Out of the Great Book of Fairy Tales

By: doctorrosetyler

Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor who or Naio Ssaion's brilliant song "Out of the Great Book of Fairy Tales"

Summary: He was different. She didn't care. Ten/Rose (caution: the Doctor's back story is not going to be anything close to canon, so be prepared for that)

Many many years ago, there was a young boy. He was new at the Gallifreyan Academy. He had no friends, and this wasn't because he was new. It was because he was strange. He hadn't been made in the looms like all of the other children. His mother and father, both Time Lords and both very much in love, had conceived him as nobody had done in centuries. His mother had carried him and given birth to him, and because of this he was different. His parents gave him a name that, when translated into English, would be nothing but a meaningless list of colors: blue, white, and yellow. In Gallifreyan, those colors were emotions; stronger than any others. His name was lovepassionhappiness.

They loved him dearly, something which wasn't openly expressed in Gallifreyan culture. They were the "perfect race". They didn't feel emotion. But his parents did. Instead of shipping him off to Academy the moment he could talk, like most Gallifreyan parents did, they raised him. They nurtured him and taught him to love.

And then they died. And he was sent off to Academy, where the Time Lords hoped he would forget emotion. They did not want him to mar their supreme race by being the one who could feel.

In a distant land there lived a young boy

And bluewhiteyellow was his name

He was fourteen when he learned he had a special gift.

Centuries before he was born, the Gallifreyans had lived like the humans had. They laughed and loved and formed strong bonds with those that they loved. They were a strong, telepathic race that had a great capacity to feel. And they felt in color.

Then they discovered time travel and the vortex. They became the Time Lords and declared themselves a superior race. They stopped forming telepathic bonds, as it interfered with their ability to control the vortex. They could not see clearly through the rainbows of emotion. In time, they learned to close off their emotions. Then they stopped feeling them.

That is, until his parents. They discovered the bond and fostered it. They wanted their son to love and to escape the unfeeling society that was Gallifrey. And he loved. He loved his parents, he loved his home, and he loved his friends. It caused him pain, because the only people who ever showed him love in return were his parents. And now they were dead.

At the Academy, he was shunned. The other students didn't know why they didn't like him. Only that he made them uneasy. It was in one moment of need, one moment of incredible desire for comfort and love and home, that the boy found out why he was so different. He sat in his bed as the other boys in the dormitory played games and studied. None of them missed home, because none of them loved. They didn't feel sadness because none of them had felt happiness. The only comfort he could draw was from a lullaby his mother sang him every night. So he sang it softly to himself, under his breath so no one could hear it.

He didn't know that they could feel it. His telepathic abilities and the capacity for emotion his parents had carefully nurtured strengthened the song. It unblocked the carefully constructed walls the Time Lords had built in the minds of themselves and their children. A rainbow of emotion clouded the room. The students, who now knew why they avoided the strange boy, fell to the ground. They couldn't see through the colors behind their eyes. They didn't understand why their hearts felt different. They didn't recognize emotion, even when they were forced to feel it themselves.

He was born with one

One special gift indeed

It was making rainbows

After that incident, nobody spoke to him. He learned to never sing. He learned, though he would always feel emotion, to act the part. He felt deeply, but didn't show it.

He would try to make friends, believing that if he showed these people kindness that they would someday return it. His father had taken him to Earth when he was five. It was there that he met humans and learned kindness from his father. They spent a year there, helping people in need. When they returned to Gallifrey, he showed the same kindness to people he called his friends. After his parents died, he persevered, believing that he wouldn't feel these emotions if nobody would ever understand him. The universe couldn't be that cruel, could it?

But it was.

He would spend his days at the Academy, acting unfeeling and logical like the rest of them. In the warm nights (as it was always summer on Gallifrey) he would sneak out and walk far away from the school, far out of his telepathic range. And he would sing.

The colors always surrounded him and comforted him. The wind would sing through the trees with him and he knew that wind was the only friend that he would ever have.

