Never Quite Normal

By: Jessa L'Rynn & Olfactory Ventriloquism

This work is a collaborative effort. If it had been just me, this story wouldn't be right at all, so big round of applause for my co-author, Olfactory Ventriloquism. -Jessa

Disclaimer: We don't own Doctor Who. We have abducted him and are trying to get him to sign himself over. After unsuccesfully questioning the Doctor on what Jack alluded to last week, OV has reluctantly returned to trying to get him to sign himself over. The Doctor has continued to peruse our handiwork, now with Jack peering over his shoulder. Jack says that the Doctor, like Joshua, is prone to lose control only when Rose is involved. Before we could get too excited by this compliment to our characterization, he continued, trying to explain this one time when the Doctor used his teeth to...before being interrupted by a Time Lord who was in a rush to assure us that the teeth were new, he was trying them out.

And our paperwork is back on the ground...

Please note: This fic carries an M rating for a lot of very good reasons


Chapter 27:

The door swung shut behind them with a soft click. Joshua quickly noticed that, overlaying the frigid sterility were vain splashes of color trying to cheer a stubbornly unhappy populace. An orderly came forward and took Joshua's case, and he knew it would end up being inspected. He rather hoped they'd settle for his coat being patted down, as it was a bit strange.

The doctor, his nametag announced him to be Bill Hendy, eyed the package that was clutched absentmindedly in Joshua's hand. "I'm going to need to look in that," he said. "You're here to cut your dependence on alcohol, but you haven't shed it yet." He was far too sympathetic, but it wasn't the empathy that Rose projected. It was something else, and it seemed almost unnatural. It made Joshua experience the sudden urge to retch, even as defensive walls slammed up. Whatever his aunt had given him, was only for him. It was private. Joshua crossed his arms, forbiddingly, shrugging deeper into his coat.

"Everything will go smoother if you cooperate," Dr. Hendy continued in his overly mild tones. Joshua eyed the man from his pink shirt with tie a slightly darker shade, to his starched lab coat. Even as he scorned the whole idea, he knew he wanted this place to work. That meant he had to let it work, let it do its thing. Reluctantly, he handed over the package. The pink-shirted one opened and cursorily examined the gift before handing it back to its proper owner.

Joshua was surprised to be handed a picture frame. Within it, smiled Rose and himself. He hadn't known the picture had been taken. It must have been snapped by John, that day in the park, the day he grabbed her hand and told her to run. For whatever reason, Benton had most likely taken it with his mobile, though, judging by the quality of the print he held, Aunt Doris must have digitally enhanced it. Joshua really didn't care why the picture had been taken; he was too busy basking in joy that he had received it.

Once out of the bleached hallway, Joshua saw that the rest of the rehab was a drab building. Cream walls from the 70's and a beige carpet had been worn into milky grays. The fluorescent lights had at least one in every three bulbs burned out to enhance the gloomy atmosphere.

He was led past the common room and to a room with two beds. An Asian man in his sixties was lounging on one of them, so Joshua assumed he would have the other one. The man looked up and grinned affably as Joshua settled Rose's picture next to his bed, always in easy reach.

"This is Son," Dr. Hendy introduced. "He will be your roommate. Son, this is Joshua."

Joshua nodded at him. Son was a cliché wrapped modernity. His gray hair was pulled back in a tight bun. He sported a neatly trimmed mustache and a goatee that was nearly a foot long. He looked like he was ready to play an emperor's advisor, except that wardrobe hadn't gotten to him yet. He wore baggy khaki shorts, and a painfully vibrant Hawaiian shirt. It was topped off with a ball cap for Manchester United.

"I'll leave you gentlemen to get acquainted," Dr. Hendy said. "Oh, and group is at 3."

Joshua rolled his eyes. There was a clock on the wall, but it was almost fifteen minutes fast. Still, not much time to wait. Joshua turned and stared out the window and wished for impossible things.


"Why don't we introduce ourselves?" Dr. Hendy began. This group, Joshua had learned, was for all the patients of Springwood who were admitted for chemical dependency. Dr. Hendy went, person by person, around the room. There were crack heads, heroin addicts, prescription pain pill abusers, and other alcoholics. Apparently, Dr. Hendy wanted his patients to become friends, because he'd ask what people did for a living, and what had brought them here.

Joshua found himself watching these people carefully, sizing them up, analyzing them. Son was addicted to pain medications because of injuries he'd sustained when working with a gymnastics troupe. There was another alcoholic, ironically named Sherry, who had an underlying anxiety disorder that Hendy hadn't caught yet, assuming it was the usual anxiety that detoxing alcoholics underwent. It would be soon, though, Joshua decided, that it became obvious that she had chronic anxiety.

Inevitably, it was Joshua's turn. "I'm Dr. Joshua Stewart," he stated gruffly.

"And why are you here?" Dr. Hendy asked.

"I'm an alcoholic."

"No," Hendy gently pressed. "That's what you're suffering from. Why are you here? What makes alcohol such a tempting escape?"

