Author's Note.
This is my first foray into Doctor Who fanfiction. I have more planned, but this thread was born from the massive one I have currently going and I decided it was a good idea to see how its reception went, whether I succeeded in portraying angsty Doctor 10 and what I need to do in order to improve.
It starts off a bit err … PWP … but it isn't. It's psychological. (God that sounds like a terrible justification for calling porn something worthwhile, not that I am saying it doesn't have its place or anything … but, well … *continues to dig deeper hole!* if you have read any of my BMT Fiction you will know that "psychological" is my middle name, hence the rating, higher than children's but lower than Mature although, I suppose it could fit into either category!
Also, as a note of interest – type in Homo-sapien into Wikipedia and read the article on humans … it's flippin' hilarious – Wikipedia's policy of "writing it for an outsider looking in" is utterly genius – I have an image of 10 reading this and applying it all …. *sniggers in the corner*
Please, if you feel my writing deserves your time, even if it is just to give constructive criticism, leave a review. This is an entirely new fandom, going since waaayyy before I was born so it is very likely I have stepped in some major loop-hole somewhere.
I appreciate everything I get, even if you read and don't review, seeing the stats- per- month makes me smile like a total loony. I thank you all for that on my previous fics.
Also, as you will have noticed from the summary, this is a Ten/Rose fic … due to the fact some people like the whole Doctor- doeS- romantic, and some people think he doesn't. I will be publishing two versions of the same fic … one where he does and one where he doesn't. I don't know where I stand on it – Moffat likes to play games with us – so I am sitting on the proverbial fence! XD
Hope you likey
HeadlessHedwig (Emily)
"This Is How the World Will End; Not With A Bang, But With a Whimper"
A Doctor Who Fan Fiction
His emotions were all over the place.
Seducing Rose Tyler was not on the to- do list, but nevertheless, he was doing it. All the Time Lord restraint was put on the back burner; he broke rules all the time, the one about 'not interfering in events' being a prime example. He loved her, he couldn't tell her that, couldn't physically say the words because it meant he had a connection to her, acknowledged it past all back pedalling – but he did, whether he liked it or not. The only thing was, he was an alien – she was a human, a being, a Homo- Sapien, a "wise man," or in this case a "wise woman," a woman who would live for a mere blink in the relentless march of Time. So many voices were clamouring for this to stop, he had lost one entire family already; he couldn't survive loosing another, yet he continued down this path, driven by the loneliness. He was asking for heartache.
"Doctor," she breathed into his face, with her south London accent, and her girlishly high voice. He had been stood close to her for entirely too long. Her human mind was putting two and two together and she was coming to the right conclusion, something her race had an uncanny knack for. The man who named them in Latin was not far off – and they say humans have no ability at prophecy. "Are you going to kiss me, or release me?"
"Kiss you, I think – well, I am still debating that one – I can't decide if you would kick me, or get Jackie to slap me, not desirable outcomes, so I think I will just continue to – oh!
Rose kissed him, a much better outcome, one he didn't have to blame himself for instigating. Kissing was such a human thing to do – Time Lords had their own methods of displaying romantic emotions. And sex, well, that was another matter entirely. But, being surrounded by them for so long, he found himself taking on some of their mannerisms wanting to see what made them tick, why they did what they did. She was so warm, comparisons of Twilight jumped into his mind, he being the block of ice that was the protagonist's love interest, but he pushed that out of his mind. He was a Time Lord, his body was cooler, she was a human; her body was 37 degrees Celsius. It was how it was meant to be.
"Well, whoever taught you to kiss did a bloody good job!"
One of his cool fingers traced her eyebrows, watching his face she caught such a moment of wonder and interest, of genuine emotion that she had to smile up at him all white teeth and crinkled eyes. It was like he had never seen a human before, like he didn't share a very similar body. He was fascinated.
One hand went to her heart, singular, and pressed gently over her hoodie. His eyes followed it and she took the opportunity to do the same to him, one hand on each heart, their syncopated beat becoming clear to her ears under the pin striped suit. The pair of them began stroking their thumbs along the fabric, the Doctor seconds behind her, aware that she must find him as strange and fascinating as he did her. "I shouldn't be doing this."
A hot finger touched his lips, and he couldn't resist kissing it. "I feel like Edward Cullen, am I growing fangs?" He flashed the toothiest grin she had ever seen, displaying a distinct lack of fatally pointed teeth. "I am considerably older than him, so perhaps I should be even stuffier than he is, I don't fancy becoming a block of ice, it would do terrible things to my physi -
She reached up on her toes putting her mouth to his hypersensitive ear stopping him dead. "You are no vampire."