Kind at heart like his father

His friend was summer wind

He was eighteen when it was all ruined. His roommate, who had noticed that he left every night, was curious as to where he went. He followed and became caught up in the rainbow. He told the Director of the Academy, and they came the next night to spy. In the middle of his song, he was interrupted and thrown into the basement of the school.

He was left alone for weeks, food brought down to him through a slot in the door. And he gave up. He wept for his mother and father, knowing it would hurt them greatly to know his fate. The Time Lords were taking his emotion from him and he was letting them. He couldn't take it anymore. So he built walls. Over those walls, he built more walls, until his hearts were buried behind logic and math and the Time Vortex.

They let him out of that basement and he never snuck out again. He never sang, never cried, and never hoped. He became like them.

Because of this, he gained 'friends'. Though they couldn't be called this, because there was no emotional attachment. There was a logical desire for association, and they fulfilled this.

He became the greatest of his class. He devoted himself to the protection of the Time Vortex. He graduated from the Academy with high honors. It was all going perfectly for him.

Until his graduation ceremony. They looked into the vortex again, just as they had when they were young and first entering the Academy. That glance into the vortex cracked his carefully constructed barrier to his emotions. He looked into the swirling gold of time and felt fear. It was the first thing he had felt since he locked himself inside his mind in that basement, years earlier. So he ran.

He stole a TARDIS, and she became his only real friend in the universe. She had been sentenced for decommission in favor of a later model, and he knew she would not be missed. His TARDIS was grateful to him for saving her, for she was nothing without a pilot. She was a machine, but she was alive and she was the only thing that would understand him. So he threw himself through the vortex and she sang in his stead.

He had his ship, one who would go anywhere he asked to go. So he returned to the planet that understood him. On Earth he shed his name and became The Doctor, in hopes that, by bearing the name of a healer, he could heal himself.

She was with him when the Time War began and ended, in an instant and in millennia, and she landed him on an uninhabited planet as he realized he was alone. He lowered his mental barriers one last time and sang to the universe. The dark and horrible colors of sadness and rage and pain came and swirled through the air.

The trees whimpered with the song and the stars wept, as lovepassionhappiness died. And the Oncoming Storm was born.

And he sang

Every time when somebody opened their heart

When he sang the rainbow began

Many years later, The Doctor lay on a grassy hill with his companion. It was a warm summer night, like those he had found solace in so many years ago. Rose's head was on his shoulder and he could feel her happy murmurs as she made up constellations in the unfamiliar sky. He laughed with her, feeling genuine happiness and basking in it. He thought back to the suffering he had endured. When had he ever believed he could be this happy again?

"Doctor?" she asked, the seriousness of her voice interrupting their light-hearted conversation.

"Yes, Rose?" he replied, curling his arm tighter around her as if to warm her, though the night was plenty warm already.

"You said something the other day…about flying the TARDIS. Is she really meant for six pilots?"

He lay his cheek on the top of her head, breathing in the scent of her hair as he answered. "Well, she really only needs me. I can fly her alone." He grinned. "But everything's better with two."

She let out a small laugh at that, turning over on his chest to look him in the eye. "You said something the other day…I think it was to the TARDIS, but you said it in English…I don't know that I was meant to hear it."

He gave her an encouraging look while checking his memory for things he may have said out loud on accident. She continued. "You said you couldn't see, which didn't make sense to me, because you were pressing buttons and levers fine."

He knew what she was talking about. He had been trying to navigate a particularly difficult area of the vortex when Rose had walked in. He had thought she was asleep, so he was unprepared for the emotions she always stirred up when he saw her. Those emotions created colors, and they clouded his vision and senses for the vortex. He had urged the TARDIS to help him tamp down his response, because it was difficult to see through his haze of surprise and adoration. He could have sworn he said that in Gallifreyan.

