Forever Begins Here
Forever Begins Here, Ten/Rose. Teen. 2,540 words.
“I know you’ve been protecting me from Satellite Five, but you should know… its okay. I’m alright, and I’ve done… a little bit more than remember,” she says, drawing the word 'little' from her mouth like thin strings of taffy.
She’s a witch, and oh god does she adore it.
Maybe it was the hair with tawny roots showing, or the thin-strapped tank that showed a scandalous amount of lush, round cleavage. Maybe it was what they thought was kohl around her eyes, making her brown look to be a rich mahogany that reminded them of the trees.
Maybe it was the Vortex still curled lovingly around every cell in her body, and how she can make things happen with a flick of her finger and a smile.
No matter how Rose Tyler got here, she is here. Tied to a tall post, tumbleweeds and sagebrush and whatever grasses and wood the townsfolk could find being tucked beneath her boots. One sprig of sage still has a miniscule purple flower on it, half bloomed and peeking out at her. She nudges it with a toe and smiles.
She even dressed for the time period, once the Doctor had landed them incorrectly. Really, she did. Went back to the TARDIS and scavenged the wardrobe room, dancing with delight at the comfort of cloth that the old girl provided. A billowing cream top lacing it’s way to her chin, an azure and heavy skirt that fell to the tips of her decorated black boots.
Maybe she should have left off the rings? Moonstone likely isn’t helping her case, but she just thought they were so lovely. It was like they’d found her, tucked into an ornately carved black box, what looked to be obsidian but all the carvings were Gallifreyan. Whatever the obsidian equivalent was, it was that, and it was suddenly displayed proudly on the floor, neatly next to the lace-up leather shoes where moments before it hadn’t been.
She waits. Secretly, and she would never, ever tell him this, she delights that he might be late to save her. The song in her blood is boiling, and she wants to know how much of the Bad Wolf she is. She creates herself, but can she save herself?
Yes. How… well, she’s working on that.
There is shouting behind the crowd that makes a solid wall of angry and frightened people. She can only hear some of the words, but oh he is angry.
“You… one hair… Ohhhhhhh no… don’t think… like elephants!”
She snorts and can’t help herself, she’s grinning ear to ear now. So happy to see him, elation carving her features into that of a joyful goddess (or witch, as the case may be). So Rose closes her eyes and feels for atoms, the lines that divide them. No A-levels and her only grasp of physics what she’s picked up from the Doctor’s babbling, but it doesn’t matter; she understands.
There is a black hole four hundred years out, not yet exhausted from its all-consuming majesty. A star is born in such ecstasy, the universe sings for it and she sings too, a ball of gas and rock and matter and gravity swirling together and Melicon, she thinks. Your name is Melicon.
There is molten movement churning sluggishly miles under her feet as the Earth shifts and bubbles inside, a dying Redwood in the forests of California with a little girl holding it in her small arms even as the last of its life passes.
And there is the Doctor, storm gathering around him in thunderous movement through the air, the overcast sky knowing exactly what he is and trembling because of it.
And there is her, Rose Tyler, the valiant child who did not die in battle, and she will not be held down or apart from her Lord of Time by any hands in the universe.
She slides between the fibers of rope, letting them go, burning their bonds away at the molecular level. She plants the sage beneath her feet, the newly grown roots thrusting their way into the soil and flowering in violently amethyst arrays. She soothes the mob’s fear, slides between their synapses and tweaks the programming that sparks panic at magic and difference and the powers that be. She lets them rest, and every last being in the crowd falls asleep at her feet.
The Doctor is stopped, mid stride towards her, back trainer hovering ridiculously in the air and sonic pointed in the vague direction he thought she was behind the wall of people. His coat flaps lightly in the wind, and she thinks, smothering a snort with her palm, she has never seen his hair look more ridiculous than when he is angry.
“Hello!” she calls, waving cheerfully.
Still uncertain, he sets his back foot gingerly on the ground.
“They’re dead?!” he demands somewhat in alarm, somewhat in dismay, looking around frantically for the source of the poison gas spore electric device something that could have killed so many at once.
“No, no, no no!” she says, gesturing with her hands aimlessly in front of herself. “They’re just sleeping, s’all. I thought they were a little too worked up for their own good, you know?”
