dw - the end is where we begin
Title: The End is Where We Begin
Beta(s):ladyofgallifrey
Song Titles(s): Dream a Little Dream of Me
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairing: Nine/Rose, Ten/Rose
A/N: Written for alex_caligari as part of the Carol-A-Thon 2009.
Outside, the ash continues to fall. She'll want to keep pretending its snow, and he'll let her.
There's a song playing on the radio, made three-fourths of wistfulness and the rest of nostalgia, which echoes in the cloistered walls of the estate. Beneath the light of a streetlamp, an innocuous blue box is overlooked and forgotten by the odd person who passes by, straying from their holiday festivities and loved ones. Some will pause for a moment; regard it first with bemusement, then thoughtfulness with a head tipped, and though they'll eventually continue on their way and never remember it again, all will have strange, brilliant dreams that night.
One doesn't pass like the rest, because he's always known the blue box and its secrets, and it still knows him. As he swings open those astounding blue doors, a disconcerting glow about him, the hum of the motor rises in pitch and the temperature rises by a fifth of a degree. There is the console he knows so well, worn under his hands and ministrations. There is the man he had less time to get to know, regarding him solemnly in the blue light.
If he's startled, he doesn't show it; his eyes flicker to meet the other for a moment, then back down again. Though he doesn't say a word, there is a certain degree of respect in his silence; for this was the veteran, the survivor. The man that was a step closer to the war, that precipice, those storms of fire and blood. In identical motions they circle the console; different hands, different fingers brush the lever, the randomizer. One grows all the more real and solid while the other wanes like a shadow.
"You'll lose her," One of them says calmly, almost conversationally, more than an apparition or an Emergency Protocol, less than the distant past. "Even given my past track record, I think you're more of a reckless git than all the others before us combined."
At this, the man in the brown suit bristles, all bright and new like a shivering star. There are words he could vocalise, that swim in the darkness of his time ship. What about the Gelth then, and that basement in Cardiff. Remember Utah, remember the Dalek. But he can't - not in the still-fading light of the Vortex and a kiss that seared like a solar flare and forgiveness. Not still with the memory of a girl's smile and that look on her face; like he holds all the answers to her universe, yet wouldn't mind if he botched up every single one (at this very moment outside, she’s noticing his glasses on the dinner table and his overcoat hung on the rack, his absence).That was this man's redemption, and his own opportunity may come yet.
So he says, quietly, "I promise you, when it comes to her, I'll be more careful than I have with anyone else."
There's only quiet for a moment. The man in the leather coat - more than a memory, less than something real, says nothing. "She'll like you," he finally admits like a gross truth, giving his reincarnation a scrutinizing look that is not altogether displeased. "You're a bit pretty, and we know how she feels about the pretty ones."
He chokes over something. Maybe a laugh. Jackie's turkey, most likely. "She loved you."
The tips of the other's lips quirk up. "Coward. Every single time." His expression turns thoughtful. "Maybe you'll be the brave one, for a change."
The Doctor laughs. The radio tunes down - linger til dawn, dear. "Doubt it. 'Cause I'm you, aren't I?"
She's shivers in the doorway, pausing by those blue doors she's come to love more than those to her earthly home. But despite the fact she has a key clutched in her hand, she wonders now whether or not she should knock. Flakes of white drift onto her hair, and thoughtlessly she runs a hand through it, ignoring the gray that dusts onto her fingers and dyes into the strands.
Finally thinking better of it, Rose pushes the blue doors open. "Hello," she calls into the open, the closed confines of the box. "Alright if I come in?"
The new man, reclined on his jump seat, quite alone, quite singular now, nearly falls to the floor at the sound of her voice. "Yes! Yes, of course." He bounds - quite springy, this body is - to his feet and crosses the console room in a few long strides. "Sorry about leaving your mum's so abruptly - just that," the words fail him for the first time in this reincarnation, and he swivels the monitor towards him like a nervous twitch. "There was something on the screen. Harmless stuff really, just more space junk in the atmosphere.” He grins at her, attempts a joke. “No more alien invasions 'til the new year, I promise."
