Title: Heartsfriend
Author: SCWLC
Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who, I don't even really own the soulmates concepts, which have been bandied about the fandom for a while now.
Rating: K to K+ or G to PG I suppose?
Summary: Yet another soulmate fic, and also a certain amount of telepathy. Rose and the Doctor are Heartsfriends.
Notes: So, I've read a decent number of these DW soulmate fics and I hadn't found one that really felt sciency to me. Now, not that I have a problem with a nonscientific soulmate fic, but Doctor Who is ostensibly sci-fi not fantasy, and even when there are witches, it's all still cast as being super-advanced science. This led me to trying to figure out a way of making soulmate marks appear that was sciency in nature. That is, the reason wasn't mysticism but biology and chemistry. After some thought I worked out the heartsfriend idea. It's kind of impossible to do a true soulmate thing based on science, but I flatter myself to think I've created a possibility for a mark that could be used as an indicator of soulmates without degenerating into pure fantasy.
It just sort of figured, really.
It was completely understandable that she hadn't noticed right away either, because who looked on the bottom of their foot very often? And it took her a little longer to figure out who or what it might be for. The problem with a heartsfriend mark is that it was very personal to the two people marked by it, and you could never tell what it meant to the other person until you'd talked to them about what it meant to them.
Basically it was something that meant something important to both of you. That is, not necessarily the same important thing, just an important thing. A four-leaf clover could stand in for Ireland for one person and good luck charms for another, but since those things were important to both, they'd both have the same mark.
In theory everyone had at least one heartsfriend, usually more. The trouble was, a heartsfriend mark didn't appear until you'd met them, and they could appear on any part of you, silently and without fanfare. So, if your heartsfriend was a person you accidentally brushed against while on the bus, you'd never know it, possibly never find them again. You'd periodically get people advertising in newspapers and there were web sites devoted to the cause of finding a heartsfriend you knew was out there, matching up pictures of symbols, dates of appearance and where you'd been last before it showed up.
You had to triple-check that, because lots of people find the same sorts of things important, symbolically speaking, within the same culture. Lots of people had the same sorts of experiences and what-all, so if a squiggly, sort of Celtic-looking sideways eight (or maybe an infinity symbol) appeared on the bottom of your foot, there could be any number of people with that picture. Not to mention that the place on the body was also usually important.
The working scientific theory was that there was something in the brain chemistry between heartsfriends that meant they'd just get each other. Working on the same mental wavelength as it were. It didn't mean you would be romantically connected, it didn't mean you'd be bestest friends ever, (although it did mean that second one a lot and the first not-infrequently) sometimes it meant you were frenemies for life. Something in your brain chemistry affected the production of melanin in the skin, and the exact combination of hormones and what-all on your skin, so that when two people who were heartsfriends touched, something in your brain would give you a spontaneous, really weird birthmark. And the other person would get the same one somewhere on them too.
But the Doctor wasn't human. So when Rose was rubbing her feet after everything that happened on New Earth, her first thought was that she was never going to find the heartsfriend she'd stumbled across, because she honestly couldn't recall the last time she'd looked at the bottom of her foot. Not to mention the sheer number of times and places they'd been. Could be anybody. Hard enough to find someone in London, on a planet of six billion people, now the person could be anywhere. And what if it was some alien that wasn't even a heartsfriend, but just had some weird chemical whatsit that made it come out?
She still perused the library for some sort of connecting thread between the infinity symbol (or a sideways eight), and places she'd been.
It wasn't until after the debacle with Queen Victoria that Rose finally noticed the symbol on the Doctor's palm. Maybe she should have noticed it sooner, but she'd been so caught up in examining his face and eyes and body language for traces of the Doctor she knew and loved, that looking at smaller details, like his palms, had slipped past her.
Hesitant to ask, because it might just be a thing from his regeneration, he'd said he could wind up with two heads before he changed, she went back to the library, finding a book with the weird circle things the Doctor used for writing that had the Celtic-looking infinity symbol all over it. That meant it was a Gallifreyan symbol.
"Doctor?" she asked at breakfast.
He turned from where he was adding obscene amounts of sugar to his tea, "Yes?"
"You've got a . . . what is it? A tattoo? Birthmark? On your hand," she said, stumbling a little about how to ask without sounding desperate, needy or weird.
He looked at his palm. "Mmm." He seemed to contemplate it a minute. "I don't know why I've got the Seal of Rassilon on there. Subconscious effects of regeneration can be fairly obscure," he said.
"Subconscious effects of regeneration?" Rose asked, because it sounded like it might be important.
He picked up his mug and joined her at the table. "Regeneration can be controlled, to an extent," he said, slowly. "I had . . . a friend," there was a long pause. It was clear he was struggling with something painful.
"You don't have to tell me," Rose said, putting her hand on his. As much as she wanted to know, to be sure, she also felt that making him sad or depressed wasn't something she wanted to do, just to ease her curiosity and . . . no sense going down that path right now, she chided herself.
