maggie o'hara defends the universe. (chavtastically) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-12-21 07:30:00 |
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There was a slight crisp chill in the air, one that whipped through the nooks and crannies of the alleyways and prickled against the London crowds. Wreaths hung from the lampposts and the front doors, the council workers spent days upon days slinging cheery lights about, and storefronts dusted off their best and brightest Santas and reindeer for the windows. It was midday, on a regular old day in the bustling city, and Rose Tyler, with pink nose and cheeks, stood among the crowd. She had a purple hat adorning her golden crown, curls spilling out of the sides haphazardly, and her fingers were snug in a pair of fingerless gloves, and she was otherwise dressed simply, with jeans, and a T-shirt proclaiming some indie rock band from 2006, and a winter coat. It was easy in the twenty-first century to blend in if you were simply a few years later than your home, though Rose did not know this was London during Christmas time in 2012. She had an inkling, of course, but how could she just be back in her city after falling into that void? No, it still had to be in her head, didn’t it? There was no other way. No matter what ‘the Doctor’, if that was who it really was, said. By the redness of her cheeks and the tingling in her fingers, she clearly had been standing there for some time. Opposite her, on the other side of the street, should have been Henrik’s. The department store where it all started. Where a mysterious man grabbed her hand and told her to run. She had done a lot of this lately, touring about Londontown to revisit key points and places in her life. Her schools were still there, blocks away from the estates, and Mickey’s favorite pub was bursting with people, and that fountain they had lunch at still stood. Henrik’s was gone, as it should have been, and everything seemed right. But Canary Wharf, that was completely functioning now. Wouldn’t she have remembered it as she had last seen it -- full of Daleks and Cybermen? As she paced around the city, stopping at the place where she and the Doctor had their first ‘date’ for chips or the school where she met Sarah Jane Smith, a fire, a desire boiled in the pit of her stomach. She needed the Doctor, and she was determined to get him back by whatever way necessary. The only issue was what would that exactly be. The Christmas music blaring from the shops caused Rose to wrinkle her nose. Last Christmas, or at least the last one she knew, she had just lost her Doctor, and some bloody Santa robots tried to kill she and Mickey, and the Sycorax nearly obliterated the planet. (Or, at least, a third of it.) Not to mention that Christmas tree. Just another day with the Doctor. And, that was the problem. That it was just another day. With the Doctor not here, there would be nothing like that again. There would be no him. Kicking at the ground with her Doc Martins, she turned and flopped down on a nearby bench. Willing her mind to conjure him up with his messy brown hair and brown trenchcoat down to his ankles. He sat down next to her. He was not the man she imagined, but he belonged there, even in his trousers drawn up about his shins and his odd professor’s leather shoes. It was cold to be out in just a tweed jacket, but he seemed not to notice, his child’s chin stuck out at an angle and his expression quiet and bizarrely contained. The chill winter breeze ruffled his odd poofy fringe of brown hair, and his hazel eyes were soft and focused out at a distance rather than on the woman next to him. As he sat there, he felt a faint static spark over one of his hearts as the sonic screwdriver pressed through the silk lining of his jacket pocket. The gold watch hanging on the inside of his left wrist ticked a vibration against his pulse. The Doctor folded long fingers reddened from the cold over his stomach and drew his heels together with a hissing scrape over the pavement. The effect was very much like a wizened shoemaker gotten lost in his own time stream. “Hello, Rose Tyler,” he said, in a voice pitched low and yet perfectly audible through the rumble of traffic. He turned his face towards hers and gave her a child’s false smile, all motion and no heart. “I’m sorry I’ve been away so long.” At least a month since they’d met, and no sign of John Smith nor the blue box since that time. The hazel eyes turned sea quartz green, searching her face. She didn’t look next to her when he sat down, too absorbed in her own thoughts and staring ahead to realize. But she jumped when he spoke, and when she turned, John Smith sat next to her with