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: 8/9
Summary: A second chance. A new beginning. A different ending?
Chapter 8: Army of arms
Not enough time.
She left one of her trainers lying by the door, hopped a few steps onwards and kicked the other one off halfway up the ramp, the Doctor’s heavy footfalls clanging behind her.
Not enough time.
She was down the corridor and on the way to his room before she managed to haul off her jeans. He was much closer behind her, although he’d obviously got rid of his boots because he was doing rather more stalking and rather less clumping around.
Not enough time.
She had remembered, and now all she wanted to do was forget. In the end, she hadn’t been able to hear ‘I love you’ come flying out of his mouth like so many shimmering angels and not respond. Something was coming, and no matter how fast she raced, time was catching up. She knew he had serious problems with that as a reason to jump groin first into a relationship. She knew he wanted her to choose to be with him without any pressure, and for the right reasons, but she’d realised eventually that whether it was sooner, or much, much later, everybody left everybody else behind in the end. Making the most of today, of this hour, this minute even, was the best reason she could think of. If he was going again she wanted to make sure she had something to remember him by, because her memory was going to be all she’d have left.
Not enough time.
In the distance, she heard the almost sensual slapping sound his coat made as he discarded it, and the thought of all those fragments of his regard for her being left behind spurred her to run faster. She ran for the only time she was sure they had left, and that was now.
She also ran into his bedroom. Stopped, checked to make sure she hadn’t barged through the wrong doorway by mistake and had a good look round. He had cleaned. He’d also increased the temperature by a couple of degrees and his bed was now graced with a decent amount of sheets and pillows as well as something that looked remarkably like a cushion. There were actual living flowers in a vase on the bedside table with not a nut, bolt or half assembled bit of machinery in sight. It looked like he swapped ‘Mechanics’ Monthly Magazine’ for ‘Spaceship Decorators’ Weekly’ and the transformation continued into the bathroom, which now contained a fully usable bath, rather than half a factory and bits of car.
She came out of the en-suite to find him standing against the closed bedroom door, arms folded, with so much wonder, and pride and sheer happiness in his eyes that her wandering thoughts were silenced, stilled, and her heart took over. He held out his hand.
There was a space of existence when she must have been walking, but instead the impression of his body burned itself back onto her retina - the individual tension in every sharp muscle in his shoulders, the gleaming paleness of skin, spare and lean across his chest, a scattering of hair, the tautness of his stomach. And his eyes, not so much windows on his soul as the only place his soul could escape, told her all the secrets he’d never share, spoke the truths he couldn’t utter.
She ran the tips of her fingers up his chest, just to remind herself what it felt like to have him captured, waiting. He watched her do it, holding himself steady at the drag of her nails across his nipples, at the spanning of her hands as she measured his chest. She looked a question up at him, fingers moving down over the smooth lines of his torso and pausing at the waistband of his jeans and he nodded, with the single short nod he favoured when he didn’t have any words.
She undid his trousers with a slight shake in her hands, feeling stupidly nervous and trying to remind herself that he was only an ex-boyfriend, and she’d done this lots of times before. It was just that every move she made seemed to be etching itself into her memory and she was conscious of every single second that ticked past. There wasn’t enough time. She needed to go faster. He knew. He must have felt it too.
With that supernatural flash of speed he showed sometimes she found their positions reversed, her back against the door and her bra lost somewhere in the turn. He was kissing her. It took her a minute to realise what he was doing before she relaxed and let the sensation of his tongue sliding swiftly within her mouth work its forgotten magic.
She tilted her head back, put one arm up and around his neck and re-lived the texture of his lips, his taste, the way he could make her shudder with only a kiss. A kiss and his hand on her breast at least, squeezing her rounded curves between his fingers, the hard skin on his thumb rasping across her nipple with an exhilarating roughness.
But it wasn’t enough, all of a sudden it wasn’t enough, and the countdown circling in her head grew louder. She wanted him now, right now because there was no guarantee that he’d still be here in another day, another hour, another minute even. She wanted, needed him inside her, to tell her that he was still real, still here. He knew. Maybe he felt it too.