"No," he breathed as her mouth nipped at it, "I am an alien, a Gallifreyan, not a human."
"…Better than a vampire then."
She silenced his doubts by kissing him again, coaxing his mouth open and entering the one part of him that was of a similar temperature. His arms suddenly came around either side of her bracing against the walls of the TARDIS. Briefly he wondered what she thought of this new activity for her driver, would she help or hinder him? He could have kissed Rose for a good long while, her warmth was such that he couldn't get enough of it, but alas, humans needed to breathe whereas he could turn his on and off for indefinite amounts of time. While she sucked in air he returned to exploring her human body pressing his lips to everything he could reach, and returning one of his hands to her heart, enthralled by its singular lonely beat. No amount of hearing them pound would ever lessen his love of it. Studying them from a theoretical stand point in the Academy would never compare to watching the real thing.
They were so strong, yet their bodies were so fragile, they spent their lives searching for that one person, yet they could exist merrily unaccompanied despite their short life spans and very real possibility of dying alone, nameless. He hunted for worthy companions to assuage the loneliness and the guilt, unable to exist alone for an extended length of time, yet he knew his passing would be marked, by an increasingly hostile audience, but also, marked by humans, by the companions he travelled with. He craved the company, he craved that one person who understood him, he craved another Time Lord, which wasn't going to happen, but he would continue hunting driven ever on.
Rose tensed slightly as he put his ear to it. She marvelled; most men were enthralled by breasts, by sex in general, but there he was; eyes closed; ear pressed to her chest; listening to her heart, ignoring the other part of her chest entirely. Being in love with an alien clearly had its advantages. Gently she ran her hands through his exposed hair, noting the slightly different texture to her own. His breathing was so regular, whereas she was frantic. Would being an alien mean he didn't reach that point? She tried to remember if he had breathed heavily when he had legged it from one beastie or another but her mind failed her.
"Is that comfortable?" She was smiling, showing that she didn't mind it, but his next question threw her.
"Am I doing this wrong?"
It took her a minute to understand that he meant seduction, an entirely human concept. "No, no, not wrong, unusual, but not wrong."
His head came up; he fixed her with that chocolate gaze looking for direction. For once she was the one with the answers, the one who knew more about a given topic, about being human. She tried to get to his lofty level, something impossible. "When you watched us, all those years banished amongst us, what did you see? What jumps out at you in this situation, Time Lord or Human? What does your body tell you?"
He shrugged. You are all different, but you like being romanced, at least, in your sense of the word. You like your adrenaline excited, your endorphins and your nerves on fire. You like to be overwhelmed, although, you contradictory sods, you like it done in varying ways."
"What do Time Lords like?"
He closed his eyes briefly. "Not to be alone, not to find their heads empty of other people. We all used to have a mental connection, so we could communicate if we needed to – watch whatever part of the universe and be within calling distance.
"Can I get into your head? Or am I too human?"
This was the woman who had sucked in the Time Vortex, saved the universe countless times, gotten past his defences both mental and physical. She had a key to his TARDIS. She was anything but human. "Do you really want in there? I have done some terrible things Rose, unforgivable things, my planet has me to blame for its destruction; Gallifrey is no longer here because of me, I am homeless in every sense of the word. TARDIS does not count, she is as much a person as me, she chose me to run away with, lived in a museum, we are tied only as long as she keeps me – and judging by the amount of damage I have done to her I am surprised I am still here."
Her heart increased its frantic pounding 'Gallifrey.' So that was the name of his home. "Let me in, Doctor, if we are going to do this, I do not want this to be one sided. Humans can be selfish – but, the thing you missed off your list is mutual respect, we want a partner to please as much as they want to please us. We want mutual happiness."
Her eyes widened as he nudged at her consciousness, his desire to be connected winning out. He didn't know what it felt like to her, didn't know how to go about asking, he was close to tears, emotional beyond words. When her mental voice made itself known in his mind he actually sobbed, her mind filling the empty hole that had existed for a very long time. 'Well this is different.'
Overwhelmed was the word for her, his consciousness was vast, vaster than she could comprehend with her human brain, but she was doing an admirable job of understanding, pulling and watching his thoughts like she was always meant to do it. "Is this Gallifrey?"
