Won't Live Forever, Chapter 3
A/N: annnnddddd...this is all that's done so far. More soon. I hope.
Set during the new Doctor Who series, Season 2, during the episode "Rise of the Cybermen".
Chapter 3
Rose fumed as she stormed down the strange-yet-familiar street.
Things had been better for the past few days. Not perfect-she was still sleeping in her own room, after all, she reflected, brows drawing together in irritation-but there had been a restored level of closeness and camaraderie between her and The Doctor (which seemed to annoy Mickey to no end, as he was entirely unable to contribute to their reminiscing and inside jokes).
After that one terrible night on the ghost ship, she had been expecting to wake up stuffy, miserable and more than a little resentful, but much to her surprise, that hadn’t been the case. Her room had still been in a bit of disarray when she opened her eyes…which is one way of saying that it looked roughly like it had been in the path of a particularly dedicated tornado (or a very angry teen-aged girl, which is so much the same thing that they are both listed under the same universal warning code), but at some point in the night, it seemed that she had woken up enough to get herself to bed, along with apparently having had the foresight to clean up the worst of the broken glass on her floor, the result of which being that slept comfortably and didn’t step on a pile of pointy things when she got up.
Furthermore, the pointy things that her feet had already encountered were conspicuously absent. She had been wondering for a while if she was recovering more quickly from injury than she had been prior meeting Jack’s Tulah nano-genes-this certainly seemed to confirm her theory that The Doctor had missed a couple.
So all in all, her day started in a much better place than she would have anticipated.
What had taken a few minutes to reconcile, however, was the overall feeling of peace and wellbeing she felt, cuddled under her fluffy comforter. It tingled through her veins like the remnants of a wonderful dream, but it didn’t fade away as her haze of sleep thinned. She had waited tensely for painful reality to trample her contentment. When her good mood had continued to linger, she had prodded memories of the night before, of how alone and afraid she had been, hesitantly at first, and then with more commitment, dredging up the anger and tears, the sight of The Doctor disappearing, theoretically forever, through the mirror to be someone else’s hero.
She had been mildly puzzled. It wasn’t as though she had forgotten the events that had turned her into a sobbing wreck. She had still been angry with The Doctor on an intellectual level, but…well, he saved people. If he didn’t do that, he wouldn’t be The Doctor. He couldn’t exactly have left that poor girl to her fate, and let historical timelines be skewed out of alignment. Rose had signed on as TARDIS crew, and that meant that she accepted the danger, the risks, the uncertainty. The moment she had made the choice to step through the doors of the waiting blue box, she had made the choice to become rescuer, rather than rescue-ee. She knew that. Sometimes, well…one could loose perspective from time to time-that was all. Especially if one was slightly less than two decades old and trying to deal with tempestuous emotions and lustful longings for a Time Lord who was slightly less than one millennium old, especially one who acted like a hyperactive child half the time and had that adorably rumpled hair and lovely brown eyes and….and it had been a rather irresponsible choice on HIS behalf. But, well…his plans were occasionally not as thoroughly thought through as they could have been.
Shaking her head in bemusement, she had thrown back the comforter and swung her legs over the side of the bed. It seemed that her Mum’s thoughts on a girl sometimes needing to have a good cry, and also on things often looking brighter in the morning had some merit after all.
So, after a much needed shower, she had donned her favorite jeans and a cozy sweater, and wandered into the kitchen with a spring in her step. She had rejoiced at the sight of fluffy pancakes and had joked with Mickey as they created silly faces with the components of their breakfasts. She had glanced up in the middle of a laughing fit induced by Mickey’s pancake version of their old Headmaster to see The Doctor leaning against the doorway. She had flashed him a bright smile and gestured for him to come join them, and shortly thereafter, he had the two Londoners in stitches with his abysmal attempts at breakfast art.
He had looked at her a handful of times during that day as if he wanted to say something, but each time he had ended up wandering off purposefully (only he could wander with purpose) to fiddle with some wiring or check on the ship’s readings. Rose breathed a sigh of relief each time he decided against a heart-to-heart-despite her acceptance of his role in the universe and the fact that she mostly didn’t want to hit him anymore, if he tried to talk to her about Rennet, she wasn’t entirely sure she could be held accountable for what came out of her mouth. Especially if he had sat her down and tried to explain in small words that saving other people and preserving the timeline was his job and that he knew her short-sighted species had a difficult time understanding long term consequences-no, she was definitely happier that they just left it where it was.
