Fic: Path of Needles (7/8)
Sep. 5th, 2008 11:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tardis_stowawayTitle: Path of Needles
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tardis_stowaway
Characters/Pairings: Chiefly Ten/Rose, but there's also a bit of Nine/Rose (I couldn't resist), and some 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!
Betas:wendymr and dark_aegis rock my socks
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.
Navigation links: Previous chapters on Teaspoon or back to Chapter 6 on LJ
Chapter 7: And So It Came To Pass...
The Doctor and Rose have breakfast and come to terms with some consequences of their pasts and Rose's unusual return.
* * * * *
"Fairy tales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”
--G.K. Chesterton
* * *
Rose watched the Doctor make breakfast. He capered around the kitchen, brimming over with manic energy like a child on Christmas morning. As he worked he talked at supersonic speed, mostly an improbable anecdote about yet another of his meetings with Shakespeare, this time with someone called Martha Jones. Rose tried to listen, but she found it hard to concentrate. Her attention kept being drawn to the grain of the wood on the scuffed table, the feel of that wood against the pads of her fingers, the bright labels of the food containers, or the scent of the waffle batter. The physicality and intricacy of the world left her astonished and more than a little overwhelmed. As the joyous clarity of her awakening faded, she felt adrift.
How very strange to be sitting in a kitchen, occupying one human body again. She did not precisely remember much about the time between helping the Doctor end the Time War and awaking in the console room, but she was aware of it. Unlike the first time she’d absorbed the vortex, she understood perfectly what had happened. Presumably that awareness was a consequence of how her mind had crystallized out of the vortex this time, not tried to contain it. The Doctor hadn’t regenerated since she was the last one with the hot potato of power. She hadn’t died since there was enough of the deadly glory of the vortex absorbed within herself to let her release the rest safely. Now that she was more settled within herself, however, Rose knew that she was almost entirely a normal human. Still, she recalled a sense of immensity. Her skin felt confining.
Rose took a sip of tea. She’d done so much in her quest to find the Doctor, but in the end he’d had to rescue her. She used to love that the Doctor would always come to get her, but part of her wished she’d been strong enough to make it all the way on her own this time.
And now it was over. All that suffering, all that grandeur, and she ended up in a kitchen having breakfast. It was all so domestic. She told herself that it would feel more natural in time, but she wasn’t sure. Sometimes she thought she saw trees out of the corner of her eyes or heard the whispers of the hostile woods at the edge of her hearing. Sometimes when she spoke her voice stumbled over the words and she felt a howl would come easier.
How do you leave the woods when they have grown up within you?
“Rose? Did you hear me?” asked the Doctor. He must have asked a question.
Rose examined the Doctor. His expression was full of concern. When she studied his eyes, she could see the hard toll of the time since she’d been gone layered on top of the 900-odd (usually VERY odd) years he’d lived before that. That gentle concern was backed by an implicit promise that he would shift planets and face down armies for her sake.
The bowl of waffle batter cradled in his arms didn’t invalidate his status as the Oncoming Storm. Just because he’d finally said “I love you” didn’t make him one iota less magical. He was her Doctor, her true love, the fulfillment of the quest.
The Doctor had held the Time Vortex for her. It wasn’t a rescue, not really. She’d been fine, even if rather lacking in self-awareness and technically dead. However, the Doctor’s part was necessary to reach the final goal, and rightly so. A partnership couldn’t be one-sided, no matter which side was which. Though she’d walked many miles in solitude, the quest was ultimately not hers but theirs.
For better or worse, she’d chosen long ago to abide in the woods. Even the deepest woods may contain shelters where a traveler can rest for a time, but the lull is all the sweeter because it is temporary. Though they had been remade without calluses, her feet belonged to the journey, and her hand to the one who journeyed beside her.
“Sorry. My mind was elsewhere. I was hoping you could come over here,” she said.
“Do you need something? I can get you more tea.”
Rose lurched to her shaky new fawn-legs and boldly draped her arms over the Doctor’s shoulders. “I have plenty of tea, but I could do with another kiss.”
The Doctor honored her request thoroughly. Rose let him kiss away all her uncertainties. This was where she belonged, body and soul.
“You’re an easy woman to provide for,” he told her, grinning smugly.
“Don’t think this gets you out of making me waffles.” Rose suddenly realized that she was hungry.
