and the world was a restless place

fic: nothing gold

Sun, 12 Oct 2008 21:08:41 GMT

Title: Nothing Gold
Rating: G
Characters/Pairings: Ten/Rose and Mickey, with mentions of Sarah Jane and Reinette
Spoilers?: Not for anything beyond "The Girl in the Fireplace"
Prompt: "Autumn" at the time_and_chips "Seasons Change" ficathon.
Summary: She can spend the rest of her life with him, but he can't spend the rest of his with her. (Set during Season 2, shortly after "The Girl in the Fireplace".)
Excerpt: Poetically speaking it was a sick but accurate allegory, and the letter that lay tucked into his breast pocket seemed impossibly heavy. Minutes for him, decades for her. Dead and gone in the blink of an eye.
Author's Notes: The poem alluded to in the title and in the fic is Robert Frost's Nothing Gold Can Stay.

They chose the planet of Maenestrehla for three reasons.

The first reason was that the Doctor was loathe to take them anywhere that might happen to have time windows opening into any portion of eighteenth century Europe, and as the people of Maenestrehla rarely expressed interest in any planet other than their own, it seemed like a safe bet.

The second reason was the absolutely spectacular display of colour that occurred during Maenestrehlan autumn. Situated on a hill, its capital city looked down on valleys on blues and purples, rock patches of pale pink mingled with spots of deep fuchsia and rivers of pale yellow.

The third reason was that Maenestrehla happened to sell ice cream of every imaginable flavour, and it was this reason that sold the idea to Mickey and Rose.

Typical.

“It’s like Harry Potter. Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans!” the Doctor had told them eagerly, only to learn neither Mickey nor Rose had ever expressed any interest in the boy wizard. His faith in them took another blow when Mickey, presented with a virtually comprehensive list of flavours – a list including everything from mint to foie gras to alien fruits that no twenty-first century human had ever tasted before – chose vanilla.

“Vanilla?” the Doctor had spluttered indignantly. “I bring you to a planet where you can have any flavour of ice cream imaginable and you pick vanilla?”

“It’s good!” Mickey had stubbornly protested. “Besides, most of these flavours shouldn’t even exist – who wants ham ice cream?”

Committed to proving a point, the Doctor had proceeded to order the ham-flavoured ice cream, and when he happened to drop the cone a minute later, it was tragic and entirely accidental and not, as Mickey seemed to believe, “on purpose”.

The two were ahead of him now, walking the winding path that overlooked the valley, lost in gossip about people the Doctor didn’t know. He trailed behind, hands in his pockets, watching and listening.

Shareen had a new boyfriend, a bloke named Daniel that she’d met at a bar. Someone named Will had unwisely quit his job in order to “make it” with his band. Amanda had left her boyfriend to be with another girl named Amanda. Sam was unemployed, Mike just bought a car, and Marla might be pregnant.

It was disturbingly like listening to the summary of a soap opera, the Doctor thought, and it was another flashing neon sign of a reminder that Rose was very young and very human.

Like he needed any more of those.

The last few days had been a non-stop deluge of reminders, really. First there was Sarah Jane, and though it had been wonderful to see her again, save the day with her again, run with her again, it had come at a price. It poked a hole in the carefully constructed bubble of ignorance he’d always chosen to live in with regards to his companions and his argument with Rose seemed to be stuck on loop in his mind.

(Humans decay.)

She was getting older, his Sarah Jane.

And then came Reinette.

Reinette had been a fascinating piece to a fascinating problem, and beyond that she’d been a bright and beautiful girl who dealt bravely with being thrust into a situation she was never meant to experience. She was captivating, that girl in the fireplace, and her death – her natural, normal human death – had shaken him to the core.

Hours. Her entire life had flickered past him in hours; she’d grown and aged and died before he’d changed his tie. Poetically speaking it was a sick but accurate allegory, and the letter that lay tucked into his breast pocket seemed impossibly heavy. Minutes for him, decades for her. Dead and gone in the blink of an eye.

(You wither and you die.)

Ahead of him, Rose laughed. She tossed her head back as she did so, her hair a golden-orange under the influence of the Manestrehlan sunset, and the sensation of dread that had shadowed the Doctor since the Krillitanes reared up, tugging at his hearts and settling itself in his stomach. She was growing up, Rose Tyler, fantastic as ever and more brilliant each day and yet –

He sighed, turning his gaze on the vast slope of blue to his left. It was beautiful, to put it plainly, a final dazzling show before the winter set in, cold and harsh and abrupt. Winter here lasted nearly the length of a full year on Earth, thick sheets of ice and snow burying the city and the valley below. For the Maenestrehlans this was ideal – they adored the cold, flourished in it – but for most visiting creatures it was uninhabitable. Their economy, so dependent on tourism, relied on the autumnal display of colour that lasted only three weeks of every Maenestrehlan year.

It worked. Thousands flocked to see the majesty of Maenestrehla in its fall, eating outrageously flavoured ice cream and sending postcards of blue forests. Thousands flocked to watch the leaves die.

Such splendour in decay.

“Oi, slow poke, you coming or not?”

Rose peered over her shoulder at him, a grin on her face and an orange drop of ice cream on her chin. Seeming to feel it, she stuck out her tongue to lick away the offending splotch, and the Doctor was fairly certain his left heart stumbled in its rhythm as she did so.

Looking at her, he tried not to think of the lines that had been added to Sarah Jane’s face – of Reinette, who'd aged and died while his back was turned – of the inevitable day when Rose’s bottle blonde would be replaced with gray. He tried not to think of each second spent with her as the wasting of some precious finite resource, some reservoir that, once dry, would leave him lost and damaged and so very lonely.

(Imagine watching that happen –)

Instead, he tried to focus on the present, on the grin she was giving him, the lively sparkle in her eyes, the pink tinge of her cheek, the orange hue of her lips from the ice cream, the golden sheen of her hair in the sunset, the way she could make his hearts do things they shouldn’t merely by licking her cheek –

(To someone that you –)

“Well?” she called, eyebrows raised.

Nothing gold, he thought grimly, even as he put on a manic grin and bounded forward, wedging himself between the two and looping his arms around their shoulders.

“Sorry. Lost in thought. Consequence of being very clever.” He beamed at the both of them, pretended not to notice when Mickey rolled his eyes, then released their shoulders to clap his hands together. “Now! How do you two feel about a beach?”

the facts were these:

Fri, 03 Oct 2008 15:19:54 GMT

I have a midterm at 4 today that I probably should be studying for, and yet I cannot seem to work up the concern because it's Linguistics, it's multiple choice, and that course is just so dumb. So I guess it's time for a generic update? Initially I had typed "life update" but then I realized this won't actually have anything to do with my life, because my life has been exceedingly boring as of late. Um, tomorrow I'm going with Tania (and I think her parents?) to go see some play called Happy Days at the NAC. Her mom got free tickets or something and I am the beloved friend who gets to go, bahahaha. I... have no idea what it is about, but I am sure it will be fun and exciting and cultural anyway, lirl.

and, like, I kind of hate the entire cast. Except maybe Ianto and Tosh, though I love Ianto in the way you might love a really stupid puppy. Gwen kind of pisses me off with her "I am so ~human and caring~" spiel, and how apparently she's really awesome at her job (says Suzie the Corpse) and yet I have never seen any evidence of this, save her occasional bleeding heart speeches. Man I even hated Jack 99% of the time, enough that when Gwen punches him for making a very accurate statement about her status as a h00r, I was like OMFG YES! Even if, you know, the statement was very accurate, and Gwen is a h00r. Who drugs her boyfriend. Fail.

And just to be clear, what the fuck happened in the season finale, anyway? The rift opens because Asian Man in a Cravat wanted it to, and it unleashes ~~that thing from~~ Satan ~~Pit~~ and it eats people with its shadow and so Jack ... is a buffet, and then he Care-Bear Stares the Devil to death? And then he dies for X number of days (I'm guessing 3, because that seems to be how long people are usually out before they're ressurected) and then GWEN KISSES HIM AND HE WAKES UP ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? *flails* Also, how come exploding the Devil made time conveniently reverse itself? Did Cravat Man just disappear into time or something? Was he an agent of the devil? Why is Rhys alive again? SO MANY QUESTIONS.

However, A+ for having the VOTE SAXON posters in the background. (Also, does that mean the Master was just like, laughing his ass of the entire time, in a sort of "wow I don't even need to take over this planet, they're fucking it up on their own" kind of way? If so: win.)

That said, for those of you not lucky enough to be on afterthree's flist, I highly recommend this recap of Torchwood Season 1's Fail.

Also, the season premiere of Pushing Daisies reminded me why I love Pushing Daisies. If it does indeed get cancelled I will be sad, but not exceptionally surprised because, I mean, there's been about 10 seasons of Survivor and shows like Dog Eat Dog exist, so obviously North America in general does not have the most exceptional television taste. While watching Pushing Daisies I saw a commercial for the Americanized Life on Mars, and I can readily say based on the single episode I've seen of Life on Mars that the American one is made almost entirely of fail. Needs moar John Simm, tbh.

Evidently I don't have anything else to discuss, or at least nothing comes to mind. I know you're all in the throes of VP debates, and Canada's having an election too, but... yeah, no, nothing srs bsnss ever gets posted here. Sorry to disappoint, lirl.

Also, I'm very bored, so if you happen to be around, hijack and procrastinate with me, yeah?

fic: such sweet sorrow -- doctor who

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 04:06:57 GMT

Title: Such Sweet Sorrow
Rating: PG
Genre: A little bit of column A, a little bit of column B. (Angst and gen and romance and hopefully a dash of comedy.)
Spoilers: Set during Journey's End, so that'd be a yes.
Characters/Pairings: Ten/Rose/Ten2, Donna, with hints of Jack, Martha, Jackie, Sarah Jane and Mickey
Summary: The universes are safe and the TARDIS is full of people he loves drinking wine and swapping stories, so naturally the Doctor is... watching from the sidelines. Set during Journey's End.
Exceprt: Rose stands up straight and moves perpendicular to him, threading her arm through his. He thinks probably she’d take his hand, if he took it out of his pocket.

