Inside the Candle Flame
Rating: PG
Prompt: #029 - Body
Claim: The Time War
Table: Here
Spoilers: Journey's End
Characters/Pairing: Rose/ Doctor 10.5
Summary: “You’re not him.”
They go to a small café right after returning from Norway. Without even going home first, and she realises he doesn’t know their house yet only because it’s not in his copied (stolen) memories. This café he knows because it exists in the other universe as well, but in this one the tea is better. They chat.
She doesn’t want to call him ‘Doctor’.
He asks about her life here, her family, Jackie’s little son. Her job at Torchwood. It stays strangely clinical. She wants to know about the time the Doctor spent without her, about that Martha, Donna and whoever else he met, but he doesn’t seem the right person to ask so she keeps to answering his question in short, distant sentences.
They sit stiffly, their conversation awkward, like teenagers on their first date.
In the end she just gets up and walks out. It feels too much like a bad joke on her expense.
-
He fits into the family life neatly, though he’s never occupying the place Mickey used to fill. It seems like there was a spare chair at their table just waiting for him to take it. Her father likes him well enough while always remaining slightly distant. Her mother warms to him quickly because he laughs at her jokes and helps her take care of her little boy. Her brother loves him because he always has time to fool around.
Rose is the only one who can’t stand him.
-
There has been something about the Doctor, about this version of the Doctor, that stirred up Jackie’s maternal instincts. He has inherited that along with his face - Rose’s rejection of him only strengthens her mother’s strange fondness and she begins to despise him for getting into her life, into her family, like that.
Jackie is always siding with him, in every fight they don’t have.
“You should give him a chance,” she tells her daughter one day, in the large kitchen, while he is upstairs putting her son to bed. “He’s never done anything to deserve this.”
“Why don’t you adopt him then, if you like him so damn much?” Rose replies, harshly while trying to keep her voice down.
But he’s standing behind her in the doorway and has heard every word. The look on his face is enough to make her leave the house and sleep in her office for two days.
-
“You’re not him.”
He’s sitting in the café of their fist talk, on a table in the corner, and she’s standing in front of him, not ready to sit down. Outside the windows the world is moving on - she wonders if it was in this place that she decided it would never work.
“No, I’m not,” he says calmly, looking at her with love and hope and pain in his eyes. “But I’m like him. I’m more like him than anyone else you’ll ever meet and more than he could ever be.”
She forbids herself to look away, summons her frustration like a shield. “What can you do that he can’t?”
“I can love you.” There is only honesty in his words, a truth she doesn’t want to face.
“He loves me!”
“Yes. But not the way you want him to. He can’t - it would destroy him. You would destroy him.” He’s sitting straight, a slim figure in front of the window, the world. Fragile. His hands are lying on the table, unmoving. “He couldn’t give you forever.”
She clings to the delusion that this isn’t true. “And you can?”
His hands, folded on the table in front of him. “I don’t have forever,” he reminds her. “But what I have to offer is yours.”
-
When she comes home he’s curled up on his bed, fully clothed but asleep. She’s watching from the open doorway, her form blocking much of the light falling in from the corridor. There is a vulnerability about him that reminds her of the Doctor but seems stronger somehow, more defined, like he’s lacking the Doctor’s defences.
(They both need her but him she could break.)
Like this he’s helpless, exposed - she could go over and smother him with a pillow and maybe he wouldn’t even struggle. The Doctor she has never seen so defenceless, but this one, he needs to sleep, needs to eat like her.
Many nights Rose has imagined herself in the Doctor’s bed, but her fantasy has always been tainted by the knowledge that while she slept in his arms he would stare at the ceiling, wide awake, and think of the stars.
This man is all she wanted the Doctor to be and it feels like cheating.
After a minute she closes the door, hiding him from sight.
-
“Tell me about the war,” she asks on one of the occasions when she’s willing to talk to him out of the need to hurt. He’s calm as always; at first he doesn’t react to her words at all. Always nice and polite, always holding back, because he hasn’t yet learned how to deal with the ugly parts of being human.
After a while he looks at her with his deep, dark eyes. Eyes that are too old for a man who’s lived for less than a year.