* * *
“There we are, locked in a broom closet with a bomb two minutes from blowing up, and there’s a dozen angry weasels in there with us. I turn to Kara, and I say, ‘It’s probably just as well this is a confidential mission, because I would hate for death by weasel and explosion to be in my obituary.’ I’m grinning, of course, ‘cause what else are you gonna do? She looks at me like I’ve gone completely bonkers. She says, ‘Do you honestly find this situation humorous, Agent Tyler?’” Rose told the Doctor over the bowl of ice cream that followed two waffles, affecting a posh accent for her Torchwood partner. “That’s when I decided to stop trying to make myself accept the other world and start listening to what my heart had been telling me the whole time. I belong here, with you. You would have known that the proper response in that situation was…”
“ ‘Actually, this is the kind of obituary I’ve always wanted’,” the Doctor offered. Rose laughed.
“Good one, but even better would have been, ‘they could write about the weasels just as long as they don’t mention my nudity’.” Rose smirked.
The Doctor spurted the sip of tea he’d rather foolishly taken across the table. “No! You were naked?”
“We were! I finally had a naked story to match the ones Jack used to tell, and the only person with me completely didn’t appreciate it. I thought I would die of frustration before the bomb had a chance to get me.” Rose smiled for a moment, but her mirth faded.
“Speaking of Jack, I ran into him in the Void. Turns out he goes there for a little while every time he dies.” Rose watched the Doctor as she spoke. He seemed surprised by the meeting in the Void, but the mention of Jack’s repeated dying only made the Doctor look everywhere but at her face.
“So you remember being in the Void? After how I got you back, that’s surprising. What about afterwards?”
“The Void I remember bits of quite well, although it doesn’t feel entirely like it happened to me. After the proper universe started up my memory gets fuzzy, mostly just emotions without reference point and a pounding headache if I try for more. I don’t think the history of the universe fits in my thick ape skull. But you just changed the subject, Doctor. Why did you leave Jack?”
The Doctor hesitated, but he answered her. “A Time Lord has senses humans don’t. When he became immortal, he became a fixed point in time. It grated on those senses, like fingernails on a blackboard.” The Doctor fidgeted, twirling the sonic screwdriver between his fingers. Rose reached out and took it from him, stilling his hand.
“When I made him immortal, you mean. I know my part in this. Doctor, couldn’t you have put up with it for long enough to explain the problem and drop him off somewhere other than a satellite full of bodies?” Rose had no anger, guilt, or accusations in her voice, just an iron demand for the truth.
The Doctor met Rose’s gaze, and his brown eyes were full of shadows. “Tolerate his fixedness for that long, yes. Explain, no. What happened to Jack…however kindly it was meant, it was no blessing. I couldn’t face explaining that to either of you.”
“Did it ever occur to you that he should be the one to determine that?”
“Maybe. Eventually. Rose, abandoning Jack was not my best decision, I admit that, but he and I have already discussed it. It’s done, and he and I are both old enough to accept that.”
“You got back in contact with Jack?” Rose leaned back in her chair, surprised.
“Stranded at the end of the universe with each other, held captive together for a year…that sort of thing. I’ll tell you about it, but it’s a long and not very happy story. I’d rather keep this day clear of that, if you don’t mind waiting.” When Rose nodded, the Doctor continued. “At the end of it I offered him a space on the TARDIS. He refused. Apparently he’s acquired his own personal Scooby gang and prefers their company to mine.” The Doctor spoke somewhat too casually to be entirely believable.
“Hmmm. I still miss him. I want to try changing his mind, but we can let him have a bit of time doing his own thing before I get persuasive. It’s strange, though, that he turned you down. When I met him, he was so intent on tracking you down that he was carrying your severed hand in his saddlebag in the Void and as a tracking device in this world. A severed hand as a memento–how creepy is that?”
The Doctor looked shifty. Rose saw his demeanor and raised her eyes to the ceiling.
“Please tell me you don’t have the severed hand.”
In answer, the Doctor rose momentarily to open a cupboard that used to contain an immense selection of condiments from across time and space. Instead, it contained a clear case with a severed hand suspended in liquid.
“You have your own severed hand in your kitchen. Doctor, why?!”
“It used to be in the console room, but I moved it when I started growing a body there for you,” said the Doctor, as if that explained everything.
“Only room for one bizarre Frankenstein mad-science project in there?”
“You are NOT a mad-science project, Rose. You’re alive, human, and completely yourself,” the Doctor said with sudden intensity, reaching over the table to take Rose’s hand.
