New Fic: Raindrops (Anywhere But Cardiff entry)
Title: Raindrops
Pairing: 10/Rose
Rating: PG13
Betas: timesup and gabesaunt
Spoilers: Set between The Age of Steel and The Idiot's Lantern, tiny reference to Gridlock
Prompt: Woodstock, 1969
Summary: The Doctor knows just the place to go to try and cheer Rose up, but a trip with him is never quite that simple.
A/N: I'm borrowing some ideas/names from Greek mythology in this story, but it actually does make sense. I've tried to get the details of Woodstock close to the real thing, but don't hate me if I've made a mistake.
Rose sat on the Tardis bench, feet propped up on the console. Her face was stormy, and she appeared to be lost in her own thoughts. On the other side of the console, the Doctor stood fiddling with various disconnected buttons in an effort to look busy. He wasn't very good at sitting still, and Rose didn't appear inclined to clown around with him like she normally would. He really couldn't blame her-- she'd just lost her oldest friend, the only friend she could talk to about her new life traveling with him.
Mickey. Who would've guessed that Mickey the Idiot, who'd cowered from the Nestene Consciousness and urged Rose to leave the Doctor behind, would turn into such an independent guy who would choose to leave Rose to help fight the Cybermen? The Doctor didn't really have a strong attachment to Mickey, well, not the way he did to Rose. All the same, he felt her pain in losing Mickey.
He'd done the only thing he could think of-- brought her back to the Powell Estate for a cup of tea and a hug from Jackie. It had helped too. They stayed for a while, and Jackie had fussed over Rose.
Wallowing in her flat was only going to make her think of Mickey more, the Doctor had finally decided, and he'd whisked her back to the Tardis, saying a trip would help take her mind off of... things. Problem was, he had no idea where to bring her. What had she been itching to see that they'd bypassed before?
"Aha!" yelled the Doctor. "Of course."
"Of course what?" asked Rose, shaken from her thoughts.
"I know where we're going," he said, grinning.
"Where's that?"
"You'll see."
He turned a knob and pulled a lever and the whole room shook as the central column whirred into its usual frenzy.
* * * *
The trip didn't take long at all-- a few moments later, they landed with a thud.
"That was quick."
"We haven't gone that far back, and we're still on Earth."
"Am I all right?" asked Rose, motioning to her clothes-- a t-shirt and jeans from home.
"Add a pair of wellies, and you're all set," said the Doctor.
"Wellies? I'm almost afraid to ask why I might need them."
"Then don't ask-- just have a look," he said, nodding toward the Tardis doors.
Jamming on the wellies, Rose ran to the doors. Pausing to grab his coat from where he'd draped it on the Tardis wall, the Doctor followed.
Stepping out of the Tardis, Rose slipped, nearly falling to the ground before the Doctor caught her. Looking across the muddy fields, Rose could see an absolute sea of people. Some wore loose skirts, some wore bell-bottom jeans, and some, well, they weren't wearing anything at all.
Stooping slightly, the Doctor stood behind her and spoke into her ear. "What do you think?"
"What is this? The Age of Aquarius?"
"Exactly!" said the Doctor cheerfully. "We never made it to see Ian Dury and the Blockheads in Sheffield, but I figured Woodstock might make up for it. Well, strictly speaking, it's the not the town of Woodstock. That's a few miles away, but it is the concert. Logistical issues. Come on, then."
* * * *
"Think it's muddy enough? It's like Glastonbury here," said Rose.
"That's part of the experience," said the Doctor, as he put his arm around her shoulders. "Besides, the wellies should keep your feet dry."
Thunder boomed, and fat raindrops began falling again.
"It's not keeping dry I'm worried about-- gave up on that. It's just that the mud's so thick, I might actually get stuck."
"Come to think of it, it's supposed to rain at Woodstock, but this is more extreme than it should be. Let's have a look around, see if we can't find something out of the ordinary."
They waded through deep puddles, splattering mud all over Rose's jeans and the Doctor's suit. Rose smiled, embracing the distraction their search provided. Muddy or not, she needed something to keep her mind off of recent events, and a muddy hippie-filled field would work.
