Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who~
Author's Note: This was supposed to be a 100-ish word ficlet. Oops.
Warnings: Inspired by cracked-dot-com's "11 Deep Space Photos You Won't Believe Aren't Photoshopped." Not chronological. Ten/Rose, TenToo/Rose, Eleven/Rose. Brief reference to the episode "School Reunion" and the DW book, "Feast of the Drowned." Crap editing, because most of this was done at 2 AM. :'D
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Bloom
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"But humans decay. You wither and you die. Imagine watching that happen to someone that you—"
Some years later, she thinks: 'Maybe that's when it began.'
X
"It's sorta become a laugh, you know? Between my 'n friends," she'd snorted, on some unremarkable day after an unremarkable visit to her unremarkable childhood home. In her lap, as of then unnoticed, had lain the fallen petal of a wilted rose, sent with (somewhat belated) notes of gratitude from Keisha and Jay. Jackie had preserved the bud as best she'd been able, but still, it had died… Too late to save, or dry, or press. All it'd done had been to stir up a few hazy human memories and give the Tardis' rubbish bin a sweeter scent. "'Cause all these blokes at school, right, thought they were so original. Whenever they were tryin' to get my attention, or whatever, they'd send me a rose. Reeeal clever. Bet it took 'em ages to come up with that, yeah?"
Rose had rolled her eyes, then… Or had begun to, anyway, but instead found her gaze stuck musingly upon the ceiling. "…can't even remember 'em all, anymore. Not really. Such a bad joke, it kinda blends." She shrugged, nonchalant. "Guess that's just the way of flowers and memories, huh? They sorta wither, after a while."
"Mmm," the Doctor had returned noncommittally. Though—to be fair— that was most of what he could say with the sonic screwdriver in his mouth. It was either that or distorted vowel-sounds; her pick. Of course, that wasn't to say Rose was wrong in assuming that he was paying as little attention as was necessary to justify his inevitable 'I'm not ignoring you (entirely)' defense.
In the end, she told herself it hardly mattered, and left him to his tinkering.
X
She stops. She looks up. The graceful camber of her craning neck gleams like ivory in the dead of winter, the exposed flesh nearly as white—and almost as cold—as the drifting tufts of midnight snow.
"D'you think it's out there? Even now?"
The question wafts upward on hazy mists of breath. When her boots falter to a stop, so do another's pair; she loses the hand that she'd been holding, but gains a kiss and a gently-looped scarf.
"Who could say? Different universe, different stars, different galaxies… I'm so sorry, but I couldn't tell you."
She tries not to look as crestfallen as she feels.
"That said… Wherever it is, Rose, it won't have wilted. It's still there. It's still yours—ours. Just like always."
He smiles. Encouraging. Lacing their fingers between them, he swings their arms back and forth, back and forth, like an eager child, until even their bodies are effected: swaying into motion and unable to stop. The playful (and, perhaps, gravitational) force of it all compels her frowning lips to perk upward, and soon she's pink and amused and—temporarily— mollified.
"…thank you."
X
It hadn't been her birthday. Probably.
It'd also been fairly safe to assume that they still had some time left before Christmas, or Easter, or Valentine's. Neither had it been their anniversary, due in great part to the fact that they weren't really, well, properly, you know… anyway. So a great big "no" on that.
But for some reason or another—known only, as most reasons were, to the Doctor himself— that day had been chosen as one of celebration. Gifts and all: Rose's squeak of gleeful anticipation had bounced off of the Tardis halls, giggles spilling from her mouth as the Doctor had bound his tie around her eyes and took her by the shoulders, leading her in exuberant spins. "We can't have you spoiling yourself!" he'd teased, his warm laughter tickling her smile-strained cheeks as her blonde hair flared and swirled. So close— she'd been able to feel it whenever stray tendrils brushed against his chin or temple; her skin had flushed wherever his guiding fingers landed. "No peeking! No peeking—!"
"What, did you get me a piñata?"
"Now you want a horse full of candy, too? Isn't Arthur enough?"
"Pft, Arthur is all yours. Are we pinnin' a tail on him, then? There are only so many games that start with gettin' dizzy!"
"Oh, you know what they say about people who assume, Rose… They spell 'you' wrong. Now! Sit down, right there—yes, there. Careful… Feel free to stretch your legs out a bit, there we go. Aaaand—!"
A wooden creak had resounded in her ears for a moment, followed by a hollow, yet echoing thrum. Like the sea, almost, when heard though one's hands. In nearly the same instant, she'd been distracted by friction: the heat of cotton on cashmere, of words against her ear. Five minutes later, Rose couldn't anymore remember what, exactly, the Doctor had said, so immediately captivated she'd been by the sight before her. One second, she'd been safe within the confines of the Tardis; the next, she'd found herself seated on the sloped stoop, feet dangling in the ether, moored to the ship by the body crouched behind her.
One hand had curled around her forearm. The other tossed the tie away.
"What you're looking at," it'd been quietly explained, as a chin fell to rest against her shoulder and an index finger inched out to gesticulate, "is the result of a collision between two galaxies. The distribution of gravity in this sector is such that the smaller galaxy has shot itself through the big'un's center, like an arrow! And the continued force that it's exerting is distending the little one's edges even more, making it look all… leafy. Like a stem, do you see?"