He doesn’t.
Author's Notes: This is definitely a companon piece to Say Goodnight and Goodbye, which is set just before this piece, but it's certainly not neccessary that you read one to understand the other. I don't get why I find blue!Doctor to be much easier to write than regular!Doctor, but apparently that's the case; Donna, however, came easier this time around. Hurrah!

Hands in his pockets, the Doctor leans back against a coral brace, trying to permanently record the scene in front of him simply by watching.

Not twenty minutes ago Donna and the Other had appeared, wine glasses in hand, and announced that under no circumstances was anyone being taken home before there was at least some semblance of a party. They’d gotten their wish without much argument, and now, wine distributed, the console room looks more like a reception hall than the control centre of a highly advanced, mostly-sentient spaceship.

Sarah Jane and Jackie share the jump seat and – to his horror – discuss the ups and downs of motherhood. (“A year?” “A bloody year! I thought she was dead!”)

Donna leans back against the console, eyebrows raised, and plies Jack with more wine. (“Oh, I could tell you stories about Catraxian wine!” “Yeah, I’ll bet you can.”)

The Other bobs from side to side as he gives Martha and Mickey a detailed explanation of what, exactly, a biological meta-crisis means. (“Of course she gets knowledge of time and space, and I learn the intricate details of Brangelina.”)

It’s nice. They’re laughing and happy and safe and it’s nice, it really is, seeing them all together. The Doctor sighs, smiling faintly to himself and doing his best to ignore potential timelines for the moment.

It was going to sting, returning to an empty ship after seeing it so full.

For just a second he indulges, considers the possibility of what if: what if the brilliant, brave humans in front of him had no outstanding responsibilities, no more important places to go or people to be with? What if they, too, had no home beyond the TARDIS doors?

The Time Lord and his Children of Time.

It’s a selfish thought, and he shoves it aside impatiently. That’s not the case, and thank the universe’s numerous gods and deities for that. They will leave, one by one, and he will smile, wave and wish them all the best as he always has. It’s what they deserve and what they fought for.

Fought. His mind catches on the word like a scratched CD. You take ordinary people and you fashion them into weapons.

A shoulder bumps his, derailing him from an unpleasant train of thought, and he looks to his left to see Rose smiling up at him, a shy smile that speaks of years apart and reunions cut short. His stomach somersaults, and he tries not to feel the presence of the Other in his mind, tries to be blind to what he can see in the immediate future.

Instead, and against his better judgement, he leans into her, just a little, and revels in the warmth of their sides pressed together.

“You’re quiet,” she says, in a manner that very nearly masks her concern.

One corner of his mouth pulls up in a grin. “Just watching.” He looks back towards the group gathered around the console. “Been a long time since the TARDIS was this full.”

“It’s nice.” Suddenly the warm weight of her head is against his arm, familiar and comfortable and terrifying.

He swallows. “Yeah.”

She exhales a happy sigh and burrows closer to him. “S’good to be back.”

She’s looking up at him, her hair falling over one half of her face, and he studies her the way he hadn’t had a chance before, with the fate of everything in existence hanging on tenterhooks. She looks… different, older. Her hair is blonder and her waist, her face are thinner. But she’s smiling at him, and it’s the same Rose Tyler smile he remembers her wearing when she’d run to join him on the TARDIS so long ago.

It sends a not altogether unpleasant current down his spine. Rose Tyler, his fantastic human girl who’d clawed her way through holes in the universe just to get back to him.

Across the room, he catches the eye of the Other and nearly manages not to feel a surge of jealousy.

“It’s good to have you back, Rose Tyler,” he tells her. He watches a moment longer, returns her smile, and then looks back towards the centre of the room.

Rose stands up straight and moves perpendicular to him, threading her arm through his. He thinks probably she’d take his hand, if he took it out of his pocket.

He doesn’t.

When he looks at her again, she’s frowning.

“What’s wrong?”

He gives her what he hopes is a reassuring smile. “Wrong? Nothing, everything’s fine. We just saved the universe! All of them! So better than fine, really, all things considered. Although, I could go for some of wine, have you tried it? Delicious. Fantastic wineries they’ve got in the Catraxian Galaxy, did I ever take you? No? Come on, we’d better get some before Donna’s force-fed it all to Jack.”

He goes to take a step forward and is impeded when she pulls him back by the arm.

“No.” She stays rooted to the spot and looks at him, eyebrows raised. He avoids her eyes. “Something’s wrong. You’re babbling and you’re not looking at me, and that always means that something’s wrong.”

Perceptive girl, that Rose Tyler.

The Doctor meets her eyes. “Rose, I’m fine,” he insists, slowly, and wills it to be true.

She stares at him, silent, eyes searching, then finally says, “Listen, Doctor, what Davros said–”

“Well, well, well,” comes a deceivingly American accent from behind her, “Rose Tyler, the girl so good this universe got rid of her. I don’t think we’ve been properly reintroduced.”

Rose turns, and Jack sends her a toothpaste smile, holding out his arms.

“Captain,” Rose says, with as serious a tone and a nod as she can muster – then she releases her hold on the Doctor and leaps forward for a hug, something like “so good to see you” getting muffled in the process.

The Doctor watches them just long enough to send Jack an encouraging grin, then turns and leaves them to their reunion.

--

Donna turns to survey the room, now that her source of conversation has up and left her for Rose Tyler. She pushes herself up from the console and looks around, one hand in her pocket, one hand holding her wine.

It’s good to see this place so full. If there’s anyone in the universe who might actually benefit from what amounts to be essentially a family reunion, it’s the Doctor. She decides they’ll have to do this more often; Sarah Jane, Martha and Jack are bound to co-operate, even if the Doctor is likely to shy away from such domesticity.

Actually, Donna supposes, his reluctance might make the idea even more appealing. She can, for instance, readily imagine the look of mingled horror, revulsion and the teensiest bit of affection he might give them if hey were to, say… throw him a birthday party.

With pointy hats. And cake. (But probably not the appropriate number of candles, lest they violate seven galaxies’ worth of fire safety codes.)

She grins into her wine glass and makes a mental note to put Martha’s number in her phone.

Over the top of Martha’s head, the Doctor in blue catches her eye and sends her a manic grin, waving with the hand that had, by all rights, kind of saved the universe. It occurs to Donna then that for him this is as much a goodbye as a reunion, and she feels a cold twinge of sympathy. He’ll get Rose, but only in exchange for everything else, and the other Doctor –

Automatically she looks to her left, just in time to see the one with the binary vascular system slip away from Rose and Jack. Raising her eyebrows, Donna swallows the rest of her wine in one gulp, sets down her glass and sweeps after him.

“Oh no you don’t, Tweedle Dumb,” she mutters as she catches his elbow, pulling him to some corner of the room where she can give him a proper lecture without being overheard. “No wallflower-ing somewhere else. Honestly, the two of you, bloody biggest sulks in the universe.”

He stares at her, bewildered. “Tweedle Dumb?”

She shrugs. “You rather be Tweedle Dee?” She folds her arms across her chest and decides now is perhaps not the best time to debate nicknames. “He told me what you’re planning.”

He pulls back, his jaw set, and fixes her with one of his don’t question me, I’m in charge stares that has never had any affect on her whatsoever. She sincerely hopes when she’s old, gray and a slow runner and he’s looking to find a replacement model, the girl isn’t the sort who wilts under this stare and backs down. The Doctor does not need someone who will treat him like a god; he just needs a friend.

I’ll have to run auditions, Donna thinks.

“Don’t try to stop me,” he snaps, harsh enough that she leans back.

I'll defnitely have to run auditions.

She smirks at the hostility, unperturbed. “Actually, wasn’t planning on it. I think it’s a good idea.”

The defensiveness rushes out of him in a breath. For a brief second, she thinks, he looks as though he wants her to stop him.

But she can't, won't. Not this time.

“Well… good,” he says lamely, unsure what to say now that she’s removed the wind from his outraged sails.

“Yeah, good,” she quips back before she can help herself – then she sighs, letting her arms fall to her sides. Impossible Time Lord that he may be, he does not need her bickering with him, and that is not what she intends to do. “I just wanted to say – he told me, and I think it’s a good idea, and I know they’ll be happy together, doing human-y things and sharing arthritis medication and all that…”

She trails off and looks back over her shoulder, watching the doppelganger in blue. He’s leaning over the back of the jump seat, being absolutely horrified by Jackie’s description of Rose as tabloid fodder. Donna has fleeting image of an alternate version of herself, gobbling up details of the enigmatic Rose Tyler’s mysterious new beau.

She blinks and refocuses. She turns back at the Doctor in front of her, and continues:

“But I also know what she means to you, and I know how much it’s gonna hurt you, and I’m sorry for that, I really am.” He opens his mouth to interrupt, but she keeps going. “I’m sorry, and I swear to God we can watch The Notebook seven times in a row and eat Ben & Jerry’s out of the tub afterwards if you want, but right now she’s on board, and so are all your friends, and if you don’t make the most of that you’re going to regret it for the rest of your long Time Lord life. So go talk to her. To them. Properly.”

For a long moment he regards her, silent, and she’s not sure she’s done anything but handed him a shaker of salt and said here, try cleaning your wounds with this but then he nods and swallows.

“Yeah,” he agrees quietly. He hesitates. “Donna –”

She rolls her eyes. “Well don’t talk to me, there’s plenty of time left to talk to me, go!” She moves behind him and gives him a firm shove towards the center of the room. “Mingle! Run your ridiculous mouth off at someone else for a change!”

The Doctor stumbles forward and looks back at her, grinning. “As you wish!”

Something about the grin strikes her as off, strange. Insincere. She opens her mouth to ask, but by then he’s already bounded around the console with an excited “Mickey Smith! Long time no see! Hello!” and it's a lost cause.

Instead, Donna takes a second to familiarize herself with the hum of the TARDIS in her mind, and then goes to ask Dr. Jones for her mobile number. After all, there are planets to save, civilizations to rescue, and embarrassingly domestic surprise parties to plan.

fic: of costumes, superheroes and personal space

Sat, 20 Sep 2008 03:47:03 GMT

Title: Of Costumes, Superheroes and Personal Space
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairings: Ten2/Rose
Genre: Humour, fluff, a few hints of shippiness and decidedly angst-free.
Spoilers?: Through 4x13
Summary: The Doctor has found a kindred spirit (and a Halloween costume); Rose is inclined to disagree.
Excerpt: He wiggled his eyebrows in his aren’t I a genius? way that was typically reserved for things like growing a new TARDIS, building a new sonic screwdriver or figuring out the most efficient way to peel bananas.

