electrictoes

wishiknewwho

One day, when the TARDIS was floating lazily through the dark tunnel of the Vortex, where stars and civilisations and planets brushed the sides of the ship without so much as a tremor, Rose asked the Doctor a question.  They were sitting together on the captain’s chair, his arm around her shoulders and her head resting in the crook of his neck, and she walked her fingers down his chest, slipped them under his shirt to stroke the skin of his stomach. 

“Doctor?” she asked quietly, lifting her head so that she could look at him.  “How much do you love me?”

He didn’t reply.  Instead, he smiled at her, a slow, warm smile that felt like melted chocolate and hot tea and steam coiling from a bath, and then, quite simply, he showed her.

*

At first, when he got up from the chair and moved away from her towards the console, she was afraid, terrified that she’d scared him off, that she was pushing him too far, too fast.  And then he was tapping in co-ordinates, his fingers flying across the keys like the feet of a dancer, and she watched him without breathing, hoping desperately that they weren’t returning to London, that he wasn’t taking her home.

“Doctor?” Her voice trembled just a little as she spoke and he looked at her over his shoulder, gave her one of those dazzling grins that was manic and heady and bright as the sun, the grin that made her feel as though she could cross the universe in just a few short leaps.  She went to him and craned her neck to see the cosmos as it whirled past on the screen.  It formed a beautiful reel of light and dark and colour, as if a film was coming apart in front of them and the images were scattering across the sky.  It was breathtaking.

By the time they came to a stop, Rose was dazzled, soothed into a stupor by the silent splendour of the universe, and the Doctor paused to watch her for a moment, drinking in the strange shadows cast by the time rotor on her hair, the amber glint of her eyes, the light that gleamed on the pink blush of her lips.  He hoped that she would understand, that by showing her how much she meant to him he could somehow articulate the feelings he could never quite translate into eloquent words, and his heart beat a little faster in his chest, a rhythm of passion and tension. 

“Are you all right?” She looked up at him then, gave him a tentative smile, and he slid his arm around her, lightly squeezed her waist. 

“I’m always all right.”

She frowned, and in that familiar scrunch of her nose he could see, as though peering through a time window, the nine-year-old she’d once been.  “Yeah, but are you really all right?”

He watched her for a moment, all quiet intensity, before breaking into a smile.  “Rose, you make me all right.”

She smiled too, and it was like the first crack of sunlight after a long winter’s night, bright and powerful and warming, and he wondered if she knew that she was his whole world, that he would die for her until his regenerations ran out, that he would give her time and space and know it still wasn’t enough.  He knew, deep down, that she didn’t realise this, because she was Rose and she was brilliant and she actually thought she didn’t deserve him.

When the TARDIS had fully materialised, he let go of her, moved forward, then reached for her hand, interlaced their fingers and tugged her after him.  She followed willingly, laughing with excitement and anticipation, and he flung open the doors, melodramatic to the core.

They’d landed in the middle of a wide expanse of nothing, just a flat plain of brown dust which stretched as far as the eye could see.  The only thing that broke the blank landscape was a single glass pod, which glimmered ethereally in the dim light.  She frowned at him, nonplussed.

“You love me...as much as a pile of dust?” she guessed, eyebrow raised in enquiry, and he rolled his eyes.

“Rose Tyler, I do believe you’re a bit excited about this trip.” She gave him a look, one that tried to be exasperated but which turned out as mildly reproving, and he pulled her along behind him.  “You’re just going to have to wait and see, I’m afraid, but I think you should credit me with a little more romance.”

She snorted.  “You, romantic?  I think there’s more chance of my mum telling you her deepest secrets.”

He glanced at her over his shoulder, saw the wicked gleam in her eye and affected hurt.  “You wound me.”

“Yeah, yeah.” She bumped her shoulder against his, grinning, and then came to a halt outside the glass capsule.  She reached out, rested her hand against the handle, looked at him questioningly.  He nodded.

Hesitantly, as if she was suspicious of this little pod in the middle of this godforsaken planet, she stepped inside.  It was small and they had to stand close together, the Doctor’s hands sliding under her t-shirt to stroke her back.  She shivered a little and he dipped his head, slid his lips across hers with the lightest of touches, so that she shivered again and laughed, resting her forehead against his shoulder in embarrassment.

“You’re a bit gorgeous, you know,” he said matter-of-factly, nuzzling the hair away from her neck with his nose and dropping a line of kisses along her collarbone, and she smiled even though he couldn’t see her, opened her eyes and just beamed, because every kiss he gave her made her feel like a goddess.  She stroked his cheek, his jaw, and then pulled him gently back up to find his mouth with hers.  He moved his head away, teasing, tantalising, and she pouted, moved her hand to the back of his neck and finally drew him down to her.

No matter how many times she kissed him, it never felt like enough.  It was like dancing, in a way, because their bodies fitted so perfectly together, she leaning and he curving, his tongue to the left, hers to the right, her hand in his hair, his on her back.  He pulled back a little to let her breathe and she gave the tiniest sigh, one of quiet, unsullied contentment, and he smiled again, a smile that was for her and her alone. 

“You’re a bit gorgeous, too,” she whispered back and he laughed, the sound humming softly against her cheek.  She rested her head on his shoulder and gazed through the glass, aware suddenly that they were moving, that this strange pod was a lift that was taking them soaring through the sky.  She gasped at the slow blur of pastel colours, the yellow of a sunrise, the blue of midday, the pink of a sunset. 

“Where are we going?” she asked softly, pulling back to see him, and he smiled, obviously pleased with himself. 

“We’re going to see the stars.” She looked at him quizzically.  “This little capsule acts as an observatory.  By the time we reach the end of the ride, we’ll be in the middle of the cosmos, standing on a carpet of stars.” She shivered at the timbre of his voice, at the rolling beauty of his words.  “We could have seen them from the TARDIS, but this way we get a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view.” She gazed at him, lost for words, and he winked.  “What were you saying about me being romantic?”

She laughed shakily then, standing on tiptoes to kiss the corner of his mouth and noticing that he was wearing more lipstick than she was, the product of their earlier kisses.  She wiped it off with her thumb and he frowned at her.

“Lipstick,” she explained.  “Don’t want to be wearing make-up while you look at the stars, do you?”

“Certainly not.  That wouldn’t be very macho.”

“It wouldn’t be macho at all,” she agreed as the lift came to a gentle stop.  She started to move away from him to look outside, but then his hands were descending over her eyes and she was left suddenly in the dark.  “What are you doing?”

He turned her round so that her back rested against his chest, and he was very close now, so close that she could feel his breath on the shell of her ear, tickling the coil of delicate skin.  The atmosphere had suddenly changed, morphed from light banter to a slow burn of intensity.

“This is how much you mean to me, Rose Tyler.” His voice was low, deep, and he lifted his hands away from her eyes.  Miles and miles of stars rolled away from her in a sea of glitter, tiny pinpricks of light which blazed against the dark, intangible sky.  She felt tears spring abruptly to her eyes and her vision blurred, smudging light into dark and turning the view into some surreal, abstract painting.  “I would give you every single one of these stars, I would gather them up and offer them to you as a present, and it still wouldn’t be enough because you are perfect.” He swallowed.  “You are, Rose.  You’re perfect.”

She couldn’t speak, just tore her eyes away from the quiet world of the twinkling stars and turned in his arms, pressing her face against him and breathing him in.  She loved him so furiously in that moment, loved him with a passion that felt like an inferno, and she wasn’t sure she could ever find the words to thank him.

Slowly, gently, he tipped her head back and kissed her amid a cradle of constellations, whispering in between kisses that she was beautiful, that she was his, that he was hers.  And then finally, when she’d lost track of time and felt as though they’d melted into one being, he pulled back, stroked her cheek.

“But it’s not enough,” he repeated in a whisper, and smiled.  “Let me show you something else.”

electrictoes

salimali

I tag...everyone who can be bothered to do this ;)

writerinatardis

Once, she tells him she’s tired of running.  It’s too hard, she says quietly, as the doors close on another disaster, it’s never enough.  She’s never been a great believer in sacrificing the few to save the many, and it’s so much harder when they don’t stay to help, when they save lives yet scatter death in their wake and then whirl away in their time machine to another catastrophe.

Results day is here!  After a fortnight of utter terror, I finally have them in my hand...

FOUR As.

I've bloody well done it.  I am so indescribably, ridiculously happy - I am delighted beyond measure.  I am quite literally speechless - I was utterly convinced that I'd totally mucked them all up.  I got an A in History by 9 marks so that one was a bit riskier than the others, but I actually got FULL MARKS for Latin.  Full marks.  I'm on cloud nine right now.

