Through Doomsday.
, Rose remembers.
This is the end, then. I'll be picking up again with work on this ridiculously epic post-Age of Steel fic to which I've decided I simply must sacrifice my sanity. I'm in need of a regular beta/Brit-picker to help out on that, actually, so if anyone's interested, let me know. There's plenty of crazy to go around. Thanks for reading!
More Author's Notes: A quick word of explanation - I decided not to deal with Jack's death and resurrection in this fic for a number of reasons, not the least of which being that I sort of forgot to. My rationalization is that the Doctor and Rose have already discussed Jack's continued health and abandonment at some length on a previous occasion. I apologize to the Captain, and know that, sexy manbeast that he is, he will find it in his heart to forgive me.
++
When she woke up, the first thing she saw was the ceiling of her room.
“I’m in my bed,” she croaked.
“Truer words were never spoken.” The Doctor’s all too cheery face appeared in her line of vision. “Hello!”
She sat up. “I’m in pajamas.” She pulled at the neckline. “Men’s pajamas.” She looked down. “Howard’s pajamas.”
“Three out of three. Well done, Rose.” He beamed as she gaped at him. “Don’t worry, they’ve been laundered. Lucky I forgot to return them, eh? Otherwise we would have been in a bit of a pajama pickle.”
She realised that if she left her mouth open a moment longer she’d start to dribble, so she closed it. “I’m in Howard’s pajamas.”
“Well, it would have been a tad rude of me to go digging through your armoire, wouldn’t it?”
She stared at him. “Doctor, you took off my clothes and dressed me in another man’s pajamas while I was unconscious.”
The Doctor leaned back in his chair and tapped his finger against his lips, as if deep in thought. “There’s this saying you humans have, I can’t quite remember it, something about turning about and a fair play…”
She fell back against the headboard with a sigh. “Point taken.” She smirked slightly. “So you saw me naked, then?”
He grinned. “I’m sure I was just as much of a gentleman as you were in my position.”
Rose chuckled weakly. “‘Fraid I was a bit too distracted at the time to properly take in the view.” His grin faded and she looked away, knowing he could see the memory of her utter helplessness written across her face. “You looked so strange in those clothes and I…I didn’t know what else to do for you.”
“I didn’t mind,” he said softly. He cleared his throat, and when he spoke again his voice was rough. “You’d been…your fever had broken by the time I got you to the infirmary, but your clothes were soaked through. I grabbed the first thing I could find.”
She reached for his hand, and he twined his fingers with hers. She gave him the widest smiled she could manage, and knew it came off a bit manic. “So, was it just me or did I explode there for a minute?”
“A little bit, yeah.” He didn’t smile. “You remember, then.”
“I do.” She let go of his hand and pulled the duvet tight around her. “Sorry to disappoint.”
His face was like stone. “I’m not going to apologise for lying to you, Rose. I did what I thought was best, and I’d do it again.”
She raised her chin defiantly. “So would I.”
He closed his eyes, and she could see him struggling with his temper. There was a short silence before he spoke again. “The remnants of the vortex in your system – something must have triggered them.”
“I’m not sure. The last thing I remember before going all…you know,” she gestured vaguely to indicate the glow of her eyes, “was painting my toenails.” She waited for him to scold her, but he stayed silent. “The TARDIS was…well, I know it sounds odd, but it was a bit like she was humming. The song sounded so familiar, but I couldn’t quite place…” She stopped.
“‘There was a singing,’” the Doctor repeated wearily. “That’s what you said. After.”
“I don’t understand. Why would she deliberately set me off like that?”
He rubbed a hand over his face. “I did every test I could think of – which was quite a few, given the considerable size of my brain – and I couldn’t find a single thing to suggest that the smidgen of vortex I left in you is anything but harmless. Nothing more than a memory.” He sighed. “And for some reason, the TARDIS wanted you to have access to that memory.”
“And for some reason, you didn’t.”
He glared at her, his lips pressed into a thin line. “I told you. It was for your own good.”
“You had no right to make that choice for me,” she fumed. “Don’t treat me like a child, Doctor!”
He shot out of his chair, furious. “I’ll stop treating you like a child when you stop acting like one, and not a moment before!”
Rose felt her anger pounding under her skin like a pulse, but she said nothing. She just stared up at him from her bed, her hair mussed and lank, ill-fitting pajamas falling off her shoulder. She stared at him, watched the rapid movement of his chest and the tense lines of his body, and waited.
After a long silence, he looked away.
She remembered the vise-like grip of his hands on her shoulders, panic writ clear across his features. She remembered watching him burst into flame and the sick fear in the pit of her stomach when his new lips curved into a grin for the first time. She remembered sitting in a chip shop, hating him for sending her away and knowing that she would do anything, anything to save him.
She remembered.