She struggled out of her own underwear with an effort, trying to kiss him a lot more fiercely until she found herself lifted, her back slamming against the door with the urgent rush of his body between her thighs. She cried out, tightened her arms around his neck convulsively, not because she wasn’t ready, not because he hurt her, but because she remembered how much she’d missed him like a spike in the chest. His mouth dug into the side of her throat, teeth nibbling, suckling, and sending lightening shivers down her spine. She welcomed the grind of his hips into hers, the sinuous practiced motion as he lifted her up, and then forced her down, penetrated her again, and again and again. She felt him pull back, launch forward and she was ready, so ready, so much so that she crossed her legs around his backside, tensed all her muscles to get every last bit of him inside.
She curled her fingers in his hair, knew the shift of his shoulders as with fast, deliberate, powerful drives he thrust himself within her, once, twice, again. She didn’t want it to end, craved more of that unyielding pressure banging hot and tight against her, that deep push of man into woman that made forgetting simple.
A fire ignited in her loins, swept outwards through her belly, made her legs quiver, her toes point, sent a groan flying between her lips and her whole body clenched in the throes of orgasm. She bowed to the commands of pleasure, shook and juddered her way through an intense climax with the Doctor poised, still, hard and heavy between her thighs, letting her come around him.
When she was conscious enough to release her deathgrip on his shoulders and he lifted her down she realised he’d been biting her neck because the skin flinched away from the movement of his lips as he whispered, ‘You know you always come first.’
Although only his mouth was smiling, his whole body laughed. She tried to see the joke, wanted to see the joke, wished desperately to see the joke but the countdown in her head drowned out anything else he might have said. He was going to leave again. She was sure all of this was just the build up to him leaving her behind.
Not enough time.
‘Again,’ she said. ‘Again.’
He didn’t let her get as far as the bed, yanking her down onto the floor a couple of feet away, with his fingers firmly on her hips. She waited on her hands and knees, legs spread, for him to enter her again, and when he did, it was fast and hot and all about sweat and effort and pleasure. He groaned when he guided himself within her body and felt her push back into his erection, meeting his thrusts stroke for stroke. She hung her head, closed her eyes and let her hair fall forward as she concentrated on the man kneeling behind her, his hard flesh jerking into her waiting depths with a fiery passion. She lost count of the number of times he pulled her back, sheathed himself inside her and made her cry out with the grate of delicious friction on that secret place buried within. She ignored the pain as his fingers dug into her waist because it meant that he was there, joined with her in the bodily ecstasy of uncomplicated sex. Her breath came faster, her breasts bounced against her chest as he took her, rode her without compunction. She ignored the first time she came. He took it as a sign to go quicker, slamming into her with a speed he clearly couldn’t control and had stopped trying to even slow. He came then, with a shuddering cry and a last urgent rush that buckled her legs and collapsed them both face down onto the floor. He lay heavily on her back, making it difficult to breathe and she could hear the air rasping through his nostrils.
Not enough time. There was still a clock ticking in her head, even as she lay and listened to him recover and tried to estimate how long it would be before he could do it again. Tears slipped hot from the corners of her eyes, hidden, dripping onto the floor. She wanted to scream out the rage and helplessness and sheer unkindness she felt at the universe, and at him too, for being found and lost again so soon.
Something was coming, some sort of crushing disaster that he might even have caused simply by being around to withdraw slowly from her body and climb shakily to his feet, pulling her up against him and putting his arms around her. She hid her face in his chest, and she cried because she loved him and couldn’t bear to feel her heart smashing again, and she cried for all the wasted time, for all the second chances thrown away, for all the things he’d never said, and she cried for all the future cut down, cut off and concentrated into this little bit of now.
She couldn’t trust him to tell her all his secrets and that wasn’t likely to change. He wasn’t going to put her first all the time, and he was definitely, one day, going to leave her behind.
But she wasn’t living in the middle of a steamy romantic novel, the sort of teenage fiction where love at first sight was the end of the story and happily ever after a foregone conclusion. Real life wasn’t like that; it wasn’t perfect, it wasn’t easy. Everyone tried to do the right thing but everyone lied a little, everyone made mistakes. Responsibilities got in the way and wanting to come first all the time was just another way of being selfish. Real life was just getting up in the morning and hoping to make a difference. It had taken her far too long to realise just how little time she had.
He swept her off her feet, picked her up as if she weighed nothing and laid her carefully on the bed, knocking all the carefully arranged soft furnishings onto the floor as so much irrelevance. His hand came up to touch her face, his fingertips gently tracking the outline of her cheek, brushing away stray strands of hair and ending up following the line of her jaw, erasing the wetness of tears underneath. Inches away, he smiled. It was that same indomitable, heart-sundering smile, the one that said that in spite of all the dangers, in spite of Consequences and Bad things, in the very face of a world that needed saving, there was still hope. It was a lesson he’d tried to teach her before. It was his answer.