But aside from that few hours of minor awkwardness, life on the TARDIS the past few days had been great-it had even transcended into spectacular recently, on a blissful night of movie watching that Mickey had bowed out of early on, due to a lack of modern guns or sports featuring prominently in the plot. She and The Doctor had curled up in pajamas on the fluffy sofa and made a valiant effort at watching the entire extended Lord of the Rings saga in one go. They had bantered playfully over the merits of various characters and the true nature of Sam and Frodo’s relationship. They had a popcorn fight when he teased her about the fan-girl-esque squeals she released when Aragon came into the picture, and asked why Legolas didn’t get the same treatment, since she obviously had such a thing for pretty boys.
A short time into the second movie, she had winced as she tried and failed to stifle a huge yawn, sure that she was about to be sent off to bed followed by a trail of ramblings focused on humans and the ludicrous amounts of sleep they needed. Instead, the Time Lord had chuckled, shaking his head, pulled her against him and tucked his chin on top of her blonde locks. She had drowsily wrapped her arms around his waist and been lulled to sleep by the staggered rhythm of his twin heartbeats.
She had drifted to consciousness a while later and had been amused to discover that not even The Great and Mighty Oncoming Storm could outlast the full extended edition of Lord of the Rings. For a few moments she had watched the light from the screen flicker across his sleeping features, then laid her head back against his chest as sleep reclaimed her. Her own heart had beat double when she had shifted to find a more comfortable position and his arms had tightened around her, preventing her from moving away from him.
When she had next opened her eyes, she had been in her own bed, but she could still smell the scent of his skin on her clothes (which she resolved immediately not to wash, again, ever). After showering and changing, she had nearly skipped down to the console room, the few scraps of dignity she clung to the only thing that restrained her. (That and the multi-lingual ‘no running, skipping or rough housing in the corridors’ signs posted every few meters-she had to wonder, had it really been enough of a problem at some point to require the posting of signs?)
When she’d bounced through the doorway into the blue-washed room, Mickey had been lounging against the railing, a steaming mug of tea in each hand.
“How’d the marathon go?” he’d asked, handing her one.
“Fell asleep,” she’d admitted, taking a quick sip of the scalding liquid to cover up her irrepressible grin.
“Bloody humans,” The Doctor had grumbled as he crawled out from under an access panel, “All that sleeping…can’t even make it through a decent movie marathon…”
“Oi! You fell asleep too! I saw you,” She’d shot back.
“How could you have?” He’d raised a questioning eyebrow. “You were asleep. Said so yourself.” He had grinned triumphantly, flopping down in the captain’s chair and reaching for Rose’s cup. All her attempts to argue her case, or regain her tea were thwarted, but even that couldn’t puncture her buoyant mood.
The three of them had spent the morning lazing around the console room, joking and reminiscing-well, she and The Doctor joked and reminisced, and Mickey tried valiantly, but fruitlessly to join in, or failing that, steer the conversation topics he could contribute to.
And then, in the midst of their laughter and gee, as the poem said, they’d fallen out of the Vortex.
She wrapped her arms around her in an attempt to ward off the chilly air as she stalked past building and shops that she barely didn’t quite recognize. She understood that The Doctor was worried about his ship. After having had a rather close connection with the TARDIS her self on one notable occasion, Rose was concerned, too. But she didn’t see how treating her like a petulant child was going to fix things.
Rose plopped down on a picnic bench and glared out at the water. Of course she knew that this wasn’t her world. Exactly how thick did he think she was?
Wait…no, probably don’t want the answer to that, she thought, shoving her hands deep into her coat pockets.
She knew this Pete wasn’t her dad. She really did. Her eyebrows pulled together in consternation as she stared out at the choppy grey surf. She just wanted to... She wanted to maybe see what he might have been like. She knew better than to try to talk to him. After all, it wouldn’t do to have a girl who probably looked just like his own daughter walk up to him and ask the time. But what could it hurt to just see him in passing, maybe…just across a street…see what he turned out like? See what kind of dad this world’s Rose got to grow up with?
