A/N: Hey everyone - We're super sorry about the long delay! As stated in chapter 1, we're writing 3 chapters for every chapter we post, and chapter 17 has been killing us. Hopefully it'll get easier from here on out, but in the meantime, at last an update!
PSA: We meant for this story to be fun and fluffy and light-hearted. It turned out not to be. There are still a few more chapters of fluff, but this story does turn dark eventually. We're still not sure why that happened, but we want our readers to be forewarned so this warning will continue to appear in the next few chapters.
If you recognize it, we don't own it. A few lines from Terry Pratchett's Discworld make an appearance in this chapter so shout out to him for writing awesome books.
Falling
Act One, Chapter Five
Once Rose learned to speak, everything got a little simpler. He had never quite gotten used to her as a baby. When she started talking, though, she became a small human instead of a strange little imp creature.
And the first time she woke up in the middle of the night sobbing into her pillow, Nine was relieved that he could finally ask her why. He knelt by her bed, turning himself so that he could spread a wing over her. "Rose, Rose," he whispered. "Tell me what's wrong. Why are you crying? Sh, sh, precious girl."
"There was monsters," she sobbed. "Like bins. Wif plungers."
Monsters like bins. The mind of a child was unfathomable to him but that didn't matter. What mattered was that his charge was frightened and he could help her.
Rose raised her eyes and looked at him. Nine felt the world pause. She had never before looked straight at him like that, never truly acknowledged that he was visible or tangible to her - not like this. She had tried to grab his wings when she was a baby but this... this felt much different, much more significant.
"Don't you worry, precious girl. I'm keepin' an eye on everything and there are no monsters here. And if I ever find a monster, I'll make it go away. All the monsters are scared of me."
Rose shifted a little under her blankets. "You're not scary."
Nine's dark wings flexed a little at the sound of those words. Why did it feel like redemption? It shouldn't have. He knew who he was and what he was capable of; she didn't. "You don't need to be scared of me, Rose. Not ever."
She smiled. "'Cause you're the Doctor. You fix things." She reached out and, for a second, her small, chubby, innocent fingers rested on his cheek. He was surprised when she didn't come away with black stains on her fingers. Nine reached out and caught her hand in his, completely engulfing her tiny hand in his palm.
"Go back to sleep, Rose," he whispered, his voice trembling with a host of emotions he didn't dare name. "You'll be safe. I'll chase all the monsters away."
Rose smiled faintly and fell asleep. Nine stayed where he was until sunrise, his muscles cramping as he kept his vigil.
When she wasn't having nightmares, Rose was an energetic, rambunctious, and extremely daring child. She took constant looking after. Jackie would never have been able to keep up with her on her own. She tore through the house on her chubby little legs, exercising her new vocabulary almost constantly. She wasn't saying anything, just chattering to hear her own voice, so Nine tuned her out as he followed her indulgently from room to room or, depending on her mood, in circles around the living room couch.
Jackie spent most mornings following her, too, though she usually gave it up as a bad job before lunch time. Instead, she sat on the couch and kept an eye out for when Rose toddled past. Every so often, if Rose spent more than a few minutes out of Jackie's sight, she would call out and Rose would come running.
In the meantime, Jackie flipped through the channels, looking idly for something to watch.
"'Ad ya a bleedin' eyeful?! You got a nerve, largin' it in here wif - "
" - ntlemen, for the sake of the cheeseboard! The time - "
"- haven't eaten spinach since I was old enough to spit. I thought - "
" - exploded, poisoning the land around it for miles. In this - "
" - will send you a guide. Uh, Trixie Bell, that's it."
" - can run 'round the world before the truth can get its boots on."
Jackie went back the other way as Nine followed Rose in circles around the couch.
"Buggrit. Millennium hand and shrimp."¹
"- April 28, 1986, staff reported - "
Nine spun around, but the Jackie had already changed the channel again. It didn't matter; he'd heard enough, seen enough, to know what the programme was about. It hit him with the force of a demon's punch. Nine leaned against the couch, elbows locked, head bowed, glaring at the upholstery. No human documentary could know what had happened there as well as he did. The quiet, happy human town, besieged by enemies no human could see - the desperation of the fight, knowing they were vastly outnumbered. He remembered seeing the first building fall. An arcade. The flood of demons streamed out, crystal clear in his memory, their eyes gleaming black or red. There was another shape, too, a limp body carried in triumph, her wings as white as the flashing fangs of the laughing demons.
That had been when he realized what he had to do, the only choice available if they weren't to be overwhelmed. It was an awful choice: if he did nothing, the demons would destroy them all and then move on to other towns, other cities, and who knew what evil they would wreak? But if he took action...
"Doctor! Doctor! Doctor?"
The world shattered and Nine looked down at Rose, tugging urgently on his heavy denim jeans. She stopped calling and smiled.
Jackie murmured, "What doctor, Rose?" and then went back to the soap she was watching.
"I'm fine - don't you worry," he said. "Anyway, I'm guarding you, not the other way around!"
Her smile broadened and she laughed. Nine's lips pulled into a grin to match hers. He could feel scraps of darkness sloughing off and fading; it was hard to be miserable when Rose Tyler grinned at you. Through his smile, he bared his teeth and hooked his fingers into claws.
"You better run! I'm gonna get you!"
