Summary: Emotions run high between the Doctor and Rose after the foreboding events of Fear Her, so they set off for the Intergalactic Barter Bazaar on the asteroid planet Opifex for some much needed relaxation. But when Rose begins to be plagued by ominous nightmares of the Doctor's future, a future without her, they realize that something sinister may be lurking behind the exotic stalls of Opifex's acclaimed market.
Thank you to my lovely beta miss_prufrock over at lj, who has made this story 10x better than it ever was (or had right to be).
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Part One
Rose sat curled up on an old leather couch in the TARDIS' library, feet tucked comfortably under her, a soft red afghan wrapped snugly around her shoulders. A cup of steaming tea sat on the end table to her right, an open book nestled in her lap.
Heaving a large sigh, she stretched her arms high over her head, basking in the warmth of the large wood burning fireplace, which nearly took up one whole wall of the massive room. Rose loved everything about the library. She loved the stacks and rows of dog-eared books piled high on shelves, that reached ever upwards towards the faraway ceiling. She loved the giant mahogany desk tucked in the far corner, covered in papers and oddly shaped knick-knacks. She loved the Doctor's collection of bizarre alien lamps. Her favourite lamp had a ceramic base painted and moulded into the shape of a brown rabbit sitting on its haunches. To switch on the lamp you had to tug on the rabbit's left ear and the lampshade was painted with a rows of cheery orange carrots that sprang happily from bright tufts of green grass. There were hundreds of lamps in the room, tucked into every book free space and they filled the room with a soft constant light. But most of all, Rose loved the library's smell, old paper, spilt ink, cracked leather, and the tangy smell of wood smoke that drifted from the fireplace.
The Doctor lounged on the other end of the couch, glasses perched precariously on his nose, legs neatly crossed, paisley tie loosened. He was reading from a slim book with a red leather cover and he hadn't so much as glanced at her for what felt like ages.
So, yes, she loved the library. She loved sitting with the Doctor. She even liked the book she was reading. She was comfortable, cosy, and warm. Nevertheless - she was bored to pieces.
Five days ago, the Doctor had told her that he needed to make a few repairs on the TARDIS, and then that he planned to spend a day or two in theVoid to give the TARDIS a chance to recalibrate. At first, Rose had been glad for a little break. The Doctor could make his repairs, and she could finish her book, a delightfully trashy romance that she had picked up in a used bookstore that the Doctor had dragged her into last month. He had even promised to take her to something called the Intergalactic Barter Bazaar after he had finished with his tinkering, so that she could go shopping, maybe find some sort of alienknick-knack for her mum.
But, all of that had been five days ago; five very long, very silent days ago.
She shut her book rather loudly, the hard cover slapping down on the soft pages with a satisfying thump.
The Doctor read on.
Shifting, she gave another sigh, added a little yawn for good measure and looked pointedly over at the Doctor. No response. The Doctor remained resolutely oblivious.
Rolling her eyes, she sighed again.
The fire popped cheerfully in front of her and she let her thoughts drift farther, her eyes tracing the crackle and fizz of the golden flames.
The Doctor had been acting strangely - well -stranger than usual, ever since they had got back from 2012 and helping Chloe Webber and the Isolus. It was almost as if he was afraid of something, hesitating from taking her anywhere. He had acted oddly that night too, touching her a little more than had become habitual, cracking too many loud jokes about edible ball bearings, brushing off her comments about them always being all right. 'Never say never ever'. She shivered, cold seeping down into her bones, despite the fact that it was quite warm in the library.
A lot of things had changed since that night. It seemed like all the words they never said to one another were growing, twisting and tangling through the space between them. It felt as if all the barriers they had so carefully set between them were beginning to crumble. And now, here she was trying to figure out whether to be elated by that strange bright and burning look he got in his eyes when he touched her or terrified that it all would change, disintegrate, and she would lose everything that was most important to her.
"Doctor?" The word popped out of Rose'smouth, breaking the soft silence of the library. He looked over at her and she suddenly discovered that she had no idea what to say, scrambling for words, her eyes settled on the book in his lap and she hastily added, "What are you reading?"
"Oh," he paused, absently tugging at his ear, "poetry."
"What kind of poetry?"
"Hmmm? Oh. Yeats."
"Never took you for a romantic," she grinned, the tip of her tongue peeking out from between her teeth.
"Cheeky." His face split into a wide grin, his dark eyes twinkling merrily at her. "Poetry is universal Rose," he said waggling his eyebrows for effect and then returning to his book.