“I’ve decided on a Halloween costume,” he told her as he plopped down onto the sofa beside her, close enough that her level of comfort shifted from ‘snugly nestled’ to ‘really quite wedged’. The tiny bubble of personal space they had always maintained on the TARDIS seemed to have popped completely now that they were stuck in one place -- specifically, now that the Doctor had to deal with “ridiculously overzealous human hormones”. While as a general rule she didn’t mind – rather the opposite – she also rather liked the ability to breathe.

She squirmed, and he leaned into her even further.

Git, she thought, without much malice.

She tossed the file she’d been reading (Important Torchwood Business, which of course the Doctor refused to read, only to be indignant later when he violated some Important Torchwood Protocol stated in the aforementioned Important Torchwood Business) onto the coffee table.

“Your… what?”

“Halloween costume!” he repeated proudly, leaning in far closer than was generally appropriate for casual conversation. “The clever disguise I shall don for All Hallow’s Eve.” He pulled back, granting her at least enough room to breathe, and grinned. “Fascinating ritual, Halloween – put on a costume and go begging door-to-door.” A pensive look crossed his face and he scratched his chin. “You lot, you spend so much time telling kids not to take candy from strangers, then once a year you turn around and practically force them to. Well, not force, I don’t suppose the kids mind much -- I mean, free candy, what kid doesn’t love free candy -- but still. Very contradictory message there.”

Rose stared, and temporarily considered what it might be like to be in a relationship with someone who accepted trivial human rituals at face value.

She supposed it’d be a good deal less entertaining, at any rate, albeit less exhausting.

“…Right,” she agreed absently. She wondered for a second what could have brought on such a seemingly odd statement, then realized: “You’ve been talking to Tony.”

The Doctor beamed. “Yep. Clever boy, that Tony Tyler.”

Rose snorted, wriggling her shoulders to carve out more room between the Doctor’s side and the arm of the sofa. “So what’s your great costume, then?”

He wiggled his eyebrows in his aren’t I a genius? way that was typically reserved for things like growing a new TARDIS, building a new sonic screwdriver or figuring out the most efficient way to peel bananas.

“I,” said the Doctor in his (rather practiced) voice of self-importance, “am going to be Superman.”

Rose laughed; the Doctor did not, and that left her with a rather terrifying conclusion.

“Sorry, are you serious?”

“Of course I am!” he proclaimed, apparently unawares of her rather obvious and well-placed skepticism. “Isn’t it brilliant? Got quite a lot in common with Clark Kent.”

Rose stared. Her mind had rather unhelpfully crafted an image of the Doctor flying around in a cape while dodging zeppelins, and she swallowed down the laughter that was threatening to resurface.

“Er… how, exactly?”

He looked at her as though she had just asked if the sky was always such a blue colour. “Everything! Well, not everything – can’t fly, for instance. Not that I want to, really, flying’s overrated. Gets you into all sorts of trouble, there are loads of different intergalactic laws to regulate flying, not to mention all sorts of ones per planet -- it’s practically impossible to keep them all straight, even if you do happen to be very clever, and I am –”

Rose raised her eyebrows, and it seemed to occur to him suddenly that he was supposed to be telling her why he was a kindred spirit of the Man of Steel.

“Anyway,” he continued, “flying is hardly the point. The point is we’re really very alike – planet gone, last of our kind, end up on Earth, save the world a few dozen times, fall in love with a human…” He winked at Rose and she grinned despite herself. “See? Practically the same.”

Admittedly, he had a point. Still, the theory behind it did not make it sound like all that much better of a plan.

“Oh,” was the most reaction she managed. “Well… yeah, there is that, I s’pose.”

The Doctor widened his eyes incredulously. “I believe this is the part where you say why Doctor, you’re absolutely right, that’s such a clever idea, how ever do you manage to be so fantastic?”

Rose snorted. “Think you read the script wrong, then,” she quipped, elbowing him in the ribs. She ran a tongue over her teeth, considering the best way to discourage this latest idea. It was bad enough picturing the Doctor dressed as Superman; she couldn’t imagine spending an entire night seeing it in flesh-and-blood without… well, probably without exploding from the force of her own hysterics.

“It’s just…” She trailed off and he looked at her inquisitively. “… I mean, you don’t really… look like Superman.”

The Doctor shrugged. “It’s not as though he’s got a lot of distinguishing features – glasses, no glasses, that’s pretty much the height of his disguise.” He seemed to consider this. “He doesn’t really try very hard, does he? The citizens of Metropolis must be exceptionally unobservant.”

She was getting the creeping feeling he was going to make this absolutely as hard as it could be. “I just meant that… Superman’s sort of...” She waved one hand uselessly, hoping it might suddenly gift her with tact. “…y’know…”

He gave her a look that told her very plainly that no, he didn’t know.

“Well… built,” she said finally, hunching her shoulders and flexing her arms as she did so.

The Doctor stared at her so blankly that for a second she thought perhaps “built” had been lost somewhere in his vast mental dictionary, so she said, quite helpfully:

“Like Jack.”

The Doctor’s mouth dropped open into possibly the most scandalized expression she’d ever seen him wear, and she wondered if there wasn’t just a little bit of Donna at work.

“Like Jack?” he exclaimed when he had relocated his voice. “Like Jack?” It was practically a squeak.

Rose giggled. The giggle did nothing to quell the indignity he was radiating.

“Rose Tyler! I am wounded! That was rude!”

She didn’t quite manage to hold back her grin. “Yeah, you must be rubbing off on me.”

“Oi!” He pulled back even further, somehow managing to rearrange his features to look even more offended. “First you say I don’t look enough like Jack, now you’re having a go at my personality? Rose Tyler, you are cruel.”

“Sorry,” she managed, still smiling in a way that belied her apology. “It’s not that – I just mean spandex… probably isn’t a good look for you, is all.”

The insulted look left his face long enough for an incredulous one to replace it. “Is spandex really a good look for anyone?”

Rose blinked. It was a fair point. Then she snickered again, and he was back to looking offended.

“Honestly,” he muttered, folding his arms and reminding her far too much of Tony. “I come up with a brilliant costume – you could even be Lois! Lois! – and you shoot me down with the accuracy of an Olympic marksman. And anyway, the entire purpose of Halloween is to look ridiculous, so I hardly see how your criticism is valid.”

She shrugged innocently. “Just warnin’ you, spandex … s’not the most comfortable thing to wear.” Particularly around important government figureheads, she didn’t add; being in the public eye had failed to influence the Doctor’s behavior in the slightest, and she rather doubted he’d make an exception for her father’s Halloween party. “Anyway, Superman’s sort of boring, yeah? I’ve met more interesting aliens.”

His mouth twisted into a decidedly self-satisfied smile. “Have you?”

“Yeah.” She bit her lip, scrunching her face up in consideration. “Well -- Jack counts as sort of an alien, right?”

“Oi!”

She laughed again, leaning her head back against the sofa and grinning sideways at him. She supposed she ought to stop; it was just terribly entertaining to wind him up, and there was something strangely endearing about the fact that he could get worked up over apparent competition an entire universe away.

“Kidding,” she said, prodding him in the side with her finger. “You could be James Bond. I could be your Bond girl.”

He wrinkled his nose. “James Bond? I’m nothing like James Bond. And those girls, they’re--”

“I think you’re missing the point of Halloween, Doctor.”

“He’s licensed to kill, Rose, what sort of license is that? He—”

“Looks dashing in a suit, though,” she interjected, and his smug smile returned.

“Dashing? Really?” He seemed to think about this for a moment. “You know, Martha said something like that once. I was wearing that tux. Bad luck, that tux, always got in trouble in that –”

Regrettably the Doctor was cut off, as Rose -- evidently disinterested in the dangers of tuxedo-wearing -- punctured their bubble of personal space by pressing her lips to his.

Wed, 10 Sep 2008 17:57:50 GMT

Hey wow, something I care about was posted on ohnotheydidnt!

(Potential?) casting spoilers for future Doctor Who episodes, btw.

Thoughts?

Sun, 07 Sep 2008 01:34:13 GMT

So Kelly (sweetcherrytree and I are on Skype discussing the Twilight/Doctor Who fic I stumbled upon once, which of course led to us discussing the general possibilities inherent in a Doctor Who/Twilight fic and all the hilarity that would ensue. In sum:

The Doctor would be convinced they're aliens who need to be returned to their planet of origin because of the threat they pose to the life on Earth
The combination of the Jedi mind tricks of the Doctor/Bella/Edward: Edward would, of course, be completely mindblown by reading the Doctor's mind, and the Doctor would be less than impressed with Bella's memories (and she would be greatly disturbed to discover her Love Sheild does not work)
The Doctor and Alice would get in a huge debate over the concept of time and its constant state of flux, as well as her "I can see the future" vs "I CAN SEE ALL THAT EVER WAS/IS/COULD BE,BITCH PLZ"
The Doctor would quite like Carlisle and Esme because they are very ~compassionate~ and that is a big selling point with him, really, but Carlisle and Esme are not sure that they approve of him because of his tendency to commit genocide
Kelly and I were wondering if the Doctor's two hearts make him more delicious and meaty or if he'd be gross because he's not strictly human. Probably the vampires would be convinced there was another human present somewhere and would be incredibly frustrated at their inability to find him/her.
An argument between Edward and the Doctor over a) who is more awesome and b) who has a suckier life
-i'm such a monster vs. i've committed genocide several times (often with the same species) and destroyed my own planet
-i've put the life of my one true love in danger vs. i've put the planet in danger
-i'm so old -- 17 for 100 years to be exact vs. psh, kiddo, over 900, and on my 10th body
-i've nearly committed suicide since i had to be away from my one true love vs. she was in a parallel universe and i have an obligation to save the universe as the last Time Lord, AND i'd outlive them all anyway
-at least i'm married to my one true love vs. the first one i gave away to my clone, the other one is locked in a virtual reality
-people have died because of my child vs. several people (AND ALIENS) have died because of me
-i have a magical half-vampire baby who is smart and awesome vs. i have a fully grown genetically engineered daughter trained in combat who was born wearing perfect eyeliner
-the volturi don't really like us vs. my enemies keep coming back to life and trying to destroy me and earth
-i have a family that i don't deserve vs. i am doomed to be alone for the rest of my life
-my best friend is my annoying sister vs. my best friend nearly died cause she inherited my brain so i had to wipe her memories and can never see her again
-my wife calls me a beautiful statue of adonis vs. i have great hair (although it isn't ginger. *jealous, for the first and last time*)

Yes this is how we spend our Saturday nights, apparently.

fic: say goodnight and goodbye -- doctor who

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 18:41:42 GMT

Title: Say Goodnight and Goodbye
Rating: PG
Spoilers?: Through 4x13.
Characters/Pairings: Donna, Ten2(/Rose/Ten)
Summary: (Set during Journey's End.) The Doctor-Donna has just saved the whole of creation -- that calls for drinks, and she is not going to allow a part-human part-Time Lord to ruin the moment by brooding.
Excerpt:For the first time, she wonders how you deal with a love triangle when two of the parties are the same person in every way that counts. Not for the first time, she wonders what the Doctor did to the universe to make it so hell-bent on tormenting him.

