Fic: Postcards to Gallifrey
Title: Postcards to Gallifrey
Fandom: Doctor Who
Characters: Doctor, Rose, various
Summary: AU. The TARDIS is broken; no more time travel, and no off-planet travel until he can get the parts he needs. And so the Doctor and Rose live out their bohemian lifestyle in a whole new way.
Spoilers: References to Doomsday, but they're rather vague.
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: If I owned Doctor Who...but I don't. Maybe for Christmas. Hey, one can dream.
Part Two: Bray, Ireland
Part Three: New York City, USA
Part Four: Perth, Australia
Part Five: Arcadia
Intro and Chapter One
ETA: Now with a lovely chapter header. :D
She says, offhand, that at least the TARDIS got stuck in her own century. And then she remembers that it doesn't matter anymore. Not really. She chose to stay with him, and not go with her mother and Mickey into that other universe where the man who would be her father was still alive. Rose has been traveling with him since, and he hasn't let her go.
Of course, they've picked up strays and left them off again, when they were ready to go. But Rose stays. And the funny thing, the Doctor notices years later, is that she doesn’t look like it has been years. He puzzles over it, and runs some tests, which earn him a smack or two. But he eventually figures it out; The Time Vortex changed her when she took it into herself; it made her into the Goddess of Time; she is his equal.
On the day the TARDIS is damaged, and Rose gets hurt. It's the same cause, actually. The Doctor has made enemies more powerful than he and with more convenient access to their repair yards. Rose is hurt worse than the TARDIS, and for a while he’s so concerned with her that he doesn't notice how bad the damage to his ship, his home, is.
Rose heals, it turns out. He wonders if, when something does manage to kill her, she won't simply regenerate. It’s starting to seem likely.
His ship, however, can't regenerate the parts she needs. He babbles on at Rose, back on her feet within a day, about how bad it is as he works away wedged under the console, trying to cobble together something that will work. In the end, he does the best that he can.
No more time travel, it turns out. Not until he can figure out a better solution to the parts problem. Barely works for traveling through space either. They find this out the hard way when he takes her to Barcelona and they step out in Spain. And so, for a couple hundred years, they settle for space. One city, and then another, jumping when the neighbors get suspicious, when the country goes to war, when they have grown attached.
They love each place, just as they love each and every traveler that they have picked up over these long years.
These are their loves songs to these places.
*
Rose loves to run down the hill, like a little girl. The house, perched on its cliff high above the ocean, is up a steep, winding road from the town. When Rose walks down to the market, a basket in her arms, she will sometimes, and only if absolutely no one is around to see, run down the hill, feeling as if she is, if only for a moment or two, flying.
At the market, the translated Greek has a tang to it, tasting, perhaps of salt air and long ages. It reminds her of how Greek sounded when translated from a younger version of itself. She haggles with the women in the market over vegetables, and rice, and freshly caught fish. Both parties always come away happy. By now all of the women at the market know her, and Rose knows them and their families as well.
Among all of these dark-haired people, Rose has let her hair go dark as well. The Doctor dresses more casually now, in a t-shirt sometimes even. She’s made him take on a pseudonym, which she insisted be something other than John Smith. He now goes by Doctor John Tyler. It was just to annoy her, at first, but she's grown rather fond of it.
Taking the shopping back up the hill is more tiresome, and for the first few months, Rose would have to stop and rest several times on the way up. Now she can make the trip in one go, even if she does arrive back at the house a little sweaty and out of breath.
The tiny house is right on the cliff, on the edge of the Aegean Sea. They can look from the windows and right out across the water. At night, the other islands look as if they float on nothingness. She likes to lie awake at night, pressed to his side, and listen to him talk. He tells her of the 'Floating World' in Kyoto, where they once visited, so long ago. He tells her of the city in the clouds, which only he stopped from coming down. Then she makes up stories, of worlds, of places. He can always top her with the truth of what he's seen. She's waiting for the day that he runs out of things to tell her.
