Title: and the big bad wolf
Author:
leyennRecipient:
honeyminkFandom: Doctor Who (new)
Pairing: Rose Tyler/Martha Jones
Rating: PG
Word count: 1998
Spoilers: Alternate post-Doomsday, spoilers really only for Parting Of The Ways.
Summary: Inside the TARDIS, Martha met a girl.
Note: Humble apologies for being a bit late. I hope it's worth the wait! *collapses in a heap*
i: bang (not the beginning)
Rose nudges her over a little more in the bed, and she moans - irritated and half asleep, not sexy at all - and tries to steal back some of the duvet from the slow and tactical invasion into her space that's been progressing steadily for the last hour.
Rose mutters something about frogs. She opens one eye just slightly and raises the same eyebrow, just about awake enough to be amused.
"Rose. Oi." She nudges back. There's no response. She smirks, turns over into a warm pillow covered with strands of well-messed blonde hair, and trails her cool fingers over Rose's stomach.
There's a twitch, but nothing else. Rose can beat the dead at sleeping late. So she moves her hand further, tickles that little sweet spot in the curve of a hip -
"Mm. Mm. Hmgh."
Blurry eyes open, see her, and she gets a groan and a smile. "Oi yourself," Rose says, voice throaty and almost not-hers the way it always is just when she wakes up.
"Duvet," Martha says succinctly, not phased, and yanks hard enough to retrieve some if not all of her lost territory. Rose makes a face.
"'m cold."
"It's the TARDIS. It's always warm."
"We're in space. That's always cold."
She can't argue with that. It seems like the easiest thing to do is snuggle for warmth, which is not precisely a burden whichever way she looks at it. More duvet and the added heat of Rose, tangling up around her like it's the most comfortable place to be at the beginning of the universe.
Maybe it is.
"Mm." Rose is good at those little dark-time noises (there are no nights in the TARDIS). They're the ones that sink right into Martha's skin and make her lungs feel hot and her scalp tingle. "'s nice."
She blows a strand of blonde hair out of her mouth and smiles. "Mm."
Rose laughs. "Mm?"
"Mm-hm." She nuzzles a little more; Rose is warm and soft, and she'd never guess they were hanging in space inside a living space ship shaped like a police box. "You think he's done yet?" she murmurs, and Rose laughs in her ear.
"Nah. I've seen him tinker like this for days."
Martha sighs. "Best leave him to it then, should we?"
"Mm," Rose says, and pulls the duvet in closer around them both.
ii: the dark ages
It's the first proto-planet she's ever seen.
"It's the first proto-planet there is," the Doctor says proudly, like he's just sculpted it with his own two hands. "Gorgeous, that. Gorgeous! The beginning of worlds. Brilliant, eh?"
"Brilliant," Rose says, grinning, and the words make her chin dig into Martha's shoulder just as her arms squeeze around her waist. Martha's glad of that something - someone - solid behind her, because it's dizzying to stare out at empty space through the doors of what she knows looks like a wooden box and yet somehow not be dying.
The Doctor looks at Rose the same way he looks at the planet: like he's made her, made the gleeful voice that comes out of her mouth at seeing something like this. Martha has an uncomfortable suspicion that he has. She's not sure that's something she likes.
"Hang on," Rose says. "Where's the star? Planets form around stars, right?"
"No stars yet," the Doctor says. "Not for a few more million years at least. No more planets, either. Just this little thing and its twin, like a couple of marbles gathering up dust. Unique in the universe."
Martha looks at him. The light in his eyes, it's the same as the shine in Rose's. "Twin?"
He grins at her then, that same look, that pride, and she isn't sure if Rose is hugging her or that's just her heart expanding. "There. Look -" and he points and she can see it there, just sneaking out from behind the curve of the world: a second horizon.
iii: monsters and wolves
It is Croydon and it is the 9th of April.
Unfortunately, it is also 89,014,676 B.C., and it happens to be lunchtime. At least according to the hungry but dumb Tyrannosaurus that won't take 'sorry, no' for an answer.
"We're going to die," Rose says miserably, only half-joking. "Eaten by a dumb dinosaur."
"Can't you..." Martha waves her hand in the general direction of where they left the TARDIS. Rose makes a face.
"It really really doesn't work like that."
"So how does it work?" Because she's been dying to know since she first saw the - whatever it is that Rose is, and if she's really about to become appetiser for a Tyrannosaurus then this is a question she'd quite like answered while her head's still attached.
"Don't know. Don't really remember." Rose shrugs. "Just sort of... it's just there, y'know? In my head. Like she gets into everyone's head. Except I feel it."
It's such an easy explanation that Martha almost thinks she can understand it. She didn't think it would be like that, she thought it would be something complicated and weird and insane, not that it would make sense.
"What's it feel like?" she asks. Rose looks at her like she's gone mad.