Author's Notes: Because there was not nearly enough of blue!Doctor and doctor!Donna kicking ass in Journey's End, and because I wrote a fic where Rose and this Doctor discuss the fate of Donna, and it only seemed fair that Donna and this Doctor discuss the fate of Rose. Illogically, Donna Noble proved to be the most difficult to write of every character I've written so far from this canon, and that includes everyone's favourite emotionally-stunted alien. Go figure. I think I managed to "get" her by the time I finished this, but we'll see, I guess.

She waits until everyone’s gotten the euphoria-induced hugging out of their system and settled into excited just-saved-the-world chatter, then she jabs the one in blue in the ribs.

“Oi! Handy! C’mere!” She weaves through the crowd and down a corridor, beckoning him to follow with one hand.

He’s at her side in an instant, looking thoroughly indignant and horrified. “Oh, no. No, no, no, no, absolutely not. You are not calling me that.”

Donna smirks back at him, wondering briefly why this Doctor seems to be even more fun to pester and if this is what it’s like to have siblings. “Yeah? I can call you Thing One and Thing Two if you’d prefer. Or – what was it? – Proper Doctor and Other Doctor.”

He doesn’t smile and she wants to roll her eyes. Leave it to the Doctor to find time for an identity crisis just after saving every bloody universe in creation. She opens her mouth to say something – make light of it somehow – but he beats her to it, quirking an eyebrow.

“Why are you taking me to the kitchen?”

“Because we’ve just saved the whole of creation,” she tells him, spinning on her heel to face him (which, she thinks instantly, is very much more a Doctor thing than a Donna thing), “and that calls for drinks.” She raises a hand to silence him before he’s even begun to speak. “I know we’ve all got families to check on and fretting mothers to call and I know Martha’ll want to get back to her lover-boy and Sarah Jane’ll want to get back to her son, but we’re in a time machine, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let you two skip out on this very good opportunity to be mortified by your friends trading stories.”

The Doctor stares at her, one corner of his mouth tilted up in a fond grin. “Do I usually go that long without taking a breath?”

Donna considers. “Longer, usually.”

He gives her a noncommittal “hmmm” in reply. Hoping he’s musing over how irritating it can be to have someone jabber at you at ninety miles an hour (not that she supposes that’ll ever stop her, now, either), she rolls to the tip of her toes to fetch two oddly-shaped bottles from the cupboard.

“Here we are!” She examines the bottles in her hand then holds them up to show him. “What d’you think, peach wine from the Catraxian Galaxy or silver champagne from the Ninth Moon of Ganendor?” She doesn’t wait for an answer; instead her head snaps back to inspect the now-empty shelf in the cupboard. “This is really all you’ve got?”

He shrugs. “Used to have more - went through a great deal of it when Rose and Jack were on board,” he explains.

She catches a flash of a memory that isn’t hers: laughter, a young Rose with dark roots sitting beside a much younger Jack, empties on the table, the weight of heavy leather on her shoulders – and then it’s gone. She blinks and gives her head a shake; for a second the Doctor looks concerned, almost panicked – then that’s gone, too, everything’s back to normal and he raises an eyebrow.

“Disappointed?” he asks.

“Surprised, maybe; seems like you’d have a big wine cellar to help you… brood.” She frowns at the corks firmly wedged into the tops of both bottles, blinking when the first thing that comes to mind is not a corkscrew but blue light and setting 523.

“I do not brood,” the Doctor huffs, clearly doing his best to look serious and indignant and failing miserably.

Donna snorts as she roots around the kitchen drawers for a corkscrew, quite certain the sonic is back in the console room with Thing One. She’ll have to make one for herself, later. “Oh, please, you’re a brooding champion. You’ve probably got a big armchair somewhere where you sit and drink your Catraxian wine and read Byron and stare at the fireplace.”

“I do not!” he insists, reaching across her, pulling open a drawer and grabbing a corkscrew. He takes the bottle of peach wine and starts to open it, a hint of a mischievous grin on his lips. “Of course this sudden desire for celebratory drinks wouldn’t happen to have anything to do with intoxicating one Captain Jack, would it?”

She glares, hands on her hips. “Are you implying I need alcohol to win the affections of the opposite sex?”

“Absolutely not!” he replies instantly, innocently. “…I’m implying it might help.”

“Oi!” She swipes at him to give him a well-earned thump upside the head, but he dodges her hand and springs out of her reach, grinning like a madman.

“Ha! I knew you were going to do that!”

She means to send him a warning glare but it twists into a laugh because the man in front of her knows her better than any other creature in the entirety of the universe, even the pinstriped first draft, and not five hours ago he was a hand in a jar like something straight out of the Addams Family. It’s ridiculous and hilarious and all kinds of weird, and when he laughs with her she’s sure it’s because he’s thinking the exact same thing.

“Donna Noble,” he says fondly, once they’ve both collected themselves, “I’m going to miss you.”

The laughter fades from her face and she asks the question even though she thinks she’s already worked out the answer. “Miss me? Where do you think you’re going?”

“Pete’s world!” he answers. He pops the cork out of the wine, sets the open bottle on the counter and hoists himself up next to it, swinging his legs like a child. He tilts his head and narrows his eyes in thought. “Sounds like a theme park, doesn’t it? Mascot could be a zeppelin!” He considers this for a second, then frowns. “Bit of an awkward costume, though, I s’pose.”

She listens to him banter and frowns, because she doesn’t need a biological meta-crisis to tell her that his rambling serves much the same purpose as “all that lip”.

“He’s gonna leave you there,” she says. It isn’t a question because even as she says it she can see that timeline spinning off into an indecipherable blur, can see the what ifs and maybes and must nots.

“Yep. He thinks I’m dangerous.” His expression hardens just enough to betray a feeling of resentment. “Am I always that self-righteous? No, on second thought, don’t answer that.” The anger disappears as quickly as it had come and he shrugs, rubbing the back of his neck. “Still… probably for the best.” He grins. “One of us would end up killing the other before long. Do you suppose that counts as suicide or homicide?”

She ignores the attempt at distraction and doesn’t smile. “And Rose?”

The grin falters and he nods, staring down at his ridiculous red trainers as he swings them back and forth. “Rose too. Back with her family.”

Donna rolls her eyes. “Well don’t look so glum about it! Rest of your life with the woman you love, not exactly purgatory, is it?”

He looks up and meets her eyes, no trace of the grin left. In that second he looks lost and terrified and she thinks of atmospheric excitation and Rose, her name was Rose.

“She’s not going to like it, Donna. She’ll want to stay.”

Be it through the biological meta-crisis or simply because she’s spent enough time with the skinny little alien git to understand him, she hears what he doesn’t say laced in with the words he does. She’s not going to want me, Donna. She’ll want to stay with him.

For the first time, she wonders how you deal with a love triangle when two of the parties are the same person in every way that counts. Not for the first time, she wonders what the Doctor did to the universe to make it so hell-bent on tormenting him.

She can see the situation with the same horrible clarity that she’s sure breaks both of the other Doctor’s hearts. He’s the last of the Time Lords and he’s got a universe to look after, blonde shop girls with Dimension Cannons be damned; Rose has a fleeting human life, a single heart, and so does the man sitting on the countertop, like he was tailor-made for her. It’s the right solution, the best solution, the only solution and Donna knows that, she can see that, the twists and turns of the timelines, different possibilities, different golden threads splitting off every which way –

It’s the right solution, but not a painless solution.

“If she’s clever at all, she’ll stay with you,” she says.

He doesn’t answer.

Donna sighs and digs her hands into the pockets of her jacket. “You can give her what he can’t. She can have a life with you, one where –"

She breaks off, not quite sure how to tactfully say one where she isn’t doomed to die before you do and leave you an emotional trainwreck.

“If she wanted a proper human life she could’ve had one in her parallel world,” he reasons, grim.

Donna raises her eyebrows. “I don’t think it’s the TARDIS she came back for.”

She gets a weak smile out of him for her trouble. “Doors and carpets and mortgages,” he mutters, and she opens her mouth to ask what he’s on about when –

“You’d have to get a mortgage,” Rose singsongs, bathed in the orange-yellow light of the impossibility burning overhead.

“No.”

“Oh, yes!”

“I’m dying. That’s it, I am dying, it is all over.”

Startled by the vividness of the memory, Donna jerks her head; this time the concern on the Doctor’s face doesn’t disappear.

“Donna? Are you alright?”

He reaches forward as though to grab her arm, but she pulls away. “’M fine,” she insists, and she is, it’s just that there are so many thoughts buzzing around in her head, “just --”

And just as it had on the Crucible, everything clicks. “If you’re so worried about it why don’t you take a bit of TARDIS with you? Grow your own!”

“That takes thousands of years,” he counters, shaking his head.

She nods. “Sure, if you do it your way.” She smirks. “Or you could shatterfry the plasmic shell and modify the dimensional stabiliser to a foldback harmonic of 36.3, accelerating the growth by the power of fifty-nine.”

He gapes at her, stunned. Donna decides she will never stop loving this newfound ability to render him speechless.