“You… you? Rose, what’s going on?” he is asking, even as he is hopping over dozens of sleeping bodies to run into her arms and sweep her bodily away from the pyre, laughing and gratefully feeling the pounding of her life beneath her ribs.
“S’okay, Doctor! Though I might have suggested they lay off on the killing of witchy things in the future, a bit, maybe,” she shifts about nervously, the thought only now occurring to her that she likely pushed humanity to a different line of history.
“You… suggested it,” he says flatly, almost disbelieving that she could have talked an angry mob of dozens down from burning her at the stake, but the fundamental line of his faith remains unshaken. “Well, then, that was easy, wasn’t it!”
She laughs and holds both of his hands, bringing one joined pair to her temple and tapping it with his knuckle. “Here,” she said. “And in my blood, I could just… feel it. An’ I wanted to save myself for once, so I… just did, I s’pose.”
“You feel what, Rose?”
He is cautious now, eyeing her like he’s examining her for fever or mumps or Silverian flu, or maybe like he has X-ray vision and can see she isn’t wearing knickers. She shivers a little under the dark scrutiny, pushing the way his eyes make her molten to the side. They’re not like that, she reminds herself. Not going to be, so might as well stop thinking about it, you silly little ape girl. Don’t look at the concerned downward tuck of his mouth, his mouth, his… ah, hell. Everyone lived, didn't they?
She kisses him, full on his gorgeous and startled lips, pressing her body close, azure skirt blending with cerulean pinstripes. It would be chaste if not for the heat behind it, her hands on his neck, her nails sinking half moon marks into his nape. His double pulse pounds and she steps back, pleased that she has sufficiently dazzled him twice in one day.
She’s setting new records, she is.
“I know you’ve been protecting me from Satellite Five, but you should know… its okay. I’m alright, and I’ve done… a little bit more than remember,” she says, drawing the word 'little' from her mouth like thin strings of taffy.
He blinks at her, stupidly. She cups his face and he unconsciously leans in, the gravity of them demanding it of him. It’s always been a law he’s found himself obeying, and only recently has that bothered him less and less with each passing second of Rose Tyler in his wild and jeopardy friendly life.
She hugs him then, crushing his ribs into hers so they can feel the rise and fall of the other’s breath.
She whispers hotly in his ear, “I create myself.”
And then she is traipsing back to the TARDIS, leaving him dumbfounded and fully, impossibly in love, delicately stepping over sleeping limbs and torsos, bending to brush her fingers against the flourishing sage.
***
This really wasn’t how he’d pictured Barcelona. And oh, how he had pictured it, ever since he’d run his tongue along new teeth and seen the uncertainty behind the gold in her eyes.
She puts on the lightest dress she can find inside the wardrobe room, a slip of mystery fabric turquoise that should have been a fashion nightmare but clung to her curves like a wetsuit. She insists on summer. He insists on the inky night and smooth Spanish guitar. Secretly, she thinks he wants it to improve his moves. Secretly, she desperately wishes he would show them to her.
They dance.
It is a soft, flowing movement of bodies and the space between bodies. Her hips carve letters in front of him that he swears he can read if only he concentrates hard enough. Each note of music touches her, neck, breasts, hips and belly; the E flat is working its way along her breastbone, and he desperately wants to follow.
So he does.
Slender fingertips touch first. This is a brief connection, looking for the life of them like he is touching her heart through her sternum. Maybe he is. But as he grows bolder, fingertips become fingers, become a palm that is cupping the space between her breasts and feeling the fragile life beat. Her eyes are closed and she sways, mouth tugging upwards on one side, murmuring, “I knew you could dance.” He can scarcely hear her over the octave jump between Cs roaring in his ears, and the cicadas rustling up the night with the gossip of insects.
He comes to her fully, not just his palm but his arms, his chest against her back, his shoulders rolling inward to form little cups for her to turn her face into. There are conversations around them, the black night discussing rainfall with the soil, other patrons clinking margaritas together with hushed talk of sex and liaisons, his pelvis matching hers sway for sway as they dance next to their table, the only beings that matter in the universe.
He is jolted from his reverie when she begins to stir in their cell. It is only when he realizes that she is waking nearly six hours before her human body should have been metabolizing the sedative that he starts to understand the gravity of the wolf.
