Obligatory Disclaimer
Donna's a red
The TARDIS is blue
I don't own the Doctor
So please don't sue
A/N The title and story were inspired by 'Astronaut' by Amanda Palmer, who I also don't own (yet). I don't really like songfics, so I used the lyrics as dialogue, as opposed to throwing verses randomly into the story. If you want to fully understand the influence, I highly recommend checking out the song before reading the story. Or during. Or after. Or not at all. Whatever you want. I'm not the boss of you. Enjoy!
"Is it enough to have some love?" The Doctor whispered to Rose Tyler as the TARDIS disappeared from their universe. Rose nodded sadly and pressed her face into his chest. He smiled to himself as he stroked her hair, quietly pondering what their new life in this new universe with a new-new Doctor could be. As if falling into an old routine, they quickly found themselves living a rather ordinary, scheduled life.
For the Doctor, this trivially domestic life was far too small and he craved the freedom to explore he had previously enjoyed. Rose recognized the flame within this man was more than fleeting and wanted to find a way to help him cope. One day, she brought home a new project she had been apart of at Torchwood. "Small enough to slip inside a book," she said, smiling as she handed him this tiny crystal. She explained to him that this rock had fallen to the earth after this universe's Earth had its first encounter with the Phottis, and how Torchwood hoped that it would assist with the furthering of space travel. Immediately, the Doctor leaped to his feet and demanded to be taken to Torchwood - this was something he needed to be a part of. No more than a week later, 'John Smith' found himself head of Torchwood's extraterrestrial exploration program.
Life was all but a dream for Rose, she was truly happy with her Doctor. Even if he didn't, she enjoyed her admittedly normal life with him and was always planning for their future. The Doctor got the hint soon enough. One evening, on a lovely stroll through the park, the Doctor proposed rather suddenly. Rose was terribly embarrassed by such a public gesture and dozens of onlookers quickly decided that being discrete was for suckers. The Doctor laughed as he slipped the ring on her finger. "Small enough to cover with your hand, because everyone around you wants to look." Rose cried some very happy tears and leaned on his shoulder the whole way home.
"Is it enough to have some love?!" Rose screamed, throwing a rather expensive-looking vase to the ground, shattering on impact. The Doctor had just arrived home at 2:17am, without even calling Rose to tell her he'd be late. Lately, his whole life was the program, he rarely spoke of anything apart from their latest advancement. When the Doctor tried to explain how important the program was to him, Rose responded in a way that would have told most men that she craved his attention. But not the Doctor. He was far too busy trying to get himself back into space.
Rose would often find herself at her mother's home, crying in the kitchen with a frantic Jackie Tyler trying to calm Rose down with copious amounts of tea. Rose felt unappreciated when she was around the Doctor. "Small enough to slip inside the cracks..." she moaned as she used up the last of Jackie's tissues. Pete and Jackie would worry about the direction of this relationship, as Rose's self-esteem was getting lower every time she came over. The only thing that ever seemed to cheer Rose up was little Tony. When they played together, all of Rose's tears would melt away into smiles. Jackie strongly suspected that Rose was needing a Tony of her own.
Last night, that vase had been thrown to the ground for the third time. Rose sat in the kitchen, deciding whether or not to re-assemble it. She stared at the shards, unable to figure out which pieces went where. The Doctor would be able to figure this out, he had last time. But he wasn't here. He was at work again. On their day off, the day they'd planned to have a picnic, he went to work. And this wasn't the first time he'd stood her up for a date. There were so many fights and make-ups that Rose wasn't even sure when to be mad at him. As she listlessly tried to fit the broken vase back together, she mumbled "The pieces don't fit together so good, with all the breaking and all the gluing back."
The Doctor sat in the living room, restless and frustrated. The exploration program had be delayed in favour of the alliance with Earth newest visitors, the Wadell. His only way of hopefully getting back to life as normal had been taken and he'd been stuck in a desk. He was considerably upset and Rose didn't understand the importance. All she ever cared about was trivial hand-holding and domestic gush. Exactly what she'd wanted from the original Doctor. "And I am still not getting what I want!" He'd yelled. Why did she think that her problems deserved all the attention and his deserved her anger? She just didn't get it. It was in his Time Lord genes to yearn for freedom and adventure. Being stuck here was like his own personal hell.
