DW Fic: Of Discovery and Sacrifice (3/5)
Sep. 11th, 2007 05:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
salienneTitle: Of Discovery and Sacrifice (3/5)
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 owned Doctor Who, I would not be laboring over this Chem homework. The Doctor would be. Oh, if only if only…
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: Yeep, sorry it took me so long to put this up. College is nuts, and I completely lost track of time. So… here be part three. I hope y’all enjoy, and comments are always welcome! :D
During the tenth and eleventh years, Rose is one of the key figures in a rebellion in the Jaggit Brocade, one that she herself instigates on Crespallion. The name of the planet has always sounded familiar to her, though she still can’t put her finger on why. She assumes she heard about it during her travels with the Doctor, a man whose faces are now only a blur in her memory. Sometimes she wonders whether she ever really knew him; maybe he lied or maybe he was just a dream. Even in the end, he always kept so many secrets. She pushes those thoughts away.
It starts with a woman she meets, Rijou, the governor’s secretary and the sister of an informant to the resistance. Rose isn’t in a particularly good place at the time, and while she never considers simply ending it, as Jack has, the wandering is beginning to wear her down. It’s just that, so far, she hasn’t been able to stop.
Rijou changes that. Here, on Crespallion, one galaxy over from the Milky Way, in the year 5.5/apple/36, a little over five billion years since the last time this version of Rose Tyler leapt from Earth, she makes a friend who becomes dearer to her than the hundreds of other people she has befriended. When they meet, Rose is walking down the street, her hood up, her hands shoved into her pockets, and Rijou spills a slimy sort of paint all over her and Rose somehow ends up insulting the woman’s great-aunt. They scream, people stare, and Rose is close to stomping off before Rijou drags her back to her family’s flat, insisting that she clean up there.
When the first sun sets, the two are holding onto one another and can’t stop laughing.
Everything is fine, at first. It’s more than fine; it’s fantastic. Not many people visit Crespallion, but the Governmental Station for the system is here, in orbit around the ringed golden planet, and they’re in need of a mail clerk. It’s not the most prestigious or difficult job, but Rose has never cared about that. It’s something she can do, and it’s something she can enjoy. Besides allowing her to spend more time with Rijou, the job gives her the opportunity to associate with all sorts of races and practice the languages here, since she is still unhappy with her Universal Tongue and New English. As for Crespin, Crespallion’s native tongue, after half an Earth year, the language still sounds like gibberish with the clicking thrown in to her, and she does her best to remedy that.
When Rose is first put to work, she is immediately offered quarters on the Governmental Station because of her species. This system, after all, is a labor system, providing workers to the rich and powerful, and out of all its planets, Crespallion is the worst off, servicing the human empire. The natives here, a race called the Bionernites, look just like humans with indigo skin and sea-pale eyes, and they’re practically a slave race. Even here at home, they are kept in poverty-level conditions. No one cares enough to help them, and only a few can afford proper homes, proper beds, proper medicine, or even proper food. Rose, however, refuses to use her race to find something better, so when the governor offers her a room on the Governmental Station, she instantly refuses.
For all their advances in science and technology and philosophy and exploration, it seems that human beings are still the greatest monsters of them all.
With distaste stuck in her throat, Rose stays and works, watching handshakes and rituals and handing out envelopes because, apparently, hard copies are still important. Every night, she goes home to a room with a mattress on the ground and, every once in a while, goes out for drinks and laughs with Rijou. On weekends, which occur every fortnight, the two stay at Rijou’s place and Rose chats with her sister and husband or plays with the children. She is exiled from the kitchen after two separate dinner fiascos, but she’s always welcome to taste the food. Back at work, although she complains about the horrid conditions in this system even to ambassadors, almost losing her job several times, she’s too wary of paradoxes and Reapers and what the Doctor might think to do more than that.
Everything changes when one of the governor’s more damning memos is leaked to the press and circulated around the galaxy, and he only knows of one person who could have been responsible: Rijou, his secretary, an alien. After all, she is a Bionernite, a worker, a lower class citizen and a lower species, and it doesn’t matter that she has worked for him for ten years or that she has two children or that she can make him laugh. He executes her, publicly, and lets it be known that she is a traitor and this is what happens to traitors.