He would curse himself for not instructing her to not pet the dogs with no noses, except if he’s honest with himself they haven’t been jailed in ages, and he’s missed it, a little.
She is darling when she sleeps.
Okay, so she was drugged. Still darling, all pink and yellow and tiny snores.
“Doctor?” she mutters groggily, palm going to her head to cup her skull and swear bloody hell at the twelve drummers drumming right behind her eyes.
“I’m here, Rose,” he murmurs soothingly, stroking her shoulders and sitting very close to her. He tells himself it’s for her safety, though even she can’t find a way to wander off in a cell this small.
“W’happened?”
“No nosed dogs are adorable but sacred, apparently.” He grins at her sheepishly. “My bad.”
“S’okay. My headache's clearin', so I don’t feel the need to currently feed you to my mum. So. Escape plans, yeah? To the TARDIS for a good cuppa and a swirly in the Vortex?”
He chuckled. “I hadn’t thought that far. I was expecting you to be under for hours still.”
She nods, unsurprised. “I’m sleeping less at home, too.”
He blinks at her, filing the thrill his hearts get at the use of home away. (It sounds so, so good on her lips. Would sound even better in her bed, in his bed…) “You’re sleeping less? How much less, Rose?”
“Oh, y’know. Enough t’know you don’t just tinker all night, if you know what I mean,” and she waggles her eyebrows, grinning.
He flushes hotly. “I also knit,” he insists.
“I guess they both do involve two things doing…” she trails off, completing her sentence by circling her two index fingers around each other and then makes a gesture decidedly obscene on at least thirty-seven different planets.
“Escape! Right-o, one escape, coming up!” he squeaks, standing abruptly, trainers tapping out a dull beat as he paces the cell.
Idly, she hums the song that thrives in her blood to the beat of his footsteps, and stands to help him.
***
It is a month later, after long nights of them both being awake and him teaching her to identify the biomechanical parts he uses in the time rotor, or reading to her from the grit of Charles Bukowski, or watching the last Harry Potter film two years before the book’s release but six months after she’s read it, that he realizes he hasn’t felt her cells age in twenty-two days.
He stops her in the galley, toast with huckleberry jam halfway to her mouth and a wretched gossip magazine in her other hand (The best sex you’ve ever had! it declares. How to please your man and make him--). Her tea is nearly cold, but she doesn’t care.
“You’re not getting older,” he reports, bluntly.
She doesn’t move her toast or close her mouth. “I’m a what now?” she asks, fixing him with her best you’re crazier than usual today stare.
“I can’t feel it, Rose. I can’t feel you age.”
“Riiight, because I’m-“ she stops, the firm set to his features halting her words before she dare finish them. “You’re not joking.”
“No,” he says, shaking just a little.
“Bad Wolf, huh,” she murmurs, resting her toast back on her plate and cuddling her tea with her hands. She is grateful for the small warmth it has left.
“Probably,” he muses, sitting beside her. “I need to run some tests, we should get you to the med bay and-“
She doesn’t let him finish, instead slamming her mug on the table so hastily the earl grey sloshes onto the wood. She is there, in front of him, almost entirely in his lap in her eagerness and her mouth is crashing to his, taking him with her in the elaborate fantasy (reality, her blood sings) of being together.
“I,” she breathes in between kisses, “don’t. Age.”
And she pulls back, gazing at him with the entire weight of eternity held in the space between her glistening lips.
“You don’t have to be alone!” she cries with such jubilance, and she is laughing, and hugging him, and crying into his chest all at the same time. He is dazed, eyes wide and staring at the coral walls next to the pantry.
“You… you could be my mate,” he whispers, so soft and nervous she almost doesn't hear him.
The way he is looking at her, like he could devour her whole and still save some for leftovers... She had not been expecting him to be so brazen in his words, her champion of dodging all things awkward and Rose related.
Inspired, she fists her hands in his hair and surges forward again, their mouths and hearts meeting in waves, a desperate display of what is decidedly inappropriate behavior for the kitchen.
There is a ping in his mind that tells him the TARDIS does not appreciate him snogging on her table, and doesn’t he have a bed for that?
Grinning and lifting Rose from their perch, he decides he most certainly does.
***
“Tell me, where do you want to go?”
“With you? Everywhere, forever.”
“Forever begins here,” says the storm to the wolf, taking her hand and letting the fire in their eyes light the way until the very distant end.