Rose blinks and smiles back cautiously, walking up the ramp. This is the strange swaying motion, the back-and-forth feeling they've fallen into; she mourns him, they wear paper hats and make travel plans. And so on, and on.
Then he notices what she has cradled in her arms, and something drops to the pit of his stomach. He'd just seen that jacket, just worn it. There is the ghost of the weight of it, still thrown across his shoulders. It was meant to be a metaphor for war and survivor's guilt, and inexplicably somewhere along the way, it became hers.
She stands a ways away from him, playing with a cuff. "Found this on the couch, when we - when we brought you inside." She's dying a little inside with guilt at tossing it aside so easily and thoughtlessly, pilot fish and Sycorax be damned. "Just thought you'd want it back." Rose moves past him, goes to drape it across the rails. And there it’ll stay, in stasis, in memoriam, until one relative day, they’ll think to stow it away in the wardrobe room. It’ll go on one of the infinite racks, standing apart from the ruffled shirts and the ostentatious ties with the memory it carries as a stigma.
He deserved better than that.
"No.” He catches her arm, makes her look him in the eye. “Listen - you can keep it. I mean, I want you to have it. If you want."
There is a tremulous brightness in her eyes that can only herald one thing. She turns into his arms, crushing the battered leather between them, but it's not him that she's clinging to. It's the idea of him that she's desperately trying to believe in again. She'd once had such faith, he realizes.
"You are the same, aren't you?" Rose asks into the lapel of his suit. "You're still - still the Doctor."
She'll dream about him for a long time still, of the man with the ridiculous ears, a battered leather jacket and grief, tight and fresh. His apparition lingers still, and he knows that he's not the only one who still sees it - it’ll resides in her mind's eye and over his shoulder, perhaps forever. He hopes that one day she might come to realize how much of her handiwork this regeneration is comprised of, how much every part of him is meant for her. Their hands will fit better than before and he’ll laugh at every single one of her jokes. This face, this youth - but they have time yet to discover these things.
He watches the other over her shoulder, but that man is not looking at him. He’s watching the girl in his arms, and he knows the expression well. These things, plaintive and deep rooted, must carry across incarnations; those strange, cataclysmic intersections of love and hope and desire and fear. They are not that different after all.
But until then. "In every way that counts." he answers earnestly, and runs a hand through her ash-streaked hair.
There are tithes to be paid, and promises yet to be kept. He rocks his girl in his arms, the one with the dreams and the heart susceptible enough for both love and grief.
Stars shining bright above you
Night breezes seem to whisper -
Life, then death.
Two long and short years held between their clasped hands. The Greeks would've envied their symmetry. A thousand ships were bound for Troy, a million, million books whispered his death in the library. Something pinwheels in the black. She's walking away, and it's all she does these days, no matter how many times she fought to stay with him. She crossed universes for him, with him. And oh, what they saw; the slow inhale and exhale of the Milky Way, apple grass, supernovas. His vision blurs with the grain of static as pain lights his blood on afire.
If it only could have lasted longer, he gasps, tasting the rust of heartbreak. The long caresses of the Vortex that tumble across his eyes like a lone sock in a washer. Conversations with beautiful girls in the snow that never end.
And here he stands over him again, footprints in the snow (she pretended it wasn't ash and he let her) that aren't really there. The beginning and the end. They're hers; her symbol of eternity, her mark across the stars. They carry on. They die with blood and the Vortex and her taste on their mouths. They begin again.
He asks, and answers. - but in your dreams, whatever they be,
"She's safe," he gasps. "I - He'll give her everything, and won't hold anything back."
"The brave one." the man says softly, even more ghosty in the lamplight. "Street corner, two in the morning. The one adventure. But it's enough for us. You can let go now."
The last strains of his song dissipate in the Christmas evening. A girl walks away without knowing it, towards a brighter future and a man she'll meet again, for the first time, always. Forever - she said once, and made them more than just words.