"Suppose it is, yeah," she murmured, her eyes drifting back to the fire.
Silence settled back over the library, until, gaze still lost in the flames, she softly recited:
"'How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.'"
He looked at her, surprise and then pleasure flashing in his eyes as he gave her wide grin, "Yeats! Fantastic!"
She squirmed a little, fighting the blush that was threatening to spill across her cheeks, "It's a bit sad really, the whole poem… but it's always been my mum's favourite though. I s'pose, over the years, she just kinda transferred it over to me."
He grinned wider. "Jackie Tyler the Romantic! Brilliant!"
She grinned back, "Sir Doctor of TARDIS the Romantic." He smiled at her again and turned back to his book. She focused on the fire.
"Doctor?" she asked, fingers worrying the red threads of the blanket wrapped around her.
"Hmmm?" he murmured absently, not looking up from his book.
She paused, indecision gripping her. Her stomach churned in nervous flip-flops, but she pushed onward, not daring to look at him. "How many children did you have?"
"What?" surprise, dismay, was evident in the tone of his voice.
She stole a glance at him. He was looking at her now, one eyebrow raised, mouth hanging part of the way open, truly gob smacked. She quailed a little, but forged ahead, her words tumbling awkwardly over themselves, "It's just -well - you said earlier that you were a father once… and I just wondered… I wanted to know how many children you had."
He had managed to regain his composure and was silent for a moment, his eyes carefully searching her face. "I had two children and one granddaughter," he said softly, returning to his book, the rigidity of body language blocking her out.
"Oh." Ignoring his obvious displeasure, she continued, asking the first question that came to mind. "Were you married then? "
"Yes, I was married," he replied succinctly. There was silence for a long moment and then he sighed, running a hand over the smooth pages of his book as if he could soak up the script through his skin. "Marriage was a bit different where I came from. More ceremonial, less, oh," he paused searching for the words, "less emotional I suppose. It wasn't about love." He looked over at her, his eyes soft.
She returned his gaze, her fingers continuing to fidget nervously with the frayed edges of the blanket, countless confusing emotions that she couldn't put a name too bubbling up inside her. She looked away, another question slipping off her tongue, "Were all your family Time Lords?"
"No, not all Gallifreyans are Time Lords." His voice broke slightly on the word Gallifreyan and her heart lurched painfully in her chest.
She bit her lip, suddenly reminded of her first him and how broken he had been when she had met him. Memories of blue eyes, rough hands, daft ears, an old and battered leather coat, she realized now that he wore as a kind of armour to protect his bruised heart. The second time she had met him, he had taken her hand, told her that he could feel the spin of the Earth and she had heard the anguish laced through his voice. She could see the sorrow on his face now. Gallifreyan. "Is that what you are, a Gallifreyan? That's where you were born, yeah?" she asked softly.
"Yes, Gallifrey," he replied, looking into the fire, his expression distant.
"Gallifrey," she whispered, tasting the soft lilt of the word on her tongue. "It's beautiful."
He didn't respond and she resumed pulling at the threads of her blanket. Noticing that she had made quite a large hole in the soft red fabric, she vaguely hoped that it wasn't some sort of costly alien heirloom. "Are there Time Ladies,then, or just Time Lords?" She was afraid to let the conversation go now, in case it never came again.
"Of course there were female Time Lords."
Her brow wrinkled in confusion, "They were called Time Lords too?"
"Yes, well, sort of. The ending of the word is slightly different when referring to women who are Time Lords. It has a feminine ending. It doesn't translate well into English. English is a bit of an odd language really, so gender neutral. I mean of course, you have your personal pronouns, but it's not like French, or Spanish, or even Latin. Of course, French and Spanish are both Romance languages based on Latin and English is a bit of a mix between… "
She cut him off, "The TARDIS doesn't translate Gallifreyan then?"
He shook his head, "No, too complicated," looking over at her, he continued, "Too many tenses."
"She doesn't translate swear words either."
A little bit of a sparkle returned to his eyes. "Noticed that, did you?"
"Bit of a prude, the TARDIS." She smiled a little as the lights in the room flickered and the TARDIS' hum became a bit louder.
"Careful Rose," he said, starting to grin, "Don't start something you can't finish."
"Never," she quipped, a large smile spilling across her features.
He opened his mouth, seemingly on the verge of saying something, and then shut it again, his face thoughtful. After a few seconds, he continued abruptly, "My granddaughter, Susan, was the only member of my family to ever travel with me."
"What was she like?" She leaned towards him, eager and a little surprised at the turn in the conversation.
