New fic: Five and a half hours later
Title: Five and a half hours later
Pairing: Nine/Rose
Rating: Adult
Content: Adventure; Romance; Graphic Sex; Angst; Ten
Disclaimer: BBC owned as usual
Chapters: 3/9
Summary: A second chance. A new beginning. A different ending?
Chapter 3: The Idiot
The phone rang. Completely out of place, its jaunty little tune disturbed the silence and Rose let it ring for a while, just watching the Doctor standing in a circle of his enemies as she’d seen him once before, with his eyes closed. He’d never looked so old. The phone rang again, and she had to kick the sand off the bag she’d dumped before climbing up the hill to rummage around inside. By the time she’d dug it out and blown off the red dust the phone had stopped ringing and switched to voicemail. Automatically, she dialled the number of her mailbox and she didn’t look away from the Doctor as he came back to life. Part of him came back to life anyway, although the light in his eyes that had shone so brightly when he’d looked at her at the top of the hill seemed to have been extinguished down here at the bottom.
She couldn’t help but wonder what on earth had happened to him in France to make him behave so differently. He’d said she was beautiful. He’d said it before, of course, but that had been when she was making an effort, had put her hair up and been wearing a dress and heels and everything, And even then he’d qualified the compliment immediately. Today, unwashed, undressed and uncomfortably sticky he’d praised her quite seriously, and confidently too, as if he was used to doing it. She could only conclude that just because he’d got lucky in France and then again with her, he’d decided to practice his new-found seduction skills a bit more. She didn’t really think that he meant the compliment, or that he’d meant anything by the kissing, no matter how much she might want him to. She wasn’t really sure she could trust him, and certainly not with her heart.
She had to listen to her mother’s message twice before she actually heard it. Then she had to listen to it a third time before she understood it. As quietly as she could she redialled, handed the phone to Mickey and told him to listen to the voicemail, before approaching the Doctor, still staring at the masses on masses of faces staring back.
She tugged his sleeve. ‘We have to go back,’ she said clearly.
He looked down at her, but she could tell that he wasn’t really seeing. The angles of his face were etched with a crimson tinge that had stopped being beautiful and had started to be sinister. His eyes reflected back at her blood-red. ‘There’s no going back.’ His voice was hollow and came from a long way away. ‘This is what happens when you try.’
She didn’t understand and she tried to attract his attention, putting her hand up to his cheek. ‘No - we have to go back home. Now.’
His eyes slid into focus as soon as her fingers met his skin but he didn’t move his head away or ask her what she thought she was doing. The texture of his face, the twitch of a muscle under her hand called to her somehow, spoke to something buried right down inside. There was a brief flicker in his eyes.
Sensing her confusion he pulled his head back, took a pace away swiftly. ‘Why?’ he asked.
She shrugged, brushing her finger against her thumb, trying to rub away that tingle of familiarity. ‘Because that was my mum on the phone. Mickey’s Gran’s been hurt in a fall. She’s in hospital.’
Behind her, she could already hear Mickey’s footsteps disappearing rapidly in the direction of the TARDIS and she could only guess at what he was feeling.
The Doctor frowned. ‘No. That’s not important now. I need to find out where all these things have come from.’ His disgust was self evident.
She shook her head. ‘You don’t understand. Mickey’s Gran’s been dead for five years.’
There was a split second in which he froze, before exploding into a blur of movement. Scooping up her fallen bag he escorted her - there was no other word for it - with a hand underneath her elbow quickly back to the TARDIS, unlocked the door and followed her inside. He shot a single glance at Mickey and began punching co-ordinates. The ship disappeared faster than she could say abracadabra.
