A/N: I want to send a shout out of thanks to LovelyAmberLight and KeplersDream who have both been terrific in giving me their time and their comments on where I am faltering and how to improve not just the tale, but my writing in general. I'm never going to be perfect, and neither will the story (which is totally my fault), but it sure is nice to get that tap on the shoulder and some sage advice. Thanks to you both.
Now to the chapter: I really really don't quite know how to preface this chapter except to say that it gets a little ugly.
I expected this chapter to be really short and therefore was planning to do the next bit, which gives our girl a little bit of hope when all of hers seems to have fallen off the planet somehow. Sadly, that didn't happen and this monster ended up a 4K pot of absolute angst that is bound to upset more than a few people - especially those who love Tentoo and Rose.
This chapter is quite dark and shows a completely unraveled Tentoo. There are a couple of quite disgusting references to casual sex that may offend - but no act occurs at all in this chapter.
I make zero apologies for what I wrote in here, but do issue warning to tread lightly as there are likely several triggers in here.
Things do lighten up a little from here, I promise. Hope comes to Rose in a rather unexpected way...
~~oooOOOooo~~~
"Vale," she began again in a slow and measured pace. "You have to believe me." So far so good. "I love you more than anything else in this entire universe and beyond. And I will. Forever."
Rose's heart immediately rose up into her throat and wedged itself firmly inside her esophagus. She could still breathe, but swallowing was proving difficult to do around that damned heart.
Vale's harsh grip on her arms softened with her declaration and he lifted one hand to lightly drag the backs of his fingers down along her cheek. His eyes were soft and his voice a tender croaking timbre.
"And I love you too, my precious girl." He dragged his thumb across her plump lower lip. "So. So much."
Rose's breath hitched when his head cocked little to one side and he began a slow descent toward her mouth. She wanted to pull back, to correct what she'd said to him. She wanted to scream at him about what he was allowing Doctor Song to do to her, but found herself only able to whisper his name.
"I'm right here," he assured her gently as his lips brushed hers. "I'm always going to be right here for you, Rose." He stooped as he slid his hand around her backside and clutched firmly at her thigh. With a grunt he drew her knee up to hook her leg around his hip, and then straightened his back to lift her off the ground.
"C'mon," he purred against her throat as he held her in place and walked toward the stairs. "Let's go back to bed."
With one leg hooked around his hip and the other left dangling in front of his, and her arms pinned in between their chests, Rose was hardly comfortable. She wriggled a little in search of freedom and was rewarded with a husky chuckle against her ear.
"Settle, Rose. We'll be in bed soon enough and you can writhe against me as much as you want." His lips pressed against her hair. "In fact I look forward to it."
She stilled momentarily and contemplated just what the next hour or so might entail, and found herself feeling sick to her stomach. Writhing naked against anyone – particularly him - was currently at the very top of the list of things she had absolutely no interest in doing at this very precise moment. It was at the top gilded with a golden No Entry sign coiled with chains and padlocks forged from dwarf stars.
Halfway up the stairs, she began to squirm in earnest. "Vale. Vale, let me go."
He stumbled under her incessant and insistent wriggling, and fell against the stair's bannister. He kept his hold firm, however. "Rose. Stop it. You'll make the two of us tumble down the stairs if you keep that up."
"Then let me go," she demanded with a strangled tone as she pushed her hands against his chest and pushed herself back as far as she could.
He maintained his firm hold with all of the tenacity of a father trying to keep hold of a squirming toddler. "Rose. Really. Stop it."
"Then let me go," she repeated with exasperation.
"No." His eyes darkened as he shook his head. "I'm never letting you go, Rose." He snapped his arms more tightly around her and grunted out loudly as he fought against her kicking legs to ascend the stairs. "You can run," he continued as he tripped his toe on the top step and staggered a heavy slam of his shoulder into the wall across the landing. He hissed through his teeth at the pain in his shoulder from impact. "But I'll always find you. You'll always come home to me."
Rose panted a quick staggering of breaths that were in no way deep enough to stop her from getting lightheaded. She ceased her struggling, but kept her hands against his chest in a determined effort to hold herself as far from him as she possibly could. "M'not goin' anywhere," she assured him. Please just let me down."
