Fic: Path of Needles (8/8)
Sep. 8th, 2008 11:00 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 are wise, generous, and all-around fantastic.
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.
* * * * *
Go back to chapter 7 on LJ or read the whole fic on Teaspoon
Epilogue: Happily Ever After
Old friends and ever after.
* * * * *
AN: During the visit to VJ Day in Times Square, the famous photo mentioned is this one.
* * * * *
“Not only are there no happy endings,” she told him, “there aren’t even any endings.”
-Neil Gaiman, American Gods
* * *
“Well, that was unexpected,” Jack said to the white horse when it nudged him to consciousness in the woods. “Still, I suppose with the Rift constantly bringing in people from other times I shouldn’t be that surprised that I died at the hands of the Spanish Inquisition. Can you call it an Inquisition if there’s just the one priest and a guard?”
The horse pawed the ground. Jack decided to interpret that as a yes.
“That’s my opinion too. It just sounds much better than saying I was killed by a pair of confused, temporally-displaced Spaniards with nothing but a large knife and the element of surprise. Bet I can surprise them just as much when I get back. Then they’ll really think I’m a witch.” Jack climbed to his feet and dusted off his cloak. He grabbed the pommel of the saddle, but before he could mount he suddenly noticed the change in the woods.
The ominous bare trees were gone. In their place, the forest floor was blanketed with greenery and tree seedlings reaching about as high as his waist. As he watched, wildflowers burst into bloom and the seedlings unfurled spring-green leaves. Somewhere in the distance, a bird sang.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” he declared. The horse tossed its head, dislodging a butterfly from its nose.
Jack climbed aboard and rode off slowly, taking in the sights. By the time he left the woods and returned to the living, the verdant trees were as high as his mounted eye and still growing.
* * *
Jack awoke to the smell of rubbish, the feel of concrete underneath him, and the wondrous sound of the TARDIS materializing. His eyes shot open. The Inquisition was nowhere to be seen–he must have been out for longer than usual this time–but the familiar blue box was flashing into existence just past his feet in the dingy alley. Joy and worry combined to set Jack’s pulse racing. The door opened and the Doctor emerged in a flood of light.
“Doctor! This is unexpected. Is the world ending or something?” Jack said, rising to his feet. He knew far too well that the Time Lord wasn’t the sort to pay social calls.
The Doctor beamed, that marvelous, shining, everybody lives grin he so rarely had occasion to wear. “Or something.”
Out of the TARDIS stepped Rose Tyler. Rose Tyler! Though the light spilling from the TARDIS illuminated her hair like a halo, she seemed as solid as the ground under his feet. Jack stared. He glanced at the Doctor, who somehow managed to grin even more broadly. Without quite knowing how he got there, suddenly Jack had Rose in his arms and was spinning her around in a giddy circle.
“He found you,” Jack said in wonderment as he set her down. “Or did you find him, clever Rose?”
“Little of both. It’s quite a story. You’re in it, actually, but I don’t think you remember yet. I’ll tell it to you if you like, but first I need to ask you something. Do you wanna come with us?” Rose asked with hopeful eyes.
Jack’s smile fled. To say he wanted to go with them was the greatest understatement of his considerable lifetime, but he couldn’t abandon Torchwood again. His team still needed him.
“It doesn’t have to be now,” the Doctor said gently, evidently reading the conflict on Jack’s face. “That’s the beauty of having a time machine. Rose and I can skip ahead while you take the slow path for a while. Whether you need three years or forty or a hundred, we’ll keep coming back until you’re ready or until you tell us to get out of your life.”
“Oh, yes.” Jack stumbled over his words. “I mean yes, I’ll come with you eventually, not yes, get out of my life. Stay in my life. Both of you.” He grabbed a hand from each of them, the Doctor and his miraculous Rose.
“Count on it,” Rose assured him. She beamed at him (and my! What a gorgeous smile she had!)
“Quite right, too,” said the Doctor. Jack wasn’t quite sure why that remark made Rose kick the Time Lord’s pinstriped shin.
