Do You Want to Build a Snowman?
Rose heard the knock on the door but chose to ignore it. She turned over in her bed and snuggled more deeply into the comforter. It had been a long day. And while it warmed Rose's heart to know that she and her friends had been able to restore heat and power to Vinterisen, a snowy island in the midst of an otherwise tropical planet, it had taken her body a long time to stop feeling chilled. So there was no way she was leaving her cosy cocoon anytime soon.
The knocking began again followed by the half-whispered voice of Jack Harkness. "Rose? Are you asleep?"
"Yes!" she called back in a tone that she hoped conveyed both her annoyance and her exhaustion.
"Rose!" repeated Jack from the other side of the door. "Rose, wake up!"
"Jack, go back to your room and get some sleep," she called back as she pulled the pillow over her head. She heard a rattle and the unmistakable sound of her door being opened. She groaned inwardly. Rose must have forgotten to lock the door like she had done many other times after an exhausting day. But in all the time she had been travelling with two men, she had not once been intruded upon. That is until now.
"Jack!" she scolded, not bothering to remove the pillow from over her head. "What if I had been indecent?"
"That would have been a bonus." Rose could almost hear him smirk. "And I can't sleep until you see what I discovered!"
"What?" asked Rose, feeling slightly curious despite herself. She put the pillow back under her head, but turned away from the direction of Jack's voice.
"Snow!" Jack sounded like a child on Christmas morning who had just discovered what Father Christmas had left under the tree.
"Are you mental? Didn't you see enough snow all day?" Rose pulled the covers over her head.
"Maybe. But now it's actually snowing."
"Brilliant," groused Rose. "Go play in the snow. But don't blame me if you freeze to death because you couldn't bother to stay inside like a sensible person." Rose frowned at the words she had spoken. They sounded like something the Doctor would say. Rose didn't know if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
"But have you ever seen it snow inside?" Jack's words dripped with the same seductive tone she had heard many times before, yet it was mixed with a hint of wonder that was hard to ignore.
Rose sat up and turned to look at her friend, who was still in the winter clothing he had been wearing all day. "What do you mean 'inside?'"
"Come on," he said. "This is something you have to see."
Moments later, Rose was running through the Tardis corridors with a wool coat over her pyjamas and snow boots on her feet chasing after Jack, who alternated between calling for her to hurry and urging her to be quiet. After a few turns, they burst through the large double doors at the back entrance of the Tardis library.
Rose gasped in amazement. Unlike the cosy reading area with comfortable sofas, dark wood, and a fireplace, or the impressive formality of the multiple floors filled with rows of bookshelves, this particular wing of the library was open and expansive. Tall columns surrounded the room and supported a cathedral ceiling that was intricately painted in a pattern of swirling jewel tones. In the middle of the room, surrounded by marble floors, was a large swimming pool that reflected the ornate ceiling above. But this was not what amazed Rose. She had been in the far wing of the library many times. What captivated her attention were the streams of blue and silver light that danced along the edges of the ceiling then fragmented into shimmering white flakes which glided down to cover the marble surface below. The snowflakes that fell onto the pool caused ice crystals to form, and the pool was quickly being overlaid in a delicate layer of ice.
"This is amazing," she said, mesmerized by the indoor snowfall.
"Told you. And you wanted to miss this just to sleep."
Rose smirked. Now Jack was the one sounding a bit like the Doctor.
"How'd this happen?" she wondered aloud.
"Remember the piece of crystal from the caves of Isgrotta that the governor of Vinterisen gave us as a token of thanks?" Jack asked.
Rose nodded.
"Those crystals are the reason that a tropical planet has an island where it is perpetually winter," Jack told her. "The crystals draw moisture from the environment and turn it into snow and ice. The Doctor put our souvenir crystal in that trophy case at the far end." Rose looked briefly in the direction that Jack pointed. The streams of sliver started from that point. "But he forgot to take into account the humidity in the air caused by presence of the pool," Jack continued. "Bingo! Instant winter in the library."
Rose corrected her earlier thought. Jack didn't just sound a bit like the Doctor, he sounded a lot like him.
"That was a lucky accident," Rose said as the crystal blanketed everything the in the far wing with snow. "But why be so secretive?"
"Well," Jack said stepping forward onto the snowy floor. He squatted down, picked up a handful of powdery snow, and let it fall to the floor. "I figure prolonged exposure to the snow and cold can't be good for the room, and the Doctor will have to set it right."
"As he should," said Rose. The scene was magical—like something out of a dream—but she loved the library and its swimming pool. She would have hated to see them ruined.
"True," Jack said. "But there's no reason we can't enjoy it first."
"So now what?" Rose imagined herself falling back and making a snow angel while watching the streams of light dace above her, but then she realized it was marble and not soft earth beneath the blanket of crystal-generated snow. She was also only wearing her thin nightclothes under her coat, and was already beginning to feel the chill in the air.
"How about we build a snowman?" Jack returned to the perimeter of the library where Rose was standing. "We could each build our own snowman with a head, torso, and base, and the first one finished wins." He walked over to a storage chest that was against the wall and opened it up. "But to make it more interesting, we also have to use four of the items in here."