Rose squeezed the Doctor’s hand in reassurance. “I know. I trust you not to bring me back as anything less than whole. Other than being a bit weak, I feel like myself. Still, it’s a bit strange, knowing that my body was grown in a vat. Look at this!” Rose swung a foot onto the table. “Last thing I remember clearly, I’d just walked my feet to bloody tatters in the woods. Now there’s not so much as a callous. Or look here on my hand, where I was bit by a weasel in that closet. Used to be a scar, but there’s no sign of it. I’m in mint condition.”
“Oh, really?” said the Doctor with a sudden dangerous smile. “I think you need a Doctor’s examination to test that out.”
The Doctor took her hand and studied it with intense concentration, stroking his fingers over every inch. He leaned in and pressed a kiss to the spot on her palm where the scar once was. Then he repeated the performance with her feet, massaging them before kissing every toe and the baby-soft soles. Rose’s head tilted back appreciatively.
“Let’s see. If I remember correctly, you had a small scar on your ear from a failed ear-piercing experiment with Shareen.” He knelt beside Rose’s chair, brushing her hair back and then pressing a feather-soft kiss to the ear. Abruptly his tongue darted out to lick the folds of her ear. The Doctor was rewarded with Rose’s sudden intake of breath.
“Now,” he said, close enough to her ear that she felt the puffs of his breath, deliciously cool against the dampness left by his tongue, “do you have any other former scars that need examining?”
Rose smiled languidly as she pondered. Suddenly she sat bolt upright, pressing a hand to her mouth.
“Oh my God! Doctor, are unicorns real?” she said anxiously.
“What?!” asked the Doctor, utterly baffled.
“Lots of things I used to think were imaginary turn out to be real. If unicorns exist, we need to go and see them. Now.” She enunciated very clearly, but the Doctor still didn’t understand a thing she was saying.
“What?”
“My body’s back to starting condition. All over. Unicorns prefer…”
“…virgins,” the Doctor finished. He had the expression of someone who’s just discovered what the unidentified exotic dish he was devouring actually contained while in the company of the hosts who must not be offended.
His mind raced. What did Rose want him to do with this information? Was a regrown hymen a positive or negative thing to her? The twenty-first century had such complicated and bizarre attitudes about sex. Saying the wrong thing could upset or offend her. Did she want to wait on the physical side of their newly expanded relationship? What if she wanted to break in her replacement body with a fellow human? Was he being presumptive to assume that she wanted sex with him at all? Her chaste company would be infinitely better than her absence and unquestionably worth every bit of his effort, but he’d hoped for something different.
A pun. He needed to make a pun.
“Rose, I do believe you’ve been reflowered!” the Doctor declared.
Rose dissolved into giggles.
“I’m the embodiment of a Madonna song!” she said when she had the breath for it.
“I think I have a chastity belt stashed in the wardrobe room so we can protect your new status,” the Doctor informed her with exaggerated solicitousness.
“You own a chastity belt? Why? On second thought, I don’t want to know. Just keep it away from me,” Rose said. The Doctor breathed a silent sigh of relief.
“Should I increase the number of goats I pay to your father for the privilege of your company should we ever discover a way to send livestock across the Void?”
Rose rolled her eyes. “Whatever. A little membrane doesn’t change the fact that I’ve been with other men, and it doesn’t change a thing between us. I’m yours now and you’re mine. Our first time with each other would have been just as special in any version of my body...or your body, for that matter. Can’t say I’m thrilled about this side effect of coming back, but I walked across the Void on bloody feet to get to you. I think I can handle first-time pain a second time.”
“Rose Tyler, have I ever told you how astonishing you are?”
“Not within the past five minutes, so feel free to say it again. But Doctor, I really do want to know about the unicorns. Are the legends true? And if they are, will physical virginity be enough or do my memories disqualify me?”
“The inhabitants of Valamith Alpha bear a remarkable resemblance to Earth’s legends of unicorns, but they couldn’t care less about a person’s virginity.”
“Right, then. Unicorns tomorrow. Jack some time soon. Today we stay in the TARDIS.”
“Whatever you desire, fair maiden.”
“I think you know what I desire,” said Rose in a voice that sped his double-pulse up several notches.
“Spell it out for me,” the Doctor said, helping her to her feet and pulling her body against his.
“You and me, Doctor. Together. All the way down the path of needles,” Rose said. They kissed.
(In and out, in and out, needle and thread, woman and man. There is piercing and there is binding. The storm breaks over the wolf, and the wolf turns its head to the sky, soaked and howling in delight at the thunder. An ancient fairy tale is told anew.)