that upturned lip that didn’t quite meet his eyes. “John,” she said, tired and surprised to see him again. She figured she might not see him again after weeks and weeks of no sign. “It’s okay.” She licked her lips. “I didn’t know if you were coming back. I thought maybe you’d be lost in this crowd.” Rose laughed a hollow laugh. “How can I imagine all these people I don’t know? It’s bloody nuts.” “About that,” he began. “Yes. Well...I--” and then he stopped. He just wasn’t sure how to carry this out. He’d wanted Rose to get to know him as he was, and at least think of him as a friend before he told her she wouldn’t ever see the Doctor she knew again. It looked like they didn’t have that kind of time. He had read that Rose’s host was having troubles with the divide as well, and while he was just too him to entirely separate himself from Sunny, he could help Rose separate from Maggie. But it would require a tactile connection and Rose’s trust, and he wasn’t going to come by that easily. “You remember when I said this was the Void and you were very imaginative? I might have overestimated you. A wee bit. Not a lot.” Rose stared at him, large lips pursed in a tight line and dark eyebrows knitted together. All very cross London girl. “What are you on about?” She knew she spoke to the Doctor recently, or someone who said he was, and she had foggy visions of pictures of him and dreams of that beautiful blue box that took her anywhen and anywhere. And she knew vaguely of the girl who she seemed to be tethered to, but she didn’t know much else. She hated feeling like she was in the dark, with only the maelstrom of emotions as a constant in her life. “Too real to be the Void. The Void is a place where all places are one and time is wrong. There is nothing wrong about this place, Rose.” He started to twist his fingers together on his lap, but the movement was too fast, and ended up as a quick collision of digits that fell apart again almost immediately. “It’s not a place in your mind because in your mind you can only go to places you’ve been. This is nowhere you’ve been. This is Christmas 2012.” He turned his head and stared up at the gray sky, the crazed swirl of his hair flopping back in all directions. “Beautiful, isn’t it?” Her lips turned down into a deep frown when he spoke, something ugly and almost off-putting on her face. One the Doctor surely grew accustomed to being bright and full of joy. “It can’t--,” she started, looking up at him as he stared at the sky, ugly and gray and cold. The wind whipped against the curls sneaking out underneath her hat, and they tickled against her cheek, and her nose wrinkled in irritation. “You’re lying.” He had to be, right? Why would he weave that tale only to simply rip the rug from underneath her. “You’ve got to be kidding me.” The Doctor looked pained, his generous face flattening under the cruel edge of the wind. “No. I wasn’t. I didn’t. I just... I just agreed with your notions.” He grew frenetic without warning, one of “John Smith’s” telltale traits. He yanked his fingers apart and pressed them into his hair, squinching his eyes tight. He held it for a second and then released the contortion all at once and hung his head back from his shoulders, skinny limbs spread back against the bench. His round chin tipped up toward the sky and he stared at it as if it was all he could see. “I didn’t want you to be disappointed. But you’re gonna now. Be disappointed.” “That’s the same as lying, John.” Rose turned her entire body towards him, one knee drawn up on the wooden bench while the other foot still rested on the ground, and she leaned into him slightly, just enough that the tips of her fingers were mere inches from his legs. “Why? Why am I gonna be disappointed?” She paused for a moment then scrutinized him more thoroughly. Eyes flashed with suspicion and accusation. “How do you know so much about me then? My name, where I lived, what the Doctor and me do--did.” The correction came quickly and with a pain in her stomach, one that would not be healing soon. He brought his head up, his sparse blonde brows comically high. “It’s not the same as lying,” he said, resentful but abashed, like a five year old that couldn’t let go. “If it was the same as lying it would be lying.” His chin protruded slightly under a thickened lower lip, but he let it go with a sigh. The Doctor had very odd definitions of morality, but such a shade between lying and not lying didn’t matter all that much. The Doctor lied. All the time. You could argue that it was part of his nature. “We should go somewhere. You like going somewhere. You should.” He stood in a long assembly of limbs without any grace to speak of, and then he held out a