The music challenge
By BadWolfReborn
Whilst sitting on a train, I gave myself twenty minutes and seven songs to write small ficlets for, based on whatever inspiration I could get from the songs. It was on shuffle, so I had no say in whatever came up, and I have edited it since, but I refused to allow myself to add more, except for the song lyrics at the beginning of each section.
So if a fic seems to end in an odd place, it's because the two minutes were about to end and I needed to finish up quickly
None of these are obviously AU, but there are a few maybe-not-quite-canon moments.
Features Ten, Rose, Rory, Amy, Eleven, Mickey and almost kind of appearances from Donna and Martha.
I've become so numb, I can't feel you here
Become so tired so much more aware
I'm becoming this, all I want to do,
Is be more like me and be less like you
Numb, Linkin Park
Rory lay next to Amy in bed that night, remembering his words to the Doctor. They might have been said in anger and desperation, but he was quickly realising how true they were.
"This isn't fair. You're turning me into you."
He didn't want to be the Doctor- Amy might idolise the alien (Rory had always known it, even before that time in Venice... he was the kid who'd been dressed in ripped shirts and pinstriped trousers) but that didn't mean he was right all the time.
Things when the Doctor was around, and whether that was a good or bad thing, it was dangerous.
Rory didn't want to be like that, ever.
I bet that you look good on the dance floor,
don't know if you're looking for romance or
I don't know what you're looking for
I bet that you look good on the Dance floor, The Arctic Monkeys
It was the disaster in 1952 that finally got them to Barcelona.
Seeing Rose without a face had scared the Doctor more than he liked to admit (more than it should, a traitorous part of his mind whispered every time he had a second to think about it). And even now, with her directly in his sight, his heart was pounding and he just wanted to hold her. Preferably alone, and in the TARDIS, with no-one around whom could tempt her away.
Although, that might be due to the pretty boys surrounding her whilst she danced.
(Maybe he could even bring out the Glenn Miller- he hadn't danced to that in a lifetime.)
(Wake me up) Wake me up inside, wake me up inside
(Save me) Call my name and save me from the dark
(Wake me up) Bid my blood to run, before I come undone
(Save me) Save me from the nothing I've become
Bring me to life, Evanescence
"Doctor, you can stop now!"
He looked down, half-surprised to see the redhead (what was her name? Donna, that was it) still standing there, sodden and undoubtedly freezing. He had expected her to have legged it out the sewers by now, across town and into the closest high-security mental hospital. That's what he would have done.
That's what Rose should have done, because everything they told him about how it's better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all? It was bullshit.
It was all bullshit and lies and now Rose was never coming home again.
And in my dreams it feels like we aren't ever gonna fall.
We're safe and sound, we're untouchable
Untouchable, Girls aloud
"It could be so much worse, really, when you think about it."
"Please, explain how it could be worse. Let me see into that big, stupid brain of yours."
"Hey, don't get cranky at me!"
"... Sorry. It's just- it's just so strange to know that we're here, in 1969, forever. I never thought- I never expected-"
"It's ok, Amy. Trust me."
"So, go on. How could it be much worse?"
"Well, firstly, the sixties aren't that far into our past. We'll be born in... Oh, about thirty years? About from a few small differences, most of which don't affect us anyway, it's pretty much the same as we're from."
"Hmm..."
"Secondly, at least we know about the sixties. We could be, I don't know, in the thirtieth century with no idea about how to behave. And fourthly, no, wait; thirdly, there are no more world wars."
Amy shook her head, sat on the kerbside of the road, and remained quiet until a faint noise reached her ears.
"Is that the TARDIS?"
Rory stood next to her and shook his head as a woman dressed in plain clothes and a man in a pinstriped suit ran past. Holding his hand next to her face, Amy realised something Rory had missed on his list of why the Sixties weren't that bad.
"You know what, stupid face," she whispered, pulling him closer until he stumbled down next to her, "at least we've got each other."
Rory smiled.
My fingertips are holding on to the cracks in our foundations,
and I know that I should let go but I can't.
and every time we fight I know it's not right,
every time your upset and I smile
I know I should forget but I can't.
Foundation, Kate Nash
Hoodies, Cardigans, Jeans. All went into the large duffle bag Rose had thrown on the large double bed that filled the centre of the room.
"Rose? Where are you?"
She spun around quickly, relieved to see that the Doctor hadn't reached their bedroom yet, and looked up to the ceiling of the Tardis.
"Don't let him in, please, old girl. I can't- I can't deal with him right now."
A sympathetic sounding hum from the Tardis had Rose back to work, running around to collect all her stuff. The clothes were easy enough to pack- most of them were from the Powell estate anyway, and the ones she had that came from the Tardis wardrobe stayed behind. It was the personal things that had Rose struggling.
The photograph of her and Jack on Women Wept went into the bag- no matter what the Doctor had done, Jack was her friend, and she didn't want to leave him, even if he had left her to help rebuild Earth after the Dalek invasion.
The bauble with actual, never-melting snow that the Doctor had bought her in the thirty-third century stayed behind, because it was from the Doctor.
The Charles Dickens book that the first Doctor recommended went in, because she had realised that her Doctor would never hurt her or leave her- so that one and this one were obviously completely different people.
The door crashed open just as Rose had finished, leaving her bag flapping open as she paused, waiting for the Doctor to say something from behind her. She was glad when he finally did, because the silence was just awkward, and at least it could now be put out of the way.
