Measures of Time
by Camilla Sandman
Disclaimer: Characters of Doctor Who are from the loving bosom of the BBC. I wouldn't dare get in the way of such a relationship.
Author's Note: You might call this an AU Bad Wolf scenario. Spoilers up to "Boom Town" and does deal with some of the storylines of "Bad Wolf"/"Parting of the Ways". Nine/Rose pairing, a little TARDIS on the side.
II
Part One
II
a life
II
Sometimes, in the sentience that is the TARDIS, she thinks about time. There are no words to capture it, but sometimes she borrows the human term of ocean; an ocean she drifts on and tries to keep him from drowning in. She is his ship, but even he doesn't fully understand or know her. There's no one left who do now and she mourns Gallifrey too.
There's time, she thinks, and there are those who live in it. Live in it and try to make it theirs with whatever technology they have. Clocks, hourglasses, words, crystals, metal, light, darkness, computers, ships... One more device for the telling of time, making it seem manageable in pieces. Seconds, hours, days, years, lifetimes, centuries, millennia, ages, eternities, all the little measures of time.
She doesn't need them.
She is them all.
II
thirteen seconds
II
He can feel the moment they hit and the TARDIS screams, or perhaps it's him, feeling time ripping into them. They've collided. They've collided and time is yanking at them and they're all going to fall, him and Rose and Jack.
And he can only reach one of them, fall with one of them.
In the seconds of decision, there's an eternity. Rose, oh Rose, beautiful and human and hand that fits in his like no other. Jack, oh Jack, flirts and breaths and life, jokes to keep the darkness away.
He hopes Jack will forgive him one day.
He lets go of the TARDIS console and reaches for her, feeling her hand still fit in his, an anchor of skin to keep even a Time Lord from going adrift.
"Not letting you go, Rose Tyler," he says, and they fall into time.
II
a rainstorm
II
He awakes to pain. Not an unfamiliar sensation, but not one he has ever grown too fond of. There's something like a firestorm in his head, a hundred burning sensations from his body colliding. He breathes and lets them slowly sort themselves out.
His leg is slightly twisted and he corrects it, feeling the bone groan, but obey. Not broken then. Skin is on fire along his arm, he can feel blood as he touches it. His back aches as if he's carried the world and his flesh is aching all over. But he still feels himself and the ears feel the same too.
He lets out another breath and opens his eyes.
It's bloody Earth, is his first realisation. It's bloody Earth again. Second realisation, they fell. Third realisation, it's raining. Fourth realisation, Rose is lying on the ground a few feet away, arm still stretched towards him, eyes closed.
The brain almost howls with pain when he gets up on his knees, but he manages to crawl over without cursing too much. He'll pay for this in bruises and aches later. Doesn't matter. He's paid far worse before.
She doesn't stir when he touches her, but he can feel her pulse and hear her breath and the sonic screwdriver he manages to dig out of his pocket does confirm she's alive. He lets his hands do a far more intimate exploration of her body than he's dared before, and nothing seems broken. She's bleeding from several cuts and seems to have a burn on her hand, neither of which he's sure of the source of, but they're not in any way fatal.
"Oh, Rose," he mutters and sinks down on the ground again, just for a moment, letting his forehead rest against hers. They're alive. They're both alive. He can take a moment to enjoy that before taking on everything else. Just a moment of Rose and him, her skin so soft under his fingers.
"Right," he says and lets out a long breath. This is Earth, but when, he's not quite sure. Still, there has to be something here to heal Rose (and himself, he adds as an afterthought), and something with power he can use to bring the TARDIS to him. Provided whatever they collided with in time didn't rip the TARDIS apart.
He doesn't want to think about that, so he doesn't.
What they did collide with, however, he does consider. None of the alternatives cheer him particularly up and most of them point to some kind of save the world situation again. If it was a collision at all, that is. And after that's been sorted he has to find Jack, which could very well be something like finding a particular grain of sand in a sandstorm and he's done that before. It makes for burning eyes and raw skin. He'll definitely want tea afterwards. Probably a few biscuits too.
Or he'll fail and everything will be a bit of a muck-up. Always a possibility, even with him. But he stores that with everything else he doesn't want to think about - the war, losing the TARDIS, falling face down in the mud and looking like an idiot, Rose eventually leaving or dying from him - and fights himself back on his feet.