“He thought he was a god,” she said, though at first she didn’t even recognize her own voice, the words sounded so far away and unfamiliar. “The Emperor of the Daleks. He created the others in his image, and thought that made him a god. Immortal. I turned him to dust, but he died believing he would live forever. Died screaming.” She looked down at her hands. “They had a scripture, you know. I saw it – commandments and prophesies and everything. You got a few mentions.”
She glanced up to find he was watching her, entranced. She smiled, and it felt tight and wrong on her face.
“Not terribly flattering stuff. Destroyer of worlds, bane of Davros, corrupter of the pure. The Oncoming Storm. Imagine most of it was rubbish, but still.” She paused. “He knew to fear you. Knew you’d try and stop him. He was ready.”
His jaw tensed, and she knew he was remembering all the people lost on the Gamestation, on the Earth below. “Rose, why are you telling me this?”
She hesitated. “They hated you, feared you. You nearly wiped them out of existence, and yet there was something worse. Something that frightened them even more than the Doctor.” She closed her eyes, remembering what she’d seen. “The scriptures spoke of a being that burned like a star, but was not a star. That lived, but carried within it only death. It was Death.” She opened her eyes. “The Abomination.”
The air left his lungs in a rush of sound. “You. When you appeared on Satellite Five, the Emperor…that’s what he called you. The Abomination.” He moved to her. “Rose, you can’t think—”
She shook her head. “I know it’s impossible. There’s no way the Emperor could have known. It’s just a coincidence, yeah?” Managing a weak smile, she continued, “In the prophecy, the Abomination comes to destroy the Dalek race during the last great battle and the Emperor banishes it from reality, never to be heard from again.” She shrugged. “Doesn’t say much for his tealeaf reading skills, does it?”
“No,” the Doctor answered stiffly. “I suppose not.”
Rose took his hand and tugged gently until he sat beside her on the bed. “Is that the memory you were hoping to protect me from? That I’m some sort of genocidal boogey man?”
He was staring at their interlocked hands. “Didn’t see why you should have to join the club. The perks are all right, but the dues…” He shook his head, and his grip on her hand tightened. “I should have stopped you sooner. Taken it from you the moment you stepped out of the TARDIS.”
“I wouldn’t have let you.”
He looked at her, his eyes bright with anger. “I should have taken it from you and then I should have sent you home. What you did, Rose, was beyond irresponsible, beyond madness. You knew why I’d sent you away, and you knew what you were risking by coming back.”
“What? My life?” He tried to move away, but she held on fiercely. “I risk my life every day, Doctor. How is this any different?”
He exploded. “Because this time it was for me! You intended to give your life for mine, and don’t you dare tell me otherwise. You looked into the heart of the TARDIS and she gave you exactly what you asked for – a way to save me, no matter the cost. How dare you try to sacrifice yourself for me, you stupid little—”
Rose grabbed his collar and pressed her mouth to his. The Doctor’s lips were cool and still as he resisted her, nearly pulling away. Then his fingers grazed the pulse in her throat, the back of her neck, and she felt him melt against her, the space between them disappearing as he pressed her into the bed, his hips cradled by her thighs. She opened her mouth under his and for a dizzying moment he deepened the kiss, his tongue brushing past teeth and over sensitive skin. Then he pulled back, their faces so close that he went a bit cross-eyed trying to look at her.
“You kissed me.” He sounded absolutely stunned.
“You were getting a little carried away,” she explained, aiming for nonchalance and failing utterly. Her lips were still a little chapped from the fever, and they stung. “Thought I should stop you before you said something you might regret.” Her eyelids fluttered as he ran a soft thumb over her lower lip. He didn’t seem to be listening. “Anyway, I…I figured it was my turn to yell a bit.”
He stilled. “Your turn?”
She sat up a little, putting enough distance between them so she could look him in the eye properly. “You died.”
He frowned. “Well, technically—”
“No. No technically. You died, Doctor. You killed yourself to save me, and now you have the utter bloody nerve to lecture me about self-sacrifice!”
The Doctor closed his mouth mid-objection. “Ah,” he said, as if he’d suddenly noticed something that should have been rather obvious.
“Yes,” Rose agreed.
“That is a tad hypocritical of me, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” she said. “It is.”
“Well, then. Seems to me,” he said casually, his fingertips tracing unintelligible patterns along her exposed collarbone, “that we’ve arrived at something of an impasse.”
She shivered. “I know what you’re doing. You’re trying to use sex to dis…to distract me from the fact that I’m right and you’re wrong.”
“Turnabout,” he said, and brushed his lips against hers. “Fair play.”
She arched into his touch and whispered, “I’d do it again, if I had to. I’d die for you.”
He froze, his breath cool on her cheek. “And I’ll die before I let you.”
There was a hard, tense silence, and for a moment Rose was sure that he would pull away and leave. Sure he would send her home and tell himself it was for her own good, that her feelings for him put them both in danger. For a moment, she felt like she was losing him all over again.