"We're in a cave, hiding from a Tyrannosaurus that's probably eaten our only rescuer by now, and you want to know how the TARDIS feels?"
Martha looks at her, thinking about it, like she thinks she agrees with the craziness of that. Outside there's a roar... followed by a slightly puzzled and very upset bugle of pain.
They don't turn around, don't look, don't really need to: Rose just grins and grabs her hand and kisses her, open-mouthed and a hot tongue and quick fingers in her hair. It burns with heat, light explodes in her mind and she knows, oh, of course, of course it has to feel like this.
iv: revolution is good for the soul
The Doctor has a preoccupation with the French Revolution now, for reasons best left to themselves, and they humour him mainly because - well, he's the Doctor. And it's his TARDIS, no matter whose brain it occasionally enjoys the use of.
And it means an excuse to wear absurd dresses and dance at night in the gardens at Versailles, which is wickedly romantic in anyone's book, especially when you've gone all the way back to Eighteenth Century France to do it.
The bodice makes it hard to breathe, or maybe that's the feeling of Rose pressed up against her, the swell of her breasts against low-cut fabric just too close, close enough to press skin to skin with her own. Too close for Martha not to want to lean down and kiss the expanse of skin there that looks so good...
She does, and Rose moans.
"Bad idea," she whispers. "Bad. Very. Um. Bad. Martha..."
"Time machine," Martha says, as if that fact might have slipped either of their minds. "The perfect getaway car." She finds the laces behind Rose's back, catches silk between her fingers and gets to work.
"Can't get caught, we were never here..." Rose says, starting to smile, reaching. This time the light in her eyes is all her own.
v: no place like home (and this is no place like home)
Inside the TARDIS, Martha meets a girl.
The irony is that Martha should never have even seen the TARDIS, never have stepped inside, certainly never have wandered down the long corridor that she's now lost in, that seems to actually go on forever. Martha Jones was supposed to be at work this morning, on the start of a new shift on a new ward that just happens to be on the far side of the car park that she didn't quite make it across. If she'd taken the bus instead of wasting cash on petrol, she wouldn't have even been here.
Why did she come in here, anyway? She's not sure, she thinks she shouldn't have, and now she can't find her way out again. And she does not want to think about why the hell a rickety old box that shouldn't even be parked - parked! - in her spot has corridors that take half an hour to walk down.
"It's bigger on the inside," a smiling voice says, right behind her. She spins around and falls over.
There's a girl. The girl. She's white, blonde, pretty, a little on the cheap side of Martha's fashion choices but not half bad, she looks about Martha's age.
Her eyes are glowing.
"It likes you," the girl says, and her voice is like a chorus, like the white light in her eyes is speaking. Martha shivers, almost with anticipation - and just like that the light fades and those eyes are blue, so blue.
"She, likes you," the girl says in an easy London accent, and reaches out to take Martha's hand. "Come on. There's someone she wants you to meet."
"Who are you? What is this thing - place - whatever?"
"I'm Rose." The girl turns around. "Welcome to the TARDIS. Who're you, anyway?"
"Martha," she says. "I'm Martha Jones. You're, um. You're parked in my space. Well, almost my space. My space on Tuesdays, anyway."
"Oh." Rose looks like she's thinking about that, but what comes out of her mouth after a moment is only, "It's Tuesday? I lose track."
She tugs her hand free and takes a step back. It's all crazy, and this girl is making her chest thud with something beyond adrenaline and she doesn't know what to do with it. "What are you, on drugs?"
"Hey, just a free spirit," Rose says, and takes her hand again. This time a couple of fingers manage to slip between hers. "Come on. He'll run off if we don't catch up quick. He's like her, never wants to stay put for more than five minutes. Bet he's in trouble already!"
Then they're running down the corridor and Martha isn't sure she wants to ask who he or she are because she's got a strange feeling, from Rose's hand in hers, that the answer's not as exciting as discovering the question in the first place.
vi: end of the road that never ends
Rose is sobbing on her shoulder, clinging to her like the world's ending, and Martha's holding her so tight because she can't say it's not.
She studied for five years to be able to fix this, and she's helpless. There's nothing she can do. Nothing.
His eyes are open and it takes a moment through her tears to realise he's looking at her, not through her, not the dead stare she's waiting for.
"Doctor," she whispers, and the word rasps at her throat. It's a plea, a please, please tell me I can do something. "Doctor?"
"...Rose..." he says, through the foam of blood on his lips, and Rose cries and her knees hit the hard ground even though Martha's trying to let her kneel, not fall, beside him.
"...if... the ears grow back... kill me again..." he whispers, and Rose laughs like she wants to choke on the sound. Martha holds her tight, still, and makes her own lip bleed with the pressure of not screaming as his head falls limp. Rose's fingers shake as she reaches out to touch him.
And then the light...