(no subject)
madmen and love, ten/rose, eleven/rose, PG
so she leaves his spent body behind, another wound opening on a cardial battleground; the ache of her palms filled by Torchwood gunmetal., AU, 1353
Each time he dies in her arms, she is certain that the world will end; her eyes skitter over the sky and search for falling stars, her ears strain for a rising chorus of heartbreak. No one notices, no one mourns - he passes on alone in the shadow of her primal silence. The world is cruel to the Doctor, whose greatest sin, perhaps, is that of self recrimination. Rose wilts a little at these barbed disappointments, but she picks up her tears and closes his eyes, the breath shuddering from her lips in a fine tremble at the touch of his cheekbones and the brush of his lashes beneath her hands. It is as if she is failing him, a distinct bitterness spreading across the tip of her tongue. And so she leaves his spent body behind, another wound opening on a cardial battleground; the ache of her palms filled by Torchwood gunmetal.
She keeps running and the walls keep tumbling down around her into grains of smoky memory.
Worse yet, it begins to feel like her fault, the weight of his head when his neck collapses and the scent of time and huon particles heavy on her skin, as if he lives in all those parallel universes just until he can see her again (touch her again, hold her again). It is with dread that she runs toward him and hope that she quickens her pace, leaving the dust of dead worlds to chase her heels.
The joy on his face is nearly more than her feeble, too-strong human heart can withstand and for a moment the flare of light reminds her of sunshine and apple grass, of a golden field of wildflowers tall enough to graze against her thighs. Of his grumbles vibrating on the the side of her neck and his hands hot on her hips, chin perched carefully on the slope of her shoulder. Oh, but this is not the warmth of daylight filtering through her black top, no, no, no, this is the Dalek curse that haunts her nightmares. She hates them that much more for it, only she has not the room right now for more than the Timelord still beaming up at her.
"Hey," he manages through struggling lungs, that ridiculous smile unwavering. She thinks he looks silly, beautiful and dying and silly. Maddening, he is.
"You'll be okay," Rose Tyler chants and he ignores the question in her words. "You can't be dying, you can't." Because he has died in her arms enough times and this time, this time there is a faint echo of a howl ringing in her ears, though it is lost beneath the riot of sounds that explodes around them. This time, his cells begin to glow and tingle, and she surrenders him just long enough for Donna to help to carry him back to the TARDIS.
"What's happening to him?" Donna's voice is strained, unintentionally sharp with tartness and thick with tears.
Rose pinches her lips and tightens her hand around his, once, twice, before she lets go, reluctantly pulling apart from him. The moment she does, he screams, his spine arcing too high and his empty hands stretching tight, seeking, needing. His entire being buzzes and he rocks to his feet like a rag doll, energy and power spilling from every pore.
Donna repeats her question, a high, imploring voice that ricochets through a haze of relief and shock. Jack grabs her shoulder and jerks her back when she places a hand on the Doctor's arm in confusion and desperation, a grim don't etched into the clench of his jaw.
"He - the Doctor - he's changing," is all she gets out before she gives up trying to speak - you can't, she wants to say, please, please, you can't; the words lodge in her throat and eat away at her courage. Jack picks up the task of explaining as his own.
And he is changing. He does. He burns up like a tired sun, but she swears that at the last moment, the very, very last moment, he looks at her and smiles. Then he is gone and the pinstriped suit is too short and too tight, his Adam's apple bobbing and his ankles peeking out from the edges of his trousers.
"Well," he contemplates with a twirl and a half like a little boy on Christmas, excitement painted on his young face, "How do I look?"
She chokes on her sobs. He looks so different, he sounds so different, and his eyes, his eyes are dark whirls of greens and blues against his pale skin. Somehow breathing has become secondary to losingfindingalmostsaving him and she remembers to inhale in order to answer when he turns to her, new-new features arranged in uncertainty. There isn't a language eloquent enough for this form of heartbreak and love.
"You - you're still not ginger."
It is so refreshing to laugh again and the way he scowls and pulls at his hair is familiar enough to make her anxiety dissolve into gasping giggles.
