If you have never heard the song, or seen the performance, you can find a nice clip of it at YouTube. Ah, YouTube -- where would we workers who want to waste time be without you?
The momentary strum on the electric guitar cut through the air, about as discordant and unharmonious as was humanly possible. The crowd only cheered louder, pressing around the Doctor as he finally broke through to the front.
There they were, looming over all on that elevated stage. Pete in his pure white jump suit. Roger, bare-chested, with his fringed Indian jacket. John in a white shirt but shrouded in darkness. And Keith in his gleaming red shirt, a torso behind a drum set. The spotlight swung over onto Pete as he stepped to the mike.
"Thank you very much indeed. We'd like to play a song which kinda is our--"
Someone shouted indistinctively behind the Doctor, but the pause snapped his attention back. He found himself facing the stage, where he needed to be, but it was the fence that made him mentally slap himself. Of course, the fence! The high fence that held back the crowd and provided a pit in which the film crew had set up shop to film the documentary!
"--we knew we were gonna come back and do it -- this is a --"
Another shout and people were laughing. The Doctor thought and thought, his thoughts running miles in milliseconds. He had to use the Who. They were the key -- or, well, their performance within the next four minutes was the key. Now, he couldn't get to the stage and make the needed modifications there. No, even he couldn't charge the stage in time. There had to be another--
"--yeah, sorry -- uh this is kinda our hymn. It's a song about you and me. We're getting a bit old now."
Then he looked to the left and how he did grin! Of course. If you can't get to the source of the sound, you go to the relay of the sound. The skeletal structure that housed the mammoth speakers used to get to the far reaches of the crowd. The sound tower!
"Song called My Generation."
The Doctor was off and running before the first notes and chords were struck on the Who's youth anthem. In his head the clock ran down. Three minutes, fourteen seconds. Thirteen seconds. Twelve seconds...
Rose lay on her stomach. He was already down to the remaining buttons with those incredibly fast and nimble fingers of his. He used only one hand to finish undoing the bodice, lightly running the fingers of his free hand up and down the freshly exposed skin of her back. The warmth of the light touch was more relaxing than any massage she'd ever received.
"Never ceases to amaze me how you lot can devise such complex means of doing up your clothing," he murmured in her ear as he pulled apart the last button.
Rose looked over her shoulder at him, poking her tongue out.
"You've never learned the art of undressing as foreplay, have you?"
"I never had the chance tonight, did I?" he shot back, as he slipped her arms free from their puffy shoulder restraints. "You just looked at me and there I was, naked, without so much as a may I undress you now, Doctor?"
He lightly slapped her bum through the layers of chiffon and taffeta. "Now, turn over."
Rose shifted unto her side, covering up her breasts with her free arms in a teasing bid for modesty. "You'd rather you were dressed right now?"
He sat back on his haunches, observing her shielding arms with a raised eyebrow.
"I'd rather we establish an equality here. Are you having second thoughts, Rose?"
Rose blushed. It was silly, she knew, because she knew it wasn't really him, even if it felt like it was really him, and since it wasn't really him, well, this one had seen her like this many times before. But he had never acted like this, which is why he felt so real, which made what she was about to show him, the whole intimate act of actually showing him, something that felt so real and intimate and exposed.
Her head was spinning again. It took her a moment to process that he had stretched out to look into her eyes, propping himself up to only have their noses be touching.
"Rose, if you've got three nipples on each breast under that lovely arm of yours, it would hardly matter to me -- I've seen it, mind you it comes in quite handy when your species has large litters of pups -- but no matter what you look like, it won't matter. What matters is that I love you."
Rose arched up to kiss him and used both arms to pull him down on top of her.
When they broke from the kiss, he looked down between them at what she had been protecting, then looked back up at her with a soft smile and twinkling eyes.
"Fantastic."
Rose giggled, and he sat back on his haunches, his studious gaze now on the puffy skirt.
"Alright, one bit done. Now to get rid of this taffeta travesty."
The Doctor's mad dash along the fence didn't mean he got past the fence. No, the bloody wooden barrier went on and on past the sound tower he had reached. The tower was nothing more than a scaffolding of poles latched and crisscrossed together with a set of four speakers on a platform halfway up and then again at the very top. There were a number of people on the top of the tower. Mostly sound crew, even if they were either as naked or similarly attired as the crowd around him.