She's yet to, but somewhere, she'll start to dream of him again.
Beta(s):ladyofgallifrey
Song Titles(s): Dream a Little Dream of Me
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairing: Nine/Rose, Ten/Rose
A/N: Written for alex_caligari as part of the Carol-A-Thon 2009.
Outside, the ash continues to fall. She'll want to keep pretending its snow, and he'll let her.
There's a song playing on the radio, made three-fourths of wistfulness and the rest of nostalgia, which echoes in the cloistered walls of the estate. Beneath the light of a streetlamp, an innocuous blue box is overlooked and forgotten by the odd person who passes by, straying from their holiday festivities and loved ones. Some will pause for a moment; regard it first with bemusement, then thoughtfulness with a head tipped, and though they'll eventually continue on their way and never remember it again, all will have strange, brilliant dreams that night.
One doesn't pass like the rest, because he's always known the blue box and its secrets, and it still knows him. As he swings open those astounding blue doors, a disconcerting glow about him, the hum of the motor rises in pitch and the temperature rises by a fifth of a degree. There is the console he knows so well, worn under his hands and ministrations. There is the man he had less time to get to know, regarding him solemnly in the blue light.
If he's startled, he doesn't show it; his eyes flicker to meet the other for a moment, then back down again. Though he doesn't say a word, there is a certain degree of respect in his silence; for this was the veteran, the survivor. The man that was a step closer to the war, that precipice, those storms of fire and blood. In identical motions they circle the console; different hands, different fingers brush the lever, the randomizer. One grows all the more real and solid while the other wanes like a shadow.
"You'll lose her," One of them says calmly, almost conversationally, more than an apparition or an Emergency Protocol, less than the distant past. "Even given my past track record, I think you're more of a reckless git than all the others before us combined."
At this, the man in the brown suit bristles, all bright and new like a shivering star. There are words he could vocalise, that swim in the darkness of his time ship. What about the Gelth then, and that basement in Cardiff. Remember Utah, remember the Dalek. But he can't - not in the still-fading light of the Vortex and a kiss that seared like a solar flare and forgiveness. Not still with the memory of a girl's smile and that look on her face; like he holds all the answers to her universe, yet wouldn't mind if he botched up every single one (at this very moment outside, she’s noticing his glasses on the dinner table and his overcoat hung on the rack, his absence).That was this man's redemption, and his own opportunity may come yet.
So he says, quietly, "I promise you, when it comes to her, I'll be more careful than I have with anyone else."
There's only quiet for a moment. The man in the leather coat - more than a memory, less than something real, says nothing. "She'll like you," he finally admits like a gross truth, giving his reincarnation a scrutinizing look that is not altogether displeased. "You're a bit pretty, and we know how she feels about the pretty ones."
He chokes over something. Maybe a laugh. Jackie's turkey, most likely. "She loved you."
The tips of the other's lips quirk up. "Coward. Every single time." His expression turns thoughtful. "Maybe you'll be the brave one, for a change."
The Doctor laughs. The radio tunes down - linger til dawn, dear. "Doubt it. 'Cause I'm you, aren't I?"
She's shivers in the doorway, pausing by those blue doors she's come to love more than those to her earthly home. But despite the fact she has a key clutched in her hand, she wonders now whether or not she should knock. Flakes of white drift onto her hair, and thoughtlessly she runs a hand through it, ignoring the gray that dusts onto her fingers and dyes into the strands.
Finally thinking better of it, Rose pushes the blue doors open. "Hello," she calls into the open, the closed confines of the box. "Alright if I come in?"
The new man, reclined on his jump seat, quite alone, quite singular now, nearly falls to the floor at the sound of her voice. "Yes! Yes, of course." He bounds - quite springy, this body is - to his feet and crosses the console room in a few long strides. "Sorry about leaving your mum's so abruptly - just that," the words fail him for the first time in this reincarnation, and he swivels the monitor towards him like a nervous twitch. "There was something on the screen. Harmless stuff really, just more space junk in the atmosphere.” He grins at her, attempts a joke. “No more alien invasions 'til the new year, I promise."