That night, Rose goes to the Resistance and incites an uprising. The day after, she goes into work and can barely hold herself back from killing the governor. She just manages to escape before going underground in what soon becomes an all-out, very public rebellion.
Now, Rose is the alien. For years, this has been the case, but she has never before stayed in one place long enough to feel the throb of total isolation or to see just how much of the hostility she has encountered has all been in response to her race. For the first time in so long, she remembers Mickey and the teacher who tried to fail him because of his skin color, the teacher she almost punched. Then she thinks of the Doctor and wonders whether he ever thought of her like this, as just another alien, and then she stops thinking.
Months go by, and Rose keeps on fighting. Because of her unique ability to cheat death, she is assigned many dangerous missions, most solo, and whispers follow her wherever she goes. She becomes a legend. Soon enough, she also becomes a leader, responsible for strategy and resources and alliances and concealment and so many people’s deaths. Over a year goes by, and some of her fellow faction leaders still treat her with contempt. More than one has questioned the wisdom of fighting with a human, and she finds herself clashing with them over and over again. A few times, she even manages to talk herself out of a struggle. She thinks the Doctor would be proud.
When the end comes, Rose has no new scars and far too much blood on her hands. As she watches Remallo, a one-time enemy and a long-time friend, sign the peace treaty with Emmot Matthews, the president of the Scarlet Juncture, she feels her heart swell with pride. Naturally, she refuses to put down her name, though “Rose Tyler” probably belongs there beside the twelve others, and before she leaves, she gives each of her friends and comrades and warriors a hug or a handshake or a smile, whatever each person wants or needs. She doesn’t feel like an outsider anymore.
On the day she leaves, a memorial service is held, and thinking of Madellipe and Leelan and Serena and Rijou and so many more, she can’t help but tear up. She rarely does that anymore, but at the moment, she doesn’t see the harm in it. She even allows herself to think of the Doctor as they stare off into the red swirling sky and send the black shuttle of ashes into it, a monument meant to float in the heavens for eternity.
Rose thinks how she and the Doctor might still have forever, and how they never ever could.
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
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 owned Doctor Who, I would not be laboring over this Chem homework. The Doctor would be. Oh, if only if only…
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: Yeep, sorry it took me so long to put this up. College is nuts, and I completely lost track of time. So… here be part three. I hope y’all enjoy, and comments are always welcome! :D
During the tenth and eleventh years, Rose is one of the key figures in a rebellion in the Jaggit Brocade, one that she herself instigates on Crespallion. The name of the planet has always sounded familiar to her, though she still can’t put her finger on why. She assumes she heard about it during her travels with the Doctor, a man whose faces are now only a blur in her memory. Sometimes she wonders whether she ever really knew him; maybe he lied or maybe he was just a dream. Even in the end, he always kept so many secrets. She pushes those thoughts away.
It starts with a woman she meets, Rijou, the governor’s secretary and the sister of an informant to the resistance. Rose isn’t in a particularly good place at the time, and while she never considers simply ending it, as Jack has, the wandering is beginning to wear her down. It’s just that, so far, she hasn’t been able to stop.
Rijou changes that. Here, on Crespallion, one galaxy over from the Milky Way, in the year 5.5/apple/36, a little over five billion years since the last time this version of Rose Tyler leapt from Earth, she makes a friend who becomes dearer to her than the hundreds of other people she has befriended. When they meet, Rose is walking down the street, her hood up, her hands shoved into her pockets, and Rijou spills a slimy sort of paint all over her and Rose somehow ends up insulting the woman’s great-aunt. They scream, people stare, and Rose is close to stomping off before Rijou drags her back to her family’s flat, insisting that she clean up there.
When the first sun sets, the two are holding onto one another and can’t stop laughing.
