tardis_stowaway (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
tardis_stowaway) wrote2008-08-02 01:00 am
tardis_stowaway) wrote2008-08-02 01:00 am
Entry tags:
Fic: Path of Needles (1/7?)
Title: Path of Needles
Author:tardis_stowaway
Characters/Pairings: Chiefly Ten/Rose, but there's also a bit of Nine/Rose (I couldn't resist), and some leaning towards Ten/Rose/Jack (Jack couldn't resist).
Rating: mild PG-13 for a bit of discussion about sex and one or two instances of salty language.
Spoilers: through season 3, spoiler-free AU after that!
Disclaimer: Doctor Who is not mine. I just take it out for play dates with my strange imagination.
Summary: Once upon a time, she had abided in the world where lives did not begin with ‘once upon a time.’ No more. Rose walks through the woods. Meanwhile, the Doctor deals with an abundance of Bad Wolf references.
Author's Note: Look, the aggressive plot bunny that attacked months ago has finally resulted in fic! This is not part of my Illyria series. Expect something different. The Doctor's sections begin in the interval between "Runaway Bride" and "Smith & Jones" and continue through the end of S3, going AU after that. My marvelous beta readersdark_aegis and wendymr improved this story immeasurably! You can also read this story on Teaspoon if you prefer.
Chapter 1: Once Upon a Time, In a Far Off Kingdom
Rose sets out. Meanwhile, the Doctor is asked to tell a story.
* * * * *
Trust ghosts. Trust those that you have helped
to help you in their turn.
Trust dreams.
Trust your heart, and trust your story.
-Neil Gaiman, “Instructions”
* * *
“Tell me a story.”
The Doctor looked down at the small boy tugging at the hem of his suit jacket. Humans really were amazing. Killer flying monkeys from space were swooping past the mall skylight (the Doctor would be able to get rid of them in about ten minutes when his makeshift sonic monkey stunner finished charging). However, this child had obviously grown bored of cowering alongside his mother and the other shoppers. Now he came to the Doctor, clearly the most interesting adult around, and begged for a story.
The monkeys weren’t having any luck breaking the reinforced glass. They also weren’t going away. They swooped by over and over, hooting and throwing rocks dispiritedly. There was nothing to be done until the monkey stunner charged.
“What sort of story would you like?” asked the Doctor, pulling out his glasses. Not that he was going to read anything, but it made him look much more like a proper storyteller. “An adventure? A space adventure with astronauts…no, better not try that, might accidentally say something your lot shouldn’t know for centuries. Perhaps a swashbuckling pirate tale? Just don’t ask me to explain what a swash is or why pirates need to buckle them. Or, if you like being scared, I know stories to chill every one of your bones. Ghosts, vampires, zombies, witches, whatever you like. Scratch that; no point in traumatizing you for life. How about a fantasy full of wizards and magical swords? Or a romance? No, you’re a bit young to enjoy the kissing bits. Maybe you like the classics? Hercules, Ulysses, Gilgamesh, Siegfried, Beowulf, King Arthur? Ah! You must want a fairy tale! What’ll it be? Cinderella, Rapunzel, Hansel and Gretel, Beauty and the Beast, the Frog Prince, Jack and the Beanstalk, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Goldilocks? Well?”
Throughout the Doctor’s babbling, the boy simply looked up at him, solemn expression unchanging. The Doctor’s gestures grew more and more animated in an attempt to get some sort of reaction. Nothing worked, and he wound down to silence slightly deflated.
“Bad wolf,” the boy said.
The Doctor frowned, crouching down to the boy’s level. “What did you say?”
“Tell me a story about the big bad wolf,” the boy requested, enunciating very clearly for one so small.
“That story has a sad ending,” the Doctor said, gazing off at something no one else could see. His shoulders sagged.
“You don’t know the ending,” the boy said in a voice that was not a child’s voice. The Doctor looked back at him sharply and saw something feral in the boy’s smile.
“I’ve got to go,” muttered the Doctor, standing. He strode purposefully in no particular direction except away.
* * *
Jackie Tyler embraced her daughter like they would never meet again, which, in fact, they wouldn’t.
“Sweetheart, you can still…” Jackie began.
“No, Mum. Please let’s not spend our last minutes arguing,” Rose said, clinging to her.
Jackie nodded into Rose’s shoulder. “This is the most idiotic plan I’ve ever heard of, but I’m so proud of you.” Her expensive mascara could cope with a lot, but Jackie could feel it beginning to run down her face.
“I love you,” Rose said, tears spilling over. “I’ll always love you. I’ve just gotta go.”