* * * * *
Click here for the epilogue with extra Jack and ever after.
* * * * *
Author:
tardis_stowaway Characters/Pairings: Chiefly Ten/Rose, but there's also a bit of Nine/Rose (I couldn't resist), and some 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!
Betas:
wendymr and dark_aegis rock my socksDisclaimer: 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.
Navigation links: Previous chapters on Teaspoon or back to Chapter 6 on LJ
Chapter 7: And So It Came To Pass...
The Doctor and Rose have breakfast and come to terms with some consequences of their pasts and Rose's unusual return.
* * * * *
"Fairy tales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”
--G.K. Chesterton
* * *
Rose watched the Doctor make breakfast. He capered around the kitchen, brimming over with manic energy like a child on Christmas morning. As he worked he talked at supersonic speed, mostly an improbable anecdote about yet another of his meetings with Shakespeare, this time with someone called Martha Jones. Rose tried to listen, but she found it hard to concentrate. Her attention kept being drawn to the grain of the wood on the scuffed table, the feel of that wood against the pads of her fingers, the bright labels of the food containers, or the scent of the waffle batter. The physicality and intricacy of the world left her astonished and more than a little overwhelmed. As the joyous clarity of her awakening faded, she felt adrift.
How very strange to be sitting in a kitchen, occupying one human body again. She did not precisely remember much about the time between helping the Doctor end the Time War and awaking in the console room, but she was aware of it. Unlike the first time she’d absorbed the vortex, she understood perfectly what had happened. Presumably that awareness was a consequence of how her mind had crystallized out of the vortex this time, not tried to contain it. The Doctor hadn’t regenerated since she was the last one with the hot potato of power. She hadn’t died since there was enough of the deadly glory of the vortex absorbed within herself to let her release the rest safely. Now that she was more settled within herself, however, Rose knew that she was almost entirely a normal human. Still, she recalled a sense of immensity. Her skin felt confining.
Rose took a sip of tea. She’d done so much in her quest to find the Doctor, but in the end he’d had to rescue her. She used to love that the Doctor would always come to get her, but part of her wished she’d been strong enough to make it all the way on her own this time.
And now it was over. All that suffering, all that grandeur, and she ended up in a kitchen having breakfast. It was all so domestic. She told herself that it would feel more natural in time, but she wasn’t sure. Sometimes she thought she saw trees out of the corner of her eyes or heard the whispers of the hostile woods at the edge of her hearing. Sometimes when she spoke her voice stumbled over the words and she felt a howl would come easier.
How do you leave the woods when they have grown up within you?
“Rose? Did you hear me?” asked the Doctor. He must have asked a question.
Rose examined the Doctor. His expression was full of concern. When she studied his eyes, she could see the hard toll of the time since she’d been gone layered on top of the 900-odd (usually VERY odd) years he’d lived before that. That gentle concern was backed by an implicit promise that he would shift planets and face down armies for her sake.
The bowl of waffle batter cradled in his arms didn’t invalidate his status as the Oncoming Storm. Just because he’d finally said “I love you” didn’t make him one iota less magical. He was her Doctor, her true love, the fulfillment of the quest.
The Doctor had held the Time Vortex for her. It wasn’t a rescue, not really. She’d been fine, even if rather lacking in self-awareness and technically dead. However, the Doctor’s part was necessary to reach the final goal, and rightly so. A partnership couldn’t be one-sided, no matter which side was which. Though she’d walked many miles in solitude, the quest was ultimately not hers but theirs.
For better or worse, she’d chosen long ago to abide in the woods. Even the deepest woods may contain shelters where a traveler can rest for a time, but the lull is all the sweeter because it is temporary. Though they had been remade without calluses, her feet belonged to the journey, and her hand to the one who journeyed beside her.
“Sorry. My mind was elsewhere. I was hoping you could come over here,” she said.
“Do you need something? I can get you more tea.”
Rose lurched to her shaky new fawn-legs and boldly draped her arms over the Doctor’s shoulders. “I have plenty of tea, but I could do with another kiss.”
The Doctor honored her request thoroughly. Rose let him kiss away all her uncertainties. This was where she belonged, body and soul.
“You’re an easy woman to provide for,” he told her, grinning smugly.
“Don’t think this gets you out of making me waffles.” Rose suddenly realized that she was hungry.