‘I love you,’ he said, in the pause following the smile, reached for her hand, and laced his fingers through hers securely.
She thought, I could love you until the day I die, but all we have is now.
Not enough time.
He made the most of now. He made the most of it until she forgot that anything else existed. He welcomed her home with his lips and his tongue and his skilful hand, and his mouth between her legs and his body lost inside her. She found that place that he loved to have licked and reminded him why he should never have let her go in the first place. Throughout the long night he held her hand as a promise that he’d never let her go again.
It was a brisk, cold dawn. A breeze whistled downstream and sunlight spangled the roiling grey waters of the Thames without illuminating the depths below. Seagulls scraped the sky with a raucous shrieking and the granite pavement of the riverbank glistened with a coating of drizzle. The Doctor stood on his own outside the gallery, waiting for Rose to get dressed and considered the Consequences staring him in the face. He hadn’t managed to come up with a saving the world plan, and wasn’t really sure he understood the danger, but the giant airship crashed into the top of Canary Wharf tower told him that the Bad things that were coming had finally arrived.
His teeth hurt so much he’d eaten half a packet of old aniseed sweets he found in his pocket all at once in an attempt to get rid of the pain. He sighed, wanting desperately just to take the TARDIS and Rose with it and race for the stars. But the consequences of his mistakes were his responsibility and despite all the running, he’d never really been free. He had sadly wasted his second chance, or whatever number he was up to now. He could tell Rose was worried and that in all likelihood, she was back in the ship throwing up and trying to hide it.
Choices, and the freedom to make them were important, but without trust, and truth, any choice was just a leap in the dark. He wondered whether he had another morning, or an hour, or a minute even, before today became the day he left her behind. Some things weren’t meant to be. He’d never really deserved a second chance.
A hand slipped into his and he trapped her against the railing with his arms on either side, resting his chin on her shoulder as they looked together at the damage a zeppelin could cause to the top of a building.
‘I dreamt about you, you know’ she said, burrowing back against his chest. ‘Before I ever remembered. You looked like someone else, but it was you in my head.’
He wasn’t quite sure what to make of that.
‘Oh, and Mickey called,’ she said, doing well to keep her voice neutral. ‘He said to meet him there. He was on about Torchwood?’
The Doctor shrugged. ‘Doesn’t matter what it’s called. There’s always something.’ He tightened his embrace, as if the strength in his arms could make her feel the words as well as hear them. ‘Before, during and after all of this - I love you, remember?’
She nodded. ‘It’s the after that worries me.’
But when they stepped out of the TARDIS on the very top floor of the very highest building in London following an energy signature spiking so dramatically it was nearly off the chart they were most definitely after whatever it was that had happened. All that was left was a bare white room, with a lever on either side, a couple of computers, an upturned chair or two and a deserted office, with the Torchwood moniker everywhere. There weren’t any people, and little sign of their presence, other than a half drunk cup of coffee, still warm. The Doctor typed a couple of commands into a terminal, squinted at the results and then spent about five minutes trying to learn the system and find out exactly what was going on.
Rose wandered into the office, called out while he was still typing. ‘Look at the flashing lights near the ceiling. There’s a silent alarm in here that’s been tripped. The whole building must’ve been evacuated.’
He shook his head grimly. ‘Don’t think so. Can’t you smell it?’
She sniffed at the air suspiciously, her eyebrows drawing into a frown as she caught the same scent that was so clear to him. The smell of residual energy like an old thunderstorm, a faint touch of something burning and behind it all a cloying hint of sweetness. He placed it easily as the first creeping flavour of decay. Somewhere close, there was death. This tower was a tomb.
She strolled back to stare at the screen over his shoulder. ‘What do the levers do?’
‘Not much,’ he replied, finishing and heading for the TARDIS again to scan for whatever was on the loose and out for a killing spree. ‘It’s like a doorway between worlds - open the door and whatever’s on that side comes through, or vice versa. Doesn’t look like they’ve used it more than twice though.’