“Don’t ask that of me ever again.” And he sounds like the Doctor here, really sounds like the Doctor with the hidden steel and the voice that scares and thrills her.
“The Doctor would!” she says, childishly, because she wants to remind him what role he has to play and how easily she would crush him if he disappointed her.
The smile he gives her is thin and without humour.
“No, he wouldn’t. He never, ever, ever would. And you know it.” His voice is cold and hard, but still gentle - she doesn’t know how he does it. For this moment she doesn’t control him and it frightens her.
Then he looks away.
“I don’t want you to ask me because I might.”
-
He has the Doctor’s memories, but his personality has been influenced by the human woman, just a bit. He’s seeing things in a way the Doctor never would.
“He thinks you’re beautiful, but not in a way you could understand,” he tells her one day. “For him it makes no difference what you look like. He’d never tell you that your new haircut looks better than the last.”
He’s more open, less controlled. He loves her and is willing to show it. Sometimes the feelings she sees in his eyes when he looks at her make her want to cry and always end up making her angry. The Doctor would never bind himself to her and her family so strongly - it’s against his very nature. This one wants to touch her. The Doctor never would.
From time to time she feels sorry for him, when he looks lost and torn and she thinks that he has all the Doctor’s memories like he’s been him, but the man he is doesn’t fit in there, not completely.
She doesn’t want to feel sorry for him.
-
He’s in the garden, playing with her little half-brother, and he looks happy. His grin is the same grin the Doctor always showed her and she despises him for it.
“Careful. If you don’t mark your territory soon your brother might steal him,” her mother warns her. “He adores that man.”
“Yeah? He can keep him. It’s a present.” Rose turns away from the window, taking a bite from her apple. But the window is open and she can still hear their voices.
“No, but I mean it, Rose,” Jackie says, more serious. “You need to finally show him some appreciation or you’ll lose this one as well. He won’t wait for you forever.”
He’s like a dog, Rose thinks. He’ll always come back for me.
-
Eventually she’ll give in. She knows it because she knows this is the closest she’ll ever get to the Doctor. She resents him for it, resents the fact that he’s a reflection, an echo, and that she already loves this man, and the power she holds over him.
The thought that he might not want to waste this short life he has waiting for her, that one day he might be gone is impossible to bear. He loves her and she needs to be loved, completely. Yet she can’t give in to him, can’t give him what he longs for.
She wants him to suffer like she does.
-
“He’s left me, mum,” she cries into her mother’s arms. “He’s never coming back. I could have stayed with him but he left me behind.”
“He wanted you to be happy.” Jackie is stroking her hair like she always did when Rose was smaller. Like she does with her little boy now. “God knows I didn’t always love that man, but I know he only wants what’s best for you. He understood that you wouldn’t have been happy with him, because he could never have given you what you need. And it’s time you accept that as well.” Her hand is soft in Rose’s hair but she hears the hint of steel in her voice: Stop chasing your dreams and take what’s being offered to you!
“How can he think this is best for me?” she sobs. “Stranding me here with this parody of him to remind me every day of what I’ve lost!”
“You’re too hard on him. He’s not existing to annoy you, you know. And he’s a good man.”
“He’s the pet given to me as compensation for a lost friend.”
“Rose!” It’s the voice that says Stop being so selfish and the hand stills in her hair. “He’s a proof how much the Doctor trusts you. This man is the life the Doctor wants to live, and he gave it to you. He asked you to care for him and so far you’re doing a lousy job. What would the Doctor think if he could see you now?”
It only makes her sob harder.
-
He always sleeps curled up, like he wants to protect himself from (her cold rejection) the cruel world he can’t run from. He’s sleeping like this now, his back to the door, and Rose wishes his bed was a little broader when she climbs in and presses against him so his spine is an uneven line against her breast. Her arms wrap around his slim form; she can feel his ribs through his shirt when her hand slides up his chest. Just like she imagined the Doctor to feel if she’d ever dared to touch him like this.
He’s moving slightly, the quickened rhythm of his breathing indicating he’s awake now, but too confused, too lost to speak. Her hold on him tightens and it’s not tender, not really.
“Time for you to show me how human you are,” she whispers against his neck.