* * *
“There we are, locked in a broom closet with a bomb two minutes from blowing up, and there’s a dozen angry weasels in there with us. I turn to Kara, and I say, ‘It’s probably just as well this is a confidential mission, because I would hate for death by weasel and explosion to be in my obituary.’ I’m grinning, of course, ‘cause what else are you gonna do? She looks at me like I’ve gone completely bonkers. She says, ‘Do you honestly find this situation humorous, Agent Tyler?’” Rose told the Doctor over the bowl of ice cream that followed two waffles, affecting a posh accent for her Torchwood partner. “That’s when I decided to stop trying to make myself accept the other world and start listening to what my heart had been telling me the whole time. I belong here, with you. You would have known that the proper response in that situation was…”
“ ‘Actually, this is the kind of obituary I’ve always wanted’,” the Doctor offered. Rose laughed.
“Good one, but even better would have been, ‘they could write about the weasels just as long as they don’t mention my nudity’.” Rose smirked.
The Doctor spurted the sip of tea he’d rather foolishly taken across the table. “No! You were naked?”
“We were! I finally had a naked story to match the ones Jack used to tell, and the only person with me completely didn’t appreciate it. I thought I would die of frustration before the bomb had a chance to get me.” Rose smiled for a moment, but her mirth faded.
“Speaking of Jack, I ran into him in the Void. Turns out he goes there for a little while every time he dies.” Rose watched the Doctor as she spoke. He seemed surprised by the meeting in the Void, but the mention of Jack’s repeated dying only made the Doctor look everywhere but at her face.
“So you remember being in the Void? After how I got you back, that’s surprising. What about afterwards?”
“The Void I remember bits of quite well, although it doesn’t feel entirely like it happened to me. After the proper universe started up my memory gets fuzzy, mostly just emotions without reference point and a pounding headache if I try for more. I don’t think the history of the universe fits in my thick ape skull. But you just changed the subject, Doctor. Why did you leave Jack?”
The Doctor hesitated, but he answered her. “A Time Lord has senses humans don’t. When he became immortal, he became a fixed point in time. It grated on those senses, like fingernails on a blackboard.” The Doctor fidgeted, twirling the sonic screwdriver between his fingers. Rose reached out and took it from him, stilling his hand.
“When I made him immortal, you mean. I know my part in this. Doctor, couldn’t you have put up with it for long enough to explain the problem and drop him off somewhere other than a satellite full of bodies?” Rose had no anger, guilt, or accusations in her voice, just an iron demand for the truth.
The Doctor met Rose’s gaze, and his brown eyes were full of shadows. “Tolerate his fixedness for that long, yes. Explain, no. What happened to Jack…however kindly it was meant, it was no blessing. I couldn’t face explaining that to either of you.”
“Did it ever occur to you that he should be the one to determine that?”
“Maybe. Eventually. Rose, abandoning Jack was not my best decision, I admit that, but he and I have already discussed it. It’s done, and he and I are both old enough to accept that.”
“You got back in contact with Jack?” Rose leaned back in her chair, surprised.
“Stranded at the end of the universe with each other, held captive together for a year…that sort of thing. I’ll tell you about it, but it’s a long and not very happy story. I’d rather keep this day clear of that, if you don’t mind waiting.” When Rose nodded, the Doctor continued. “At the end of it I offered him a space on the TARDIS. He refused. Apparently he’s acquired his own personal Scooby gang and prefers their company to mine.” The Doctor spoke somewhat too casually to be entirely believable.
“Hmmm. I still miss him. I want to try changing his mind, but we can let him have a bit of time doing his own thing before I get persuasive. It’s strange, though, that he turned you down. When I met him, he was so intent on tracking you down that he was carrying your severed hand in his saddlebag in the Void and as a tracking device in this world. A severed hand as a memento–how creepy is that?”
The Doctor looked shifty. Rose saw his demeanor and raised her eyes to the ceiling.
“Please tell me you don’t have the severed hand.”
In answer, the Doctor rose momentarily to open a cupboard that used to contain an immense selection of condiments from across time and space. Instead, it contained a clear case with a severed hand suspended in liquid.
“You have your own severed hand in your kitchen. Doctor, why?!”
“It used to be in the console room, but I moved it when I started growing a body there for you,” said the Doctor, as if that explained everything.
“Only room for one bizarre Frankenstein mad-science project in there?”
“You are NOT a mad-science project, Rose. You’re alive, human, and completely yourself,” the Doctor said with sudden intensity, reaching over the table to take Rose’s hand.