Mickey paced. Mickey didn’t, as a rule, pace. Maybe shout sometimes, or run around waving his hands above his head, but pacing was not one of his usual behavioural characteristics. He walked round and round in circles. Stopped occasionally. Then carried on walking, and always in silence. She thought she could see him growing up as he walked. After five minutes or so of this she was so tense she just wanted to get whatever was coming over with and she pushed herself off the railing to go and stop the endless pacing. She felt vaguely that she should be comforting him, although since his Gran was alive and not dead, maybe celebrating would have been a better reaction. Mickey saw her coming, detoured, and stopped next to the Doctor, whose swift glance left her in no doubt that he just wanted to get it over with too.
Mickey crossed his arms on his chest. ‘Alright, I admit it,’ he started, and his voice was thick. ‘I’m an idiot.’
The Doctor didn’t stop pressing buttons, but he was clearly just waiting.
‘You’ve said it enough and it’s true. I don’t understand. What’s going on?’
When he replied, the Doctor’s voice was stripped of the condescending sarcasm he usually deployed whenever her ex was around. Although his response was neutral, she caught a hint of compassion beneath the surface. ‘I don’t know,’ he said.
Mickey was clearly expecting something more. ‘And what?’ he asked. ‘That’s your best answer is it? How can my Gran be alive?’
‘I don’t know,’ repeated the Doctor again, maintaining the distraction of button pushing.
‘But she fell, because I didn’t…I went to the funeral.’ His words were edged with tears. ‘Aren’t you going to explain?’
The Doctor looked at him for a long time. ‘I can’t. I don’t have any answers.’
It was obvious to Rose that Mickey needed some answer, any answer, to stop himself flying apart.
‘It’s because it’s me, isn’t it?’ he said, in a more bitter tone than she’d ever heard him use. ‘If it was Rose’s dad that had come back to life you’d be all over it. But I’m not special am I? I’m not the one you’re interested in.’
There was more than a grain of truth in that statement and the Doctor’s lack of an immediate denial told her he knew it too. He was making quite a show of being completely absorbed in switches and levers but there was a suspicious red tint in his cheeks that could be either sudden sunburn or sudden embarrassment. Strangely, she found herself considering whether he actually could still be interested in her, properly interested, but he wasn’t looking in her direction and she couldn’t be sure. She’d always accepted that she came first with him, and it suddenly dawned on her that the reason she’d got so upset by the whole French business was because she’d been beaten into second place for a change. Second place was where Mickey had been ranking for some considerable time and he knew it.
‘Yeah well, ‘I don’t know’ isn't a good enough answer,’ Mickey said loudly. ‘I’m sick of not being special. It isn’t good enough. This isn’t good enough.’ The sweep of his hand took in the TARDIS, the Doctor and the whole of time and space, and ended up with Rose herself. Mickey looked her deep in the eye. ‘Some things are more important.’
He’d done more growing up than she realised. There was a lesson about valuing yourself enough to expect more than second place that he’d only just grasped. The Doctor sighed heavily, but he wasn’t shouting, and he wasn’t angry or sarcastic - he just seemed sad.
‘Your Gran’s the most important woman in the world,’ he responded at last. ‘And you’ve got her back. Now go and tell her so.’
She was too busy watching Mickey change to pay attention to the end of the TARDIS’s dematerialisation cycle. Shoulders back, his jaw squaring, she could see determination to find his own answer in the unfaltering stride that took him across the room. He didn’t look back. At last, it seemed he had had enough of being left behind. She was sorry to see him go - she didn’t think it was possible to live through any goodbye without sadness - but she was also proud of him. When the door clicked shut and he’d walked out of her life she found the hole in her heart wasn’t fatal, and she was glad to count him as her friend. She was quite sure she’d see him again.
