Le Mien Privé Seulement
On the roof of the Powell Estates, Buckham House, a strange, mechanical, grinding sound rent the air. A light began to flash in and out of existence seven feet off the ground, and the blue outline of a Public Police Call Box soon followed. After a few moments, it solidified, casting a long, dark shadow across the rooftop.
The box opened, a single panel of faded blue wood swinging away to reveal a tall, lanky man wearing a brown and blue pinstriped suit underneath a lighter brown overcoat that trailed to mid-calve. He stepped into the doorway, leaning one shoulder against its frame as he ran a hand through his wild brown hair.
He half stepped out of the box, his foot disturbing the fine layer of white ash which covered the length of the rooftop before him. The man in brown drew in a deep breath and closed his eyes, lips pursing before he took the final step out of the box and shut the door behind him.
He took a few faltering steps toward the roof access door, but turned abruptly and walked to the edge of the roof instead, his eyes sweeping the cityscape before him. A strong, frigid wind brushed his hair back and his overcoat away from his legs, but he did not shiver. He began to pace. He paced a weaving, erratic pattern into the ash, the white coating his Chuck Taylors and the bottom of his pant legs. He stooped down and took a mass of the stuff into his hand, allowing it to slip through his fingers and back to the ground.
Then, he began to trace a swirling sort of pattern into the blank canvas before him, a string of interlocking circles and squiggles and lines that could have been words. He continued until the space in front of him was all taken up, and he had to turn to start on a fresh patch of roof. He wrote with a slow deliberateness, every symbol traced out with infinite care, only stopping when his hand flared a dull yellow. He brought the appendage up to his face and studied it a moment before dropping it to his side and looking over his labor. The man nodded then, once, and rose to his feet. Carefully, he stepped over the message, and moved back to the door he'd avoided, entering the building slowly. The wind blew it shut with a rattling clang.
The man stood motionlessly in front of a single door that was chipped and peeling with age and exposure to the elements, a door identical to its neighbors but for the large black numbers painted next to its frame. The numbers were crooked, uneven, and shaky around the edges, as if the person painting them was either horrible at free hand or in a terrible hurry. The eight in particular was bad, having been painted in two separate circles that looked more like lopsided ovals, the top one bigger than the bottom. It was thicker and darker in comparison to the four, which had gotten only one coat of paint where the eight had at least three.
He reached into the breast pocket of his coat slowly, and brought out a small, metal, pen-looking instrument. He rested it against the lock on the door, but pulled back as soon as it made contact, looking down at the thing that wasn't a pen and rolling in around in his hands. He began to twirl it in his fingers rather skillfully considering its bulky, unbalanced design, and stared hard at the peep-hole on the door. He shook his head once, twice, and sighed sharply as he looked back to the stairwell.
He stopped the twirling abruptly and pointed the device back at the lock, it's tip flaring blue. After a nearly inaudible click, the man tucked the tool back into his pocket, and stood completely still with one hand resting on the knob, the other balled into a tight fist by his thigh. He drew in a deep breath and slowly opened the door.
He silently walked down the hall, glancing briefly at a large hole in the wall that had been covered with a white sheet, and emerged into a small, cramped living room filled to the brim with furniture. The room was dark but for a strand of Christmas lights hung on the far wall with scotch tape that had fallen in a few places. The lights cast a soft multicolored glow about the room which was just bright enough to reveal mounds of stuff strewn about the floor underneath a short, white, artificial tree.
The man walked toward the mess, his eyes trailing over the presents and paper and bows and ribbons before pausing on a small pile of loot on the couch that had started to fall between the cushions. It consisted of a small plastic figure of one of the three-eyed aliens from Toy Story, a packet of brown wool socks, a clear box with some kind of machine sealed inside it, and a large, bright red tie covered with dancing Santas.
The man pulled the tie from underneath the other items, and carefully folded it before stuffing it onto his pocket, a small, sad smile touching his face as he did so. He cast his gaze about the room again, and sat down on the couch, his head tilting to back to rest against the wall. He sat like that for a long while, eyes closed as he breathed deeply.
Eventually, the man opened his eyes again and pulled himself off the couch, heading back to the hallway. He stopped at the hole in the wall that might have once been a door, and lifted the sheet out of his view. Inside, the room was in shambles. Debris had been piled up everywhere: broken wood, ornaments, clothing, and drywall littered the floor. The only clear space was the bed, which was by no means tidy.