Jackie squeezed hard, lingeringly, then let go. She’d learned to do that at last. She reached into the stylish but very large bag at her feet and came up with a plastic resealable bag full of home-baked chocolate biscuits.
Back in the other universe Jackie almost never baked and, to be honest, that was probably a good thing for public health. Here, having a live-in cook to deal with most meals suddenly freed Jackie to realize that she liked cooking when not trying to put on dinner at the end of a long day on her feet. She’d learned to bake properly, and she intended to put that knowledge to use.
“For him. And you too, of course. Don’t let him eat them all without sharing!” The bag was nearly the size of a person’s head, but Jackie thought that it would be just like the Doctor to gobble the treats up in moments all by himself.
“Thanks,” said Rose, voice too rough with emotion to mean just the biscuits.
“Stop wasting time,” Jackie said, because she thought if this lasted any longer she might shatter beyond repair. Jackie blew her nose loudly. Rose nodded, kissed her mother on the cheek, and opened the door to the lab where the portal waited.
She opened her mouth and after several tries managed to speak. “Goodbye.”
“Be careful, sweetheart,” Jackie pleaded.
Rose nodded, smiled through her tears, and closed the door behind her.
* * *
“Are you ready?” asked the man who was almost Rose’s father. Almost.
“I’ve been ready since I arrived here,” Rose answered. “It’s not for lack of loving you and Mum, but…” she trailed off.
“I understand,” said Pete. Rose knew he did.
“Powering up,” announced Jake, flipping the big red switch with great gusto.
“Energy readings within parameters,” Mickey informed them from his station, not quite concealing a jealous look lingering from last week’s argument about who would flip the enticing red switch. Rose rolled her eyes a bit. Boys.
Rose turned her attention to the doorway that, for the moment, still led nowhere. The tangled arc of wires that would produce the portal between worlds almost looked like vines framing a door through a garden wall. Uncomfortably aware of the awkward plastic bag of biscuits in her hand, she looked around for some sort of better bag or container. Everything she was taking with her (mobile, TARDIS key, jewelry to exchange for cash in case she couldn’t find the Doctor right away, photos of her family, hope) was stowed in her pockets. Less to carry, less to lose, but she couldn’t leave behind the biscuits. She spotted a basket holding a floral arrangement (good old Ianto, trying to give even utilitarian laboratories that touch of class), dumped out the flowers (sorry, Ianto) and put in the biscuits. That would do.
“Gonna miss you,” she told Mickey, laying a hand on his shoulder.
“Hey, you could still see me again. You thought you’d left me behind over here once. If this works without stressing the universe too much, maybe we can make it a permanent thing,” he said, sparing a glance away from the monitor.
“I don’t think the Doctor would be too happy with more holes between the universes,” Rose said sadly.
“Yeah, well, what does he know?” said Mickey, without much force behind it. “Just take care, all right?” He took Rose’s small hand between both of his, squeezed, and turned back to his task.
The air within the wire frame took on a distorted look, like the air over a parking lot on a blistering summer day. The hairs on the back of Rose’s arm began to stand up.
“Void radiation levels rising,” Kara, Rose’s former Torchwood partner, informed them.
“Safe journey, Rose.” Pete caught her in a final embrace.
“Give ‘em hell, Dad,” she said. “Err, with this void door, make sure that’s not actual hell.”
“Trust me on this,” he said, earning Rose’s smile.
The shimmer in the doorway thickened, began looking milky, and then cleared to reveal a shining white emptiness.
“Portal open!” Mickey cried, triumphant. “It’s holding steady.”
Rose stepped forward, her every muscle tight with anticipation.
“Wait!” Jake shouted. “We don’t have a fix on the far side.”
Rose waited. An ominous crackling sound filled the air. The light coming from the doorway began to pulse.
“What’s wrong? Can I go yet?” she asked, the hand not clutching the basket tightening into a fist.
“I don’t know. We’ve got through into the Void, but I can’t tell if it’s coming out on the other side! Trying to get a fix now,” Jake shouted, typing at lightning speed.
“Well, find out!” said Pete, moving to a console of his own. For a moment the only sounds were the clacking of keys and the crackling of the portal, which grew more and more violent.
“Losing stability now,” Mickey said tensely. “It won’t hold much longer.”
“Radiation levels rising into the danger zone. Sir, we’ve got less than one minute until the time-space continuum starts to lose structural integrity, and we better not try this again,” Kara warned.
“Does the portal go through yet?” Rose practically screamed over the warning sirens that had joined the portal’s noise.
“Yes. No! Probably. I can’t tell!” Jake growled in frustration. “No fucking idea.”