She had latched onto a memory consisting of the domed Capitol, as he remembered it before the Time War. As soon as his attention had been brought to the image his answer tumbled at her without words; to her credit she sifted through his rapid thoughts keeping up with the jumps, with the flashing images that followed that one. The council Hall, the mountains that went on forever, the hillside where he grew up, away from Gallifreyan civilisation until he had been accepted into the Academy, and then memories of lessons, of people he had lost, of The Master, who she didn't know but who she ascertained was someone who had played an important role in his life. Information he had given to her in bursts flooded into her mind, unchecked and desperate for understanding. "What happened?"
He didn't steer near the Time War, swerved his thoughts away from it whenever it came up, he didn't want to frighten her with the things he had seen, didn't know what he would do if faced with those last moments – The Moment. But, she read this thought and squeezed a hand.
"Let me in, Doctor."
He let go.
Everything was burning, he could smell the chemicals in the Dalek's weapons, see a sky full of ships, he could see his people dying, fighting for survival and losing. Bodies, many many bodies, sprawled everywhere, unable to regenerate, finally dead, long, long before their time. It was chaos and the chaos was spreading, Gallifrey was its its catalyst, epicentre, its central point, but the rest of the universe was being dragged into it, other innocents were dying for a war they didn't have any emotional or physical investment in. He needed to end this, he could end this, but he would kill them all, the Daleks, the Time Lords, and anyone else on this doomed planet. There would be no going back.
There was no other way.
He truly would be the "Destroyer of Worlds."
His own world.
Things continued to flash, he was watching from his TARDIS. Gallifrey was burning underneath him bright blood red, lava destroying everything it touched, the Untempered Schism, the Capitol, the Academy, the fields of burnished grass that had once stretched so unspoiled into the distance merging with the mountains and the sky. Yet still they fought on, the Daleks and the Time Lords, mindless for the minute of their destruction.
He hated the Daleks for this and he loathed Rassilon for his utter greed, his total blindness to the right path, his selfish desire to be something bigger than he was. A God, they were already Gods. This was the price the world paid for it, the price he would pay for his mistaken belief in a resurrected Lord. He would survive this monstrosity, travel all of time and space to spread the message of his race, be a reminder of what happened when people got too greedy, looked beyond their jurisdiction, even the vast never ending Jurisdiction of Time and Space. Let he, The Doctor, be that reminder; the man who "fixed everything."
Let them see what happens when things couldn't be "fixed."
Slowly he raised the matte grey device and pointed it at his home, his trap had been set up before he had left, Rassilon himself had provided the weapon for his own destruction, he just didn't know about it.
Yet.
His finger tightened on the trigger, the memory narrowed as he focussed on a particular place on Gallifrey, the place that would cause the most impact when the world went bang; The Panopticon, or more specifically, The Eye of Harmony.
He pulled the Trigger.
There was silence as the bullet released and flew out of the TARDIS door. He watched its journey with sharp eyes, his world remaining in place as he dropped the gun, throwing it deep into space to be destroyed with all his hopes and dreams. The bullet entered the atmosphere with an almost undetectable flash and for a moment nothing happened, Gallifrey continued to burn on, defying time and all the odds as it had done for millions of years. But, that flash had attracted the Daleks and suddenly the whir of their ships reached an ear splitting pitch as they zoomed past his invisible TARDIS going to investigate, sure of victory. He urged them on, every single last one of the bastards. They would never know that it was he who had engineered Gallifrey's fall, would never know that he would wipe them both out, would never know that no one would walk away from this the victor.
As they zoomed toward Gallifrey, seconds ahead of them, so did the bullet, visible to his sharp eyes.
Five seconds…
The Dalek Fleet was getting closer, sinking into its tattered gravitational field, they were almost there …
Four seconds …
He reached out with his mind, immersing himself in the mental connection of his people, calling out to his family, his wife, his children and his grandchildren, for the last time.
Three seconds …
A straggler made it past the gravitational field.
Two seconds …
The Bullet connected with the Citadel Tower.
One second …
A deep vibration reverberated through the centre of the planet, spreading up and over and out, like a sand dune blown by wind, nearly knocking him off his feet. Despite the sheer brute force of it though, it happened in silence. His home split, cracks running along its surface, parts made to fly off, the gravity that surrounded all planets shattering along with it in utter deathly silence, the spectacle's music was that of Dalek space craft, an unbearably high pitch, almost gleeful sounding as, for a moment, The Moment, they won their war.
One sad voice echoed in his mind, one sad lonely voice that died a quick death just before the greatest flash of white light he had ever seen knocked him free from all awareness.
Allons-Y.
His planet, his home, vanished.
In Rose's arms, he sobbed.