They've picked up a stray: A little, dark-eyed boy who can’t be younger than about 12. His parents had both died, accidents, and he had been living with the family of his cousin, there in the town. When the Doctor and Rose had showed up, out of nowhere, all the children on the small island were curious. But only little Athos was curious enough, and with enough skill at shirking his duties, to go up and investigate the strange people living on the old abandoned house on the hill.
He crouched in the scrawny bushes in front of the house, waiting for a glimpse of human life while down in the town below his cousin tired of looking for him and went back to her mending. Rose spotted him right away when she went out, no matter how cleverly he thought he was hiding himself. She walked right up to the bush, a disarming smile on her face. But the little boy still didn't move. Finally she said, scaring him a little, "Well, are you gonna sit there all day, or are you going to come have a cup of tea?"
Warily, he accepted the offer, and thusly met Rose Tyler and Doctor John. Athos assumed they were married, and they didn’t correct him, mostly because they too couldn't figure out exactly what they were. It was simplest to explain to the child that they were married. At the very least, Rose told the Doctor, it would cause the least scandal.
As soon as he met him, the boy seemed to be fascinated with the Doctor, and came sneaking up to the house at any chance he got. Soon, he was spending so much time up there that, one day while at market Athos' cousin simply asked Rose if she would like another housemate, up there on the hill. For a brief moment, she considered asking the Doctor first, but then figured he could deal with it, said yes, and carried a few of Athos' things up the hill with the rest of the shopping.
The Doctor warmed to the boy quite quickly. Rose thought it must be because the boy was bright, smart as a whip. Anything the Doctor or Rose taught him, he understood and could use. She taught him how to cook, to dance, to laugh. The Doctor taught him science, and math, and anything else the boy wished to learn. Athos loved it all, but took a shine to the discipline of geology. The islands of Greece were full of this record of the past, and it was clearly visible. But it grew to encompass more than just his own land; he wanted to explore, to find the other records of long lost worlds, and resurrect them, at least in his own mind.
Rose and the Doctor taught him to wander.
*
AN: Did this for a challenge in the citynextdoor community, and I honestly love how it turned out. It's not been beta-read (volunteers? Sarah?), so if you have any con-crit for me, that'd be lovely. Hope you enjoyed. Ta!
Fandom: Doctor Who
Characters: Doctor, Rose, various
Summary: AU. The TARDIS is broken; no more time travel, and no off-planet travel until he can get the parts he needs. And so the Doctor and Rose live out their bohemian lifestyle in a whole new way.
Spoilers: References to Doomsday, but they're rather vague.
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: If I owned Doctor Who...but I don't. Maybe for Christmas. Hey, one can dream.
Part Two: Bray, Ireland
Part Three: New York City, USA
Part Four: Perth, Australia
Part Five: Arcadia
Intro and Chapter One
ETA: Now with a lovely chapter header. :D
She says, offhand, that at least the TARDIS got stuck in her own century. And then she remembers that it doesn't matter anymore. Not really. She chose to stay with him, and not go with her mother and Mickey into that other universe where the man who would be her father was still alive. Rose has been traveling with him since, and he hasn't let her go.
Of course, they've picked up strays and left them off again, when they were ready to go. But Rose stays. And the funny thing, the Doctor notices years later, is that she doesn’t look like it has been years. He puzzles over it, and runs some tests, which earn him a smack or two. But he eventually figures it out; The Time Vortex changed her when she took it into herself; it made her into the Goddess of Time; she is his equal.
On the day the TARDIS is damaged, and Rose gets hurt. It's the same cause, actually. The Doctor has made enemies more powerful than he and with more convenient access to their repair yards. Rose is hurt worse than the TARDIS, and for a while he’s so concerned with her that he doesn't notice how bad the damage to his ship, his home, is.
Rose heals, it turns out. He wonders if, when something does manage to kill her, she won't simply regenerate. It’s starting to seem likely.
His ship, however, can't regenerate the parts she needs. He babbles on at Rose, back on her feet within a day, about how bad it is as he works away wedged under the console, trying to cobble together something that will work. In the end, he does the best that he can.
No more time travel, it turns out. Not until he can figure out a better solution to the parts problem. Barely works for traveling through space either. They find this out the hard way when he takes her to Barcelona and they step out in Spain. And so, for a couple hundred years, they settle for space. One city, and then another, jumping when the neighbors get suspicious, when the country goes to war, when they have grown attached.