In the three years he had been with Rose, he had slowly begun to remove the walls around his hearts. The lifeless and hard man the Time Lords had made him, and the sad man the war had forced him to be, was no longer who he was. He began to feel again, the colors of his emotions both comforting and frightening after over 800 years of silence.

He still didn't sing; hadn't sung for happiness since he was caught that night. Sure, he sang along to the various songs on the radio, but he didn't really sing. He didn't show emotion the ancient Gallifreyan way. After so many long and lonely years, it was enough just to feel again.

And oh, did he feel. He felt so much for this human in his arms. And now he had a choice. Tell her a lie; that he had had a headache, or the TARDIS mistranslated. He could do that. Or he could tell her the truth. He could tell her those intricate details of his heritage. He could tell her of his parents that loved and ruined him as a Time Lord, but made him as a man. He could tell her that sometimes they floated in the vortex for days (days he called a mini-break and movie marathon time) because he couldn't see through his own love for her enough to fly.

A million stars were up and shining

When something strange occurred that night

He did something he had never done before. He took the harder route. He told her some of the truth, because she wanted to know and he wanted her to know.

"I'm a Time Lord." He said to begin. She blinked.

"Yes. I know that." She looked at him, confused and waiting for a real answer.

He sighed. "I'm a Time Lord, Rose, but that's not my heritage. It's a title. I am a Gallifreyan. Full-blooded. Only I'm different from the other Gallifreyans."

She quirked an eyebrow at that. "Oh?" she asked.

He smirked. "Yup" he said, popping the p. "I have a belly button!" he grinned.

She smacked him on the shoulder. "I was expecting something really cool, and all I got was something completely normal."

He grinned and tugged her back to her previous position with her head on his shoulder. "Normal for you. You humans are born from your mothers, all of you. There isn't a choice. On Gallifrey, sex just isn't necessary. It was actually frowned upon, so much so that only one couple in three hundred years did it. Gallifreyans aren't born, Rose. They're loomed." He paused, unsure as to whether or not he should tell her the rest. His last barrier to his heart was his asexual manner, his kind but unemotional image. If he told her, she would know that he could feel.

He wanted her to know. He wanted her to know his secret, so that whether she stayed with him forever or chose to return to Earth (which he doubted would happen, since she had let slip that she was in love with him to a world-saving acquaintance the other day…she didn't think he had heard it, but he had) someone would know who he was, and that he wasn't just the Doctor. His hearts burned for him to tell her. He loved her, too, after all. He loved her so much that he wanted her to stay forever, even when she would die in the blink of an eye. So he continued his story, this time watching her face for reactions as she turned in his arms to watch him.

"I'm the only Gallifreyan in centuries to be born, Rose. My mother and father went against the rules of our society and made love. They formed a mental bond, which was just short of illegal, and they had me the old fashioned way." He explained, feeling a weight lift from his shoulders. He had someone else now, someone to share his burdens with. She asked every day that he talk to her and tell her his thoughts and feelings. It was time he accepted her offer and gave her the love she deserved to feel from him.

Rose snuggled a bit closer to him and propped herself up to look at him better. She knew that this was hard for him to do; to tell her of his past and let her in. She loved him a little more for allowing himself to be a little vulnerable to her.

"My parents loved me. Most parents on Gallifrey sent their kids away as soon as possible, so they could get an education. Nobody cared that their kids were gone; nobody loved enough to miss someone. They didn't feel." He looked into her eyes and let her see the deep hurt he had felt those years ago, though the wounds had healed to scars because of her. "I did."

"So what does feeling have to do with not being able to see?" she asked, wanting to understand what he was getting at.

"Gallifreyans feel in color. When it gets very very strong, we can't see properly and it makes navigating the vortex very difficult. That's why the Time Lords learned how to stop emotion in the first place. My parents taught me to love and they loved me. My father took me to earth when I was little, and taught me how to ignore the emotion blocks that Gallifreyans were born with. He taught me that it was good to feel." He continued, though he knew he had answered her original question. Once he had begun telling her all of this, he found it was impossible for him to stop.