"There's all sorts of weird weather on this planet. You've got places that can be cold and rainy in the morning and be incredibly hot and dry by the afternoon. One place I went, can't think of where on Earth it was, they told me that if I didn't like the weather, I should hang about for a while, because it would change." He grinned. "You've got to have a sense of humor about it, I suppose, or it just wouldn't be any fun. Think of it, Rose. Some people pay good money to get bathed in mud, and here we are, doing it for free."
Looking up at him, she smiled. "I can't picture those posh people here, rolling around in the mud. Can you?"
"No, not really. It'd be fun to watch though." He ran a hand through his sopping wet hair. "All this rain, it's definitely too much for Woodstock. What could be causing it? It wouldn't be the hippies; they don't want it to rain on their concert. And no matter how much the locals dislike it, there's not much they can do about the weather. Hmm... some sort of temperature manipulation? Or extra vapors being released from somewhere? Maybe there's a new organism in the air, producing water."
"What if it's just an alien with a head cold?" asked Rose. "You know, like when you're sick with a cold, and you can't stay in a steamy shower all day to clear up your chest. They've got machines that make the air really steamy and humid without taking up so much water."
"Of course!" he said, stopping and turning to her. "A non-indigenous humanoid could increase the precipitation in a specific geographic area with an imbriferum filter."
"Seriously, though?" asked Rose. "It's really an alien with a head cold?"
"Well, maybe not a head cold, but someone needs the water for something. I don't mean for a drink; all this water-- it's for something big."
They crossed into a densely populated field and attempted to squeeze through the masses of people. The Doctor clasped Rose's hand tightly.
"Wouldn't do to lose you in this crowd. Maybe we should ask around-- oi, mate," he called to a nearby man. "Have you seen anything strange around here-- lights in the sky, people not behaving normally?"
The man reached out and patted the Doctor's shoulder. "Aw, relax, man. Must be your first time. Just enjoy it."
He turned and disappeared into the gyrating crowd. The Doctor looked at Rose, puzzled. "What'd he mean by that?"
Rose giggled. "He thinks you're tripping for the first time."
"Oh." The Doctor looked slightly offended.
"Don't worry about it," she said, playfully smacking his arm. "Come on; let's go talk to some more people."
* * * *
Other people were a bit more helpful, and after an hour slogging through the mud, the Doctor and Rose found their way to a tent on the edge of a concert stage. The Doctor stood outside the closed tent flap and sniffed.
"Something smells fishy," he said.
"Now that's just corny, Doctor," said Rose.
"No really, it does," he said, sniffing again.
"I suppose so," said Rose, wrinkling her nose as she neared the tent.
"Let's go meet them then," said the Doctor. He held out his arm, and Rose grasped it as he flipped open the tent flap.
Inside, there were three girls who looked like they were in their twenties. The other people were right, though, they weren't your typical hippies. They wore the flowing skirts and loose peasant blouses, but their long hair was a sea-foam green, and they appeared to be wearing scaly boots on their feet. All three looked up as the Doctor and Rose walked into the tent.
"Well, well. Nereids. You're a long way from home, aren't you?" said the Doctor.
"You know of us? How?" asked one of the Nereids. "None of the other humans had heard of us, although they seemed to like our appearance."
"There you go. I'm not human. I'm the Doctor. Who are you, exactly?"
"I am Dynamene, and these are Pherusa and Amphitrite."
"But why are you making all this rain? You're already flooding the fields-- it's just a matter of time before the flooding causes massive erosion in this whole area. How long were you going to keep this up?"
"Indefinitely. We crashed a few days ago and have been unable to repair our ship. It was so dry here; we couldn't survive. So, we had to enable the imbriferum filter. We need marsh-like conditions at the very least to sustain life."
"I see," said the Doctor, nodding. "You can't continue doing this to the local environment. This area isn't meant to have so much rain. But I'll tell you what-- take me to your ship, and I'll see what I can do to repair it and get you back home."