I want to do Classics at University, so this is completely the springboard I needed.

More later, when I'm feeling more coherent.

I just...wow.  Brilliant.

*collapses*

Jack realises as he stands beneath a grey sky on a grey March day that this is the first time Torchwood has ever done this.  The church is mostly empty, he’s only seen perhaps a dozen people enter, but he knows that Torchwood does that in the end.  It takes over your life and sucks you in like a spider down a plughole, until all you can do is hang on and pray for a smooth ride.

Gwen is already inside.  He’s had to fight her this morning already, because she was determined to carry the coffin just like him and Ianto and Rhys. She said her height was irrelevant.  He remembers how she challenged him, her dark hair whipping around her face and her brown eyes steely, daring him to contradict her, to tell her she was wrong.  

It was Rhys, in the end, who managed to convince her it might be better to let an undertaker bear the final corner.  She’d nodded and then looked at Jack with tears clouding her eyes, as if she was blaming him for everything and any trust she’d ever instilled in him had been totally destroyed.  And, like the coward he was, he’d looked away.

“Are you ready?” There’s Ianto, at his shoulder as always.  His voice is low and gentle, the master of handling emotions.  Jack turns and he gives a weak half-smile that even to him feels horribly bleak, before nodding once and bending to shoulder one side of the small, wooden coffin.

It nearly breaks him then and there to think that it’s Toshiko he’s carrying.  She seems so small, so very fragile, and as he placed her inside that morning he’d touched her hand, just once, just to make sure.  Call it an act of blind faith, an act of utter desperation, an act of sheer superstitious stupidity, but whatever it was, it was in vain. She was cold.

Rhys is quiet for once, respectful that this is their day and he’s only an onlooker, a spectator from the sidelines who can never even hope to understand the real price of the game. His gaze keeps flicking forward into the church and Jack knows that he’s worried about Gwen, worrying about the vibrant, passionate love of his life who seems to have lost all her colour.  It’s his fault, Jack thinks, he’s broken her.

But there’s no time for this now. This is the day when they can finally say goodbye and dammit, he’s not going to taint it even more with his own guilt and self-pity. Ianto and Gwen need this.  They’ve been through enough already.

He’s hardly even aware when they start walking.  He can feel the coffin, solid against his shoulder, but it’s so light that he can hardly believe she’s in there.  Gwen made sure she was dressed properly, in the blue wraparound dress she’d chosen for Tommy, and she covered her with the soft woollen blanket she’d often pull around her shoulders if she worked into the early hours, the blanket in which they’d often find her the next morning, fast asleep and with her glasses all skew-whiff.  He watched Gwen that morning, watched the way she tended to her friend (their friend) with such tenderness, and so he saw the way she brought the blanket to her nose, saw the way a single tear slid into the soft thick folds.

Owen didn’t have a body, of course, but there was no way in hell Jack was let that stop him.  If Torchwood was going to have a funeral, then by God, it’d be a proper one.  He’d bought a coffin, the best one there was, made of solid oak and polished to a high shine, and exactly what Owen would have scorned.  When he’d stood there in the undertakers, the catalogue in his hands, Jack could almost hear his voice, the familiar sardonic tone filling his eyes and his nose and his ears until he felt like he was all but swallowed by his ghost.

Jack didn’t know what to do, really, with an empty coffin and so that morning, so reverently he’d been surprised at himself, he had opened it up and laid Owen’s lab coat inside, still complete with the ridiculous badges Jack had always teased him about.  Although he would never admit it, even he had cried again then, holding an object in his hands that had screamed Owen but was now just an empty shell.  He had always known, right from the start, that it was people who made the world go round – with their laughter, with their tears, with their stupid arguments over who’d eaten the last chocolate biscuit.  Without people, without their defining essence, there was nothing but darkness.

And now, as he entered the church with Toshiko on his shoulders and Owen just behind, he was determined to make them proud.  He might have put them in danger time and time again, he might even have been responsible for their deaths in some way, but this was their swansong, and he was damned sure he was going to make this worth it.

So, as they walked past the empty pews towards the front, and the tears of those few attendees linked up in a melancholic symphony, he tugged the British flag draped over the coffin a little straighter. 

Because they were Toshiko Sato and Owen Harper, and although they could be stubborn and hard and clinical, they were his team and his friends, and to coin a phrase from another great man, they were absolutely fantastic. 

Rose’s contractions began at exactly two thirty one on the morning of the eighth of May.  The sky was still dark but surprisingly clear for London, and five or six pinpricks of light glittered like sequins outside the window. 

Rose awoke from a strange, dream-filled sleep to a pain rippling across her stomach.  She curled instinctively into a ball, teeth set, and let it wash over her in a wave that was unpleasant but not unmanageable. 

Once it had passed, she drew in a deep, shaky breath, a thrill creeping up her spine which was equal parts fear and excitement.  It suddenly hit home that this baby was coming, that in a few hours time she would be holding her child in her arms, a child that was half her and half the Doctor, a child that would grow up in this little house with its creaky stairs and peeling paintwork.  It wasn’t surreal anymore, a far-away dream that would never come to fruition, and she realised that for all the time she’d spent preparing for her pregnancy, for the birth, she’d never stopped to consider the fact that they would have a real, living baby to look after.

Closing her eyes, she rested her hands either side of her stomach, stroked her thumbs lightly around her bellybutton.  Something stopped her from waking the Doctor, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on.  She supposed it was the realisation that this was the last time she’d ever be truly alone, lying here in the dark and the quiet.  Once the Doctor was awake, everything would be chaotic and noisy and then it would snowball until the second their baby was hauled screaming into the world.  From now on, she’d never be able to think solely about herself, and so she savoured these last few moments of peace and solitude, of being completely, unabashedly self-centred.  She knew with a twist that felt like both regret and delight that they would never come again.

Taking a deep breath, she climbed slowly out of bed, wincing as her elbow caught the corner of her nightstand.  This was something she definitely wouldn’t miss – the ungainly movements, the huffing and puffing, the agonising backache.  The floorboards groaned as she padded across the room.

“Rose?” She paused, wondered if he was simply calling out for her in his sleep as he was prone to do lately.  “Rose, is that you?  What’s the matter?” She returned to the bed, sat down beside him and ran her hand through the mess of brown hair.

“Nothing, don’t panic.” She felt him relax, felt the tension ooze out of his body.  The eye that had opened in worry had now drifted closed and he sighed wearily, contentedly.  “I think you’d better get up though.”

He shifted onto his side, away from her touch, frowning sleepily.  “It’s the middle of the night.”

She lowered her mouth to his ear, let her lips trace the delicate shell.  “You really need to get up.  It’s time, Doctor.” She couldn’t keep the smile out of her voice.  “We’re having a baby.”

“What?” He sat bolt upright, tangled his feet in the covers, and toppled sideways off the bed.

***

The Doctor had been so focused on how difficult the birth would be for Rose that he hadn’t even considered how terrible it would be for him.  Watching her writhe and scream and thrash was possibly the most agonising, soul-destroying thing he’d ever witnessed, and every instinct yelled at him to run, to run far, far away where he wouldn’t be able to hear her cries.

He’d never felt so very helpless, so useless and frustrated and powerless, as he did then.  He sought her hand, wrapped his fingers around it, and then felt guilty because he knew he wasn’t doing this to reassure Rose, but to assuage his own fears that she was somehow slipping away. 

In one of the bouts of rest between contractions, pauses which were becoming rarer and shorter with each passing minute, Rose looked up at him.  She seemed so small, so fragile, and he couldn’t believe that this baby would ever come out, because if it did it would surely tear her apart.  There was terror in her eyes, terror and pain and horror because she’d never expected this much agony, this tsunami of distress and torture, and she knew as well as he did that there was nothing he could do.

“I’m here,” he murmured, stroking back sticky strands of hair from her face and kissing her forehead, “I’m right here with you.” He squeezed her hand.  “Not too long now.”

She was panting again, another contraction already beginning to build, and she clung to his sentence with a terrible desperation.

“How long?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted, brushing his lips over the back of her hand and closing his eyes as he saw the pain inscribe itself across her face once more.  “Not long.”

***

It was another hour before Rose was allowed to push.  Her emotions had swung wildly from fury at the Doctor for putting her in this position to bone-chilling fear to a state of numb auto-pilot, where she tended to simply pant and keen and clutch at the Doctor’s shirt.

It had been a long labour.  Seventeen hours in, and she was exhausted.  He could see it in her eyes, in the way she no longer had the strength to hold his hand, and he wished for the hundredth time that day that he could do it all for her. 

