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DW Fic: Of Discovery and Sacrifice (1/5)
Title: Of Discovery and Sacrifice (1/5)
Author: salienne
Characters: Doctor/Rose, Jack, various OC’s (I’d tell you which Doctor(s?), but that’d give a bit away :P)
Rating: PG
Beta: Thanks so much to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lunaserenade, who managed to beta this while taking care of a new Doctor kitty and Master kitty. All hail!
Disclaimer: If I really owned anything Doctor Who related, would I really be writing fanfiction to sate my love for the show and characters?
Spoilers: Through Doomsday
Summary: Post-Reunion. In an attempt to rediscover herself, Rose decides to leave the Doctor, but like all things, this decision is not without a cost.
A/N: For the longest time, I’ve been musing about the Doctor and Rose’s relationship. There’s obviously love but also naiveté on Rose’s part, and what I’ve even seen described as codependence on both their parts. Plus, Rose is 19 when she meets him and basically makes him and his lifestyle her life when she’s just starting to figure out who she is. Then, there’s what Jackie said about Rose turning into him, and throughout the second season, this does happen.
What I’ve often mused about specifically is this: what’s better, to be happy with the man you love and, to some extent, lose yourself, or to be more independent yet, at the same time, more unhappy and alone. I also thought about how Rose joins the Doctor at such a young age and how she’s always been rebellious. As she says, “Everyone leaves home in the end.” But what if, at some point, the Doctor became just too familiar and too much “home?”
This, ladies and gentleman, is where this fic comes from. :D I hope y’all enjoy, and as always, comments/reviews are appreciated!
A/N 2: When I think about Rose’s life in the alternate universe, I have no doubt that she would make it “fantastic,” but at the same time, she would never forget or really “move on” from the Doctor. My interpretation of what her life there, and the interpretation used in this fic, is that she would have led that life to make the Doctor proud. Now, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with this life. It would be fulfilling, and she would do so very much with it. The only problem would be… well, there’s only so much “Doctor” anyone can take, no matter how much you love the guy. And to Rose, these years would, at first, make her cling tighter to him, and then they’d fade into further “Doctor” years. Hence, in this fic, in her mind, her world has centered around him for over a decade.
Rose has been with him for six years when she makes the decision—it is time for her to leave.
Nearly thirteen years have passed since she first started traveling with the Doctor, four and a half of those spent in a parallel world. When she finally made it back to him, the man who held her hand across the galaxies, the man who made her grin with just the sound of his voice, she could have asked for nothing more. And although that departure hurt worse than anything else she had experienced, although leaving her mum and dad and Lily and Mickey and Jake and Daniel was almost like cutting out a little piece of herself and chucking it away, it was worth it.
Six wonderful, busy, thrilling, loud, and joyful years passed then, six years in which they ran side-by-side through the universe, sharing a little more than perhaps either was comfortable with but too in love to care, exchanging laughs and smiles and thoughts and touches and breaths, always together. They were happy. They still are happy.
But now it is time for her to leave.
Rose doesn’t quite know how to tell him that she needs to go. It’s not anything he’s done, and it’s not anything he hasn’t done. It’s not even him, really, but somehow she doubts saying, “It’s not you, it’s me,” will go off any better with him than it would with a human male. And there, she thinks, is the problem. The Doctor is not human. And as much as she loves him, as much as she needs him, her feelings are only adding to the very real problem that her mother’s words are becoming truer and truer every day. “You’ll keep on changing,” Jackie Tyler had said. “And in forty years time, fifty, there’ll be this woman, this strange woman, walking through the marketplace on some planet a billions miles from Earth. She’s not Rose Tyler, not anymore. She’s not even human.”
Well, it hasn’t been fifty years. It hasn’t even been forty. But Rose can still feel herself slipping away more and more every day, she can still feel herself becoming more and more like the Doctor every day, and while this is not in and of itself a bad thing, she is no longer naïve enough to think that not knowing where he ends and she begins is a good idea.