“I – you -- that’s –”

“Brilliant?” She grins. “Yeah, I thought so too.”

He laughs and grins back at her.

“There you go, then,” she says. “Rose Tyler and a TARDIS, what more could you want? Besides me, of course.”

Just as it had before, the smile fades. The Doctor shakes his head and looks away, focusing on some insignificant spot to Donna’s left. “She’s still not going to – she’ll see it as getting rid of her.” He frowns. “Like I told her I never would.”

As he says it, Donna catches another glimpse of stolen memory: a chippy and promise fated to be broken and the first of many hesitations to say a very important word. She blinks once and it’s gone.

Donna shakes her head and goes to stand beside him, leaning back against the counter. “Y’see? Just told you how to grow a TARDIS and you’re already back to brooding,” she jokes, nudging him with her elbow.

He doesn’t smile. She wonders how hard this whole thing will hit the Doctor in the console room and thinks of water and fire and the screams of a distraught mother.

Someone to stop you, she thinks, and takes a breath.

“Listen to me, Spaceman, you're gonna be fine. Rose is stupidly, madly in love with you and you’re stupidly, madly in love with her – don’t look at me like that, I saw you run like bloody children, and besides it’s time you manned up enough to say it – and while it might be romantic and Shakespearean to know that she’d give up her entire family to be with you, it’s really much better if she doesn’t have to, and she’s going to see that.” She raises her eyebrows. “For God’s sake, she crossed universes to get back to you!”

He smiles tightly, still avoiding her eyes. “No,” he says, soft enough that she’s glad she moved next to him, “she crossed universes to get back to him.”

With a sigh of determination, Donna moves in front of him and grabs him by the shoulders. He looks up at her, surprised, a question half-formed on his lips.

She doesn’t give him a chance to ask it. “She crossed universes to get back to the Doctor,” she insists, staring him straight in the eye. “Now is that you or not?”

“I –” He hesitates for only a second, as though confused by her question. “Well -- yes.”

“There you go, then!” She drops his shoulders and brushes her hands together. “Now enough of your moping! I’m gonna get enough of that from him once we drop you two off.”

He smiles at her – the affectionate, quirky little smile she remembers from the Shadow Proclamation – and shakes his head like a proud parent. “Donna Noble. Where would I be without you?”

At the bottom of the Thames, apparently, she doesn’t say. Instead she grins back. “Marinating in that creepy hand-aquarium, I’d imagine.” She tilts her head. “You’re like a Chia Pet. Just add Donna.”

He looks mildly offended. She snorts.

“You’ve even got Chia Pet hair!” She reaches up to ruffle said hair and he pulls away from her, looking indignant.

“Oi! At least I’m not ginger,” he snaps back, glaring.

Donna stares at the Doctor. The Doctor glares at Donna.

Then she laughs – big, loud laughs that hurt her stomach and throw her shoulders forward – and he laughs too, throwing his head back and accidentally thumping it against the cupboard behind him. At the thud and his “ow!” she laughs even harder, so does he, and for a moment, she thinks, there’s just that. They’re simply best mates in hysterics in the kitchen, free from reality bombs and genocide and parallel worlds and two-way biological metacrises.

And then it stops.

He slides off the counter and lands lightly on his feet. “Not even sure why I said that, really,” he admits, tugging at his ear. “I like ginger hair.”

“Rude and not ginger,” she says reflexively. It's only after the words have left her mouth that she realizes she's not sure where they came from.

Once more he’s looking at her like she’s suddenly grown another head. He steps towards her. “Donna?”

She waves a hand to brush off his concern, walks around him and moves to the cupboard he’d been blocking before. “S’nothing,” she says impatiently, opening the cupboard doors and taking down several wine glasses, “just caught some of your memories, that’s all. Biological metacrises will do that to you. Now gimme a hand with these!”

When he’s not at her side the next second, she looks over her shoulder and finds him rooted to the spot, staring at her with an expression that sends a shiver down her spine.

I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.

She shakes the feeling aside. Raising the four glasses she’s managed to carry, she arches her eyebrows. “Well don’t just stand there, help me carry this! You’re the one with pockets.”

The familiar words do the job she’d intended and he blinks, somber expression replaced with a conspiratorial smile. “Yes ma’am.” He moves forward, but his hands hover over the remaining glasses and he hesitates.

He turns back to face her. “Donna?”

She swivels to face him. “I’m listening.”

“Thank you,” he says, and the look he gives her tells Donna he’s referring to much more than the relationship advice.

Her throat is thicker than usual when she nods and says, “yeah.” She wonders how it’s possible that she’ll miss this Doctor even as she knows she’ll spend the rest of her life traveling with a man just like him. She supposes it’s the same dilemma that awaits Rose Tyler, and she doesn’t envy the blonde for a second.

But getting sentimental isn’t something either of them are good at and she refuses to think of this as losing him -- not when there’s a Time Lord in pinstripes who will very shortly have two broken hearts she’ll have to help him patch up -- so she swallows, smiles and jerks her head towards the hallway.

“Come on, Spaceman, there’s a party waiting to be had.”

fic: where the heart is -- doctor who

Sat, 23 Aug 2008 20:11:03 GMT

Title: Where the Heart Is
Rating: PG
Spoilers?: Indeed, through season 4.
Characters/Pairings: Ten2/Rose, Tony, crayons (lulz, inksplotched)
Summary: The Doctor was drawing. With crayons.

Rose leaned against the doorway, her arms crossed, determined to commit this sight to memory.

The Doctor was drawing.

With crayons.

Of course, so was Tony. Hunched over the coffee table with a pack of Crayola spread between them, Tony’s tongue between his teeth and the Doctor’s useless but beloved glasses at the end of his nose, they looked ridiculous.

She felt a surge of affection for both of them, warming its way up her torso and spreading a smile across her face. Tony had been an anchor for his sister in the years before the Dimension Cannon, had been the first roots she’d even considered planting in this parallel world; now there was the Doctor, sitting on the living room floor, the two of them together a sight she’d never allowed herself to hope for.

Much to her delight and Jackie’s distaste, the pair had gotten along famously from the very start, the novelty of which had never worn off for Rose. Tony reacted to the Doctor as though he was a living, breathing action hero straight out of his favourite cartoon; the Doctor, for his part, regarded Tony as an endless wealth of entertainment and was constantly willing to do the mundane sorts of things that tried the patience of even parents and big sisters – like, apparently, drawing with crayons.

It was just so fascinatingly domestic that she couldn’t help but wonder if the tolerance for tiny humans that this Doctor possessed was the result of Donna or of parenthood long past. But then, it seemed rather tactless to ask someone if their knack for babysitting sprung from a two-way biological metacrisis or from raising the child – children? – they’d lost so long ago, so she held her tongue. It wasn’t as though she was even certain what Time Lord parenting entailed – did they draw with crayons, too?

As if on cue, the Doctor tossed down his crayon with a triumphant “aha!” He flipped the paper up to show Tony, and from her spot in the doorway Rose could make out little more than a mass of reds and oranges with something like a snowglobe in the middle.

“There,” the Doctor said with a note of pride that was considerably more sincere than it probably deserved to be, “all done.” He grinned at Tony across the table. “What d’you think?”

Tony wrinkled his nose. “But the colours are all wrong!”

The Doctor’s grin was quickly replaced by a look of confusion. “Sorry?”

“The colours are wrong,” Tony insisted again, jabbing a finger at the picture. “The sky should be blue.”

“Oi! Orange is a perfectly acceptable colour for a sky!”

Tony stuck out his tongue. “Is not.”

Rose half-expected the Doctor to stick out his tongue in retaliation. Instead he adopted an expression that was suspiciously like a pout, something she found even more hilarious.

“Well, there’s no need to be so ethnocentric about it,” he reasoned.

Rose rolled her eyes. Ethnocentric. He’d called a child ethnocentric. That was probably her cue to get involved.

“No fighting, you two,” she called, dropping her arms and stepping from the doorway even as her smile stayed on. She raised an eyebrow at the Doctor in a manner that she hoped conveyed the message ethnocentric? Really?

He beamed at her, either missing the message or choosing to ignore it. She suspected it was the latter.

“Not fighting,” he said innocently. “Were we, Tony?”

It seemed Tony was not in the mood to agree. Instead he cocked his head at Rose. “What’s eth—et—what’s it mean?”

Rose considered what her mother’s reaction would be if Tony’s new favourite word was ethnocentric and, kind soul that she was, chose to spare the Doctor that particularly unpleasant fate. Instead she smiled, kneeling down by the end of the table.

“It means you’re good at drawing.”

At her explanation, the Doctor was indignant. “Well don’t lie,” he said, exasperated. “Tony, it means –“

Rose gave him her most pointed of stares.

Not surprisingly, he faltered.

“…Er, it means you’re very good at drawing,” he amended, punctuating his sentence with a smile in Rose’s direction.

She figured the smile translated roughly to please don’t hurt me; she replied with a smile that said only if you don’t give me reason to.

“Oh,” Tony said, pleased. He set down the crayon in his hand and held up his picture for inspection. “Rose, look!”

The picture in question was a crude (though truthfully, Rose doubted she could do all that much better) depiction of the Tyler mansion, complete with a stick-figure Tyler family and her favourite plus one. The sun was wearing sunglasses, there was a zeppelin in the sky, the grass was comprised of single green lines, and in the corner of the paper, Tony’s name acted as an oversized signature.

She grinned at him. “It’s perfect!” she announced earnestly, and Tony’s face lit up in response.

She glanced at the Doctor, expecting to see him grinning back at her, only to find him staring at the picture in his hands. Closer now, she could see the details – red ground that swelled into mountains beneath the orange sky that Tony had rallied against, surrounding a mass of spirals and towers enclosed in a great dome. It was no planet she’d seen before, and she was seconds from asking him outright when she caught the look of distant longing in his eyes. It was a look she knew well, even if she was used to seeing it on a different face.

It lasted only a second – then, it seemed, he felt the weight of her gaze and looked up, flashing a bright smile that might have deceived just about anyone else.

Her feeling of comprehension was closely followed by a heavy sadness settling in her chest.

Oh.

“I think,” said Rose, gently taking Tony’s drawing from his hands, “that this deserves a spot on the fridge. D’you want some juice while I’m up?”