“Come on, Rose,” the midwife coaxed from her position between Rose’s legs, “Push on your next contraction.” Wearily, reluctantly, Rose obeyed. She leaned forward, held her breath and pushed as hard as she could, her breath finally coming out in a long shout of effort. “Good girl, come on, one more!”

But Rose had collapsed back against the pillows, face red and breathing heavy, weakly seeking the Doctor’s hand. 

“I can’t,” she murmured, and he noticed with horror that she was sobbing now, all the fatigue and pain and overwhelming hormones flooding out in a rush of fresh tears.  “I’m too tired.” He brushed the hair back off her face and looked helplessly at the midwife, who was gesturing anxiously at him to do something.

“You really need to push, love,” he said quietly, wiping the tears away as they tumbled off her eyelashes.

“I’m so tired,” she whispered, shaking her head, “I can’t, I can’t do it anymore.  Need to sleep.”

He swallowed, renewed determination surging through him at the worry on the midwife’s face.  Rose needed to push, and he’d be damned if he let her give up now, not when she’d come so far.  He suddenly realised his place in this scene – not as the midwife or the mother or the obstetrician, but as Rose’s support, the one person she relied upon to do the right thing, to look after her and their baby until the day he died.  His heart swelled.

“You can do it, Rose.” He bent so he was at eye level, took her hand in both of his and kissed her knuckles.  “Just a few more pushes, and we’ll have our baby.” He swept his thumb over her cheekbone, marvelling for the hundredth time that day at her bravery, her strength.  “I love you.”

That seemed to trigger something in her and she took a deep breath, her eyes still locked on his.

“I’m so tired,” she repeated, and he nodded.

“I know.  A few more minutes, and it’ll all be over.  Ready?”

A spark seemed to reappear in Rose’s eyes, the resolve that had steadily worn away during the past few hours.  She swallowed, gripped his hand and let her body take over – instinctively pressing her chin to her chest, drawing her knees up and pushing with a shout that ripped through him and filled him with such overwhelming pride it was almost unbearable.

And then, quite suddenly, the midwife beckoned.

“I think it’s time you came down here.”

He hesitated, looked at Rose, but she was so far gone, immersed in a world he couldn’t be a part of at the moment, that he knew she wouldn’t care that he was no longer by her side.  He let go of her hand, hurried to the end of the bed with a mixture of trepidation and excitement.  It felt like this was the moment he’d been waiting for all his lives, from the moment he’d stared into the Time Vortex at eight years old and found it lacking.  He’d found his place in this tiny, back-to-front planet lightyears from home, and now, as he watched the head of his child force its way into the world, he knew he was finally at peace.

Time seemed to slow down as their baby slid, covered in blood and goo and stuff he couldn’t bring himself to even think about, from the warm cocoon of Rose’s womb into this loud, bright room. 

“Rose, he has a head!” He knew he was shouting but somehow he didn’t care – he was consumed by this overpowering joy and delight and contentment and he wanted everyone, anyone to know.  Rose laughed weakly and he knew she needed to know what he was seeing, needed to know everything was all right through her mist of fatigue and pain. “He has shoulders and a chest and fingers and...oh, Rose.”

“What?” She struggled to sit up, their baby finally slipping free.  “What’s the matter?”

“Rose,” he said quietly, reverently, disbelievingly, tears clouding his vision of this unutterably perfect moment, “it’s a boy.”

“It’s a boy?”

“It’s a boy!” And suddenly everything came crashing back and he had a little boy, a son, a tiny baby who would one day grow up to be the most brilliant man.  “We’ve got a boy, Rose!”

He cut the umbilical cord, astonished at the sheer complexity of the rope which had fed life to their son for the past nine months.  Humans were so miraculous, so amazing, and he felt a fierce, sudden affinity for this messy, confused little species surge inside him, wiping away any contempt or scorn and replacing it with a deep admiration for the ingenuity of their biology.

He watched their son as he was carried off to be weighed and then went to Rose’s side, took her hand in his and kissed her, long and slow and grateful.  There would never be enough words to express how very much he loved her in that moment, still bloody and sweaty and tearful, but he hoped that one day, far into the future, she would somehow understand.

The midwife returned a few moments later and settled the baby gently on Rose’s chest, his ear resting just above her heart.  He was tiny and red and wrinkled and really a bit disgusting, but right then he was the most beautiful, amazing, divine thing the Doctor had ever seen.  He had the finest whisper of dark hair on his head, and the wide eyes he turned on his parents were fringed with long, delicate lashes.

“Seven pounds, two ounces,” the midwife announced, “born at eight fifty eight on the eighth of May.” She paused, smiled.  “Congratulations.”

***

“Well?” Jackie asked, adjusting the baby in the crook of her arm and turning an expectant gaze on Rose and the Doctor.  “Are you going to tell us his name, or what?”

From beside her, Pete sighed.  “Don’t badger them, Jacks.”

“Don’t you start!  He’s my grandson, I’m allowed to know his name!” She paused, then looked at them with disappointment.  “You’ve named him something weird, haven’t you?  What is it then?  Dentist?  Civil Servant?”

“Jackie,” the Doctor interrupted, sensing this could go on for a long time, “we’ve given him a perfectly normal name.” He walked over, took his son from his grandmother’s arms and settled him with Rose before tucking his arm securely around them both.  “Do you want to tell her?”

Rose smiled and traced a finger across the smooth apple of their baby’s cheek.  “It’s all right, you can do it.” There was a beat, where the Doctor visibly puffed up with pride and Jackie waited dubiously.

“His name,” he announced grandly, “is Theo.”

“Theo,” Jackie said, “Theo.” There was a moment’s silence.  “I like it.”

“What about you, Theo?” Rose asked softly, adjusting the blanket with a touch that was so tender, so loving, it could only be the touch of a mother. “What do you think?” He snuffled in his sleep and she laughed.  “Good answer.  We like it too.”

“Welcome to the world, Theo Tyler,” the Doctor said, looking around at these ordinary, brilliant people who had quite by accident become his world. “It’s completely mad.” He paused, broke into a dazzling grin.  “You’re going to love it.”

She’s waited for this moment for a very long time, but now it’s come she doesn’t know what to do.  She’s standing in the console room, and there are no tears this time because she’s better than that, and her trousers are torn around the knees and she knows that she’s bleeding.

He looks up and she knows the split second he notices her because his eyes are suddenly dark and fathomless and when did he start looking so old?  She wants to run to him, throw her arms around him, kiss him with her traitor’s lips, but she feels cold and dated and she doesn’t think he wants her anymore.

“You’re here,” he says softly, but his voice is different to how she remembered, rougher and wearier and a reflection of herself.  She can’t remember when she became so like him.  He steps forward just once, and his hands twitch at his sides, and she doesn’t go to him. Why not?  She’s been waiting for this for years that have stretched into decades and she’s got blood on her hands and guilt in her heart but she can’t bring herself to touch him and acknowledge that all the terrible things she’s done over the years are real.

He’s looking at her with a reverence and need that makes her uncomfortable, as though she’s the absolution for all his sins.  She drops her gaze and then she’s looking at her feet and through the grilles into the underbelly of the TARDIS, wishing he never has to know the wrongs she’s never righted. 

She knows he knows.  His eyes are pleading with her not to press him, not to ask how he is or where he’s been, and equally he’s begging her not to tell, not to admit to the hundreds of things she knows she’ll never justify.

“I’m here,” she replies just as softly, and she wonders how she could ever have thought things could be the same when they are both so different.  Where time hasn’t aged her physically, it’s aged her threefold in mentality, slowly but surely washing away her compassion and pity until she’s the same hard, vulnerable shell as him, hiding from emotions and honesty.

Half of her wants to tell him.  They’re all dead, she’d say, they died a long time ago - because of me - and I’m alone now, just like you.  She keeps quiet.  She never understood his burdens before now, never understood the grief he carried for the death of his planet, but now she’s lost her own family she feels his pain like an acute prick in the base of her spine. 

She knows she’s changed.  When he knew her she was carefree and wondrous and in love and if she’s honest she can barely remember those days.  Slowly, she’s been eroded and worn down and the only one of those emotions left is love, but it’s not the same.  It’s not intense and passionate and vibrant.  This time it’s all darkness and unhealthy obsession and clinging on because it’s the only thing the universe can’t destroy. 

When he finally crosses the room and hugs her, her senses scream like she’s on fire, because she hasn’t been touched like this in so long and love is pouring from his mind into hers.  She’s been starved of it like a babe starved of oxygen and only now is she turning from blue to pink, thawing and melting and oh, she needs him.