She is coming to resent his manic grin, the way he bounces around the console, the new magenta suit, the Converse trainers, the way he always caters to her needs first. Rose is coming to resent him, the safety and the comfort and the love he provides, and she hates herself for it. She hates herself for it.
Rose doesn’t need to leave so much as get away.
He is in the console room when she finally decides to break it to him. He isn’t doing much when she walks in, just fiddling with the time stabilizer, but since they’ve been in the Vortex for nearly a day now, she strongly suspects that this will only serve to destabilize the ship. The TARDIS controls have never been her forte, however, so she could be wrong.
After sitting down in her usual spot, Rose holds onto the front edge of the only seat in the room and waits. She knows she should probably say something but, for the life of her, she can’t think of what that is. She isn’t at all surprised when the Doctor breaks the silence, but while his words are nothing new, there is so little emotion behind them that she’s almost scared. “So when do you wanna leave?”
“Actually,” she says, playing dumb, “that’s what I need to talk t’ you about.”
He looks at her, his right hand still on the console, and his usually warm brown eyes are so empty that his next words are unnecessary. “I know.”
She stands up and walks over, wanting—no, needing—to make him understand, to wipe that pain away from his face and away from his soul. “’S not you, Doctor,” she says, “’s really not. I just, I just need to get away, I need some time for myself, some time away from …” God, she thinks, she’s even rubbish at expressing her own emotions now. Maybe she’s already more like him than she thinks. “Doctor, I still love you, I—”
“Don’t.”
The Doctor has stopped moving away, stopped pressing random buttons and pulling random levers. Instead, he’s looking right at her. And he’s angry.
“Doctor—”
“Don’t, Rose.” She swallows, and as he steps closer, close enough to kiss, she doesn’t speak. “You can leave, and I won’t stop you. You can… you can stay, and I won’t stop you. But don’t…” He breaks off, and as she looks at that familiar face, she can hardly resist the urge to put a hand to his cheek, pull him into a hug, and never ever let go. But she’s determined, she’s strong, just like he taught her to be, and clenches her fists at her sides. “You tell me which year to take you to,” he continues, “which place, and I’ll do it. But don’t expect more than that.”
He walks away, no longer under the pretense of fiddling but quite obviously putting distance between them, putting the entire console and the time rotor and the soul of the TARDIS between them, and Rose isn’t sure if she’ll ever be able to cross that distance again.
“Doctor, this isn’t permanent,” she presses, taking a step closer to him. “I can come back to you, I want t’come back to you. I just need some time.”
“How much time, hmm?” he asks, and she almost cringes underneath the glare and tone he almost always reserves for his enemies, not her. “A day, a week, a year, a century? You were the one who promised forever Rose, not me, so tell me, what’s the new time table?” He moves closer but stops several feet away. “How long do you want me to wait now?”
Rose isn’t quite sure what he means by this last sentence, but her face is too busy projecting shock and remorse to show her confusion. “Doctor, we can set up a meeting, yeah? We can find a time and a place, an’ I could travel by myself for however long an’ then I could come back to you. I could come back to you. Five minutes could pass for you, five minutes, an’ then—”
“It doesn’t work like that, Rose.”
“But it could!” She steps forward again. “Please, Doctor, please don’t—”
But he’s looking away from her now, and she knows there’s no point in continuing, not when he’s flipping switches again, not when he’s examined the monitor and moved over to the temporal scroller and he never even has to pass her to get there. “Where do you want to go?”
“Earth,” she says, using her years with Torchwood and years with him to fight back the tears. “I don’t care when. Sometime around when… sometime around when I left.” She moves towards the exit, the cave-like opening that leads to the rest of the TARDIS, and just a few feet from her destination she turns her head back toward him, willing him to look at her. “I’ll just… I’ll jus’ go get my things.”