“But it might?”
“It’s possible,” he said, not looking up from his desperate work.
“I’m going then,” Rose decided, eyes fixed on the doorway.
“Rose, no! If the portal doesn’t come out on the far side, you’ll be trapped in the Void. In Hell, Rose, and we can’t get you out. It’s not worth the risk,” pleaded Pete.
“I’m getting back to the Doctor. This is the way to him,” Rose said, and her voice was heavy with authority far beyond her years, maybe even her species. The light from the doorway turned her hair into a luminous halo. The others shivered and did not rise to stop her.
On the threshold of the portal she paused. “Tell Mum I made it. Make her think it’s sure,” she said, in a voice once more high and very young.
“Rose!” Mickey cried, but Rose never found out what he meant to say. The portal took her.
* * *
She stepped into the maelstrom. Wind buffeted her skin and pawed at her hair and clothes. Even after she shut her eyes, pulsing white light burned a hole through the back of her eyeballs and into her brain. Energy surged through her, savagely churning up her insides and sizzling through her skin. She tried to scream but wasn’t sure if she managed it.
She clutched desperately at the idea of the Doctor. She held up the mental image of him like a shield against all the pain that assaulted her senses and mind. He was the object of the quest, her one wish. Everything would be all right if she could just get to him. This was just another run for her life, wasn’t it? Except her feet scrabbled at nothing, and her hands waved through emptiness.
She was still clinging to her desperation to reach the Doctor when she passed out.
* * *
She awoke in a forest. Under her feet was a path made of glossy black pebbles. Surely it wasn’t normal to rouse from unconsciousness in a standing position, but she found she was no longer sure. The path wound off through the trees, wide enough for two or three people to walk abreast. The bare black trees stretched on as far as she could see to either side, fading into the mist in the distance. It must be winter. The ground under the trees was as snowy white as the cloudy sky overhead, though not a flake lay on the path. The world was so colorless that she would have thought her vision somehow damaged were it not for the intense crimson of her hoodie.
Improbably, the basket of biscuits still hung from her hand.
Turning to check behind her, she found a hedge running through the forest as far as the eye could see. It loomed far over her head, thorny and impenetrable. Where the path met the hedge, a wooden door filled an arched portal in the hedge. She tried the door and was unsurprised to find it locked. No turning back.
She put the hedge behind her. Drawing a deep breath, she set off down the path through the woods.
* * * * *
Onwards to Chapter 2
Author:
tardis_stowaway Characters/Pairings: Chiefly Ten/Rose, but there's also a bit of Nine/Rose (I couldn't resist), and some leaning towards Ten/Rose/Jack (Jack couldn't resist).
Rating: mild PG-13 for a bit of discussion about sex and one or two instances of salty language.
Spoilers: through season 3, spoiler-free AU after that!
Disclaimer: Doctor Who is not mine. I just take it out for play dates with my strange imagination.
Summary: Once upon a time, she had abided in the world where lives did not begin with ‘once upon a time.’ No more. Rose walks through the woods. Meanwhile, the Doctor deals with an abundance of Bad Wolf references.
Author's Note: Look, the aggressive plot bunny that attacked months ago has finally resulted in fic! This is not part of my Illyria series. Expect something different. The Doctor's sections begin in the interval between "Runaway Bride" and "Smith & Jones" and continue through the end of S3, going AU after that. My marvelous beta readers
dark_aegis and wendymr improved this story immeasurably! You can also read this story on Teaspoon if you prefer.Chapter 1: Once Upon a Time, In a Far Off Kingdom
Rose sets out. Meanwhile, the Doctor is asked to tell a story.
* * * * *
Trust ghosts. Trust those that you have helped
to help you in their turn.
Trust dreams.
Trust your heart, and trust your story.
-Neil Gaiman, “Instructions”
* * *
“Tell me a story.”
The Doctor looked down at the small boy tugging at the hem of his suit jacket. Humans really were amazing. Killer flying monkeys from space were swooping past the mall skylight (the Doctor would be able to get rid of them in about ten minutes when his makeshift sonic monkey stunner finished charging). However, this child had obviously grown bored of cowering alongside his mother and the other shoppers. Now he came to the Doctor, clearly the most interesting adult around, and begged for a story.
The monkeys weren’t having any luck breaking the reinforced glass. They also weren’t going away. They swooped by over and over, hooting and throwing rocks dispiritedly. There was nothing to be done until the monkey stunner charged.
