Ricky the Idiot Disclaimer: I don't WANT to own Doctor Who and neither should you! He is an alien thing and he snatched my girl right from under my nose while I was looking right at her. And just because I never noticed that she was more special than someone who should be greeted at the door with "kit off" doesn't mean I had that coming, so shut it!
As I am a professional writer and have work to do to get paid, I have decided to deal with these thudding plot bunnies in the traditional manner - I will inflict them on others. Please see my Profile for the Challenges of the Month. New challenges for May have been added! Due to lack of response, at least one of April's will remain up. The new set will run through the end of May. Please let me know when you respond to a Challenge so I can read and review.
A/N: THIS IS A WARNING!!
This chapter may be pushing the rating just a little bit. If you are at all sensitive or are still subject to the adult conspiracy, you may wish to avoid the end of it.
Chapter 21: The Storm
"I'm a Time Lord. You're aware, I'm sure, that this means I can see the future."
Rose wanted to say something, anything, in response to this, but she couldn't move. Why couldn't she move?
"My precious girl," came the Doctor's thought in her head. "Be still, be silent. I'll get you out of there."
He continued talking. She kept her eyes closed and tried to figure out what had happened. Where ever she was, the room stank of chemicals and that sauce smell she'd noticed earlier. It was also unbelievably cold.
"There is no future," she heard one alien say. Weird. They hadn't been talking in English before this, and now they were? "There is now and not now. Time Lords see not now."
"Fine. I see the not now. And, in the not now, I am punching you in the face. This isn't something that's happening now, right?"
"You are not punching anyone, Time Lord. You are standing still as Time Lords do. You move at will through time and will not move."
"Watch me," he snapped.
Whatever happened next involved quite a lot of noise from the aliens. It also apparently caused the Doctor a small amount of pain. She used the distraction to try to place what was happening. She realized that she had straps on her wrists and that she was lying flat on what felt like a cold metal table. Her eyes flew open and she struggled. The Doctor landed awkwardly next to her, leaning heavily on the table. One bright blue eye winked at her and he wrenched the restraint loose on her left wrist. She held still again, encouraged by his strength, and watched silently.
"That did not happen in the now," he continued. "It happened in the not now. I need to know what happened to you in the not now to get you here. Tell me."
"We are coming through the hole. We are finding this place and these moving things and we are watching them. They are moving through the not now. They have time travel. We are studying why."
"You are ignoring the basic facts of this situation! In the not now, some of them will come for you and you will be destroyed. Let me help you. Let me get you home."
"We are not going home. We are staying here. They have time travel. We will take it for ourselves."
"They can't give it to you," he snapped. "They can't. It's just something that happens for them."
Rose watched him with her eyes only open a crack as he moved between her and the three aliens who towered over him. As soon as she was sure he blocked their view, she reached her hand over and tugged the other restraint loose. She brushed his mind to let him know, and waited, feigning unconsciousness, while the aliens seemed to debate amongst themselves.
"If they are not giving us their time travel, they are dying," one of the aliens said.
"No, they are not dying," the Doctor replied insistently. "There are many of them and few of you. You are dying."
"We are using the detonator," countered the alien. "They are dying."
Her blood ran cold.
"No!" he shouted. He breathed slowly and sharply, then spoke again, calmly. "There's no call for this. Let me help you."
"You can give us time travel," said another alien. Rose knew it was a different one because its voice was harder, stronger, colder. "You are bringing the Time Spill. You can bring us time."
"I cannot and you know it. Time Lords have tried to give you time before... in the not now... and it won't work for you."
"You are different. The Time Spill is coming to you, from you. You are giving us time travel, or..."
"Or what?" he demanded.
"Or this one is dying."
"No!!" he cried out, anguish plain in his voice and in his thoughts. "I can't give you time. You won't understand! All you believe is now. Even if I give it to you, you won't believe me!!"
"Then the pink and yellow one is dying."
The aliens all screamed at once. The Doctor's hand clamped down on hers and she let him pull her from the table.
She got a brief glimpse of filth and blood and equipment that looked like it had escaped from the set of a sci-fii horror film. The aliens were all shaking and screaming, as sparks shot from the silver pieces at their necks. Rose almost froze, but the Doctor had her hand and then her arm in a tight grip, pulling her along with him almost as fast as she could move. She felt stiff and weird but her head didn't hurt at all like she thought it should.
"Run!" he shouted as soon as she had her feet steady under her. They stumbled together through the main room, tripping and skidding but never falling and never, ever letting go. The Doctor put up his free hand as they reached the ramp and the outside cellar doors burst open. They charged through them. Rose lost her footing and almost tumbled in the damp grass, but the Doctor's grip kept her upright.
"Keep going," he commanded. "We've got to get away from here!"
The wind was strong enough to almost knock her to her knees. The storm that had been brewing all morning had arrived. The early afternoon sky was as dark as twilight, darker for the absence of stars. Instead, it was punctuated by great sheets of bright lightning that swept over the clouds, followed almost immediately by the near-deafening roll of thunder.
She didn't dare try to go down the hillside. One misstep, and it would be so easy in the rising dark, the wind, and the panic, and she would lose her footing and fall, tumbling helplessly until she hit the bottom. The Doctor apparently agreed with her, because he stopped and looked around desperately for some sign of shelter or help.
