An Adventure in Norway
by Camilla
Sandman
Disclaimer: BBC's characters. My words. Norway belongs to itself.
Two
II
Norway.
August. Year one.
The Doctor has tried many machines, and the TARDIS is still the one in his heart, but he has to admit feeling the wind in his hair, a car window open, and watching the horizon never come any closer has a certain charm to it still. He can see why humans might enjoy it, never having seen horizons be born and die within a day and feel stars in their hair.
Rose is driving, and he is feeling a little bothered being the passenger, but he tries not to let it show. She can probably still tell, he figures. Or at least he'd like her to tell so she can take pity on him eventually and let him drive.
He's not sure where they're going, but he knows it's not to London and her life. If that's for her sake or his, he's not sure. He's fairly sure he's not quite ready for Jackie Tyler yet, though. She probably has a speech prepared for him by now.
He did keep his promise, he reminds himself. That's important.
The sun is being filtered through trees as they drive, pine and spruce and the occasional leaf tree. He leans back a little, watching the sky and wondering if all the stars in this universe are the same as in his. He feels a bit of an urge to find out, but reminds himself there's plenty of time.
Might have to raid Torchwood a bit to find ways of travelling. Might be fun. Might lure Rose along, too.
"You look like mischief," Rose says over the roar of the engine. She does too, he thinks, twinkling eyes and bright smiles. "What are you up to?"
"What are you up to?" he counters. "Whisking me out of Norwegian government buildings in the middle of the night, refusing to say where we're going..."
"Thought it best they didn't know," she answers honestly, and for a moment she does look worried about something. She doesn't say what, but he feels confident he'll lure it out of her sooner or later. "Don't know where we're going, besides. Somewhere I can get used to you again."
"I'm an acquired taste?"
"Overwhelming taste, sometimes."
He reflects on that a bit, sucking slightly on a finger. He doesn't find the taste that overwhelming, really. Maybe he should ask Rose to try.
The air smells of coming rain, grass and trees, and he remembers the last time he was stranded on an Earth and had to get used to actually minding the weather. It feels distant now, many bodies ago, and even more companions ago. Jo, who left him, and Sarah Jane, who he left and so many after, all the way to Rose.
The car pulls over to the side, and he sees it's some sort of stopping place for those wanting, benches and tables about for people to eat at. There's a lake in the distance, glimmering peacefully, and there's Rose, looking at him a little hesitantly.
"You are feeling all right, aren't you? Memories all back? No dizzy spells? Nausea?"
"Yes, think so, no and no. I also still have all my hair, and none of my teeth have fallen out."
She gives him a wiltering stare. "There could be all kinds of aftereffects. You went through the void, through 'hell'..."
"Yes, and I'm out. End of story, full stop after the last word of a sentence, final tone to a Beethoven masterpiece. Did you pack any food?"
She sighs, but reaches into the backseat anyway. "What do you prefer, sandwich with salami or ham?"
II
Rose had forgotten how annoying secrets kept from her could be, but she's remembering now, watching the Doctor very carefully finding out that he does in fact prefer salami. He goes about it with the same amount of energy he does most things, looking utterly dedicated, and yet she knows he's thinking about a million other things as well as they sit on a bench in little Norway, the Universe so very distant.
He does seem the same, but she can't help but worry. Worry about how he'll manage, worry about pains he might hide from her, worry about people who might want his knowledge. No TARDIS to run away in. She had never realised how much safety was in that.
"Are you used to me yet?" he asks suddenly, gaze very earnest and smile very wicked.
"I think you take a lifetime to get used to," she replies honestly. "It's a little weird... I thought about you so often, what you were doing, and it was almost like you lived in my mind only."
"Life-by-Rose-thought. Not a bad life, I reckon. Did I have fun?"
"Oodles."
"I like oodles. Makes a funny noise when you say it. Ooo-oooodles."
She watches him pucker his lips, and really, that is too much even for the most restrained person and she's never been that. So she just has to gently pluck the sandwich from his hands and place herself on his lap. He goes a bit still, but doesn't pull away.
"Say it again," she orders.