The Doctor was too busy trying to work out whether his day could get any worse to worry about whether or not Mickey Smith was still his friend. Finding a sandcastle built out of Cybermen would have qualified as worst on most days, but added to that was the fact that the TARDIS had let him down. None of the scans he’d been running during Mickey’s lengthy farewell address had shown any signs of where they’d come from, and new and improved Cybermen didn’t just leap out of the void at you. There had to be factories, and evil geniuses and a world that would tolerate their development first. He couldn’t find any sign of them, anywhere. And then, worse than worst - reincarnation. Of someone’s dead granny. Why was it that anytime anyone came back to life you could guarantee it would be somebody’s dear old dead granny? He really didn’t have many answers for that either, because the TARDIS was playing hard to get and hadn’t spotted any invading aliens, suspicious time anomalies or second comings within a million mile radius. Plus, he’d been shouted at for the second time in two days, had been kicked by his conscience and, if all that wasn’t bad enough, there was sand on the floor of the TARDIS.
‘We’ll have to drop in on my mother,’ said Rose. That was the worst worst yet - there was only one better phrase to describe something worse than worst, and that was Jackie Tyler.
However, despite the lack of a messiah, he was about to find salvation because half an hour later when Rose rang the doorbell, her mother answered, and promptly slammed it shut again. ‘Oh dear, what a shame. She’s not in,’ he remarked, leaning against the doorframe and manfully braving Rose’s storm-cloud glower.
A couple of seconds later, the letterbox flapped open a crack and a theatrical stage whisper echoed its way around most of the estate. ‘Go away,’ Jackie hissed. ‘I’ve got a man in.’
He snorted with laughter, suddenly seeing the silver lining. There were some things that you expected your arch nemesis/potential mother in law to say, and then there were others that were just plain wrong.
The letterbox spoke again. ‘Shut it you,’ it said. ‘He’s just putting up some shelves.’
‘That’s one way of describing it,’ he told the talking brassware.
Rose kneeled down to her mother’s eyelevel and poked him in the thigh. The sight of her on her knees, looking up at him from just that height reminded him forcefully of the last time he’d ‘put up some shelves’ of his own. He shut up.
‘Who’s in there mum?’ Rose demanded though the flap. ‘Why can’t you let us in?’
‘His name’s Elton something,’ came the response, ‘and he keeps on asking about you. Where you are, when you’re coming home. So I told him I hadn’t seen you in ages.’
A man’s voice rang out from inside the flat and the Doctor could hear Jackie shout back distinctly. ‘Jehovah Witnesses.’
There was a shuffling noise and the door opened again on Jackie’s slightly concerned face. ‘Quick love - go before he sees you. Just in case.’ Her face become much less concerned as it turned in his direction and she yelled at the top of her voice. ‘I’ve told you before - we don’t want your sort round here. Now get lost!’ The door slammed shut on an enormous grin.
He wondered if every single person who’d ever met Rose was queuing up to shout at him. But she took his hand as they hurried away from the flats and he found he felt much better.
‘So where next?’ she asked, as he stopped and ushered her inside ahead of him, but he’d already thought quite seriously about the answer. He’d drawn a blank in the search for clues, and there didn’t seem to be much wrong with time or space apart from the odd spot of dislocation that set his teeth on edge. He could only think that he was the thing that was wrong.
Maybe the consequences inevitable in changing your own timeline were following him round like his own personal fanclub, the groupies of doom. The only way to find that out was to go somewhere completely different, and see if anyone asked for his autograph. Plus, he had Rose to himself again and that hadn’t really happened since he’d tried for a concert and got a bus stop in Sheffield and a battered sausage instead. And since she didn’t remember sleeping with him, or anything else remotely useful, she wouldn't remember arguing about who to go and see either, which meant he could take her to see the only man in history whose groupies might be more determined than his own.
As soon as he’d set the co-ordinates for Elvis he took her hand and tugged her off down the corridor to the wardrobe room.
Somewhere out there was a horde of marauding Cybermen, and that was probably his fault. Without their heads they’d be doing more bumping into things than marauding but that was beside the point. Somewhere out there was a reason that old aged pensioners were deciding to extend their old age a bit further and rising from the grave. That was probably his fault too. The consequences of his mistakes were coming back to haunt him. Literally in some cases, and he wasn’t sure what he’d need to do to sort it out. Rarely had he seen so many signs that the world needed saving.