She was still focused on the screen but he’d already unlocked the door and was halfway back inside when he heard a very familiar, impossibly familiar, shockingly familiar buzzing noise approaching rapidly around the blind side of the TARDIS. It haunted his nightmares. It was a sound that was usually followed by screaming and then silence. From the doorway of the TARDIS he found himself looking down the barrel of a Dalek. Just the one, all on its own. One was enough. He tried not to make any sudden movements despite the out of control steeplechase his hearts had entered and the all conquering, unreasoning fear that made his palms sweat, fear that he couldn’t brush off as a slight concern. The Dalek was pointing securely in his direction, and it hadn’t seen Rose, standing vulnerable by the terminal.
Pleading with the universe for just a little leeway, he called out quietly. ‘Rose - remember how you flew the TARDIS? Do it again. Now.’
The universe wasn’t cruel, or kind, or anything else and fate and destiny were just constructs to soothe lonely souls. The Dalek's eyestalk swivelled even as her hands raised to type ‘emergency programme’ into the keyboard. He couldn’t think of what else to do. Time slowed to an agonising dawdle, measured only by the click of the letters in the quiet. So he shouted. There hadn’t been enough shouting recently and he was good at shouting. Shouting was practically a hobby, behind fixing things and saving the world. He didn’t even know what he was shouting, and he didn’t care as long as the Dalek turned back in his direction.
It did. She hit the return key. The Dalek got as far as ‘Exter-’ and never finished the last two syllables as the levers behind it flicked back automatically and the gateway into whatever world was waiting opened, and it hurtled towards the blank wall at breakneck speed.
He paid it no attention. He had no attention left for anything but the look of horror on Rose’s face and the glowing crack in space and time that seemed to have split wide behind her. He was in the TARDIS, safe, and she was outside, unprotected, and she was fading, sucked backwards into the gaping hole that he recognised as the inevitable, tangible existence of Consequences. His mistakes were coming for her. She was going to leave him behind.
Choices, and the freedom to make them were important. He’d got her to run Torchwood’s own emergency programme, set up to reverse whatever last command the computers had carried out. He could turn it off easily, just by using the remote control on the sonic screwdriver. If he did that, he’d save Rose. If he did that, he’d save the Dalek too.
He needed her. He’d never been able to let her go. She was the woman he loved. The woman he’d loved since the day he met her, the woman who was his best and dearest friend, the reason he got up in the morning and the companion of his night-time hours. But the world needed him too. It was a question of doing the right thing.
He’d promised to look after her - and that was right at the top of the list under the heading Mistake Number One. Mistake Number Two was setting up emergency programme one because he couldn’t bear to just leave her alone with no way out. And that left Mistake Number Three. The last best mistake of all. He loved her, beyond all time and space, beyond fate and destiny, beyond hope. Because of that mistake he was willing to make any and all of the others, all over again, as many times as necessary.
He was in the TARDIS, safe, and she was on the outside, only a little way away, almost within reach, so close he could almost reach out and touch her. Nobody was leaving anybody else behind. So he did the only thing he knew to do.
He ran.
He ran as if all the other running he’d ever done had just been practicing for this moment. He ran because the only time he was absolutely sure they had left together was now. He ran because she was his hope, his only hope, the foundation and the start and the end of all the hope he had left.
There were only a couple of yards between them, and wherever she was going, he wanted to go too. But he wasn’t fast enough, wasn’t quick enough, couldn’t keep up with how soon she was leaving him behind. His eyes held her, spoke to her, pleaded with her not to go, begging for another second, another minute, another hour, another forever. He was running, still running, always running towards happiness and never quite finishing the race.
He wanted an eternity, but all he had been given was now.
He stretched out his hand to her, held out his arms even as he reached the place she had been standing, even as he saw the last echo of her fade into the vacant air like a projection, like a daydream he’d once had and then lost. He held out his arms, but they remained empty. Forever empty, forever alone.
Not enough time.
Chapter 7: London: http://sap1066.livejournal.com/16249.html
Chapter 6: Her fear: http://sap1066.livejournal.com/15944.html
Chapter 5: Impossible planets:http://sap1066.livejournal.com/15848.html
Chapter 4: New York:http://sap1066.livejournal.com/15364.html
Chapter 3: The Idiot:http://sap1066.livejournal.com/15356.html
Chapter 2: The Rise of Steel: http://sap1066.livejournal.com/15097.html
Chapter 1: Consequences: http://sap1066.livejournal.com/14430.html
Pairing: Nine/Rose
Rating: Adult
Content: Adventure; Romance; Graphic Sex; Angst; Ten
Disclaimer: BBC owned as usual
Chapters: 8/9
Summary: A second chance. A new beginning. A different ending?