“Ouch!” protested the Doctor half-heartedly. “Now, Jack, we owe you a story to explain this.”
“And I promised to remind you of something,” said Rose, and Jack was quite intrigued by the inviting look she gave him.
“We’ll get to that, Rose. It starts like this: once upon a time there was a girl who was also a wolf…”
Somewhere in the distance, a clock tolled midnight. His companions’ hands fit with Jack’s hands like feet in perfect shoes. All was right with the world.
And so it came to pass that the girl known as the Bad Wolf, the Time Lord called the Oncoming Storm, and the immortal Captain were reunited at last. When his business on earth was as finished as it could ever be, Jack joined them on their starry road, which was wild and perilous but no longer lonely. There followed a great deal of dancing, a great deal of running, and eventually a fair amount of heroics (for the Doctor had not forgotten the giant wolf’s warning that events often come in threes). The three traveled the universe together, and the TARDIS rang with their laughter. They all lived happily ever after.
* * *
They lived happily ever after.
Such tales are supposed to end with happily ever after, but how could this one? With all the peril and dungeons and days when hardly anybody lived, how could you call their life together happy? With Rose in a fragile, fast-decaying human body and even the Doctor a long way from invulnerable, how could they claim forever? For time travelers, even the “after” posed problems.
This tale cannot end with happily ever after. Except…
On VJ day in Times Square, a photographer snapped a picture of a sailor and a nurse kissing that became famous, but if he had turned around and walked twenty feet he would have seen a man in a pinstriped suit and a bleach-blond woman joined in a kiss that put the other celebrants to shame. Beside them, a man in a long wool coat watched them with a million-dollar smile.
Only these three knew that the atomic bombs dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki days earlier had woken something ancient, reptilian, and evil that had slept under the seas, and only they knew that just one hour ago the survival of the Earth, perhaps the universe, had depended on Jack and Rose’s ability to sing for long enough to keep the monster lulled to sleep while the Doctor made a technologically advanced device out of the materials on hand: a toaster, a broken radio, and some chewing gum. The corners of Rose’s eyes bore the faint beginnings of crows’ feet, and the open neck of the Doctor’s shirt revealed the tip of a long, old scar down his chest that would not heal further until he regenerated, but they were giddy as teenagers.
He dipped her, right there in the crowds that celebrated another victory entirely, and kissed her until they both lost track of the way the universe was turning. When at last they stood and unlocked their lips, Jack grabbed the Doctor’s shoulders and spun him around suddenly. Before the Doctor had a chance to speak (a very short interval indeed) Jack kissed the Doctor with a dip every bit as dramatic as the Doctor had given Rose moments earlier. Such a display from two men would normally have attracted hostile attention, but most passers-by were so elated by the war’s end that there was no room in them to bother with hatred. The few who did stop to stare soon hurried along, having seen something in Rose’s smile that went straight to the primitive back of their brains and sent them on their ways, glancing nervously over their shoulders. When Jack released the Doctor, the three practically skipped back to the TARDIS. Look at this moment and a thousand others and see if you dare deny them “happily.”
On a planet called New Walla Walla, in the year 4529, Rose just smiled and shook her head when Count Jojo asked if the Doctor was her son. She gave up getting angry about that question years ago. Her legs were still strong enough to run, although if they figured out in time that the problems at a given stop would require a particularly athletic solution she would often stay in the TARDIS and offer advice to the Doctor and Jack via an earpiece. Rose made sure the earpieces had no off switches on the away team’s end. On matters of court intrigue like this, however, she was the trio’s most valuable asset. She looked trustworthy, harmless, ignorable, until all of a sudden the light shifted and revealed that granny had very sharp teeth indeed.
When the Count raised his eyebrow to enquire what they were if not parent and child, the Doctor put an arm possessively around Rose’s shoulders. Rose fluffed the Doctor’s hair, now featuring five gray strands, and pinched his bum. The Count’s shocked expression made them giggle like children. Jack was supposed to be flirting with the Countess Fifi for information, but he quite ruined his suave act by catching their giggles from across the room. This is “after,” and it is still fantastic.
