cupboard.
She is Lachesis. Clotho. Atropos. Once she was Rose and a valiant child.
This is the endless web.
She wakes slowly, sitting upright stiffly in the stark sunlight. She brings palms to her eyes and rubs away the crust of sleep, the ache of her eyeballs that marks how they fluttered during her dreaming. She forgets which century she is in. Traces a golden hand along the windowsill until it collides with the soft rustling pages of the books she read last night, A Quiet Contemplation of Quantum Mechanics and Cooking with Aphrodisiacs: Sex and Lust in the Kitchen. They are old books she had left over from the 22nd century, dusty things acquired idly in a second hand shop smelling of foamy aftershave.
She thinks its silly figs are supposed to be sexy.
She stands. The down duvet falls from her body in frothy waves of warmth, and she is bare but for a white button up that is crooked, two more on the left side, no knickers. The air prickles her into gooseflesh, and she shivers. Smiles. Makes tea, earl grey, the bergamot suddenly a thick taste like the fabric of his trousers.
Curling the fingers of one hand neatly around her white mug, the other threading into her tangled forest of hair, she closes her eyes and plucks at the strands of her web. A fingerprint pulls at one string and the rebound cascades through seven other universes, technology increasing the frequency of microwave ovens develops sooner, a prime minister is changed to a president, a lovely redhead curls her toes as she comes and stares wide at the speckled ceiling, a Flutterwing dies, and the flushed heat of tea races down her throat, amber and water and fate swirling down into her stomach.
She tickles her fingers along the limited web of his life, and decides which piece of him she will visit today.
She thinks about lunch, too.
***
Scarlet grass shivers on Wild Endeavor, the Citadel gleaming with such pride in the twin suns as to rival the forests in the fires of dawn. He sits inside the dome and looks up into the sky, his mother not twenty feet behind him speaking in hushed tones to the President. His mind is light years away, gazing longingly at space but shaking as violently as the grass in the tumultuous winds; he hugs his bare knees to his chest, though he is not cold.
He does not understand why he has to go. He likes his little house with his family halfway up the ruddy mountain, thank you very much. He never said he wanted to be a Time Lord, and Prydon Academy is far.
"Theta?"
He slowly shifts his eyes to his mother, standing over him in a thick billowing gown of emerald. She looks lovely against the grass, but he would never tell her so. It was embarrassing enough when she insisted on kissing him in front of the other boys. He's eight, for Rassilon's sake. (She'd frown at him swearing, too.)
He turns on the most magnificent doe eyes he can muster.
She is, as always, unimpressed.
"It's time to go, darling."
He scrunches his face until his eyes begin to water, and does not waver in his eye contact. He hugs himself tighter. Sticks out his bottom lip just a smidge for good measure.
"Closer," she teases, her eyes crinkling with mirth. "But I'm no fool, young man. This is the first step to the Academy, and being a Time Lord is in your blood. You're going to be a man of vast things."
"I'd rather be a doctor," he pouts, no longer bothering to use his charms on her. Instead, he sulks and plucks a long strand of grass. Splits it down the middle, squishes the moisture between his fingers.
"You will be a Time Lord," she says firmly, and tugs him to stand by his hand. He does not let go of the grass, and she pretends her heart does not clench at the trembling of her son's hand. They take their comforts where they can.
"Go. The Vortex does not wait for anyone. It is time."
"I thought Time Lords had all the time they wanted," he mutters to the ground, kicking it until patches of dirt scuff his fancy shoes. The wind ruffles his hair, and his eyes lift to the tangerine sky. He feels something new stirring in his blood, coiling in his stomach like a beast waiting to pull him apart. He wonders if his mother felt this sullen when her mother made her go stare into the big bad vortex. He doubted it. His mother was fearless.
Later, a mile of walking and cursing as extensively as his young vocabulary can allow away, he is before the Untempered Schism.
As one peers over the edge of a chasm and waits for a rock to hit bottom, he looks inside the ebony depths. Gallifrey quakes under him, his knees shake and give way, wetness streams unabashedly from his eyes. His mind expands, and there is an empty woman inside the Vortex wrapping herself around his mind, trying to soften the violence of raw power, but he is terrified. Panic swells inside him as energy he does not understand reaches for him.
Paths of choice burst into his consciousness, and he sees the beginnings and ends of all things. He sees gold and the power rattles him. It is bright and burning, and he thinks she is fate itself. She whispers to him that she is, and he does not see her face. A hand that already knows him reaches from the deep dark and caresses his face.
"Why does it hurt?" he chokes, hands at his temples numb, nerves feeling nothing but the roaring in his mind.
Everything ends with her.
No. Wrong, not. Everything. Not.
He. Him. Theta. He ends. With her. They circle.
Circle. Burns. It burns!
I think you need a Doctor.
