Flowers on Air 10/11
TITLE: Flowers on Air
CHARACTERS: Ten/Rose, OC (lots)
RATING: PG/Teen
SPOILERS: None past mid-series-2
SUMMARY: After being temporarily stranded in 1999, the Doctor is faced with a temptation he may not be able to turn from. Can Rose save him from himself?
DISCLAIMER: If I owned any of these characters, I'd have already released a collectors edition of Until the End of the World on region 1 DVD. BBC, RTD, Wim Wenders, full props.
A/N: This is a crossover fic between Doctor Who and the mid-90's film Until the End of the World. Knowing anything about the movie is not required (besides, I'm taking some liberties, and then the Doctor shows up and the timeline's all shot to hell anyway).
This Chapter: Rose Tyler to the rescue!
It was high noon, in every sense of the term. The shade in the canyon where Rose sat and the Doctor slowly disappeared was getting to be at a premium, just small slivers hugging the rocks like new moons. Rose put her straw hat on, as succumbing to heat stroke was probably not the most efficient way of getting through to the Doctor. She carefully regulated her water intake, and when the white-hot rays began to creep up the Doctor’s prone body, she popped her umbrella open and without a word placed it next to him on the ground, creating a small circle of shade around his head. She poured some water into the lid of the canteen and also placed it next to him, though she knew he probably wouldn’t drink it while she watched.
“I’m a fool,” she said, settling back down on her blanket. “I’ve always been a foolish girl and I think you’ll agree that maybe I come from a long line of foolish girls.”
The Doctor look up briefly from his screen. She knew his soft spot for her mum, given how much he always protested that he did not have one-a sure sign, that. And now she also knew he was listening.
“You told me to forget you and go home, d’you remember? To be wise, I would have done. It really wasn’t all that long ago. Seems like a lot longer than it’s really been, relatively. Or not relatively. I can’t keep all this time travel stuff straight. Anyway. I’m a fool, like I said. I met a bloke who told me he could feel the turning of the Earth, and that being with him would always be dangerous, and I smiled and ran to him anyway. And when you sent me away again, I did the impossible to get back. Even after you completely changed yourself, gave me permission to go, I stayed. I dunno, some people might call that loyalty. If it was one of my girlfriends though I’d tell her she was being a bleedin’ idiot. Though I’d also have to tell her that her new chap was a bit of a dish.”
She winked, though she wasn’t sure if the Doctor was able to see her at all.
“Quite,” the Doctor croaked, so softly Rose thought for a moment it was just a pebble falling or the wind in the scrub grass.
So he was in there, somewhere. His rather overweening vanity about this new body of his would never let a comment like that slip by unnoticed. His eyes, however, never left the video screen, his pupils shrunk to pin-pricks in the bright light.
“So right now, because I’m a fool and will always be, I’m just going to come over there, okay? I’m not asking you to do anything, I’m just gonna come and sit with you, for a little bit.”
In actual fact she wanted to just storm over there and grab the video player and smash it in to a hundred tiny pieces, but if there was one thing that Rose Tyler learned from the Doctor, it was the power of choices over decrees.
She rose and went over to sit by his feet, not wanting to seem like she was intruding in on what he was watching, which was his own private business, as much as the demons inside of her wanted to see.
“You know, the coppers back in 1953, they said you went a bit mental when they found me, or my body I guess since I wasn’t really there. Oh yeah, I did chat with them a bit later, I guess I didn’t mention. They didn’t really remember what all you said but they did get the distinct impression that you were…well, a little bit mad. Just a scootch.”
She was trying not to stare at the Doctor, but she saw out of the corner of her eye that he was looking at her now, though every few seconds darting his eyes back to look again at his dreams.
“I hated to see you like that,” he murmured. “You’ve no idea what that did to me.”
“When someone else hurts me, yeah.” Rose pulled her knees up and hugged them where she sat. “But you seem to have no problem doing it yourself. You know sometimes it hurts just being around you, but that’s my own fault for always coming back for more.”