An accident. Rose had come home from another tearful visit to her mother's house to find the Doctor unconscious at the bottom of the staircase. A blur followed as she called an ambulance and went to his side. She found herself sitting in the hospital waiting room, while the Doctor's right arm was being put into a cast. He was protesting quite loudly, something about his superior genetics not needing this primitive healing device. The doctors (the ones who earned the title, not picked it) laughed, thinking he must be delusional from the pain killers. But Rose knew better. The Doctor shuffled out of the room, looking like a dog who'd tried to take on a bear and lost. Rose drove him home, and he said very little. She assumed he'd learned a lesson about his own mortality today. "I want to touch the back of your right arm..." Rose leaned over and picked out large chunk of plaster that had wedged itself into the back of the cast. The Doctor smiled, noting that it had itched.
They sat in bed together one night, for the first time in months, and talked. They recalled their previous adventures, before Rose had been pulled into this alternate universe. Rose talked about their encounter with the Gelth and Slitheen, New Earth and the impossible planet, the Doctor encouraging her to keep speaking. When she asked why he wasn't getting his sides of the stories in, he admitted to having lost some of his old memories and that his own humanity was catching up with him. "I wish you could remind me who I was," he said sadly, his eyes tearing. "Because everyday I'm a little further off." Rose wrapped her arms around his shoulders as he began to cry.
Weeks later, after a rather nasty ending to Earth's first contact with the Wadell, Torchwood's space exploration program was put ahead at full speed. The Doctor was the proud engineer and pilot in building a new spacecraft capable of speeds only previously imagined. The first launch was scheduled for the following month. Everyone at Torchwood was working at full speed to get this project off the ground, staying into the wee hours of the morning. As the launch date grew nearer and nearer, the Doctor began to realize just what he was doing, the risks involved and what would happen to Rose if his human body succumbed to death in this new frontier. When he confessed these feelings, she smiled. "But you are my love, the astronaut," she reassured. This was in his blood, and he shouldn't need to be reminded that he is an adventurer.
"...Flying in the face of science," said the man on the television news station. Rose, Jackie, Pete and Tony all huddled around the television to watch the progress of Excalibur, Torchwood's ship on its maiden voyage to Mars. It had been less than a week since its launch and already it was in position to land. Impossible, critics had said, to reach Mars in such a short period. And yet now the whole world was watching mankind make first contact with a celestial body apart from the moon. Rose held Tony's little hand and pointed out 'big brother Doctor' on the screen, who was now addressing the people of Earth in an audaciously condescending tone about how very important this mission is, and how privileged he was, and all sorts of things that would have otherwise earned him a smack up the back of the head from Rose.
Rose stood in front of the console at Torchwood and spoke to the Doctor directly for the first time since he left. He was on the surface of the red planet and the crew had just encountered life. Not life that talks or walks around or shoots ray guns at you or anything, but something that might be the equivalent to an Earth cat. The mission had to be prolonged to research this race that had eluded all of NASA's robot cameras for so many years. The Doctor apologized profusely, he'd promised to be back in a month, but now it was looking like three, minimum. When he offered to come home early, Rose interrupted him. "I will gladly stay an afterthought, just bring back some nice reminders." The Doctor smiled and agreed to bring her the nicest thing he could find on this previously lifeless rock. Probably something shiny.
Five months passed and finally Excalibur and crew returned to Earth, completely intact. Rose was there at the landing zone, awaiting the return of her Doctor. Since his departure, Rose had continued to plan their wedding so that it might actually happen before the next mission. They returned home, and she showed him all the plans made so far. The Doctor was surprised that she'd even bothered. He's assumed that now that he was such a huge part of this mission, they would never have time to get married, and assumed that she'd known that. Rose, furious, accused him of not wanting to marry her anymore, and that he assumed she'd was going to wait around without him forever. "And is getting harder to pretend that life goes on without you in the wake?" The Doctor denied this, stating that it wasn't that he didn't want to, it was just that he didn't feel it would be an efficient use of their time. Rose threw a pile of stamped and addressed wedding invitations at his chest, and demanded he go mail them. Before he left again, there was going to be a ring on his finger even if she had to bond it to his cells.