"Oh - she was small and dark, a quick thinker when she focused herself." His expression, his voice, was far away, both lost in memories that she couldn't see or touch. He turned to her suddenly,dark eyes focusing on her with an intensity that made her heart ache. "She was young, sometimes a bit silly, loved music - listened to it all the time, horrible stuff too. Her favourite colour was red, loved to travel, adored London, hated Tiramisu, never could figure out why though... She was – kind, but well she was mostly fantastic, brilliant really." He paused there and something broke. Clearing his throat, he ran a hand roughly over his mouth. When he continued speaking his voice was too loud, "But she's gone - they're all gone now."
Rose bowed her head and leaned back, tucking his words away in her heart, making a vow that though it was too painful for him, she would remember for him. She began to pick at the threads of theafghan again, making the hole bigger and bigger. "Do you miss them?" she asked, her voicebarely a whisper.
"It was a long time ago." His voice was thick, body language tense, he was almost leaning away from her, as if he were trying to fight whatever force it was that kept pulling them together.
"You must have loved them very much."
He looked at her and she automatically looked down to see if she had dribbled on her shirt. The words had tumbled from her lips before she had had a proper chance to realize how stupid they would sound and a blush spread up her neck and across her cheeks. She bit her lip again, knowing that he wanted nothing more than to let thisconversation drop and go back to his book, pretend that nothing had ever been said, but she couldn't stop now, the damn had broken and she rushed forward, "What were their names?"
"Whose names?" he asked cautiously, looking at the fire.
"The names of the others you've travelled with," she whispered, keeping her eyes locked on his profile, the tension in the air was palpable, she could feel it pressing down around her.
He closed his book with heavy thud and turned towards her, the glare of the fire off his glasses hiding the expression in his eyes. "Why do you want to know?"
She squirmed uncomfortably under the weight of his gaze, "I just… I want to know more about you… we never talk about it… I'd just like to know."
"Why?" She still could not see his eyes.
He had countered with another question and familiar frustration bubbled up inside of her. It was so unfair! He knew everything about her, knew her mum, knew where she came from, knew her favourite colour, favourite food, favourite T-shirt, he knew… well – just everything. He had held her when she was a baby, been to her parents wedding, given her a red bike for Christmas before she had even known him, seen her hold her dying father in a dirty street. She had died for him, felt the Earth spin with him, faced down an army of Daleks at his side and still he had never even told her the name of his home planet. She would give him forever, if he only asked, if he was only willing to give her just some part of himself, however small… It was all too much and she broke."So I'm not one of them!" she burst.
"What?" His voice was low, incredulous. She should have recognized the dangerous undertone in his voice, the warning, but she was too caught up in her own emotions. Everything she had felt for months, eversince Sarah Jane, ever since Reinette, ever since she realized that just maybe this fantastic life wasn't forever, was spilling over.
She gestured expansively with her hand, "One of them! You know, just one more of your girls! One more in a long line of 'assistants' or'companions' or - whatever you call them. One more girl that you pick up and then drop off whenever you feel like it, taking but never giving. What's gonna happen when I get old, or when you're bored of me and want someone newer and younger and better looking to take my place. Is that the end? What will you say; 'Well Rose, sorry this is it, end of the line. Jolly good knowing you, I'll keep in touch, pop 'round now and then to take you for a spin 'round the Moon.' What will I have left then, a memory, a blurry photograph of a man who I never really knew?"
She paused and looked over at him. He was looking back at her, calm, unruffled. In the back of her mind, she briefly wondered how many times he'd had this conversation before and with how many other people. How many others had lined up to beg for a piece of him? Her frustration faded, replaced with fatigue. Her eyes shimmered with unshed tears that she refused to let fall. "I'm sorry. I know that we've talked about this before, with Sarah Jane and everything… and I know – well - It's just that I've never really fancied Aberdeen…" she finished lamely, trying to throw some spark of humour back into the conversation.
He ignored her jibe, and the distance between them grew. "What do you want from me Rose?" he asked softly.
"I just… I'm not a child," she murmured, eyes lowered.
"You are a child." His tone was frigid.
Her head shot up and her eyes locked with his. His face was cold and unforgiving. His eyes were black, bottomless, so frightening in their intensity that she was painfully reminded of just how old, how different, how alien, he really was. Ripping her gaze away from him, she bit her lip to keep it from trembling. The space between them had never felt so large or so complicated.