long-fingered hand toward her. “Come along.” It was as if he was about to say something else, but he didn’t. His mouth worked against his teeth and then stilled. The corner of Rose’s lips turned into an adolescent sneer. She had seen people lie before, and it never worked out well for anyone. She couldn’t see how this wasn’t lying, just agreeing with whatever notions she apparently made up in her head. Crossing her arms over her chest, she looked over at John as he stretched and straightened, and she suddenly felt a ball of anger bubble up inside her. But, she took his offered hand regardless, even if his long fingers felt strange in hers. “I suppose. Where are we going?” She stood up and measured trusting eyes on him. “I like to go places if I know where I’m going.” His fingers were both rough and cool, but the palm of his hand was comfortably warm, and he curled it around hers in an easy fashion that didn’t have a trace of self-conscious concern at the physical contact. He knew she was angry with him, and he didn’t blame her, but it obviously bothered him, as he looked straight ahead and only sneaked frowning, guilty glances at her when he thought she wasn’t looking. They went down the street, the Doctor in his funny tweed jacket and no proper coat to speak of. His eyes kept darting up toward the sky as if he was reluctant to leave it, but eventually he led her down a close lane with high walls on either side. At the end of the lane there was a bit of a hedge, a dark flat, and a blue box. She followed along without a second thought, so used to diving in headfirst during her adventures with the Doctor that the idea of following John didn’t bring any hesitation. Still, she didn’t say anything as they walked, and her lips were drawn into a thin line. Frustrated beyond belief, she couldn’t even look straight at John without anger boiling in her stomach. He lied to her; the reason didn’t matter. She couldn’t face him either way. So, she looked around as well, taking in the holiday shoppers, then the quiet lane, and then... “What.” Rose stopped in her tracks, fingers squeezing his in surprise when she spotted the familiar blue box. There was no way. She didn’t want to believe it. She couldn’t. The Doctor began at a mutter and picked up his pace and his volume until his voice raised up like a flag on a mast. “It’s not really a police box, it’s a TARDIS, but I’ve always liked the police box, it gives it a bit of panache, you know, like bright orange race cars only a bit more tasteful, if I do say so myself.” He did not let go of her hand, but the way his voice abruptly tapered into nothing suggested that he was fully aware she knew what it was. He fidgeted with his feet, standing there in the shadow of the quietly blue time machine, and finally--finally--looked her full in the face. His eyes had gone wide, like a child’s, and there was a pleading in them he doubted she would understand. “You were meant to be happy, when I left you. You weren’t like this. It’s all wrong.” His eyes shifted, mercurial, deeply green, and yet he did not look away. “But there was a... spot of bother.” He smiled hopefully. He knew she would not laugh, but he hoped it, anyway. Rose Tyler could always be read like an open book; her emotions spilled across her face like paint on a canvas. And, the quiver of her bottom lip and the rapid blinking whispered a distraught story. When they came to a halt, she looked at him in the eyes as well, but her face lacked usual pure faith and crinkled corners of her eyes. No, there was betrayal and hurt written in that stare. “I know what it is,” she said quietly, evenly, hand shaking. And then she yanked it out of his grip. “Meant to be?! You left me?” A pause, and the betrayal shook her to the bone. “A spot of bother? Doctor, I--how could you?” While Rose’s Doctor had a poetic sense of loss, this one’s emotions were as clear as hers. Looking at him was like looking at glass, with the stir of feeling twisting up behind the fragile panes of his eyes. “Lost you.” He wasn’t sure that it had been leaving. Perhaps once, but the thought of it in his mind didn’t feel like leaving. It felt like loss, and there had been so much loss lately. His eyes filled and he rubbed the heel of one hand over the curve of his brow. His newly empty had fluttered helplessly. “I had to.” She bit down hard on her lip, annoyed at the quivering lip. “No,” she said vehemently. “You’re full of it. I told you--I just told you I was gonna be with you forever.” Rose stepped back, stumbled away from this stranger. Because this man (or alien) was, Doctor or John or whoever, a stranger to her. He wasn’t her Doctor, with his tweed coat and floppy long hair. And, her Doctor