“I know you’ve been protecting me from Satellite Five, but you should know… its okay. I’m alright, and I’ve done… a little bit more than remember,” she says, drawing the word 'little' from her mouth like thin strings of taffy.
She’s a witch, and oh god does she adore it.
Maybe it was the hair with tawny roots showing, or the thin-strapped tank that showed a scandalous amount of lush, round cleavage. Maybe it was what they thought was kohl around her eyes, making her brown look to be a rich mahogany that reminded them of the trees.
Maybe it was the Vortex still curled lovingly around every cell in her body, and how she can make things happen with a flick of her finger and a smile.
No matter how Rose Tyler got here, she is here. Tied to a tall post, tumbleweeds and sagebrush and whatever grasses and wood the townsfolk could find being tucked beneath her boots. One sprig of sage still has a miniscule purple flower on it, half bloomed and peeking out at her. She nudges it with a toe and smiles.
She even dressed for the time period, once the Doctor had landed them incorrectly. Really, she did. Went back to the TARDIS and scavenged the wardrobe room, dancing with delight at the comfort of cloth that the old girl provided. A billowing cream top lacing it’s way to her chin, an azure and heavy skirt that fell to the tips of her decorated black boots.
Maybe she should have left off the rings? Moonstone likely isn’t helping her case, but she just thought they were so lovely. It was like they’d found her, tucked into an ornately carved black box, what looked to be obsidian but all the carvings were Gallifreyan. Whatever the obsidian equivalent was, it was that, and it was suddenly displayed proudly on the floor, neatly next to the lace-up leather shoes where moments before it hadn’t been.
She waits. Secretly, and she would never, ever tell him this, she delights that he might be late to save her. The song in her blood is boiling, and she wants to know how much of the Bad Wolf she is. She creates herself, but can she save herself?
Yes. How… well, she’s working on that.
There is shouting behind the crowd that makes a solid wall of angry and frightened people. She can only hear some of the words, but oh he is angry.
“You… one hair… Ohhhhhhh no… don’t think… like elephants!”
She snorts and can’t help herself, she’s grinning ear to ear now. So happy to see him, elation carving her features into that of a joyful goddess (or witch, as the case may be). So Rose closes her eyes and feels for atoms, the lines that divide them. No A-levels and her only grasp of physics what she’s picked up from the Doctor’s babbling, but it doesn’t matter; she understands.
There is a black hole four hundred years out, not yet exhausted from its all-consuming majesty. A star is born in such ecstasy, the universe sings for it and she sings too, a ball of gas and rock and matter and gravity swirling together and Melicon, she thinks. Your name is Melicon.
There is molten movement churning sluggishly miles under her feet as the Earth shifts and bubbles inside, a dying Redwood in the forests of California with a little girl holding it in her small arms even as the last of its life passes.
And there is the Doctor, storm gathering around him in thunderous movement through the air, the overcast sky knowing exactly what he is and trembling because of it.
And there is her, Rose Tyler, the valiant child who did not die in battle, and she will not be held down or apart from her Lord of Time by any hands in the universe.
She slides between the fibers of rope, letting them go, burning their bonds away at the molecular level. She plants the sage beneath her feet, the newly grown roots thrusting their way into the soil and flowering in violently amethyst arrays. She soothes the mob’s fear, slides between their synapses and tweaks the programming that sparks panic at magic and difference and the powers that be. She lets them rest, and every last being in the crowd falls asleep at her feet.
The Doctor is stopped, mid stride towards her, back trainer hovering ridiculously in the air and sonic pointed in the vague direction he thought she was behind the wall of people. His coat flaps lightly in the wind, and she thinks, smothering a snort with her palm, she has never seen his hair look more ridiculous than when he is angry.
“Hello!” she calls, waving cheerfully.
Still uncertain, he sets his back foot gingerly on the ground.
“They’re dead?!” he demands somewhat in alarm, somewhat in dismay, looking around frantically for the source of the poison gas spore electric device something that could have killed so many at once.
“No, no, no no!” she says, gesturing with her hands aimlessly in front of herself. “They’re just sleeping, s’all. I thought they were a little too worked up for their own good, you know?”