Everything is fine, at first. It’s more than fine; it’s fantastic. Not many people visit Crespallion, but the Governmental Station for the system is here, in orbit around the ringed golden planet, and they’re in need of a mail clerk. It’s not the most prestigious or difficult job, but Rose has never cared about that. It’s something she can do, and it’s something she can enjoy. Besides allowing her to spend more time with Rijou, the job gives her the opportunity to associate with all sorts of races and practice the languages here, since she is still unhappy with her Universal Tongue and New English. As for Crespin, Crespallion’s native tongue, after half an Earth year, the language still sounds like gibberish with the clicking thrown in to her, and she does her best to remedy that.
When Rose is first put to work, she is immediately offered quarters on the Governmental Station because of her species. This system, after all, is a labor system, providing workers to the rich and powerful, and out of all its planets, Crespallion is the worst off, servicing the human empire. The natives here, a race called the Bionernites, look just like humans with indigo skin and sea-pale eyes, and they’re practically a slave race. Even here at home, they are kept in poverty-level conditions. No one cares enough to help them, and only a few can afford proper homes, proper beds, proper medicine, or even proper food. Rose, however, refuses to use her race to find something better, so when the governor offers her a room on the Governmental Station, she instantly refuses.
For all their advances in science and technology and philosophy and exploration, it seems that human beings are still the greatest monsters of them all.
With distaste stuck in her throat, Rose stays and works, watching handshakes and rituals and handing out envelopes because, apparently, hard copies are still important. Every night, she goes home to a room with a mattress on the ground and, every once in a while, goes out for drinks and laughs with Rijou. On weekends, which occur every fortnight, the two stay at Rijou’s place and Rose chats with her sister and husband or plays with the children. She is exiled from the kitchen after two separate dinner fiascos, but she’s always welcome to taste the food. Back at work, although she complains about the horrid conditions in this system even to ambassadors, almost losing her job several times, she’s too wary of paradoxes and Reapers and what the Doctor might think to do more than that.
Everything changes when one of the governor’s more damning memos is leaked to the press and circulated around the galaxy, and he only knows of one person who could have been responsible: Rijou, his secretary, an alien. After all, she is a Bionernite, a worker, a lower class citizen and a lower species, and it doesn’t matter that she has worked for him for ten years or that she has two children or that she can make him laugh. He executes her, publicly, and lets it be known that she is a traitor and this is what happens to traitors.
That night, Rose goes to the Resistance and incites an uprising. The day after, she goes into work and can barely hold herself back from killing the governor. She just manages to escape before going underground in what soon becomes an all-out, very public rebellion.
Now, Rose is the alien. For years, this has been the case, but she has never before stayed in one place long enough to feel the throb of total isolation or to see just how much of the hostility she has encountered has all been in response to her race. For the first time in so long, she remembers Mickey and the teacher who tried to fail him because of his skin color, the teacher she almost punched. Then she thinks of the Doctor and wonders whether he ever thought of her like this, as just another alien, and then she stops thinking.
Months go by, and Rose keeps on fighting. Because of her unique ability to cheat death, she is assigned many dangerous missions, most solo, and whispers follow her wherever she goes. She becomes a legend. Soon enough, she also becomes a leader, responsible for strategy and resources and alliances and concealment and so many people’s deaths. Over a year goes by, and some of her fellow faction leaders still treat her with contempt. More than one has questioned the wisdom of fighting with a human, and she finds herself clashing with them over and over again. A few times, she even manages to talk herself out of a struggle. She thinks the Doctor would be proud.
When the end comes, Rose has no new scars and far too much blood on her hands. As she watches Remallo, a one-time enemy and a long-time friend, sign the peace treaty with Emmot Matthews, the president of the Scarlet Juncture, she feels her heart swell with pride. Naturally, she refuses to put down her name, though “Rose Tyler” probably belongs there beside the twelve others, and before she leaves, she gives each of her friends and comrades and warriors a hug or a handshake or a smile, whatever each person wants or needs. She doesn’t feel like an outsider anymore.
On the day she leaves, a memorial service is held, and thinking of Madellipe and Leelan and Serena and Rijou and so many more, she can’t help but tear up. She rarely does that anymore, but at the moment, she doesn’t see the harm in it. She even allows herself to think of the Doctor as they stare off into the red swirling sky and send the black shuttle of ashes into it, a monument meant to float in the heavens for eternity.
Rose thinks how she and the Doctor might still have forever, and how they never ever could.
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