July 23, 2008
Prompt: #029 - Body
Claim: The Time War
Table: Here
Spoilers: Journey's End
Characters/Pairing: Rose/ Doctor 10.5
Summary: “You’re not him.”
They go to a small café right after returning from Norway. Without even going home first, and she realises he doesn’t know their house yet only because it’s not in his copied (stolen) memories. This café he knows because it exists in the other universe as well, but in this one the tea is better. They chat.
She doesn’t want to call him ‘Doctor’.
He asks about her life here, her family, Jackie’s little son. Her job at Torchwood. It stays strangely clinical. She wants to know about the time the Doctor spent without her, about that Martha, Donna and whoever else he met, but he doesn’t seem the right person to ask so she keeps to answering his question in short, distant sentences.
They sit stiffly, their conversation awkward, like teenagers on their first date.
In the end she just gets up and walks out. It feels too much like a bad joke on her expense.
-
He fits into the family life neatly, though he’s never occupying the place Mickey used to fill. It seems like there was a spare chair at their table just waiting for him to take it. Her father likes him well enough while always remaining slightly distant. Her mother warms to him quickly because he laughs at her jokes and helps her take care of her little boy. Her brother loves him because he always has time to fool around.
Rose is the only one who can’t stand him.
-
There has been something about the Doctor, about this version of the Doctor, that stirred up Jackie’s maternal instincts. He has inherited that along with his face - Rose’s rejection of him only strengthens her mother’s strange fondness and she begins to despise him for getting into her life, into her family, like that.
Jackie is always siding with him, in every fight they don’t have.
“You should give him a chance,” she tells her daughter one day, in the large kitchen, while he is upstairs putting her son to bed. “He’s never done anything to deserve this.”
“Why don’t you adopt him then, if you like him so damn much?” Rose replies, harshly while trying to keep her voice down.
But he’s standing behind her in the doorway and has heard every word. The look on his face is enough to make her leave the house and sleep in her office for two days.
-
“You’re not him.”
He’s sitting in the café of their fist talk, on a table in the corner, and she’s standing in front of him, not ready to sit down. Outside the windows the world is moving on - she wonders if it was in this place that she decided it would never work.
“No, I’m not,” he says calmly, looking at her with love and hope and pain in his eyes. “But I’m like him. I’m more like him than anyone else you’ll ever meet and more than he could ever be.”
She forbids herself to look away, summons her frustration like a shield. “What can you do that he can’t?”
“I can love you.” There is only honesty in his words, a truth she doesn’t want to face.
“He loves me!”
“Yes. But not the way you want him to. He can’t - it would destroy him. You would destroy him.” He’s sitting straight, a slim figure in front of the window, the world. Fragile. His hands are lying on the table, unmoving. “He couldn’t give you forever.”
She clings to the delusion that this isn’t true. “And you can?”
His hands, folded on the table in front of him. “I don’t have forever,” he reminds her. “But what I have to offer is yours.”
-
When she comes home he’s curled up on his bed, fully clothed but asleep. She’s watching from the open doorway, her form blocking much of the light falling in from the corridor. There is a vulnerability about him that reminds her of the Doctor but seems stronger somehow, more defined, like he’s lacking the Doctor’s defences.
(They both need her but him she could break.)
Like this he’s helpless, exposed - she could go over and smother him with a pillow and maybe he wouldn’t even struggle. The Doctor she has never seen so defenceless, but this one, he needs to sleep, needs to eat like her.
Many nights Rose has imagined herself in the Doctor’s bed, but her fantasy has always been tainted by the knowledge that while she slept in his arms he would stare at the ceiling, wide awake, and think of the stars.
This man is all she wanted the Doctor to be and it feels like cheating.
After a minute she closes the door, hiding him from sight.
-
“Tell me about the war,” she asks on one of the occasions when she’s willing to talk to him out of the need to hurt. He’s calm as always; at first he doesn’t react to her words at all. Always nice and polite, always holding back, because he hasn’t yet learned how to deal with the ugly parts of being human.
After a while he looks at her with his deep, dark eyes. Eyes that are too old for a man who’s lived for less than a year.