“You… you? Rose, what’s going on?” he is asking, even as he is hopping over dozens of sleeping bodies to run into her arms and sweep her bodily away from the pyre, laughing and gratefully feeling the pounding of her life beneath her ribs.
“S’okay, Doctor! Though I might have suggested they lay off on the killing of witchy things in the future, a bit, maybe,” she shifts about nervously, the thought only now occurring to her that she likely pushed humanity to a different line of history.
“You… suggested it,” he says flatly, almost disbelieving that she could have talked an angry mob of dozens down from burning her at the stake, but the fundamental line of his faith remains unshaken. “Well, then, that was easy, wasn’t it!”
She laughs and holds both of his hands, bringing one joined pair to her temple and tapping it with his knuckle. “Here,” she said. “And in my blood, I could just… feel it. An’ I wanted to save myself for once, so I… just did, I s’pose.”
“You feel what, Rose?”
He is cautious now, eyeing her like he’s examining her for fever or mumps or Silverian flu, or maybe like he has X-ray vision and can see she isn’t wearing knickers. She shivers a little under the dark scrutiny, pushing the way his eyes make her molten to the side. They’re not like that, she reminds herself. Not going to be, so might as well stop thinking about it, you silly little ape girl. Don’t look at the concerned downward tuck of his mouth, his mouth, his… ah, hell. Everyone lived, didn't they?
She kisses him, full on his gorgeous and startled lips, pressing her body close, azure skirt blending with cerulean pinstripes. It would be chaste if not for the heat behind it, her hands on his neck, her nails sinking half moon marks into his nape. His double pulse pounds and she steps back, pleased that she has sufficiently dazzled him twice in one day.
She’s setting new records, she is.
“I know you’ve been protecting me from Satellite Five, but you should know… its okay. I’m alright, and I’ve done… a little bit more than remember,” she says, drawing the word 'little' from her mouth like thin strings of taffy.
He blinks at her, stupidly. She cups his face and he unconsciously leans in, the gravity of them demanding it of him. It’s always been a law he’s found himself obeying, and only recently has that bothered him less and less with each passing second of Rose Tyler in his wild and jeopardy friendly life.
She hugs him then, crushing his ribs into hers so they can feel the rise and fall of the other’s breath.
She whispers hotly in his ear, “I create myself.”
And then she is traipsing back to the TARDIS, leaving him dumbfounded and fully, impossibly in love, delicately stepping over sleeping limbs and torsos, bending to brush her fingers against the flourishing sage.
***
This really wasn’t how he’d pictured Barcelona. And oh, how he had pictured it, ever since he’d run his tongue along new teeth and seen the uncertainty behind the gold in her eyes.
She puts on the lightest dress she can find inside the wardrobe room, a slip of mystery fabric turquoise that should have been a fashion nightmare but clung to her curves like a wetsuit. She insists on summer. He insists on the inky night and smooth Spanish guitar. Secretly, she thinks he wants it to improve his moves. Secretly, she desperately wishes he would show them to her.
They dance.
It is a soft, flowing movement of bodies and the space between bodies. Her hips carve letters in front of him that he swears he can read if only he concentrates hard enough. Each note of music touches her, neck, breasts, hips and belly; the E flat is working its way along her breastbone, and he desperately wants to follow.
So he does.
Slender fingertips touch first. This is a brief connection, looking for the life of them like he is touching her heart through her sternum. Maybe he is. But as he grows bolder, fingertips become fingers, become a palm that is cupping the space between her breasts and feeling the fragile life beat. Her eyes are closed and she sways, mouth tugging upwards on one side, murmuring, “I knew you could dance.” He can scarcely hear her over the octave jump between Cs roaring in his ears, and the cicadas rustling up the night with the gossip of insects.
He comes to her fully, not just his palm but his arms, his chest against her back, his shoulders rolling inward to form little cups for her to turn her face into. There are conversations around them, the black night discussing rainfall with the soil, other patrons clinking margaritas together with hushed talk of sex and liaisons, his pelvis matching hers sway for sway as they dance next to their table, the only beings that matter in the universe.
He is jolted from his reverie when she begins to stir in their cell. It is only when he realizes that she is waking nearly six hours before her human body should have been metabolizing the sedative that he starts to understand the gravity of the wolf.
He would curse himself for not instructing her to not pet the dogs with no noses, except if he’s honest with himself they haven’t been jailed in ages, and he’s missed it, a little.