The Doctor’s face never turns away from the console. Rose leaves the room.
Author: salienne
Characters: Doctor/Rose, Jack, various OC’s (I’d tell you which Doctor(s?), but that’d give a bit away :P)
Rating: PG
Beta: Thanks so much to
lunaserenade, who managed to beta this while taking care of a new Doctor kitty and Master kitty. All hail!Disclaimer: If I really owned anything Doctor Who related, would I really be writing fanfiction to sate my love for the show and characters?
Spoilers: Through Doomsday
Summary: Post-Reunion. In an attempt to rediscover herself, Rose decides to leave the Doctor, but like all things, this decision is not without a cost.
A/N: For the longest time, I’ve been musing about the Doctor and Rose’s relationship. There’s obviously love but also naiveté on Rose’s part, and what I’ve even seen described as codependence on both their parts. Plus, Rose is 19 when she meets him and basically makes him and his lifestyle her life when she’s just starting to figure out who she is. Then, there’s what Jackie said about Rose turning into him, and throughout the second season, this does happen.
What I’ve often mused about specifically is this: what’s better, to be happy with the man you love and, to some extent, lose yourself, or to be more independent yet, at the same time, more unhappy and alone. I also thought about how Rose joins the Doctor at such a young age and how she’s always been rebellious. As she says, “Everyone leaves home in the end.” But what if, at some point, the Doctor became just too familiar and too much “home?”
This, ladies and gentleman, is where this fic comes from. :D I hope y’all enjoy, and as always, comments/reviews are appreciated!
A/N 2: When I think about Rose’s life in the alternate universe, I have no doubt that she would make it “fantastic,” but at the same time, she would never forget or really “move on” from the Doctor. My interpretation of what her life there, and the interpretation used in this fic, is that she would have led that life to make the Doctor proud. Now, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with this life. It would be fulfilling, and she would do so very much with it. The only problem would be… well, there’s only so much “Doctor” anyone can take, no matter how much you love the guy. And to Rose, these years would, at first, make her cling tighter to him, and then they’d fade into further “Doctor” years. Hence, in this fic, in her mind, her world has centered around him for over a decade.
Rose has been with him for six years when she makes the decision—it is time for her to leave.
Nearly thirteen years have passed since she first started traveling with the Doctor, four and a half of those spent in a parallel world. When she finally made it back to him, the man who held her hand across the galaxies, the man who made her grin with just the sound of his voice, she could have asked for nothing more. And although that departure hurt worse than anything else she had experienced, although leaving her mum and dad and Lily and Mickey and Jake and Daniel was almost like cutting out a little piece of herself and chucking it away, it was worth it.
Six wonderful, busy, thrilling, loud, and joyful years passed then, six years in which they ran side-by-side through the universe, sharing a little more than perhaps either was comfortable with but too in love to care, exchanging laughs and smiles and thoughts and touches and breaths, always together. They were happy. They still are happy.
But now it is time for her to leave.
Rose doesn’t quite know how to tell him that she needs to go. It’s not anything he’s done, and it’s not anything he hasn’t done. It’s not even him, really, but somehow she doubts saying, “It’s not you, it’s me,” will go off any better with him than it would with a human male. And there, she thinks, is the problem. The Doctor is not human. And as much as she loves him, as much as she needs him, her feelings are only adding to the very real problem that her mother’s words are becoming truer and truer every day. “You’ll keep on changing,” Jackie Tyler had said. “And in forty years time, fifty, there’ll be this woman, this strange woman, walking through the marketplace on some planet a billions miles from Earth. She’s not Rose Tyler, not anymore. She’s not even human.”
Well, it hasn’t been fifty years. It hasn’t even been forty. But Rose can still feel herself slipping away more and more every day, she can still feel herself becoming more and more like the Doctor every day, and while this is not in and of itself a bad thing, she is no longer naïve enough to think that not knowing where he ends and she begins is a good idea.