His back is protesting to the point of strike as he gathers Rose in his arms, cradling her head carefully. The ground feels muddy underneath, and he has to walk carefully not to slip. It's a muddy landscape in the rain, a few hills rising in the distance, no trees and so sign of people.
It better not be near Cardiff again, he thinks. It better not be.
There are faints traces of burn as he walks, a trunk crumbled in ash, a blackened rock, tufts of grass still not grown back. And as he gets higher, he realises the hills are not so much hills as the ground level. It's a crater. Something has fallen from the sky and burned here, the traces still visible. Something falling out of time, as he and Rose did. And he remembers the sound of the TARDIS just before time ripped in. Or was let in.
Fifth realisation - oh, bollocks.
"We didn't collide," he says to the rain and the rain drums in agreement. "We rammed something."
Sixth realisation, Rose is stirring.
"Hey," he beams at her, watching her eyes focus on him.
"What happened?"
"Took a bit of a tumble," he says cheerfully. "You all right to stand? Much as you might enjoying travelling by Doctor, you are a bit heavy."
"Yeah," she mutters, obviously too exhausted to bother giving him a lecture on never calling anyone of her gender "heavy". She sways a bit when he puts her down on her feet, and he keeps a firm arm around her waist. "What did we ram?"
"Ah. Caught that, did you?"
She gives him a "duh" look. "I'm not deaf. Where's Jack?"
He doesn't even have time to form an answer before she reads his face and he can see the pain across her face as clear as day too.
"I'm sorry," he offers, pushing a soaked strand of hair out of her face. "I couldn't let myself drop into fatal danger with both of you, much as I would clearly want to."
"Why'd you pick me?"
There's a quite a few logical answers he can give. He made a promise to her mother, even unspoken. She has the TARDIS key and without the TARDIS, he'd never find any of them. Jack's a Time Agent, trained to manage getting lost in time. Jack's more experienced. Jack would have done much of the same.
Only problem is, the decision wasn't made on logic at all.
"I would always choose you," he says, the painfully stupid ape thing to say, the sort of thing he'd say if he was starring with her in a book that had "Desires" in the title and him half-naked on a moor and ravishing her on the cover.
Sometimes the stupid thing is the true thing.
She closes her eyes. One second pass, another drag on, a third seems to swallow an eternity on its way.
"Is it okay if I hate you a little bit for that?" she asks finally, eyes remaining closed, drops of rain clinging to her lashes.
"Yeah. I do too."
She opens her eyes and smiles faintly. "For the rest of it, I'm quite fond of you."
"Yeah," he says again, taking her hand as they walk on, "me too."
II
a train of thought
II
He thinks.
If the TARDIS rammed something else, something falling through time, bringing them here, to where something has fallen from the sky not too long ago, that doesn't feel like an accident at all.
If they've fallen close in time to whatever they hit, maybe Jack hasn't fallen too far from them and maybe he won't have to lose another companion and maybe Rose won't have to grieve and he can watch her smile.
If Rose smiles, he can pretend to forget everything else and smile back.
If he forgets everything else, he'll never be able not to kiss her.
If she kisses him back...
If...
It's best not to think, he thinks.
II
a fall
II
She falls, she thinks.
She falls like a rock in a waterfall, a rock in a sea, but it doesn't matter. The rock crushed. The rock broke the fall of the planet-burners, brought it down where he might hurt it, where he might end the time war, where the bad wolf waits and the world howls. Rock in time, falling, until time shakes with his call.
He's calling her.
The fall becomes flight.
She is coming.
II
an interlude
II
The rain has ended by the time they've found shelter; an emptied cottage, dust clinging to every surface and a fence half burned down. Rose takes the house, he picks apart the shed and finds just what he's looking for.
"It's got a generator. I've hooked it up, started calling the TARDIS to me. Seems to be responding, but I don't what shape it's in," he calls in through an open window, watching the faint outlines of the TARDIS shimmer and fade, shimmer and fade. Whatever state it's in, it is at least still working and he feels a moment of comfort. His TARDIS, the only echo left of everything he came from.
He feels Rose's eyes on him even before he turns. She's leaning against the door, clothes changed to extremely colourful pants and a blouse dotted with flowers that she must've found within. At least that settles they're near the 20th century. Any other age and that is banned as a crime against fashion, eyesight and humanity.