At this the Doctor sat up to lean against the boulder again, several of his joints creaking and cracking in the process.
“As I say,” Rose continued, “I’m a fool. It’s what I have for you, my foolishness. Before I came up here, Mr. Fitzpatrick asked me what I have to give you, and that’s it. That’s all I’ve got and it’ll have to do. I’m offering, if you’ll have it.”
She continued to stare straight ahead, ignoring every impulse she had to rip his stupid little device away from him, and then to….well, to show him the pain he caused her just by being around, and to show him how he could release her from it. She rested her hands on the ground, drawing doodles in the sand to keep her feelings in check, and in a way enjoying the feel of the warm Earth, solid under her, which is a rare feeling when one lives in a time-and-space ship.
“I said that there was no power on this Earth that could stop me.”
The Doctor’s voice was hoarse and she hoped he would avail himself of the water she’d provided. He sounded terrible. His great gob had been stilled for nearly a day, and she reckoned it was the longest he’d been quiet in over 900 years.
“Well, Doctor, I think we’ve put the lie to that. There is a power that could stop you and he’s sitting right here next to the Universe’s Biggest Fool. Quite a pair we make. My mum would be so proud. We should take a picture to remember. She’ll put it on that dreadful sideboard.”
There was a movement from the Doctor that could possibly have been a small inaudible chuckle, but she couldn’t be sure. It could have just as easily been a swallowed sob.
“When I was little and I’d have a bad dream, I’d go running in to mum’s room and she always said that if I told someone about it, I’d never have that dream again, and I wouldn’t have to be afraid of it anymore.”
“Did it work?”
“I guess. I never had recurring nightmares. I always told her and they never came back.”
She felt the light brush of the Doctor’s pinky finger against her own hand, where it was resting on the ground between them. She didn’t want to make any sudden movements however, as if she was trying to coax a small forest creature to her.
“You could…you could tell me. About your dreams. Or if that’s too hard for you maybe you could show me.”
He clutched the player tighter to him with his other hand.
“No, I mean, you could show me like you do, in my mind like. That way, I wouldn’t see anything that you didn’t want me to see.”
The Doctor closed the screen of the player for the first time in many hours, and Rose, in spite of her luring-the-small-forest-creature stealth let out an audible sigh of relief. He didn’t say anything at all, just shifted slightly where he was sitting and placed the tips of his fingers lightly on her temples. Rose didn’t even have time to realize how much she’d missed his touch in the past 24 hours before she was flooded with sense-memories.
It wasn’t like watching a movie or looking at a picture. The images projected on to the back of the scrim of the mind’s eye, and so she can’t say she ever actually saw the burnt orange sky or the twin suns and silver forests. It was as if she had once been there and was remembering it, along with a smell, earthy like incense, and the sound of wind through strange trees. And she felt the bittersweet memories of home. His memories.
It was over in just a second and he removed his fingers and seemed to curl up slightly again, like a leaf drying out. Rose took a moment to catch her bearings. The Doctor’s brand of telepathy was a bit jarring and he rarely used it with her. She wondered what it was like on his end, if it was just as disorienting.
She brought her hand up to touch her temple, feeling the faint impressions of his fingers there. “I feel like that too. About home,” she said.
He looked extremely skeptical. Sad and skeptical.
“When you’re there, it seems so dull and predictable. And the people, they’re all horrible you just wish you could get away from them. But then you’re gone and it doesn’t seem so bad any more. You want to go back, you forget the bad stuff.”
“I can never go back. It’s all gone,” sighed the Doctor.
“Yes, yes I know that. I can’t ever really either, you know. I mean, yeah, I can physically go home, or the place I used to call home, but I can’t really ever go back. Not now. Not anymore. It would be like dying, every day. And if I was back there without you, I can’t say I’d turn down someone who could offer me this.” She gestured to the player. “I’m not saying I can ever fully understand how you feel, but consider that I may sometimes, just a tiny little bit.”