"Oodles?"
She kisses him at the end of the word, his lips already parted and his tongue tasting of the expected salami, sharp and spicy. He moves a little against her, his hair tickling her forehead and his hands settling on her hips. She is much more active, fumbling her fingers through his hair, tugging a little at his tie (a moose-patterned one she had got him, since he has to start his wardrobe collection all over), exploring his mouth until it feels like familiar territory. She doesn't even mind the first drops of rain she can feel falling into her hair and on her skin.
"Rose," he mutters, his teeth scraping against her bottom lip.
"Mmmm?"
"Is there anyone in your life that..."
"Yeah," she says firmly, and his face falls a little. "There's you."
He grins, and the sky opens, dumping water on trees and humans and Time Lords indiscriminately, drumming as it falls. She laughs as he grabs her hand and they run to the car, the food left behind to the elements and time, almost forgotten.
There's just the hint of salami still on his lips that she licks the taste of, his body pressing hers against the car and the rain suddenly not important at all.
II
Rose shags the Doctor in a wooden cabin, the rain drumming against the roof and branches of pine trees lashing against the walls and windows in the wind. They've rented it, the Norwegian lady running the place that has about twenty of the sort for accommodation obviously thinking they're tourists. Perhaps they are, in this place and in this time, visiting normality.
Wet clothes get discarded and left on the floor, skin touched and kissed and even bruised a little when bumped into hard surfaces, and somehow, they end up in a closet and not in the bed. She half suspects him of being contrary just for the sake of it, but she doesn't really care when his mouth is warm against a breast, and his fingers are making her buck and whimper in the same breath.
He talks a lot of nonsense about body temperatures and wool socks that she can't really focus on, and has no idea why he is, but maybe he just likes to let his mouth run free, and when he lets it roam free across her body, she does think she might be in favour. He only goes really silent after his first thrust into her, and he pauses, her body adjusting to the unfamiliar hardness and trying to get comfortable with a shelf at her back.
He watches her face, and his own is so still that she almost thinks time has frozen around them and is just holding, like an embrace. She can't quite read from his expression how he feels, and she longs to so badly she lifts and a hand and touches his temple.
He smiles faintly, as if he knows, and leans down and kisses her. She runs her hands down his back as he moves, retracting and thrusting, leaving her aching until he changes his angle slightly and she has no breath to tell him it's definitely good. He seems to get it anyway, and she digs her nails into his flesh and almost wails into his mouth as he keeps at it, torture and pleasure meeting in a moment slamming into her and sweeping away everything else.
"Rose," he says softly, coaxing her back and she feels a strange sense of loss as the moment slips and time moves on. It'll never be the first time with him again. It's lost now. Everything is lost, and she lost him too.
Not again, she vows, pressing a kiss against the pulse in his neck and feeling his body tense slightly as she moves. His time for torture now, she decides, and grins.
Yeah. Oodles of it.
Outside, the rain dies away, and there's just the stillness after.
II
The Doctor sits and watches the sun rise, way before morning is due. It's stopped raining, and the clouds have parted a little, enough to let him watch the display of light across sky. It's hard to just sit calmly and not rush off to compare it to other skies and other sunrises, but it is pretty in its own way and he likes watching.
Rose is sleeping, as humans like to, and he's slipped out without waking her. Plenty of time after all, and he can feel that almost to the point of panic.
Time is a lot less overwhelming when you can skip the boring parts and fast forward to anything interesting.
He'll just have to label everything potentially interesting, he decides. Like this forest, and this morning, and how quiet it can be with all the noises of nature around him.
He tilts his head slightly as a moose comes barrelling out of the forest, and pauses at the sight of him.
"Hello!" he says cheerfully. "Out on a late night without your plus one? Certainly looks like it. Maybe you sent me vibes and lured me out here to follow your example. They do say 'when in Norway, do as the moose'."
He thinks a bit. "Who are these 'they', do you know? I've never met a 'they'. Would like to. I'd have a lot of questions for them about what they say."