Rose smiled at his answer and the mention of his parents, knowing that he had been part of a loving family once, and that he remembered. His next statement, however, sent silent tears streaming down her cheeks.

"And then they died."

She let the tears fall for him, and to her astonishment she saw tears in his eyes as well. "I loved my parents. I was the only child on Gallifrey that could feel loneliness. And I was the only one that was truly alone. They didn't like me. I was weird. I didn't act logically, like everyone else. I acted on my feelings like my parents had taught me." He paused for a moment, fighting back the bitter feelings the memories brought. The ghosts of his pasts haunted him, but he knew that Rose's light would scare them away.

It was a little ghost, wanted to make him cry

Until forever

"Eventually I learned to stop feeling. It hurt too much, and it was better to feel nothing at all than to be in constant pain. I became a Time Lord. I thought I was doing well, and then I looked into the Time Vortex. It changed something in me. It opened part of the wall I had built over my emotions, and it changed me. I stole a TARDIS that wouldn't be missed, and I let myself become a failure."

Rose opened her mouth to protest, but the look in his eyes made her stop. He needed to say these things. They could argue over his "failure" status later.

"The Time War came and I was the only one who could end it. I was the only one who would do what was necessary. If I hadn't acted, the entire universe would have died, except for Gallifrey. Trillions of lives would be lost for every one person that would live on my planet. The Daleks would have died, but so would everyone else that did not have Gallifreyan blood. So I took it into my own hands."

Rose shuddered at the darkness in his voice, the hatred he held for himself and for his people, for making him a murderer. He looked at her, his eyes black with emotion and shining with tears.

"I killed them all. Every one. And my mind has been silent for centuries."

Wanted to rule the world

With darkness in his eyes

Rose knew this. She had known this since she had become the Bad Wolf. But the way he said it made her heart constrict in her chest. He was so very alone, and he thought it was all his fault. It wasn't. She wanted to tell him this, but knew it wasn't her time to speak. She wanted desperately to show him what she felt for him. Because she could feel, and now knew that he could as well.

Perhaps the look in his eyes was love, then. Longing looks over the console, close embraces, and chaste kisses. These were not meaningless signs of affection, if what he was telling her was true. He did feel love, and he was the only one of his species who could. He wasn't lying to her when he said Time Lords didn't feel.

But he wasn't a Time Lord, after all. He was a Gallifreyan. A man.

He was a man with twice as many hearts to break, and no one to help him keep them safe. If he would let her, she would do her best to keep him from hurt. He was finally letting her in, and she was going to savor the closeness.

She saw the pain he held every day. The pain he went through of being the only one who was lonely, and then being lonely because he was the only one. The pain of losing his parents at a young age. The pain of loving and losing his previous companions, and the pain of knowing that someday he would lose her, too. He carried all of this, and yet he still managed to smile through his misery.

She wanted to take it away, before the pain could take him.

And have it all

Have it all

She didn't know what she could say. He had finished telling his tale, and there was now a comfortable silence on the hill. She didn't return her gaze to the stars, deciding the shine of his tears on his face was far more beautiful. She reached up with her hand and wiped them away, barely noticing her own tears fall from her eyes.

"Doctor…" she whispered. His eyes crinkled at the edge with a smile, and his expression softened into that look that she had previously ignored as a friendly gaze. She felt his hand reach up to brush the tears off of her cheeks, and she gave him a watery smile.

He offered her a small smile in return, and she let her fingers brush his hair out of his eyes, resting her palm gently on his cheek. "Does it hurt? The silence?"

Another small tear leaked from his eye, rolling down to land on her fingertips. He gave a nod so small that she wouldn't have known if it weren't for her hand on his face. He remained silent, his breath coming softly from his gently parted lips.

"Can I take it away?" she asked, whispering.

