Disclaimer: I recently won Doctor Who from RTD in a poker game. Joss Whedon was there and I cleaned him out as well—I now own Buffy, Angel, and Firefly. And Eliza Dushku. Sigh. Except for the part where I don't, really.
AN: My first go at Doctor Who fic! I wrote this forever ago and have just now worked up the nerve to post. Hooray for self-affirmation!
This story takes place post-Family of Blood with extremely vague references to what comes before and after.
Introitus
By: OneSongKatie
In my dream she keeps walking away. He doesn't know why that phrase lingers on his lips like red wine, tart and brittle. He doesn't remember much about being John Smith, but he remembers charcoal smudges forming lips and eyes and those words hovering, obscuring the face, resonating. And he remembers the ache and the knowledge that he's somehow lost her all over again rings in his skull while grey and white lines blur.
In his dreams he talks to Rose. He generally doesn't sleep and considers the act of closing his eyes—quite irrationally some part of him insists but he tucks the silly truthful voice away—a form of surrender to the ever whirling and insurmountable universe pressing in on him. But in those infirm, tiny moments of resigned unconsciousness he finds her there. When he looks on her face in this way it is both sweet relief and acutely painful and burns his skin from the inside.
In dreams, when he sees her, he is back on that beach with the multi-dimensionally ironic name. He clenches his eyelids around her face, desperately tries to freeze it, trap her and her golden hair, windswept and heartbreaking.
Later, he sees her with his waking eyes. On the TARDIS, digging around the console, hurting and finding cold shreds of comfort in the façade of maintenance, in the solid whir and buzz of machinery beneath his hands. He looks up from where the sonic screwdriver presses into snaking wires and she is there. She leans on a rail, watching him with what seems to be the faintest hint of amusement in her eyes. He gasps, tilts off balance, drops the screwdriver.
His mouth soundlessly forms a word. How.
She grins more fully. Are you surprised? I am the Bad Wolf after all.
He gapes at her, standing feet from him, looking so young and vital, like she never tumbled into eternity and out of his world. As if watching her infinitely far across a windblown beach had been a dream. He stares disbelieving, watches her saunter toward him. He doesn't think it's important in that moment that they are communicating without speaking.
But….how?He asks again, not daring to hope.
All things are possible to those as… She looks at him meaningfully. Enigmatic… as you and I. She raises an eyebrow and his hearts constrict in tandem. He doesn't remember her being this omniscient or this vague and though there's something wrong here he ignores the pang, because he's longed for one last chance to say the words that perpetually ring in his ears, hollow and bitter. And he cannot let another chance evaporate into ageless, fathomless ether.
He leans toward her, fervent, possessed, afraid and desperate to touch her.He hovers, searching her eyes.I have wanted to show you so many things since you left. Everything I see, every beautiful sight. They don't mean anything. Their awe cannot touch me. I am numb.
He halts, chokes. This is not real, she is not here. But it doesn't stop him from hurtling on.
You have no idea how much ache there is in the universe. Vast caverns of unfilled space that beg me to fall into their nothingness. I lost you, and now all I can think about is fading into the empty black of uncharted stars.
She reaches up to touch his face, her touch is feather light, almost nothing. But I'm here.
Are you? He is frantic, feverish and terrified that she will dissolve, disappear.
I am. She softly presses a phantom hand against his temple.Here.He turns into her touch, closes his eyes against the sensation.
Her voice is soothing in his frenzied head, a trickle of cool, clear water assuaging his heated anguish. . So. Tell me. Let's hear all about your new adventures. Something about energy particles, yes? Hospitals on the moon? She pauses, runs her ghost fingers through his hair. Families of blood?
He opens his eyes abruptly, searches her own strange eyes, flecked with gold, unable to let this pass.I love you. You have to know. I've been so lost without you. Alone. I cut all my memories from body, changed my DNA, and I still couldn't forget your face. He takes her hand desperately from where it rests on his face with both his hands. It is barely solid, softer than the finest sand.
And he knows. He is losing his mind and this is the hammer nailing a final dirge rhythm in his coffin. And somehow, he doesn't care. Not if it means he can have her.
After this first, raw encounter he sees her all the time. In the ebbs and flows of his experiences with others, new companions and sometimes new old companions, though no one hurts him or compels him as she does. Even as a ghost she is the most solid figure in his world.
He talks to her about spare parts for the TARDIS, the dwindling spore distribution of fichus-like flowers on a distant jungle planet, giant balls of yarn that mysteriously turn up in 19th century New York, the genius way he deals with said balls of yarn and their attempt to terrorize the citizens of New York, a strange smell he encounters in Paddington Station in the far future. Tiny, strange details which only she can fully appreciate and react to accordingly.
He tells her all the secrets of his cavernous, gaping life and how she made him forget everything that came before. Only hope and bright things with her. He tells her that what is most painful to him is the fact that they are no longer linked by a single phenomenon in the universe. Not even ancient, reverberating starlight can flash on them both as it echoes ominous and dead through the ages. That he cannot take solace in the stars.