But no, Mr. High and Mighty Lord of Time and Space acts like she’s going to waltz out into this world and invade her not-family’s life, or create a bloody paradox-seriously! That happened once! She’d pretty much learned her lesson on that count. It’s infuriating. Half the time…well…more like a third or a quarter of the time…but occasionally, at least, he gives her…well, a bit more credit than she thinks is her due-throws her into a complicated situation and gives her an, ‘I know you can do it’ grin before taking off in the opposite direction and leaving her to extricate herself. And then other times, he treats her like she doesn’t know which side of a time vortex is up, like she’s just ‘another stupid ape’.
And what’s really unfair, he hardly says two words to Mickey! It’s all, “Rose, he’s not your da,’ ‘Rose this isn’t your world,’ ‘Rose don’t get into trouble,’ ‘Rose, please try not to break the universe.’ What does he tell Mickey? Practically nothing. Bloody Boys’ Club. And who on this trip was most likely to make some monumental blunder that would have them running for their lives before lunchtime? Well…probably The Doctor. And between the two humans along for this wacky fun vacation? Right, probably not the girl who has been to the end of the world, stood up to the crazy emperor of the Daleks, and spectated the London Blitz by barrage balloon.
She jumped when her phone started beeping in her pocket.
Pulling it out she squinted at the screen. Free trial? She hadn’t been able to get a signal all day…despite whatever gizmos The Doctor had hooked up to her phone, they didn’t seem to pack quite enough punch to push through to another universe.
She looked at the screen speculatively. She always felt a bit hedgy about ‘free’ trials-Jackie was rarely able to resist their allure, a fact that had forced Rose to put in overtime at the shop a time or two when free turned into automatic service charges and required activation fees-but, with any luck, they’d be back where they belonged before this bill came due…and if not, well…she could always look into alternate service providers tomorrow, if no one was trying to kill them.
Absently, she began scanning through the options her screen was displaying. People search, huh? That certainly wasn’t something that came with her old service. She thought for a moment, then entered ‘Peter Tyler’ into the search field.
Set during the new Doctor Who series, Season 2, during the episode "Rise of the Cybermen".
Chapter 3
Rose fumed as she stormed down the strange-yet-familiar street.
Things had been better for the past few days. Not perfect-she was still sleeping in her own room, after all, she reflected, brows drawing together in irritation-but there had been a restored level of closeness and camaraderie between her and The Doctor (which seemed to annoy Mickey to no end, as he was entirely unable to contribute to their reminiscing and inside jokes).
After that one terrible night on the ghost ship, she had been expecting to wake up stuffy, miserable and more than a little resentful, but much to her surprise, that hadn’t been the case. Her room had still been in a bit of disarray when she opened her eyes…which is one way of saying that it looked roughly like it had been in the path of a particularly dedicated tornado (or a very angry teen-aged girl, which is so much the same thing that they are both listed under the same universal warning code), but at some point in the night, it seemed that she had woken up enough to get herself to bed, along with apparently having had the foresight to clean up the worst of the broken glass on her floor, the result of which being that slept comfortably and didn’t step on a pile of pointy things when she got up.
Furthermore, the pointy things that her feet had already encountered were conspicuously absent. She had been wondering for a while if she was recovering more quickly from injury than she had been prior meeting Jack’s Tulah nano-genes-this certainly seemed to confirm her theory that The Doctor had missed a couple.
So all in all, her day started in a much better place than she would have anticipated.
What had taken a few minutes to reconcile, however, was the overall feeling of peace and wellbeing she felt, cuddled under her fluffy comforter. It tingled through her veins like the remnants of a wonderful dream, but it didn’t fade away as her haze of sleep thinned. She had waited tensely for painful reality to trample her contentment. When her good mood had continued to linger, she had prodded memories of the night before, of how alone and afraid she had been, hesitantly at first, and then with more commitment, dredging up the anger and tears, the sight of The Doctor disappearing, theoretically forever, through the mirror to be someone else’s hero.