He’d put it in danger for the sake of a woman who’d forgotten that he loved her, and who just wanted to be his friend. If all the Bad things happening really were connected to him in some way, she’d have to stay only a friend as well, until he either saved the world or had to go back and fix the timeline properly, or both. He absolutely was not going to love her, let her love him, and then lose her all over again. His day really couldn’t get a lot worse.
And yet, there was always hope.
Fiddling around in the women’s clothing section - not a place he’d had much cause to frequent - he located a bright pink skirt, a white top and a denim jacket, although he drew the line at choosing accessories. He handed them to her with a grin and it only took him a couple of minutes of her waiting, and then pointedly beginning to undress in front of him to remember that he didn’t have the right to watch her take her clothes off anymore and turn around.
He had a second chance, and maybe, just maybe, he could manage to save the world and get the girl simultaneously.
He kept the corner of his eye on her reflection in the strategically placed mirror, noting her strip off her top and deciding that the white bra she wore wasn’t all that flattering, and that he preferred the black see through one she had instead.
He was going to respect her freedom to make up her own mind, which meant he couldn’t tell her what they’d once been to each other. And he couldn’t tell her that something Bad might be about to happen. And he couldn’t tell her it was probably his fault.
He quite enjoyed the way she wriggled out of her jeans, and stood, unembarrassed in her knickers - which he did like - and her socks and trainers. In fact, he only really stopped staring when she straightened, clad only in her underwear, put her hands on her hips and gave him a big beaming smile in the mirror that she obviously knew he could see.
Hope was the only saving the world plan he ever really had, and he had to believe that this time, it would be enough. He beamed back, exaggerated shutting his eyes and felt like singing.
Chapter 2: The Rise of Steel: http://sap1066.livejournal.com/15097.html
Chapter 1: Consequences http://sap1066.livejournal.com/14430.html
Five and a half hours Chapters 1-10: http://sap1066.livejournal.com/11963.html
Five and a half hours Chapter 11: Technical Note: http://sap1066.livejournal.com/14703.html
Pairing: Nine/Rose
Rating: Adult
Content: Adventure; Romance; Graphic Sex; Angst; Ten
Disclaimer: BBC owned as usual
Chapters: 3/9
Summary: A second chance. A new beginning. A different ending?
Chapter 3: The Idiot
The phone rang. Completely out of place, its jaunty little tune disturbed the silence and Rose let it ring for a while, just watching the Doctor standing in a circle of his enemies as she’d seen him once before, with his eyes closed. He’d never looked so old. The phone rang again, and she had to kick the sand off the bag she’d dumped before climbing up the hill to rummage around inside. By the time she’d dug it out and blown off the red dust the phone had stopped ringing and switched to voicemail. Automatically, she dialled the number of her mailbox and she didn’t look away from the Doctor as he came back to life. Part of him came back to life anyway, although the light in his eyes that had shone so brightly when he’d looked at her at the top of the hill seemed to have been extinguished down here at the bottom.
She couldn’t help but wonder what on earth had happened to him in France to make him behave so differently. He’d said she was beautiful. He’d said it before, of course, but that had been when she was making an effort, had put her hair up and been wearing a dress and heels and everything, And even then he’d qualified the compliment immediately. Today, unwashed, undressed and uncomfortably sticky he’d praised her quite seriously, and confidently too, as if he was used to doing it. She could only conclude that just because he’d got lucky in France and then again with her, he’d decided to practice his new-found seduction skills a bit more. She didn’t really think that he meant the compliment, or that he’d meant anything by the kissing, no matter how much she might want him to. She wasn’t really sure she could trust him, and certainly not with her heart.
She had to listen to her mother’s message twice before she actually heard it. Then she had to listen to it a third time before she understood it. As quietly as she could she redialled, handed the phone to Mickey and told him to listen to the voicemail, before approaching the Doctor, still staring at the masses on masses of faces staring back.
She tugged his sleeve. ‘We have to go back,’ she said clearly.