“What sort of story would you like?” asked the Doctor, pulling out his glasses. Not that he was going to read anything, but it made him look much more like a proper storyteller. “An adventure? A space adventure with astronauts…no, better not try that, might accidentally say something your lot shouldn’t know for centuries. Perhaps a swashbuckling pirate tale? Just don’t ask me to explain what a swash is or why pirates need to buckle them. Or, if you like being scared, I know stories to chill every one of your bones. Ghosts, vampires, zombies, witches, whatever you like. Scratch that; no point in traumatizing you for life. How about a fantasy full of wizards and magical swords? Or a romance? No, you’re a bit young to enjoy the kissing bits. Maybe you like the classics? Hercules, Ulysses, Gilgamesh, Siegfried, Beowulf, King Arthur? Ah! You must want a fairy tale! What’ll it be? Cinderella, Rapunzel, Hansel and Gretel, Beauty and the Beast, the Frog Prince, Jack and the Beanstalk, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Goldilocks? Well?”
Throughout the Doctor’s babbling, the boy simply looked up at him, solemn expression unchanging. The Doctor’s gestures grew more and more animated in an attempt to get some sort of reaction. Nothing worked, and he wound down to silence slightly deflated.
“Bad wolf,” the boy said.
The Doctor frowned, crouching down to the boy’s level. “What did you say?”
“Tell me a story about the big bad wolf,” the boy requested, enunciating very clearly for one so small.
“That story has a sad ending,” the Doctor said, gazing off at something no one else could see. His shoulders sagged.
“You don’t know the ending,” the boy said in a voice that was not a child’s voice. The Doctor looked back at him sharply and saw something feral in the boy’s smile.
“I’ve got to go,” muttered the Doctor, standing. He strode purposefully in no particular direction except away.
* * *
Jackie Tyler embraced her daughter like they would never meet again, which, in fact, they wouldn’t.
“Sweetheart, you can still…” Jackie began.
“No, Mum. Please let’s not spend our last minutes arguing,” Rose said, clinging to her.
Jackie nodded into Rose’s shoulder. “This is the most idiotic plan I’ve ever heard of, but I’m so proud of you.” Her expensive mascara could cope with a lot, but Jackie could feel it beginning to run down her face.
“I love you,” Rose said, tears spilling over. “I’ll always love you. I’ve just gotta go.”
Jackie squeezed hard, lingeringly, then let go. She’d learned to do that at last. She reached into the stylish but very large bag at her feet and came up with a plastic resealable bag full of home-baked chocolate biscuits.
Back in the other universe Jackie almost never baked and, to be honest, that was probably a good thing for public health. Here, having a live-in cook to deal with most meals suddenly freed Jackie to realize that she liked cooking when not trying to put on dinner at the end of a long day on her feet. She’d learned to bake properly, and she intended to put that knowledge to use.
“For him. And you too, of course. Don’t let him eat them all without sharing!” The bag was nearly the size of a person’s head, but Jackie thought that it would be just like the Doctor to gobble the treats up in moments all by himself.
“Thanks,” said Rose, voice too rough with emotion to mean just the biscuits.
“Stop wasting time,” Jackie said, because she thought if this lasted any longer she might shatter beyond repair. Jackie blew her nose loudly. Rose nodded, kissed her mother on the cheek, and opened the door to the lab where the portal waited.
She opened her mouth and after several tries managed to speak. “Goodbye.”
“Be careful, sweetheart,” Jackie pleaded.
Rose nodded, smiled through her tears, and closed the door behind her.
* * *
“Are you ready?” asked the man who was almost Rose’s father. Almost.
“I’ve been ready since I arrived here,” Rose answered. “It’s not for lack of loving you and Mum, but…” she trailed off.
“I understand,” said Pete. Rose knew he did.
“Powering up,” announced Jake, flipping the big red switch with great gusto.
“Energy readings within parameters,” Mickey informed them from his station, not quite concealing a jealous look lingering from last week’s argument about who would flip the enticing red switch. Rose rolled her eyes a bit. Boys.
Rose turned her attention to the doorway that, for the moment, still led nowhere. The tangled arc of wires that would produce the portal between worlds almost looked like vines framing a door through a garden wall. Uncomfortably aware of the awkward plastic bag of biscuits in her hand, she looked around for some sort of better bag or container. Everything she was taking with her (mobile, TARDIS key, jewelry to exchange for cash in case she couldn’t find the Doctor right away, photos of her family, hope) was stowed in her pockets. Less to carry, less to lose, but she couldn’t leave behind the biscuits. She spotted a basket holding a floral arrangement (good old Ianto, trying to give even utilitarian laboratories that touch of class), dumped out the flowers (sorry, Ianto) and put in the biscuits. That would do.