Chapter 8: Army of arms
Not enough time.
She left one of her trainers lying by the door, hopped a few steps onwards and kicked the other one off halfway up the ramp, the Doctor’s heavy footfalls clanging behind her.
Not enough time.
She was down the corridor and on the way to his room before she managed to haul off her jeans. He was much closer behind her, although he’d obviously got rid of his boots because he was doing rather more stalking and rather less clumping around.
Not enough time.
She had remembered, and now all she wanted to do was forget. In the end, she hadn’t been able to hear ‘I love you’ come flying out of his mouth like so many shimmering angels and not respond. Something was coming, and no matter how fast she raced, time was catching up. She knew he had serious problems with that as a reason to jump groin first into a relationship. She knew he wanted her to choose to be with him without any pressure, and for the right reasons, but she’d realised eventually that whether it was sooner, or much, much later, everybody left everybody else behind in the end. Making the most of today, of this hour, this minute even, was the best reason she could think of. If he was going again she wanted to make sure she had something to remember him by, because her memory was going to be all she’d have left.
Not enough time.
In the distance, she heard the almost sensual slapping sound his coat made as he discarded it, and the thought of all those fragments of his regard for her being left behind spurred her to run faster. She ran for the only time she was sure they had left, and that was now.
She also ran into his bedroom. Stopped, checked to make sure she hadn’t barged through the wrong doorway by mistake and had a good look round. He had cleaned. He’d also increased the temperature by a couple of degrees and his bed was now graced with a decent amount of sheets and pillows as well as something that looked remarkably like a cushion. There were actual living flowers in a vase on the bedside table with not a nut, bolt or half assembled bit of machinery in sight. It looked like he swapped ‘Mechanics’ Monthly Magazine’ for ‘Spaceship Decorators’ Weekly’ and the transformation continued into the bathroom, which now contained a fully usable bath, rather than half a factory and bits of car.
She came out of the en-suite to find him standing against the closed bedroom door, arms folded, with so much wonder, and pride and sheer happiness in his eyes that her wandering thoughts were silenced, stilled, and her heart took over. He held out his hand.
There was a space of existence when she must have been walking, but instead the impression of his body burned itself back onto her retina - the individual tension in every sharp muscle in his shoulders, the gleaming paleness of skin, spare and lean across his chest, a scattering of hair, the tautness of his stomach. And his eyes, not so much windows on his soul as the only place his soul could escape, told her all the secrets he’d never share, spoke the truths he couldn’t utter.
She ran the tips of her fingers up his chest, just to remind herself what it felt like to have him captured, waiting. He watched her do it, holding himself steady at the drag of her nails across his nipples, at the spanning of her hands as she measured his chest. She looked a question up at him, fingers moving down over the smooth lines of his torso and pausing at the waistband of his jeans and he nodded, with the single short nod he favoured when he didn’t have any words.
She undid his trousers with a slight shake in her hands, feeling stupidly nervous and trying to remind herself that he was only an ex-boyfriend, and she’d done this lots of times before. It was just that every move she made seemed to be etching itself into her memory and she was conscious of every single second that ticked past. There wasn’t enough time. She needed to go faster. He knew. He must have felt it too.
With that supernatural flash of speed he showed sometimes she found their positions reversed, her back against the door and her bra lost somewhere in the turn. He was kissing her. It took her a minute to realise what he was doing before she relaxed and let the sensation of his tongue sliding swiftly within her mouth work its forgotten magic.
She tilted her head back, put one arm up and around his neck and re-lived the texture of his lips, his taste, the way he could make her shudder with only a kiss. A kiss and his hand on her breast at least, squeezing her rounded curves between his fingers, the hard skin on his thumb rasping across her nipple with an exhilarating roughness.
But it wasn’t enough, all of a sudden it wasn’t enough, and the countdown circling in her head grew louder. She wanted him now, right now because there was no guarantee that he’d still be here in another day, another hour, another minute even. She wanted, needed him inside her, to tell her that he was still real, still here. He knew. Maybe he felt it too.