would never lie to her either. “Change back.” It was a whisper, a childish wish that she knew he couldn’t fulfill already, and she regretted it as soon as it slipped through her lips. Rose had asked him that once before, on that strange Christmas not so long ago, and it wasn’t possible. The Doctor changed permanently. She would never see her tall, not-ginger, trenchcoated alien again. He hurt for her, and he let her anger wash over him, the acidic sting taking whatever damage it would, and he didn’t resist it. “There is no such thing as forever, Rose. Not for you. Not even for me.” It came out quicker and harsher than he meant it too, because when he was hurt, the Doctor could be cruel. His soft mouth quivered and then set low, tamping down the emotion. “I can’t. If I could, I might for you, Rose Tyler.” He put out a long arm and touched her face, leaning forward so his fingers just touched the line of her chin. “But I can’t. I can change, and I might not be what I am--” here he gave a strange, dangerously sad smile, “but I’ll never be what I was.” He let her move away from him, looking after her from under his brows as his exaggerated chin tucked low over his tie once more. His sharp anger startled her, and she stared at him with wide eyes, wider than usual a hurt only the Doctor could cause. She knew he could be callous and heartless, but it rubbed salt in a raw wound of betrayal and disgust. It stung something awful that he was angry. And, she knew he couldn’t change back, she knew that, but she wished with all her heart and body and might that he could. “It’s not fair.” It was like a truck had slammed into her. Much worse than the pain of the entire universe within her being, and just as terrible as the immediate loss of her first Doctor. Only, that Doctor hadn’t lied to her. He’d changed to save her. “How long? For you, how long has it been since you lost me?” A nervous lick of her lips, and she took another step away from him. The touch was too comforting. She couldn’t afford that. “What happened after Canary Wharf?” Had she actually fallen into the Void, then? Fallen in and then it simply spit her out wherever was least convenient? The Doctor saw that he was causing more pain, and he backed away from her, exactly mirroring her movement. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” It was quick speech, sour, full of self-reproach, but he meant every apology. “I haven’t seen you.” He smiled brightly through his tears, something only the Doctor could manage so well. “You don’t know how wonderful it is to see you.” He touched his tongue to his lips, and then he leaned back against the smooth blue wood of his constant. His only constant. “Canary Wharf. We nearly had it closed. It almost had you. But your dad got you.” The Doctor smiled his admiration. “Caught you right before it closed. Kept you from the Void. Brilliant.” The cadence of the word was just... just right. But then the smile vanished. “So he saved you. Took you home safe... Then there... were things happening. Dimensions. All complicated. But I saw you again. You were perfect.” A brief glow of the unfamiliar hazel eyes. “But you had to go back. You even had me to go with you.” A slight shrug. “A kind of me. One that could make you happy, if you let him.” He hesitated. “That was a long time ago for me.” His apologies sounded nothing like her Doctor’s, but so similar at the same time. Heavy and truthful. How could this man standing before her be so bizarrely similar and different at the same time? His mannerisms were jolty, but reminded her of the other Doctor’s hyperactive joy and curiosity towards everything the world (and other worlds) had to offer. Lips twitched as if she were fighting off a smile when he uttered that brilliant. It sounded so right. But the corners dropped quickly, and she reached up to roughly wipe away the tears slipping down her cheeks. “None of that’s happened. Not yet. Last thing I remember, I let go of the lever, and then I woke up here. How is that possible?” She knew time could be all sorts of screwed up, but not like this. “Were you alone?” She wondered if Sarah Jane had been right. That he simply dropped them and forgot. Always forgot about them. He stared at her for a moment, eyes suddenly agate in the winter light of the shaded alley, and then he launched into an explanation that bypassed her question entirely. “We have been transferred to a world that connects the conscious mind to another conscious mind, in this case always a human of the normal variety located in Las Vegas, Nevada, America. I’m not sure why it’s Las Vegas, but I imagine because that’s the easiest place to hide a building that reforms a person into their alter