“I’m a monster,” she whispers, because she has to tell him the truth, because she can’t pretend that she’s the same.  He clutches her tighter and she feels him shake with desperate sobs as he cradles her head against his chest, his hands like iron but still infinitely tender.

“Not you,” he chokes out and she clings to him, because he’s the only person she’s got left and he can’t abandon her too.  “Never you.”

She’s hardened to the guilt now, immune after years of disappointment and apologies and death, but although she can’t cry she feels her legs crumble and fall and then he’s holding her in his arms like a child, weeping and mumbling things she’ll never remember.

“I’m sorry,” she says and her voice is hatefully weak, “Please don’t leave me.”

And it’s funny, because she never thought she’d be able to give herself to someone so wholly ever again. She never thought, not in a million years, that she could plead with him, that the hideous insensitivity she’s acquired would let her fall to her knees and beg, beg for forgiveness.

He just hauls her to her feet and kisses her in a gesture that’s hard and punishing and never gentle, but she knows he understands, knows that in her he’s found his soul mate,  someone who understands the battle to remain standing when everyone else falls to the mud.

“Never again,” she promises, and he runs his hands through her hair as if he’s washing them clean, a thousand words on his lips and none of them with any meaning.  In her dreams, it wasn’t like this.  In her dreams, she was young and beautiful and alive, and together they ran hand-in-hand and made love beneath the stars.

When he finally says the words she knows she can’t say herself anymore, she finds herself accomplishing something she hasn’t in many, many years, something so alien and unfamiliar she has to ask him what she’s doing.

He looks at her as if his heart is breaking, rubs his thumb across her cheek.

“Rose,” he says sadly, "You’re smiling.”

The sun rose slowly, bathing the hospital ward in its grey, wintry light.  It played over Rose’s face as she dozed, her dreams punctuated with memories of blood, of anxious knots deep in her stomach.  She didn’t hear the Doctor come in, didn’t hear the swallowed sob as he saw her lying prone in the hospital bed, and by the time she awoke, he was perfectly composed, that expressive face wiped clean of any desperate emotion.

She wondered for a moment, as she opened her eyes to the sight of his fingers laced delicately through hers, if she was dreaming, one of those moments when one hovers between the extremes of consciousness and oblivion.  Then she felt him stir, raised her gaze to meet those dark brown eyes, and nearly broke down just at the sight of his familiar, gentle smile.

“Hello,” he said quietly, lifting their linked hands and steepling their fingers.  She glanced away, back, not quite sure how to feel.  She was angry, confused, but at the same time she just wanted to fall into his arms, let him soothe away the worry and pain of the past few hours.  She settled for moving their joined hands, bringing them to her face and resting her cheek against the back of his hand, closing her eyes for a few brief seconds.  

“Where were you?” She wondered if she sounded accusing, critical.  Mostly, she thought, looking at him again, she just sounded tired.  She didn’t want to fight, not now they’d come so close to losing the only tangible thing that linked them.  She just needed to know, so that they could either move on or not, so that they could find a way of working because they couldn’t live like this forever.

“I got scared.” She hadn’t been expecting a straight answer and she stared at him, taken aback.  “You don’t need to look so shocked, Rose.” He gave a tiny, self-deprecating smile.  “I just...I saw that babygro in the kitchen and I lost it.  It made it real.”

She looked away again, annoyed at the tears building behind the backs of her eyes.

“I needed you.”

“I know.” He stroked the thumb of his free hand along her jaw and she tried not to shiver.  “I’m sorry.  I’m so used to running, and I thought for this mad moment that I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t be a father.” He paused and she toyed with his fingers, desperate to ask and yet afraid to know.

“And?  What did you decide?”

“I was wrong.” There was no hesitation.  His voice was steady, strong, and she could sense the regret lurking behind his words, the grief that when she’d needed him most, he’d run away.  “I want to do this with you, Rose. I am never going to let you down again, and I’m going to spend every second of the next few months making it up to you.” She smiled at him, tentatively, shyly, and he smiled back.  “Now, fill me in.”

She sighed, fiddled with the threads of her hospital blanket as she gazed out of the window towards the rising sun.  Already, the sky was cloaked in dark grey clouds, hovering ominously over the city and threatening snow.  “I’ve got this condition called placenta previa.  It means my placenta is unnaturally low.  That’s why I was bleeding.” She wondered when she’d suddenly become able to talk to him about things like these.  When they were on the TARDIS she’d always been too embarrassed even to admit that her ‘headache’ was actually period pain.  Now they were sitting together, and she was telling him about her placenta.  Things like this, the complete lack of inhibitions, the lack of boundaries, she would never have expected back on that windswept beach in Norway, when he’d taken her hand and promised her forever.  It was wonderful.

“Is it serious?” His brow was furrowed, and she felt his nerves in the tense cords of his fingers. 

“Not yet.  It should move back into its normal position after a while.  We don’t need to start worrying until much later, if it hasn’t gone.” There was a lull.  “I didn’t tell my mum,” she blurted suddenly and his head snapped up, eyes searching out hers to read her expression, “that you’d gone, I mean.  I said you were called out.”

“Why?” He wasn’t ungrateful, just curious.  Jackie was always the first person Rose turned to in a crisis, and he felt guilty all of a sudden, ashamed that he was the one to slowly drive them apart. 

“I thought you might be too fragile for a slap.” She smiled at him, a ghost of her normal grin but still enough to speed up his heart. “And...I don’t know.  It’s our business, yeah?  What we do, the problems we have, no one else needs to know.  Not when it’s something we can fix.”

He picked up on that and he looked at her hopefully, half-afraid of getting knocked back.  “You’re going to forgive me then?” She gazed at him for a moment, at the way he was focusing solely on her, at the way his jaw tightened at the prospect of her refusal.  When had he become so human?  She couldn’t remember a time on the TARDIS when she hadn’t felt just a little bit secondary, as if she held ninety-nine percent of his attention while the remainder solved problems or monitored timelines. 

“I’m thinking about it,” she answered finally, smiling, and then, when he didn’t smile back, she frowned.  “What’s the matter?”

“Rose, I think we need to talk.” She froze, started to pull her hand from his but he tightened his fingers, locked them against hers.  “Just about the past.  There’s this big gap when we weren’t together and I think there are secrets there, on both sides.” She turned her face away, cast those honey-and-lemon eyes around the room, to the ceiling, towards the nurse’s station, as though his eyes were magnets that repelled hers.  He realised he’d hit the nail on the head and felt something, some last vestige of hope, slink away from the depths of his mind and into the gloom of the day. 

“You first,” she whispered finally, and he told himself it wasn’t tears he heard in her voice, that it wasn’t regret.  He hesitated, just for a second, and then he plunged in, promising himself there would be more secrets, no more skeletons.  As he spoke, the sun brightened the room with its pale, wintry light, glinting off bedposts and trays and heart monitors.  It took him two hours to finish his story, and when he did, it was to find Rose looking very much whiter, as though the sun had drained away her life and taken it for itself.  “I’m so sorry,” she murmured, brushing a kiss over each of his knuckles, “I’m so sorry I wasn’t there.”

He smiled weakly.  “I had friends.  Martha, Donna, Astrid.  Jack.” She squeezed his hand, let the silence stretch between them.  She dreaded the questions she knew were coming.  “Tell me about you.”

She sighed, noticed vaguely that it had started to snow, fat white flakes which hit the window and then nestled against the sill. She didn’t want to tell him, didn’t want to see the expression on his face, the tightening of muscles and tendons and cords as he swallowed the hurt of her infidelity.

“Not much to tell,” she said finally, keeping her eyes carefully averted from his, “Worked, mainly.  I was trying to get back to you.”

There was a pause. 

“Was there anyone else?”

Another pause.

“Yes.” He didn’t answer and she watched him from the corner of her eye, saw the slow, accepting nod of his head.

“Who was it?”

“It was...no one.  Someone I met in a bar.” She didn’t know if that made it better or worse.  “Charlie dragged me out one night – I never went out really, I used to work all the time or look after Tony – but we had a setback with the Dimension Cannon and he thought I needed a night out.” She moved her hand an inch in his, made sure his fingers were still tightly wrapped around hers.  “He was there and he was charming and I slept with him, just once, just to escape.  I didn’t even tell him my name.  I left before he woke up the next morning.”

She couldn’t look at him, couldn’t keep the shame out of her voice, the self-loathing she’d nursed ever since it had happened.  She felt dirty, cheap, but at the same time she’d needed the refuge of someone’s arms, the long lines of a man to hold her close and keep her safe.  “I’m so, so sorry.”