Much later, on a planet that would not acquire inhabitants sentient enough to name it for another forty million years, the Doctor and Jack lay on their backs in the grass. They lay far enough apart for a narrow set of shoulders to fit in between them, a portrait in negative space. A resplendent canopy of stars stretched over them. Their air smelled of fallen leaves and coming cold. The woods surrounding the meadow where they lay were very quiet.
“Why are we here, Jack?”
“Just look at the sky.”
The Doctor looked. The planet’s peculiar position on the outskirts of a nebula meant that shining lines of dust and gas curled across the sky. As he let his mind quiet, he started to perceive patterns. There was a circle with more circles and lines within it. The Doctor drew in a sharp breath.
“I woke up from that last gunshot knowing to come here and knowing the spot in the sky, but I can’t read it. Care to translate?” Jack said. Since reuniting with Rose and the Doctor years ago, Jack had begun remembering bits and pieces from the woods beyond his deaths.
“I think you know,” the Doctor told him, his face opening up in wonder.
Far away, some animal gave a ululating cry, but it was not a lonely sound. The autumnal air carried the faintest hint of honeysuckle scent. “Bad Wolf” was written across the stars in Gallifreyan. It was not an empty echo.
The universe hates complete destruction but loves metamorphoses and cycles. Now that the Doctor knew that the persistent messages were a signal of love, the words in the sky filled him with peace he hadn’t known these past few empty months. The night was charged with presence. Rose was with him still in a way, as she must be. She always would be. For ever.
They lived happily 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 are wise, generous, and all-around fantastic.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.
* * * * *
Go back to chapter 7 on LJ or read the whole fic on Teaspoon
Epilogue: Happily Ever After
Old friends and ever after.
* * * * *
AN: During the visit to VJ Day in Times Square, the famous photo mentioned is this one.
* * * * *
“Not only are there no happy endings,” she told him, “there aren’t even any endings.”
-Neil Gaiman, American Gods
* * *
“Well, that was unexpected,” Jack said to the white horse when it nudged him to consciousness in the woods. “Still, I suppose with the Rift constantly bringing in people from other times I shouldn’t be that surprised that I died at the hands of the Spanish Inquisition. Can you call it an Inquisition if there’s just the one priest and a guard?”
The horse pawed the ground. Jack decided to interpret that as a yes.
“That’s my opinion too. It just sounds much better than saying I was killed by a pair of confused, temporally-displaced Spaniards with nothing but a large knife and the element of surprise. Bet I can surprise them just as much when I get back. Then they’ll really think I’m a witch.” Jack climbed to his feet and dusted off his cloak. He grabbed the pommel of the saddle, but before he could mount he suddenly noticed the change in the woods.
The ominous bare trees were gone. In their place, the forest floor was blanketed with greenery and tree seedlings reaching about as high as his waist. As he watched, wildflowers burst into bloom and the seedlings unfurled spring-green leaves. Somewhere in the distance, a bird sang.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” he declared. The horse tossed its head, dislodging a butterfly from its nose.
Jack climbed aboard and rode off slowly, taking in the sights. By the time he left the woods and returned to the living, the verdant trees were as high as his mounted eye and still growing.
* * *
Jack awoke to the smell of rubbish, the feel of concrete underneath him, and the wondrous sound of the TARDIS materializing. His eyes shot open. The Inquisition was nowhere to be seen–he must have been out for longer than usual this time–but the familiar blue box was flashing into existence just past his feet in the dingy alley. Joy and worry combined to set Jack’s pulse racing. The door opened and the Doctor emerged in a flood of light.
“Doctor! This is unexpected. Is the world ending or something?” Jack said, rising to his feet. He knew far too well that the Time Lord wasn’t the sort to pay social calls.
The Doctor beamed, that marvelous, shining, everybody lives grin he so rarely had occasion to wear. “Or something.”