He shook his head and then his torso as he finally pulled himself up from his stumbled lean against the wall and latched his eyes onto hers as he walked his autonomous path toward the bedroom. "Never letting you go, Rose."
He carried her through the doorway and toward the rumpled bed in the centre of the room. He dropped her onto the mattress and immediately climbed over her, straddling her hips between his knees and holding her arms over her head with a firm hold of his hands around her wrists.
Rose didn't bother to struggle against him. She lay heavily atop the rumpled duvet that was bunched uncomfortably underneath her back. Her chest heaved with quickened breaths that she was determined to slow and deepen despite her panic.
"What are you going to do?" she queried on a voice she forced through her teeth. "Force me?"
His brows drew together in a tight knit in the centre of his forehead. There was a grimace of hurt across his eyes as he tilted his head in question. "Is that something you think I'm even capable of, Rose?"
She made a deliberate show of shifting her eyes to look at his current position and the looming posture he had over her. She let her eyes flick back to his. "I don't know what you're capable of anymore," she admitted hotly.
His voice softened, but his grasp remained firm. "I'd kill myself before I would even consider doing something like that to you."
"Then why do you have me in this position?" She exhaled a wet breath that blew spittle against his face. "If you don't intend on…" She gulped. "Following through."
His grasp loosened just slightly on her wrists. His voice was pained and his expression wounded. "Do you really think I've become that much of a monster?"
Tears leaked from her eyes and trailed down to her ear. "Look at us," she offered quietly. "Right now. Here. Look at what you're doing to me."
He blinked and let his eyes trail down along her face, down the length of her neck, her chest, belly, and hips. They stopped where the seat of his body curled around her thighs. He kept his eyes on the crotch of his flannel pyjama pants and let out a resigned breath. "There was a time when you considered me getting you into a position like this was fun; that it would always end with you and I making love and becoming one with each other." He lifted his eyes to hers. "What happened, Rose?"
"You changed," she answered quietly, the struggle gone completely from her.
He blinked and looked into her eyes, but said nothing.
"Where's the man I fell in love with?" she asked softly. "Where's John?" she inhaled and repeated the question, this time replacing John with the eleven musical syllables that sounded out his Gallifreyan name.
He slowly unwrapped his hands from around her wrists and levered his body upward. His Adam's apple bobbed with a hard swallow as he drew his fingertips along the length of her crooked arms and onto her shoulders. He exhaled slowly as he drew his thumbs along her collarbone.
"When you say that name, Rose," he began softly. He let his eyes finally rise to hers. "Are you thinking of me, or are you thinking of him?"
She deflated completely. "Are we really going to start that again, Vale?"
The rub of his thumbs along her collarbone grew rougher and heavier. "Just answer the question." The softness in his eyes hardened. "Are you thinking of me, or are you thinking of the one who abandoned you on a beach over thirty years ago?"
Rose drew her hands down from where they'd remained above her head. With a sigh she lifted them to touch just the pads of her fingers on his chest. She smiled at the inhale that hissed through his teeth at her touch. "I'm thinking about the man who stayed behind with me on that beach," she clarified. "The man I fell in love with, married, had a beautiful son with." She inhaled deeply and bit her lip as she focused her eyes on his. "John…"
"…Is dead," Vale finished for her. "Five years ago when the two front tyres blew out on his vehicle and it flipped three times before it landed on its roof." The rub of his thumbs along her collarbone stopped, and his thumbs flexed to dig them into her skin.
She winced at the deep press of his thumbs into the hollow of her skin underneath her collarbone. "Vale," she urged fearfully. "Don't say that."
"Dead, Rose," he clarified cruelly. "Just like his beloved boy. John Smith: The weak-minded idiot who forgot who he was…"
"Don't you dare speak like that."
Vale dropped his head and lifted a brow. He regarded her with a smile that touched only one side of his mouth. "He died that night, Rose Tyler." He gave her a wink. "But I survived. Reborn I suppose you could say. A complete psychological regeneration." He chuckled. "Well look at that, Rose. I can regenerate after all."
