"Oh nonononononono! See? Never waste time on a hug!"
- The Tenth Doctor, Evolution of the Daleks
Back, years ago, way before the Doctor made an appearance, Rose had taken English at high school. Her teacher had explained about melodrama and the way an audience was desensitised to the pain of characters. Truth be told, she'd been stuffing around with Shireen at the time, writing notes about how gorgeous Timothy Parker in the second row was and not really listening. But those words had struck her. How could someones really be so affected by horrible events that they just stopped caring? That they laughed?
Now she understands. Standing in front of the only man she has ever felt true and utter loyalty and love to, she understands. He's not laughing, and neither is she, but there's a dull spark in his eye. He's seen so much terror, so much sadness that he locks it away inside of him, desensitising himself to the pain as a defence mechanism. She realises suddenly that she's going the same way.
She's ripped him apart - ripped the world apart – standing in some church in the past opposite him, trying so desperately to explain. Part of her has gone numb, it's the only way she can deal with this.
"If I'd realised-" she begins, hoping that even these three words might magically make it all go away. As if she can explain that it was a misgiving of the past, trying to pass it off as an uneducated mistake. Something resembling the excuses she'd given to her English teacher at school. "Sorry Miss. If I'd realised it was due today…"
He seems to recognise this, meeting her eyes with his and holding her sight captive. "Just… tell me you're sorry."
She nods and doesn't drop her gaze. Inside she realises that this may be her only chance, and if she buggers it up now, it would be one more loss for the day… a mistake explicitly made.
"I am." She pauses. "I'm sorry ."
For a second Rose thinks that he's going to turn away unsatisfied, but he reaches out instead, cupping a hand around her cheek, his long fingers burying themselves in her hair and his thumb gently touching the pressure point in her temple.
Suddenly, he splits into that huge grin, the unexpected swap between incredibly subdued and radiant happiness that she's seen so often in him as long as she's known him. He chuckles, a silent sound that is his alone, and pulls her to him, hugging her tightly.
The empty void carved deep within her body begins to fill again, flooding with his warm forgiveness. His gripping embrace energizes her, and she begins to feel hope that perhaps this isn't the end. She can't die now that she's found his love again.
&&
Years ago Reinette dreamt of embracing him, holding him to her so that he could not disappear in the same fashion he had done twice already in her life. It was improper of course, but it was her own mind and her own memories to do with what she liked. Such thoughts, provided they remained un-voiced, were perfectly harmless.
Now, she can feel his fingers inside her mind. Tendrils, like leaves that tickle briefly when they pass over skin. He's so gentle, his fingers like an embrace of her soul.
"Fireplace man… you are inside my mind."
"Oh dear, Reinette," he replies quietly. "You've had some cowboys in here."
Reinette swallows, searching in her own mind to find him. "You are in my memories. You walk among them."
"If there's anything you don't want me to see, just imagine a door and close it. I won't look." So queer, the ideas this man has, but as he explores one particular memory, she understands. Purposefully she stands by this door and holds it firmly open. "Ooh… actually… there's a door just there." She smiles, and opens her eyes, searching his face for recognition of this improper fantasy that she's held onto for so long.
"You might want to clo-" He pauses and she raises her eyebrows. "Ooh. Actually, several." She wishes to laugh at his reaction, but composes herself instead, curious still about this man.
"To walk among the memories of another living soul… do you ever get used to this?"
His voice is detached when he replies, far away from his own body. "I don't make a habit of it…"
She's so warm inside from his touch, and she can't believe his response. "How can you resist?" If she is this warm, then surely he must also feel the radiating heat, like a lover's embrace.
"What age are you?" He asks forwardly, but she supposes for a man that is probing deep into her most intimate thoughts and memories, they are long past trivial social politics.
"So impertinent a question so early in the conversation. How promising."
"No, not my question… theirs. You're twenty-three and for some reason, that means you're not old enough." Reinette hasn't spoken a word of her age, and yet he realises it in an instance.
Before her, in her mind – yet another queer occurrence for the evening – is another door, so torn and ravaged by past storms. So old is this door that its weather beaten wood has lost its original colour. Outwardly, Reinette flinches as she carefully opens the door.