She felt overwhelmed, vulnerable in the face of everything that was passing back forth in between them. She was sinking, she was in over her head, but she wasn't about to go down without a fight. "Why don't you ever talk about them? You talk all the time, all you ever do is talk. But you never talk about anything that happened in your past! You just keep everything bottled up inside and it rips you apart. I see it every day… not as much since you…you know… changed," she exclaimed, gesturing wildly at him. "But it's there in your eyes sometimes, or in how you avoid saying certain things, or doing certain things. It is there and I see it and I just want to know. I want to help."
He didn't say anything, remained silent,staring at the fire.
"Talk to me!" she cried, scrambling for words, weighed down by his silence, by everything that had happened last week at the London Olympics. She had nearly lost him then, and it had nearly undone her, it felt like she was losing him now. "We all hurt, we all lose things… its just part of life - part of being human," she ended, a littlei neloquently, all the words she really wanted to say (I love you, I hate this, you're my best friend, I would do anything for you, forgive me, please don't ever forget me) stuck in the back of her throat.
For a moment, he said nothing and then he whispered so softly that she could barely hear him, "I'm not human."
The air in the room was heavy, stifling, and her heart nearly split in two at the raw edge in his soft voice.
Impulsively, irresponsibly, selfishly, she leaned over and kissed him, the forgotten book on her lap clattering loudly to the floor. She wrapped one hand in his hair and pressed the other against his warm chest, fingers twisting in the fabric of his shirt where she could feel the slow and steady thrum of his double heartbeat. He smelled of wool, the tang cinnamon mixed with the darker bite of cardamom, and something else, something heavier, electric, and definitively male.
She opened her eyes. He gazed back ather, dark eyes hard, ancient, and unfathomable. His lips remained pressed against hers, cold and immobile; his hands lay still at his sides.
He had not kissed her back. Oh god, he hadn't kissed her back.
She backed away horrified, raising a trembling hand to her mouth. "I'm sorry," she whispered, refusing to look at him. Her heart was beating painfully against her ribcage. "I'm sorry," she whispered again, chancing a look at him. He was still staring at the fire, face blank, a perfect mask of indifference. Jumping up, she ran for the door, her face burning.
Before she could make her escape, he followed her, crossing the room in three bounding steps. Catching her wrist in a vice-likegrip, he pulled her towards him. Pushing his body into hers, he pressed his lips against hers with such force that she nearly stumbled backwards, but his strong hands caught her and then his long fingers were running up under her t-shirt and over her spine. His lips were burning, biting, teasing, everywhere - on the hollow of her throat, on the inside of her wrist, the curve of her jaw.
She wrapped herself more tightly around him, arching forwards. One of her hands was trapped between them, pressed against his chest, her palm vibrating with the now erratic beat of his hearts. Her other hand skimmed his jawline, rough with stubble, then snaked up over his neck and tangled into his hair. Heat started to swirl in the pit of her stomach as his tongue brushed gently against hers, softly at first, gentle as a butterfly's touch, and then more urgently as the kiss deepened and swelled into golden crescendo.
She broke away first - had to, because she couldn't breathe - and for a moment they just stood there, both out of breathe, their foreheads pressed together, eyes closed.
"Rose… I…" he started, as he shifted to bury his face in her hair. His voice was rough and uneven. "I'm an old man Rose. You deserve more."
"But I just want you." Her face was hidden in the crook of his neck, her hands fisted in the fabric of his shirt.
He pulled back abruptly, untangling their embrace. Running a hand through his hair, his gaze locked onto a point somewhere over her head. "It's late Rose, you should get some sleep."
She remained in the doorway her eyes carefully searching his face, her own face flushed with the heat of the room and the fire of his sudden embrace.
He did not - would not - look at her. He turned away, shoving his hands in his trouser pockets, "Big day tomorrow, lots of shopping, got to get you to the Bazaar so you can get something for Jackie the Romantic."
She didn't move.
"Go to bed Rose," he ordered, his voice laced with ice.
She turned and left, feeling betrayed, confused.
The Doctor waited until the sound of her footsteps faded down the hall. Picking up his discarded book, he opened it and leaned against the fireplace, expression once again detached, impassive, eyes fastened on the delicate script that curled across the page.
And softly, ever so softly, he read aloud to the empty room and to the dying fire:
"I heard the old, old men say,
'Everything alters,
And one by one we drop away.'
They had hands like claws, and their knees
Were twisted like the old thorn trees
By the waters
I heard the old, old men say,
'All that's beautiful drifts away
Like the waters."
Sinking silently onto the sofa, he dropped the book and hid his face in his hands.