Tony nodded his head with an enthusiasm only children could manage over juice. “Yes, please!” he recited, already reaching for a new piece of paper to host his next masterpiece.

She rose to her feet and looked down. “Gimme a hand, Doctor?”

He peered up at her from the floor, uncomprehending. “You need help getting a glass of juice?”

Rose stared incredulously. For someone so very clever, he was completely daft.

Finally, it seemed to click. “Oh! Right! ‘Course you do.” He sprung to his feet, grabbing her free hand – habit, she figured, not that she minded – and dragging her towards the kitchen. “Onwards!”

The trek to the kitchen was disappointingly short, leaving Rose hardly enough time to decide how she was going to approach the subject. The truth of it was that she worried about him. She’d seen him toss and turn at night, haunted by the frequent nightmares that Time Lord sleeping patterns could escape. There were moments every so often when someone or something at Torchwood would get under his skin and she’d catch just a glimpse of the supposed “danger” the Doctor in brown had self-righteously spoken of. She so often attributed it to other things – to whatever had happened in her absence, to losing the universe he knew so well, to losing Donna, Jack, Martha, Sarah Jane and his precious, precious TARDIS – that she very nearly forgot the survivor’s guilt that shadowed him every step of the way. She supposed it was the sort of wound that never healed, just faded into a chronic ache you learned to live with.

She knew what that was like.

She dropped his hand as they reached their destination, using a magnet to stick Tony’s drawing to the fridge and pulling open the door to get the juice. The Doctor grabbed a glass from the cupboard, slid it towards her and then leaned back against the countertop, watching her.

“So,” he said, prompting.

Right. It probably didn’t make much sense to insist that someone follow you, only to ignore them. “So,” she said, hoping to keep her tone light, “didn’t know you could draw.”

His tone was smug and his expression teasing as he said, “Oh, I can do everything.”

She rolled her eyes. “Right.”

She stared at the juice as she poured it into the cup, considering the best course of action. She could say nothing and the topic would go ignored as always; she could dance around the subject and watch him do the same, avoiding the hurt and vulnerability as keenly as always.

Or she could be blunt, test the depth of the water with both feet and risk getting wet.

Well, she’d never been a coward.

“Is that your home?” She saw him stiffen in her peripheral vision and plunged on, turning her head to watch him. “I mean, what you drew, is that what it looked like, your planet?”

“Yes.”

He looked ahead, gazing at nothing, lost in memories she didn’t share. Then he swallowed, draged one hand across his cheek and secured the façade of always all right back in place. “Well, rough approximation, really. Not the most accurate medium, crayons.”

She nodded absently, overcome with a burning desire to know more, to lift even the smallest bit of the weight of his shoulders. “What was it called?”

“Gallifrey,” he replied, glancing at her in honest confusion. “Never mentioned that?”

She shook her head, rolling the word around in her mind. It felt alien in a way that even Raxacoricofallapatorius didn’t anymore.

The realization made her profoundly sad.

“Gallifrey,” she repeated. She offered a half-smile. “Looks beautiful.”

He nodded, smiling weakly in return. “It was, yeah.” Then, just as she expected, he dropped his eyes and looked away.

She tried, not for the first time, to imagine what it must be like – last of the Time Lords, destroyer of worlds. It was impossible. She’d seen the heart of the TARDIS and destroyed thousands of Daleks, but then promptly forgotten all of it. She’d seen her planet burn, but then she’d gone and had chips on it; she’d been the last of her kind but seen evolution take its course, humans of all kinds spread to the far reaches of the universe.

The closest she’d come was losing the planet she’d been born on – but standing in the kitchen of her parents’ mansion, getting a glass of juice for her brother, in a city called London on a planet called Earth, she had to admit it wasn’t the same.

And there it was again, she thought, the brick wall that had always prevented this conversation from advancing. As awful as she felt, as much as she wanted to help, there was nothing she could do and no way she could understand. It was why she’d avoided it from early on, why she’d flippantly suggested chips that first day, why she’d always spent so much of her time determined to drag a smile out of him and keep things lighthearted. She had been sure the best she could offer was distraction and a hand to hold, and when he’d regenerated and become so full of life and laughter and flirtation, she‘d come dangerously close to forgetting how bitter, how lonely he’d once been.

Then there was Canary Wharf. Then there was Donna’s world, where no hand to hold meant death; then there was the darkness and Davros and the Doctor-Donna and losing it all to spend his only life with her.

She supposed she’d have to be more than a distraction.

The faraway look hadn’t yet left his eyes, and so she resigned herself to asking the question she already knew the answer to.

“You okay?”

He jolted, ever so slightly, drawn back into the moment by the sound of her voice. “Sure, ‘course.” As expected, he smiled. “I’m fine, brilliant.”

Despite her concern, Rose rolled her eyes. “You know no one believes you when you say that?”

He grinned again, sincerely this time. “Donna made that pretty clear, yeah.” When she didn’t grin back, his expression sobered. “It was a long time ago, Rose.”

She raised an eyebrow, skeptical. “Yeah? Am I supposed to believe that makes it all better?”

“No,” he said, and the honesty surprised her.

Once again, he turned to avoid her eyes, and she sighed. “You never talk about it, and obviously you don’t want to, and that’s fine, just – I wish -- I want to help you.”

His head turned back to her, his brow furrowed. “But you do. You have. You–”

He broke off, and she could see him hesitate the way he always did when he reached the brink of any sort of emotional confession. Wordlessly, she held out one hand and wiggled her fingers, offering a silent encouragement; he let his arms fall, twining his fingers with hers.

“I’ll always miss it,” he continued finally, rushing the words the same way one hurries to pull off a Band-Aid. “I’m sorry if that worries you, but it's -- it was home.” He raised his eyebrows, the slightest trace of a grin on his lips. “But everyone leaves home in the end, yeah?” He looked down at their hands, thoughtful, and swung them from side to side. “And I’m fine, really. I’m happy, Rose. Here. With you, and your blue sky and its ridiculous number of zeppelins and your marginally ethnocentric brother.”

“Yeah?”

She squeezed his hand, and he looked up to meet her gaze.

“Yes.”

He beamed at her, that manic grin of his, and leaned forward; her heartbeat increased ever so slightly with anticipation and her lips curled into a sly smile.

“Now,” he said, looping his free arm behind her, “…I believe we promised Tony some juice!”

With a wink, he grabbed the juice from behind her and spun around; Rose had only a second to register the complete disconnect between what she had expected to happen and what had happened before he grinned over his shoulder at her and tugged her forward, hand still clasped in hers.

"no one understands meeee," he would seethe

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 00:56:24 GMT

I am bored, kids. I'm writing fic but it is slow going and not as entertaining as it usually is. (Also, while writing said fic, I rewatched the bit from "Sound of Drums" where the Doctor talks about Gallifrey, and I had completely forgotten how absolutely hilarious all the names are. The continent of Wild Endeavour? THE MOUNTAINS OF SOLACE AND SOLITUDE? Srsly, guys? GALLIFREY, WHY SO SERIOUS? I imagine whomever named it getting hassled by the others, like, "Really? The Nightmare Child? Really?" and his defense being like, "YES I AM DOING THAT 'EMO BULLSHIT', I CAN FEEL IF I WANT TO!" Oh, Growing Up Cullen, you are quotable already.)

Talk to me! Entertain me! Comment here or harass me on AIM/MSN or something!

AIM: Ka1isaurus
MSN: The same as above @hotmail.com

Writer's Block: Six-Word Story

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 16:26:02 GMT

Hemingway was once challenged to write a story in only six words. His response? “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” He is believed to have called it his greatest literary work ever. Can you write a story in six words?

Submitted by femspectre

View other answers

...I just wanted to laugh at this prompt with my fellow Roomies.

good things never come to those who wait too long

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 19:23:54 GMT

My grandma and her twin sister are visiting, and they and my mom will not stop talking about food/calories/losing weight and it is driving me insane. Oh my God. I even made an "OMFG WHY?" face at my dad as I went up the stairs this morning, hahaha. I mean, they're family and I love them, but it's kind of like having three of my mom in one house, and it's kind of driving me nuts, and they've only been here a day. They leave next... Saturday? AHHHH.

(Fun fact! For the first eighteen years of my life we didn't talk to my paternal grandparents, so I was explaining this to a friend once, how I only really "have" one grandma, and then I mentioned that my maternal grandmother has a twin sister, and the friend went "But if she's a twin then you have two!" Hahaha OH EMILY, TOO BAD YOU SUCK. /bitterness)

Tomorrow we're driving south of the 49th parallel to go shopping. It will be fun, though I kind of wish I was going with my friends and not... my dad and three of my mom. LIRL But I don't even care, I am so desperaet to get out of this country, even if it is for like five hours and we go to upstate New York. I have not gone ANYWHERE this summer. I have wanderlust like nobody's business. Oh, worldly travellers of my flist, I stare at you in envy! Envyyy!

Before this degenerates into a whine about money, I am going to do some memes. BECAUSE YOU ALL CARE SO MUCH, RIGHT?

Would you do meth if it were legalized?
Um, no. Man I barely even drink.

Are you for or against abortion?
In most scenarios I think it's probably not the best option to choose, but I'm all for women having that option.

Would our country (United States) fall with a woman president?
Okay for one the US is not my country and we've had a female Prime Minister, but no, I do not think a woman president would be ZOMG the death of liberty or, um, whatever. I don't know enough of American politics to make a fair comment on Hillary, but I certainly don't think a female president would be a bad thing.

Do you believe in the death penalty?
Not really. It doesn't do what it's supposed to -- deter -- so it just seems sort of ...spiteful in the worst possible way.

Do you wish marijuana would be legalized already?
No. But I'm apparently the only teenager in the world who doesn't smoke, so y'know, whatever.

Do you believe in God?
No. I am a born skeptic, so this idea really doesn't click with me, but more power to you if you want to be religious. lulz when I was little I used to look at the clouds and wonder why the fuck I couldn't see angels hanging out up there. Apparently I imagined heaven was a lot like those Philedelphia Cream Cheese commericals.