"Flower girl," he says brightly and she gives him a tired smile.
"This was the least glittery," she informs him, sounding amused. "I found some pants I'd die to see you in."
"No."
"Your clothes got wet too."
"I dry faster. Wonderful alien special ability."
She considers that for a moment, then shakes her head at him. "Liar, liar, wet pants on fire."
He refuses to take the bait, merely folds his arms. "Anything else of use inside?"
"Not much. Some tinned food, a lot of mould, layers of dust, some books, some clothes... No trace of people. See for yourself."
He follows her in, resisting the impulse to cough in the stuffed air. It smells abandoned and dusty, electricity dead until he flickers the sonic screwdriver across. In the pale light that comes on, the place looks even more desolate.
If Jack has been here, he's left no sign of it.
"Jack is out there somewhere," he says, seeing her face. "We'll find him. No problem."
"Yeah," Rose agrees, echoing his lie, even knowing it for a lie. He's not sure if she's doing it to comfort him or herself. Perhaps both.
She sinks down on the couch, and he can almost feel the last energy flow out of her, like blood from a wound. She just looks at him as he comes to sit next to her, and says nothing as he takes her arm and looks at her cuts. She's washed away the blood with something, but the skin is angry red.
"Gonna play Doctor?" she asks softly after a moment, her voice mingling with the distant hum of the coming TARDIS, "ask me to remove all my clothes?"
"Bad idea."
"Why?"
He looks at her, her eyes so bright and young. So much innocence. A mountain of innocence and he with a chisel, chipping away. There are times he is tempted to take her everywhere, show her everything, Gallifrey's burn and a million planets like it until she knew all he had seen and all he'd done and if she still stayed, if she smiled at him then, he'd know she truly did love him.
But he won't do that to her. He loves her too much.
"Just is, Rose."
"If it's the ears, I don't mind."
He shakes his head even as he smiles. "There's nothing wrong with my ears. They give me character."
"Your cup runneth over with character," she replies, closing her eyes as he runs fingers across her skin, soothing the pains he can. She seems to breathe almost in sync with his strokes, a strange little rhythm in the silence. He almost lost this too, his fingers on her skin.
It's a bad idea, he reminds himself. He's over 900 years old and he never knows what face or personality he might have next week. She doesn't know him, can't know him with the abyss of experience stretched out between them. And still sometimes it feels like she does.
"Rose?"
"Mmmm?"
"If I played Doctor, would you play nurse?"
"No," she says, letting him have a heartbeat of disappointment, of relief, of something. "I'd be the young talented assisting surgeon."
"Ah."
Her breathing evens and he watches her sleep, just for a moment, innocence in her face like a sun warming him. Then he presses a kiss to her forehead and walks out, knowing she's going to rip him a new one for going wandering off without her.
Still, sometimes a 900-year-old Time Lord's gotta do what a 900-year-old Time Lord's gotta do.
He has to stop watching stupid ape programs, he thinks.
II
a swanning off
II
It's overcast and the smell after rain lingers in the wind as he sets out, leaving the comforting hum of the TARDIS coming and Rose's sleeping breath behind. It's darkening and the day must be drawing to a close, and it's a good thing he has the lovely pain of his body to keep him warm. The mud still clings to his feet, but after a while, trees begin to appear again and he finds tracks from jeeps. Not too deserted, then, and he follows one track until he can see buildings lit up in the fading daylight, fenced in with barbed wire.
There's only one kind of structure he knows always rather looks like that on Earth, and that's a military structure. Good place to take the TARDIS inside and poke about, should it work well enough. Probably even some useful gadgets to power her up some, if needed.
As the lights switch on, he can see the name above the gate and feels the wind how right through him.
Bad Wolf.
This isn't an accident at all.
"Fantastic," he says, and he isn't even sure himself if it's sarcasm or not.
II
a swanning back
II
"You're such a jerk!"
Rose is raging at him, and he can't really defend himself, even if he's right and she's wrong since she'll find some holes in his logic and he'll start to think he wasn't right after all. He hates that.
"I was only gone for a little bit," he points out when the worst of the storm seems to have passed. "Just an hour or so."