“Don’t ask that of me ever again.” And he sounds like the Doctor here, really sounds like the Doctor with the hidden steel and the voice that scares and thrills her.
“The Doctor would!” she says, childishly, because she wants to remind him what role he has to play and how easily she would crush him if he disappointed her.
The smile he gives her is thin and without humour.
“No, he wouldn’t. He never, ever, ever would. And you know it.” His voice is cold and hard, but still gentle - she doesn’t know how he does it. For this moment she doesn’t control him and it frightens her.
Then he looks away.
“I don’t want you to ask me because I might.”
-
He has the Doctor’s memories, but his personality has been influenced by the human woman, just a bit. He’s seeing things in a way the Doctor never would.
“He thinks you’re beautiful, but not in a way you could understand,” he tells her one day. “For him it makes no difference what you look like. He’d never tell you that your new haircut looks better than the last.”
He’s more open, less controlled. He loves her and is willing to show it. Sometimes the feelings she sees in his eyes when he looks at her make her want to cry and always end up making her angry. The Doctor would never bind himself to her and her family so strongly - it’s against his very nature. This one wants to touch her. The Doctor never would.
From time to time she feels sorry for him, when he looks lost and torn and she thinks that he has all the Doctor’s memories like he’s been him, but the man he is doesn’t fit in there, not completely.
She doesn’t want to feel sorry for him.
-
He’s in the garden, playing with her little half-brother, and he looks happy. His grin is the same grin the Doctor always showed her and she despises him for it.
“Careful. If you don’t mark your territory soon your brother might steal him,” her mother warns her. “He adores that man.”
“Yeah? He can keep him. It’s a present.” Rose turns away from the window, taking a bite from her apple. But the window is open and she can still hear their voices.
“No, but I mean it, Rose,” Jackie says, more serious. “You need to finally show him some appreciation or you’ll lose this one as well. He won’t wait for you forever.”
He’s like a dog, Rose thinks. He’ll always come back for me.
-
Eventually she’ll give in. She knows it because she knows this is the closest she’ll ever get to the Doctor. She resents him for it, resents the fact that he’s a reflection, an echo, and that she already loves this man, and the power she holds over him.
The thought that he might not want to waste this short life he has waiting for her, that one day he might be gone is impossible to bear. He loves her and she needs to be loved, completely. Yet she can’t give in to him, can’t give him what he longs for.
She wants him to suffer like she does.
-
“He’s left me, mum,” she cries into her mother’s arms. “He’s never coming back. I could have stayed with him but he left me behind.”
“He wanted you to be happy.” Jackie is stroking her hair like she always did when Rose was smaller. Like she does with her little boy now. “God knows I didn’t always love that man, but I know he only wants what’s best for you. He understood that you wouldn’t have been happy with him, because he could never have given you what you need. And it’s time you accept that as well.” Her hand is soft in Rose’s hair but she hears the hint of steel in her voice: Stop chasing your dreams and take what’s being offered to you!
“How can he think this is best for me?” she sobs. “Stranding me here with this parody of him to remind me every day of what I’ve lost!”
“You’re too hard on him. He’s not existing to annoy you, you know. And he’s a good man.”
“He’s the pet given to me as compensation for a lost friend.”
“Rose!” It’s the voice that says Stop being so selfish and the hand stills in her hair. “He’s a proof how much the Doctor trusts you. This man is the life the Doctor wants to live, and he gave it to you. He asked you to care for him and so far you’re doing a lousy job. What would the Doctor think if he could see you now?”
It only makes her sob harder.
-
He always sleeps curled up, like he wants to protect himself from (her cold rejection) the cruel world he can’t run from. He’s sleeping like this now, his back to the door, and Rose wishes his bed was a little broader when she climbs in and presses against him so his spine is an uneven line against her breast. Her arms wrap around his slim form; she can feel his ribs through his shirt when her hand slides up his chest. Just like she imagined the Doctor to feel if she’d ever dared to touch him like this.
He’s moving slightly, the quickened rhythm of his breathing indicating he’s awake now, but too confused, too lost to speak. Her hold on him tightens and it’s not tender, not really.
“Time for you to show me how human you are,” she whispers against his neck.
July 23, 2008