Rose blinks and smiles back cautiously, walking up the ramp. This is the strange swaying motion, the back-and-forth feeling they've fallen into; she mourns him, they wear paper hats and make travel plans. And so on, and on.
Then he notices what she has cradled in her arms, and something drops to the pit of his stomach. He'd just seen that jacket, just worn it. There is the ghost of the weight of it, still thrown across his shoulders. It was meant to be a metaphor for war and survivor's guilt, and inexplicably somewhere along the way, it became hers.
She stands a ways away from him, playing with a cuff. "Found this on the couch, when we - when we brought you inside." She's dying a little inside with guilt at tossing it aside so easily and thoughtlessly, pilot fish and Sycorax be damned. "Just thought you'd want it back." Rose moves past him, goes to drape it across the rails. And there it’ll stay, in stasis, in memoriam, until one relative day, they’ll think to stow it away in the wardrobe room. It’ll go on one of the infinite racks, standing apart from the ruffled shirts and the ostentatious ties with the memory it carries as a stigma.
He deserved better than that.
"No.” He catches her arm, makes her look him in the eye. “Listen - you can keep it. I mean, I want you to have it. If you want."
There is a tremulous brightness in her eyes that can only herald one thing. She turns into his arms, crushing the battered leather between them, but it's not him that she's clinging to. It's the idea of him that she's desperately trying to believe in again. She'd once had such faith, he realizes.
"You are the same, aren't you?" Rose asks into the lapel of his suit. "You're still - still the Doctor."
She'll dream about him for a long time still, of the man with the ridiculous ears, a battered leather jacket and grief, tight and fresh. His apparition lingers still, and he knows that he's not the only one who still sees it - it’ll resides in her mind's eye and over his shoulder, perhaps forever. He hopes that one day she might come to realize how much of her handiwork this regeneration is comprised of, how much every part of him is meant for her. Their hands will fit better than before and he’ll laugh at every single one of her jokes. This face, this youth - but they have time yet to discover these things.
He watches the other over her shoulder, but that man is not looking at him. He’s watching the girl in his arms, and he knows the expression well. These things, plaintive and deep rooted, must carry across incarnations; those strange, cataclysmic intersections of love and hope and desire and fear. They are not that different after all.
But until then. "In every way that counts." he answers earnestly, and runs a hand through her ash-streaked hair.
There are tithes to be paid, and promises yet to be kept. He rocks his girl in his arms, the one with the dreams and the heart susceptible enough for both love and grief.
Stars shining bright above you
Night breezes seem to whisper -
Life, then death.
Two long and short years held between their clasped hands. The Greeks would've envied their symmetry. A thousand ships were bound for Troy, a million, million books whispered his death in the library. Something pinwheels in the black. She's walking away, and it's all she does these days, no matter how many times she fought to stay with him. She crossed universes for him, with him. And oh, what they saw; the slow inhale and exhale of the Milky Way, apple grass, supernovas. His vision blurs with the grain of static as pain lights his blood on afire.
If it only could have lasted longer, he gasps, tasting the rust of heartbreak. The long caresses of the Vortex that tumble across his eyes like a lone sock in a washer. Conversations with beautiful girls in the snow that never end.
And here he stands over him again, footprints in the snow (she pretended it wasn't ash and he let her) that aren't really there. The beginning and the end. They're hers; her symbol of eternity, her mark across the stars. They carry on. They die with blood and the Vortex and her taste on their mouths. They begin again.
He asks, and answers. - but in your dreams, whatever they be,
"She's safe," he gasps. "I - He'll give her everything, and won't hold anything back."
"The brave one." the man says softly, even more ghosty in the lamplight. "Street corner, two in the morning. The one adventure. But it's enough for us. You can let go now."
The last strains of his song dissipate in the Christmas evening. A girl walks away without knowing it, towards a brighter future and a man she'll meet again, for the first time, always. Forever - she said once, and made them more than just words.
She's yet to, but somewhere, she'll start to dream of him again.