He looked down at her, but she could tell that he wasn’t really seeing. The angles of his face were etched with a crimson tinge that had stopped being beautiful and had started to be sinister. His eyes reflected back at her blood-red. ‘There’s no going back.’ His voice was hollow and came from a long way away. ‘This is what happens when you try.’
She didn’t understand and she tried to attract his attention, putting her hand up to his cheek. ‘No - we have to go back home. Now.’
His eyes slid into focus as soon as her fingers met his skin but he didn’t move his head away or ask her what she thought she was doing. The texture of his face, the twitch of a muscle under her hand called to her somehow, spoke to something buried right down inside. There was a brief flicker in his eyes.
Sensing her confusion he pulled his head back, took a pace away swiftly. ‘Why?’ he asked.
She shrugged, brushing her finger against her thumb, trying to rub away that tingle of familiarity. ‘Because that was my mum on the phone. Mickey’s Gran’s been hurt in a fall. She’s in hospital.’
Behind her, she could already hear Mickey’s footsteps disappearing rapidly in the direction of the TARDIS and she could only guess at what he was feeling.
The Doctor frowned. ‘No. That’s not important now. I need to find out where all these things have come from.’ His disgust was self evident.
She shook her head. ‘You don’t understand. Mickey’s Gran’s been dead for five years.’
There was a split second in which he froze, before exploding into a blur of movement. Scooping up her fallen bag he escorted her - there was no other word for it - with a hand underneath her elbow quickly back to the TARDIS, unlocked the door and followed her inside. He shot a single glance at Mickey and began punching co-ordinates. The ship disappeared faster than she could say abracadabra.
Mickey paced. Mickey didn’t, as a rule, pace. Maybe shout sometimes, or run around waving his hands above his head, but pacing was not one of his usual behavioural characteristics. He walked round and round in circles. Stopped occasionally. Then carried on walking, and always in silence. She thought she could see him growing up as he walked. After five minutes or so of this she was so tense she just wanted to get whatever was coming over with and she pushed herself off the railing to go and stop the endless pacing. She felt vaguely that she should be comforting him, although since his Gran was alive and not dead, maybe celebrating would have been a better reaction. Mickey saw her coming, detoured, and stopped next to the Doctor, whose swift glance left her in no doubt that he just wanted to get it over with too.
Mickey crossed his arms on his chest. ‘Alright, I admit it,’ he started, and his voice was thick. ‘I’m an idiot.’
The Doctor didn’t stop pressing buttons, but he was clearly just waiting.
‘You’ve said it enough and it’s true. I don’t understand. What’s going on?’
When he replied, the Doctor’s voice was stripped of the condescending sarcasm he usually deployed whenever her ex was around. Although his response was neutral, she caught a hint of compassion beneath the surface. ‘I don’t know,’ he said.
Mickey was clearly expecting something more. ‘And what?’ he asked. ‘That’s your best answer is it? How can my Gran be alive?’
‘I don’t know,’ repeated the Doctor again, maintaining the distraction of button pushing.
‘But she fell, because I didn’t…I went to the funeral.’ His words were edged with tears. ‘Aren’t you going to explain?’
The Doctor looked at him for a long time. ‘I can’t. I don’t have any answers.’
It was obvious to Rose that Mickey needed some answer, any answer, to stop himself flying apart.
‘It’s because it’s me, isn’t it?’ he said, in a more bitter tone than she’d ever heard him use. ‘If it was Rose’s dad that had come back to life you’d be all over it. But I’m not special am I? I’m not the one you’re interested in.’
There was more than a grain of truth in that statement and the Doctor’s lack of an immediate denial told her he knew it too. He was making quite a show of being completely absorbed in switches and levers but there was a suspicious red tint in his cheeks that could be either sudden sunburn or sudden embarrassment. Strangely, she found herself considering whether he actually could still be interested in her, properly interested, but he wasn’t looking in her direction and she couldn’t be sure. She’d always accepted that she came first with him, and it suddenly dawned on her that the reason she’d got so upset by the whole French business was because she’d been beaten into second place for a change. Second place was where Mickey had been ranking for some considerable time and he knew it.