She is darling when she sleeps.
Okay, so she was drugged. Still darling, all pink and yellow and tiny snores.
“Doctor?” she mutters groggily, palm going to her head to cup her skull and swear bloody hell at the twelve drummers drumming right behind her eyes.
“I’m here, Rose,” he murmurs soothingly, stroking her shoulders and sitting very close to her. He tells himself it’s for her safety, though even she can’t find a way to wander off in a cell this small.
“W’happened?”
“No nosed dogs are adorable but sacred, apparently.” He grins at her sheepishly. “My bad.”
“S’okay. My headache's clearin', so I don’t feel the need to currently feed you to my mum. So. Escape plans, yeah? To the TARDIS for a good cuppa and a swirly in the Vortex?”
He chuckled. “I hadn’t thought that far. I was expecting you to be under for hours still.”
She nods, unsurprised. “I’m sleeping less at home, too.”
He blinks at her, filing the thrill his hearts get at the use of home away. (It sounds so, so good on her lips. Would sound even better in her bed, in his bed…) “You’re sleeping less? How much less, Rose?”
“Oh, y’know. Enough t’know you don’t just tinker all night, if you know what I mean,” and she waggles her eyebrows, grinning.
He flushes hotly. “I also knit,” he insists.
“I guess they both do involve two things doing…” she trails off, completing her sentence by circling her two index fingers around each other and then makes a gesture decidedly obscene on at least thirty-seven different planets.
“Escape! Right-o, one escape, coming up!” he squeaks, standing abruptly, trainers tapping out a dull beat as he paces the cell.
Idly, she hums the song that thrives in her blood to the beat of his footsteps, and stands to help him.
***
It is a month later, after long nights of them both being awake and him teaching her to identify the biomechanical parts he uses in the time rotor, or reading to her from the grit of Charles Bukowski, or watching the last Harry Potter film two years before the book’s release but six months after she’s read it, that he realizes he hasn’t felt her cells age in twenty-two days.
He stops her in the galley, toast with huckleberry jam halfway to her mouth and a wretched gossip magazine in her other hand (The best sex you’ve ever had! it declares. How to please your man and make him--). Her tea is nearly cold, but she doesn’t care.
“You’re not getting older,” he reports, bluntly.
She doesn’t move her toast or close her mouth. “I’m a what now?” she asks, fixing him with her best you’re crazier than usual today stare.
“I can’t feel it, Rose. I can’t feel you age.”
“Riiight, because I’m-“ she stops, the firm set to his features halting her words before she dare finish them. “You’re not joking.”
“No,” he says, shaking just a little.
“Bad Wolf, huh,” she murmurs, resting her toast back on her plate and cuddling her tea with her hands. She is grateful for the small warmth it has left.
“Probably,” he muses, sitting beside her. “I need to run some tests, we should get you to the med bay and-“
She doesn’t let him finish, instead slamming her mug on the table so hastily the earl grey sloshes onto the wood. She is there, in front of him, almost entirely in his lap in her eagerness and her mouth is crashing to his, taking him with her in the elaborate fantasy (reality, her blood sings) of being together.
“I,” she breathes in between kisses, “don’t. Age.”
And she pulls back, gazing at him with the entire weight of eternity held in the space between her glistening lips.
“You don’t have to be alone!” she cries with such jubilance, and she is laughing, and hugging him, and crying into his chest all at the same time. He is dazed, eyes wide and staring at the coral walls next to the pantry.
“You… you could be my mate,” he whispers, so soft and nervous she almost doesn't hear him.
The way he is looking at her, like he could devour her whole and still save some for leftovers... She had not been expecting him to be so brazen in his words, her champion of dodging all things awkward and Rose related.
Inspired, she fists her hands in his hair and surges forward again, their mouths and hearts meeting in waves, a desperate display of what is decidedly inappropriate behavior for the kitchen.
There is a ping in his mind that tells him the TARDIS does not appreciate him snogging on her table, and doesn’t he have a bed for that?
Grinning and lifting Rose from their perch, he decides he most certainly does.
***
“Tell me, where do you want to go?”
“With you? Everywhere, forever.”
“Forever begins here,” says the storm to the wolf, taking her hand and letting the fire in their eyes light the way until the very distant end.