She struggled out of her own underwear with an effort, trying to kiss him a lot more fiercely until she found herself lifted, her back slamming against the door with the urgent rush of his body between her thighs. She cried out, tightened her arms around his neck convulsively, not because she wasn’t ready, not because he hurt her, but because she remembered how much she’d missed him like a spike in the chest. His mouth dug into the side of her throat, teeth nibbling, suckling, and sending lightening shivers down her spine. She welcomed the grind of his hips into hers, the sinuous practiced motion as he lifted her up, and then forced her down, penetrated her again, and again and again. She felt him pull back, launch forward and she was ready, so ready, so much so that she crossed her legs around his backside, tensed all her muscles to get every last bit of him inside.
She curled her fingers in his hair, knew the shift of his shoulders as with fast, deliberate, powerful drives he thrust himself within her, once, twice, again. She didn’t want it to end, craved more of that unyielding pressure banging hot and tight against her, that deep push of man into woman that made forgetting simple.
A fire ignited in her loins, swept outwards through her belly, made her legs quiver, her toes point, sent a groan flying between her lips and her whole body clenched in the throes of orgasm. She bowed to the commands of pleasure, shook and juddered her way through an intense climax with the Doctor poised, still, hard and heavy between her thighs, letting her come around him.
When she was conscious enough to release her deathgrip on his shoulders and he lifted her down she realised he’d been biting her neck because the skin flinched away from the movement of his lips as he whispered, ‘You know you always come first.’
Although only his mouth was smiling, his whole body laughed. She tried to see the joke, wanted to see the joke, wished desperately to see the joke but the countdown in her head drowned out anything else he might have said. He was going to leave again. She was sure all of this was just the build up to him leaving her behind.
Not enough time.
‘Again,’ she said. ‘Again.’
He didn’t let her get as far as the bed, yanking her down onto the floor a couple of feet away, with his fingers firmly on her hips. She waited on her hands and knees, legs spread, for him to enter her again, and when he did, it was fast and hot and all about sweat and effort and pleasure. He groaned when he guided himself within her body and felt her push back into his erection, meeting his thrusts stroke for stroke. She hung her head, closed her eyes and let her hair fall forward as she concentrated on the man kneeling behind her, his hard flesh jerking into her waiting depths with a fiery passion. She lost count of the number of times he pulled her back, sheathed himself inside her and made her cry out with the grate of delicious friction on that secret place buried within. She ignored the pain as his fingers dug into her waist because it meant that he was there, joined with her in the bodily ecstasy of uncomplicated sex. Her breath came faster, her breasts bounced against her chest as he took her, rode her without compunction. She ignored the first time she came. He took it as a sign to go quicker, slamming into her with a speed he clearly couldn’t control and had stopped trying to even slow. He came then, with a shuddering cry and a last urgent rush that buckled her legs and collapsed them both face down onto the floor. He lay heavily on her back, making it difficult to breathe and she could hear the air rasping through his nostrils.
Not enough time. There was still a clock ticking in her head, even as she lay and listened to him recover and tried to estimate how long it would be before he could do it again. Tears slipped hot from the corners of her eyes, hidden, dripping onto the floor. She wanted to scream out the rage and helplessness and sheer unkindness she felt at the universe, and at him too, for being found and lost again so soon.
Something was coming, some sort of crushing disaster that he might even have caused simply by being around to withdraw slowly from her body and climb shakily to his feet, pulling her up against him and putting his arms around her. She hid her face in his chest, and she cried because she loved him and couldn’t bear to feel her heart smashing again, and she cried for all the wasted time, for all the second chances thrown away, for all the things he’d never said, and she cried for all the future cut down, cut off and concentrated into this little bit of now.
She couldn’t trust him to tell her all his secrets and that wasn’t likely to change. He wasn’t going to put her first all the time, and he was definitely, one day, going to leave her behind.
But she wasn’t living in the middle of a steamy romantic novel, the sort of teenage fiction where love at first sight was the end of the story and happily ever after a foregone conclusion. Real life wasn’t like that; it wasn’t perfect, it wasn’t easy. Everyone tried to do the right thing but everyone lied a little, everyone made mistakes. Responsibilities got in the way and wanting to come first all the time was just another way of being selfish. Real life was just getting up in the morning and hoping to make a difference. It had taken her far too long to realise just how little time she had.