A girl lay in curled up in the bed, the sheets tangled and cocooned around her body, the comforter scrunched down at her feet and falling off the mattress. Her hair lay across her face in a frazzled mass of bleach-blonde strands, obscuring her features from view. He man leaned against the door frame, a smile curving his lips as he watched her breath make the hair in front of her nose sway back and forth.
The girl shifted and let out a small groan, and flung her hand out around her, patting the bed covers. The man's eyes widened as he quickly turned to leave the room, and a jagged piece of wood that had nagged his coat tumbled to the ground at the sudden movement. The girl's eyes snapped open, and she drew in a deep breath, but quickly released it as her eyes fell on the cause of the noise.
"Doctor? What's the matter?" the girl mumbled almost unintelligibly, a hand coming to swipe the hair out of her face as she sat up, blinking hazily. "Is it more aliens?"
"No," the man responded quickly, "It's nothing. Go back to sleep."
The girl shivered and reached down to pull the comforter back over herself, wrapping it around her shoulders. "What are you doing up here? Thought the TARDIS needed work."
He moved his mouth silently, before breaking out, "Ah, I'm jus–the TARDIS- I –I needed... tea! Tea! For a break -and we're, uh, out, so I came up here."
"Quiet," the girl shushed, wrinkling her nose. "You'll wake Mum."
The man cast an anxious look down the hall and they both fell silent. After a few moments, the girl whispered to him, "Think we're safe. She had a lot to drink, anyway."
He nodded, and turned back to the girl. She raised her eyebrows after a long pause, and then man said rather suddenly, "Right, well, I'll be going." He bit his lip, and then smiled brightly at her. "Bye, Rose."
"Doctor," the girl said sternly. The man froze in the doorway. "You didn't come up for tea, did you?"
"Uh," he squeaked. She scowled.
"Honestly! You don't have to check on me or anything. I meant what I said earlier. I do want to keep traveling with you. I only wanted to be here for Mum for the next few days, yeah? Have to clean up this mess at the very least." She waved her hand at the wreckage cluttering the bedroom.
The man shook his head, "No, I wasn't checking up on you. I know you meant- mean it." He let out a harsh breath as he stared at her, his eyes glimmering in the dim light from the window.
"I know," he repeated in a whisper.
The girl frowned. "Are you all right? You don't sound so good. Not still feeling sick, are you?"
"No, no, not sick."
"Good." Her brow was furrowed. "Is it about- about," the girl swallowed and wet her large lips, "Satellite Five?"
The man opened his mouth, halfway through the motion of shaking his head when he stopped abruptly. He nodded.
The girl bit her lip, then slid to the middle of the bed. "Come on, then." He cocked his head to the side, and didn't move. She huffed sharply, "I won't bite."
He approached the bed slowly, carefully avoiding the rubbish strewn about the floor. He sat with one leg hanging off the side of the bed, facing the girl, who reached for his hand immediately. She fiddled with it, tracing the lines on his palm and the whorls of his fingertips, turning it this way and that. First she threaded their fingers, and then cupped them together, never settling on any one position for very long.
"I'm sorry," she said quietly.
The man looked up from her ministrations. "What?"
"I'm sorry. For the way I acted, you know." She tucked some loose hair behind her ear without releasing her hold on him, keeping her gaze on their joined hands. "When you- since you changed."
"It's alright, Rose," the man offered.
"No, it's not. I was just so- you should have told me." She locked gazes with him, dark eyebrows furrowing as she pursued her lips.
"I-"
"You should have. I was so scared, Doctor. You -I dunno- exploded." The man squeezed her hand.
"I'm so sorry."
"No, don't-" she sighed, shaking her head. "I've been thinking, yeah? This whole thing, it reminds me of this friend I had when I was growing up. Alicia. We wanted to spend every waking moment together. Used to drive Mum and her parents batty."
She looked up at him, tongue pinned between her teeth as she smiled. "In second grade they put us in different classes, and I refused to do any work or follow instructions or anything until they put us together. Took a week, but I wore the teachers down in the end."
The man laughed lightly as he brought her hand to his lips. "I can believe it. You, Rose Tyler, can do anything if you put your temper to it."
The girl flushed slightly, and cleared her throat. "Yeah, well, in 6th, her father got a job up North, and they moved away. I didn't see her again for five years."