A week later they were married. Considering the amount of force it took Rose to get the Doctor in a tuxedo and learn his role in the ceremony, one might have assumed it was a shotgun wedding. It was lovely, if not a little rushed. Turns out the Doctor was leaving on the follow-up mission within the month. Even after the wedding, the Doctor had complained that there were more things to do than 'participate in an out-dated ceremony' just to get new titles. Rose tried to insist that it wasn't about being a missus, or changing her last name, it was about the act itself. "And can you see the means without the ends, in the random frantic action that we take?" And still, the Doctor said that the ends were not substantially justified. He slept alone on the couch that night. By the morning, he seemed to understand what she meant by the means being more important, or he had enough back pain to admit his defeat and apologize. Rose allowed him to sleep in her bed after his apology, sincere or not.
"And is it getting easy not to care?" Rose yelled through her microphone. "Despite the many rings around your name!" The Doctor was back on Mars to research the new species that seemed to be multiplying daily since its discovery. He was refusing to come back after Rose had just told him that a more important multiplication (of sorts) was happening here on Earth. She was pregnant, and assumed that he'd put the whole mission on hold to be by her side during this time, like any normal man would, but she should have known better. Adventure before domestics, it just wasn't in him to deny his own sense of self-satisfaction. How could Rose not have known this would happen from the start? He may be a human copy, but he was still a Time Lord in his mind, and Time Lords don't have that instinctively parental gene.
Excalibur's mission turned to disaster. The mass-reproduction of the Skits (the working name for the cat-like creature that the research was centered around) had reached Tribble-like proportions, speculated to be a result of the Earth food that the crew had willingly fed them. The entire crew was ordered home immediately. The Doctor had found the entire ordeal hilarious, and thought that the resulting population increase was highly predictable. A very pregnant Rose met him at the landing and was ready to rip into him. She was due any day now and if it hadn't been for the emergency recall, he would have missed the birth too. And he didn't seem to care. "It isn't funny and it isn't fair!" When the Doctor voiced his opinion that she was just like her mother when she was angry, she pulled him by his hair to the car.
Eight days later, the fighting stopped. Rose sat in the hospital with their baby boy in her arms and the Doctor by her side. They both agreed that little Jack would be the the highlight of their lives, that he would come first in every decision they made. For Rose, that meant she would get the life as a full-time mother that she's always feared and yearned for. For the Doctor, that meant no more prolonged trips into space, even after the Skit population died down. The Doctor leaned over and took Jack's hand between his thumb and forefinger. "You've traveled all this way and it's the same..." he cooed quietly, remarking at Jack's incredible journey into life. Jack looked at these two giant people and yawned, falling into a very quiet sleep.
The constant monitors of Mars showed that the Skits died down rather quickly after the crew of the Excalibur evacuated. Torchwood decided that it was time to return, with the new knowledge to not feed the wildlife. The Doctor, as a surprise to everyone, refused to go. Even Rose was surprised by this. "But you are my love, the astronaut." Of course she didn't want him to leave again, but she at least expected that she would have to convince him not to. The Doctor again, flat out refused to return to Mars and leave Rose and Jack again. He agreed to be the contact from Earth and monitor the craft and crew during its travels, but insisted that his job be limited to desk work. Rose, while happy he was staying, was terribly confused about his out-of-character decisions.
In the weeks that followed, the Doctor watched the crew land on Mars and continue their studies on the Skits. They were a generally friendly race, with soft fur and a calming demeanor. Their primary purpose in life seemed to be digging in the planet's reddish soil for nutrients, which was determined to be iron-based microorganisms. Eventually, the decision was made to bring a Skit back to Earth. Having no idea how they might react to Earth's different atmosphere or increased gravitation pull, they first brought what they believed to be an elderly Skit into their campsite, which was an artificially oxygen-rich atmosphere. After an initial panic from the creature, it seemed to survive and thrive perfectly normally. The Doctor was immediately opposed to bringing a creature off its own world to a planet where survival was extremely unlikely. Torchwood ignored his unearthly expertise and began planning an environment for several Skits to live in while they could be studied. "Flying in the face of science," the Doctor spat as the set up began to bring the Skits to Earth.