She opened her mouth to protest and was immediately prevented by doing so as he pressed his finger against her lips.
"And no," he lectured condescendingly. "I can't change back, so don't ask." He kept his finger on her lip, but raised his head to look at the ceiling above. "Or is it that I won't change back? It's actually quite possible that I could change back if I wanted to, but where's the fun in that?" He grinned and lowered his gaze back down to the woman he held underneath him. "Half the fun of regenerating is seeing just what little surprises the change has in store for you. Am I right?"
Rose merely held her breath and blinked up at him.
He tipped his head to one side and let his eyes crinkle at the sides when he felt the impact of the emotion conveyed within her eyes.
"Fear, darling?" he questioned curiously. "Is that actually fear?" He shook his head. "Oh no. No. No. No no no no no. No." He let his mouth break out into a wide smile. "You're the safest person in the entire multiverse. Don't you understand that?" He moved his hands to stroke and cup at her cheeks. "I'm never going to let you come to any harm, Rose. Never." He leaned forward and pressed his lips against her forehead. "I love you. I have always loved you. Inside the box, outside the box, inside my head and out of my mind. I love you."
She shuddered underneath him and winced at the press of his lips against her forehead. "Vale," she pleaded sadly. "Please let me go. Please."
He dropped his mouth to her cheek and dragged his lips along the very apple in her cheek. He smiled at the feeling of her shuddering underneath him. "I can still make you quiver, can't I?"
She shook her head and inhaled a wet and congested sniff. "Please let me go."
"Oh," he sang lightly as he peppered her face with tiny kisses. "I'm never letting you go." He exhaled a moan. "I know. It's been a while, Love. It's been so long since we've touched each other like this. So very long." He lifted his head only enough to look into her eyes. "It's been almost three months since we've made love. Hasn't it?" He dipped his head and kissed at her throat. "Two months." He shifted his mouth to her chin. "Three weeks." He nipped at her chin with his lips. "Four days."
She squirmed underneath him.
"Twelve hours." He inhaled a sniff of her skin. "Seven minutes and eighteen seconds since I last had you singing to the heavens of your love for me."
She inhaled a deep gulping sob.
"Since I looked down at you falling apart underneath me," he continued softly and with absolute reverence. "Rassilon, Rose. Noone is as beautiful as you are at that magnificent moment that you lose yourself when I'm moving inside you." He nipped at the very edge of her mouth with his lips. "Absolutely no one compares to you in that moment."
"Not even River Song?"
Vale froze more at the coldness in the question than at the question itself. Obviously the question stabbed him directly in the groin, but the defeated and emotionless manner in which Rose posed the question made him catch his own breath deep in the back of his throat.
"Excuse me?"
Rose looked up into his face with a stoic and icy expression on her face. "I think you heard me," she replied. "But in case your superior hearing missed its meaning: Does my apparent beauty when I am brought to climax by your unfaithful cock surpass the expression River Song gives you when you do the same to her?"
"That's how you respond to a compliment," he shot back incredulously. "By bringing in another woman?"
She snorted. "Why not? You have."
He sat himself up and folded his arms across his chest. "I just laid my soul bare to you, Rose, and this is how you respond to my unwavering love for you?"
She remained held underneath him, but was able to cross her arms in a defiant manner. "Just answer the question, Vale. Does River Song look as so reverently beautiful when you make her come?"
He inhaled a deep breath and lifted his head just enough that he looked along his nose down at her. "I wouldn't know."
Her expression hardened. Anger swirled inside her eyes. "You know. I'd be less pissed off at that response if you gave me the truthful answer."
"Are you accusing me of lying?"
The fold of her arms tightened across her chest. "If you think I don't know what the two of you get up to behind her office door, then you're an even bigger idiot than I thought you were." She released the fold of her arms to renew her squirming attempt at escape. "It might've been three months since you've touched me, Vale, but I'll place wagers that it's been less than a week since you've fucked her."
He maintained his tight grip on her thighs with his, but didn't release the fold of his arms across his chest, nor the high looming glare than he stared down at her with. "Four days if you want to be precise," he answered callously.