She is coming to resent his manic grin, the way he bounces around the console, the new magenta suit, the Converse trainers, the way he always caters to her needs first. Rose is coming to resent him, the safety and the comfort and the love he provides, and she hates herself for it. She hates herself for it.
Rose doesn’t need to leave so much as get away.
He is in the console room when she finally decides to break it to him. He isn’t doing much when she walks in, just fiddling with the time stabilizer, but since they’ve been in the Vortex for nearly a day now, she strongly suspects that this will only serve to destabilize the ship. The TARDIS controls have never been her forte, however, so she could be wrong.
After sitting down in her usual spot, Rose holds onto the front edge of the only seat in the room and waits. She knows she should probably say something but, for the life of her, she can’t think of what that is. She isn’t at all surprised when the Doctor breaks the silence, but while his words are nothing new, there is so little emotion behind them that she’s almost scared. “So when do you wanna leave?”
“Actually,” she says, playing dumb, “that’s what I need to talk t’ you about.”
He looks at her, his right hand still on the console, and his usually warm brown eyes are so empty that his next words are unnecessary. “I know.”
She stands up and walks over, wanting—no, needing—to make him understand, to wipe that pain away from his face and away from his soul. “’S not you, Doctor,” she says, “’s really not. I just, I just need to get away, I need some time for myself, some time away from …” God, she thinks, she’s even rubbish at expressing her own emotions now. Maybe she’s already more like him than she thinks. “Doctor, I still love you, I—”
“Don’t.”
The Doctor has stopped moving away, stopped pressing random buttons and pulling random levers. Instead, he’s looking right at her. And he’s angry.
“Doctor—”
“Don’t, Rose.” She swallows, and as he steps closer, close enough to kiss, she doesn’t speak. “You can leave, and I won’t stop you. You can… you can stay, and I won’t stop you. But don’t…” He breaks off, and as she looks at that familiar face, she can hardly resist the urge to put a hand to his cheek, pull him into a hug, and never ever let go. But she’s determined, she’s strong, just like he taught her to be, and clenches her fists at her sides. “You tell me which year to take you to,” he continues, “which place, and I’ll do it. But don’t expect more than that.”
He walks away, no longer under the pretense of fiddling but quite obviously putting distance between them, putting the entire console and the time rotor and the soul of the TARDIS between them, and Rose isn’t sure if she’ll ever be able to cross that distance again.
“Doctor, this isn’t permanent,” she presses, taking a step closer to him. “I can come back to you, I want t’come back to you. I just need some time.”
“How much time, hmm?” he asks, and she almost cringes underneath the glare and tone he almost always reserves for his enemies, not her. “A day, a week, a year, a century? You were the one who promised forever Rose, not me, so tell me, what’s the new time table?” He moves closer but stops several feet away. “How long do you want me to wait now?”
Rose isn’t quite sure what he means by this last sentence, but her face is too busy projecting shock and remorse to show her confusion. “Doctor, we can set up a meeting, yeah? We can find a time and a place, an’ I could travel by myself for however long an’ then I could come back to you. I could come back to you. Five minutes could pass for you, five minutes, an’ then—”
“It doesn’t work like that, Rose.”
“But it could!” She steps forward again. “Please, Doctor, please don’t—”
But he’s looking away from her now, and she knows there’s no point in continuing, not when he’s flipping switches again, not when he’s examined the monitor and moved over to the temporal scroller and he never even has to pass her to get there. “Where do you want to go?”
“Earth,” she says, using her years with Torchwood and years with him to fight back the tears. “I don’t care when. Sometime around when… sometime around when I left.” She moves towards the exit, the cave-like opening that leads to the rest of the TARDIS, and just a few feet from her destination she turns her head back toward him, willing him to look at her. “I’ll just… I’ll jus’ go get my things.”
The Doctor’s face never turns away from the console. Rose leaves the room.