He turns tail and flees, feet pumping into the ground, lungs and chest heaving. He cannot see beyond the future in his eyes, and runs along the red plain blindly, trips, his knobby knees slamming into the grass and staining the same color as his blood. He wants his mother, and she is waiting. Her glittering green dress is cool against his face, but the reek of the Vortex still beats violently against him. Oranges, sharp tang with back of the throat sweetness. It soaks his skin.
It will be three hundred and two years before he goes to Earth and learns what oranges are. It will be nine hundred and two before he understands why he craves them so.
***
She knits.
Snick, snick, snick. Clink. Tap. Her needles weave against each other, soft sounds lighting the air as they caress yarn into shape.
She fancies a scarf. She sips her tea.
***
Consider marmalade.
Thick, warm honey amber that catches the sunlight in the morning. Sweetness licking the inside of a locked jar that fingers itch to twist open, golden lid cool and smooth. The dulcet sugar inside curls its arms around the fruit, which is dulcet as well but like an older step-sister brought into the family just late enough she wants to know if her new father has noticed her pretty little lips.
Consider this jar, on an empty expanse of white counter, taking residence in the vacant company of ghosts.
Consider the older step sister, the peach with parted lips and wispy breath as she demands he keep his fingers from the sticky, thick, sucking, heady depths of the marmalade. She shakes her head as his fingers are inside and he wonders if he swirled the preserve in her mouth if she would say no then.
She gave Adam her key. His mind reels at the audacity.
He wants her in this jar, clearly labeled with nutritional facts, to put on his tongue and greedily suck at his leisure.
Consider, if she were neatly labeled, how prettily he could shelve her safely away.
This biological ship which holds this jar which holds this fruit (but does not hold his succulent companion, who will be held by no limits) is missing something. He thinks it is a sound, but he wouldn't know it until he heard it, and he certainly can't hear it until it decides to rush from her mouth and pour over him like the thickest honey, leaving him dazed and hungry and clumsy.
He wants her to confess every truth he already knows. To collide with her and ride her and suck her sugar away until she is the bitter, gnarled pit that has nothing to give, no skin, no tree from which she grew, no home but his mouth and belly; what a lie time is, to tie him down with supple leather and watch as he begs and falsely soothes her fear. He is a stupid old man.
He wants to hear her say it. That she lied. That she will leave him.
Angrily, he shoves the jar deep into the pantry, not bothering to see if the lid is closed tightly enough. He reckons the sugary treat will escape its confines and make a mess of his life anyway.
***
It is two days before she comes to him.
He hasn't spoken to her since she begged to see her father. He had turned sharply on his heel and left the console room.
He could hear her silence through the walls. Still missing the sound, still eating the lie.
This small young creature is in his doorway, shyly resting the ball of one foot atop the other. He is on his bed, splayed as if to be waiting. She chews the tip of a finger and leans on the deep oak frame, wearing one of his navy jumpers and red lace knickers.
She is brazen. She is not a natural blonde.
"Is... is that... mine?" he chokes out, roughly. You'd think he'd never seen a pretty girl before. In his clothes. And her knickers. In the bedroom doorway she had somehow managed to find that was most definitely supposed to remain hidden so companions could not find him when he was pouting and wanted to be alone, thank you very much, you silly git of a time machine.
She quirks an eyebrow. "Which part?"
"You cheeky little..."
The silence hangs like wet laundry as he does not finish the sentence. She drops her eyes to her toes, curls them, admires the shine of the brown polish, stares at the hallway light glinting off the very fine hairs on the top of her foot.
"I'm sorry," she whispers to the space in front of her chest.
"Oh? Does the little human know what she is sorry for?"
She winces and he feels like a magnificent ass. Reckons she'd agree with him. But how else is she going to learn to not wander, to not break rules, to stop liking those damn boys until his blood runs hot?
He pretends for a moment he doesn't adore her so because she breaks rules.
Point in case, his damn jumper holding her breasts so lovingly he can see her nipples. (How did she get into his clothes, anyway? Was it even clean?) His mind reels as his scent soaks into her skin.
Saturated. He wants to clean everything out and begin again.
"I do."
"What's that now?"
"Know what I'm sorry for."
"Oh, this should be good then!" He leans back onto his bed leisurely, the picture of arrogance. He sets his 3,298 page book (Synchronized Swimming in the Gelatinous Waters of Klexia, the TARDIS tells her) to the side, laces his hands against his stomach, and prays to gods he doesn't believe in that his duvet is thick enough to hide how much he loves being angry with her while she's in her knickers.
He is daft. And old. And hard. And has only glanced at her breasts once. Twice.
Twice and a half.
She saunters to the bed, one foot in front of the other, the barest of whispers on the cream, plush carpet. Sits, her hips making a dip in the bed that gravity is more than happy to pull him into. Her heat licks at him through the duvet.
In a very grown up moment for her nineteen years, Rose tells the truth.
"I should have told you that I wanted you, Doctor. But I'm a silly little girl in this great big box, and you've just got so much history clinging to you like skin. M'not stupid. M'not someone for you to love. But I don't have to have more boys 'round neither."