His finger had arced, tracing the lilac wisps of extraterrestrial residue that lingered a hundred-million miles beyond their hovering craft. The stem—she could see it, yes. Swooping sidelong in a silken swirl, so delicate Rose had thought she might've been able to waft it away. Yet still, it gleamed through the dark like a fire opal, kaleidoscopic and luminous. And there, resting above its airiest end: the flower to its stalk. Amidst the black velvet of deep space, the tendrils of heliotrope vapors congealed into thick clouds of indigo and gold, interspersed with vivid bursts of amber fire. The ruby-rust of those mottled flares veined outward, as if a sort of webbing, before flaking off into ten-thousand firefly flickers of ethereal cerulean, glittering like dewdrops and diamonds atop the blossoming helix of the larger galaxy.
"NASA calls it Arp 273," the Doctor had grinned— she'd known that he had, even though she hadn't been looking at him, right then. She'd been able to feel it, in much the same way she'd been sure he could feel her heart pounding frantically against her ribcage… The way she could feel his hearts skip a beat against her back, fluttering endearingly when she'd answered with a stunning smile of her own. "The rose galaxies."
X
The door is open, the others are elsewhere, and he has the words of Robert Herrick stuck on a loop in his mind.
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow will be dying.
He doesn't need to look up to know where they are. Where he is. This trip… This one trip, it's not for them. This pilgrimage is his own, undertaken for his own sake and reasons and desires, as it's always been. As it'll always be.
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying:
The scanners are unneeded; he switches them off. Locks the controls. Takes a deep breath. Feels the familiar ache of this place, these thoughts, stick in his chest and rummage around like a butcher's blade, hacking away at his soul... But even if he were to try, he'd not have been able to evade her emotional hold. Hand-in-hand, they'd left imprints and memories of their adventures together scattered across the breadth of Forever, ingrained within the Time Vortex itself. For him, she has become like oxygen: invisible, necessary, inescapable.
And this same flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow will be dying.
His boots clatter soundlessly against the gloss-smooth floor. Fingers flex, restless and empty, before being stuffed unceremoniously beneath crossed arms. Resting his weight against the jamb, he peers wearily out into the iridescent astral, gaze once again falling upon the universe's everlasting rose: shimmering, variegated, and eternally sparkling with stardust.
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may…
White: "Purity." Yellow: "Friendship." Pink: "Gratitude." Orange: "Energy." Red: "Passion." Lavender: "Love at first sight." Blue: "I can't have you, but neither can I stop thinking about you."
Old Time is still a-flying.
He smiles as he misses her.
X
"If you were t' ever give me flowers someday—real flowers, like a normal bloke," Rose had asked, her head quirked and her smile lopsided, with a teasing tip of tongue between her teeth, "what sort would you get me?"
At this, the Doctor had blinked, taken aback. Taken aback, but not beyond answering; he'd deliberated for a spell, but then twisted fully to face the young woman beside him. Hip to hip, thigh to thigh, they had squeezed together to lounge in the doorframe of the Tardis. The hands that hadn't been holding the frosted flutes of banana daiquiris sat atop their sporadically-bumping knees; their pinkies kept catching against one another, as if in an unspoken promise. "Isn't it obvious?" he'd then returned, in complete and utter earnestness.
There were supernovas in her eyes: brilliant, bright, blinding. Beautiful. But soft— tender—, in a way that dying stars rarely managed.
"Humor me."
And for a moment, he'd thought of humor. Of jokes. The alluded bad puns of her past; the arsenal of witticisms that he'd cowered behind in the present. It would have been such an easy loophole to exploit, and doing so had been a temptation, even if it'd meant undermining all of… everything. To shoot a deluge of half-lies and enigmatic truths her way, watered down by dumb jests and anecdotes and did you know, for example, that the anemone conveys love in the language of flowers, too— 'unfading love'—and they aren't bogged down by nearly so many color-related 'dialects' as roses, which might mean 'friendship' if yellow, or 'pure' if white, and plus, an anemone is a sort of sea-creature, too, isn't that fascinating, and have I ever told you about the planet Anomena 14, which is really just one big ocean, and do you suppose they have anemone there? The sea-sort, not the flower-sort, and speaking of flour, have we done the shopping yet, because next time we're near a market I need to pick up two yards of copper wiring, a hydraulics pump, staples, apples, and—should you remind me— nutella.
But he hadn't. Amazingly, he hadn't. For once, he'd chosen not succumb to distracting rambles or flustered ranting. Instead, in the face of his companion's wry command, the Doctor had merely beamed again—in that sad way of his, that distant way. The sort of sobering smile that overtook the whole of his boyish face, but could never quite penetrate the endless abyss of Space and Time that lurked behind the lachrymose sheen of his dark, dark eyes.
In that instant, Rose had wavered. Swallowed. Hard. And he—with as much barefaced, shameless honesty as could be mustered— had affectionately confessed,
"Forget-me-nots."
XXX