Operation: Immersion went over rather smoothly, despite protests from animal rights groups and the papacy. Most of the population of Earth was positively thrilled to have a non-threatening extraterrestrial life form visit Earth without the intent to enslave or eat the human race. After what was affectionately referred to as 'the Tribble incident', Torchwood was determined to make sure a similar catastrophe would not occur on Earth. As cute as the Skits were, they were hungry creatures, and there was no hurry to put humans on their new menu. As different as this universe's Torchwood was, they still didn't listen to him. "I will gladly stay an afterthought, just bring back some nice reminders," he warned bitterly. Now refusing to even be a part of the mission, the Doctor resigned from it and volunteered himself for desk work. Rose, now on indefinite maternity leave, would often bring little Jack to Torchwood to visit the Doctor. She was not opposed to bringing the Skits to Earth; they were cute and every household on the Earth would want one as a pet. This made him even more angry.
Even at home, the Doctor spent a large chunk of time brooding about the mission. The Skits were scheduled for their Earthly debut in three days, and nothing he did was going to stop them. They were bringing a total of ten, young and old, male and female, and were going to watch their condition for a whole year. Earth is too warm, the Doctor had told them, the gravitational pull was too strong, the Skits were going to die or thrive at a rate incalculable by scientists. Either way, it would not be a good living condition for this innocent new species. But there was no convincing Torchwood; they were mad. Rose spent all of her time trying to get his mind on something else. "And I would tell them anything to see you split the evening," Rose urged, trying to get his mind off it. Jack had taken his first steps earlier that week, exciting news for any parent, but the Doctor had yet to watch the video or even acknowledge the fact. Rose found this universe's Donna Noble, a secretary at a company Torchwood had been monitoring for some time, but suddenly the most important woman in the universe wasn't important enough to hold the Doctor's attention. There was no consoling him. She knew this look, this determination. The Doctor was going to do something drastic.
The day of Excalibur's return with the Skits, the Doctor awoke at 3am and was at Torchwood by 4. He sat in the monitor room with a cup of tea and waited. And waited. And waited. He spent the entire time planning a speech. A phenomenal speech that would amaze and dazzle the lot. Something so profound that even the new head of the program, a young, headstrong man named Ianto Jones, would have to pay attention. And then they could send the Skits home before any permanent damage ensued. He shook his head and wondered what happened to the clever Doctor he used to be. He'd never planned a speech in his entire life. He finished his tea and decided to fly by the seat of his pants and hope for the best. When the staff of Mission: Immersion entered the room, he stayed quiet and watched them get to work. When the whole of the team entered the room, he stood up and began to speak about the moral and ehtical issues this mission posed, the danger it might cause to humanity and... Skitmanity... and that one episode of Buffy, he liked that one... He commanded the attention of every man in the room, but sort of blew the ending with a lot of smugness. "But as you see, I do not have an awful lot to tell."
Despite the fact that his little speech/tangent had reached and been taken into deep consideration by everyone at Torchwood, Ianto Jones still made the decision to move on with the mission. "Everybody's sick for something that they can find fascinating," said the Doctor, judging Ianto's motives to be entirely selfish. Ianto denied this claim, saying that his interests were whatever was best for the human race and, at this moment, what was best for mankind was the studying of this new race. With the Earth's population growing every day, they could use what they learned from the Skits to potentially start a colony on Mars, followed by the rest of the solar system. If this universe was anything like the one he and Rose were from, this sort of advancement wasn't due for anything century and a half, and Ianto had different plans entirely.
The Skit experiments went ahead as planned. The bio-engineers at Torchwood did their best to re-create the Martian diet of the Skits and it seemed to be working so far. They hadn't started reproducing at an explosive rate, their frail bones hadn't been crushed by Earth's stronger gravitational pull, nor had their fur fallen out from Earth's warmer atmosphere. In fact, the Skits had taken to Earth quite well. In the first six months of the program, two new Skits had been born and were also doing very well. The program had been going so well, hardly anyone seemed to take notice when one of former crew members of the Excalibur suddenly took ill and died. The media noticed when a second died, and the whole world watched in horror as the fourth died, and the remaining six were hospitalized. All except the mysterious 'John Smith', it seemed, were doomed to die of a mysterious new respiratory illness. True, he'd contracted a fever immediately after baby Jack had the flu, but he'd recovered within the week. Rose, with good reason, was deeply concerned for the well-being of her husband. "Everyone but you," she noted, "and even you aren't feeling well." The Doctor assured her that he wasn't about to die of the Martian Flu.