"What are you doing?" His voice sounded hurt and confused, making Roe angry- she and Mickey had been left to defend themselves on a murderous spaceship, but the Doctor was the one who got upset over it?
"I'm leaving, that's what I'm doing. You got a problem with that?" Zipping the bag shut and swinging it onto her shoulder, Rose turned around and tried to push past the Doctor, but his tall frame blocked most of the doorway, and he reached out to touch her. Rose flinched away, causing the Doctor to realise what was happening.
"Yes, I do. You can't just-"
"Whoa, hold on. You don't get to say what I can and cannot do. You didn't have that right before, and you certainly don't have it now. You lost it when you lost the ability to care when I was strapped to a table, about to be dissected."
Running a hand through his hair, the Doctor sighed, before trying to hug Rose. She stepped away, never turning away from him, scared that he'd find a way to trap her in their room like a naughty child so that she couldn't walk out and leave him.
"You were perfectly safe, Rose. If you had had so much as a cut on your body, I would have known. I'm not human, and you're so bad at hiding thing- blood, fear, arousal. I know when..."
"But you obviously don't!" Rose shouted, sick of him trying to make excuses. "You obviously don't know jack-shit, because if you did, then you wouldn't have kissed someone else right in front of me! You wouldn't have fallen in love with someone else! You would have- you should have-" she broke off with a sob and dropped the bag on the floor, and was soon wrapped up in his arms. She struggled for a few seconds before relaxing, because she was so angry with him but it hurt, it hurt knowing that there would always be people and aliens and trees that would walk in and take the Doctor away from her, because she was just a kid from a council estate in London and he was the Doctor so why should he stay with her?
She wouldn't stay with her.
He murmured hushes and its okays and I'm never going to leave yous into her hair as she cried.
It's not about your make-up, or how you tried to shape up to these glass and paper dreams.
(Paper dreams, honey, yeah)
So now you pour your heart out, you're telling me your far out,
not about to lie down for your goals.
She moves in her own way, The Kooks
"And what about... that one?" Rose asked, quietly, pointing up to where a swirling pink nebula shifted and evolved. From their position, sat in front of the open Tardis doors, with her head in the Doctor's lap and the Tardis moving slowly through empty space, it felt like you could touch it if you stood on your tiptoes.
"That one, coincidently," the Doctor whispered, stroking bits of Rose's hair away from her face, "is called the Rose nebula on Earth- and, once you little humans spread, you take that name with you and it becomes it's official title. It's renowned all across the cosmos for its colour and it's beauty, and has prompted many a poets and planetary systems."
"Wait, so, because of humans, the name Rose is used for, like, planets and stuff?"
"Yup!" The Doctor had a cheesy grin on his face as he popped his 'P', and Rose giggled at the sight of him looking so happy. "And most of the Rose planets are absolutely stunning. There's one where the fountains are made out of diamond, and the water causes mini-rainbows wherever it touches, thanks to the atmosphere, which is slightly more condense than Earth's. The poetry is a bit dodgy, though, I'm afraid."
"Aww, well, can't have it all, can you?"
The Doctor was silent for a few seconds, but carried on stroking her hair, less for practicality and more because the golden threads felt like silk as they slipped through his fingers.
"I don't know. You can get pretty close."
I'm just a teenage Dirtbag baby; I'm just a teenage Dirtbag baby
listen to Iron Maiden maybe- with me?
Teenage Dirtbag, Wheatus.
The club lights flashed into Rose's eyes again as she looked around for Jimmy. Mickey tugged on her arm, pulling her towards the club exit slightly, before she yanked herself out of his grip.
"Come on babe, leave him-"
"Shut up, Mickey!"
"I saw him with me own eyes, him and that Lozza bird from Hackney, right in front of the flats."
Rose spun around and a resounding crack filled the air as she slapped Mickey, forcing him to take a step back due to the force behind it (if there was one thing she could thank Jackie for, it was her slapping ability).
"I said shu' up!"
She pushed her way through the crowd of people years older than herself. Being the youngest person in the club by five or six years, Rose found it easy enough to attract attention- before reaching the platform where Jimmy would usually be performing, a security guard had stepped in her path.
"Excuse me, love, but I don't think you're quite old enough to be in here, do you?"
The guard grabbed her shoulders and turned her around forcefully, despite her protests.
No, please, I need to find me boyfriend-
"'Scuse me, lads, out of the way please, coming through."
- 'is names Jimmy, he sings in the-
"Shut up, kid, I don't care what his name is, you shouldn't be in here."
-band that's playing later and I-
"Now stay out!"
Humiliated, Rose stormed away from the club once she regained her balance from being thrown out, hot tears streaked down her face as she walked in the general direction of the Powell estates, ignorant of the crowds heading towards the different hotspots in east London. She didn't even notice the man in the tweed jacket until she walked right into him.
"Sorry, mate," she sniffed, trying to walk past him. "Didn't see you there."
"Ay, I can see that." The man laughed without humour, and Rose looked up through her clumped eyelashes to see a young man in front of her, hands fiddling with the blue bow tie he hung around his neck. Shocked to see someone so obviously not dressed for partying, she paused instead of walking away.
He looked really sad.
"Are you alright, mister?"
A small smile tugged at the side of his mouth as he shoved his hands into the pocket, and Rose was struck by how much he resembled a hyperactive baby giraffe.
"Yup, I'm always alright."
Authors notes: I seem to have gotten better at speed typing, so yeah, the last three are slightly longer than the rest... ay, I'm pretty proud of myself :)