Rose peered inside at the selection of swimming supplies, trying to picture some of them on a snowman. It sounded fun, but it was never that simple when Jack Harkness was involved. "What's the catch?" she asked.
"No catch."
Rose shot him a dubious look.
"Fine. Winner gets bragging rights; loser has to find the Doctor, tell him what happened, and confess that we did not let him know right away."
Figured. Rose had to be mad for going along with Jack's suggestion, but she found herself putting on the gloves that were in her coat pocket and positioning herself strategically between a good source of snow and the chest of pool items.
"Ready, set, go!" Jack's shouts bounced of the high ceiling and echoed around the hall.
Rose rushed into action, starting first with a small snowball that she intended to form into a larger one for the base. Unfortunately, the marble floor was icy and did little to provide the friction needed to roll the ball into a larger one, so she resorted to gathering the snow together the way one might make a sand sculpture on the beach. Her glances in Jack's direction seemed to indicate that he had adopted a similar strategy. By the time Rose got to the torso and head, however, the snow beneath her feet had become more firmly packed, and she was able to use a more traditional method.
Once the body was finished, Rose rushed over to the chest of pool supplies to retrieve her four accessories. Jack ran over to the chest almost immediately after she did, and Rose was glad that she had mentally chosen her items before she had begun. She was back in front of her snowman a few seconds before Jack returned to his. She hurried to add her items without concerning herself with perfect placement. This competition was about speed, not aesthetics.
"I'm done!" Rose called just as Jack said something almost identical.
"I was first!" she insisted.
"It was definitely me."
"Call it a draw and we can both tell the Doctor about the crystal."
"It might not be a draw," Jack said, making his way over to her snowman. "Let's make sure yours is actually complete."
It was. Her snowman was wearing green goggles where its eyes should be and a matching snorkel in place of a pipe. A light blue towel with the image of a grey shark in the center was draped around what should be its shoulders. Down at the base of the snowman, where feet should go, Rose had placed two pink swim fins. It looked like her snowman was ready for a lap around the pool.
Jack nodded. "Not bad."
"Not bad? Let's see yours then." Rose walked over to examine Jack's snowman. His too had goggles for eyes (purple this time) and was wearing a towel. But unlike Rose's, the rainbow patterned towel of Jack's snowman was covering the top of its head. Rose guessed this was supposed to represent hair, but it made the snow figure look like it should be a shepherd in some Technicolor version of a nativity play. Stranger yet, two diving sticks, one red and one pink and both about twenty centimetres long, were sticking out from the side of the torso where the arms should be. They were far too short to be proper arms, and it made the snowman look something like a tyrannosaurus. Rose laughed. Jack's snowman was a hippie shepherd T-rex!
"It's inventive, Jack," she said to him, "but you're missing an item. There's only three."
"Goggles, towel, and two diving sticks. That's four," said Jack as he pointed to each item.
"The sticks should count as one," countered Rose. "I counted the swim fins as one."
"You didn't have to," said Jack with a shrug.
"Fine, then it's a draw like I said."
"Or we could try a tie-breaker. First one to knock at least half the items off the other one's snowman wins."
There was going to be no arguing with Jack, Rose knew it, and she was already in front of her target. So without waiting for Jack's signal to begin, she made a snowball and began her assault, ignoring Jack's protests that she had begun unfairly. Rose continued to rapidly make and throw snowballs at Jack's snowman as he rushed to attack hers.
Rose kept her eyes on her work as she created and launched one snowball after another, doing her best to demolish the psychedelic snow shepherd. All the while, she was laughing and trading taunts and insults with Jack.
Rose loved moments like these. She had played in the snow before, but it was never quite like this. It wasn't because the snow was indoors, but because it was part of a larger day in which she had made life better for others. To top it off, she was with one of her best friends in the universe. Though Jack spoke to her almost constantly in the language of flirting and double entendres, Rose mentally put him in the same category as her best earth-mate, Shireen. The only thing that would have made the moment better was if the Doctor had been there with them. He was also her best mate, but in a different, somewhat stronger (and often confusing) way. He could be goofy at times (referring to the clairvoyant Gwyneth as a "happy medium," for example) and join in the fun, but he could just as easily roll his eyes as if the games she and Jack played were somehow beneath him. She had a feeling this was the real reason Jack hadn't said anything to him about the indoor flurry. Rose and Jack had both had their speech and conduct influenced by the Time Lord in their company. She just wished their humanness had had more of an effect on the Time Lord.
"What do you two think you're doing?"
The baritone voice with its northern accent exploded from the doorway and bounced off the walls. It made Rose's heart skip with both delight and dread. Yes, it meant that she and Jack had been caught acting like children rather than reporting the mishap, but it also meant the Doctor was with them—with Rose. It was always better when the Doctor was there, even if one of them was angry at the other.