The Doctor heaved another sigh and finally reached for the glass of proffered water. Rose plowed onwards.
“So while I’m being utterly foolish, is there anything else, any other dreams you want to tell me about? To help me understand? About home, or what you want or what you’re afraid of? Anything at all, I just want to understand and to share things. Our lot, humans, we do that. Share things in order to deal with them. Spread the load around I guess. There’s no shame-.”
She’d gotten carried away with her talking but suddenly his fingers were on her again and she floated in eddies of sense-memory. This time it felt different. Less like history and more like fiction. A true dream, not a hazy amalgam of old memories and dreamings. As before, she saw without seeing. It was her own image, as had been on the monitor in the lab, but now enhanced with emotion, sound, sensation. It was like the most vivid memory, but of something that had never actually happened. The Doctor was placing a hand on her cheek, then under her chin and raising her face up to meet his. She felt hot tears and couldn’t be sure if they were his in the dream, or hers in her mind, or if they were actually forming in her eyes sitting there on the ground in the middle of the great desert. Sadness, bittersweet longing, desire, need, completion but also the feeling of being ripped in half again. She felt as if her heart would burst, and all the air was crushed out of her lungs at once.
It was of course again over in a matter of seconds, though she couldn’t be sure if she’d lived entire lifetimes while in the Doctor’s dream. When her vision swam back in to focus, the Doctor was now standing, in the lee of a rock-face opposite her and several feet away. The minidisc player still lay on the ground where he’d been before, though Rose didn’t notice, still completely overwhelmed by the emotions the Doctor had let her feel. He stood with his hands deep in his pockets, hunched and slouching, shirt untucked, tie half-off, badly in need of a shave and his hair in a complete tangle. Both of them were by now covered in a fine layer of dust and sand.
Rose stammered, unable to form any suitable words for a long while. Looking back, she had to admit, she’d been trumped. She’d planned on talking with the Doctor and bringing him back to her through the very human practice of sharing her feelings and inviting him to open up a little. A foolish crusade if she ever heard one. She never counted on this though, never thought in a million years he’d let her get that close.
“I’m sorry,” he said dully.
“But I….” Rose took a moment to try to compose herself and not come off sounding like a complete yammering idiot, or like the young girl she in fact was. “I feel that way too. About you. It’s okay. I mean, it’s good, isn’t it?”
She never thought talking with the Doctor would feel this much like being back in year seven.
He continued to look darkly at her, beetling his brow.
“It can’t ever be like that though. Never. And I’m so sorry. I’ve been so selfish when it comes to you. I want you with me always, but I can’t ever be what you need. It was so much easier to just crawl inside a fantasy than to let you go.”
“Go?” Rose wiped her hands on her shirt and rubber her eyes, incredulous. “Haven’t you heard me at all? I’m not going. You’ll not be rid of me that easily.” She could tell a misunderstanding was brewing.
“I’m quite serious, Rose. I’ve done a monstrous thing to you. I wanted to keep you in this bell jar, no one else can ever have you, but I can’t either. I drove Mickey away, took you from your mother, and I knew what I was doing. I can barely live with myself for what I’ve done.” He’d barely moved, but his haggard red-rimmed eyes had grown wide and his lips were thin and pursed, drawn in to the same grim straight line she’d seen so many times before. It never meant good things.
“Doctor, you’re such a right old knob sometimes. I left mum and my home of my own choice. You didn’t take me or make me do anything. Don’t flatter yourself. And Mickey, well that was partly my doing as well. We’re both to blame there but I think he found the right way for himself.”
It seemed time to do something. This discussion was probably not going to wind up going anywhere good or healing for the Doctor, as much as she wanted to run over to him and grab him by his shirt collar and first demand to know why they could never be together, and then to prove him wrong, right there on the spot. But for the moment, he seemed as if he might be ready to at least make the choice to move on from this place, and that moment had to be taken advantage of. These other issues would have to wait, and Rose had a plan for that as well.