That answer made her still. Although she knew beyond all doubt that an affair was most assuredly happening between her husband and Doctor Song, to hear it actually confirmed by her husband gave her instantaneous nausea. As much as she wanted it finally out in the open – to have it confirmed like that finally removed that tiny little shred of hope that she was simply imagining it all.
"S-So," she stuttered. "It-It's true."
His lips and nose turned up with a deep sniff. "But if you want me to answer your question of a comparison between the two of you then my answer still remains firm." He looked down at her finally. "I wouldn't know, because I've never actually ever gotten her there."
Rose's eyes widened with a mixture of disbelief and disgust. Her reply was spoken so breathlessly that it was barely audible. "What did you say?"
He shrugged with a roll of his eyes. "And even if I did get her anywhere close to that stage of things, I wouldn't see her face anyway. Typically she's bent across the desk and I'm…"
"Get off me!" Rose bellowed with a desperately urgent need to fracture the remainder of his explanation. "You disgusting, filthy, revolting…"
He refused to budge. "It's just sex, Rose." His eyes pinched with confusion. "Pointless release. That's all. Lindos hormone injections have a rather unfortunate side effect…"
"God," she moaned painfully. "Please. Get off me."
"It doesn't make any difference in how I feel about you, Rose," he assured her vehemently. "What you and I have together, it's…"
"It's over!" she finished with a growl.
His response was barely audible. "What?"
"You heard me," she growled with disgust. "We're done. Over. Finished."
His entire face fell. His eyes widened and his head shook from side to side in disbelief. "No. No. You can't say that, Rose. You can't mean it."
She stopped squirming for a short moment to stare up at him with an expression of incredulous disbelief. "Why not? Vale. There are things about you that I can overlook. I can live and hope that one day the man I love will break through whatever spell's come over you because I love you and I know that deep inside you somewhere you love me to."
"I've never denied my feelings for you," he vowed fiercely. "Since the day I grew from a severed hand I was honest about how much I love you."
"But what I can't forgive," she continued emotionally. "I can't forgive the fact that you not only broke the vows you gave on our wedding day: To love, honour, cherish. To forgo all others…"
"Rose.."
"But that you care so little for the woman you're throwing away thirty years of marriage for…" She took a moment to inhale a shaking breath through her mouth "…That. That …" She exhaled and inhaled again. "She's nothing but a worthless piece of garbage to you, is she?"
His brows pinched together and he shook his head. "I care about her," he admitted softly. "Just. Not like that. She knows that what she and I share means absolutely nothing."
Her nose crinkled in absolute disgust. "You shouldn't be sharing anything with her at all. Not when you have a loving and doting wife waiting for you at home."
"Who will still be waiting for me, yeah?"
There was a hopeful and even juvenile tone to his voice that almost did her in, but Rose simply shook her head. "No, Vale. Not anymore." She inhaled at the catch in his breath. "I'm finished. I can't do this anymore."
His voice fell to a whisper. "You're leaving me." He spoke it as fact and not the question he'd intended it to be. "Despite how you are all I have in this entire universe and that I'll never survive here without you – you're going to leave me?"
She looked up at him with agony in her eyes. "Why not, John? You left me."
The moment that Rose's words left her lips, Vale's eyes and face darkened. "So that's what this is about then? Him?" His hands snapped toward her shoulders to shove her down hard into the mattress. "You find yourself a way to cross those damn dimensional walls and all of a sudden thirty years of marriage to me means absolutely nothing?"
Rose's face tightened up in confusion. Her eyes pinched and her jaw gaped slightly. "What the hell are you talking about?"
"Oh," he huffed with a dark chuckle. "Didn't mean to admit that out loud, Rose? Hmmm? Didn't want to be truthful about why you're really leaving?" He leaned down over her face and puffed heated breath against her mouth. "Oh, but you're a tricky girl, aren't you? I'd call you brilliant, and let's be honest, I think you are…"
She struggled underneath him. "Get off me. Now!"