Chaos. Four Skits had escaped their holding pen in the night and were currently loose in the middle of London. Their sweet demeanor seemed to be on vacation, as they attacked everyone who tried to catch them with their sharp claws. They doubled in population in less than a week after getting into restaurant dumpsters and eating human food. The Skits remaining in captivity went insane, trying every way possible to break out of their holding chamber to join their free brothers, and most of them died within two weeks of unknown causes. After Torchwood failed to recapture them, U.N.I.T. was called in to destroy the Skits that seemed to be multiplying by the day. It wasn't long before more than a hundred individual Skits were confirmed as being in the city. And the Doctor, though begged by Torchwood to step in and help, refused to save them from something he'd told them not to do in the first place. Rose went with her mother, Tony and little Jack to the safehouse at Torchwood to wait out the attack, but the Doctor insisted on staying at home. Before leaving, she'd kissed him on the cheek and said "But you are my love, the astronaut." The Doctor knew then that it wasn't his decision whether or not to help catch the Skits, he had to for the sake of the people he'd always done his best to protect. If he didn't act now, more people were going to die of the Martian Flu, more people were going to have their face mutilated by the Skits' ferociously sharp claws, and more people would be in favour of a Skit genocide.
"Flying in the face of science..." the Doctor muttered to himself, remembering the words used to describe the initial mission. He was clever, but not ever he could have predicted an outcome like this. The plan was simple enough; a huge amount of food in the middle of a well-defended area and wait for the Skits to show up. They seemed particularly fond of bananas, and who could blame them? Good source of potassium. 'John Smith' had earned a glowing reputation in the eyes of U.N.I.T. and followed his plan without question. It worked; every single Skit in London smelled the massive pile of bananas, and once they were all accounted for, the net was launched and the Doctor-approved tranquilizer gas was fired.
As the only remaining crew member of the Excalibur, the Doctor volunteered to be in charged of the mission to fly the Skit back home. In fact, he was the only volunteer. No one else at Torchwood was ready to risk a bout of the Martian Flu, it was a rather painful way to die. Ianto Jones ended up volunteering himself and three others from the group, none of whom had any experience with flying or space travel. The Doctor feared for his safe return, and the fates of Rose and Jack should the worst come to pass. Rose cried, but she knew that everything would be alright if the Doctor remained in charge. She warned him against letting Ianto take too much control, and assured him that she and Jack would be fine. "I will gladly stay an afterthought, jut bring back some nice reminders." The Doctor kissed her for the last time as he prepared to board the Excalibur.
The flight to Mars went off without a hitch. The large amount of unconscious Skits were released from the cargo hulled and gently laid on the planet's surface. They set up to return to Earth immediately. Rose watched the whole thing from the monitor room, cheering them on. "Yes! You are my love, the astronaut!" she cheered as the last sleeping Skit was placed on the surface of Mars and the team set up for their return. The Doctor smiled into the camera and blew her a kiss. Despite the lack of collective knowledge, everyone on board was doing their job very competently and the mission seemed to be ready to complete without any kind of incident. Which is why the accident came as such a shock to everyone.
"Crashing in the name of science..." the man on the television news station said solemnly. Again, the replay of the hull of the Excalibur cracking, resulting in an explosion and pieces of the ship being scattered across the Atlantic Ocean. Rose had been crying nonstop for the past day and a half. She had been speaking with him not half an hour before the crash, and then he was suddenly gone. Little Jack didn't know why his Mommy left him with his Granny, and cried to be with her for hours at a time. Torchwood launched a worldwide search for the remains and survivors on the crash, but were only able to recover bits of ship itself. There was absolutely no sign of the crew. Pete Tyler promised Rose that the Doctor would receive a hero's funeral, that he would be remember and honoured by Torchwood staff, and that they would name all kinds of things after him. Rose didn't care, none of those things were going to bring him back in any form he was human now and there was no chance he'd survived that crash. She spent all those years trying to get him back, just to have him die rescuing alien kittens. The other Doctor would either be very ashamed or very proud, and Rose wasn't sure which.