And then she smiled. “I guess we only have two options, then.” He blinked at her, confused. “I say I’ll die to save you, and you say you’ll die to keep me from dying. So, I figure we can either throw in the towel now and pull a Romeo and Juliet—”
He grinned suddenly, and she loved him. “Bit messy, that.”
“But very romantic, in a morbid sort of way.”
“I don’t know about you, but I like my romance with a little more dancing and a lot less double suicide.” He waggled his eyebrows at her in a particularly ridiculous fashion.
Rose laughed. “I like dancing.”
“I remember,” he said, and the rasp of his voice made some hidden ache inside her flare to life. She moved beneath him, and he inhaled sharply. “And the second option?”
She’d entirely forgotten what they’d been talking about. “Sorry?”
“Your brilliant plan. There was a second option.”
“Oh. That.” She gave him a lingering kiss, memorizing the texture of his skin. “Or we can live. For however long we have, we can live.”
The Doctor pulled back to meet her gaze, and in his eyes she saw that some part of him was already grieving. Because, she realised, in a way he had already lost her.
That lived, but carried within it only death.
He smiled beautifully. “Make it up as we go along, eh? That is a bit brilliant.”
“I thought so,” she replied airily, as if only a moment ago she hadn’t been half-expecting him to drop her at her mother’s door and never return. “Of course, with a brain as ridiculously huge as my own—”
“Actually,” he interrupted, “for a human of your evolutionary era you have a perfectly normal…” His eyes went wide. “Oi!”
She couldn’t help it; she cracked up.
He rolled to the side, landing on his back beside her. “You wound me, Rose.”
“Your ego’s pretty healthy,” she replied, still giggling, and rested her chin on his shoulder. “I think it’ll recover.”
His hand went to straighten his tie. “I don’t get no respect,” he said in a strange voice, his eyes bulging slightly.
She hooked her finger over the tie and loosened it again. “You’re very odd.”
“And you, my friend, have no appreciation for the fine culture of your own planet.” He paused, tapping out an unrecognizable rhythm against the end of her nose with one long finger. The pause went on for a moment too long.
“You’re still angry,” she said softly.
His finger stilled, and he smiled. “‘Course I am. So are you.” He traced a path from her nose to her bottom lip, letting the tip of his finger rest there lightly. “I find myself in an unusual position.”
“What, snogging a stunning blonde on a pink duvet?”
“All right. I find myself in a number of unusual positions.”
The incredibly suggestive expression that bloomed across her face was unconscious, born of pure gutter-minded instinct. She opened her mouth to comment, but the pressure of his finger against her mouth stopped her.
“Whatever lovely, filthy thing you’re about to say, please don’t. At least, not yet.” He removed his finger and brushed a strand of hair from her face. “I never thought…this feels entirely too natural. It’s unnerving.”
She took a deep breath and decided not to be hurt. “Why?”
His eyes were dark. “Change is never easy, Rose.”
“Don’t need to tell me.” He looked away, still uncomfortable with her loss of the him who’d come before. But she’d seen so much of him that day, looked into eyes he hadn’t yet had, and felt for the first time that she understood, a little. She touched his chin and he met her gaze. “That’s the thing, though. Doesn’t really feel like a change, does it?”
“I’m in your bed.” Something about the significance he lent these words left her feeling warm and unsure, like there was a buzzing heat just beneath her skin.
“You’ve been in my bed before,” she replied, her voice as steady as she could make it.
He reached beneath the pajama top and pressed a hand to the naked skin of her back. His touch was cool and suddenly unfamiliar. “Not like this.”
“No,” she breathed, “not like this.” His hand slid lower, the pads of his fingers slipping under the waistband of her pajamas, just brushing the swell of her arse. She gasped, and her eyes closed. “Unnerving. Right.”
“Look at me.” She hesitated. “Rose, open your eyes.”
She did.
His face was so very familiar, and so very alien. Her breath caught in her throat at the sight of him looking up at her through half-lidded eyes, his expression all but unreadable. “Are you sure?” he asked, his voice warm and low.
Somehow, Rose knew he wasn’t talking about sex.
“Always,” she answered, and though it wasn’t quite the truth, it seemed to satisfy him, because suddenly he rolled until she was beneath him again, his chest against hers, his hand trapped between the hot skin of her back and the mattress.
“Well then, Rose Tyler,” he whispered against her jaw, “I have only one more question for you.”
She tried to reply, but the words came out as a squeak. She hoped it was a lusty squeak.
“You see,” he kissed the corner of her mouth, the arch of her eyebrow, “I can’t help but wonder,” he pulled back, staring down at her, “how the hell the TARDIS console came to be covered with pink sequined bows.”
The look on his face was priceless.
As it turned out, some things never changed.
End.
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rosa_acicularis) wrote2007-03-26 03:23 am