The moose doesn't have a lot to contribute on that, just staring and ever so carefully talking a step westwards. It looks rather distrusting, really, but with humans around, who wouldn't be? They have a habit of shagging you one day and yelling at you the next, he reflects.
Not that he'd know. Too well, anyway. He suspects he's in for a lot of learning,
"Have a good morning, then!" he calls after the moose trodding away, and gives it a little wave.
"Chatting up moose already?" Rose asks, and he turns to see her leaning against a tree, arms folded and hair a horrid mess. He quite likes it.
"It was walking up me, the horrid flirt," he replies, leaving the stone he's called chair for a good hour to walk over. He halts a step away, not quite sure what post-shag protocol indicates these days. Snog? Hug? Friendly handshake? Shakespeare sonnet?
She solves it by kissing him, soft and slowly, seeming to delight in it, and that is rather nice.
"Did I snore and drive you out of bed?" she asks, buttoning his shirt up. He hadn't really noticed that he hadn't until now.
"Nah."
"Did I...?" she trails off as he shakes his head, because it's really not about her.
"It's so silent," he whispers quietly. "I forgot how silent it is without her."
"The TARDIS?" She doesn't wait for his confirmation, probably doesn't need it. "Take you to see mum, you'll soon be pleading for silence. She had her baby, you know. Graham Tyler. My brother. Half-brother. Sort of. Something like that. It's a little confusing."
"Yeah," he agrees, not having the heart to tell her she can't really substitute his lack of family with hers. "Do you want to go home, then?"
"It's not home. It's just a place I live. We don't have to go there at all."
They will sooner or later, he knows. If only because he'll need Torchwood and Rose will need something beyond him, even if she pretends she doesn't. But no rush. He has to learn this taking-it-slow thing sooner or later, after all.
He has a funny feeling it involves a lot of knitting.
"Let's just go where we want to," he says, and they do.
II
They travel.
They drive across Jotunheimen, a rugged mountain range that feels windswept and almost barren, reminding the Doctor of a planet long since dust, and dust long since forgotten. No two places of the Universe are the same, but there's always an echo somewhere. There's an echo of Gallifrey somewhere between the darkness of space and the burn of stars, and he fears hearing it.
Some reminders are best avoided.
They watch mountains, sometimes in silence, sometimes in talk. He insults tourists by being his friendly self, and delights in the insults they throw at him. There's some he hasn't heard in years, and humans are so delightfully eager in trying to cause offense. It's really quite endearing, even if Rose just looks at him like he's bonkers when he tells her.
He rides a reindeer, just because, finding it nothing like riding a camel at all but still fun; and Rose rides him, just because, nothing like gentle at all but still pleasure. There's something rough and dark between them too, he discovers, and wonders if it comes from him or her or both.
She smiles at him a lot, and he turns her phone off a lot when she isn't looking. It's better that way, he's firmly convinced, so she won't have to look guilty for not answering and he doesn't have to make her forget after.
He was always better at pretending it never happened at all.
They sleep under open sky, they sleep in the car, and they don't sleep at all, sitting on the hood of the car as the sun rises and he tells her about two suns colliding and all the beauty in destruction of the Universe's making. He thinks about not being able to take her, he knows she thinks about what it would've been like to see, and neither say anything.
Sunlight feels pale in the early hours of the morning, he finds, and Rose's kiss tastes of desperation.
They shag when they feel like it, and don't when they don't. He learns how she likes it, and is an appallingly bad teacher for her. He's not even sure what he likes himself yet, body relatively new and still in original wrapping. Humans have such human ideas about sex anyway, and Time Lords have a lot of ideas about everything else.
He discounts a career in sex ed, but finds experimentation much to his liking.
They go skinny-dipping in a river because a lake is too normal, only it's more like skinny-crawling-in-water due to the lack of depth. It's still cold and silly and mostly embarassing, all the things a skinny-dip should be.
He crosses it off his mental 'Things Humans Do in Life' list and adds two new ones after Rose's grumbling - visiting a sauna and going to a nudist beach. He has a good feeling about not running out of things to do.
He has a bad feeling about running into things he has to do.