(To Chapter 11)
CHARACTERS: Ten/Rose, OC (lots)
RATING: PG/Teen
SPOILERS: None past mid-series-2
SUMMARY: After being temporarily stranded in 1999, the Doctor is faced with a temptation he may not be able to turn from. Can Rose save him from himself?
DISCLAIMER: If I owned any of these characters, I'd have already released a collectors edition of Until the End of the World on region 1 DVD. BBC, RTD, Wim Wenders, full props.
A/N: This is a crossover fic between Doctor Who and the mid-90's film Until the End of the World. Knowing anything about the movie is not required (besides, I'm taking some liberties, and then the Doctor shows up and the timeline's all shot to hell anyway).
This Chapter: Rose Tyler to the rescue!
It was high noon, in every sense of the term. The shade in the canyon where Rose sat and the Doctor slowly disappeared was getting to be at a premium, just small slivers hugging the rocks like new moons. Rose put her straw hat on, as succumbing to heat stroke was probably not the most efficient way of getting through to the Doctor. She carefully regulated her water intake, and when the white-hot rays began to creep up the Doctor’s prone body, she popped her umbrella open and without a word placed it next to him on the ground, creating a small circle of shade around his head. She poured some water into the lid of the canteen and also placed it next to him, though she knew he probably wouldn’t drink it while she watched.
“I’m a fool,” she said, settling back down on her blanket. “I’ve always been a foolish girl and I think you’ll agree that maybe I come from a long line of foolish girls.”
The Doctor look up briefly from his screen. She knew his soft spot for her mum, given how much he always protested that he did not have one-a sure sign, that. And now she also knew he was listening.
“You told me to forget you and go home, d’you remember? To be wise, I would have done. It really wasn’t all that long ago. Seems like a lot longer than it’s really been, relatively. Or not relatively. I can’t keep all this time travel stuff straight. Anyway. I’m a fool, like I said. I met a bloke who told me he could feel the turning of the Earth, and that being with him would always be dangerous, and I smiled and ran to him anyway. And when you sent me away again, I did the impossible to get back. Even after you completely changed yourself, gave me permission to go, I stayed. I dunno, some people might call that loyalty. If it was one of my girlfriends though I’d tell her she was being a bleedin’ idiot. Though I’d also have to tell her that her new chap was a bit of a dish.”
She winked, though she wasn’t sure if the Doctor was able to see her at all.
“Quite,” the Doctor croaked, so softly Rose thought for a moment it was just a pebble falling or the wind in the scrub grass.
So he was in there, somewhere. His rather overweening vanity about this new body of his would never let a comment like that slip by unnoticed. His eyes, however, never left the video screen, his pupils shrunk to pin-pricks in the bright light.
“So right now, because I’m a fool and will always be, I’m just going to come over there, okay? I’m not asking you to do anything, I’m just gonna come and sit with you, for a little bit.”
In actual fact she wanted to just storm over there and grab the video player and smash it in to a hundred tiny pieces, but if there was one thing that Rose Tyler learned from the Doctor, it was the power of choices over decrees.
She rose and went over to sit by his feet, not wanting to seem like she was intruding in on what he was watching, which was his own private business, as much as the demons inside of her wanted to see.
“You know, the coppers back in 1953, they said you went a bit mental when they found me, or my body I guess since I wasn’t really there. Oh yeah, I did chat with them a bit later, I guess I didn’t mention. They didn’t really remember what all you said but they did get the distinct impression that you were…well, a little bit mad. Just a scootch.”
She was trying not to stare at the Doctor, but she saw out of the corner of her eye that he was looking at her now, though every few seconds darting his eyes back to look again at his dreams.
“I hated to see you like that,” he murmured. “You’ve no idea what that did to me.”
“When someone else hurts me, yeah.” Rose pulled her knees up and hugged them where she sat. “But you seem to have no problem doing it yourself. You know sometimes it hurts just being around you, but that’s my own fault for always coming back for more.”