Some of the stage light fell on the area, but it wasn't enough to see by. He ran his fingers up and down the nearest plank until he felt the cool metal nails. His screwdriver made short work of those nails, vibrating them right out of the wood. He wasted no time ripping the wood away and slipping into the narrow opening -- being very glad he had regenerated into such a lean figure.
He didn't notice, or he didn't care, that a couple security guards took notice of his activities and ran towards him, shouting for him to halt. Even if they were security guards at the concert of peace and love, he wasn't about to take them lightly. But he was also not about to let them get in his way. That was just not his style.
His internal clock was already at two minutes twenty seconds, and tumbling downward faster and faster.
He leapt up and grabbed the skeletal structure. His feet found traction, and he was pushing himself up by the time the security had reached the bottom of the tower.
He caught a quick glimpse as he hauled himself up to that first set of speakers. Two burly men, more fat than muscle. One just looked up at him as the other called for back-up. Either they were too big to handle the climb, as the tower did vibrate a bit every time he or someone else moved on it. Or they were hoping those already on the tower would stop him.
Good luck with that, the Doctor thought ruefully, pulling himself onto the platform with the first speakers. Not even an invasion of Daleks could stop me right now. He could tell by the way the tower moved that someone was climbing on it -- probably those above him coming down. He went to the first speaker, set his sonic screwdriver, and went to work.
The platform quivered. Someone had just landed on it. He didn't look. Two minutes....
"Hey, you're the alien!"
The Doctor glanced up as he moved to the second speaker. Sure enough, it was their friend from when they'd arrived at the concert. The rather stoned individual Rose had goofed around with. Still looking rather stoned, the man was smiling brightly.
"What are you doing here?" the Doctor said, rather harshly, knowing he was being rude, really not caring. He focused on the speaker. "Didn't you say you were going to mind my ship?"
"Sorry, alien, I had to come to work the sound. That's me. I'm the sound man, goo goo g'joob."
"It's amazing you haven't electrocuted yourself," he muttered to himself, then lit up and smiled warmly at his new found friend. "Say, can you do me a favor, since you've left my spaceship unguarded and everything? Can you tell your security friends that I'm supposed to be here?"
"Sure, alien, I'm down with that."
The Doctor finished up with the second one and moved to the third one. The man went to the edge and waved off the security crew.
"It's okay, guys, he's with me!"
The Doctor was on the fourth and final one -- his internal clock becoming infuriating louder in his head -- when the man came back to peer over his shoulder.
"So, what are you doing, alien? You gonna hook us up so that your friends out there on the Moon can hear us?"
Out there on the Moon? Did this man not see the lunar landing? Humans! Can't believe something even when it's right there in front of their own eyes, nose and hands!
The Doctor finished the fourth and paused only the briefest of time to explain to his friend what he was attempting to do.
"I'm modifying these speakers so that they will emit a hypersonic, neural-resonating pulse that will be triggered by the specific frequencies Pete Townsend is about to achieve with his amazing discordant solo at the end of this song, with the hope that the resonance pulse will be enough to disrupt the delta waves that are holding my friend and others in a drug-induced coma while simultaneously jump starting their brains' beta waves that will wake them all up."
The man blinked. "Hey, groovy, man."
The Doctor leapt up to begin his climb again. "Thanks for your help!" he called down, before clenching the screwdriver between his teeth to haul himself up.
"Any time, alien! Live long and prosper!"
Now they were equal. They were lying on their sides, facing each other's nudity. She watched his face as he just looked at her. No, it was more than looking. He was devouring her with his eyes. Memorizing every curve, every scar, every freckle, every line, every river of blue that was a vein. She had gotten used to seeing his body -- this time and every other time she had thought about it -- but he studied her as if she was new territory. A new galaxy he'd never been to, with stars and nebulae and planets to catalog and explore.
She had never felt so comfortable with anyone. The warmth in his eyes spread into every fiber of her body and soul.
Then he reached out and brushed her stomach, starting below her bellybutton and tracing a line straight up between her breasts and to the dip where the neck meets the shoulders.
"We need to just stay here, you and me, so that I can properly explore you. Every single, absolutely fantastic part of you. I don't want to hurry this. I want to know you."
