The Day After the Separation (1/1)
Title - The Day After the Separation (1/1)
Author - earlgreytea68
Rating - General
Characters - Ten, Rose
Spoilers - None
Disclaimer - I don't own them and I don't make money off of them, but I don't like to dwell on that, so let's move on. (Except for the kids. They're all mine.)
Summary - The Doctor tells Rose what he's never told her before.
Author's Notes - salimali asked for the night the Doctor and Rose left Brem at uni in response to this meme.
Thank you, as usual, tojlrpuckfor the beta. She has been turning them around rapid-fire for me, which I greatly appreciate!
The gorgeous icon was created byswankkatfor me, commissioned byjlrpuckfor my birthday.
Most of what is in the story below I flat-out made up. I tried to research for a change, honestly I did! We just don't really know much!
The TARDIS was humming differently. The rest of the family seemed to think that they were just taking a mini-break at Jackie’s, here in the wake of leaving Brem at university, but the Doctor was noticing that the TARDIS was humming differently, and he begged off of the family outing to the High Street in order to fiddle with the console and see why the TARDIS was humming differently.
He’d allowed himself to lose track of time, more lost in thought about Brem than anything else, and was not entirely expecting Rose to walk in when she did, finding him slumped in the captain’s seat, feet propped up on the console, sonic screwdriver loosely clasped in his fingers.
“Did you fix her?” she asked.
The Doctor, startled out of thought, looked at her blankly before focusing on her. “What?” he asked, fuzzily.
She walked toward him, trailing her finger along the edge of the console. “Is she all fixed?”
“She…” The Doctor looked back at the central column. “She’s fine. She was never broken.”
Rose lifted her eyebrows at him. “I thought you said that there was something wrong with her? That her hum sounded funny?”
“It did. It does, it’s just…She misses Brem, that’s all.”
Rose sat beside him silently. He shifted automatically to give her enough room on the seat. “We all miss Brem,” she said.
“Yes,” he agreed.
Rose was silent for another moment. “You’re still angry with me.”
“I’m not angry with you. I haven’t been.”
“You are. You have been. You don’t think this university thing is a good idea. And I can’t convince you it’s a good idea.” She took his hand, threading her fingers through his. “But you let us leave him there anyway. And thank you for that.” She leaned over to kiss his cheek, and left her mouth there, lingering against him, breathing him.
“It’ll be an adventure for him,” the Doctor said, after a bit. “A huge adventure. He’ll love it, I’m sure, and he won’t be careful, he won’t realize how dangerous he is, because he’s…”
“So much like his father,” Rose finished for him, against his ear.
He shifted, dislodging her, tearing his hands through his hair. “That isn’t a good thing, Rose. That isn’t a good thing. I know the things I’ve done.”
“Doctor. It isn’t like he’s going to be reckless-”
“Why wouldn’t he be? I certainly was. Nine hundred years, and I’m already on my tenth regeneration. That is not what my people would call responsible,” he muttered, bitterly.
“That’s different,” she told him.
“How?”
“Who did you have? Looking out for you? Who?”
Her Doctor took a shuddering breath, and she squeezed his hand and inched closer to him. He hardly ever spoke, not really, about what his youth had been like, maybe a couple of comments here and there. But Rose suspected it had not been happy; she could tell from the determination with which he worshipped their children, that he had not known that sort of life when he had been their age, that he had not even imagined such a life could be possible.
“There were others,” he said, suddenly, breaking the silence, and Rose, who had not been expecting him
to speak, jumped a bit. “I had parents, you know. And brothers and sisters. I had friends at the Academy. I got married, I had children, and I…I was so alone. You can do that, you know, you can be surrounded by crowds of people and be so lonely you can’t stand it.”
Rose shifted, resting her head on his shoulder, turning toward him, pressing against him, as if to be a
physical reminder that he was no longer alone.