A man in a billowing great coat stood at the base of the hill, watching them and watching the house. Rose couldn't even make out his face at this distance. He pointed off to the left. "You'll be safe there," he shouted, but it sounded like a whisper against the meteorological pyrotechnics.
The Doctor nodded and turned Rose into the open field. The wind churned the grass into whips that slapped against her legs, soaking her jeans through and the rain hadn't even started yet.
They found a wash, where the run off must have once cut down the hill. Now, it was covered in a thick layer of moss and some kind of fern. "This should do," the Doctor said, and dropped over the side, reaching up to help her down after him.
She looked into his eyes as he gripped her waist and brought her gently to the ground. His pupils were huge, his irises indigo against them. The storm's fury was echoed there, reflections of the lightning looking completely natural in the dark depths.
He turned away, back toward the house. She turned, too, just in time to see the sky split in two by an enormous fork of light. It cut through the air, then through dry wood, exploding everything in its path with horrendous noise. She threw her hands up over her ears and watched as the house burst into flame like so much dry kindling.
Thunder answered the lightning's roar, wreaking havoc through the air with force enough to shatter the clouds. The rain came then, pounding like hail and almost as cold.
The Doctor flung his arms around her and pulled her down to the floor of the wash, covering her with his body. Then, with a noise that easily out-stripped even the thunder, the remains of the house on the hill exploded.
The ground shook and the air shook, the Time Lord above her shook, and she herself practically vibrated with cold and fear and the indomitable ecstasy of purely being alive. He looked at her, his eyes desperately searching her for any trace of damage.
What happened next was at once inexplicable and perfectly normal, a very bad idea and a positively brilliant one. She moved and he moved and his lips crashed down over hers, a searing, starving, possessive kiss. She fought back, not to break free, but just to match his blazing intensity.
She wasn't cold anymore, and she wasn't afraid. He was beautiful and hers and they were safe and together and so very, very alive. She wrenched his shirt free from his trousers, breaking the kiss to attack his throat with her lips, while one of his hands cupped her head. The other ventured to the hem of her shirt and tugged at it impatiently.
She drew back and inhaled sharply, snatching at his clothes and her own. It took both of them to get her out of her drenched jeans and she decided she wouldn't think about getting them back on later for awhile. He pulled her into a sitting position and threw his coat down where she could recline on it, their shirts balled up to pillow her head.
They were naked in the heart of the storm, water coming down over them in a steady downpour. The air smelled of fresh churned earth and sweet living plants. Beyond that was the charred reek of disaster and above it all was the fragrance of the storm itself, the cold, pure scent of fresh rain and saline, the indescribable smell of a sky blasted clean by wind and fire and water.
Finally, most immediately, there was that all-encompassing aroma of arousal, the demanding, compelling, enamoring human scent of "oh-god-we-didn't-die-let's-procreate".
She looked up at the Doctor in shock and wonder. That last was not, could not have been her thought. His eyes were still huge and blazing, his face strained almost to the breaking point. She could feel it, his want, his need, his longing, not just for her body but for her, for everything about her. He nudged at her in more than one way, desperately fighting himself on both fronts, because neither was right under the circumstances.
Rose loved him, more for fighting than for wanting, but the wanting was beautiful, too. "Do it," she whispered, monumental decisions made in those two short syllables, her life forever, inextricably bound to his.
He studied her face, and then nodded. One hand cupped her cheek, the other splayed on her bare hip. He eased into her, mind and body, and she cried out in ecstasy that felt, not merely doubled, but quadrupled by the connection. Her legs went up around his waist by instinct, but the more pressing joy was what he was doing in her head.
"My Rose," came the whisper, but she thought his words may have come from her lips.
"My Doctor," she replied, or had him reply for her, perhaps.
All the doors in her mind flew open at once. All the doors in his did the same, all except one, which was marked "abandon all hope, ye who enter here" so she knew it was best left alone.
"I'm not allowed to open it," he told her, a fact.
She kissed him, drawing him closer in every possible way. He was so cold and she was burning around him and within him, a flame that would always be the torch he used to light his way. They belonged together. She was created for him.
She created herself for him.
He gently nudged one of her doors closed. "Not that one," he whispered. "We're not ready."
He did something, something that a human being could not possibly do with that and she arched into him, demanding to experience it again. He complied, his face all serious and concentrated, but his eyes sparkling like diamonds with the knowledge that she accepted and wanted everything about him. She didn't want him to be human; she just wanted him to be her Doctor.
The wind picked up again. The rhythm of their bodies and their minds rose to echo it, copy it, supplant it. He gazed down at her and at last she could see what he saw, a precious creature of starlight and wonder, caressed in gold that danced for her every breath.
She blinked to clear her gaze of the unearthly mirror, looked up at him, instead, and was blown apart by what she saw. He was the storm itself, wore the clouds like silken wings, the last of the lightning a halo for his head. His eyes were the color of the sky and his voice as he cried out was the thunder itself.
The storm broke over her and broke through her, inside her body and inside her mind, and she held him closer still, cherishing him, loving him, surrendering to him and accepting his surrender in return.