Rose mirrored his motion, only backwards. Starting at his Adam's apple, she used her fingertips to push through the light hair on his chest, down his nicely taunt stomach, smiling a bit when she saw his eyes close the lower her hand went.
"Do you know what I want?"
Those heavy-lidded, heavenly eyes focused on hers.
"What is that, my Rose?"
She twirled her finger in the hair she found below his belly button.
"I want you -- him -- I want my Doctor to remember this later, like if he'd been the one here with me, and not just you."
He plucked her toying hand away, wrapped another arm around her shoulder, and pulled her to him. Face to face, body against body, he wrapped his leg around hers, aching to possess her.
"How do you know I won't?"
He arched towards her, his body as warm as a thousand suns, setting her aflame. He caught her moaning mouth with his own, pulling her even closer into him.
The Doctor bit down, hard, on the screwdriver and gripped the metal poles for support as the warm feeling of Rose pressed against him sent shivers through every single nerve in his body. He found himself fighting his own body as he dragged himself onto the top platform.
The other sound men gawked at this strange person. One squatted down and literally pulled the sweating, panting Doctor onto the platform.
He could still hear the clock ticking in his head. Just over a minute left. His brain screamed at his body to move, to get up and get to those last four speakers. But there was a disconnect. His brain was yelling through jelly. His body radiated from the phantom embrace. But it wasn't just Rose's emotions he was feeling now.
This time, he had been him -- the other him -- holding Rose against his naked body. Kissing her. Feeling the need to possess her, to never let her go.
And that connection with his fake self, well that was, quite simply, impossible.
The other him was a construction of Rose's mind. It had no identity of its own. How in the world could he, the real Doctor, be telepathically connecting with a non-existent version of himself?
The fog separating his mind and body was lifting, and he found himself able to push up. The feelings had subsided, retreating back into the more comfortable connection he had with Rose. More comfortable, in that the pleasure she was feeling was still there, just not consuming. Not so real.
He shrugged off the sound man's hands, not caring how rude he was toward the kind gesture. He shuffled to the first speaker and set to work.
The sound men gathered around him, curious. He sensed his friend hauling himself up to the platform. He was vaguely aware that this friend told the other sound men that everything was okay, that they could trust this alien who was just trying to call to his mother ship. He might have said something silly or snide, but he jumped to the second speaker.
Truth was he could barely concentrate. His fingers shook, and his mind threatened to pull him back to that phantom embrace, which he knew was becoming more intense thanks to the sounds he heard Rose making. Her groans and moans were echoed by his -- no, bugger, the other him -- that other person's groans and moans.
They filled his head, mixing with the ticking clock. Forty-five seconds -- oh lord, was that what she looked like -- forty-four seconds -- was that, did he just taste her skin?
Another tremor, and his body involuntarily froze. The screwdriver clattered to the platform. He wanted to scoop it up. He could hear the clock ticking. But what he was seeing made it impossible for him to carry out any of those movements.
He saw her, completely supine to his touches, his caresses, his kisses. He saw her looking at him, with such love, such honest and complete love.
He was there. He was the other Doctor.
The small part of his brain that was still functioning, that was very mindful of the ticking of the clock, jostled the part that was highly engrossed with what he was experiencing. Like a kick in the pants, it shook him out of his fixation on the sensations and redirected his gaze to the screwdriver and the awaiting speaker.
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "This is ridiculous. She's counting on you, and you're indulging in a fantasy! Focus!"
Rose was laughing, in his head, in his ear. The Doctor gulped and tore everything away until all he saw was her forehead. He bore into it, focusing on the white light in her mind that he connected with.
"Rose, stop it right now! I need to concentrate!"
Rose jumped out of his embrace, slamming her head into the bed's headboard.
"What was that!" she gasped, grabbing her throbbing head. It wasn't just where it made contact with the wood that hurt. It was like someone just set off a bomb inside her skull, and now the whole bleeding thing was ringing because of it.
He immediately cradled her to his chest, rocking her as he examined the bump on her head.
"I didn't know you were ticklish under the knees. I'll have to make note of that. That noggin of yours, good thing it's so thick. You hit that headboard with a tremendous thump!"
He was smiling, but she definitely did not find it funny. She didn't dare open her eyes until her skull stopped ringing.
"I'm not, and that's not what it was."