just by going through a door into a different world.” He rocked back and forth on his neat leather shoes and high socks as he spoke, posing like some indigent professor. “The bond seems to be on a deeply psychic level. I’m not able to detach in the slightest, and those that have were jarred by a somewhat violent emotional upheaval.” He raised his comical brows at her. “You’ve not noticed?” “Yeah, I’ve noticed,” Rose snapped with more vehemence than she meant. She felt a slight guilt creeping up over being angry at the Doctor, but then again, he had deliberately lied to her. She shouldn’t feel so guilty. “I get glimpses, mostly, of what she sees, or what she thinks. I don’t know if she gets the same. What I don’t get,” she continued, wringing her hands together and looking away from the man in front of her, “is why I’m here. Now. Why didn’t I go back to the other y--back to where I came from?” She looked at the blue box in front of her. The TARDIS (and the Doctor, naturally) taught her that nothing could really be impossible. Her hand reached out to touch the old wood -- or, actually, rather new looking wood. This TARDIS was bluer, more repaired. She didn’t even get to have her battered, war-torn time machine. Everything was new, new, new, and Rose Tyler didn’t know if she liked it. After a moment, she realized he hadn’t answered her question. “Were you alone?” She repeated it, worried about his answer. She couldn’t decide which would be better. He smiled when she snapped at him, because his attempt had been to draw her out, and the success pleased him. It also got them closer to his purpose in revealing his nature so soon, without any other obvious advantage. “There isn’t an obvious pattern to the place in your personal timeline that you appear, except that it appears to be at some significant place, a point of upheaval or recently calmed unrest.” His smile lingered as his brows bobbed and he tipped his youthful face forward a few inches, obviously quite pleased with himself and his conclusions. “Can’t be sure, of course, but that’s what it looks like.” He stretched his neck to one side and his expression turned reflective. “I had a bit of a chat with your other. There’s some bleed-over there. I thought I might assist you... both. If you’ll have it.” His mouth twitched down into a child’s frown when she repeated her question rather than being distracted by his brilliance. Rather than answering he again attempted a distraction, but this time he went for the big guns. He stepped sharply back and pressed against the door of the TARDIS without looking back. A touch of pressure and a sliver of beckoning bronze light washed over them both. Gleeful smile. “Shall we take a jaunt?” The antiquated phrasing was no doubt intentional. “Bleed-over? What kind of bleed-over are you on about?” Rose couldn’t wrap her mind around what could possibly be happening to the other girl. There was already far too much bouncing around up there, and she wasn’t like the Doctor. Having a thousand things flitting through her mind at once never worked for her. Her emotions got the best of her, like usual. Still, she couldn’t help the twitch of her lips when the TARDIS opened. Blinking away the angry tears, she fought the smile attempting to emerge. She teetered on her toes before stepping forward. Because, this was the Doctor, she knew it was, but he had blatantly, deliberately lied to her. “I--,” Rose started, then stopped. She watched him for a moment with his childish smile and bobbing eyebrows. “Yeah, alright.” They would talk, but right now, it needed to be Rose and the Doctor in the TARDIS. As it should be. The Doctor held up one long, pale finger, the joints rosy in the chill air. "You." He held up the matching index finger from the other hand. "The girl in Las Vegas." He whirled both fingers around each other in a mad mix up, pantomiming strings becoming hopelessly tangled. "Telepathy. Very messy. And you've got a bit Bad Wolf, so that's probably causing a bit of trouble. Nothing like having me in your head, of course, but still not good." His smile slipped slightly. "I can help. You and this other one. Separate you two out a bit?" Then, rather than backing up into the TARDIS, he stepped slightly forward to meet her. His voice softened. "Won't hurt a bit." This was somewhat stretching it, but he seemed to be awaiting her permission. "We'll go after." She probably wouldn't be conscious for the trip but he didn't mention that part. Humans needed to heal and recover for this sort of thing. Rose blinked, licked her lips nervously, and then blinked again, and she fought the overwhelming urge to step away from him again. He’d frightened her before, but this wasn’t