The three Nereids beamed at him, and Dynamene stood up. As she stood, Rose could see that she wasn't wearing boots at all-- the scales were part of the skin on her legs. Leading the Doctor and Rose out of the tent, she walked away from the stage, toward a clump of trees at the edge of the field. Pulling back a mass of branches and other foliage, Dynamene revealed a small spacecraft. Walking over to the side, the Doctor opened a small control panel and began scanning it with the sonic screwdriver.
"Oh, this isn't bad at all. Beautiful circuitry."
"What's wrong with it, Doctor?" asked Rose.
"Someone's put in a faulty transistor. It's not conducting as well as it should. They really should have used a germanium one for this. The one they've got won't carry enough energy over to the next circuit to keep them in flight. That's fixed easily enough-- I'll just change the connection. Should last them until they can get home and get a proper replacement transistor."
"So easy? Not business as usual for us."
"The hard part isn't fixing it-- it's figuring out how to let this ship take off without the thousands of people here noticing it."
"Most of these people are too stoned to notice, I think," said Rose.
"All the same, we've got to distract everyone. That stage near the tent, why isn't anyone performing?"
"The equipment became waterlogged, and the amplifier developed a short," said Dynamene.
"Well if we can get the amplifiers working--" Rose began.
"Then we'll have our distraction!" exclaimed the Doctor, almost bouncing with energy.
* * * *
Behind the amplifier, the Doctor had taken off the back panel and now stood, wires draped over one shoulder as he worked on it with the sonic screwdriver.
"Just a few more adjustments, and we'll have it all fixed up for your performance," he said to a young woman.
Dressed in a flowing blue jacket and trousers, with long brown hair, she certainly looked the part of a Woodstock performer. "Thank you; we were supposed to be on earlier, but we can't play to this crowd without an amp," she said.
Fiddling with various wires, the Doctor continued to make adjustments to the wires. Rose stood next to him, ready to help if she could. Just then, a sparking frayed wire slipped out from behind another clump of wires and touched the Doctor's coat sleeve. The reaction was instantaneous as the sleeve flared up with a small flame. Rose wasted no time, pushing the Doctor down into a nearby mud puddle and dousing the flame.
"Rose, if you wanted to play in the mud, all you had to do was ask," he said with a teasing grin, waggling his eyebrows.
He sighed. "Of all the luck. The one part of me that was dry and it had to catch fire. That last connection did it, though, the amplifier should be ready to go."
"I really can't thank you enough," said the young woman. "Especially since you've ruined your coat fixing my amp. Hold on for a sec, let me see if I've got anything you can wear instead."
She ran off toward her band, behind the stage. After she talked with them for a few moments, the Doctor saw one of the men in the band hand her his coat. The woman walked back to them, holding out the coat. "The guys really appreciate what you did too, and they've offered to give you this coat to replace yours, since it looks so much like the one you lost."
"I'll say," said Rose. "They could be identical. I can't tell the difference."
"Thank you."
"Oh, it's no problem," said the young woman. "I've got to go get ready for our set now."
"Just one more thing," said the Doctor. "What was your name?"
"Oh," called the young woman, as she walked away. "You can call me Janis."
Looking at each other, Rose and the Doctor burst into laughter.
"I can't believe it."
"You've just got a knack for running into those famous people, Doctor."
"I know! Charlie Dickens, Queen Victoria, and now Janis Joplin. Well, she'll certainly take the attention away from our little launch. Come on; let's go tell the Nereids the good news."
* * * *
"There we are," said the Doctor, watching the Nereid ship sail off into the sky. "Good deed done there. How'd you like the concert?"
"It's great. Just what I needed; I'm feeling a lot better now," said Rose. "It's still going to be hard, knowing I won't see Mickey anymore, but you always know how to cheer me up."
"My pleasure. So you really like Woodstock, then?"
"Great music. A bit muddy, though. Next time we go to a concert, can we go to one indoors?"
"Tell you what. If you liked this, I should take you to see a real rock 'n' roll classic-- how do you feel about Elvis?"