He shook his head slowly, unsure whether the emptiness in his stomach was betrayal or a final relief from the uncertainty which had been curled around his intestines ever since his arrival.  He decided that it was probably both, but it was done now, there was no turning back the clock, not anymore.  They each had their demons and it would take a crueller man than him to make her relive and repent for her mistakes.  She had always made sure never to do that for him.

“It’s all right.” He let go of her hand and she looked panicked for a moment, but he simply spread it palm-to-palm against his, crooked the tips of his fingers over hers.  “We were never like that, Rose.   As far as you knew, you were never going to see me again-”

“-I always knew,” she insisted stubbornly and he grinned, that giddy smile of someone safe in the knowledge that they are loved, wholly, unconditionally, unreservedly. 

“Either way,” he conceded, “it’s history now.  It’s not up to me to punish you.  I’ve got no room to talk as far as mistakes are concerned.” Silence fell again, and like the snow which now blanketed the window, it softened the spires of their resentment, of their hurt, and spread across their relationship in a blank canvas that was desperately cathartic.  “I love you.”

She looked up, sniffed back the tears she could feel stinging the inside of her nose.  “Love you too.” She threw her head back and laughed tearfully, ignorant of the curious stares of her fellow patients.  “God, what are we like?”

He grinned crookedly, and for the first time that day it reached his eyes, set them alight with warmth and love.  “We, Rose Tyler, are the stuff of legend.”  He leaned forward, captured her lips with his and kissed her slowly, luxuriantly, desperately clinging to the fact that they were in a hospital, that they couldn’t go too far.  She opened her mouth and he groaned, trailed his free hand from her cheek to her neck and down across her stomach, where he suddenly froze.  Rose pulled back an inch, stared at him in pure surprise.

Something fluttered beneath his palm, tiny and tentative but utterly, utterly real.

“Is that...?” she whispered, and he could hear the tears in her voice, the disbelief, the awe.

“I think so.” He guided her hand down beside his and together they felt their baby’s first timid movements, the first kicks of its strengthening legs as it stretched and moved inside her.  All the things he’d seen – the birth of a galaxy, a rainbow ocean, a land carved entirely from peaks of sapphire– and nothing even came close to the complete, untainted wonder he felt in that moment, as their baby moved beneath their fingertips. 

Later, much later, when they recounted this moment to friends, he would deny it, but as he sat beside Rose in that hospital ward, he leaned his forehead against hers and he cried. 

electrictoes

The sun was beginning to set as the Doctor and Rose collapsed onto the sand, bathing the expanse of the beach in long, ruby shadows which glittered from the crests of the waves.  The sea traced intricate patterns around their toes, slowly and determinedly cleansing away the blood and grime of the day. 

Silence stretched between them, a tug-of-war of emotions that neither dared to pull too hard.  There was nothing left to say, no tears left to cry, and so they let nature articulate their grief, their pain, their guilt that they had been just minutes too late.  Wind whispered across alien sand, some sort of sea creature splashed against the horizon.  Tranquillity.  Calm.  Death.

Slowly, so slowly, the sky turned from crimson to indigo to black, and it was only when the twin moons appeared, a curious act of balance that somehow defied the turmoil of the day, that the Doctor moved.  Rose didn’t hear him, wasn’t aware that he’d stirred until she felt his lips on her shoulder, her neck, his fingers on her stomach as he surrounded her with love.  She shuddered in his arms, let herself be drawn into the cocoon of his embrace.

“It’s midnight,” he murmured as his mouth traced the shell of her ear, a flesh-and-blood conch which he played like the most intricate instrument.  She didn’t respond, realised that this was his way of drawing a line beneath the destruction they’d seen today, wondered when it had become so easy to move past the pain.  He pressed his nose into her shoulder, prompting her to respond.

“What’s so special about midnight?” she asked finally, indulging him, and she felt the curl of his lips against her neck.

“It’s now officially your birthday.” She’d been wondering all week whether he’d remember, whether he’d realise, but something as trivial as her birthday had suddenly paled into insignificance, been eclipsed by the impenetrable shadows of death and suffering.  The thought that it was on his mind though, after the enormity of what they’d seen today, was warming, and the cold block of horror deep in her stomach began to thaw slightly.

“Didn’t think you’d remember.” She kept her voice deliberately light, eager not to seek recriminations or insults after the day they’d had.  He rested his chin on her shoulder, sideburn tickling her cheek, and frowned.

“Rose Tyler, you offend me.  Of course I remembered.” He got abruptly to his feet and dusted himself off before extending a hand and helping her up.  Then he shot her a dazzling grin, so bright and so fervent that she felt the horror of the day begin to bleed into the sewers of her mind, which she could tuck away and ignore.  He began walking backwards to the TARDIS, practically bouncing now as he jabbered away at her, and not for the first time she wondered at his mercurial moods, which had him flitting from brooding to effervescent in a heartbeat.  She followed him into the TARDIS, felt her mood lighten further as its gentle hum engulfed her, and perched on the captain’s chair, smiling at him.

“Do you want to know what your present is?” He was practically fizzing and she grinned.

“Go on then.  Though, for future reference, it’s customary to actually unwrap the present to find out what it is.”

“Aha!  But that’s the thing!” He tapped the co-ordinates over-zealously into the monitor and pulled the lever with a flourish, still beaming at her.  “You can’t unwrap this present.  You see, what I’m giving you, Rose Tyler, is memories!”

She stared at him, perplexed.  How could he possibly think that every day, every hour, every second spent with him wasn’t inscribed in indelible ink on her brain, on her heart?  Everywhere he took her, everything they did, she could remember it all as clearly as if it had all happened mere minutes ago, and he still wanted to give her more?  She reached out for him, drew him down by his tie and pressed her lips against his, let herself drown in the feeling of him for a few moments before letting go. 

“Like the idea, do you?” He was looking entirely too smug, but somehow, she couldn’t quite find it within herself to rebuke him.  He was this incredibly ancient alien with a penchant for philanthropy, with planets to save and families to reunite, and he was stepping away from it all to do something for her, an ordinary, twenty-first century human with no special qualities whatsoever.  The thought was breathtaking.

“It’s perfect.” She kissed him again, briefly, and then bit her lip.  “Do you mind if we wait until tomorrow though?  I’m...” she gestured at her clothes, covered in blood and dirt and tears, and tried to distance herself from the memory, “...not exactly looking at my best, and I’m knackered.” He looked so crestfallen that she couldn’t help standing up and wrapping her arms around him, resting her head against his chest and brushing a kiss through his shirt.  “First thing tomorrow, I promise.  And you’re wonderful, by the way.” He beamed, clearly cheered by her response, and stepped back, lacing his fingers through hers. “Come to bed with me?” she questioned, and he grinned.

“Do you even have to ask?”

*

Rose was awoken the next morning by a slow path of kisses being trailed up her arm.  Artificial sunlight slanted in through the equally artificial window, bathing the room in a warm golden glow that complemented her mood.  She stretched languorously, wondered why she could already feel anticipation simmering away in the pit of her stomach and then remembered, turned over right into the Doctor’s arms.

“Morning, gorgeous,” He nuzzled the hair away from her neck to press a kiss to her ear.  “Happy birthday.” He sat up, reached for something out of her line of vision and then reappeared with a tray balanced precariously in one hand.  “Brought you breakfast.” Her heart just about melted then, at the thought of the almighty Oncoming Storm buttering toast for her benefit and she kissed his cheek, wishing that every morning was this slow, this tender.  He smiled at her, reaching out to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear.  “Hurry up and eat, and I’ll meet you in the console room.  I need to set the co-ordinates.” And with an excited smile thrown over his shoulder, he bounded away.

Rose ate and showered slowly, taking care to cleanse herself of any patches of grime she’d missed the night before.  She was strangely apprehensive about the day ahead.  She knew he wanted it to be spectacular and she knew he’d go to any lengths to ensure that it was – what worried her was the new level to which this moved their relationship.  They’d been sleeping together for months, but they still danced around their feelings for each other.  She thought he loved her but it was impossible to tell – if things got too intense, he tended to breeze past them with a joke, and if things threatened to become too revealing, too threatening to their emotional boundaries, he’d just abruptly change the subject.  She frowned.  She was making too much of this.

He was nearly fizzing by the time she reached the console room, but he shot her one of those dazzling smiles that had such power over her rational thought.  “Blimey, you took your time.  I thought you’d accidentally fallen into another dimension.” He took her hand and pulled her to him, wrapping one arm around her waist and poising his free hand over a button.  “Ready for your first trip?” She grinned up at him, giddy with excitement.  Then she reached out, settled her hand over his, and pressed down hard.