Joshua flashed through blurred memories of his childhood, never belonging to a family, bouncing from home to home. But his uncle had found him, and Joshua had grown past that, or at least around it. Working at UNIT had been everything it said on the tin: stressful, boring, dangerous, fun, full of friends and enemies, humans and aliens. But it hadn't broken him. In some country, he seemed to remember there was a tiny grave where his infant daughter, Susan, the glorious result of his indiscrete youth, would spend eternity…or at least the next five billion years until the sun expanded to destroy the planet. But though he could almost remember her smile, she hadn't started his descent.

Somewhere, hidden in his mind, chasing him through dreams, was a terror and a guilt. No one seemed to be able to tell him what it was that dogged him, but there might be fire or screams.

Having never done so before, Joshua chased these fleeting impressions, but they dodged his mental spotlights and cast pepper to confuse the dogs that hunted them. He could find nothing.

"Joshua?" Dr. Hendy sounded concerned. "Why are you here?"

"I…" a tear rolled down Joshua's cheek. "I don't know."

For a while, everyone stared at him with various levels of sympathy and confusion. Finally, Dr. Hendy tried a different tactic.

"What made you decide to come here?"

"I needed to try to deserve her," Joshua told him without thinking, still finding his way back from the void in his memory, picking carefully around the mines that were planted in his mind.

Hendy nodded and straightened his crisp, pink shirt before turning to another patient.


Joshua's case was waiting for him when he got back to his room, for which he was grateful, because he needed his notebook. Actually, he needed a drink, and he needed Rose, but the notebook would have to do.

There was also a schedule, which he perused with his usual efficiency. "Arts and crafts?" he muttered, disbelieving.

"Yeah, that's always fun," Son commented in cheerful tones. "Especially when there are actual artists forced to participate. You can almost see the steam roll out their ears."

"Fantastic," Joshua snarked. "Mine should make a great spectacle for you, then."

Son eyed his ears speculatively. Joshua frowned. "Don't say it," he suggested.

Son smirked. "Wasn't gonna say a thing," he said. "You have trust issues?" He leaned over, still smiling, and pulled out a book from somewhere.

Joshua looked at the book, read the title (it was written in Mandarin Chinese), and rolled his eyes. His room mate was going to be either a) extremely entertaining or b) extremely irritating. Or, there was always that dreaded third option: both.

He opened his case and found, to his surprise, a small, cream colored envelope lying on top of his neatly folded jumpers. He opened it and another photo fell out, a picture of Rose taken, it looked like, in front of Henricks. There was a card as well, and he smiled. Didn't know when she had put it in there, but he didn't care, either.

It was one of those cards with a picture on front and a blank inside, this one of several fish perusing a coral reef. The center fish bore a remarkable resemblance with Flounder.

Son glanced up and found his roommate smiling softly. Maybe not such an icy bastard, after all.

"Dear Joshua," the card read, "You're rubbish at phone calls, I'm rubbish at writing. Never will have your way with words. I can't think what to say, really. Just wanted to say hi or something."

He shrugged deeper into his coat and leaned against the wall by the window, tenderly cradling the card in one hand, the photo in the other. "I'm at work, it's my break, and I was just thinking it would be nice for you to have a note or letter so you wouldn't feel as lonely while you're settling in."

He imagined her sitting in some room somewhere, probably chewing on the pen while she tried to put her thoughts to words and then the words to paper. "You just aren't the stuffed animal type, which is what I'd give Shireen if it was her, so I guess a card will have to do."

Yes, definitely no teddy bears for him. Only thing he'd ever, as far as he could remember, had any urge to cuddle was Rose.

"Just remember that you can do this. I know you can and its what you want, to do something better. I'm so proud of you. Your family are all proud of you. What you're doing now, it's good, and that's - like you always, say - fantastic. I know it might be hard, and I'm sorry, but I know you're stronger than anything."

Except being without her. He wasn't sure he was strong enough for that, but if being without her now made him better for her later, it would have to do. He would make it do.

"Just know I'll be thinking about you. If they give you time, think about me, too. And if you need me, I'm always just a phone call away. Call me any time, even if you just want someone to make you laugh."

He frowned. There was something off about that, what she'd just written, but he wasn't quite sure what it was.

"Love from, Your Rose."

Now that, that was definitely worth all of this. She probably wrote "Love from" because that was how she always signed letters, but still. She'd also written "Your Rose," like she was acknowledging what he'd been wishing to tell her all along, that he wanted her to stay with him, be with him, keep him for herself.

It was persistently two-sided, this possessive streak of his. Every single time it occurred to him, whenever it came up, it insisted not only that she was his, but that he was hers.

Over his lifetime, no one had ever been particularly willing to keep him. Uncle Alistair and Aunt Doris, yes, but the others in his life...

Everyone always left him, and no one ever would or could stay. He had the flat in London, but it wasn't really his home. He had a room at the country Estate but, while it felt closer to home, it still wasn't his. He'd learned from watching his Aunt and Uncle, from watching others, that a home was more the people in it than the place itself.

