18coda (Lebensstürme) - Phantom Pains
Title: Phantom Pains
Author: lone_wulffe
Theme: senza
Fandom: Doctor Who
Warnings: None
Disclaimer: Doctor Who does not belong to me in any fashion or form, and neither do I have any claim over the quoted song.
Summary/Comments: [Ten/Rose] Set after The Runaway Bride, so angst galore with a sprinkle of maybe-hope.
I'm miles from where you are,
I lay down on the cold ground
I, I pray that something picks me up
And sets me down in your warm arms
- Snow Patrol, Set the Fire to the Third Bar
It shouldn't hurt so much, but Donna's refusal and parting words tug painfully at the still-fresh wound caused by the absence of Rose at his side. You need someone to stop you rings in his ears long after the doors have closed and he's sent the TARDIS hurtling through the Vortex once more, because it's just one more piece of a much greater whole that he's lost to another universe.
"What about you, Doctor? What the hell are you changing into?"
The TARDIS's song swirls in his mind, a tune of comfort and shared mourning that conveys how much she too misses the human that once took her heart into her for his sake. Whether it is through her meddling or the momentary loss of his sense of time - an impossible notion, but that word is used far too often, he thinks bitterly - he finds himself in front of an all too familiar door all too soon. Reaching out, his hand is deathly still when it should be shaking as he pushes it open to reveal Rose's room.
Nothing has changed. (Everything has changed.)
He catalogues the significantly insignificant details as his feet lead him deeper into the room. The dresser is cluttered with her makeup, its mirror outlined by pictures that record their shared adventures as far back as the days when he still wore jumpers and leather. Trinkets and baubles of all kinds from across the universe litter the surface of the lone cupboard in this corner of the TARDIS - tokens of the times there had been less running, much less danger but were no less exhilarating. Her denim jacket lies slung over the chair he loves to occupy when he feels the need to drop in on her, and the bed he finds himself sitting on is haphazardly half-made, and when he breathes he can still smell that lingering scent that is so distinctly Rose it feels like she's only stepped out for a moment.
It's almost as if any second she'll walk in and ask him exactly what he's doing in her room with a raised eyebrow and that tongue-touched grin of hers.
Except she never will.
Her presence surrounds him, here in her own room and every other in the TARDIS, no longer in the here and now but never truly gone. It's a cold reminder of that day he had asked a question he should never have given voice to and she had given him the only answer she had ever given him with all the confidence of being young and simply Rose.
"This isn't what you meant when you promised me forever, was it?" he whispers brokenly into the pervasive silence that her voice and laughter used to chase away.
---xXx---
Rose doesn't leave her designated room in the Tyler mansion - the phrase still sounds foreign to her even in the privacy of her head - for a week. The servants bring her all her meals, and that's just one more thing on the long list of Things She Really Has To Get Used To Now She's Stuck Here For Good. Her mum, Pete and even Mickey do their best to dispel her grief just as they did when she first found herself stranded in this London with its zeppelin-filled skies, but it's not the same.
This time, even the faint flicker of hope she had that she could return to the Doctor is gone, and it means a world of difference.
Eventually she pulls herself together. After all, she's Rose Tyler - the Bad Wolf, the Valiant Child, Defender of the Earth, and her time with the Doctor has taught her that she's no longer one to sit on the sidelines. That morning starts like the ones before it, except when she looks in the mirror this time she sees in her own eyes not only the ever-present grief she feels but the steely determination that has gotten her out of some hellishly tough scrapes all on her own.
The universe has made it a habit of proving him wrong everytime he uses the word 'impossible', so if it's not going to oblige this time she's just going to have to do it herself, damn it all.
To his credit, Pete doesn't bat an eyelid when she tells him about her decision to join Torchwood over breakfast. All Jackie does is sigh resignedly and make a show of demanding from both of them a token promise that she'll be safe - a promise they agree to but one all of them are only too aware is not a guarantee. She gets her start in Research, putting the knowledge she's gained over her relative two years of adventuring to use in the organisation's attempts to understand the artifacts they come across. A bit of training and some impressive work in her first few outings, however, gets her assigned to one of the most active field teams, and soon enough she's earned herself a reputation of being more than the boss's mysterious daughter. In between work, she picks up her studies again - placing particular emphasis on the physics field, which does not go unnoticed by Pete - and some days she wears herself so thin her mother swears she's practically wasting away.
(All the while, the TARDIS key that still hangs from its chain around her neck presses against her skin, her last tangible link to home - a ship that is bigger on the inside and a pair of arms that feel like the safest place in all of time and space.)
It's not until one of her team's excursions yields a half-beaten Tryxallian ship engine that she allows the hope she's long buried in her heart to flare to life again. The almost-junk is barely in headquarters before she's barreling into Pete's office to make a request that sounds very close to a demand to be put on the research team assigned to study it. The look in her eyes is enough to tell him what she's really asking for, and it's not long before she's helping to salvage the engine's tech for the project they've tentatively named the Void Hopper.
"I made my choice a long time ago, and I'm never gonna leave you."
Her own words replay in her head as she studies the latest report on what Torchwood's scientists have uncovered about the materials used in the engine, but they only spur her on. She didn't leave him by choice, and there's nothing stopping her from going back to him (again), even if she has to fight the universe the whole way to do it.