‘Yeah well, ‘I don’t know’ isn't a good enough answer,’ Mickey said loudly. ‘I’m sick of not being special. It isn’t good enough. This isn’t good enough.’ The sweep of his hand took in the TARDIS, the Doctor and the whole of time and space, and ended up with Rose herself. Mickey looked her deep in the eye. ‘Some things are more important.’
He’d done more growing up than she realised. There was a lesson about valuing yourself enough to expect more than second place that he’d only just grasped. The Doctor sighed heavily, but he wasn’t shouting, and he wasn’t angry or sarcastic - he just seemed sad.
‘Your Gran’s the most important woman in the world,’ he responded at last. ‘And you’ve got her back. Now go and tell her so.’
She was too busy watching Mickey change to pay attention to the end of the TARDIS’s dematerialisation cycle. Shoulders back, his jaw squaring, she could see determination to find his own answer in the unfaltering stride that took him across the room. He didn’t look back. At last, it seemed he had had enough of being left behind. She was sorry to see him go - she didn’t think it was possible to live through any goodbye without sadness - but she was also proud of him. When the door clicked shut and he’d walked out of her life she found the hole in her heart wasn’t fatal, and she was glad to count him as her friend. She was quite sure she’d see him again.
The Doctor was too busy trying to work out whether his day could get any worse to worry about whether or not Mickey Smith was still his friend. Finding a sandcastle built out of Cybermen would have qualified as worst on most days, but added to that was the fact that the TARDIS had let him down. None of the scans he’d been running during Mickey’s lengthy farewell address had shown any signs of where they’d come from, and new and improved Cybermen didn’t just leap out of the void at you. There had to be factories, and evil geniuses and a world that would tolerate their development first. He couldn’t find any sign of them, anywhere. And then, worse than worst - reincarnation. Of someone’s dead granny. Why was it that anytime anyone came back to life you could guarantee it would be somebody’s dear old dead granny? He really didn’t have many answers for that either, because the TARDIS was playing hard to get and hadn’t spotted any invading aliens, suspicious time anomalies or second comings within a million mile radius. Plus, he’d been shouted at for the second time in two days, had been kicked by his conscience and, if all that wasn’t bad enough, there was sand on the floor of the TARDIS.
‘We’ll have to drop in on my mother,’ said Rose. That was the worst worst yet - there was only one better phrase to describe something worse than worst, and that was Jackie Tyler.
However, despite the lack of a messiah, he was about to find salvation because half an hour later when Rose rang the doorbell, her mother answered, and promptly slammed it shut again. ‘Oh dear, what a shame. She’s not in,’ he remarked, leaning against the doorframe and manfully braving Rose’s storm-cloud glower.
A couple of seconds later, the letterbox flapped open a crack and a theatrical stage whisper echoed its way around most of the estate. ‘Go away,’ Jackie hissed. ‘I’ve got a man in.’
He snorted with laughter, suddenly seeing the silver lining. There were some things that you expected your arch nemesis/potential mother in law to say, and then there were others that were just plain wrong.
The letterbox spoke again. ‘Shut it you,’ it said. ‘He’s just putting up some shelves.’
‘That’s one way of describing it,’ he told the talking brassware.
Rose kneeled down to her mother’s eyelevel and poked him in the thigh. The sight of her on her knees, looking up at him from just that height reminded him forcefully of the last time he’d ‘put up some shelves’ of his own. He shut up.
‘Who’s in there mum?’ Rose demanded though the flap. ‘Why can’t you let us in?’
‘His name’s Elton something,’ came the response, ‘and he keeps on asking about you. Where you are, when you’re coming home. So I told him I hadn’t seen you in ages.’