She takes him shopping in a small town along the way, getting shirts and ties for variation and detergents for laundry. He suspects it's a clue she won't be doing it for him, so he thinks about being nice to Jackie.
Well, it's an option, anyway.
Rose lets him drive after a while, and he soon finds Norwegian traffic rules about as restrictive as any the High Council of Gallifrey might come up with. He almost suspects one has imitated the other, and is not really sure which would be which. At least one of them doesn't know about slightly psychic paper, and he makes good use of it talking his way out of tickets.
He doesn't show Rose what else he's brought with him, and hopes he won't have much use for those items at all.
They linger around Trondheim, a sizable city by Norwegian standards on a tiny planet by his, and he walks among people and tries to feel one of them. It's hard when they're so small and he can see their lives stretch ahead of them, like the wick to a small candle, already burning.
He tries not to look at Rose, and he's sure she can taste the desperation in his kiss.
They go to Hell, and run into trouble.
II
Hell is a real place, Rose discovers, with its own train station and everything. Of course, the word doesn't mean the same in Norwegian and it's Hell, Norway, not 'Hell, see Void, the', but it still feels like a bad omen from the moment she sees the road sign and realises what the place is called.
She tries not to remember the Beast, which did end up being right, after a fashion.
What the Doctor remembers, she doesn't know, because he starts making cheerful jokes and it's a hard shield to penetrate.
"I'm serious!" he insists, tapping the 'welcome to Hell' sign with his knuckles. "Humans do find a planet shaped like a certain painful poking instrument and name it after the place where any day is pitchfork day."
She rolls her eyes at him from the car, reminding herself to have a talk with him about sudden and unexpected exits, and not just from cars. "That's impossible."
"Yeah, you're right," he agrees. "It's actually a moon."
"I'm sure..." she starts, and forgets what she's about to say when there is a short, painful scream, and there's only one sort of possible reaction to that when she's with the Doctor.
They run towards it, her a little behind as she has to exit the car first, but at full sprint she's almost by his side when they turn a corner and find the source. It really can't be anything else with so many people looking so forced casual.
"So what's the trouble here, then?" the Doctor says without even pausing for breath. "Doctor John Smith, scientific advisor on random, desperate screaming."
He waves the psychic paper a little, even at her, so she has time to see she's Rose Tyler, advisor to scientific advisor, getting a lot more shagging than Miss Moneypenny by his thinking, and she's not quite sure if she should ask him how he's figured that.
"No trouble here," a man answers, his English slow and with the odd tilt Norwegians seem to have.
"Oh, come on," the Doctor urges, a look of disappointment on his face. "Not even a little troublette?"
The people exchange looks, and finally a young by steps forwards, pointing further up the street. "It ran that way."
"Excellent!" the Doctor replies, and legs it in the direction pointed without a moment's hesitation. She had a feeling he would, so she manages to be right on his tail this time and he grabs her hand, grinning madly. The Doctor, Rose, trouble and a chase. It's exhilarating, a moment of old, and she allows herself to think it's back to the sort of normal they have where everything normal is abnormal. Just like before. At least she thinks that until they find the trouble they're pursuing standing in the middle of the street, giving them a hostile glare.
"Ah, so not in fact an alien invasion, but in fact a cow," the Doctor says, his voice falling a bit. "Runaway cow. Right. People would scream if one of them bolted up the street. Naturally."
She can't help it, she has to laugh. And the more wounded he looks, the more she has to laugh, until it's painful gasps for breath and not really laughter at all. She leans against him slightly, and he holds her lightly, and the cow nibbles merrily away on some carefully sculpted hedges.
At least it is feeling comfortable away from its element, creating anarchy in its wake, she reflects.
"This is what humans do, then?" he asks, not really looking at her. "Chase cows and drive everywhere and shag in the backseat and go buy salami when they run out and think about stuff like who'll do the laundry?"
"Yeah. That all right?"
He doesn't really answer, giving the cow a hard look instead. "Think the cow might be a little bit alien?"
"It could be," she replies, giving the cow a look as well. "It has slightly alien ears."