Rose took half a step back and glared at him, the picture of a determined challenger.
"No, I'm gonna get you!" She sprang at him and Nine spent the next ten minutes staying carefully just ahead of her. Finally, Rose threw herself forward and latched onto his leg, trying to growl like a ferocious beast. In fact, she sounded like a three-year-old imitating a puppy, which she did by saying "Rahr! Rahr! Rrrrrr…!"
Jackie, glancing over, must have seen Rose menacing thin air. Whatever she saw, she chose to say nothing.
"Doctor! It's only two weeks until Christmas!"
Rose was four years old and this was her fifth Christmas, the first time she had connected the end of December with presents. She'd talked of little else for the last month.
"Mickey's Gran told him that if he was bad, Father Christmas wouldn't put any toys in his stocking and he'd get a cold instead," she said as Nine prowled around her bedroom, checking for monsters as he did every night. Rose slept better if she saw him check everything very carefully before she went to sleep.
Nine, whose knowledge about Father Christmas extended very little beyond what Rose told him, glanced at her in surprise. "How does that work, then?" he asked. Father Christmas wasn't real, of course, but even if he had been, how would he have ensured that only bad children got sick?
"Dunno," Rose said. "But I have a runny nose. Does that mean I've been bad?"
He put the search on pause to kneel, smiling, by her bedside. "You are not bad, Rose. You're the nicest, smartest, best girl in the whole world, and I'm going to talk to Father Christmas myself to make sure you get plenty of toys."
Rose relaxed. She sank into her pillows. "Will you tell me a story?"
"You know I'm not so good at stories, Rose. Can never think of the kind you like hearing."
"I know. Tell me one anyway? Please?" She pouted at him, wide-eyed and wobbly-lipped. Nine knew that he shouldn't give in, that he'd folded to her often enough and really should teach her that he wasn't here to do what she asked of him. He wouldn't fold every time.
He sighed. "What about?"
"About Christmas!"
"Well… do you know about Christ? Christmas is named after him."
She shook her head, so Nine told her about a baby boy who had been born almost two thousand years ago, how He was the son of God, born to take away the sins of the world.
"Did you sing to the shepherds?" Rose asked.
"No, not me."
"Good, 'cause you're no good at singing."
Nine scowled at her without any anger behind it. "Brat. You've had your story - now go to sleep."
Rose snuggled down in her mountain of pillows. "I asked Mummy to get you a present because you're so old and you've never had one. And I made you one, too, so you'll have two."
Nine blinked at her. "When did you have time to make me a present?" And why had she felt the need to make sure he had one - let alone two? His eyes softened as she smiled.
"On Monday, when Romana was talking to you all that time. I hid it in my knicker drawer 'cos you never look there." She yawned, pulled up the blankets, and buried herself in sleepy warmth. "Love you, Doctor."
He spread his wings over her to keep out bad dreams. "Sleep well, Rose."
"No," she insisted as her eyes slid closed. "You say you love me, too."
Nine hesitated, adjusting his wings into a feathery canopy. "I love you too, precious girl. Now hush up and sleep."
Rose gave half of a sleepy giggle and fell asleep before she'd finished.
He sat there all night, watching her sleepy face. Rose Tyler was, without doubt, the most wonderful human on the planet. He didn't deserve such kindness, such shining adoration as she displayed to him. He was only a step away from falling and he had never been serene or beautiful. He was a haggard old thing full of hard lines and too many sharp angles, all topped off with a mass of feathers just this side of black…
She should have been terrified of him. She should have been. But she wasn't. She got him Christmas presents and told him she loved him. She refused to call him Nine, after the nine angels he had killed, and instead called him Doctor. Healer. As if he ever did anything other than destroy.
The next night, Nine stood guard only an hour after she had fallen asleep. He had things he needed to do.
Two weeks later, on Christmas morning, Rose pulled the paper off of an unmarked box and gasped when she saw the unassuming rubber duck inside.
"Mummy! You got me a ducky!" she cried, hugging it. "Thank you!"
Jackie snatched it and the box. "I did no such thing!" she said, inspecting the box and the duck closely. Nine wondered what she was looking for. Did she think it was somehow dangerous? Rose, confused and frightened by her mum's reaction, looked at Nine for reassurance. He winked at her.
"Happy Christmas, Rose," he said, smiling to match her bright grin.
"Mummy, my guardian angel gave it to me! Where's his present?!" She dove toward the pile of unopened presents still under the tree and came up with a shoebox. The label on it said
To: The Doctor
From: Jackie and Rose
She held it out to him.
"How about you open it for me?"
Rose grinned and ripped into the paper with alacrity. She came up with a toy stethoscope. Nine chuckled. Apparently Jackie misunderstood when Rose talked about him.
"I love it," Nine said and watched her face light up.
Jackie refused to ever acknowledge the rubber duck, perhaps because she couldn't bring herself to admit that Rose's imaginary friend might be real. But that night it appeared in a place of honor on top of Rose's bureau.
On the wall behind it, Jackie taped Rose's present to the Doctor: a crayon drawing of the two of them, pink-and-yellow Rose standing inside the protective curve of his dark wings. The sun shone out of their smiling faces.
» Quotes are from Terry Pratchett's Going Postal,Unseen Academicals, and The Truth.