*

They landed with a jolt that did nothing to ease the coil of apprehension in Rose’s stomach.  The Doctor was watching her, his expression sombre now, and she had the disconcerting sense that this first gift, this first memory, was not going to be an easy one to take. 

“What year is it?”

He looked at her.  “1987.”

She frowned, tried to read his eyes but found them inscrutable.  “That’s the year I was born.”

“Really?” There was something about the surprise in his voice that she found suspicious and she moved to the door, fighting the mad urge to turn tail and flee to her bedroom.  He pulled her back as she took hold of the handle, dangling something in front of her that had an uncanny resemblance to the TARDIS key she usually wore around her neck.  Her hand flew to her chest, but the key was gone.  She gave him an accusing look.  “I made a couple of alterations last night.  I’ve added a perception filter.  It makes us virtually undetectable.  People register a presence, but they don’t want to know what it is.” He slipped hers over her head.  “Promise me you’ll keep it on.”

She nodded, intrigued, and slowly opened the doors.  They’d landed in the middle of a car park, outside what seemed to be Rose’s local hospital, and the usual steady stream of people going in and out did seem oblivious to their existence.  She turned to look at him, frowning.

“What are we doing here?” 

“Paying a visit.” He took her hand.  “Come on.” They entered the hospital and wound their way unquestioned through the rabbit warren of corridors.  People stepped instinctively out of their way but showed no signs of recognition that they were strolling through a busy hospital, unauthorised and anonymous.  Rose reflected briefly that they really needed to install some more stringent security measures, but the train of thought was interrupted by the Doctor pulling her to a halt outside a blank white door which was slightly ajar. 

She hesitated and he propelled her lightly forwards, his hand on the small of her back.

“Go on, they won’t notice.”

Slowly, hesitantly, she pushed open the door and stepped inside.  Bright sunlight flooded the sterile room, glancing off white walls and a metal bed frame, but as her eyes adjusted to the light she barely managed to swallow a gasp.  Her mother – twenty years younger and thoroughly exhausted – was propped up against a mound of pillows, dyed blonde hair clinging to sticky pink cheeks.  Beside her was Rose’s father, his coppery hair  thicker and dishevelled from a long night, and there was an expression of brilliant, shining joy on his face, a mixture of pride and love and pure, untainted delight.

Rose was speechless, couldn’t move, couldn’t make a sound, paralysed by a maelstrom of emotions she’d never be able to articulate.  She felt the Doctor move to stand behind her, holding her, steadying her, but she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the perfect little family she’d always been denied.

For they were a family.  Nestled into the crook of her father’s arm was a bundle of pink blankets, one tiny foot poking insistently out of the end, and as she watched, Jackie reached for her baby, cuddled her close to her chest and smiled as Pete bent down to lay a tender kiss to its downy head. Then, and Rose could barely see because her vision was so clouded with tears, he kissed his wife, the mother of his child, whispered something that brought a bright smile to her tired face. 

The Doctor took her hand then, pulled her gently from the room and back into the TARDIS, where he wrapped her in his arms and soothed away her shock.  She was silent for a long time as she processed what she’d just seen, the perfect image of a happy new family, both her parents content, exultant in their relationship.  It was a far cry from the arguments, the accusations she’d witnessed the day of her father’s death.  It wasn’t the bumbling, repressed humiliation of their wedding day.  It was love – real, shining love – and it was all because of her.  

Almost as if he could sense her thoughts, the Doctor said softly: “You united them, Rose.  They loved you more than anything the day you were born; they would have walked the earth a thousand times to keep you safe.” He kissed her hair.  “I wanted you to see how much they loved you.  And your mum still does – she’d still take on an army of a thousand with her bare hands if it meant looking after you.  Just because their relationship wasn’t perfect, it doesn’t mean they didn’t love each other.”

She couldn’t really answer that, just pressed her cheek against his chest and tried not to cry, filled with a strange combination of relief and shock and warmth.  “Thank you,” she whispered, bunching his shirt in her hands, and he ran his fingers through her hair.

“Nothing to thank me for.” There was a pause, a brief interlude in which she sought desperately to gather her emotions.  “Ready for your next memory?”

She laughed shakily.  “Is it a bit less of a shock this time?”

He smiled, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes.  “For you.” And then, without warning, he pulled the lever.

*

There was something strange in the Doctor’s expression as they landed, something Rose couldn’t quite place.  It was almost wistful, but there was a sharp twist of sadness there too, side-by-side with an intense shadow of pride.  She went to the door but he caught her hand and pulled her back into his arms, held her in a bone-crushing hug for a few moments before finally letting go.

“Rose...” he trailed off, sighed.  “Rose, what I’m about to show you...” Frustrated, he ran his hands through his hair, back and forth, back and forth, until it was a tangled forest of chestnut.  “I’ve brought you to my planet.” His hands fell away and he just stared at her, dark eyes boring into hers with a steady imploration to react, to respond.  She gazed back, utterly speechless at the magnitude of his gesture.  “I want you to learn about me, Rose.  I want to give you something I’ve never given anything else.” And he threw open the doors.

She was greeted by the most incredible sight.  They’d landed atop a mountain, and although there was snow beneath her feet as she stepped outside, the hillside ran away into a slope of magnificent red grass, as bright and as deep as a ruby in sunlight.  The trees that peppered the mountainside, far far below, glittered like a thousand mirrors, their leaves dazzling slivers of silver which shone like shards of broken glass.  She couldn’t move, left breathless by the sheer beauty that fell away from the peak, a hundred different colours and none of them any less than radiant.  She felt giddy all of a sudden, reached out for him, felt him take her hand and squeeze it, anchoring her to him. 

“How...?” She couldn’t even form proper sentences, stunned by the raw, majestic beauty of the planet, and he moved to stand beside her, gazing out across the scene.

“When I said my planet...I lied, Rose.  It’s a world I created myself, born out of my memories and my dreams.  Like a model.  A replica.” He dropped her hand, and suddenly his voice was bitter.  “It’s beautiful, but it’s dead.” He turned sharply away, let himself back into the TARDIS, but she couldn’t tear her eyes from the landscape spread out before her, this recreation of the Doctor’s home.  In the distance, the light of twin suns danced upon the spires of a citadel, housed in a magnificent glass dome, and she wondered how he could ever have wanted to leave, to see other things.  It was the single most beautiful thing she had ever seen.

When she stepped back into the TARDIS, the Doctor had his back to her, hands braced against the console and body moving quickly in shallow, quivering breaths. She moved closer, wrapped her arms around him and then kissed each of his shoulder-blades, the nape of his neck, the skin behind his ear. 

“Thank you,” she whispered again, as he turned to hold her in his arms.  “Thank you so much.”

She was astonished by it all, by how much of his past, of himself, he was willing to share with her, and she realised that her fears this morning had been justified.  This was a new level for their relationship.  But strangely, it didn’t seem frightening anymore.  It seemed natural, wonderful, intimate.  It was perfect.

After a long few minutes, the Doctor pulled back, seemingly his normal self.  “What did you think?” His voice was almost shy, and he wouldn’t look at her as he set the co-ordinates, just flashed quick glances at her as he leaped around the console.

“It was...gorgeous,” she said honestly, and she knew that now wasn’t the time to press him, to ask more.  There would be plenty of time for questions, and she sensed that the memory was too raw still, too fresh to turn over again now.

“I know.” He smiled wistfully, then brightened.  “Ready for your next trip?” He was watching her expectantly, and she dropped her gaze, scuffed the toe of her trainer along the grating of the TARDIS. 

“Do you mind if we just go somewhere quiet?  It’s not that I haven’t had a fantastic time – I really, honestly have – but I think that’s enough for one day.  I need...I don’t know.  I just want you.” She paused.  “Another day, yeah?” He smiled at her again, understanding this time, affectionate, and he reached out for her, wrapping one arm around her shoulders as he kissed the top of her head. 

“Of course.  Sorry.  I know it was all a bit intense.” He thought for a moment before breaking out into a grin.  “I know just the place.”

*

The TARDIS seemed to sense her fragility, for the landing was the smoothest it had ever been.  They’d landed on a beach, and as Rose stepped outside, she recognised it as the same one they’d sat on yesterday, surrounded by death and destruction.  Now, it was filled with aliens – some big, some small, some arguing, some swimming – and the whole seashore seemed to hum with renewed life.

“Thirty years later,” he said in her ear, startling her, as he pulled the doors closed.  “They survive, Rose.  Eleven people survived that day – just eleven, out of a population of nearly twenty thousand.  But they moved on, they laid eggs, other races heard about the planet and they flocked here, came to see the world which somehow lived.  A whole new generation, Rose, all alive.”