"It feels like a lot longer when you wake up stuck behind," she counters. "You didn't even leave a note. Not even a 'Dear Rose, have swanned off to be a hero again. Should be back for tea. Love, the Doctor'."
"Dear Rose, have swanned back. Where's the tea? Love, the Doctor," he replies and for a moment, she glares at him, then she seems to give up and just shakes her head at him, a faint smile clinging to her lips.
He beams, and before she might be tempted to give him another round, he heads for the shed and the hum of the TARDIS coming. Only she isn't humming, she's there, solid and blue.
"Oh, look at you," he says, reaching out to feel her under his hands. Still a piece of Gallifrey. Without her, he wouldn't be a Time Lord at all, just another last survivor, waiting to die.
"The TARDIS came back about ten minutes ago," Rose says behind him and he notes the affection in her voice too. "The inside... Doesn't look too good."
II
a little eternity
II
She hurts.
Time knows all the pain of every eternity passed and she's always held all of it, but now it seems to leech into her, just as it has just once before. Another wound of the time war, another fall, just as when Gallifrey burned and she became the last of her kind in the Universe. Just as he did. She alone but for him, and he alone but for Rose.
He repaired her then. He'll repair her now.
She saved him then. She'll save him now, save them both.
She loves.
II
thirty seconds
II
Doesn't look good is an understatement, he thinks. It looks as if a storm has passed through the TARDIS, but the console still glints at him and she does flicker to life. Not fatal, then. He's repaired her before, he can repair her again.
"Think it's in any shape to travel?" Rose asks, trying to snap two bits back together. He doesn't bother telling her they don't originally go together. Maybe she'll improve it with this new design. TARDIS, by Rose, now modelling in all the cities in all the galaxies in all of time.
"Let's find out," he says brightly and the TARDIS powers up, powers up... And flies.
Rose laughs and he gathers her up in a great big hug, swinging her around as the TARDIS seems to do the same, three out of four together again. He can be happy for that. He can allow himself one moment of that.
And when he realises Rose is kissing him, he doesn't even remember why it's a bad idea.
II
a kiss
II
The TARDIS flies...
... and he kisses Rose back, her lips warm, yielding to his one moment, teasing and tugging at his bottom lip the next, tasting of human and summer and Rose, her nose rubbing against his, her hands ruffling his hair, a low moan in the back of her throat as he deepens the kiss, exploring the feel of her, listening to the sound of her breath mingling with his, with the hum of the TARDIS, together the most beautiful sound in the Universe...
... and the TARDIS lands.
II
a break-in
II
Rose's hand is warm in his as they walk out into a an empty hallway the TARDIS has taken them too, warning signs promising quite a lot of nasty accidents to anyone who shouldn't be there. Just his kind of place. He half expects a company of soldiers to come upon them at once, but the place seems quiet and empty.
There's not even an alarm going off when he finds a closed door and turns the knob. It only creaks a little and opens.
"Lax security," Rose remarks. "If this was the planet of Yarak, we'd be in chains already."
"That was a good look for you," he replies, switching on the light. It's an office, papers scattered about, a desk and a file cabinet tumbled over. Signs of a fight, or just someone very, very fond of making a mess. Bit like him, perhaps.
He picks up a few papers, reading quickly as Rose pries open the file cabinet. "This explains your fashion sense. We're somewhere in the 1960s."
"At least I'm dressed for the decade, unlike you."
"We're in the UK," he goes on, ignoring her reply, "I recognise these seals. I..."
He pauses, feeling his mind catch up to the words he's reading. No. No, no, no. Quickly, he gathers a few more documents, finding a drawings and pictures inbetween, all confiming what he wants denied.
It can't be. It shouldn't be. It mustn't be. Yet it is.
"Doctor?"
He breathes, just breathes, the words settling into him, the realisation settling into him, a whole galaxy of pain expanding in his mind.
"Doctor, what is it?"
"My TARDIS rammed it and it fell from the sky, out of time," he says, staring at the papers. "They thought it a weapon of the Russians. They brought the ship here and found what was within. The Emperor of the Daleks."
Somewhere inside him, a planet is screaming in vain and he's screaming with, a howl against time.
"Oh, Rose," he says, lifting his gaze to her face, wanting to sink into her embrace, hold her until memory runs out and there is no death and no time at all. "He was still alive."