Do you think same sex marriage should be legalized?
Yep! Rock on, Canada. Rock on. SPEAKING OF HOW MUCH CANADA ROCKS, the WBC, the crazies who wanted to protest at Heath Ledger's funeral, the ones of "GOD HATES FAGS" fame? They wanted to come up here to picket at the funeral of the man who was killed on the Greyhound bus in Winnipeg, and the border was told not to let them through. Hahahaha suck it, WBC.

A twelve year old girl has a baby...should she keep it?
No, I'd rather it be put up for adoption. (~~Abortion, I don't know -- I think that alone would be traumatic enough for a twelve year old, even disregarding the whole baby's life dilemma.~~ I just noticed this says "had a baby", so she already had it, in whcih case NO SHE SHOULD NOT, ADOPTION FTW. So many people want children and can't have them.)

Should the alcohol age be lowered to 18?
Well it's 19 in Ontario and you can't smoke until you're 19 here either, so I think that's logical enough. However, this survey is Very American, so I will say this: 21 is just a fucking stupid drinking age, I'm sorry. WHO ARE YOU TRYING TO FOOL, AMERICA?

Assisted suicide is illegal...do you agree with this ruling?
Yes.

Do you believe in spanking your children?
No. I was never spanked and so I guess the entire concept just seems off to me. It's not even that I think it's "abuse" or whatever -- I just think it's kind of dumb.

Would you burn an American flag for a million dollars?
WOULD I EVER!! And to be honest I would even if it was a Canadian flag. ilu, Canada, but a million dollars? I WILL BUY SO MANY FLAGS TO MAKE UP FOR IT. Plus I know it's very symbolic and in general I don't support flag abuse, but it is just some fabric.

A mother is declared innocent after murdering her 5 children in a temporary insanity case. Do you agree?
If she has a serious mental condition she should be hospitalized, not jailed. <-- what liz said. <-- this. And in any case the "temporary insanity" thing is one I have mixed opinions on.

Are you afraid others will judge you from reading some of your answers?
No. I don't really think there's anything inflammatory in here anyway, so whatev.

Hurrah, now you know all about my various social and political opinions! Kind of. Except harmonyjam_07 tagged me for this shipping meme, and so any illusion of me as an intellectual that the previous meme may hae created will now be shattered. ~~As if any of my answers were intellectual anyway.~~

1. List your top seven character ships
2. Put all of them in order of your love for them; 7 to 1, 1 being your main fixation.
3. Name the movie/show that they're in.
4. Supply photos for said people.
There is no 5 because I'm not tagging people.

7 - Barney/Robin - (How I Met Your Mother)

So ... Barney is the only reaosn I kept watching this show beyond the first episode or two, and he's basically awesome. Anyhow, Barney and Robin are clearly kind of awesome, because she suits up for him and they can play laser tag and just generally be epic. I am not entirely sure if I would want this to go beyond the sort of subtle (well, until the s3 finale) "they'd be awesome but neither of them wants the commitment" thing they've got going on right now, because Barney is awesome because he's such a douche, but... y'know, whatever, I needed a 7th ship, okay?

6 - Jordan/Dr Cox - (Scrubs)

It would be a lie to pretend I ship these two in the sense that most people mean "ship", but truthfully with a few exceptions I'm not really much of a shipper. Anyway, I love Scrubs and it needed representation, and I don't give a crap about JD/Elliot or Turk/Carla, but Jordan/Dr Cox is just this amazing combination of snark and wit and I love them both. They look deceptively friendly in the picture above but it's the only one I could find. Rest assured that they can and will destroy you, which is what I love about them. Behold:

5 - Ned/Chuck - (Pushing Daisies)

These two are just cute and they warm even my cold, cynical heart. For those who don't watch the show, the general gist is that they can't touch because it'll kill her (and I am too lazy to explain why), but they are obviously stupidly enamored with each other. Hence the kissing porcelain owls pictured above. Anyway, these two make abstinence way cuter than Edward and Bella could ever dream of.

4 - Dwight/Angela - (The Office)

I don't see why I need to explain this one. If you don't like Dwight/Angela you obviously suck, because they are epic and worthy only of each other. Andy and his ABBA can gtfo.

I couldn't find an appropriate clip-only for the two of them, but this hits basically every Dwight/Angela clip in season 4, plus it plays Shot Through the Heart, lirl.

3 - Jim/Pam - (The Office)

These two are awesome and they win the award for being the first television couple I gave a shit about. Hurrah! The slightly strange thing is as much as I like the idea of them being happy and whatever, I think the show in general was a lot more interesting during the seasons when they weren't together. Uh, oops. But still, they are adorable.

2 - Lily/James - (Harry Potter)

That's right, I just used the fanart everyone in the world has seen by buttfacemakani, mostly because i was too lazy to go find something else and figure out crediting and blah blah. Anyway, these two were my primary interest for ages and the only reason they aren't in top spot is because I've been neglecting them for the past, I don't know, year or so, but I still have quite a soft spot for them. Their live-fast-die-young messiah baby plotline is just epic, and I love that there's so much freedom because there's so much we don't know. It's much more fun to work with, in my opinion, as far as fanfic and all that goes. I haven't written them in ages but their characters -- or, I guess, my versions of their characters -- are so firmly embedded in my brain, as is their relationship, that writing them is stupidly easy to me. It makes me sad that after DH so many people decided this ship sucked, because... whatever, it's awesome. *waves UR banner proudly*

Unfortunately there is no video of them because those don't exist.

1 - Doctor/Rose - (Doctor Who)

Okay so if this surprised you, you're probably kind of an idiot, given that these two are plastered all over my lj/profile/icons/everywhere, ever and I keep posting fic about them. I don't know, I am a dirty new!Who fan who fawns over David Tennant and ships Doctor/Rose hard and has scarcely seen any of the original series and blah blah, I am not ashamed. They have the worst luck and they fluctuate between giggly twelve-year-old best friends to mega!angst all the time and apparently that's everything I like in a ship. I love that they got a bittersweet ending -- even though I am pretty convinced Rose and human!Ten will be having a blast in no time -- because it's such a bittersweet ship and judging from my top two on here I like tragic ends, or something. Anyway, I'm not sure what it is with these two -- be it Nine or Ten, I don't care -- but they reduce me to a girly mess the way most ships/chick flicks/movies don't. And now an OBSCENELY LONG VIDEO SPAM!

Okay so the ship meme took FOREVER, so I'm done here. Enjoy the videos/graphics/whatev.

fic: we could be something -- multifandom

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 20:53:39 GMT

Title: we could be something
Rating: PG, whoo
Characters/Pairings/Fandoms: Jim/Pam (The Office), Remus/Sirius (Harry Potter), Nine/Rose (Doctor Who)
Author's Notes: So this was my good-bye gift for the lovely inksplotched who is now off to Brazil for a year. BON VOYAGE SARA. They're her ships in our shared fandoms and the title comes from a Kate Nash song because she likes Kate Nash. This was also posted in missinginks but I'm posting it here because... I.. am a narcissist, idk.

---

There are a thousand things wrong with this picture and really he shouldn’t be thinking this way.

The fact is that Pam is engaged. She’s been engaged since he first met her, since that first not-quite-sort-of-date, and – knowing Roy – probably since the dawn of time itself, so really there’s never been any opportunity there and thinking otherwise is naïve and stupid and oblivious. She’s his best friend, chances are that he’s hers, and if he were any kind of good person at all he’d be ecstatic for her and that little diamond on her finger.

The fact is that he’s not. That damned little rock is what shoves an invisible barrier up between the two of them, and while it’s enough to ensure he has no chance it’s not enough to convince his heart the same thing. She is out of bounds in every way that counts and he knows this, but every time he’s about to move on he catches the faintest shimmer of hope – a smile, a scheme, a laugh – and he’s back to the start of the rollercoaster, plunging down that first hill all over again.

Some days, that thrill and adrenaline and queasy feeling in the middle of his stomach are enough, and he thinks maybe he could ride this out forever.

Most days, it isn’t.

--

There are a thousand things wrong with this picture and really he shouldn’t be thinking this way.

Sirius is his friend – his very straight, very male friend, at that – and there is really no legitimate excuse for Remus to be watching him this keenly, even if Sirius is making quite an exhibit of himself as he crawls around the dormitory floor looking for his tie. No excuse at all.

There’s similarly no excuse for noticing that Sirius does have quite nice arms, even if one of them is feeling around the bottomless pit of dust and discarded things that resides beneath James’ bed. There’s even less of an excuse for thinking that in reality he’s got quite a nice arse, too, and –

Remus shakes his head and rubs his hands over his face.

With a triumphant “a-ha!” Sirius springs up from the ground, dusty tie in hand. Remus decides not to consider what sort of things that can be found underneath James’ bed – or how Sirius’ tie got there in the first place – and instead raises an eyebrow.

“You do realize you could’ve Summoned it,” he points out.

Sirius smirks, slipping the tie around his neck. “Ah, but I’m not that lazy.”

Remus smirks back. “Or clever.”

“I,” Sirius insists, pointing a self-important finger at his own chest, “am brilliant, thank you very much.” He lets the tie hang loose at his neck and as he sweeps down the stairs towards the common room, Remus lets his gaze linger a second longer than is strictly necessary.

Nope, no excuse at all.

--

There are a thousand things wrong with this picture and really he shouldn’t be thinking this way.

For starters, she’s a child. Just nineteen years of television shows and take away and retail under her belt and here he is, a nine-hundred-year-old Time Lord with eight previous bodies behind him and the ash of his own planet on his hands.

More than that, she’s human - pink and yellow and fragile, a single heart hammering away in her chest and a single lifetime waiting to be used up all too quickly. Caring about a human this much is risky, the sort of risky that even he likes to avoid. With the very best of luck she’ll have seventy years, maybe seventy-five, and only a fraction of those will she spend inside the TARDIS. He’s sure she doesn’t see it that way, knows she can’t imagine herself gray and old and creaking – humans never can. They never seem to realize that in the great big scheme of things their lives are fleeting, so they spend more time sitting on the sofa watching Big Brother than they do exploring the world they live in, never anticipating the inevitable cosmic shoe that will eventually squash them like a spider.