Obviously the man notices, reassuring her. "Sorry, you might find old memories reawakening. Side effect."
She doesn't listen, so lost in the realm beyond this door. "Oh, such a lonely childhood…" The glorious heat that bubbles inside her is stilled by the contents of this room, so sad and forlorn are its memories… and they are not her own.
"It'll pass. Stay with me." He doesn't seem to realise, and yet she can feel his probing deep within her own mind.
"Oh, Doctor. So lonely. So very, very alone." Reinette embraces his mind, her lonely Doctor, to hold her to him.
"What do you mean, alone? You've never been alone in your life!" He pauses, finally coming to understand. "When did you start calling me 'Doctor'?"
But she is lost in his pain, so deep it reaches into his memories that she can barely find the door to leave. "Such a lonely little boy. Lonely then and lonelier now." So long ago, hundreds of years since he was a child. So old and aching from time gone past. She opens her eyes.
"How can you bear it?"
There doesn't seem to be enough time left for them to succeed in whatever plan her Fireplace Man and his two oddly dressed friends have, and yet here he stands, embracing her in such an odd fashion, and she in return.
Embrace so real that she doesn't want to ever let go.
&&
Back when she was living with her mum still, only oh… seven years from today's date where she stands, they used to go to carnivals. Just her, Jackie and sometimes Mickey, provided that they weren't tiffing at the time, if he had the cash and could be bothered. Rose'd always wanted to go on the ghost train, laughing when Jackie's face turned ashen at the thought. Mickey would never back down of course, but after the ride ended, he'd always had to sit down and eat something. (Something that almost always then ended up in the trash can as she patted his back soothingly.)
She loved it. The straight out unleashed fear that raced adrenalin through her body, jumping and screaming at sudden movements from the side, guttural moans and groans that echoed around them. It was fun to be scared in a controlled environment, putting yourself at low risk and letting the adrenalin drug fill your system.
With the Doctor, it was the same, except this time there was risk. You could die in 1869 in some dungeon-like morgue, or billions of years from her initial present, trapped on a space platform while the sun exploded. Then again, you could die only six years from when you left, now, just before the 2012 Olympic Games.
Throat catching and heart racing at the sound of loud banging inside the carport, Rose listens. "That you, puss-cat? You trapped?" Leaning in, hoping that it isonly a cat, she waits by the door. There's a loud clattering, much more audible than the others, and she jumps away, unnerved.
Studying the door, she begins to murmur messages of denial to herself. "Not gonna open it… not gonna open it… not gonna open it…"
Leaning down, her curiosity gets the better of her. If curiosity killed the cat, and it was just a cat in there, then from the lack of sound now coming from the shed, they were both going to go the same way. Her fingers hover over the handle and she tentatively pulls the door up, peering into the darkness inside.
Suddenly a big ball of… something … jumps out at her, a tangle of wires buzzing angrily, like a swarm of bees around her head.
Arm above her face in protection, she tries to ward it off, falling to the ground as she does so.
"Stay still!" The Doctor's voice calls from around the corner, and she rocks slightly, not really listening to him. The wires convulse, swerving away from her. Suddenly it snaps toward her, a tiny ball of thread falling to her hands.
The Doctor runs to her, holding out both hands and pulling her to her feet. "Okey dokey?"
"Yeah," she pants. "Cheers."
He grins, that eternal grin that doesn't ever seem to leave his face. "No probs." It's infectious, and she can't help but smile back.
Still holding the ball of… whatever it is… she wraps her arms around his neck, hugging him tightly. For the thousandth time she can't believe that there was a time where she didn't have him to laugh with, smile with and hug with.
&&
As a child, Joan had always dreamt of the life of a princess. Far off castles in far off lands where she could do whatever she wanted with a prince by her side. One day, she had met her prince, before he was cruelly ripped away from her. Here, now, she feels like she's found another. Brilliant, smart… handsome, and from the lips of a Negro servant, it seems that he too will be ripped from her.
The book that he's filled with wondrous absurdities speaks a tale of danger and fear, fiery hate and domination. If she doesn't speak, the end will come, but if she does, he will be brutally torn from her grasp, with no tomb for her to mourn, and no explanation for her to give.