If that was the case, then Rose was the closest thing to a home he'd had in as long as he could remember. He would fight for that, would do anything he could to become home for her.

He looked back at the card. "PS:" it continued, "Wilson took the photo for you. Said it was to say 'sorry' but I don't know what for. He asked me to wish you luck, though."

He grinned. Yeah, Wilson owed him an apology, at least a little bit. He'd caused a misunderstanding that'd very nearly ruined his chances before he knew he had any.

The very last line, crammed on the bottom of the page, led him back to that miraculous moment, which he'd only later recognized for what it truly was, the moment that Rose reached for him, only him, with both hands. "PSS: Whatever happens, just breathe."


Bill's voice was like nothing Joshua had ever experienced in his life. It had been bad enough in group, but one-to-one, Joshua was willing to consider that there was a lucrative career for the little psychiatrist in professional torture, if he wanted to take it up.

It wasn't an unpleasant voice, quite the contrary, in fact. It was a soft, gentle, careful thing, but somehow the quietness of it, the rhythm and cadence, the timbre, all added together to the aural equivalent of Chinese water torture, a sound designed to drive the listener completely insane without their noticing. It was hypnotic, and every neuron in Joshua's skull fired constant protest to its effect.

Reminded Joshua of someone, really, but he couldn't remember who. Started with a K, maybe. Or was it an M?

After the unpleasant Group session, Joshua had become aware that this facility, while admirably equipped to deal with most addicts and their attached difficulties, was completely out of their depth with someone like him. Just Bill's face in response to Joshua's unwitting confessions of earlier had been enough of a clue to let him in on that fact. He was an anomaly in their experience, but he had been one all his life.

If poor Harry hadn't spent half his medical career getting a handle on Joshua's odd physiology, he was willing to admit that he'd probably have been dissected by now. He spared a moment, while Bill filled in some form or other, to chide himself for giving up so soon.

Harry had learned, and maybe Bill could, too.

The little, bearded psychiatrist peered at Joshua over his notes. "According to Dr. Sullivan's report, you experience frequent night terrors. Would you like to begin with that?"

"Now, we both know that the effect of night terrors is that the patient can't recall what it is he dreams about. I'm no different in that regard."

"That's true, Joshua. May I call you Joshua, or do you prefer Mr. Stewart?"

"I expect you will, call me Joshua, I mean. For the record, though, it's Dr. Stewart or Major Stewart, not Mr. Stewart and not, incidentally, Josh."

"Your titles are important to you?" It was phrased as a question, but it sounded like an observation, and certainly Bill made some sort of note as he asked.

"Worked hard for 'em. Seems only right I take some pride in 'em."

"That's very true. What is your Doctorate in?"

Joshua shrugged. "Linguistics and literature. Not a medical degree, I admit."

"You like literature?" Trying to be friendly, Bill gave him the tiniest smile. There was still too much sympathy in that expression.

"I'm a poet," Joshua confessed, ruefully. "Yeah, I know I don't look like one, ya don't have to tell me."

"I'd certainly never presume to state how an artist is required to appear. Does it bother you? Your appearance?"

Joshua blinked. As a matter of fact... his appearance was... "No," he said, as a land mine and a wall manifested themselves in his head. He'd have to take a look at them, later. "Not sure I care for being forty, but who does?"

"Why is that a concern?" Bill asked.

The look in Hendy's eyes told Joshua that the man thought he'd hit a goldmine of information. Because he had seen Rose, Joshua quickly concluded, and despite, or ironically because of, his training, made assumptions about their relationship. He wasn't supposed to be treating this like a chess game but, damn it all, it suddenly felt like one, and a good one, with a reasonably clever opponent.

He used to beat the computers at chess. The pink shirt poof didn't stand a chance. "You know, getting old. Nothing major."

Bill looked marvelously defeated, but he covered well.

Check, Joshua thought cheerfully.

"I see," said Bill, and went back to his notes. "And your records state that you were in the military."

"They'll also state, then, that my work is top secret and can't be discussed without orders from the Queen." Not that Joshua would have discussed it, anyway. He wasn't in the mood to be sectioned on top of all this.

"I wasn't interested in your work so much as your feelings toward your career."

"Former career," Joshua corrected, firmly. "I'm retired."

"Do you enjoy being retired, or do you miss your work?"

"Yes," Joshua answered, fighting off the grin by remembering that Bill didn't need to know they were playing a game just yet.

"So mixed feelings, then?" Bill concluded.

Ouch. Nice gambit from Bill.

"It's complicated." Joshua stood up, rude though he considered it might be, and paced. Still was not a position he could be kept in easily. The way he saw it, he had two choices. He could chatter on about his past a lot and it would not help, since that seemed only likely to reopen wounds he'd long since learnt to heal or work around, or he could say nothing and leave the little psychiatrist with an attitude to go with the frustrated terrier look on his face.

Third option, then, one he'd forgotten about, old habit he'd thought he'd broken, but maybe not. He could talk, technically, for days, about absolutely nothing.

So he talked.