fright; uneasiness, perhaps, and mourning for the man she knew. She sensed something about this man, one that reminded her of the Doctor she met that time, so long ago it seemed, in the basement of Henrik’s. A heaviness of lost brewing underneath the surface. Oncoming Storm, indeed. She looked into his eyes, dark pools of brown so deep she lost herself in them for a moment, before she spoke. “You look like him.” She sounded tentative, and her face softened tremendously as if concerned. Which she was. “When we first met. You look like you’re carrying the weight of the wor--of the universe on your shoulders.” A nod accompanied the words in acceptance him and his assistance. Only the Doctor could smile with such sorrow buried in his eyes and soul. He stared at her without blinking for several moments, worrying at his lower lip. Snow was starting to fall, and it clung to his lashes and the impossible swirl of his boyish brown hair. "I was young then," he said. It was a strange thing to hear from a man who in appearance seemed so much younger and brighter than the man that had met Rose Tyler in a basement many years ago, but it was only that: appearance. "I had done terrible things. I know I'm not... what you want me to be. But I can help you, if you let me. It won't make it the same, but it will make it a little better." He quirked a brow encouragingly. "How about it? Hm? It isn't a jaunt, but it is a journey. You're a good traveler, Rose. Trust me." Again he stood still, awaiting permission. The snow fell on her cheek and in the gold strands of her shoulder-length hair. Her nose and cheeks turned rosier with each flake. And, that was Rose Tyler. All yellow and pink and impossibly human with everything she did and everything she was. She was younger than her Doctor and the Rose he knew last, but no less full-hearted. Though tentative still, she nodded. “Alright. Yeah. I trust you.” A smile flitted across her lips. That one thing would never change: Rose Tyler would always inherently trust him. The Doctor smiled into her face, a warm smile, deep and so inherently part of his being that it shone through the sadness in his eyes. "Brave," he whispered. "Human." And then he reached up,and very, very gently, laid four fingers against the side of her face, his foremost at her temple. He matched the movement with his other hand, and for a moment there was just the two of them standing together in the growing snow. This particular bit of Time Lord skill was a lot like music. It required dedication, talent, and even a certain flair for the sheer complexity of it. Telepathy could strike like a gong, reverberate through a physical point of contact, however brief it was, and pour as much as needed into one mind from another. The Doctor had done this before, most recently to a dumpling of a man in a London flat, but it was not the gong that was needed here. With a cautious, crystalline touch, the Doctor moved through Rose's mind. He knew her well, but there was never so close a connection as this one, and with his delicate movements he cautiously separated the incredible golden threads of her being from the others, the ones that were foreign to him but still irrevocably connected. It as no surprise the woman in Las Vegas felt Rose's feelings so keenly--they were as closely woven as wool. His influence would only able to give both a little space, and he wasn't willing to do more because it might damage one or the other. It was absolutely impossible to sever the connection, it would be like taking a chainsaw to a cloud and hoping some of it would stay intact. The Doctor focused on his task, and he didn't notice when, inadvertent, the connection strengthened to the point where thoughts moved both ways. No so much thought, but rather feelings and information, deep wells of it. The Doctor was sad, a heavy, impossibly wide sadness so big that he floated on it like a bottle at sea. He grieved the way humans could not grieve, for no one person could feel for so many and lose them so dearly. Sometimes there were faces, an old man in a reindeer hat, the smiling dark face of a woman brimming with intelligence, a red-head in a nightgown. There were no names, only feelings. The Doctor could love in so many ways that there were not words in the human language for each kind, because each love was unique. The seductive smile of a woman with wild blonde curls. The scrawny pout of a man in a gladiator's helmet. The bright grin of Jack Harkness. Rose. Abruptly, the Doctor realized that he was affecting the connection, and no human would be able to survive that for long. He cut the connection, yanking his hands away and automatically reaching out to catch her before she fell. |