Pairing: 10/Rose
Rating: PG13
Betas: timesup and gabesaunt
Spoilers: Set between The Age of Steel and The Idiot's Lantern, tiny reference to Gridlock
Prompt: Woodstock, 1969
Summary: The Doctor knows just the place to go to try and cheer Rose up, but a trip with him is never quite that simple.
A/N: I'm borrowing some ideas/names from Greek mythology in this story, but it actually does make sense. I've tried to get the details of Woodstock close to the real thing, but don't hate me if I've made a mistake.
Rose sat on the Tardis bench, feet propped up on the console. Her face was stormy, and she appeared to be lost in her own thoughts. On the other side of the console, the Doctor stood fiddling with various disconnected buttons in an effort to look busy. He wasn't very good at sitting still, and Rose didn't appear inclined to clown around with him like she normally would. He really couldn't blame her-- she'd just lost her oldest friend, the only friend she could talk to about her new life traveling with him.
Mickey. Who would've guessed that Mickey the Idiot, who'd cowered from the Nestene Consciousness and urged Rose to leave the Doctor behind, would turn into such an independent guy who would choose to leave Rose to help fight the Cybermen? The Doctor didn't really have a strong attachment to Mickey, well, not the way he did to Rose. All the same, he felt her pain in losing Mickey.
He'd done the only thing he could think of-- brought her back to the Powell Estate for a cup of tea and a hug from Jackie. It had helped too. They stayed for a while, and Jackie had fussed over Rose.
Wallowing in her flat was only going to make her think of Mickey more, the Doctor had finally decided, and he'd whisked her back to the Tardis, saying a trip would help take her mind off of... things. Problem was, he had no idea where to bring her. What had she been itching to see that they'd bypassed before?
"Aha!" yelled the Doctor. "Of course."
"Of course what?" asked Rose, shaken from her thoughts.
"I know where we're going," he said, grinning.
"Where's that?"
"You'll see."
He turned a knob and pulled a lever and the whole room shook as the central column whirred into its usual frenzy.
* * * *
The trip didn't take long at all-- a few moments later, they landed with a thud.
"That was quick."
"We haven't gone that far back, and we're still on Earth."
"Am I all right?" asked Rose, motioning to her clothes-- a t-shirt and jeans from home.
"Add a pair of wellies, and you're all set," said the Doctor.
"Wellies? I'm almost afraid to ask why I might need them."
"Then don't ask-- just have a look," he said, nodding toward the Tardis doors.
Jamming on the wellies, Rose ran to the doors. Pausing to grab his coat from where he'd draped it on the Tardis wall, the Doctor followed.
Stepping out of the Tardis, Rose slipped, nearly falling to the ground before the Doctor caught her. Looking across the muddy fields, Rose could see an absolute sea of people. Some wore loose skirts, some wore bell-bottom jeans, and some, well, they weren't wearing anything at all.
Stooping slightly, the Doctor stood behind her and spoke into her ear. "What do you think?"
"What is this? The Age of Aquarius?"
"Exactly!" said the Doctor cheerfully. "We never made it to see Ian Dury and the Blockheads in Sheffield, but I figured Woodstock might make up for it. Well, strictly speaking, it's the not the town of Woodstock. That's a few miles away, but it is the concert. Logistical issues. Come on, then."
* * * *
"Think it's muddy enough? It's like Glastonbury here," said Rose.
"That's part of the experience," said the Doctor, as he put his arm around her shoulders. "Besides, the wellies should keep your feet dry."
Thunder boomed, and fat raindrops began falling again.
"It's not keeping dry I'm worried about-- gave up on that. It's just that the mud's so thick, I might actually get stuck."
"Come to think of it, it's supposed to rain at Woodstock, but this is more extreme than it should be. Let's have a look around, see if we can't find something out of the ordinary."
They waded through deep puddles, splattering mud all over Rose's jeans and the Doctor's suit. Rose smiled, embracing the distraction their search provided. Muddy or not, she needed something to keep her mind off of recent events, and a muddy hippie-filled field would work.