She had been mildly puzzled. It wasn’t as though she had forgotten the events that had turned her into a sobbing wreck. She had still been angry with The Doctor on an intellectual level, but…well, he saved people. If he didn’t do that, he wouldn’t be The Doctor. He couldn’t exactly have left that poor girl to her fate, and let historical timelines be skewed out of alignment. Rose had signed on as TARDIS crew, and that meant that she accepted the danger, the risks, the uncertainty. The moment she had made the choice to step through the doors of the waiting blue box, she had made the choice to become rescuer, rather than rescue-ee. She knew that. Sometimes, well…one could loose perspective from time to time-that was all. Especially if one was slightly less than two decades old and trying to deal with tempestuous emotions and lustful longings for a Time Lord who was slightly less than one millennium old, especially one who acted like a hyperactive child half the time and had that adorably rumpled hair and lovely brown eyes and….and it had been a rather irresponsible choice on HIS behalf. But, well…his plans were occasionally not as thoroughly thought through as they could have been.
Shaking her head in bemusement, she had thrown back the comforter and swung her legs over the side of the bed. It seemed that her Mum’s thoughts on a girl sometimes needing to have a good cry, and also on things often looking brighter in the morning had some merit after all.
So, after a much needed shower, she had donned her favorite jeans and a cozy sweater, and wandered into the kitchen with a spring in her step. She had rejoiced at the sight of fluffy pancakes and had joked with Mickey as they created silly faces with the components of their breakfasts. She had glanced up in the middle of a laughing fit induced by Mickey’s pancake version of their old Headmaster to see The Doctor leaning against the doorway. She had flashed him a bright smile and gestured for him to come join them, and shortly thereafter, he had the two Londoners in stitches with his abysmal attempts at breakfast art.
He had looked at her a handful of times during that day as if he wanted to say something, but each time he had ended up wandering off purposefully (only he could wander with purpose) to fiddle with some wiring or check on the ship’s readings. Rose breathed a sigh of relief each time he decided against a heart-to-heart-despite her acceptance of his role in the universe and the fact that she mostly didn’t want to hit him anymore, if he tried to talk to her about Rennet, she wasn’t entirely sure she could be held accountable for what came out of her mouth. Especially if he had sat her down and tried to explain in small words that saving other people and preserving the timeline was his job and that he knew her short-sighted species had a difficult time understanding long term consequences-no, she was definitely happier that they just left it where it was.
But aside from that few hours of minor awkwardness, life on the TARDIS the past few days had been great-it had even transcended into spectacular recently, on a blissful night of movie watching that Mickey had bowed out of early on, due to a lack of modern guns or sports featuring prominently in the plot. She and The Doctor had curled up in pajamas on the fluffy sofa and made a valiant effort at watching the entire extended Lord of the Rings saga in one go. They had bantered playfully over the merits of various characters and the true nature of Sam and Frodo’s relationship. They had a popcorn fight when he teased her about the fan-girl-esque squeals she released when Aragon came into the picture, and asked why Legolas didn’t get the same treatment, since she obviously had such a thing for pretty boys.
A short time into the second movie, she had winced as she tried and failed to stifle a huge yawn, sure that she was about to be sent off to bed followed by a trail of ramblings focused on humans and the ludicrous amounts of sleep they needed. Instead, the Time Lord had chuckled, shaking his head, pulled her against him and tucked his chin on top of her blonde locks. She had drowsily wrapped her arms around his waist and been lulled to sleep by the staggered rhythm of his twin heartbeats.
She had drifted to consciousness a while later and had been amused to discover that not even The Great and Mighty Oncoming Storm could outlast the full extended edition of Lord of the Rings. For a few moments she had watched the light from the screen flicker across his sleeping features, then laid her head back against his chest as sleep reclaimed her. Her own heart had beat double when she had shifted to find a more comfortable position and his arms had tightened around her, preventing her from moving away from him.
When she had next opened her eyes, she had been in her own bed, but she could still smell the scent of his skin on her clothes (which she resolved immediately not to wash, again, ever). After showering and changing, she had nearly skipped down to the console room, the few scraps of dignity she clung to the only thing that restrained her. (That and the multi-lingual ‘no running, skipping or rough housing in the corridors’ signs posted every few meters-she had to wonder, had it really been enough of a problem at some point to require the posting of signs?)