She stopped talking, and bit her lip, eyes turning down to their hands. She flipped his over in her grasp and started to rub at the hair she found on the back of his palm. "Then- well, I, ah, I started dating this bloke, Jimmy Stone. He was in a band and they got this gig in York, and I went with him. Alicia was there, at the club they were playing. I didn't even see her at first, but then she won the pub quiz, and they said her name."
"It was so weird to see her again. I mean, we were so close in elementary. Like that." She lifted her hand to cross two fingers before dropping it back to her side. "And we got to talking, and she was so different. I mean, it was still her, yeah? I could tell. But in school she was always really shy, and then…"
The girl paused to take a deep breath, and looked up at her companion. "I've been thinking, the renovation-"
"Regeneration," the man corrected quietly.
"Right," she girl waved her hand, "regeneration. It's just like that. It's like meeting up with someone you knew really well but haven't seen in a few years. But, with you, you changed in like, thirty seconds- in the middle of the sentence! One minute you're going on about Barcelona, then the next you're burning up gold and talking about new teeth, and you look completely different. I wouldn't have known you from Adam-"
"Really? I like to think you're more observant than that." The girl frowned at him, head shaking slowly.
"Adam? Utah? Snap your fingers?"
"Oh! Right, Adam." She giggled and smacked his arm, nose wrinkling as a grin stretching her mouth. "That was awful."
"It was a bit."
"That the kind of man you are now? King of Bad Puns?" As the girl giggled on, the man's jaw clenched.
"No," he countered, "maybe next time."
"Hey, none of that." She tugged on his arm. "You can't go doing a next time for a long time."
They both frowned. "Well, that sounded pretty. I mean that you can't go changing on me again anytime soon. I won't allow it."
"Oh?" The man caught her eyes with a wink. "The Great Goddess Rose Tyler say's it's not allowed?"
"Nope," she smirked, "I forbid it."
"Rassilon help-" His smile dissolved as quickly as it had appeared, and he stated pulling back from the girl in front of him.
Her eyes widened and she tugged him back. "Besides," she said quickly, "if you did you'd have to deal with the Wrath of the Great Mother."
"Wouldn't want to get on the wrong side of Jackie Tyler."
"Might slap you, again."
Silence reigned, the man staring at a patch of headboard over the girls shoulder while she gnawed on her lip and gazed at his face. Yellow flared, and they both looked down to the man's glowing hands.
"What's this? You're still sick?"
"No."
"I thought you said the energy was all out, or, whatever." The girl's tone crept higher and higher. "They're not going to come for you again, are they? I can't-"
"No. Rose." He caught her face in his hands and looked her straight in the eye. "I'm fine. It's going to be fine. There's only a little left over energy. Nothing to worry about. I just need to go back to the TARDIS and get some rest."
"Alright." The man released her slowly, and didn't struggle when she grabbed his hands. "You should do that. But…can you stay here? Just for a bit?"
"For as long as you want."
The girl leaned forward to wrap the man in a hug, and he reciprocated, one hand going to her head as the other pressed at her lower back to bring her closer. He rested his cheek against her hair and inhaled deeply.
"I was worried," the girl mumbled into his shoulder after a few long minutes. "I was worried, because when I saw Alicia again, we didn't like each other."
The man frowned. "What?"
"We chatted, and had a decent time, but besides our childhood, we had nothing to talk about."
The man closed his eyes. "Rose..."
"It was really awkward, actually. We started babbling on about the club and our drinks and this one girl's naffy outfit, but we didn't really say anything, and…"
"That wouldn't change, Rose." He pulled back, arm still around her, and captured her eyes. "That won't ever change. No matter what happens to me, no matter how many times I regenerate," he said forcefully. "I'll always… I'll always care for you."
The girl's mouth trembled for a moment, and she sucked in a deep breath, nodding jerkily. "The Doctor and Rose."
"Best mates."
"Traveling through time and space."
"Putting an end to injustice; righting wrongs; ending tyranny; protecting the forest- No, wait, that's 'Men in Tights.'"
She laughed unrestrainedly and smacked him on the shoulder. Then, she pursed her lips. "You like me."
"Well, yeah, I-" The man's eyes flickered down to her smirk and then back to her steady gaze. "No, now, wait a minute. I never said-"
"Yes, you di-id," the girl said in a sing-song voice. "You like me."