Out of the TARDIS stepped Rose Tyler. Rose Tyler! Though the light spilling from the TARDIS illuminated her hair like a halo, she seemed as solid as the ground under his feet. Jack stared. He glanced at the Doctor, who somehow managed to grin even more broadly. Without quite knowing how he got there, suddenly Jack had Rose in his arms and was spinning her around in a giddy circle.
“He found you,” Jack said in wonderment as he set her down. “Or did you find him, clever Rose?”
“Little of both. It’s quite a story. You’re in it, actually, but I don’t think you remember yet. I’ll tell it to you if you like, but first I need to ask you something. Do you wanna come with us?” Rose asked with hopeful eyes.
Jack’s smile fled. To say he wanted to go with them was the greatest understatement of his considerable lifetime, but he couldn’t abandon Torchwood again. His team still needed him.
“It doesn’t have to be now,” the Doctor said gently, evidently reading the conflict on Jack’s face. “That’s the beauty of having a time machine. Rose and I can skip ahead while you take the slow path for a while. Whether you need three years or forty or a hundred, we’ll keep coming back until you’re ready or until you tell us to get out of your life.”
“Oh, yes.” Jack stumbled over his words. “I mean yes, I’ll come with you eventually, not yes, get out of my life. Stay in my life. Both of you.” He grabbed a hand from each of them, the Doctor and his miraculous Rose.
“Count on it,” Rose assured him. She beamed at him (and my! What a gorgeous smile she had!)
“Quite right, too,” said the Doctor. Jack wasn’t quite sure why that remark made Rose kick the Time Lord’s pinstriped shin.
“Ouch!” protested the Doctor half-heartedly. “Now, Jack, we owe you a story to explain this.”
“And I promised to remind you of something,” said Rose, and Jack was quite intrigued by the inviting look she gave him.
“We’ll get to that, Rose. It starts like this: once upon a time there was a girl who was also a wolf…”
Somewhere in the distance, a clock tolled midnight. His companions’ hands fit with Jack’s hands like feet in perfect shoes. All was right with the world.
And so it came to pass that the girl known as the Bad Wolf, the Time Lord called the Oncoming Storm, and the immortal Captain were reunited at last. When his business on earth was as finished as it could ever be, Jack joined them on their starry road, which was wild and perilous but no longer lonely. There followed a great deal of dancing, a great deal of running, and eventually a fair amount of heroics (for the Doctor had not forgotten the giant wolf’s warning that events often come in threes). The three traveled the universe together, and the TARDIS rang with their laughter. They all lived happily ever after.
* * *
They lived happily ever after.
Such tales are supposed to end with happily ever after, but how could this one? With all the peril and dungeons and days when hardly anybody lived, how could you call their life together happy? With Rose in a fragile, fast-decaying human body and even the Doctor a long way from invulnerable, how could they claim forever? For time travelers, even the “after” posed problems.
This tale cannot end with happily ever after. Except…
On VJ day in Times Square, a photographer snapped a picture of a sailor and a nurse kissing that became famous, but if he had turned around and walked twenty feet he would have seen a man in a pinstriped suit and a bleach-blond woman joined in a kiss that put the other celebrants to shame. Beside them, a man in a long wool coat watched them with a million-dollar smile.
Only these three knew that the atomic bombs dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki days earlier had woken something ancient, reptilian, and evil that had slept under the seas, and only they knew that just one hour ago the survival of the Earth, perhaps the universe, had depended on Jack and Rose’s ability to sing for long enough to keep the monster lulled to sleep while the Doctor made a technologically advanced device out of the materials on hand: a toaster, a broken radio, and some chewing gum. The corners of Rose’s eyes bore the faint beginnings of crows’ feet, and the open neck of the Doctor’s shirt revealed the tip of a long, old scar down his chest that would not heal further until he regenerated, but they were giddy as teenagers.