"So your devious little mind forces me to admit a slight indiscretion so you have the opening you need to get up and walk out without an ounce of guilt." He tipped his head to one side. "And. Well. Why should it surprise me at all. Kind've your M.O., isn't it? Dump the one you're with to go gallivanting across the universe with the Doctor."
Her breath drew in deeply not just at the horrid way that the word Doctor curled so distastefully around his tongue, but in the disgusting accusation. "Leave him out of it, Vale," she growled. "This has nothing to do with anything on the other side of any walls. It has everything to do with you, with me, and with your betrayal…"
"Says the woman who stole my dimensional beacon and crossed the walls," he snapped in reply. When she turned her head from him, he cupped her chin in his hand and forced her to look back at him. "Get it into your head that he doesn't want you anymore. He's moved on. He's got himself someone else … just like he always does."
"I don't want him," she declared quietly. "I want John. My husband."
He leaned down to whisper against her ear. "I don't believe you."
She shoved her hands against his chest, a heavy slap to get him off her. "I said get off me! I'm leaving, Vale, without a vortex manipulator or a dimension canon. I'm not crossing walls, I'm just leaving this house."
His laugh peppered out of his lips like coughs from an air-gun. "No. You're not."
Fury laced her eyes. "You can't stop me."
"I'm doing a pretty fairly good job of it right now, aren't I?" he challenged with a smirk. "You're not going anywhere while I've got you held down like this, are you?"
Rose Tyler took that challenge, chewed on it for a half-second, and then spat it right back into his face. With a cry, she stiffened her body, arched her back, and then started to thrash wildly underneath him. She cried out her demands for him to get off him and to let her go, and for a brief moment she began to believe that she just may have had the upper hand as he bounced up and off her.
She rolled quickly onto her stomach and pushed herself to slide forward off the bed, but only made it as far as the floor before he was upon her once again.
"You," he grunted as he fought against her flailing hands and kicking legs. "Are not." He dropped down once more onto her thighs and held her firm with his own. "You're not going anywhere," he announced firmly. "Especially not to him."
Rose continued to writhe beneath him, kicking at his back with her knees and slapping at his face and neck with her arms. "You can't hold me forever, Vale," she threatened him with an aggressively high-pitched tone. "Sooner or later you're going to have to get off me."
"You're right," he growled darkly as he stopped fighting against her flailing hands. "You're absolutely right."
The darkened tone in his voice gave her momentary pause, and she stopped kicking and hitting at him. Her breath drew in deep and hard. "Then why wait?" she queried cautiously.
"Quite right," he answered calmly. "Why wait?"
The calmness in his voice undid her completely. She panted worriedly and spoke his name very softly.
He smiled gently at the fear he could hear in his name. "Oh my Rose. I'm not going to hurt you. I'll never hurt you." He lowered his hands to stroke at her reddened face. "I love you. You have to know that."
Her eyes widened as his fingers danced lightly across her face. "What're you….?" His thumbs found their place on the apples of her cheeks and she felt the shift of his first and middle fingers toward her temple. Her eyes widened and she tried to shake her head. "No, Vale. Don't you dare!"
He pursed his lips to shush her with a gentle hiss of his breath. "It's okay, Rose."
"I don't consent," she cried out as she watched his eyes flutter closed. "No. Don't go into my head. I don't consent! You can't! You're not allowed to."
"Oh, I can get in there," he said softly. "Your consent is just a formality." His brows pinched and his eyes tightened. With a growl he bared his teeth. "Shields, Rose? How did you know how to erect shields."
Rose let out a scream and kicked her legs. Her hands lifted to cover his and she clawed helplessly at his hands. "You can't!"
"Oh, Love. I can," he vowed softly. "And if I were you I'd drop these shields you've put up in your mind – otherwise you're going to wake up with quite a nasty little headache tomorrow."
Her head already ached in protest to his touch. She panted for relief, and struggled to fight against an incessant knocking sensation that turned to pounding at the very edge of her consciousness. It was an explosion of shattering defenses that announced his intrusion inside her mind, and Rose Tyler felt like she was swallowing glass shards as she finally fell into darkness.