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The Doctor (fromgallifrey) wrote in vas_captio_rpg,
@ 2009-08-20 10:54:00

Entry tags:

!complete, day 19, location: gym, rose tyler, the doctor (ten)

Day 19: 9:23 PM
Who: Theta Sigma and Rose Tyler
What: Somebody has to get the kid to go to bed!
Where: The gym
When: Day 19, Time Lord bed time
Rating: A for Adoreable

Under rather dubious circumstances the boy who'd run around calling himself Theta Sigma, or just Sigma, all day found himself back in the gym. He hadn't wanted to come back here. No, it'd been his intention to keep looking for the TARDIS until he'd run out of places to look. He'd tried every door he could find, and even some things that weren't doors. All had landed with the same result: No TARDIS. He hadn't give up hope, though! He'd find that TARDIS and the mean old Doctor would get everybody back home. He'd take him back to Gallifrey and Spock back to Vulcan and Dora back to England! They'd all get to go home!

Instead, he was dragging little red chucks down the road with half lidded eyes until he'd been told it was time to go back into the gym for the night, which made him sort of cranky. "I don't want to!' he'd protested to his caretaker even as he was being scooped back up and carried up the stairs and inside.

Though, once he was in past the double doors and set down on hard wood he was suddenly much more awake, even if all the other kids were settling in for bed. No, he saw a giant gym of possibilities, now; maybe the TARDIS was actually here? Splitting from the bunch he'd slip back into a dark corridor. It was sort of scary, yeah; but, it was the perfect hiding place for a TARDIS! Look at all those lockers! Clank! Squeal! Slam! He was working his way down the row. He still had the entire other side to go. Sorry, Sigma, if you thought you could search for the TARDIS undetected, you were sorely mistaken.

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fromgallifrey
2009-08-20 04:25 pm UTC (link)

Of course he was hurting deeply. He was a scared, lost little boy. A lonely little boy when it came down to it. There was always this sort of wall he put up between himself and his peers; sure, he was nice enough, but the little Time Lord, well he just wouldn't quite let them in. So, maybe that's why he had such a hard time when Remy had dropped him off and ran away and when Sarah Jane had sent him inside with a sweet smile and left him back again with people who called him an Alien. He couldn't help but feel vulnerable, really.

Out came the truth from Rose's lips and Theta Sigma did his best not to cry. He knew he was right; but, it didn't make it any easier to hear it.

"They could do terrible things with a TARDIS, he whispered, looking Rose in the eyes. "They could ruin time. They could break the universe apart. They could..." Destroy Gallifrey. Another hard swallow. He crumpled back up against her. "Promise you won't leave, Rose?" Sarah Jane had left, Remy had left; would she leave, too? Then he'd really be all alone and even he couldn't swallow that pill. Someday he'd be able to, but right now the six year old just needed to hold on a bit tighter to this stranger, just for a little while.

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jeopardysfriend
2009-08-20 04:33 pm UTC (link)

They could, couldn't they? Maybe... It explained a lot. It explained why they could snatch people from so many points in time, including people who knew each other. Crossing their own timelines, isn't that what it was called? It explained why the whole of space and time hadn't come apart despite all the things that had been revealed between these people. It was a horrifying thought and it had been presented to Rose by a small child.

She uncurled herself from the uncomfortable kneeling position and sat on the floor, leaning against the wall. Pulling the tiny boy into her arms, she buried her face in soft, clean hair. "I'm not going anywhere, sweetheart, not if you don't want me to." Most of the other kids were fast asleep, her absence would barely be noticed.

This small child would grow up to save her world more times than she alone could count. And those were simply times she knew of. From the little she'd learned from Sarah Jane, she knew there'd been other times, possibly hundreds, where she hadn't been there and he'd done it. "We know they could," she said quietly, putting her trust in a six year-old. "And we're doing everything we can to stop it. So far, so good." She nodded around the room, smiling. "See? We're all still here and just fine." Well. The people he'd met were. She swallowed hard, thinking of Shannon, but she didn't dare mention the loss of lives around the child.

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fromgallifrey
2009-08-20 04:47 pm UTC (link)

The boy pulled himself onto her lap, breathing slowly as he tried to ignore the nagging feeling of fear in the back of his mind. No, not just fear, dread. He didn't want that cranky old Doctor to be right! He wanted to believe Remy and Sarah Jane and that Gallifrey was still there and that evil people weren't out ruining time and space in a TARDIS they stole. No wonder the Doctor was cranky and mean.

Rose didn't need to mention the loss of people, he'd read about them already. Piper, Martha, somebody named Bob. Lots of people. And people went missing and got hurt and sometimes they didn't come back at all and nobody knew what happened. That cranky Time Lord was right : you should have kept the book away from him. You shouldn't have let him read. Forget the damage he did in writing, in reading he'd only managed to really hurt himself. He pulled away reaching into his pocket to pull out the rather large book that fit rather nicely into those impossibly deep pockets.