Rose squeezed the Doctor’s hand in reassurance. “I know. I trust you not to bring me back as anything less than whole. Other than being a bit weak, I feel like myself. Still, it’s a bit strange, knowing that my body was grown in a vat. Look at this!” Rose swung a foot onto the table. “Last thing I remember clearly, I’d just walked my feet to bloody tatters in the woods. Now there’s not so much as a callous. Or look here on my hand, where I was bit by a weasel in that closet. Used to be a scar, but there’s no sign of it. I’m in mint condition.”
“Oh, really?” said the Doctor with a sudden dangerous smile. “I think you need a Doctor’s examination to test that out.”
The Doctor took her hand and studied it with intense concentration, stroking his fingers over every inch. He leaned in and pressed a kiss to the spot on her palm where the scar once was. Then he repeated the performance with her feet, massaging them before kissing every toe and the baby-soft soles. Rose’s head tilted back appreciatively.
“Let’s see. If I remember correctly, you had a small scar on your ear from a failed ear-piercing experiment with Shareen.” He knelt beside Rose’s chair, brushing her hair back and then pressing a feather-soft kiss to the ear. Abruptly his tongue darted out to lick the folds of her ear. The Doctor was rewarded with Rose’s sudden intake of breath.
“Now,” he said, close enough to her ear that she felt the puffs of his breath, deliciously cool against the dampness left by his tongue, “do you have any other former scars that need examining?”
Rose smiled languidly as she pondered. Suddenly she sat bolt upright, pressing a hand to her mouth.
“Oh my God! Doctor, are unicorns real?” she said anxiously.
“What?!” asked the Doctor, utterly baffled.
“Lots of things I used to think were imaginary turn out to be real. If unicorns exist, we need to go and see them. Now.” She enunciated very clearly, but the Doctor still didn’t understand a thing she was saying.
“What?”
“My body’s back to starting condition. All over. Unicorns prefer…”
“…virgins,” the Doctor finished. He had the expression of someone who’s just discovered what the unidentified exotic dish he was devouring actually contained while in the company of the hosts who must not be offended.
His mind raced. What did Rose want him to do with this information? Was a regrown hymen a positive or negative thing to her? The twenty-first century had such complicated and bizarre attitudes about sex. Saying the wrong thing could upset or offend her. Did she want to wait on the physical side of their newly expanded relationship? What if she wanted to break in her replacement body with a fellow human? Was he being presumptive to assume that she wanted sex with him at all? Her chaste company would be infinitely better than her absence and unquestionably worth every bit of his effort, but he’d hoped for something different.
A pun. He needed to make a pun.
“Rose, I do believe you’ve been reflowered!” the Doctor declared.
Rose dissolved into giggles.
“I’m the embodiment of a Madonna song!” she said when she had the breath for it.
“I think I have a chastity belt stashed in the wardrobe room so we can protect your new status,” the Doctor informed her with exaggerated solicitousness.
“You own a chastity belt? Why? On second thought, I don’t want to know. Just keep it away from me,” Rose said. The Doctor breathed a silent sigh of relief.
“Should I increase the number of goats I pay to your father for the privilege of your company should we ever discover a way to send livestock across the Void?”
Rose rolled her eyes. “Whatever. A little membrane doesn’t change the fact that I’ve been with other men, and it doesn’t change a thing between us. I’m yours now and you’re mine. Our first time with each other would have been just as special in any version of my body...or your body, for that matter. Can’t say I’m thrilled about this side effect of coming back, but I walked across the Void on bloody feet to get to you. I think I can handle first-time pain a second time.”
“Rose Tyler, have I ever told you how astonishing you are?”
“Not within the past five minutes, so feel free to say it again. But Doctor, I really do want to know about the unicorns. Are the legends true? And if they are, will physical virginity be enough or do my memories disqualify me?”
“The inhabitants of Valamith Alpha bear a remarkable resemblance to Earth’s legends of unicorns, but they couldn’t care less about a person’s virginity.”
“Right, then. Unicorns tomorrow. Jack some time soon. Today we stay in the TARDIS.”
“Whatever you desire, fair maiden.”
“I think you know what I desire,” said Rose in a voice that sped his double-pulse up several notches.
“Spell it out for me,” the Doctor said, helping her to her feet and pulling her body against his.
“You and me, Doctor. Together. All the way down the path of needles,” Rose said. They kissed.
(In and out, in and out, needle and thread, woman and man. There is piercing and there is binding. The storm breaks over the wolf, and the wolf turns its head to the sky, soaked and howling in delight at the thunder. An ancient fairy tale is told anew.)
* * * * *
Click here for the epilogue with extra Jack and ever after.
* * * * *
