ficlet: scarves and mountains
Scarves & Mountains, ten/rose
G; fluff, nostalgia
Ever since his regeneration he’d been a bundle of energy to the point where she’d found it difficult to keep up with him. It was still hard not seeing that leather jacket and knowing that the hand that clasped hers as they traveled the universe did not feel quite the same.
---
"Bingo!" The Doctor yelled. "Rose! You'll want to see this." He leaned all over the console pressing all sorts of buttons and levers, grinning when he knew they'd landed.
Rose came in with her long coloured scarf in her hands, fiddling with the loose threads. Memories flickered before her eyes, mingling with the Doctor’s laughter and the TARDIS’s quiet hum. It’d only been two weeks since she’d worn it last, but so much had happened since then that it felt like it came from long ago. It was from a different chapter of her life, one that she’d loved dearly and couldn’t help but miss. Much as he was the same man, he behaved very different, and the idea that he could change his face was still hard to grasp. The Doctor danced around the console without noticing her distress.
“I thought we’d go somewhere different!” he yelled. Ever since his regeneration he’d been a bundle of energy, to the point where she’d found it difficult to keep up with him. It was still hard not seeing that leather jacket and knowing that the hand that clasped hers as they traveled the universe did not feel quite the same. She pushed these thoughts out of her mind and smiled at the new Doctor, who was becoming increasingly familiar, and threw the scarf over the nearest piece of railing.
“You’ll need that scarf out here!” he yelled, racing down the ramp and grabbing his coat off the hook. Rose watched him shrug it over his shoulders before putting on the scarf. He was out the door by the time she looked up again.
She walked across the room and paused that at the door, brushing her fingers over the inside frame. The TARDIS purred under her soft touch, as if sympathizing with her nostalgic thoughts, and reassuring her. She smiled softly and opened the worn blue door.
The most stunning view hit her eyes. Hundreds of mountain peaks lay scattered out before her, tall and misty as far as she could see. Lush green grass hugged their slopes, and pine forests aboded their lower plateaus. She could see rocky cliffs and patches of bright pink snow. The sky was red, and pink-tinted clouds drifted just below her feet. She could see lakes in the distant valleys, the water all frozen over, and far away, the deep blue of the sea, so far away that it was only a small line on the horizon.
“Scarfelp,” the Doctor said, walking up to stand beside her. “Small planet, only a billion years old. There’s no one on it now, not yet If I’m right; the Gigalockans will evolve here one day. Good race, bit short, could'a laid off the constant dreaming a little bit. They were invaded quite a few times but put they up a good fight an often won. Nothing like that now, the peace of pre-existence. That's untouched that is, and it will be for a billion more years. The insects are just starting to call this their home. It’s the equivalent of summer now, that’s why it’s crisp but not cold." He paused for a moment, taking it all in, and turned to Rose. “What do you think?”
She didn’t answer. She couldn’t. Her smile stretched wide across her face, her eyes alight and a shocked, joyful laugh escaped her lips. She was completely speechless, the sounds of her laughter dancing on the mountain air.
The Doctor’s grin couldn’t quite match hers, but it reached up to his ears and he made a little happy noise that was almost like a squee.
"Hehe, thought you'd like it. Tell you what-" She turned away from the view to find that he'd already gone, prancing to and forth up the gentle slope they'd landed on. She wrapped her arms around her body against a sudden gust of wind and started to follow him, but she needn't have done so for he was already coming back. Rose's eyes studied the slope for what he might of gone for; the only change in the grass was the scattered light pink. The Doctor came down back to her, revealing something that he'd been hiding in his hands.
"Glacier ice," he said. "Thought you might like it." Rose smiled, touching it it gently before taking it in her hands. It glistened like a diamond in the low-lying sunlight, soft pink and so light that she thought she might break it. It numbed her cold fingers and slowly melted in her touch. Her eyes lit up and her smile mingled with awe. She drew her eyes off it and looked up at the Doctor. "It's beautiful."
He lay his hands in her hair and kissed her forehead. For a moment the time he’d done that last flashed before her eyes, all joy and excitement and about to send her away. This man of loneliness and leather and the word “fantastic”, and for a moment she wondered how she’d ever bare the loss of him. But then his warm body wrapped around hers, his new body, loving and comforting; and she knew that she still had everything she could wish for. She still had him, the Doctor; a man of travels and adventure, of excitement and loss and danger, of phone boxes and screwdrivers powered by sonic, and no matter what he looked like, that was still all that mattered. She still had her Doctor, and her little blue box.
---