Joan swallows, gazing at him from her position by the window as John and the servant girl quarrel. Her voice is soft as she interrupts, calmer than she expects it to be. "Then it all ends in destruction."
He turns to her, his arm still outstretched, holding the watch that could destroy so many lives, whichever way it falls.
"I never read to the end. Those creatures will live forever. To breed and conquer… the war across the stars. For every child."
He's beginning to cry, and she wants to pull him to her, just once before he is forced to die.
"Martha, Timothy, would you leave us alone please?"
There's a pause, hesitation as they both stand confused and shocked in the center of the room. Then they turn, creaking the door open and then closing it behind them to give John and Joan some privacy.
John whimpers, a deep cry that she imagines is ripping her soul in half, and she runs to him, no longer able to hold back. They hug, embracing as the sky falls to the fields around them.
Perhaps it is selfishness, but she hopes that no matter who this Doctor is, or what he's like, that this feeling will stay within him forever.
A part of her wrapped in the arms of John… buried in another man's mind.
&&
It's not a fact Martha chooses to deny, mostly because it's incredibly obvious to anyone that has been around her longer than ten minutes, but Martha has always lived in chaos. Ever since her mum and dad split – probably before that, actually – there's been the yelling, the everlasting humming in her head from her mobile ringing and the feeling of crossfire in pretty much every restaurant she's had the misfortune of dining with her complete family in.
Travelling with him is another kind of chaos. It's a completely different breed altogether. It's so quick, so messy, and then once they've cleared one thing up they just leave. It's so easy to end one era, to go from one time to another through just a flick of a switch, a punch of one button or another.
Not to mention that before, she'd never been in love.
Oh, there were the odd boyfriends and the one-night stands that she'll only ever tell Tish about, but she'd never really been in love with any of them.
Of course she's just a rebound to him. She's never had the best of luck with anything, really, so it shouldn't surprise her, but it hurts more than she'd like to admit.
Now that she's spent almost three months in one time and place, unable to fly away from this particular era, her heart aches for calmness and somewhere new.
Her heart aches for him.
She stands by the TARDIS, staring at him before her, his brown coat spattered with the rain falling on the field. She asks about Joan, and his eyes close, like he's shutting John Smith even further away into his being.
"Time we moved on."
Reflecting on it later, she winces at her oblivious reaction. He'd dropped her a blatant hint in his reaction, and she'd pushed it. "If you want, I could go and-"
"Time we moved on." His tone once again warns her to change to topic. Somewhere, hidden in his eyes is that little lost boy, curled away from the storm. She begins to get the idea that perhaps he's not referring to Joan at all, but the other girl. Rose. The one she was definitely not replacing.
There was always a chance.
"Um… meant to say…"
As much as her heart aches, as much as she wants him to love her back, the last thing she wants is for him to know it. It's so messy, and it's so complicated, and she assures herself that one day she will tell him, but that day is not here yet Not now.
"Back there, last night, I would'a said anything to get you to change…"
"Oh yeah, 'course you would!" He agrees, nodding. Neither believe it, she knows. She can see it in his eyes, that little smug child hidden within him is… happy that she had declared her love to him. Despite this, she can't let him believe what she'd said.
"I mean, I wasn't really-"
"No, no, no…" He agrees, shaking his head, looking like a little wet puppy, caught in the rain. A lying wet puppy.
"Good."
"Fine."
"So there we are then," Martha says, hooking her thumbs through the loops of her jeans.
"There we are then, yes." The Doctor looks down, to the corner of the TARDIS, and she can't help but think with a smile that he seems somewhat fixated with the blue box. "And I never said," he adds as an afterthought, looking up at her again. "Thanks for looking after me."
Martha smiles, and his face ghosts with a damp childish grin in reciprocation. He launches toward her, gripping onto her shoulders so tightly that they're knocked into the doors of the wooden Police Box. She can feel her head sprinkled with rain from the sky and droplets falling from his flattened hair. She can feel the motion of his smile rubbing against her shoulder and the warm hum of the TARDIS behind them.
She's wet, out of time, cold, and completely indifferent to everything but him. The Human and the Time Lord, standing in a field in 1913, seventy-one years before her mother gives birth to her, finding warmth and acceptance in each others arms.