At this the Doctor sat up to lean against the boulder again, several of his joints creaking and cracking in the process.
“As I say,” Rose continued, “I’m a fool. It’s what I have for you, my foolishness. Before I came up here, Mr. Fitzpatrick asked me what I have to give you, and that’s it. That’s all I’ve got and it’ll have to do. I’m offering, if you’ll have it.”
She continued to stare straight ahead, ignoring every impulse she had to rip his stupid little device away from him, and then to….well, to show him the pain he caused her just by being around, and to show him how he could release her from it. She rested her hands on the ground, drawing doodles in the sand to keep her feelings in check, and in a way enjoying the feel of the warm Earth, solid under her, which is a rare feeling when one lives in a time-and-space ship.
“I said that there was no power on this Earth that could stop me.”
The Doctor’s voice was hoarse and she hoped he would avail himself of the water she’d provided. He sounded terrible. His great gob had been stilled for nearly a day, and she reckoned it was the longest he’d been quiet in over 900 years.
“Well, Doctor, I think we’ve put the lie to that. There is a power that could stop you and he’s sitting right here next to the Universe’s Biggest Fool. Quite a pair we make. My mum would be so proud. We should take a picture to remember. She’ll put it on that dreadful sideboard.”
There was a movement from the Doctor that could possibly have been a small inaudible chuckle, but she couldn’t be sure. It could have just as easily been a swallowed sob.
“When I was little and I’d have a bad dream, I’d go running in to mum’s room and she always said that if I told someone about it, I’d never have that dream again, and I wouldn’t have to be afraid of it anymore.”
“Did it work?”
“I guess. I never had recurring nightmares. I always told her and they never came back.”
She felt the light brush of the Doctor’s pinky finger against her own hand, where it was resting on the ground between them. She didn’t want to make any sudden movements however, as if she was trying to coax a small forest creature to her.
“You could…you could tell me. About your dreams. Or if that’s too hard for you maybe you could show me.”
He clutched the player tighter to him with his other hand.
“No, I mean, you could show me like you do, in my mind like. That way, I wouldn’t see anything that you didn’t want me to see.”
The Doctor closed the screen of the player for the first time in many hours, and Rose, in spite of her luring-the-small-forest-creature stealth let out an audible sigh of relief. He didn’t say anything at all, just shifted slightly where he was sitting and placed the tips of his fingers lightly on her temples. Rose didn’t even have time to realize how much she’d missed his touch in the past 24 hours before she was flooded with sense-memories.
It wasn’t like watching a movie or looking at a picture. The images projected on to the back of the scrim of the mind’s eye, and so she can’t say she ever actually saw the burnt orange sky or the twin suns and silver forests. It was as if she had once been there and was remembering it, along with a smell, earthy like incense, and the sound of wind through strange trees. And she felt the bittersweet memories of home. His memories.
It was over in just a second and he removed his fingers and seemed to curl up slightly again, like a leaf drying out. Rose took a moment to catch her bearings. The Doctor’s brand of telepathy was a bit jarring and he rarely used it with her. She wondered what it was like on his end, if it was just as disorienting.
She brought her hand up to touch her temple, feeling the faint impressions of his fingers there. “I feel like that too. About home,” she said.
He looked extremely skeptical. Sad and skeptical.
“When you’re there, it seems so dull and predictable. And the people, they’re all horrible you just wish you could get away from them. But then you’re gone and it doesn’t seem so bad any more. You want to go back, you forget the bad stuff.”
“I can never go back. It’s all gone,” sighed the Doctor.
“Yes, yes I know that. I can’t ever really either, you know. I mean, yeah, I can physically go home, or the place I used to call home, but I can’t really ever go back. Not now. Not anymore. It would be like dying, every day. And if I was back there without you, I can’t say I’d turn down someone who could offer me this.” She gestured to the player. “I’m not saying I can ever fully understand how you feel, but consider that I may sometimes, just a tiny little bit.”