Rose is the last one to know that tears are slipping down her cheeks and Donna is saying something, hitting and scowling as she surreptitiously swipes at her eyes; Jack's arms are solid and warm around her waist, holding her together while the Doctor tuts and tsks at his new body and its nuances, counting off on the various limbs he is delighted to still have. ("Oooh, look! One, two ... ten whole toes and - wait - yes, in the proper order too! And is that another mole?") A low chuckle originates from behind her, stirring the fine strands of blonde-brown hair. She's missed him too.
"You're crying, darling."
That, the Doctor does hear. He spins around on the balls of his feet, concern wrinkling his brow and long fingers frozen in mid-wriggling (a necessary supplement to his explanation to one Donna Noble), unruly hair tugged into gravity defiant directions and tie undone around his pale neck. No more ties and suits for him, no pinstripes and leather, or big ears and sharp noses.
In two long strides he reaches her side, hand outstretched in a silent entreaty. The same stillness overtakes him and she feels like they are meeting anew all over again, like he is the lock to the universe's secrets, waiting in a stolen fragment of untouchable space for someone to care.
Rose rises to his arms, meeting the novel and foreign planes of his body, the extraordinary lines of his limbs folding around her slight frame in a culmination of home.
Resignation closes off Jack's face because this is how it will always be. Rose Tyler might be their golden girl, but she is the Doctor's before she is anyone else's. Before even herself, and that is why she is dangerous; that is why he loves her (and the Doctor as well, now that he thinks about it).
Unspoken, Donna and Jack reach an agreement and move to the other side of the controls, images of a now-gone face broken in sorrow spurring them on.
"How long do you plan on staying with me?" He whispers into her ear, the same words tasting first and virgin against his teeth.
Unconsciously, he weaves his fingers through hers, hungry and fearful that they won't be the same, that the first time was a fluke, and they might never fit again. Lightning filters through her nerves, restarting in a spark the drum of her heart. Tenderness floods her and an unbearable notion of impossibilities wells up between them.
"Forever," Rose traces truth and fate and destiny against his mouth, "Forever."
He finds that his joints are unused and untrained and callouses (scars too, he will later discover) have formed where he does not recall them, but she is her and he is him. That is all he needs.
so she leaves his spent body behind, another wound opening on a cardial battleground; the ache of her palms filled by Torchwood gunmetal., AU, 1353
Each time he dies in her arms, she is certain that the world will end; her eyes skitter over the sky and search for falling stars, her ears strain for a rising chorus of heartbreak. No one notices, no one mourns - he passes on alone in the shadow of her primal silence. The world is cruel to the Doctor, whose greatest sin, perhaps, is that of self recrimination. Rose wilts a little at these barbed disappointments, but she picks up her tears and closes his eyes, the breath shuddering from her lips in a fine tremble at the touch of his cheekbones and the brush of his lashes beneath her hands. It is as if she is failing him, a distinct bitterness spreading across the tip of her tongue. And so she leaves his spent body behind, another wound opening on a cardial battleground; the ache of her palms filled by Torchwood gunmetal.
She keeps running and the walls keep tumbling down around her into grains of smoky memory.
Worse yet, it begins to feel like her fault, the weight of his head when his neck collapses and the scent of time and huon particles heavy on her skin, as if he lives in all those parallel universes just until he can see her again (touch her again, hold her again). It is with dread that she runs toward him and hope that she quickens her pace, leaving the dust of dead worlds to chase her heels.
The joy on his face is nearly more than her feeble, too-strong human heart can withstand and for a moment the flare of light reminds her of sunshine and apple grass, of a golden field of wildflowers tall enough to graze against her thighs. Of his grumbles vibrating on the the side of her neck and his hands hot on her hips, chin perched carefully on the slope of her shoulder. Oh, but this is not the warmth of daylight filtering through her black top, no, no, no, this is the Dalek curse that haunts her nightmares. She hates them that much more for it, only she has not the room right now for more than the Timelord still beaming up at her.
"Hey," he manages through struggling lungs, that ridiculous smile unwavering. She thinks he looks silly, beautiful and dying and silly. Maddening, he is.