The Doctor laced their fingers together immediately. "It's alright," he said. After a brief pause he explained, "When she regenerated she went through a few options before settling on an appearance, and one time I was given a set of specific choices in the matter." He sighed. "But most of the time when I've regenerated it's been at need and in the moment, without a chance to focus enough to control it."
Thinking, Rose asked, "So, it's like if there's something you really want to be, or think you need to be or have or something, it'll show up in the regeneration? I mean, if you're not controlling it, it'll sort of connect to what you're thinking at the time?" This was one of those strange abstract ideas she'd had to learn to understand while travelling with the Doctor.
"Exactly," he told her with that smile that said he was thinking she'd been particularly clever.
It was now or never, Rose thought. She might not get up the gumption to ask if she waited, so she just pushed ahead. She slipped her foot out of her slipper and stuck in on his lap. "If that's brand new, can you explain why we have matching heartsfriend marks now?"
He frowned, then caught sight of the mark on her foot. Snatching her foot up he looked at the sole where the mark was, then froze. Rose tried to stay still as his finger traced the symbol, really she tried, but it tickled. She fell off her chair and took him with her when her leg twitched, throwing her off-balance and onto the floor.
"Sorry," she said as they disentangled.
"Not to worry," he told her, as he raced out the door.
It was hours later that Rose found him. He was in the infirmary, fussing with vials and computers and technological things Rose didn't have names for.
"Doctor?' she asked hesitantly. He'd rushed off so quickly she wasn't really sure what sort of tack she should take.
He whipped around and gave her a manic grin that she could already tell was a lie. "So, Barcelona? I was going to take you there, wasn't I? I could -"
"You could tell me what's got you acting weird," Rose told him flatly.
She'd never before seen anything that looked like a smile sliding off a face, but she almost heard a plop as his hit the floor. "Right. I . . . er . . ."
The Doctor looked so worried that she took his hand, smiling as his fingers instantly twined with hers, like it was just instinct, and offered, "You want to go somewhere more comfortable to talk about it?"
"Tea?" he asked.
Rose smiled. He was so English sometimes it was a bit hilarious for an alien who tended to be offended if anyone implied he was human. "You read my mind," she informed him.
And then he dropped her hand, springing away from her, looking guilty and frightened.
"Not tea, then," Rose said, more determined than ever to get to the bottom of this. "What's wrong?"
He glanced at the various wiggly lines, alien writing and medical stuff all over the table. "I . . ." he seemed to struggle a moment with what to say, then blurted out, "I was thinking of you when I regenerated," he said. "It must have effected a change in . . . well . . . chemical aspects of my biology, such that the necessary variation in the pigmentation production in my skin and signalling centres-"
Cutting him off, because he was trying to use technobabble to get out of clearly answering the question, Rose said, "Are you saying that you changed into a heartsfriend because you were thinking of me?" Because she wasn't sure how she felt about that, especially because it left her wondering what would happen if he changed again. Would he stop being a heartsfriend at that point?
"No."
The answer was solid, unwavering and surprisingly lacking in any of the Doctor's usual rambling around the point. "So, we're not heartsfriends?" she asked, feeling a little stung over the sharpness of his answer.
"You misunderstand me," the Doctor said, the marked hand twitching a little as though he wanted to do something and was trying very hard not to. "I think my physiology changed to be like yours, which let the mark happen, where it couldn't before because I'm not human."
At that her breath caught, because she was sort of very in love with him, and that was really romantic if it meant what it sounded like. "So, s'like we would have been heartsfriends when we first met if we'd both been human?"
Did that sound too needy?
"Probably," he said. His voice sounded odd. Did he resent it? "I mean, it's not like this whole heartsfriend thing means all that much," he said, oddly flippant.
That really stung, and the words flew out of her mouth before she could help it. "So . . . what? You saying our relationship isn't important?"
His head snapped up and he looked intently at her. "Relationship?" he asked. Something in how he held himself was suddenly, indefinably alien. Maybe it was the stillness, the way his head was cocked or just how his eyes, normally warm and expressive, shuttered so sharply.
"I mean, our friendship," she stumbled. "That's a sort of relationship."
There was something there that she couldn't read, and he said, "Of course." It was as he took a breath to say something that Rose found the courage to just bull forward. They were such good friends, and his biology had changed allowing him to be clearly her heartsfriend, it all had to mean something.
So, she threw caution to the winds and declared. "No. It's not just that." She grabbed his hand and said, "This . . . this means something. It always means something. When we first met, you took my hand, and you said, 'Run'. This is the hand I always hold when we're running." He was so still, and she didn't quite know what it meant, but instinct and all that time travelling with him said he was holding himself back, waiting for something. "Mine is on the bottom of my foot, because we're always running. Together. You recognised it as the Seal of whomever-"
"Rassilon," he murmured.