The Doctor heaved another sigh and finally reached for the glass of proffered water. Rose plowed onwards.
“So while I’m being utterly foolish, is there anything else, any other dreams you want to tell me about? To help me understand? About home, or what you want or what you’re afraid of? Anything at all, I just want to understand and to share things. Our lot, humans, we do that. Share things in order to deal with them. Spread the load around I guess. There’s no shame-.”
She’d gotten carried away with her talking but suddenly his fingers were on her again and she floated in eddies of sense-memory. This time it felt different. Less like history and more like fiction. A true dream, not a hazy amalgam of old memories and dreamings. As before, she saw without seeing. It was her own image, as had been on the monitor in the lab, but now enhanced with emotion, sound, sensation. It was like the most vivid memory, but of something that had never actually happened. The Doctor was placing a hand on her cheek, then under her chin and raising her face up to meet his. She felt hot tears and couldn’t be sure if they were his in the dream, or hers in her mind, or if they were actually forming in her eyes sitting there on the ground in the middle of the great desert. Sadness, bittersweet longing, desire, need, completion but also the feeling of being ripped in half again. She felt as if her heart would burst, and all the air was crushed out of her lungs at once.
It was of course again over in a matter of seconds, though she couldn’t be sure if she’d lived entire lifetimes while in the Doctor’s dream. When her vision swam back in to focus, the Doctor was now standing, in the lee of a rock-face opposite her and several feet away. The minidisc player still lay on the ground where he’d been before, though Rose didn’t notice, still completely overwhelmed by the emotions the Doctor had let her feel. He stood with his hands deep in his pockets, hunched and slouching, shirt untucked, tie half-off, badly in need of a shave and his hair in a complete tangle. Both of them were by now covered in a fine layer of dust and sand.
Rose stammered, unable to form any suitable words for a long while. Looking back, she had to admit, she’d been trumped. She’d planned on talking with the Doctor and bringing him back to her through the very human practice of sharing her feelings and inviting him to open up a little. A foolish crusade if she ever heard one. She never counted on this though, never thought in a million years he’d let her get that close.
“I’m sorry,” he said dully.
“But I….” Rose took a moment to try to compose herself and not come off sounding like a complete yammering idiot, or like the young girl she in fact was. “I feel that way too. About you. It’s okay. I mean, it’s good, isn’t it?”
She never thought talking with the Doctor would feel this much like being back in year seven.
He continued to look darkly at her, beetling his brow.
“It can’t ever be like that though. Never. And I’m so sorry. I’ve been so selfish when it comes to you. I want you with me always, but I can’t ever be what you need. It was so much easier to just crawl inside a fantasy than to let you go.”
“Go?” Rose wiped her hands on her shirt and rubber her eyes, incredulous. “Haven’t you heard me at all? I’m not going. You’ll not be rid of me that easily.” She could tell a misunderstanding was brewing.
“I’m quite serious, Rose. I’ve done a monstrous thing to you. I wanted to keep you in this bell jar, no one else can ever have you, but I can’t either. I drove Mickey away, took you from your mother, and I knew what I was doing. I can barely live with myself for what I’ve done.” He’d barely moved, but his haggard red-rimmed eyes had grown wide and his lips were thin and pursed, drawn in to the same grim straight line she’d seen so many times before. It never meant good things.
“Doctor, you’re such a right old knob sometimes. I left mum and my home of my own choice. You didn’t take me or make me do anything. Don’t flatter yourself. And Mickey, well that was partly my doing as well. We’re both to blame there but I think he found the right way for himself.”
It seemed time to do something. This discussion was probably not going to wind up going anywhere good or healing for the Doctor, as much as she wanted to run over to him and grab him by his shirt collar and first demand to know why they could never be together, and then to prove him wrong, right there on the spot. But for the moment, he seemed as if he might be ready to at least make the choice to move on from this place, and that moment had to be taken advantage of. These other issues would have to wait, and Rose had a plan for that as well.
(To Chapter 11)