She sighed deeply, a sigh of happiness and relief and emotional exhaustion, and let him lead her to a small, deserted cove, where they sat with their feet in the water and watched the sun set.  Slowly, the sounds of life began to fade away as families packed up their bags, called their children, said goodbye to old friends.  Only the soft melody of nature remained, somehow so much more optimistic this time, so much more content.

“Good birthday?” he asked her quietly, as the sun cast claret shadows across his face and his eyes burned gold with the fading light.  She nodded, leaned her head against his chest and let him trace patterns across her back with his fingertips, soothing, caring.  “I know it was a bit full-on.”

“It was incredible.  I’m still a bit speechless.”

“Rose Tyler, speechless?  Oh, well done, me.” She gave him a perfunctory whack on the leg, and he grinned.  She let the moment pass, didn’t feel ready yet to delve into the repercussions this would have on their relationship, just basked in the knowledge that she was trusted, loved. 

“Thank you,” she said for what felt like the hundredth time, and he kissed her, slowly, luxuriantly, tenderly.  Then he smiled.

“For you, Rose Tyler, anytime.”

The hours passed very slowly.  Rose had tried the Doctor’s phone nearly a dozen times to no avail, and she was visited again and again by terrible memories of the last time he’d walked out, how very close he’d come to death.  She sat on the bottom stair, head against the banister, phone in hand, trying desperately not to cry.  The past few weeks, since discovering her pregnancy, had been almost a honeymoon period, full of laughter and warmth and passion, and now she was sitting in the dark and hoping desperately that she wouldn’t have to raise this baby alone.

The car was gone – something she was thankful for, as at least he had shelter and transport – but her tenuous hope that he’d just popped out for milk or to the cash machine or even to the pub had steadily drained away.  The only explanation she could think of was the babygro.  In truth, she’d been waiting for something to spook him, had watched him carefully at work while their colleagues teased him, but he’d been nothing but proud, full of delight to show off her bump. 

Sighing, she closed her eyes, willing herself not to cry.  Was this what their relationship was always going to be like?  One of them constantly getting scared and running away from it all, hiding from what being in love actually means?  Were they in love?  She felt sick just doubting it.  They wouldn’t have gone through all this heartache, everything they’d endured since he got here, if they didn’t love each other desperately.  There was nothing, not a single thing on this earth, that would make her give him up now, and she wondered whether that was selfish, whether – if she really loved him – she would let him fly away.

Her hand settled unconsciously over her stomach and she drew in a deep, shuddering breath, awash with fear and guilt and anxiety.  This was no environment in which to bring up a child.  What were they thinking?  She’d never had a settled childhood – there had been times when there was barely enough money to put food on the table, times when she’d had to sit and talk to one of her mother’s boyfriends when all she wanted to do was scream at him to leave them alone - and she desperately, desperately wanted this for her baby.  She wanted it growing up knowing it was loved, knowing that its parents loved each other, knowing that it always, always came first. 

Could she really say that?  The questions were making her head spin and so she opened her eyes, wound one hand tightly around the banister to anchor her to the earth.  She didn’t know where he’d go, what he’d do, and she had the terrible, chilling fear that he might never come back.  She’d dialled Jackie’s number three, four times and then chickened out at the last minute, afraid of what she’d say when – if – he returned. 

She must have fallen asleep, for she came to an indeterminate amount of time later with a crick in her neck and stiff knees, freezing cold and met with the impenetrable darkness of the early hours.  She took herself up to bed, slid beneath icy covers, but sleep refused to come and instead she lay there facing resolutely away from his pillow, pretending he was just behind her, one arm under his head and the other slung across her waist.  She shivered.  It was like sleeping with a ghost.

She began to feel woozy, light-headed, and the thought vaguely occurred to her that she hadn’t eaten since lunchtime.  As if in agreement, her stomach rumbled loudly, and she was suddenly overcome with a wave of nausea that was perhaps the most intense she’d ever experienced.  At the same time, a powerful cramp ripped through her belly and she cried out, falling against the bathroom sink and scrabbling for purchase.  Her head spun.  She staggered a little, clung to the side of the bath and then closed her eyes as she waited for it to subside, for the earth to stop its pitch and roll.  Taking a deep breath, she swallowed, fought the wave of panic rushing towards her.

She was tired, that was all, tired and hungry and emotionally drained.  She’d use the toilet, wash her face, go downstairs and get something to eat.  All she needed was a plan.  By the time she’d eaten, he might even have returned. 

She lowered herself onto the toilet seat, winced as the cold ceramic bit into her thighs.  Why did she always have to be so melodramatic, so weak?  So the Doctor had got spooked, run off.  Maybe he just needed time to think, maybe he was on his way back right now, full of apologies but with a clearer mind, a clearer heart.  Another cramp ripped through her stomach and she cried out again, bent double so her nose brushed her knees.  Once again, the shadow of panic crept closer, circled like a hyena, seeped through the cracks of her mind and finally penetrated her brain.

She was pregnant.  This shouldn’t be happening.

She stood up, closed her eyes, took a deep breath.  Opened them.  Looked at the tissue.

It was bloody.

*

The Doctor was running.  He didn’t know where to and he didn’t know why, but he was running.  And at the moment, it was the best feeling in the world.  It seemed like years, decades, millennia since he’d been so free, and he ran without direction, without aim, relishing the wind that tore through his hair and the darkness which cloaked the guilt in his heart.  He kept his mind deliberately blank, focused instead on the frenzied rush of blood in his human veins, the rhythmic pound of his feet on the pavement, the bead of sweat inching down his brow.  Everything was quiet and loud all at once, a magnificent jumble of adrenaline and liberty that was thoroughly intoxicating.

Eventually, he started to slow, his all-too-human body too feeble to go any further.  He bent double, clutched at a low wall and panted like a dog, felt his muscles scream, his fingers clench and unclench.  He was making some sort of noise and he suddenly wasn’t sure if he was laughing or crying, but either way it was making his whole body shake, shudder uncontrollably. 

Slowly, slowly, he became aware of his surroundings.  It was like waking up after a long sleep, like opening your eyes for the first time and remembering what you’d been doing in the last moments before you passed out.  He tipped his head back and watched his breath form clouds of heat against the black void of the night sky, stared at the stars and wondered how he’d ended up here.  Then he glanced across the road, saw the car parked sedately against the kerb, and realised he’d achieved nothing.  He’d run full circle.  He felt sick.

He crossed over, unlocked the door, sank into the seat, feeling very small and very foolish all of a sudden.  He’d been driving for hours – hours and hours – and he’d grown tired of it, felt hemmed in and trapped by the metal frame, so he’d parked up, thrown open the door and just run.  He ran because he wanted to escape, because he didn’t know who he was anymore and he didn’t know how to pretend.  He ran because driving was too regulated, too restricted. Most of all, he ran because it was all he knew.

He hadn’t even realised he was running in a – albeit very big – circle, and he frowned.  Maybe it told him something about what his life had become, that he wasn’t capable of pushing the boundaries anymore, that he was trapped in this never-ending cycle.  He looked up at the stars through the sun roof.  Or maybe, just maybe, it was because he wanted to go home. 

He leaned back in the driver’s seat, exhausted now the adrenaline was starting to wear off.  It was true, he did want to go home.  Was it because he had nowhere else to go, or because he was finally starting to settle down?  He hoped against hope that it was the latter.  The last few months had been a rollercoaster of extremes, and although he’d tried hard to keep it from Rose, to pretend he was adjusting, he’d struggled for a long time.  Surprisingly, it was the news of her pregnancy, the news that they’d created a whole new person just the two of them, that had finally succeeded in reconciling him to the fact that this world, this earth was going to be his home for the rest of his life.  And, even more surprisingly, he hadn’t minded one bit.

Yet now, after all that, it was Rose’s pregnancy that had managed to turn everything on its head.  He forced himself not to look towards the passenger seat, where the sunny yellow babygro lay in a crumpled heap against the plain upholstery.  He couldn’t really explain why it had had such a profound effect on him.  It was fear, mainly.  Fear of the pure, untainted love he felt for his unborn child, this tiny, innocent baby whom he’d never met and yet loved unconditionally.  Fear of the responsibility a child brought, responsibility he thought he’d escaped when he was left on this world without the weight of the universe on his shoulders.  Fear of losing Rose to their baby.