Fortunately, Rose was not frightened by his "Oncoming Storm" bravado, and she was not about to let Jack take the blame. With a snowball still in her right hand, she put her hands on her hips and faced the Doctor as he entered the library and headed straight toward her. "The crystal we got as a gift mixed with the water in the air and made it snow," she told him. "I decided to enjoy it."
"That much I am aware of," he said once he had reached her side. His voice was even, making his emotions hard to gauge. "It is how you are enjoying it that needs explaining." He held his out his hand palm up in front of Rose, and she handed him the snowball without a word. The Doctor's emotions might have been hard to read, but Rose was feeling several at once. She was embarrassed for acting like a child, ashamed because she didn't go find the Doctor right away, and angry at herself for going along Jack with another one of Jack's crazy ideas. There were some other emotions swirling around within her, but she dared not name them lest they became too real.
"Really, Rose?" said the Doctor. He transferred the sphere from one hand to the other and back again. "Throwing snowballs at a snowman?"
Rose felt her face grow hot. "I know. I wasn't thinking I just—"
Rose stopped and did a double take. Was that a smirk beginning to form on the sides of the Doctor's mouth? Rose smiled shyly as a means of testing what she thought she saw.
The Doctor made eye contact and the hint of a smile became a wide grin. "Because the correct way to use a snowball," he said as he turned in the direction of the other snowman and pulled his arm back "is to throw it at someone else." He launched the snowball, and it hit Jack in the shoulder.
Jack stood with his mouth agape, but Rose began to laugh. "I see the error of my ways, Doctor. But could you please show me again, just so I can be sure I understand?"
The Doctor nodded, quickly made another snowball, and threw it at Jack.
Jack dodged out of the way this time, but still managed to get some of it in the arm. "Oh no you don't!" Jack called, and he retaliated with his own snowball. Soon snow projectiles were flying throughout the room. The laughter that had been present before the Doctor entered had returned, but sounded much fuller with the addition of the Doctor's chuckles.
At some point (Rose didn't know how much later) the snowball fight and the snow angel competition that followed it had come to an end. The trio left the far wing behind and headed to the reading area with the fireplace to warm up. Rose was chilled to the bone and her hair was damp from the snow, but she didn't care. This had been one of the best spontaneous game nights she had experienced on the Tardis, and it was mostly because Doctor had joined in, and done so without coercion.
"Doctor," ventured Rose a while later as she sat with him on the sofa in front of the fire. (Jack as always had taken the solitary easy chair. For some strange reason most of the salons on the Tardis had this exact seating configuration.) "How did you know where we were?"
"Went to ask Jack if he'd help me fine tune the interface stabilizer and couldn't find him," he told her. "Was pretty easy to figure out where he had gone. Made sense he'd take you too"
"So you knew about the crystal then?"
"Why'd you think I put it in the room with the pool?" The Doctor put down the book he was reading.
Rose's jaw dropped. "So you wanted that to happen?"
"Of course."
"But Jack said it would cause damage to the room," she said "You know, because of the marble and the water."
"You think I could live in this ship all this time and not know what she can handle?" the Doctor sounded offended, but the smile let Rose know it was an act.
"Yeah, okay." Rose flipped through the pages of the book she had not really been reading, not sure what else to say. She looked briefly in Jack's direction to see if he wanted to add anything, but his eyes were closed and his breathing slow and steady. His book had fallen to the floor.
"Was waiting until you had time to sleep before I showed you," the Doctor said in a hushed tone when Rose had turned her attention back to him. "By then the snow would have covered the entire room and the pool would have completely frozen over." The Doctor shrugged slightly. "Thought we could go ice skating."
"So you aren't angry Jack discovered it before then?"
The Doctor shook his head. "Just disappointed."
"Disappointed?"
"I like to be the one to show you all the amazing things in this universe." The Doctor looked away. It was hard to tell in the flickering light of the fire, but Rose thought she saw the color in his face get pinker.
Rose reached for the Doctor's hand, ignoring her accelerating heartbeat as she did. "I like it when you show me all those amazing things."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah." Rose put her head against the Doctor's shoulder. She was warm and content, and she could feel the need for sleep beginning to overcome her. "Tomorrow we can all go skating like you planned. But first," she said with a yawn, "wake me early and show me one of those amazing places on that mental list of yours."
"Just you and me?"
Rose nodded slightly and let her eyes close. "Just you and me." Rose enjoyed travelling time and space together as a trio. It was not a bad life—not at all. But some moments were better with two.
Author's Notes: I was inspired to write this when John Barrowman was snowed in at a Heroes and Villains convention in New York last weekend. He took to social media asking fans for ideas for him to do while he was stranded. And he looked genuinely excited about going out and playing in the snow. It didn't seem like much of a stretch to imagine Jack being the one excited about a snow day.
The title is a song is from Frozen, which I am sure most people are familiar with. It was the best title for this game night, so rather than distance myself from it, I borrowed the beginning of my story for Elsa and Anna's first interactions in the film. This includes one character waking up the other and the fact that the snow fun happens indoors. This also allowed my Tardis game night to stay within the Tardis while still incorporating the winter fun.