They love each place, just as they love each and every traveler that they have picked up over these long years.
These are their loves songs to these places.
*
Rose loves to run down the hill, like a little girl. The house, perched on its cliff high above the ocean, is up a steep, winding road from the town. When Rose walks down to the market, a basket in her arms, she will sometimes, and only if absolutely no one is around to see, run down the hill, feeling as if she is, if only for a moment or two, flying.
At the market, the translated Greek has a tang to it, tasting, perhaps of salt air and long ages. It reminds her of how Greek sounded when translated from a younger version of itself. She haggles with the women in the market over vegetables, and rice, and freshly caught fish. Both parties always come away happy. By now all of the women at the market know her, and Rose knows them and their families as well.
Among all of these dark-haired people, Rose has let her hair go dark as well. The Doctor dresses more casually now, in a t-shirt sometimes even. She’s made him take on a pseudonym, which she insisted be something other than John Smith. He now goes by Doctor John Tyler. It was just to annoy her, at first, but she's grown rather fond of it.
Taking the shopping back up the hill is more tiresome, and for the first few months, Rose would have to stop and rest several times on the way up. Now she can make the trip in one go, even if she does arrive back at the house a little sweaty and out of breath.
The tiny house is right on the cliff, on the edge of the Aegean Sea. They can look from the windows and right out across the water. At night, the other islands look as if they float on nothingness. She likes to lie awake at night, pressed to his side, and listen to him talk. He tells her of the 'Floating World' in Kyoto, where they once visited, so long ago. He tells her of the city in the clouds, which only he stopped from coming down. Then she makes up stories, of worlds, of places. He can always top her with the truth of what he's seen. She's waiting for the day that he runs out of things to tell her.
They've picked up a stray: A little, dark-eyed boy who can’t be younger than about 12. His parents had both died, accidents, and he had been living with the family of his cousin, there in the town. When the Doctor and Rose had showed up, out of nowhere, all the children on the small island were curious. But only little Athos was curious enough, and with enough skill at shirking his duties, to go up and investigate the strange people living on the old abandoned house on the hill.
He crouched in the scrawny bushes in front of the house, waiting for a glimpse of human life while down in the town below his cousin tired of looking for him and went back to her mending. Rose spotted him right away when she went out, no matter how cleverly he thought he was hiding himself. She walked right up to the bush, a disarming smile on her face. But the little boy still didn't move. Finally she said, scaring him a little, "Well, are you gonna sit there all day, or are you going to come have a cup of tea?"
Warily, he accepted the offer, and thusly met Rose Tyler and Doctor John. Athos assumed they were married, and they didn’t correct him, mostly because they too couldn't figure out exactly what they were. It was simplest to explain to the child that they were married. At the very least, Rose told the Doctor, it would cause the least scandal.
As soon as he met him, the boy seemed to be fascinated with the Doctor, and came sneaking up to the house at any chance he got. Soon, he was spending so much time up there that, one day while at market Athos' cousin simply asked Rose if she would like another housemate, up there on the hill. For a brief moment, she considered asking the Doctor first, but then figured he could deal with it, said yes, and carried a few of Athos' things up the hill with the rest of the shopping.
The Doctor warmed to the boy quite quickly. Rose thought it must be because the boy was bright, smart as a whip. Anything the Doctor or Rose taught him, he understood and could use. She taught him how to cook, to dance, to laugh. The Doctor taught him science, and math, and anything else the boy wished to learn. Athos loved it all, but took a shine to the discipline of geology. The islands of Greece were full of this record of the past, and it was clearly visible. But it grew to encompass more than just his own land; he wanted to explore, to find the other records of long lost worlds, and resurrect them, at least in his own mind.
Rose and the Doctor taught him to wander.
*
AN: Did this for a challenge in the citynextdoor community, and I honestly love how it turned out. It's not been beta-read (volunteers? Sarah?), so if you have any con-crit for me, that'd be lovely. Hope you enjoyed. Ta!