When she’d bounced through the doorway into the blue-washed room, Mickey had been lounging against the railing, a steaming mug of tea in each hand.
“How’d the marathon go?” he’d asked, handing her one.
“Fell asleep,” she’d admitted, taking a quick sip of the scalding liquid to cover up her irrepressible grin.
“Bloody humans,” The Doctor had grumbled as he crawled out from under an access panel, “All that sleeping…can’t even make it through a decent movie marathon…”
“Oi! You fell asleep too! I saw you,” She’d shot back.
“How could you have?” He’d raised a questioning eyebrow. “You were asleep. Said so yourself.” He had grinned triumphantly, flopping down in the captain’s chair and reaching for Rose’s cup. All her attempts to argue her case, or regain her tea were thwarted, but even that couldn’t puncture her buoyant mood.
The three of them had spent the morning lazing around the console room, joking and reminiscing-well, she and The Doctor joked and reminisced, and Mickey tried valiantly, but fruitlessly to join in, or failing that, steer the conversation topics he could contribute to.
And then, in the midst of their laughter and gee, as the poem said, they’d fallen out of the Vortex.
She wrapped her arms around her in an attempt to ward off the chilly air as she stalked past building and shops that she barely didn’t quite recognize. She understood that The Doctor was worried about his ship. After having had a rather close connection with the TARDIS her self on one notable occasion, Rose was concerned, too. But she didn’t see how treating her like a petulant child was going to fix things.
Rose plopped down on a picnic bench and glared out at the water. Of course she knew that this wasn’t her world. Exactly how thick did he think she was?
Wait…no, probably don’t want the answer to that, she thought, shoving her hands deep into her coat pockets.
She knew this Pete wasn’t her dad. She really did. Her eyebrows pulled together in consternation as she stared out at the choppy grey surf. She just wanted to... She wanted to maybe see what he might have been like. She knew better than to try to talk to him. After all, it wouldn’t do to have a girl who probably looked just like his own daughter walk up to him and ask the time. But what could it hurt to just see him in passing, maybe…just across a street…see what he turned out like? See what kind of dad this world’s Rose got to grow up with?
But no, Mr. High and Mighty Lord of Time and Space acts like she’s going to waltz out into this world and invade her not-family’s life, or create a bloody paradox-seriously! That happened once! She’d pretty much learned her lesson on that count. It’s infuriating. Half the time…well…more like a third or a quarter of the time…but occasionally, at least, he gives her…well, a bit more credit than she thinks is her due-throws her into a complicated situation and gives her an, ‘I know you can do it’ grin before taking off in the opposite direction and leaving her to extricate herself. And then other times, he treats her like she doesn’t know which side of a time vortex is up, like she’s just ‘another stupid ape’.
And what’s really unfair, he hardly says two words to Mickey! It’s all, “Rose, he’s not your da,’ ‘Rose this isn’t your world,’ ‘Rose don’t get into trouble,’ ‘Rose, please try not to break the universe.’ What does he tell Mickey? Practically nothing. Bloody Boys’ Club. And who on this trip was most likely to make some monumental blunder that would have them running for their lives before lunchtime? Well…probably The Doctor. And between the two humans along for this wacky fun vacation? Right, probably not the girl who has been to the end of the world, stood up to the crazy emperor of the Daleks, and spectated the London Blitz by barrage balloon.
She jumped when her phone started beeping in her pocket.
Pulling it out she squinted at the screen. Free trial? She hadn’t been able to get a signal all day…despite whatever gizmos The Doctor had hooked up to her phone, they didn’t seem to pack quite enough punch to push through to another universe.
She looked at the screen speculatively. She always felt a bit hedgy about ‘free’ trials-Jackie was rarely able to resist their allure, a fact that had forced Rose to put in overtime at the shop a time or two when free turned into automatic service charges and required activation fees-but, with any luck, they’d be back where they belonged before this bill came due…and if not, well…she could always look into alternate service providers tomorrow, if no one was trying to kill them.
Absently, she began scanning through the options her screen was displaying. People search, huh? That certainly wasn’t something that came with her old service. She thought for a moment, then entered ‘Peter Tyler’ into the search field.