“Gonna miss you,” she told Mickey, laying a hand on his shoulder.
“Hey, you could still see me again. You thought you’d left me behind over here once. If this works without stressing the universe too much, maybe we can make it a permanent thing,” he said, sparing a glance away from the monitor.
“I don’t think the Doctor would be too happy with more holes between the universes,” Rose said sadly.
“Yeah, well, what does he know?” said Mickey, without much force behind it. “Just take care, all right?” He took Rose’s small hand between both of his, squeezed, and turned back to his task.
The air within the wire frame took on a distorted look, like the air over a parking lot on a blistering summer day. The hairs on the back of Rose’s arm began to stand up.
“Void radiation levels rising,” Kara, Rose’s former Torchwood partner, informed them.
“Safe journey, Rose.” Pete caught her in a final embrace.
“Give ‘em hell, Dad,” she said. “Err, with this void door, make sure that’s not actual hell.”
“Trust me on this,” he said, earning Rose’s smile.
The shimmer in the doorway thickened, began looking milky, and then cleared to reveal a shining white emptiness.
“Portal open!” Mickey cried, triumphant. “It’s holding steady.”
Rose stepped forward, her every muscle tight with anticipation.
“Wait!” Jake shouted. “We don’t have a fix on the far side.”
Rose waited. An ominous crackling sound filled the air. The light coming from the doorway began to pulse.
“What’s wrong? Can I go yet?” she asked, the hand not clutching the basket tightening into a fist.
“I don’t know. We’ve got through into the Void, but I can’t tell if it’s coming out on the other side! Trying to get a fix now,” Jake shouted, typing at lightning speed.
“Well, find out!” said Pete, moving to a console of his own. For a moment the only sounds were the clacking of keys and the crackling of the portal, which grew more and more violent.
“Losing stability now,” Mickey said tensely. “It won’t hold much longer.”
“Radiation levels rising into the danger zone. Sir, we’ve got less than one minute until the time-space continuum starts to lose structural integrity, and we better not try this again,” Kara warned.
“Does the portal go through yet?” Rose practically screamed over the warning sirens that had joined the portal’s noise.
“Yes. No! Probably. I can’t tell!” Jake growled in frustration. “No fucking idea.”
“But it might?”
“It’s possible,” he said, not looking up from his desperate work.
“I’m going then,” Rose decided, eyes fixed on the doorway.
“Rose, no! If the portal doesn’t come out on the far side, you’ll be trapped in the Void. In Hell, Rose, and we can’t get you out. It’s not worth the risk,” pleaded Pete.
“I’m getting back to the Doctor. This is the way to him,” Rose said, and her voice was heavy with authority far beyond her years, maybe even her species. The light from the doorway turned her hair into a luminous halo. The others shivered and did not rise to stop her.
On the threshold of the portal she paused. “Tell Mum I made it. Make her think it’s sure,” she said, in a voice once more high and very young.
“Rose!” Mickey cried, but Rose never found out what he meant to say. The portal took her.
* * *
She stepped into the maelstrom. Wind buffeted her skin and pawed at her hair and clothes. Even after she shut her eyes, pulsing white light burned a hole through the back of her eyeballs and into her brain. Energy surged through her, savagely churning up her insides and sizzling through her skin. She tried to scream but wasn’t sure if she managed it.
She clutched desperately at the idea of the Doctor. She held up the mental image of him like a shield against all the pain that assaulted her senses and mind. He was the object of the quest, her one wish. Everything would be all right if she could just get to him. This was just another run for her life, wasn’t it? Except her feet scrabbled at nothing, and her hands waved through emptiness.
She was still clinging to her desperation to reach the Doctor when she passed out.
* * *
She awoke in a forest. Under her feet was a path made of glossy black pebbles. Surely it wasn’t normal to rouse from unconsciousness in a standing position, but she found she was no longer sure. The path wound off through the trees, wide enough for two or three people to walk abreast. The bare black trees stretched on as far as she could see to either side, fading into the mist in the distance. It must be winter. The ground under the trees was as snowy white as the cloudy sky overhead, though not a flake lay on the path. The world was so colorless that she would have thought her vision somehow damaged were it not for the intense crimson of her hoodie.
Improbably, the basket of biscuits still hung from her hand.
Turning to check behind her, she found a hedge running through the forest as far as the eye could see. It loomed far over her head, thorny and impenetrable. Where the path met the hedge, a wooden door filled an arched portal in the hedge. She tried the door and was unsurprised to find it locked. No turning back.
She put the hedge behind her. Drawing a deep breath, she set off down the path through the woods.
* * * * *
Onwards to Chapter 2