"You'll be okay," Rose Tyler chants and he ignores the question in her words. "You can't be dying, you can't." Because he has died in her arms enough times and this time, this time there is a faint echo of a howl ringing in her ears, though it is lost beneath the riot of sounds that explodes around them. This time, his cells begin to glow and tingle, and she surrenders him just long enough for Donna to help to carry him back to the TARDIS.
"What's happening to him?" Donna's voice is strained, unintentionally sharp with tartness and thick with tears.
Rose pinches her lips and tightens her hand around his, once, twice, before she lets go, reluctantly pulling apart from him. The moment she does, he screams, his spine arcing too high and his empty hands stretching tight, seeking, needing. His entire being buzzes and he rocks to his feet like a rag doll, energy and power spilling from every pore.
Donna repeats her question, a high, imploring voice that ricochets through a haze of relief and shock. Jack grabs her shoulder and jerks her back when she places a hand on the Doctor's arm in confusion and desperation, a grim don't etched into the clench of his jaw.
"He - the Doctor - he's changing," is all she gets out before she gives up trying to speak - you can't, she wants to say, please, please, you can't; the words lodge in her throat and eat away at her courage. Jack picks up the task of explaining as his own.
And he is changing. He does. He burns up like a tired sun, but she swears that at the last moment, the very, very last moment, he looks at her and smiles. Then he is gone and the pinstriped suit is too short and too tight, his Adam's apple bobbing and his ankles peeking out from the edges of his trousers.
"Well," he contemplates with a twirl and a half like a little boy on Christmas, excitement painted on his young face, "How do I look?"
She chokes on her sobs. He looks so different, he sounds so different, and his eyes, his eyes are dark whirls of greens and blues against his pale skin. Somehow breathing has become secondary to losingfindingalmostsaving him and she remembers to inhale in order to answer when he turns to her, new-new features arranged in uncertainty. There isn't a language eloquent enough for this form of heartbreak and love.
"You - you're still not ginger."
It is so refreshing to laugh again and the way he scowls and pulls at his hair is familiar enough to make her anxiety dissolve into gasping giggles.
Rose is the last one to know that tears are slipping down her cheeks and Donna is saying something, hitting and scowling as she surreptitiously swipes at her eyes; Jack's arms are solid and warm around her waist, holding her together while the Doctor tuts and tsks at his new body and its nuances, counting off on the various limbs he is delighted to still have. ("Oooh, look! One, two ... ten whole toes and - wait - yes, in the proper order too! And is that another mole?") A low chuckle originates from behind her, stirring the fine strands of blonde-brown hair. She's missed him too.
"You're crying, darling."
That, the Doctor does hear. He spins around on the balls of his feet, concern wrinkling his brow and long fingers frozen in mid-wriggling (a necessary supplement to his explanation to one Donna Noble), unruly hair tugged into gravity defiant directions and tie undone around his pale neck. No more ties and suits for him, no pinstripes and leather, or big ears and sharp noses.
In two long strides he reaches her side, hand outstretched in a silent entreaty. The same stillness overtakes him and she feels like they are meeting anew all over again, like he is the lock to the universe's secrets, waiting in a stolen fragment of untouchable space for someone to care.
Rose rises to his arms, meeting the novel and foreign planes of his body, the extraordinary lines of his limbs folding around her slight frame in a culmination of home.
Resignation closes off Jack's face because this is how it will always be. Rose Tyler might be their golden girl, but she is the Doctor's before she is anyone else's. Before even herself, and that is why she is dangerous; that is why he loves her (and the Doctor as well, now that he thinks about it).
Unspoken, Donna and Jack reach an agreement and move to the other side of the controls, images of a now-gone face broken in sorrow spurring them on.
"How long do you plan on staying with me?" He whispers into her ear, the same words tasting first and virgin against his teeth.
Unconsciously, he weaves his fingers through hers, hungry and fearful that they won't be the same, that the first time was a fluke, and they might never fit again. Lightning filters through her nerves, restarting in a spark the drum of her heart. Tenderness floods her and an unbearable notion of impossibilities wells up between them.
"Forever," Rose traces truth and fate and destiny against his mouth, "Forever."
He finds that his joints are unused and untrained and callouses (scars too, he will later discover) have formed where he does not recall them, but she is her and he is him. That is all he needs.