"Right," she accepted the correction and didn't let it stop her. "But to me it's an infinity symbol. Forever. Because that's how long I want to stay with you, here."
His fingers tightened around hers at the words, and she stepped closer, pushing this. A heartsfriend mark always meant something, and she'd thought for a while he felt the same about her as she did about him. She didn't let the tiny niggling voice in her head tell her it could be anything else. "Rose . . ." he said, then trailed off, the alien with the gob that wouldn't stop, at a loss for words.
"I love you," she declared, letting the words hang in the air.
There was an interminable pause as he stared into her eyes, and then he used the hand that was still twined with hers to pull her forward. Instead of kissing her though, he pulled her close, pressing his temple to hers. Suddenly she felt something . . . weird. It was a little like when Cassandra took over her body, except it felt nice. Just as she processed that, the Doctor pulled away sharply, the feeling vanished, and she realised it was him. "Doctor?"
"I'm sorry," he said. "I just . . ." He pulled away from her. "When we first met, when I told you about the TARDIS, you were upset. I . . . I'm sorry," he said, looking miserable.
"Wait," Rose grabbed his hand. "Doctor, don't just pull away. What was that?"
"You know that Time Lords are telepathic. That telepathy forms a large part of how we interact with our . . . our significant others. But I wouldn't ask you, of course." He looked anxious as he said it.
That was confusing. "Why not?"
He looked a little angry as he spoke, and Rose wondered if it was at her of the situation. "Because of how upset you were when you discovered the TARDIS had been in your mind translating for you. I would never force you-"
"You daft alien," Rose interrupted, rolling her eyes. "I'd known you for all of a day. I wouldn't let any alien I'd only just met into my mind without a good reason. It's not the same here. I know you."
"But-" he looked anxious and a little hopeful, but she still cut him off before he said anything more daft.
"Doctor, I. Love. You. I trust you. I trust the TARDIS now that I know you both. Please, just . . . tell me, yeah?" It wasn't eloquent, it wasn't anything but what she felt, and Rose just stared, just tried to convey with her eyes what this all meant to her.
Stumbling, he started. "On Gallifrey we . . . because we're . . . were telepathic," Rose could seen how the past tense hurt him. "We didn't kiss, it wasn't really done. But telepathically, there was acts of affection, demonstrations of affection that were like that."
"You just kissed me with your brain," she said, then winced because that was possibly the most awkward thing she'd ever said. "Forget I said that."
The Doctor chuckled. "I suppose it's as good a way to describe it as any," he said.
"Does that have to do with why you panicked when I said you read my mind before?" Rose asked. "Because you know that's just an expression. On Earth, anyhow."
"A lot, yes," he told her. "You see, because telepathy entered into romantic assignations on Gallifrey it's . . . well, natural for me." He shoved his hands in his pockets, pulling out the sonic screwdriver and fiddling with it, Rose was pretty sure just for something to fiddle with while he talked. "But telepathy is terribly intimate, and a telepathic connection without a very good reason or some sort of permission could be seen as assault. And you'd been so upset that first time about it, I didn't want . . . I was worried I'd accidentally done something you wouldn't want."
She took the sonic out of his hands and stuck it back in his pocket, holding his hands to still him. "I want it, okay? I want to be with you, and that means being with you in the ways you want as well as the ways I want. I trust you not to hurt me or anything else. Alright Doctor?"
"More than alright," he said, smiling.
On impulse, Rose leant in and kissed him. He seemed to tense and then relax into the motion, and then his hands were on her face, fingers sliding up her cheeks, his fingertips resting on her temples, and that mental presence she'd felt before gently pressed into her mind. And now that she knew what it was, she could feel how it was like a kiss, how it felt like affection and love in a single gesture.
She wanted to kiss him back in that same way and took her hands off his neck, putting them on his temples and trying to return the gesture. It was fumbling and strange and then she figured out what to do with her mind and the contact deepened dramatically. Rose was barely aware of the outside world until she had to pull away to breathe and found herself on the Doctor's lap on one of the beds in the infirmary. "Oh," the Doctor said, breathing a little harder than usual. "Oh, that was . . . brilliant."
"It was, wasn't it?" Rose replied. "Maybe we could do it again sometime?"
"I think we should," he told her. "But I really would like that tea, and some biscuits. Oo! Those banana biscuits from Knarflaxia Minor!"
Rose hopped off his lap and held out a hand. "Then let's go and pick them up from the kitchen. Honestly, are you sure you're an alien? Because you sound just like Mum when you get like that."
"Rose Tyler you take that back!" he said with faux-horror.
"You know you love her," she told him, laughing.
He stilled a moment, his face turning from affronted to intense. "I love you," he said.
"I love you too," she said, and put his fingers on his temples, using that connection to give him a mental kiss again.
He shivered. "Maybe the biscuits and tea can wait," he said, scooping her up and carrying her to his bedroom.
Rose wasn't going to complain about that.