"I thought so too," he says happily. "All right, alien cow, I've seen through your devious hedge plan. Might as well come with me and we'll have a talk to your human about the grass quality so you won't run off again."
The cow seems to take him on his word, or perhaps it is his hand, letting itself be touched and carefully nudged to walk back the way it came. The Doctor keeps talking to it, and Rose follows a little behind, listening.
She's not really sure a cow will have much advice on laundry, actually.
II
It's late in the evening when the Doctor return to her and the car, the worst of the heat gone and the sun feeling more distant. Distance isn't just about the length of space between two points, she reflects. It's also about what means you have to cover it.
Once, they could travel all the way to the sun in seconds. Now it's just a light in the sky, a star she can't point to and ask to see.
She's gotten the Doctor back, but only a part of him, she's beginning to realise. She never had to think about where the TARDIS ended and he began when both came in a package. Now she does.
"Cow all happy," he says as he walks towards her, his coat flapping slightly in a lazy wind and the shadows dancing with. "Got a bit of milk for returning her. I feel like a right breadwinner. Or milkwinner. Is it possible to be troublewinner?"
"With you, anything's possible. Even impossible returns."
He looks at her, bag of milk cartons in his hand, clearly trying to gauge her mood. She's not even sure about it herself, torn between joy, fear and even anger still. She is deliriously happy to see him every second of the day, and she has stopped waking up and having to check he's still there, but in memories, her life with him is perfect. Here, there are issues.
"Why'd you leave the TARDIS?" she challenges. "We could chase real alien cows travelling in it."
"I'm not killing her. You saw what happened when we travelled here by accident and the time vortex was ripped away. I'm not doing that to her," he says tensely, then seems to have an afterthought. "If I brought the TARDIS it wouldn't be really trying this life day-by-day thing, besides."
"You're treating this as some kind of experiment?"
"How else am I going to get the hang of it?"
By actually living it, she wants to scream. By not treating it as a vacation away from the real thing. Oh, she wants to howl it at him, but doesn't. He won't understand, and be hurt, because he really has abandoned so much to be with her here. Even if it's only for a while. He's not really fit for normal life.
She wonders sometimes if he's made her a misfit too.
"Come on, then, milkwinner," she says cheerfully, and ignores everything but the slow-spreading smile across his face. "Let's get out of Hell."
He looks enthusiastic at that.
"Let's get some salami on the way! And bread. Oh, and pickles, I love pickles. Onions! Think they have Norwegian onions?. Maybe even aspargaus. Used to hate it, but I can't remember why, so might be fun to find out. Cheese! Can't do without cheese. Civilizations that do without cheese go all testy and megalomaniac. Might want some jam too." He thinks a bit, tossing the bag into the backseat and getting in beside her. "I might have to make a list."
"That's all right," she tells him, turning the key and listening to the engine kick in, a pale echo of another engine sound she's quite fond of. "Day-by-day living makes for a lot of lists."
They drive away, night falling over Hell as they leave, the day gone and lost.
That's all right. There's another waiting beyond the horizon, and they don't have any means to escape it anymore.
II
"Do you love me?" Rose whispers as he kisses her skin and finds it to be smelling of pine. It's night around them, quiet and light and alien to him, even for all the time he's spent on this Earth and its not identical twin in his Universe. Just a tourist here, and still getting asked the awkward questions.
"I'm here. You have to know that," he replies, the coward every time.
"Do you love me enough?"
He wonders what to answer.
There's the truth, which is never quite what humans want to hear, and there are lies, which always come back to haunt. Sometimes, there's even a choice of what is truth and what's a lie, depending on perspective. Depending on the definition of 'enough'. Always the choice.
Rose looks at him with wide open eyes, so much human love in her face that he feels a little breathless. So little time to love, humans. So little time to understand what it is.
"Do you, Doctor?" she urges, warm breath stroking his cheek as she leans in. Young, kissable Rose, who he is going to have to shag now, and rather does look forward to. Rose, who is convinced she loves him and wonders about how he feels.
He makes his choice.
"Yes," he says, and isn't sure what it is.