"Take it back," the man demanded, leaning in close enough that their noses bumped.
"Nope. I won't. You like m-IEE!" The girl shrieked as he tickled her mercilessly, falling to lie flat on the bed as she tried to wriggle away from him. The man joined in her laugher and alternately attacked her middle and armpits while she tried to kick him away.
A loud crash sounded from down the hall, and a woman's voice called out: "God, would you two shut it already! It's four in the bleeding morning!"
They both froze and looked at each other wide-eyed. In tandem, they began to snicker. "S-sorry, Mum!" the girl cried out as she sat up, smacking her companion's shoulder. The sound of a door slamming echoed its way into the room, and the man beamed wildly at his bed-mate before adopting a schooled expression.
"Time for you to go to sleep, young lady."
"Oh, am I keeping the old miser up past his bed-time?" she chucked and whispered back. He scowled at her and pushed her back on the bed with a single finger to her forehead.
"Fine," she pouted, and grabbed the comforter. He stood to help her put it to rights on the bed, and sank back down by her side, handing her a pillow off the floor. She accepted it with a smile and jammed it under her head before reaching for his hand. "You promised you'd stay."
"I will."
"Good." She closed her eyes and settled in.
The man lightly traced her features: jaw line, cheekbone, eyebrow, and the bridge of her nose. The girl hummed slightly, an eye peaking open when his fingers smoothed a mass of tangled hair behind her ear. "Still kinda creepy."
At his blank look, she nodded toward his hand. He frowned, flexed it, and blinked at her. She rolled her eyes, and the man interrupted her just as she opened her mouth: "Oh! Re-growing body parts! Not creepy, I'll have you know. I can name fourteen different planets where they cut of various appendages in religious rituals and grow them back as a sign of renewed faith in their deities."
The girl snorted indelicately. "You're on earth now, you alien, and us human don't like to chop off hands and watch them grow back."
"You only say that because you can't grow yours back. If you could, you lot would turn it into a competition. A sport! It'd be an Olympic event, even. See who had the most creative way of severing limbs, who could stay conscious the longest afterwards, and who could grow it back fastest-"
The girl coughed, and the sound of it was almost like the word "Nutter."
The man grinned, and poked her comforter-clad thigh. "Stop trying to distract me. Go to sleep."
She pouted again, but obeyed. When her breathing even out, the man leaned down and kissed her gently on the temple. "Goodnight, Doctor," she murmured.
The man looked at her, eyes glimmering once more, and sighed. "Goodbye, Rose Tyler." He tucked the comforter under her chin, then stood and left the room, never once looking back.
The roof was not the same as the man had left it. Another set of tracks, the same size and shape and tread, were pressed into the ash, leading from the door out to the blue box. The man paused as he saw them, then looked across the length of the roof, and it was empty and silent but for the whistling of the wind. He followed their path first to the blue box, and then as they veered to the edge of the roof.
Where once there had been symbols drawn into the soot there were now erratic slices of cleared roof, the displaced ash having been sprayed in every which direction. Not a single trace of the man's message remained, but a new line of symbols had been slashed into the ash next to the clearing.
The man came to stand directly over it, and studied it with a blank expression. He slowly used his shoe to smooth the line out of existence, and stared out over the city once more as the first vestiges of dawn began to streak the horizon. He swallowed tightly, ran a hand over his face, then walked back to the blue box, his shoulders hunched. It disappeared with the same grinding noise that had signaled its appearance.
A few moments later the wind picked up, swirling the ash into a miniature cyclone, erasing all signs of the man from the roof.
000
AN: I wrote most of this fic in one sitting about three weeks before seeing "The End of Time." It originally came to me while I was watching 42, but I felt it worked much better as a replacement/expansion scene for tEoT. It's actually been complete for about three months now, with me revisiting it every week or so to edit. I've decided to call it, and let you guys tell me what you think, and what I should change.
I'm currently working on a companion piece that deals with the implications of this visit for Handy and Rose's relationship in the parallel universe, but it's turned into a bit of a monster, and you won't see it for a few months.
Reference:
"Naffy," according to Wikipedia, is British slang for "lame, tacky or cheap."
1/23/11- I tried posting this to another site that rejected it because of grammatical errors. I've since edited. This is the newest version.
In English, the title means "My own private only." Apologies to any French readers out there; I used an online translator.