He swept her off her feet, picked her up as if she weighed nothing and laid her carefully on the bed, knocking all the carefully arranged soft furnishings onto the floor as so much irrelevance. His hand came up to touch her face, his fingertips gently tracking the outline of her cheek, brushing away stray strands of hair and ending up following the line of her jaw, erasing the wetness of tears underneath. Inches away, he smiled. It was that same indomitable, heart-sundering smile, the one that said that in spite of all the dangers, in spite of Consequences and Bad things, in the very face of a world that needed saving, there was still hope. It was a lesson he’d tried to teach her before. It was his answer.
‘I love you,’ he said, in the pause following the smile, reached for her hand, and laced his fingers through hers securely.
She thought, I could love you until the day I die, but all we have is now.
Not enough time.
He made the most of now. He made the most of it until she forgot that anything else existed. He welcomed her home with his lips and his tongue and his skilful hand, and his mouth between her legs and his body lost inside her. She found that place that he loved to have licked and reminded him why he should never have let her go in the first place. Throughout the long night he held her hand as a promise that he’d never let her go again.
It was a brisk, cold dawn. A breeze whistled downstream and sunlight spangled the roiling grey waters of the Thames without illuminating the depths below. Seagulls scraped the sky with a raucous shrieking and the granite pavement of the riverbank glistened with a coating of drizzle. The Doctor stood on his own outside the gallery, waiting for Rose to get dressed and considered the Consequences staring him in the face. He hadn’t managed to come up with a saving the world plan, and wasn’t really sure he understood the danger, but the giant airship crashed into the top of Canary Wharf tower told him that the Bad things that were coming had finally arrived.
His teeth hurt so much he’d eaten half a packet of old aniseed sweets he found in his pocket all at once in an attempt to get rid of the pain. He sighed, wanting desperately just to take the TARDIS and Rose with it and race for the stars. But the consequences of his mistakes were his responsibility and despite all the running, he’d never really been free. He had sadly wasted his second chance, or whatever number he was up to now. He could tell Rose was worried and that in all likelihood, she was back in the ship throwing up and trying to hide it.
Choices, and the freedom to make them were important, but without trust, and truth, any choice was just a leap in the dark. He wondered whether he had another morning, or an hour, or a minute even, before today became the day he left her behind. Some things weren’t meant to be. He’d never really deserved a second chance.
A hand slipped into his and he trapped her against the railing with his arms on either side, resting his chin on her shoulder as they looked together at the damage a zeppelin could cause to the top of a building.
‘I dreamt about you, you know’ she said, burrowing back against his chest. ‘Before I ever remembered. You looked like someone else, but it was you in my head.’
He wasn’t quite sure what to make of that.
‘Oh, and Mickey called,’ she said, doing well to keep her voice neutral. ‘He said to meet him there. He was on about Torchwood?’
The Doctor shrugged. ‘Doesn’t matter what it’s called. There’s always something.’ He tightened his embrace, as if the strength in his arms could make her feel the words as well as hear them. ‘Before, during and after all of this - I love you, remember?’
She nodded. ‘It’s the after that worries me.’
But when they stepped out of the TARDIS on the very top floor of the very highest building in London following an energy signature spiking so dramatically it was nearly off the chart they were most definitely after whatever it was that had happened. All that was left was a bare white room, with a lever on either side, a couple of computers, an upturned chair or two and a deserted office, with the Torchwood moniker everywhere. There weren’t any people, and little sign of their presence, other than a half drunk cup of coffee, still warm. The Doctor typed a couple of commands into a terminal, squinted at the results and then spent about five minutes trying to learn the system and find out exactly what was going on.
Rose wandered into the office, called out while he was still typing. ‘Look at the flashing lights near the ceiling. There’s a silent alarm in here that’s been tripped. The whole building must’ve been evacuated.’
He shook his head grimly. ‘Don’t think so. Can’t you smell it?’
She sniffed at the air suspiciously, her eyebrows drawing into a frown as she caught the same scent that was so clear to him. The smell of residual energy like an old thunderstorm, a faint touch of something burning and behind it all a cloying hint of sweetness. He placed it easily as the first creeping flavour of decay. Somewhere close, there was death. This tower was a tomb.
She strolled back to stare at the screen over his shoulder. ‘What do the levers do?’
‘Not much,’ he replied, finishing and heading for the TARDIS again to scan for whatever was on the loose and out for a killing spree. ‘It’s like a doorway between worlds - open the door and whatever’s on that side comes through, or vice versa. Doesn’t look like they’ve used it more than twice though.’