Two weeks later, Rose, still in mourning, had returned home from a shopping trip.. She put little Jack in his playpen and quietly put the groceries in the cupboards. She heard a crash from the living room. Quickly spinning on her heel, she rushed into the living room, fearing little Jack had gotten hold of something sharp again. As she looked into the room, she dropped the quart of milk she was holding and gaped. There, next to the vase (that damn vase), with identical guilty looks on their faces, were the Doctor and little Jack. The Doctor opened his mouth to explain that it was an accident, but Rose stopped him with a kiss that would silence the wind. She didn't know how he got back, she didn't care. He wanted to talk to her, wanted to tell her where he'd been, what had happened in the two weeks he'd been gone. She just rolled her eyes. "Just my luck, they sent your upper half." And she kissed him into silence again. He asked her how long he'd been gone, she said thirteen days, and they agreed that she would always wait thirteen days for him.
Torchwood rejoiced in the Doctor's return. Since his untimely departure, they'd named two laboratories and a new planet after him. He was over the moon about the planet bit, that was brilliant. "It's a very nice reminder," he smiled to himself. It was at this point that the Doctor asked Pete Tyler to call a meeting of the entire company. He needed to tell the entire company exactly what had happened that day on the ship. Although seemingly impossible, every single employee of Torchwood London sat in their auditorium, which normally sat about six hundred people. Today, it was seating/standing almost one thousand. The Doctor stood at the front of the hall, ready to address the people who deserved to know what happened to the rest of the crew of the Excalibur.
Ianto Jones knew there was a problem the second he heard to sound of metal scraping on metal. He also knew that while this ship was the most advanced mankind had ever seen, there was always room for error. No one in the production of this ship could have known that it was going to be used to carry over a tonne of cats to Mars. He also knew that all but one escape pod had been removed to make room for said tonne of cats. Ianto knew that four out of the five crew members were not going to survive re-entry, and it was his own job to pick the member. He was never one to judge a man's life as more important than another. If he had been a surgeon, reception of treatment would be subject to chances of survival. But this was different. The staff at Torchwood were more often than not alone, they had no families, no friends, no lives outside of this job. Ianto was no different. There was only one man in this ship who had a life apart from this job, and he was talking to her on the monitor right now as they prepared to touch down. He pulled the Doctor away from the others as soon as he said his 'goodbye for nows' with his wife. Ianto Jones explained the situation and the Doctor immediately volunteered Ianto to go into the pod. Ianto, expecting this, apologized before pressing a rag to the Doctor's face which had been doused with the same agent they'd been using to sedate the Skits. The Doctor protested but his eyes quickly rolled into the back of his head and he collapsed. Ianto dragged the Doctor's limp body into the escape pod and locked the door. Dutifully, he walked up to the control panel and prepared for the roughest landing of his life. As Ianto stared at the Earth, he smiled quietly and whispered, "It's a very nice reminder."
Upon hearing the story, Torchwood staff decided to commemorate Ianto Jones by changing the names of the laboratories they had previously named after 'John Smith'. Not the planet, though, the Doctor absolutely refused to let go of the planet. Ianto could have saved the entire universe, but there was no chance the Doctor was giving up having a planet named after him. Pete Tyler eventually gave the okay to let him have the planet -- they would simply find a bigger planet to name after Ianto Jones, perhaps even a sun. The extraterrestrial exploration program was put on an indefinite suspension, which was okay with everyone. There was no way anyone was about to risk the kind of danger that had just occured. Fourteen men were dead and several hundred civilians injured due to the recklessness of Torchwood and its desire to spread across the universe far before its time. The Doctor agreed, once they had a better means of exploration, to head the program again. As the Doctor and Rose sat in bed that night, they spoke not of what had occured today, but of the terrifying times without one another. After more tears than the Doctor thought he could handle, he pressed a finger to her lips. They sat in silence for a moment. "And you may be acquainted with the night, but I have seen the darkness in the day," Rose whispered. "And you know it is a terrifying sight, because you and I are living the same way," the Doctor whispered back. The lights went out, and the silent backdrop of darkness protected their kiss.