He sighed deeply, utterly confused.  He had the deep sense that he needed to speak to Rose about all of this.  He still felt that they were missing each other – closer than they had been but still a few degrees off – as if they were moving in circles that still refused to intersect.  The last few weeks had been wonderful, but they’d been unreal, false, and something kept nagging at him, insisting that they could only move forward once they’d sorted out the past.  He needed to tell her all that had happened, all that he’d suffered, since they were torn apart.  And equally, he needed to know what had happened to her.  There was a whole chunk of her life he knew virtually nothing about and maybe once wounds had been purged and everything was out in the open, they could move on.

Resolved, he put the key in the ignition, felt the engine turn over and then settle to a low purr.  The clock on the dashboard read four eleven, and providing he could find his way back, he could be home in half an hour.  He wasn’t sure exactly where he was but his mind had registered his vague direction on the way here, and although his route had been meandering and random, he felt confident he’d be able to find a way back.

Leaning over, he fished his phone out of the glove compartment, frowned at the number of calls he’d missed from Rose.  Guilt roiled his stomach as he realised how worried she’d be.  He turned it off silent, didn’t bother to call back.  He’d be home soon.

He switched the radio on low, wound down the window and let the wind rake through his hair.  They were going to have a baby, they were going to be parents, and they would do it brilliantly.  They weren’t going to mess this up.  Their baby was going to grow up knowing how special it was, how loved, how miraculous.  He’d make sure of that.

He accelerated, roared through empty streets feeling lighter than he had in ages.

And then his phone rang. 

Jackie calling.

He picked up.

“It’s Rose,” she said. "She's in hospital."  He went cold.

electrictoes

The grey twilight of a winter afternoon spilled through the window of Rose’s office, bathing her in a dull glow that was almost ethereal.  She was alternating between typing reluctant sentences of a report, rubbing her aching back and watching the clock.  She’d always made it a rule not to leave work before five, but the paperwork she’d been grappling with all day was beginning to smear into unreality, the words growing meaningless as the minutes passed.  She’d been confined to office duties since breaking the news of her pregnancy, and although she knew it was for the best, it didn’t make it any less dull.

The Doctor was in Birmingham for the day, attending a research seminar with his underlings.  He’d somehow acquired three twenty-one-year-olds, fresh out of university, who seemed to take whatever he said as law and whatever he did to be the most brilliant thing in the whole of the universe, and although he grumbled she knew he was secretly thrilled.  It wasn’t the same as addressing a dying planet as their saviour, but it was something, and she knew that was enough.

As soon as the digits on the clock flipped to five o’clock, she switched off her computer, gathered her things and locked the door, ignoring the envious stares of her colleagues.  As their superior, she did get certain privileges, but they weren’t the ones who had to deal with emergency meetings on Sundays, with phone calls at four in the morning when everything had gone to hell.  Torchwood was rewarding, she thought wearily as she stepped into the lift, but it could be consuming too. 

“Keep me waiting, why don’t you?” Charlie’s voice greeted her as she entered the car park, and she grinned.  The Doctor had taken their car so he was giving her a lift home, and just the sight of his familiar grin was enough to lift her spirits slightly.  It wasn’t nearly as good as seeing the Doctor at the end of the day, when he’d slide his fingers through hers and kiss her cheek in front of all her colleagues, but Charlie was a worthy substitute.

“Some of us actually have work to do,” she shot back, smiling, and he walked round to open the door for her.

“Ouch.  Work, or playing with staples?” He winked and she laughed.  During the long, cold months after she’d first arrived here, Charlie had been her lifeline.  He’d seemed to know not to pry, and instead had concentrated on making her smile - telling her jokes and being there to listen and always knowing when to back off.  Once upon a time, she’d wondered if he’d been after something more than friendship, but the topic had always been carefully avoided and he’d never been anything but brilliant to the Doctor.  If anything, they’d grown even closer.

Now, she gave him a dark look.

“It’d help if the rest of you actually wrote your reports instead of sending them all to me.  I’d locked them all away in my desk drawer and now I’ve got a mountain of them in there.” He laughed and the car pulled away, purring through the car park and then out into the half-darkness of late afternoon.  The clouds hung low overhead, grey-black and threatening rain, and Rose was suddenly so relieved to be heading home. 

“I’ll put that snipe down to pregnancy hormones,” he teased, giving her a sideways glance, and almost instinctively her hand crept to her stomach, searching out the movement she hadn’t felt yet.  “I’m not sure I’ll be able to give you a lift in a few months.  Once your ankles swell and your face gets puffy and your belly triples in size you probably won’t fit.” She shoved his arm gently where it rested on the gearstick.

“Git.  At least I don’t have to see you every day while I’m stuck in the office.”

“You wound me.” There was silence for a moment and Rose gazed out of the window, her eyes growing lazy as the houses and cars and people flashed by in a blur of grey.  Her back was still aching and she closed her eyes for a moment, pictured the coils of steam rising from a hot bath, the chill of a wine glass against her palm.  “We do miss you, Rose.” She lifted one eyebrow, not bothering to look at him.

“Is that some kind of jibe I’m too tired to get?”

She heard the smile in his voice.  “I’m being serious.  We’re all looking forward to you coming back.  It’s like missing a leg.” He paused, “A really itchy, irritating leg, but a leg nonetheless.” Just like that, the moment had passed, but his honest words lay low and warm in her stomach, the belief that she meant something, she was doing something, she was missed.

They pulled up in front of the house and she unbuckled her seatbelt, not wanting to seem rude but desperate to get inside and relax.  She was just opening the door when she felt his hand on her arm, and unbidden, irrational fear whispered that he was going to kiss her.  She turned slowly, but he wasn’t looking at her, instead twisted in his seat and fumbling for something in the backseat. 

“Here.” He dropped a brightly wrapped package onto her lap.  “It’s from the team.”

“What is it?” she asked stupidly, because she was so touched she didn’t quite know what to do.

“Has pregnancy shrivelled your brains or something?  It’s Christmas next week and things always go crazy around that time, so I thought I’d give it to you now, just in case I don’t see you before.” He leaned over, kissed her cheek.  “Merry Christmas, Rose.”

She was quiet, stared out of the windscreen at the Christmas lights twinkling against the twilight, at the silhouettes of Christmas trees in every window.  She’d been so caught up in pregnancy and paperwork and the Doctor that she’d barely even noticed that the holiday was approaching.  It occurred to her suddenly that she had a lot of shopping to do.

“Oh Charlie, you shouldn’t have.” She gave him an awkward one-armed hug and then beamed at him, genuinely affected by the gesture.  They were a close team but certainly never in the birthdays, let’s-go-down-the-pub way she’d known at Henrik’s.  Torchwood encroached enough on your personal life without making your colleagues your best friends, and apart from the odd takeaway with Charlie they’d never been particularly intimate.

She watched him as he roared off before letting herself in and hurrying upstairs to run the bath, the present momentarily forgotten in the sheer relief of being home.  It wasn’t until she returned downstairs to fetch a magazine and a glass of wine that she remembered the gift, and then she debated for a moment whether to wait until after her bath.  There was certainly no way she could last until Christmas Day.

Making her mind up, she unwrapped it quickly, deducing from the attention to detail that this part at least had been Georgia’s handiwork.  Something small and soft fell into her hand and she shook it out, feeling her heart clench as she saw what it was.  It was a babygro, aged newborn, and it was too small even to fit both her hands side by side.  It was a light, clear lemon, edged in deep yellow stitching, and she could tell just from the feel of the material that it had been expensive.

She blinked back the tears that seemed ever-ready these days and laid it reverently on the kitchen table, still unable to believe that in a few months, she would have a baby, a warm, breathing child who would be tiny enough to fit into it.  It seemed impossible. 

She lowered herself into the bath in a daze, hit by the reality of her pregnancy.  It seemed so close, and she couldn’t help the thrill of excitement that fizzed through her.  The water was piping hot, deliciously soothing on her aching back and she closed her eyes, content to doze a little before she made supper.

She must have fallen into a deep sleep, for she was jolted awake by the slam of the front door to find the bath water was cold.  Shivering, she climbed out and wrapped herself in a towel, noting that it was now pitch black outside.

“Doctor?”  No reply.  She went to the landing, shouted again.  “Doctor?” That was strange.  She was sure it had been the door she’d heard, yet there was no response and no sound from downstairs. She pulled on her dressing gown and went downstairs, her wet hair dripping beads of cold water down her spine.  The sitting room and the toilet were empty, so, frowning, she continued into the kitchen.  Also empty, but this time, something was niggling at her.  There was her handbag, her shoes, the yoghurt she’d started that morning before work, the discarded wrapping paper.

And then it hit her.

The present had gone. 

So had the Doctor.