Author: lone_wulffe
Theme: senza
Fandom: Doctor Who
Warnings: None
Disclaimer: Doctor Who does not belong to me in any fashion or form, and neither do I have any claim over the quoted song.
Summary/Comments: [Ten/Rose] Set after The Runaway Bride, so angst galore with a sprinkle of maybe-hope.
I'm miles from where you are,
I lay down on the cold ground
I, I pray that something picks me up
And sets me down in your warm arms
- Snow Patrol, Set the Fire to the Third Bar
It shouldn't hurt so much, but Donna's refusal and parting words tug painfully at the still-fresh wound caused by the absence of Rose at his side. You need someone to stop you rings in his ears long after the doors have closed and he's sent the TARDIS hurtling through the Vortex once more, because it's just one more piece of a much greater whole that he's lost to another universe.
"What about you, Doctor? What the hell are you changing into?"
The TARDIS's song swirls in his mind, a tune of comfort and shared mourning that conveys how much she too misses the human that once took her heart into her for his sake. Whether it is through her meddling or the momentary loss of his sense of time - an impossible notion, but that word is used far too often, he thinks bitterly - he finds himself in front of an all too familiar door all too soon. Reaching out, his hand is deathly still when it should be shaking as he pushes it open to reveal Rose's room.
Nothing has changed. (Everything has changed.)
He catalogues the significantly insignificant details as his feet lead him deeper into the room. The dresser is cluttered with her makeup, its mirror outlined by pictures that record their shared adventures as far back as the days when he still wore jumpers and leather. Trinkets and baubles of all kinds from across the universe litter the surface of the lone cupboard in this corner of the TARDIS - tokens of the times there had been less running, much less danger but were no less exhilarating. Her denim jacket lies slung over the chair he loves to occupy when he feels the need to drop in on her, and the bed he finds himself sitting on is haphazardly half-made, and when he breathes he can still smell that lingering scent that is so distinctly Rose it feels like she's only stepped out for a moment.
It's almost as if any second she'll walk in and ask him exactly what he's doing in her room with a raised eyebrow and that tongue-touched grin of hers.
Except she never will.
Her presence surrounds him, here in her own room and every other in the TARDIS, no longer in the here and now but never truly gone. It's a cold reminder of that day he had asked a question he should never have given voice to and she had given him the only answer she had ever given him with all the confidence of being young and simply Rose.
"This isn't what you meant when you promised me forever, was it?" he whispers brokenly into the pervasive silence that her voice and laughter used to chase away.
---xXx---
Rose doesn't leave her designated room in the Tyler mansion - the phrase still sounds foreign to her even in the privacy of her head - for a week. The servants bring her all her meals, and that's just one more thing on the long list of Things She Really Has To Get Used To Now She's Stuck Here For Good. Her mum, Pete and even Mickey do their best to dispel her grief just as they did when she first found herself stranded in this London with its zeppelin-filled skies, but it's not the same.
This time, even the faint flicker of hope she had that she could return to the Doctor is gone, and it means a world of difference.
Eventually she pulls herself together. After all, she's Rose Tyler - the Bad Wolf, the Valiant Child, Defender of the Earth, and her time with the Doctor has taught her that she's no longer one to sit on the sidelines. That morning starts like the ones before it, except when she looks in the mirror this time she sees in her own eyes not only the ever-present grief she feels but the steely determination that has gotten her out of some hellishly tough scrapes all on her own.
The universe has made it a habit of proving him wrong everytime he uses the word 'impossible', so if it's not going to oblige this time she's just going to have to do it herself, damn it all.
To his credit, Pete doesn't bat an eyelid when she tells him about her decision to join Torchwood over breakfast. All Jackie does is sigh resignedly and make a show of demanding from both of them a token promise that she'll be safe - a promise they agree to but one all of them are only too aware is not a guarantee. She gets her start in Research, putting the knowledge she's gained over her relative two years of adventuring to use in the organisation's attempts to understand the artifacts they come across. A bit of training and some impressive work in her first few outings, however, gets her assigned to one of the most active field teams, and soon enough she's earned herself a reputation of being more than the boss's mysterious daughter. In between work, she picks up her studies again - placing particular emphasis on the physics field, which does not go unnoticed by Pete - and some days she wears herself so thin her mother swears she's practically wasting away.
(All the while, the TARDIS key that still hangs from its chain around her neck presses against her skin, her last tangible link to home - a ship that is bigger on the inside and a pair of arms that feel like the safest place in all of time and space.)
It's not until one of her team's excursions yields a half-beaten Tryxallian ship engine that she allows the hope she's long buried in her heart to flare to life again. The almost-junk is barely in headquarters before she's barreling into Pete's office to make a request that sounds very close to a demand to be put on the research team assigned to study it. The look in her eyes is enough to tell him what she's really asking for, and it's not long before she's helping to salvage the engine's tech for the project they've tentatively named the Void Hopper.
"I made my choice a long time ago, and I'm never gonna leave you."
Her own words replay in her head as she studies the latest report on what Torchwood's scientists have uncovered about the materials used in the engine, but they only spur her on. She didn't leave him by choice, and there's nothing stopping her from going back to him (again), even if she has to fight the universe the whole way to do it.