Thine Own Self
Still as a statue and watching the reflection for the slightest movement.
Her eyes stare back at her. The thick black mascara exactly as she likes it; her face exactly as she remembers it.
It is an illusion; an unreal parallel to reality.
And the unreal eyes stare back at her. Flat as the reflection.
Rose is afraid to look away.
The Doctor is silent in the doorway of her bedroom.
She sits; he waits.
His skin had not been his own either, but he had become used to possession by now. Intelligences far more ancient and terrifying than Cassandra had forced themselves into his mind, bent his body to their will.
Different every time, but some things stay the same:
That kissing away of control as another will slips into his consciousness. Binding thoughts and feelings and desires with silk and barb wire; his own will frozen solid in the depths of winter. The shimmer of ice as he swims for the surface and can't break through.
The drowning.
The panic.
Those soft, soft silks that slide over his mouth, his eyes. Gentle, inescapable pressure that pulls him back to the crushing depths. Pushes him down; pushes him deeper.
And the water in his lungs.
He steps into her bedroom, not quite sure what reassurances he should offer her.
And then he recognises the mirror she sits in front of and the chill of déjà vu tingles amongst the memories he has carefully placed out of reach.
He remembers…
…the mirror, oh, it was four or five lifetimes ago. When he was almost as young and twice as naïve.
Another pair of eyes had stared into it. Demanded that the reflection returned the same gaze, that the one who stared back was the one who stared in.
The snake on her arm. The twisting serpent wrapping its scales around her thoughts; the serpent in the Paradise that was far too green for him.
Possess her once, shame on you
Posses her twice, shame on…
… he had done nothing. Afterwards.
Doctor of the universe, but he can't mend people, can he?
And Tegan had sat, watching her own eyes and praying she did not see them blink.
He had done nothing, and perhaps a little less than that; her joy had withered like leaves in the autumn, and he had let it go. Let her go.
Because he can't mend people.
Just catch them when they fall.
His flesh had still been new. Still adjusting to fit. It hadn't seen alien worlds, breathed strange atmospheres or saved any civilisations. It had not felt like his own, not yet.
He quietly files away the knowledge that letting go, just for a little while, had been a relief. Another using his body, and showing him how it could be used. It was a lesson that he had never wanted, though it had been far more educational that he would ever admit.
Bodies come and bodies go and people change outside as well as in. Cassandra had slipped from skin to skin, changing to please; he practiced it only once a lifetime, a matter of survival.
Rose is herself now, but it had taken him far too long to see the alien inside. So wrapped up in exploring his new self on a new planet that he had forgotten to keep his eye on her. And whether he liked it or not, she was only human.
She had her mind and body knitted together, but he had let Cassandra cut at those threads.
The violation of the mind, such an intimate thing.
Cassandra: her being had stabbed through Rose like an old, powerful root. Pushed deep into her psyche, burrowed her way - quick and vicious - through Rose's thoughts and torn all she was apart. Examined it and found it wanting. The invader had blossomed outwards while she buried Rose beneath, trapped in choking dark earth and gnarled, twisted roots where she had forgotten how to breathe.
Rose hears the Doctor's footsteps behind her. Feels his hands resting on her shoulders. But she still cannot move away from the mirror's gaze.
The Doctor's thumb touches her neck. A reassurance, and his warmth melts her frozen eyes.
Her reflection is alive again and one hand reaches out. Her own. A finger presses against the glass.
Nothing. It is cool and solid beneath her flesh. Her relief: a shaky breath sobbing out from her chest. Her heart beats faster.
The Doctor takes her hand, guides her out of the chair and her eyes move to his. She sees herself looking back, and wonders how deeply she can look before she falls inside.
But she wants to know how he feels, wants to know how she feels against him. With her own mind in control of her own body. And she thinks that he does too.
And when her body kisses him this time she is soft, gentle, a little nervous. But he kisses her back without hesitation.
If this is dancing, then he's leading. She lets him. All she wants is sensation, her own sensations. She wants to take them and memorise their every shift and change, the warmth as he touches her, the cold as she's undressed.
One hand gripping his tie, the other wrapped around his shoulders, she pulls him down into another kiss. There is no fear this time.
And she knows now. She has her own memories, and she'll keep them safe and sound. Counterpoint to the alien sensations; they'll keep her balanced, keep her safe.
Bur she doesn't let go of the Doctor; she's not even sure that she can. The memories of Cassandra still run round inside her head; Cassandra's memories still shift through her own thoughts. Sharp and subtle, she knows that they are not hers, but they feel no different at all. There is nothing to mark their falseness save her own knowledge of who she is, and where she was - trapped, claustrophobic, in her own mind.
They are not her memories, but she doesn't know how to let them go.
She embraces the Doctor, suddenly afraid that she'll lose herself if he isn't there, holding her.
He presses her back against the wall, quick and urgent. Her mouth moves from his lips to his neck, and she buries her face in his shoulder as he moves against her. Teeth grazing the flesh, she listens to the double-pulse in his neck, feels his hands move down, skimming the skin of her stomach, until they reach her hips.
She refuses to think, kills thought with all the warm sensations he's creating with his lips, his fingers, and the feel of his body pressed against her own.
As he moves inside her, her body responds and the feelings are hers, all hers, and there is no other memory fighting against her own now. She is Rose Tyler, and this is what the Doctor feels like against her.
Breathless, she looks back at the mirror and there is no distortion.
The mirror is just a mirror.
And her eyes are her own.