“It’s so odd,” he continued, “but it was all just an accident. I mean, all just a…How many Time Lords were Loomed into existence before me, or after me, and I was the one who couldn’t…I should have been…content, I should have been…” He moved suddenly, twisting so he could look down at her. “Have I ever told you this?”
She shook her head.
He took a deep breath and looked back at the console, and she thought that perhaps he was done sharing, and she snuggled against him, content to just sit with him in silence. “I was restless,” he began again. “I was…unhappy. This is a foreign concept to a Time Lord. There isn’t even a word in Gallifreyan to describe that state of being. Happiness, unhappiness, nobody could understand what was wrong with me. I was unhappy and I was…reckless would be the right word for it.”
“So you stole the TARDIS?”
“I borrowed the TARDIS,” he corrected, primly. “I borrowed her and I…I saw things, Rose. I suddenly realized I’d been waiting my whole life to see new horizons, different skies. I wanted to taste every food in the universe there was to taste, breathe different atmospheres, meet every person and learn every custom. That was what I wanted, what I’d been longing for, since I was a little boy, and it took me so very long to discover it.”
Rose thought of her Doctor, thought of his boundless curiosity, of how delighted he was, always, to encounter something new, and she could not imagine him without that, she could not imagine how gray and lifeless he must have been, trapped in a place he did not enjoy.
“And then I found this planet,” he went on, “with all of you wonderful people, and you had all these words, all these beautiful words, words like ‘joy’ and ‘exuberance’ and…” He looked at her suddenly. “And ‘love.’ You don’t understand, love was not something…You lot are just filled with so much love, you use the word with abandon, as if it is not this most amazing thing. It is rare, in the universe. You may not realize how rare. Other species, they have a vague understanding of the idea, but it’s linked to things like genetics, or respect, a hierarchy or a caste system, but here, here you just love. You love so much that, eventually, some wandering visitor of a completely different species, from a planet where he never belonged, would find himself actually being loved as well.” He leaned forward and pressed his lips against hers in a gentle, tender kiss. “And he would get this second chance at this marriage and children thing and he would get it right this time, because he would love all of them. He would love them all so much that it would all come full circle and they would have no understanding of the idea of unhappiness.” He rested his forehead against hers, closing his eyes.
She combed her hands through his hair. “Yes,” she whispered. “That’s exactly what he did.”
“Did he?”
“Yes.” She dotted kisses across his cheek. “Yes, yes, yes.” She lifted her arms up and hugged him tightly, burying her head into the curve of his shoulder. “How long did it take you before you went back to Gallifrey?”
“So long,” he said, into her neck. “When I went back, my father had disowned me and I…I never saw him again. I tried to, I thought maybe I owed him an apology, or an explanation, or something, I was never a terribly good son and I know my father could never understand why I wasn’t normal, why I had to be difficult, but he kept refusing to see me and eventually I stopped trying. I don’t even know if he was still alive when I…”
It occurred to Rose that there was something in Darwinism, that, much as the Doctor might not like to hear it, there might be a reason why a society that was so stiff and cruel was no longer in existence, why the only one remaining was the one that had never truly fit in. It also occurred to her that that might have been the reason why he’d never told her any of this, because the only thing worse than being the person to go through that was to be the person who loved the person who went through that, and the Doctor would know that. If the Doctor’s father had still been alive, somewhere, she would have commandeered a spaceship on the next alien planet they visited and tracked him down and demanded to see him just so she could yell at him. As it was, she was forced into the terrible inaction of having her heart break. “That is not your story with Brem,” she told him, fiercely. “You know that, right? This is not the point in the story where Brem goes wandering and discovers we’ve been smothering him. And it is clearly not the point in the story where you disown him. That is not Brem’s story. This is the point in the story where Brem has a few adventures and calls his father to tell him all about how wonderful it all is and how much his father would enjoy all of it, right?”
“Yes,” the Doctor mumbled in agreement.
“Good.” She planted a kiss against his shoulder and then sighed in mock exasperation. “We are never going to come to the end of your issues, are we?”