She couldn't read the expression on his face before his lips were on hers. The kiss was so soft, she barely felt it. A hum of electricity danced from his lips to hers as he brushed her lips again. He lifted himself up to a sitting position, his forehead pressed to hers.

"You already have. All the pain I've felt for centuries…those old battle wounds and lonely nights…" he paused for a moment, placing his own hand over hers on his face "I don't have to feel it when I'm with you."

She smiled as her own tears poured down her face, feeling overwhelmed and completely in love with the man on the hill with her.

The stars still twinkled above them, but they took little notice as he kissed her again. He pressed his lips more firmly to hers and wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her closer. Her arms were around his neck and he felt one of her hands resting in his hair. She pulled back, her heart still heavy in her chest from the raw pain she had seen in his gaze as he told her his story.

"Share it with me." She said quietly.

"Share…?" he asked, pulling back to look at her troubled expression.

"Your pain. I don't want you to carry it alone. I know you can do that telepathy thing. I want to make you better." She admitted, playing with one of the buttons on his jacket.

"Rose…that's…not for emotion. That's for memories. I don't care how much you want them, Rose; I'm never giving you those horrible memories. I don't want my nightmares to be yours."

"Then how do you share emotion?" she asked.

He was silent for a moment. Dare he try to do this with her? He had already given her so much more than any companion, handed her pieces of himself that he never thought he would be giving away again. "I…don't know if I can do that."

She nodded, hiding the hurt from him. He saw it anyway. "It's okay, Doctor. You don't have to do anything. I know it's already uncomfortable for you, sharing so much." She forced a small smile and let her thumb caress his cheek, where her hand had returned after their kiss. "Thank you."

He saw the hurt in her eyes from his refusal, but he also saw the happiness there. Sharing his story with her, of his heritage and his past, had made her truly happy.

He had never imagined that he would find someone who meant as much to him as Rose. He loved her so completely, and he wanted to give himself to her completely. He desperately wanted to give her what she asked, to show her his pain and how she had mended him. If he did this, though, she would know all of his emotions. She wouldn't just know his pain. The rainbow didn't work like that.

She would know his love for her.

As he was contemplating these things, she was building up her courage. "Doctor?"

His eyes became focused, and he looked at her. "Yes?"

She kissed him again, just a short and soft kiss, and paused just a centimeter away, her eyes still closed.

"I love you" she whispered.

So he opened his mouth and began to sing.

And he sang

Every time when somebody opened their heart

It was soft at first, the words unfamiliar to his older hearts and newer mouth. His heart knew the lyrics well and the Gallifreyan began to rise and fall as it had when he was young. Rose gasped at the sound.

She looked at him, confused. He held her tightly still, carefully pulling down the walls he had built around his heart. Without the crumbling bricks of an old man's regrets, there was now room for her. And there would never be anything other than her.

Rose gasped, feeling something creeping along the edges of her mind. Her heart jumped and then calmed, knowing it was the Doctor and that he would never hurt her.

He paused in his melody. "Are you sure you want to do this?"

She nodded, trying to make her body work through the blissful feeling of his consciousness. "Absolutely."

And he thought of Gallifrey. The Time War, his parents, his utter and complete loneliness, and he sang for them. Her sobs broke his hearts, and he soon realized that he was sobbing, too. The song continued through his mind, but his body heaved with grief for his fallen planet and its people. She wept with him, finally understanding him better than anyone ever had or would again.

He hurt because he loved.

The colors danced in her vision, blocking all of her senses but those connected to the Doctor. She could feel where their bodies met, where her hand still rested against his face. All she could see was color, and each color felt different. There were reds, greens, all of the colors she could think of swirling around in her vision. The colors shifted and it was dark, all red and purple and the black tendrils of pain pulling her downward. The Doctor's grip kept her from falling.