"There's a picture of a TARDIS in here," he said, rubbing his cheeks, "A TARDIS and all kinds of other stuff, too. People." Small fingers pushed the pages by, before long he landed on a page of sketches, ones his far too distant self made. "See?" It was dark, but not so dark that the pictures couldn't be seen if you squinted. "That mean old Doctor is good at drawing." He was trying to distract himself, and you too, Rose. "I wish he'd drawn a picture of Gallifrey..."

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jeopardysfriend
2009-08-20 04:57 pm UTC (link)

Oh, God. If the boy had any idea how hard it was for her to see those sketches. Proof, things she should have seen before, all of it just kept falling into place. The console room, the TARDIS, and the woman in the middle of the page. Her, if John Smith's words, written to Shannon in fact, were to be believed. It had taken Sigma, barely more than a baby, really, to show her what she should have looked for and found on her own.

Still, she gently stroked the boy's back, looking at the pictures. "The Doctor's not so very mean," she defended her friend, despite the pain running through her. "He's had a hard life. It's been a long time since he's been to Gallifrey, did he mention that?" The same man who'd told the child in her arms that Gallifrey was gone. She'd slap him the next time she saw him for putting that pain in the boy's hearts.

The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them. "Tell me about Gallifrey," she said quietly. It was partially an attempt to distract the child from the book in his hands. But she also genuinely wanted to know. From the things Sigma had written, she already knew more than she did in a year of traveling with the Doctor. It sounded wonderful, and it explained the pain in the Doctor's eyes whenever mentions of the planet or the Time War came up.

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fromgallifrey
2009-08-20 05:16 pm UTC (link)

"I know," he said quietly. Not that the Doctor had managed a difficult life, in so much that the Time Lord wasn't really mean. Cranky, perhaps; but not out and out mean. The sensitive boy was good at reading people; he didn't get mallice from the Time Lord, just pain. Still, it made him feel better to call it mean-ness, it meant that he didn't have to feel bad for the older man. No, he could just call it 'mean' and dismiss it entirely. He could ignore the pain and just be angry right on back.

"Gallifrey?" She didn't know about Gallifrey, either? "I live in a house on the side of a mountain with my family," his mum, his dad, a brother, perhaps. Though, it seemed the more he talked they seemed less important than the man who lived down the side of the mountain. "Down at the bottom there's the Hermit. He asks all sorts of questions and tells me stories." He was breathing a little more steadily as he thought. "The sky is orange and red, though sometimes they turn it blue," he laughed a little. "Don't know why they do that bit," he shrugged. "But, the ground and rocks are red and the grass is, too. I don't know why everything is green here, though. Do you know why?" He looked away. "Though, I miss the silver leafed trees and the two suns... and I miss the citadel, too. It's big and it's glass and you can see it from my house!" He sounded excited. "That's where the Time Lords go to, the Citadel."

He breathed a moment. "What's your home like?"

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jeopardysfriend
2009-08-20 05:25 pm UTC (link)

Rose was smiling as Sigma described his home for her. In his childish voice, it was almost possible to forget that the man she cared so much about would never return to that beautiful planet, with the different colours and the beautiful glass building. "It sounds wonderful," she told him, absently running her fingers through his hair. "I think the grass here is green because of...chloraphyll?" As she'd told his adult self, botany was not Rose Tyler's best subject. "Just as I'm sure there are chemicals and elements that make your ground red instead." Two suns, silver-leafed trees... No wonder he missed it so.

She'd give her own heart to let this little boy go back to the home he loved so much. And, perhaps, the older version, as well. Despite the hurt he'd caused her, she wouldn't wish the loss of their home on anyone. And he tried so, so hard to keep any other race from losing their home, too. It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair at all.

Leaning her head against the wall, she considered. "My home... It's busy. It's not nearly as beautiful as yours. It's full of buildings, large metal structures that go really high. There's a large river nearby, but it's old and dirty because the people who lived before my time didn't take care of it." How many would describe the great Thames quite the way Rose did? "There are people, so many people, all going their own way without notice of each other. And the grass, what we have of it, is green just like here. But mostly it's all concrete...a sort of man-made stone. It's wonderful, in it's own way, but it's nothing like your home." No, his home sounded like a race of people who appreciated what they had. Rose had learned the hard way that humans rarely did.

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fromgallifrey
2009-08-20 05:50 pm UTC (link)

"Chlorophyll?" He asked, pondering. "It's the Iron in the grass that turns red as it oxidizes," the Hermit had taught him that.

He was thinking more of home and less of how it could really be gone. He was thinking of the things he could still see in his mind's eye. Things he hoped he'd see again. Though, like a flash he was imagining Rose's home. A place with tall, twisting structures that brushed space itself as they pushed out of the atmosphere! Where the river was bright yellow with age and people hustled about in flying cars and busses and tiny little floating skooners. A place where green and grey crisscrossed across the land in jagged ribbons. It sounded wonderfully interesting to him.

"I'll sneak you back to Gallifrey when I get back home. I want to show you my rock pile and my books and the Hermit." He was talking more slowly now as the little Time Lord started to drift. "You and Sarah Jane and Remy. You're all going to come see Gallifrey."

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