The Doctor choked out a startled laugh against her and held her tighter.
Author - earlgreytea68
Rating - General
Characters - Ten, Rose
Spoilers - None
Disclaimer - I don't own them and I don't make money off of them, but I don't like to dwell on that, so let's move on. (Except for the kids. They're all mine.)
Summary - The Doctor tells Rose what he's never told her before.
Author's Notes - salimali asked for the night the Doctor and Rose left Brem at uni in response to this meme.
Thank you, as usual, tojlrpuckfor the beta. She has been turning them around rapid-fire for me, which I greatly appreciate!
The gorgeous icon was created byswankkatfor me, commissioned byjlrpuckfor my birthday.
Most of what is in the story below I flat-out made up. I tried to research for a change, honestly I did! We just don't really know much!
The TARDIS was humming differently. The rest of the family seemed to think that they were just taking a mini-break at Jackie’s, here in the wake of leaving Brem at university, but the Doctor was noticing that the TARDIS was humming differently, and he begged off of the family outing to the High Street in order to fiddle with the console and see why the TARDIS was humming differently.
He’d allowed himself to lose track of time, more lost in thought about Brem than anything else, and was not entirely expecting Rose to walk in when she did, finding him slumped in the captain’s seat, feet propped up on the console, sonic screwdriver loosely clasped in his fingers.
“Did you fix her?” she asked.
The Doctor, startled out of thought, looked at her blankly before focusing on her. “What?” he asked, fuzzily.
She walked toward him, trailing her finger along the edge of the console. “Is she all fixed?”
“She…” The Doctor looked back at the central column. “She’s fine. She was never broken.”
Rose lifted her eyebrows at him. “I thought you said that there was something wrong with her? That her hum sounded funny?”
“It did. It does, it’s just…She misses Brem, that’s all.”
Rose sat beside him silently. He shifted automatically to give her enough room on the seat. “We all miss Brem,” she said.
“Yes,” he agreed.
Rose was silent for another moment. “You’re still angry with me.”
“I’m not angry with you. I haven’t been.”
“You are. You have been. You don’t think this university thing is a good idea. And I can’t convince you it’s a good idea.” She took his hand, threading her fingers through his. “But you let us leave him there anyway. And thank you for that.” She leaned over to kiss his cheek, and left her mouth there, lingering against him, breathing him.
“It’ll be an adventure for him,” the Doctor said, after a bit. “A huge adventure. He’ll love it, I’m sure, and he won’t be careful, he won’t realize how dangerous he is, because he’s…”
“So much like his father,” Rose finished for him, against his ear.
He shifted, dislodging her, tearing his hands through his hair. “That isn’t a good thing, Rose. That isn’t a good thing. I know the things I’ve done.”
“Doctor. It isn’t like he’s going to be reckless-”
“Why wouldn’t he be? I certainly was. Nine hundred years, and I’m already on my tenth regeneration. That is not what my people would call responsible,” he muttered, bitterly.
“That’s different,” she told him.
“How?”
“Who did you have? Looking out for you? Who?”
Her Doctor took a shuddering breath, and she squeezed his hand and inched closer to him. He hardly ever spoke, not really, about what his youth had been like, maybe a couple of comments here and there. But Rose suspected it had not been happy; she could tell from the determination with which he worshipped their children, that he had not known that sort of life when he had been their age, that he had not even imagined such a life could be possible.
“There were others,” he said, suddenly, breaking the silence, and Rose, who had not been expecting him
to speak, jumped a bit. “I had parents, you know. And brothers and sisters. I had friends at the Academy. I got married, I had children, and I…I was so alone. You can do that, you know, you can be surrounded by crowds of people and be so lonely you can’t stand it.”
Rose shifted, resting her head on his shoulder, turning toward him, pressing against him, as if to be a
physical reminder that he was no longer alone.
“It’s so odd,” he continued, “but it was all just an accident. I mean, all just a…How many Time Lords were Loomed into existence before me, or after me, and I was the one who couldn’t…I should have been…content, I should have been…” He moved suddenly, twisting so he could look down at her. “Have I ever told you this?”