"There's all sorts of weird weather on this planet. You've got places that can be cold and rainy in the morning and be incredibly hot and dry by the afternoon. One place I went, can't think of where on Earth it was, they told me that if I didn't like the weather, I should hang about for a while, because it would change." He grinned. "You've got to have a sense of humor about it, I suppose, or it just wouldn't be any fun. Think of it, Rose. Some people pay good money to get bathed in mud, and here we are, doing it for free."
Looking up at him, she smiled. "I can't picture those posh people here, rolling around in the mud. Can you?"
"No, not really. It'd be fun to watch though." He ran a hand through his sopping wet hair. "All this rain, it's definitely too much for Woodstock. What could be causing it? It wouldn't be the hippies; they don't want it to rain on their concert. And no matter how much the locals dislike it, there's not much they can do about the weather. Hmm... some sort of temperature manipulation? Or extra vapors being released from somewhere? Maybe there's a new organism in the air, producing water."
"What if it's just an alien with a head cold?" asked Rose. "You know, like when you're sick with a cold, and you can't stay in a steamy shower all day to clear up your chest. They've got machines that make the air really steamy and humid without taking up so much water."
"Of course!" he said, stopping and turning to her. "A non-indigenous humanoid could increase the precipitation in a specific geographic area with an imbriferum filter."
"Seriously, though?" asked Rose. "It's really an alien with a head cold?"
"Well, maybe not a head cold, but someone needs the water for something. I don't mean for a drink; all this water-- it's for something big."
They crossed into a densely populated field and attempted to squeeze through the masses of people. The Doctor clasped Rose's hand tightly.
"Wouldn't do to lose you in this crowd. Maybe we should ask around-- oi, mate," he called to a nearby man. "Have you seen anything strange around here-- lights in the sky, people not behaving normally?"
The man reached out and patted the Doctor's shoulder. "Aw, relax, man. Must be your first time. Just enjoy it."
He turned and disappeared into the gyrating crowd. The Doctor looked at Rose, puzzled. "What'd he mean by that?"
Rose giggled. "He thinks you're tripping for the first time."
"Oh." The Doctor looked slightly offended.
"Don't worry about it," she said, playfully smacking his arm. "Come on; let's go talk to some more people."
* * * *
Other people were a bit more helpful, and after an hour slogging through the mud, the Doctor and Rose found their way to a tent on the edge of a concert stage. The Doctor stood outside the closed tent flap and sniffed.
"Something smells fishy," he said.
"Now that's just corny, Doctor," said Rose.
"No really, it does," he said, sniffing again.
"I suppose so," said Rose, wrinkling her nose as she neared the tent.
"Let's go meet them then," said the Doctor. He held out his arm, and Rose grasped it as he flipped open the tent flap.
Inside, there were three girls who looked like they were in their twenties. The other people were right, though, they weren't your typical hippies. They wore the flowing skirts and loose peasant blouses, but their long hair was a sea-foam green, and they appeared to be wearing scaly boots on their feet. All three looked up as the Doctor and Rose walked into the tent.
"Well, well. Nereids. You're a long way from home, aren't you?" said the Doctor.
"You know of us? How?" asked one of the Nereids. "None of the other humans had heard of us, although they seemed to like our appearance."
"There you go. I'm not human. I'm the Doctor. Who are you, exactly?"
"I am Dynamene, and these are Pherusa and Amphitrite."
"But why are you making all this rain? You're already flooding the fields-- it's just a matter of time before the flooding causes massive erosion in this whole area. How long were you going to keep this up?"
"Indefinitely. We crashed a few days ago and have been unable to repair our ship. It was so dry here; we couldn't survive. So, we had to enable the imbriferum filter. We need marsh-like conditions at the very least to sustain life."
"I see," said the Doctor, nodding. "You can't continue doing this to the local environment. This area isn't meant to have so much rain. But I'll tell you what-- take me to your ship, and I'll see what I can do to repair it and get you back home."