He stroked her cheek, and she ventured one eye open to see the concern in his eyes.
"What was it then?"
"It was like someone shouted at me, from inside my head."
"My, that is odd. I don't suppose it could've been me that you heard. I was just thinking some rather dirty things."
Rose grinned, interested in knowing more about those dirty things later. "Not unless you told me to stop what I was doing."
He thought about it -- put his finger to his mouth, looked away, the whole hammish bit. Then he gleefully snapped out of it to grin broadly at her.
"You're right, that doesn't sound a bit like me. No, I was just thinking about what would happen if I did this."
He deftly slipped a finger into her, and her mind exploded again. This time, with stars.
thirty seconds...
He'd finished the third speaker and was moving on the fourth speaker when he felt them. Simultaneously. He felt himself moving in her, and he felt her reaction to his surprisingly expert technique. It was calling to him. It wanted him to stop what he was doing and give in to the feelings. To relish in the sensations that he had so long denied himself.
twenty-six seconds...
All that remained vigilant and rational was a tiny speck in his mind. But somehow that tiny speck took hold and pulled those strings that were needed to move his hand and work the screwdriver. To finish the preparations, as Roger stopped singing and Pete began to play.
He wanted to give in. But he also wanted to save her. And those two parts were entirely incompatible. It was a struggle, a battle for his very heart. But in the end only one could possibly win. Only one outcome would ever be acceptable, and both sides knew it..
There was no way he was going to give in to the fantasy if it meant losing her in reality.
twenty-two seconds...
The screwdriver beeped and shut off. It was done. All eight speakers had been modified to emit the hypersonic, neural-resonating pulse. A middling thought, that perhaps these speakers wouldn't reach her, was pushed aside. After his adjustments, they'd probably reach halfway across the state. Which meant a lot of people were about to be rudely awakened from their deep sleep. Perhaps even jostle a number of people out of their comas. It would be heralded as a miracle. It would be --
Possibly enough to collapse this entire sound tower.
nineteen seconds...
He leapt to his feet, startling the sound men who had been watching him very keenly.
"Right, okay, that's all done. But, gentlemen, these new adjustments are rather sensitive and need to be left alone for awhile. If you would please climb down the rear of the tower, until after the Who have finished, then I'm certain everything will be absolutely dandy."
They didn't move. Bloody humans!
seventeen seconds...
He rolled his eyes and aimed his sonic screwdriver at them.
"Okay, look, I'm an alien, this is my, err, death ray, and I've commandeered your sound system to signal my mother ship. Now, either you get off this tower, right now, or I will liquefy your eyeballs or something just as disgusting and highly painful."
"Hey, be cool, alien, we're going, we're going."
His friend, wide-eyed and trembling, led the others down, scaling the rear of the tower as instructed. The Doctor stood at the ledge, keeping his screwdriver aimed at their retreating heads. Off to his right, Pete was commanding the stage with his guitar solo -- the one the Doctor knew was about to become legendarily brutal for sensitive eardrums.
ten seconds...
With a final glance at the speakers, the Doctor swung down the scaffolding to follow suit.
eight seconds...
He reached the second platform. His screwdriver began to beep as the pulse built around the speakers. With more haste, he pressed on.
six seconds...
His screwdriver beeped faster. He dropped the remaining couple of feet.
And found himself surrounded by the sound men and their security guards -- all of whom were warily eying the beeping device in his hand. He held it up, without aiming at anyone in particular, and fixed on his former friend a dramatic evil eye.
"I'd step back if I were you," he growled.
He stepped forward, prompting them all to step back.
"Because this thing is about to--"
Pete hit that note, that fingernails on the chalkboard note, as he began to manhandle his guitar.
The Doctor's sonic screwdriver screeched. Above them, the speaker's sparked and blew out. The tower shuddered as the sparks rained down on them, prompting the humans to cover their heads. In that confusion, he slipped away.
Back through his open hole. Into the crowd that was thrilled by the performance and light show as Pete decided to slam his guitar about the place.
It had to have worked. It had to have! Rose, can you hear me?
The crowd swallowed the Doctor up, lost in their cheers for the Who.
Well, seeing as how we all know what ultimately is Rose's fate, I obviously can't kill her or anything. But that's not what is important right now, is it? The question is -- just how mean am I?