She shook her head.
He took a deep breath and looked back at the console, and she thought that perhaps he was done sharing, and she snuggled against him, content to just sit with him in silence. “I was restless,” he began again. “I was…unhappy. This is a foreign concept to a Time Lord. There isn’t even a word in Gallifreyan to describe that state of being. Happiness, unhappiness, nobody could understand what was wrong with me. I was unhappy and I was…reckless would be the right word for it.”
“So you stole the TARDIS?”
“I borrowed the TARDIS,” he corrected, primly. “I borrowed her and I…I saw things, Rose. I suddenly realized I’d been waiting my whole life to see new horizons, different skies. I wanted to taste every food in the universe there was to taste, breathe different atmospheres, meet every person and learn every custom. That was what I wanted, what I’d been longing for, since I was a little boy, and it took me so very long to discover it.”
Rose thought of her Doctor, thought of his boundless curiosity, of how delighted he was, always, to encounter something new, and she could not imagine him without that, she could not imagine how gray and lifeless he must have been, trapped in a place he did not enjoy.
“And then I found this planet,” he went on, “with all of you wonderful people, and you had all these words, all these beautiful words, words like ‘joy’ and ‘exuberance’ and…” He looked at her suddenly. “And ‘love.’ You don’t understand, love was not something…You lot are just filled with so much love, you use the word with abandon, as if it is not this most amazing thing. It is rare, in the universe. You may not realize how rare. Other species, they have a vague understanding of the idea, but it’s linked to things like genetics, or respect, a hierarchy or a caste system, but here, here you just love. You love so much that, eventually, some wandering visitor of a completely different species, from a planet where he never belonged, would find himself actually being loved as well.” He leaned forward and pressed his lips against hers in a gentle, tender kiss. “And he would get this second chance at this marriage and children thing and he would get it right this time, because he would love all of them. He would love them all so much that it would all come full circle and they would have no understanding of the idea of unhappiness.” He rested his forehead against hers, closing his eyes.
She combed her hands through his hair. “Yes,” she whispered. “That’s exactly what he did.”
“Did he?”
“Yes.” She dotted kisses across his cheek. “Yes, yes, yes.” She lifted her arms up and hugged him tightly, burying her head into the curve of his shoulder. “How long did it take you before you went back to Gallifrey?”
“So long,” he said, into her neck. “When I went back, my father had disowned me and I…I never saw him again. I tried to, I thought maybe I owed him an apology, or an explanation, or something, I was never a terribly good son and I know my father could never understand why I wasn’t normal, why I had to be difficult, but he kept refusing to see me and eventually I stopped trying. I don’t even know if he was still alive when I…”
It occurred to Rose that there was something in Darwinism, that, much as the Doctor might not like to hear it, there might be a reason why a society that was so stiff and cruel was no longer in existence, why the only one remaining was the one that had never truly fit in. It also occurred to her that that might have been the reason why he’d never told her any of this, because the only thing worse than being the person to go through that was to be the person who loved the person who went through that, and the Doctor would know that. If the Doctor’s father had still been alive, somewhere, she would have commandeered a spaceship on the next alien planet they visited and tracked him down and demanded to see him just so she could yell at him. As it was, she was forced into the terrible inaction of having her heart break. “That is not your story with Brem,” she told him, fiercely. “You know that, right? This is not the point in the story where Brem goes wandering and discovers we’ve been smothering him. And it is clearly not the point in the story where you disown him. That is not Brem’s story. This is the point in the story where Brem has a few adventures and calls his father to tell him all about how wonderful it all is and how much his father would enjoy all of it, right?”
“Yes,” the Doctor mumbled in agreement.
“Good.” She planted a kiss against his shoulder and then sighed in mock exasperation. “We are never going to come to the end of your issues, are we?”
The Doctor choked out a startled laugh against her and held her tighter.