Problem is, he can see it, so very easily. He knows with complete and total certainty that the day will come that he’ll lose her for good, either by his choice or hers or simply by the will of the universe itself. She’ll leave him or he’ll have to leave her or – worst of all – she’ll die, and the thought scares him to the core. It’s foolish to care this much, downright daft, and it violates about a dozen of his own rules and yet –

Nine hundred years and he’s seen and done and lost all sorts of things, destroyed his own bloody race; nine hundred years and somehow it ends up he needs Rose – simple, human, fantastic Rose – more than he thinks he’s ever needed another living person.

And that? That’s just asking for trouble.

--

STOP USING MY CHLOROX PEN TO WRITE "DICK" ON MY BLACK UNDERWEAR

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 23:53:59 GMT

So I said I was done with Twilight posts but that was kind of a lie because i just absolutely have to share this link for anyone who is not in mmmcradle:

This is the most accurate, canon depiction of Cullen family relations -- specifically Emmett and Edward's -- in the history of ever. GO NOW. IT IS AMAZING.

fic: suggestive selling

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 19:24:01 GMT

Title: Suggestive Selling
Rating: PG
Characters & pairings: Ten2/Rose
Spoilers?: Yep, 4x13.
Summary: The Doctor makes a suggestion, Rose wears the metaphorical pants, and the Torchwood cafeteria sells questionable bananas.
Author's notes: Okay, so this is essentially fluff. I kind of wanted to reassure myself I was still capable of writing dialogue and keeping things light-hearted.

For the record, it was not planned.

The words came out of his mouth of their own accord, really. It wasn’t a conscious decision, it just sort of…. happened.

Honestly.

The situation was entirely out of his hands.

It just so happened that the moment those words chose to present themselves was in the middle of a remarkably ordinary day. He was seated in the Torchwood cafeteria, contemplating the slightly dodgy looking banana on his plate, Rose was across from him, sipping on her soda when suddenly --

“D’you want a wedding?”

Truthfully, the sentence surprised him even as he said it. Rose made a noise that was somewhere between a cough and a snort as she choked on her Vitex and fixed him with a Look. It involved her eyes going wide and her eyebrows threatening to vanish into her hairline and it was anything but encouraging.

Immediately, the Doctor reflected that this was probably not the smoothest introduction to the topic.

Or very good timing.

“A -- what?” she managed between coughs.

He made a mental note that she was capable of making make even her coughs sound incredulous. Impressive.

“A wedding,” he continued, once Rose seemed to have remembered how to breathe. “You know, the dress, the cake, the rings, the vows, the fancy food, the guests you barely know, the reception and its inevitable conga line, the DJ who still thinks the YMCA is funny – the whole shebang.”

Rose opened her mouth, hesitated, and then settled on – “Actually, the Village People don’t exist in this universe.”

He blinked. “Really? But then what do they play at class reunions and office parties and other events with similarly bad music?”

She shrugged. “Dunno, I make it a point to avoid those –“ She cut off abruptly, narrowing her eyes in suspicion and pointing a chip at him. “Hold on, you’re not distracting me. You just asked if I wanted to get married.”

He rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, technically speaking, I asked if you wanted a wedding.”

“Right.” She shoved the chip into her mouth and rolled her eyes upward, considering. “Well, that’s probably the least romantic proposal you could’ve come up with, well done.”

“That wasn’t a – I didn’t --” Suddenly, finding the appropriate words seemed virtually impossible. It was startlingly unfair that this muteness should so closely follow what was evidently a rather large verbal mistake.

“S’all right,” she said vaguely, sparing him with a wave of her hand. “It’s not as though I fell for you because you’re such a romantic.” She smirked and muttered something that sounded suspiciously like ‘quite right too’.

He decided to try again, for the sake of his dignity.

“It was a suggestion,” he clarified. “I just thought – we’d never really talked about it, and I thought maybe I was …depriving you of some innate human desire or… something.” He shrugged. “Don’t most little girls dream about their wedding?”

Rose laughed and gave him the same sort of smile she usually did when he was being rude, oblivious or particularly inhuman. “Sure, but most little girls don’t expect to end up traveling time and space with a strangely attractive alien.” She popped another chip into her mouth. “Sort of changes the things you dream about.”

He ignored “strangely” and focused on the “attractive”, so he grinned back at her. “Suppose it would, yeah.” He leaned against the tabletop with his elbows and flicked one hand passively. “It’s fine if you don’t want to, I just wanted to be sure you didn’t feel you were… you know, missing out.” In a deft movement he grabbed the banana from his plate and began peeling it, eager to change the subject. “Right! So. Banana?” He tipped the fruit towards her in offering.

Rose wrinkled her nose – honestly, how could she not like bananas? -- and sat back, draping one arm over the back of her chair. “Hang on,” she said, running her tongue over her teeth and once again casting her eyes skyward in thought, “I haven’t actually said ‘no’.”

The Doctor stared. The banana remained in an awkward limbo between their two trays.

“Is that a yes, then?”

She considered a second longer. “Dunno, haven’t really thought about it in – oooh, years.” She tilted her head to the side, considering. “Mum’d love it. ‘Course she’d complain about the work the whole time, but she’d love it. Gives an easy answer to the question ‘so, you and the Doctor…?’ that everyone loves to ask. Might be nice, getting a dress and everything.” Then she frowned. “Lots of work, though – lots of planning and booking and dates. And knowing our luck there’d be a full-scale alien invasion whatever day we chose, anyway. Honeymoon’d be nice, though. Isabella – you know, from HR? – got back from hers this week.” A bit of Rose’s lip curled in distaste as she said it. “Bloody won’t stop talking about it, either. I swear if I hear the word ‘Rio’ one more time…”

She muttered a second longer, and he noticed that the commitment that marriage suggested was surprisingly absent from both the pros and cons columns of the list she was creating. He supposed, between the various promises and pledges they’d made to each other, she must consider it a non-issue.

The thought pleased him to a degree that was verging on ludicrous.

She cocked her head the other way and looked at him. “Where’d this come from, anyway? Do you ‘want a wedding’?”

She even did the air quotations, which he took to mean that she really was less than impressed with his choice of syntax.

“Me?” One of his hands pointed to his chest seemingly of its own accord. “Nah, ‘course not! It’s a silly, trivial and generally superfluous human ritual. Pointless, really. Just for show. You lot do love attention. And parties. And –”

She was staring at him, both eyebrows raised, once again giving him a very firm Look.

He swallowed.

“…and… and naturally I’m quite capable – more than happy, really – ecstatic -- to – to stand at the end of the aisle, if that’s what you want.”

She stared at him in silence a second longer, her eyebrows still miraculously high up on her forehead. The Doctor wondered why he seemed to be having such a very difficult time forming sentences that weren’t in some way offensive and briefly questioned the quality of Torchwood’s food.

He set the banana down, wary.

Rose burst out laughing.

“What?”

Her whole body leaned forward as she laughed, her palms slapping the tabletop, so much like the nineteen-year-old he’d first met that he couldn’t help but smile, even if he was certain the laughter was aimed directly at him.

“Oh my God,” she managed finally, looking up at him and beaming. “You do, don’t you?”

He opened his mouth to defend himself against such a horrid accusation and to his horror discovered that his vocal chords seemed to be completely nonfunctional.

Someone really ought to check out the food they were serving at this cafeteria.

At his silence she let out another bark of laughter. “You do want to get married! Now who’s domestic, Doctor?”

Certain that his dignity was now mortally wounded, he gave up, raising his palms in surrender. “I can’t help it, it’s Donna!” he whined finally, resigned to his fate. “She loved all that! Got married twice in the time I knew her. …Well, sort of.”

Rose’s frequently distracting lips twisted into a grin and she arched an eyebrow. “Yeah? You wanna wear the dress, then?”

He raised an eyebrow back at her to communicate that he was not amused (a phrase he still could not disconnect with Queen Victoria, and bugger, he never had given Rose her ten quid, had he?).

She grinned back, tongue between her teeth, clearly intent on communicating that she was. “Planning to blame everything embarrassing on Donna for the rest of your life, too?”

“For as long as I can get away with it, yes.”

She snorted. “In that case I reckon you should’ve stopped a while ago.”

“Well, technically, all these human bits are her fault.”

Rose rolled her eyes, still grinning. “So that’s that, then? Did we just decide to get married?”

The Doctor scratched his chin, replaying the conversation in his head. “You know, I think we did.”

“Right,” she said. “Hm. When?”

She was smiling, but did not look exactly… ecstatic. He had imagined women typically looked more excited when they came to this conclusion, but once again he supposed their previous pledges of “forever” rendered this decision considerably less dramatic than it otherwise might have been.

He considered her question for a moment, and then shrugged. “Our TARDIS should be ready by the end of the year.” That sentence alone was enough to pull his mouth into a grin. “Bit better than Rio.”

Her smile stretched, too. “Bit better than Rio.” She glanced down at her watch, frowning. “Suppose I really should head back to work, it’s –“ And then her eyes widened as though she’d only just understood a joke.

“Wait’ll I tell Mum you proposed in the cafeteria.”

He could imagine Jackie’s reaction.

It was frightening.

“Suggested,” he reinforced, “it was a suggestion.”

“Oh?” The smirk on her lips was fairly frightening, too. “Am I to expect a proper proposal, then?”

A proper proposal. He considered what that might entail – candles, flowers, over-priced food, a ring at the bottom of a champagne glass, an awkward, practiced speech full of clichés and stammering and love-yous.

He drew two obvious conclusions. First, human men must be absolutely mad to put themselves through that ritual.

Second, even an indignant, disbelieving Jackie Tyler was less terrifying than the idea of a proper proposal.

He answered Rose’s question with an eloquent imitation of a fish. His mouth was already on its second silent open-and-close when Rose laughed.

“Guess not, then.” Her gaze drifted to her watch again, her mouth creasing in mild annoyance. “Now I really do need to get back to work. See you later, yeah?” She stood, grabbed her tray and began to leave, all before he managed to relocate his voice.

Then she froze, twisting to look back over her shoulder.

“Doctor?”

“Hmm?”

She turned to face him completely. “Will you marry me?”

He blinked.

“…Yes.”

She beamed at him, and the Doctor was suddenly very aware of the several coworkers who had turned to stare at them.

“There we are, then.” Her smile changed just slightly – became just a bit more smug – and he was sure as she turned to leave she muttered, “honestly, I have to do everything.”