He dipped her, right there in the crowds that celebrated another victory entirely, and kissed her until they both lost track of the way the universe was turning. When at last they stood and unlocked their lips, Jack grabbed the Doctor’s shoulders and spun him around suddenly. Before the Doctor had a chance to speak (a very short interval indeed) Jack kissed the Doctor with a dip every bit as dramatic as the Doctor had given Rose moments earlier. Such a display from two men would normally have attracted hostile attention, but most passers-by were so elated by the war’s end that there was no room in them to bother with hatred. The few who did stop to stare soon hurried along, having seen something in Rose’s smile that went straight to the primitive back of their brains and sent them on their ways, glancing nervously over their shoulders. When Jack released the Doctor, the three practically skipped back to the TARDIS. Look at this moment and a thousand others and see if you dare deny them “happily.”
On a planet called New Walla Walla, in the year 4529, Rose just smiled and shook her head when Count Jojo asked if the Doctor was her son. She gave up getting angry about that question years ago. Her legs were still strong enough to run, although if they figured out in time that the problems at a given stop would require a particularly athletic solution she would often stay in the TARDIS and offer advice to the Doctor and Jack via an earpiece. Rose made sure the earpieces had no off switches on the away team’s end. On matters of court intrigue like this, however, she was the trio’s most valuable asset. She looked trustworthy, harmless, ignorable, until all of a sudden the light shifted and revealed that granny had very sharp teeth indeed.
When the Count raised his eyebrow to enquire what they were if not parent and child, the Doctor put an arm possessively around Rose’s shoulders. Rose fluffed the Doctor’s hair, now featuring five gray strands, and pinched his bum. The Count’s shocked expression made them giggle like children. Jack was supposed to be flirting with the Countess Fifi for information, but he quite ruined his suave act by catching their giggles from across the room. This is “after,” and it is still fantastic.
Much later, on a planet that would not acquire inhabitants sentient enough to name it for another forty million years, the Doctor and Jack lay on their backs in the grass. They lay far enough apart for a narrow set of shoulders to fit in between them, a portrait in negative space. A resplendent canopy of stars stretched over them. Their air smelled of fallen leaves and coming cold. The woods surrounding the meadow where they lay were very quiet.
“Why are we here, Jack?”
“Just look at the sky.”
The Doctor looked. The planet’s peculiar position on the outskirts of a nebula meant that shining lines of dust and gas curled across the sky. As he let his mind quiet, he started to perceive patterns. There was a circle with more circles and lines within it. The Doctor drew in a sharp breath.
“I woke up from that last gunshot knowing to come here and knowing the spot in the sky, but I can’t read it. Care to translate?” Jack said. Since reuniting with Rose and the Doctor years ago, Jack had begun remembering bits and pieces from the woods beyond his deaths.
“I think you know,” the Doctor told him, his face opening up in wonder.
Far away, some animal gave a ululating cry, but it was not a lonely sound. The autumnal air carried the faintest hint of honeysuckle scent. “Bad Wolf” was written across the stars in Gallifreyan. It was not an empty echo.
The universe hates complete destruction but loves metamorphoses and cycles. Now that the Doctor knew that the persistent messages were a signal of love, the words in the sky filled him with peace he hadn’t known these past few empty months. The night was charged with presence. Rose was with him still in a way, as she must be. She always would be. For ever.
They lived happily ever after.
* * * * *
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-09 08:51 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-09 06:32 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-09 10:03 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-09 06:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-09 10:25 am (UTC)i cried at this line “Waffles! Brilliant choice. Waffles it is, then. Waffles, syrup, a good hot cup of tea, some orange juice, and I love you,” the Doctor blurted out
ahhhh. so good. *bookmarks and gives you cookies*
(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-09 06:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-09 11:08 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-09 06:56 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-09 11:56 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-09 07:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-09 12:57 pm (UTC)I think my lip wibbled at this point.
Wonderful story!
(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-09 07:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-09 02:06 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-09 07:23 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-09 07:45 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-10 03:43 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2008-09-12 11:20 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-15 04:14 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-23 01:34 am (UTC)Thank you so much for sharing this.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-24 05:05 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-10-13 06:44 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-10-13 07:09 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-10-28 07:04 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-11-17 12:29 am (UTC)Thanks so much for recommending your fic!
(no subject)
Date: 2011-11-17 01:09 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-11-17 04:09 am (UTC)