She felt his adoration of his parents, and the comfort and security of a warm and loving home. She felt his abandonment after their deaths and horrible loneliness in a world of people that didn't understand. She felt his shame in feeling emotion, and his desperation in trying to control it. She felt his anger at being held captive by the Time Lords, for being punished because he did what was natural for all of them. He showed them how they should be living, and they punished him for making them ashamed of themselves. She screamed with him in agony as he remembered his choice to either kill his people or let the universe perish, and sobbed with him as he remembered that lonely planet where he died and became the bitter and angry man she had first met.

And then she came into his memory, and into his emotions. The colors shifted when he thought of her, and all she could see was blue. Her heart was flying with his, and she gasped at the depth of the emotion he shared with her.

She felt him whisper her name against her neck as his mind continued to sing, their bodies stilling from the sobs. She was too caught in the rainbow to respond.

He loved her. Deeply. At the moment, it was all she could see. Every shade of blue covered his memories of her, and she was lost in the depth of it.

Then it all changed. It went from a serene blue to an intense white and her heart picked up its already rapid pace. Her breath went ragged as the emotion overwhelmed her and all she felt was absolute passion from the man in her arms.

It quickly shifted from the burning white, and she began to laugh. Her vision turned yellow and gold, all swirling around in her mind and her vision and she felt her heart swell with happiness. She heard him, in her mind, singing. Out loud he told her what only she would ever know.

"This is who I am, Rose. This is my name. Only you can know it, in all of time and space. I am the last Gallifreyan, and you hold both my hearts. You are a part of me, and now you are a part of my true identity."

As the three colors of lovepassionhappiness swirled in her vision, she felt tears leak from her eyes once more. His name was not a word, it was him and she would hold it close to her heart. She wished she had a secret to give him, something special that only he would ever know. She wished desperately in that moment that she was a virgin, because all she had to give him was her body, and she had foolishly given that long ago.

When he sang the rainbow began

The rainbow began

His song began to quiet in her mind, and she felt him leaving. She grasped onto his consciousness as hard as she could, desperate to keep him with her.

"Rose, it's all right. I'm here. I've got you in my arms. Come back to me."

She closed her eyes and let go, feeling herself fall back into the darkness of her own humanity. His emotions were so much brighter and stronger than her own, and she wished desperately that she could show him how much she loved him in the same way.

"Doctor…you know I love you…so much." She whispered weakly into his chest, her mind exhausted.

He smiled down at her. "I love you, Rose."

She grinned and fell asleep on his chest under the stars.

He let her sleep, his own mind tired and reeling from what he had just done. He didn't regret it- there was no possible way he would ever regret giving Rose his name. She was his, and he was hers, and things would always be that way.

There was a peace in his soul as he looked up at the stars. He had never felt as perfect, as human, as he did when she was in his arms. And now he had no reason to ever let her go.

A million stars were up and shining

The storm had quieted down

The night had never been so still

Later that night she woke up in his arms. The night was still warm, and the stars had shifted in the sky. She heard a soft sound and lifted her head from her Doctor's chest to see what it was.

The Doctor was snoring.

He slept calmly beside her, the first time she had ever seen him sleep when he wasn't sick or injured. His face held a peace she had never seen before and she would treasure that moment for the rest of her life.

When morning broke, he woke up to find her gazing at him intently, a small smile on her face. He kissed her gently, and they set off once again into time and space.

He married her in human terms, and they made love frequently and passionately. He sang to her every night, reminding her of who he was and how she was a part of it. Bad Wolf changed her, and she lived as long as he did. They had many children, and there wasn't a person in the universe happier than they.

His name was lovepassionhappiness, and his meaning was Rose.

And he sang

Ever time when somebody opened their heart

When he sang the rainbow began

The rainbow began

They lived happily ever after. The End.

A/N: So, what did you think of it? A bit odd, I know, but I hope it's in a good way! Every time I listen to this song (which now has over 200 plays on my iTunes) I think of the Doctor and Rose on a hill, flooded in color. So this song really did inspire this fic. Let me know what you thought of it! Reviews always help me write better!

With love,

doctorrosetyler