The three Nereids beamed at him, and Dynamene stood up. As she stood, Rose could see that she wasn't wearing boots at all-- the scales were part of the skin on her legs. Leading the Doctor and Rose out of the tent, she walked away from the stage, toward a clump of trees at the edge of the field. Pulling back a mass of branches and other foliage, Dynamene revealed a small spacecraft. Walking over to the side, the Doctor opened a small control panel and began scanning it with the sonic screwdriver.
"Oh, this isn't bad at all. Beautiful circuitry."
"What's wrong with it, Doctor?" asked Rose.
"Someone's put in a faulty transistor. It's not conducting as well as it should. They really should have used a germanium one for this. The one they've got won't carry enough energy over to the next circuit to keep them in flight. That's fixed easily enough-- I'll just change the connection. Should last them until they can get home and get a proper replacement transistor."
"So easy? Not business as usual for us."
"The hard part isn't fixing it-- it's figuring out how to let this ship take off without the thousands of people here noticing it."
"Most of these people are too stoned to notice, I think," said Rose.
"All the same, we've got to distract everyone. That stage near the tent, why isn't anyone performing?"
"The equipment became waterlogged, and the amplifier developed a short," said Dynamene.
"Well if we can get the amplifiers working--" Rose began.
"Then we'll have our distraction!" exclaimed the Doctor, almost bouncing with energy.
* * * *
Behind the amplifier, the Doctor had taken off the back panel and now stood, wires draped over one shoulder as he worked on it with the sonic screwdriver.
"Just a few more adjustments, and we'll have it all fixed up for your performance," he said to a young woman.
Dressed in a flowing blue jacket and trousers, with long brown hair, she certainly looked the part of a Woodstock performer. "Thank you; we were supposed to be on earlier, but we can't play to this crowd without an amp," she said.
Fiddling with various wires, the Doctor continued to make adjustments to the wires. Rose stood next to him, ready to help if she could. Just then, a sparking frayed wire slipped out from behind another clump of wires and touched the Doctor's coat sleeve. The reaction was instantaneous as the sleeve flared up with a small flame. Rose wasted no time, pushing the Doctor down into a nearby mud puddle and dousing the flame.
"Rose, if you wanted to play in the mud, all you had to do was ask," he said with a teasing grin, waggling his eyebrows.
He sighed. "Of all the luck. The one part of me that was dry and it had to catch fire. That last connection did it, though, the amplifier should be ready to go."
"I really can't thank you enough," said the young woman. "Especially since you've ruined your coat fixing my amp. Hold on for a sec, let me see if I've got anything you can wear instead."
She ran off toward her band, behind the stage. After she talked with them for a few moments, the Doctor saw one of the men in the band hand her his coat. The woman walked back to them, holding out the coat. "The guys really appreciate what you did too, and they've offered to give you this coat to replace yours, since it looks so much like the one you lost."
"I'll say," said Rose. "They could be identical. I can't tell the difference."
"Thank you."
"Oh, it's no problem," said the young woman. "I've got to go get ready for our set now."
"Just one more thing," said the Doctor. "What was your name?"
"Oh," called the young woman, as she walked away. "You can call me Janis."
Looking at each other, Rose and the Doctor burst into laughter.
"I can't believe it."
"You've just got a knack for running into those famous people, Doctor."
"I know! Charlie Dickens, Queen Victoria, and now Janis Joplin. Well, she'll certainly take the attention away from our little launch. Come on; let's go tell the Nereids the good news."
* * * *
"There we are," said the Doctor, watching the Nereid ship sail off into the sky. "Good deed done there. How'd you like the concert?"
"It's great. Just what I needed; I'm feeling a lot better now," said Rose. "It's still going to be hard, knowing I won't see Mickey anymore, but you always know how to cheer me up."
"My pleasure. So you really like Woodstock, then?"
"Great music. A bit muddy, though. Next time we go to a concert, can we go to one indoors?"
"Tell you what. If you liked this, I should take you to see a real rock 'n' roll classic-- how do you feel about Elvis?"