"Rose."
"No. M'sorry. I don't need anythin' from you, so don't bother offerin'. You're beautiful, you are. Its enough just to be with you."
"You found me, in my bed, in those little things and my bloody shirt and you want to tell me you don't need anything."
She laughs. "Wanted to apologize. And, well, maybe hoped a little."
He raises an eyebrow.
"What's the place between a little bit and a little bit that's a lie, Doctor?"
He cups her cheeks with his calloused hands, leverages his body weight against her and flips them. She gasps, and her hair haloes over his pillows, his sheets, his skin; the fancies the gold against his dark arm hairs. He pushes his face deep against her skin and breathes.
Oranges, sharp tang with back of the throat sweetness.
Tentatively, he licks. Her mouth opens wide and she sucks in mouthfuls of air as his cold tongue laps at her skin, tasting hormone levels and blood pressure and a little bit of her mind. His hands grip her wrists roughly, pinning them above her head and deep into the mattress.
She offers no protest, and her heart rate has skyrocketed. Could beat out of her tiny little chest, her marvels; a rabbit in the woods frozen in time while the wolf stares.
He does not know how her ribs can hold her, but he wants to find out.
***
This is motion.
Waves rocking in on each other, frothing in their might. They collide with breath stealing swiftness. Inky blackness punctured by stars, roaring in the sound of the universe over her head.
She hears singing.
She thinks it may be coming from him as he plunges inside her, icy eyes closed and teeth biting into her shoulder. He draws blood and it feel like a gift. She holds the back of his head and rocks in his lap, tugs at the tightly cropped hair and sighs a million little breaths.
The song grows louder and she is close, so blindingly achingly close. It climbs inside of her, deeper than he is; it makes room inside of her eyelids and her belly and under the arches of her feet. Her skin crawls and itches and screams to get out getout getoutgetoutgeout and he keeps his fingers sliding over her clit and she shatters.
The room glows like it is on fire. He's blinded by the shining creature in his arms, sheathing him, and he can't, doesn't, won't look away. Her luminescent skin lights every corner of his bedroom, reflecting off knicks and knacks and bits and bobs and lighting all of the memories of his life.
She looks at him with soft, golden eyes, a warm and crinkling smile. She is older and farther away than the little body of his Rose. The smell of oranges is overwhelming.
"Theta," she whispers against his mouth. She is ethereal. "The consort of fate."
***
She remembers nothing but wakes in his bed. Her knickers are wet and her skin has the clammy tackiness that comes with high fevers and a good strong cuppa. He is long and lean beside her, naked from the waist up and jim jammed in black flannel pants. He looks so cozy she forgets to be alarmed at where she is; hell, she hadn't even known he'd had a bed, with how he goes off on superior Time Lord this and superior Time Lord that.
He is cheeky as he tells her she should watch herself on frozen planets. He doesn't fancy a companion with no toes, or letting the enemy know how much chest hair he has just because he had to keep her warm. He is exactly as good at hiding his fear as he thinks he is.
She swallows the weight in his eyes as truth, and lets the lie rest.
He never tells her.
***
She wishes she had written her story down. She likes the brittle musty pages of the old books she finds, wouldn't mind one for herself. Likes how they feel under her hands.
Sometimes, she ventures out of her flat for chips; they amuse her, the nostalgia that bites as deliciously as malt vinegar. For the most part, people don't notice her. She is a frail woman with wicked eyes, ghosting the streets, missing nothing. She makes people of all species uncomfortable. Her mind carries so much, but she has forgotten how old she is. The year. Which planet she is on. The color his eyes were when he was born for the twelfth time.
Sometimes, she visits Jack Harkness. He will live until he is ready to die; she does not know if that day will ever come for her. But when he is Boe or when he is Jack, he always loves her; they watch the star whales, and the destruction of Gallifrey, and the first and fifth annual intergalactic firework shows from Earth.
She tells him the shining lights remind her of the Doctor. Jack tells her the Universe feels it, too.
She knows.
***
Bile rises in her throat as the TARDIS doors close. Her thick boots sink into the tawny sand, and her new new new Doctor slides his hand inside hers; fingerprints rustle as new bodies say hello. She feels a grim calm, and at the corner of her heart, a tickle of the life ahead. A fire in her belly.
Her home vanishes. I'll see you again.
He knows.
***
She is Lachesis. Clotho. Atropos. Once she was Rose and a valiant child. Once she died in battle.
She is the loom, and the thread; the needle and skein. The blade that ends what was, is, will be.
She measures every length so carefully, and savors the texture of them as they slide between her fingertips; beautiful, shining, slippery things. She holds every one of them inside her endless heart.
Long ago and in this very moment, she fell in love with a man so tied into the universe she could not find his thread to cut it. It has long since been his time, and longer still been hers.
She swallows the last of her tea, and hears him knocking on the door to her flat. She smiles and lets her knitting rest, pulling another mug from the cupboard.