A man’s voice rang out from inside the flat and the Doctor could hear Jackie shout back distinctly. ‘Jehovah Witnesses.’
There was a shuffling noise and the door opened again on Jackie’s slightly concerned face. ‘Quick love - go before he sees you. Just in case.’ Her face become much less concerned as it turned in his direction and she yelled at the top of her voice. ‘I’ve told you before - we don’t want your sort round here. Now get lost!’ The door slammed shut on an enormous grin.
He wondered if every single person who’d ever met Rose was queuing up to shout at him. But she took his hand as they hurried away from the flats and he found he felt much better.
‘So where next?’ she asked, as he stopped and ushered her inside ahead of him, but he’d already thought quite seriously about the answer. He’d drawn a blank in the search for clues, and there didn’t seem to be much wrong with time or space apart from the odd spot of dislocation that set his teeth on edge. He could only think that he was the thing that was wrong.
Maybe the consequences inevitable in changing your own timeline were following him round like his own personal fanclub, the groupies of doom. The only way to find that out was to go somewhere completely different, and see if anyone asked for his autograph. Plus, he had Rose to himself again and that hadn’t really happened since he’d tried for a concert and got a bus stop in Sheffield and a battered sausage instead. And since she didn’t remember sleeping with him, or anything else remotely useful, she wouldn't remember arguing about who to go and see either, which meant he could take her to see the only man in history whose groupies might be more determined than his own.
As soon as he’d set the co-ordinates for Elvis he took her hand and tugged her off down the corridor to the wardrobe room.
Somewhere out there was a horde of marauding Cybermen, and that was probably his fault. Without their heads they’d be doing more bumping into things than marauding but that was beside the point. Somewhere out there was a reason that old aged pensioners were deciding to extend their old age a bit further and rising from the grave. That was probably his fault too. The consequences of his mistakes were coming back to haunt him. Literally in some cases, and he wasn’t sure what he’d need to do to sort it out. Rarely had he seen so many signs that the world needed saving.
He’d put it in danger for the sake of a woman who’d forgotten that he loved her, and who just wanted to be his friend. If all the Bad things happening really were connected to him in some way, she’d have to stay only a friend as well, until he either saved the world or had to go back and fix the timeline properly, or both. He absolutely was not going to love her, let her love him, and then lose her all over again. His day really couldn’t get a lot worse.
And yet, there was always hope.
Fiddling around in the women’s clothing section - not a place he’d had much cause to frequent - he located a bright pink skirt, a white top and a denim jacket, although he drew the line at choosing accessories. He handed them to her with a grin and it only took him a couple of minutes of her waiting, and then pointedly beginning to undress in front of him to remember that he didn’t have the right to watch her take her clothes off anymore and turn around.
He had a second chance, and maybe, just maybe, he could manage to save the world and get the girl simultaneously.
He kept the corner of his eye on her reflection in the strategically placed mirror, noting her strip off her top and deciding that the white bra she wore wasn’t all that flattering, and that he preferred the black see through one she had instead.
He was going to respect her freedom to make up her own mind, which meant he couldn’t tell her what they’d once been to each other. And he couldn’t tell her that something Bad might be about to happen. And he couldn’t tell her it was probably his fault.
He quite enjoyed the way she wriggled out of her jeans, and stood, unembarrassed in her knickers - which he did like - and her socks and trainers. In fact, he only really stopped staring when she straightened, clad only in her underwear, put her hands on her hips and gave him a big beaming smile in the mirror that she obviously knew he could see.
Hope was the only saving the world plan he ever really had, and he had to believe that this time, it would be enough. He beamed back, exaggerated shutting his eyes and felt like singing.
Chapter 2: The Rise of Steel: http://sap1066.livejournal.com/15097.html
Chapter 1: Consequences http://sap1066.livejournal.com/14430.html
Five and a half hours Chapters 1-10: http://sap1066.livejournal.com/11963.html
Five and a half hours Chapter 11: Technical Note: http://sap1066.livejournal.com/14703.html