She was still focused on the screen but he’d already unlocked the door and was halfway back inside when he heard a very familiar, impossibly familiar, shockingly familiar buzzing noise approaching rapidly around the blind side of the TARDIS. It haunted his nightmares. It was a sound that was usually followed by screaming and then silence. From the doorway of the TARDIS he found himself looking down the barrel of a Dalek. Just the one, all on its own. One was enough. He tried not to make any sudden movements despite the out of control steeplechase his hearts had entered and the all conquering, unreasoning fear that made his palms sweat, fear that he couldn’t brush off as a slight concern. The Dalek was pointing securely in his direction, and it hadn’t seen Rose, standing vulnerable by the terminal.
Pleading with the universe for just a little leeway, he called out quietly. ‘Rose - remember how you flew the TARDIS? Do it again. Now.’
The universe wasn’t cruel, or kind, or anything else and fate and destiny were just constructs to soothe lonely souls. The Dalek's eyestalk swivelled even as her hands raised to type ‘emergency programme’ into the keyboard. He couldn’t think of what else to do. Time slowed to an agonising dawdle, measured only by the click of the letters in the quiet. So he shouted. There hadn’t been enough shouting recently and he was good at shouting. Shouting was practically a hobby, behind fixing things and saving the world. He didn’t even know what he was shouting, and he didn’t care as long as the Dalek turned back in his direction.
It did. She hit the return key. The Dalek got as far as ‘Exter-’ and never finished the last two syllables as the levers behind it flicked back automatically and the gateway into whatever world was waiting opened, and it hurtled towards the blank wall at breakneck speed.
He paid it no attention. He had no attention left for anything but the look of horror on Rose’s face and the glowing crack in space and time that seemed to have split wide behind her. He was in the TARDIS, safe, and she was outside, unprotected, and she was fading, sucked backwards into the gaping hole that he recognised as the inevitable, tangible existence of Consequences. His mistakes were coming for her. She was going to leave him behind.
Choices, and the freedom to make them were important. He’d got her to run Torchwood’s own emergency programme, set up to reverse whatever last command the computers had carried out. He could turn it off easily, just by using the remote control on the sonic screwdriver. If he did that, he’d save Rose. If he did that, he’d save the Dalek too.
He needed her. He’d never been able to let her go. She was the woman he loved. The woman he’d loved since the day he met her, the woman who was his best and dearest friend, the reason he got up in the morning and the companion of his night-time hours. But the world needed him too. It was a question of doing the right thing.
He’d promised to look after her - and that was right at the top of the list under the heading Mistake Number One. Mistake Number Two was setting up emergency programme one because he couldn’t bear to just leave her alone with no way out. And that left Mistake Number Three. The last best mistake of all. He loved her, beyond all time and space, beyond fate and destiny, beyond hope. Because of that mistake he was willing to make any and all of the others, all over again, as many times as necessary.
He was in the TARDIS, safe, and she was on the outside, only a little way away, almost within reach, so close he could almost reach out and touch her. Nobody was leaving anybody else behind. So he did the only thing he knew to do.
He ran.
He ran as if all the other running he’d ever done had just been practicing for this moment. He ran because the only time he was absolutely sure they had left together was now. He ran because she was his hope, his only hope, the foundation and the start and the end of all the hope he had left.
There were only a couple of yards between them, and wherever she was going, he wanted to go too. But he wasn’t fast enough, wasn’t quick enough, couldn’t keep up with how soon she was leaving him behind. His eyes held her, spoke to her, pleaded with her not to go, begging for another second, another minute, another hour, another forever. He was running, still running, always running towards happiness and never quite finishing the race.
He wanted an eternity, but all he had been given was now.
He stretched out his hand to her, held out his arms even as he reached the place she had been standing, even as he saw the last echo of her fade into the vacant air like a projection, like a daydream he’d once had and then lost. He held out his arms, but they remained empty. Forever empty, forever alone.
Not enough time.
Chapter 7: London: http://sap1066.livejournal.com/16249.html
Chapter 6: Her fear: http://sap1066.livejournal.com/15944.html
Chapter 5: Impossible planets:http://sap1066.livejournal.com/15848.html
Chapter 4: New York:http://sap1066.livejournal.com/15364.html
Chapter 3: The Idiot:http://sap1066.livejournal.com/15356.html
Chapter 2: The Rise of Steel: http://sap1066.livejournal.com/15097.html
Chapter 1: Consequences: http://sap1066.livejournal.com/14430.html