| Date: 13 December 2007
Characters: Rose Tyler, Rose Tyler, The Tenth Doctor Location: hotel hallways Link to IJ: thread #5177 |
 They followed one of the lights on Rose's computer screen to the person with the sonic screwdriver. The corridors were windy, twisting through the buildings, leading them out, then in. "He's just ahead," Rose caught the other Rose's wrist, "You okay?" |
 Rose took a deep breath, giving the other Rose a brief smile. "Will be. Just... haven't seen the Doctor in... seven and a half centuries." She shrugged, reaching for the door that the Doctor should be on the other side of, according to her wrist computer.
She caught her breath as she caught sight of him, shaking herself a moment. She felt like she was twenty again, and had just said goodbye... well, a bit. The urge to run and hug him and not let go wasn't as strong as it was then, and there was a strong urge to smack him as well. "Doctor?" She was glad her voice sounded steady, and she shifted slightly, squaring her shoulders, and barely keeping herself from grinning widely with the rush of seeing him again. |
 He looked around and saw not one, but two of Rose. He took a step straight backward, too stunned abso-fucking-lutely stupid to be able to process or bounce. He just stared, hard, between the two of them. |
| Rose frowned at her other self, shoving her hands in her pockets, "What are you talking about?" |
| "Subjective time for me, since I saw the Doctor." Rose shrugged, watching the Doctor a moment. "Usually he talks more than this."
She took a step towards the Doctor, arching an eyebrow at him. "What's wrong, Doctor? Forgot how to talk? Maybe say 'Hello, Rose, I've missed you.'" |
| "Hello, Rose," he said gamely. "Why are there two of you?" |
| "...This isn't the Doctor," Rose frowned, taking a step back. |
| Rose sighed, rolling her eyes, and turning slightly so she could look between the other two. "There are two of me because we're crossing timelines, Doctor. And he is the Doctor, just not the same face. He regenerated." She looked over at the Doctor smiling slightly. "She's me before you told me about regeneration and changed faces in front of me." |
| He groaned, a little than got his head almost screwed on. "Right then. Rose! It's great to see you!" He was going to throw up. |
| "You're nutters, the both of you," she frowned, "Or alternate time whatevers and. The Doctor doesn't do that." |
| Rose smiled at the Doctor, the expression different than before they'd parted, even though the arrangement of features was the same, before turning her head back towards the other Rose.
"And opening the TARDIS to look into her heart, and using the Time Vortex to destroy all the Daleks in the universe isn't nutters?" Rose shook her head. "Sanity's relative, and the longer you live, the less appealing sanity is, anyway. Too easy to predict." |
| The second Rose really, really, deeply disturbed me. Something about the look and inflection. "What's the last thing you remember, Rose?" he asked, sort of willfully ignoring anything he didn't want to address. He was good at that. |
| "My Doctor," She crossed her arms, tilting her head up. |
| "I thought the last you remembered was Daleks, and everything turning to dust." Rose gave the younger Rose a sharp, brief look.
"Last think I remember is asking my traveling companion if there was any particular time and place he wanted to go." She ran a hand through her hair, sighing softly. "He said it doesn't matter, because he really would like to go home." |
| "Barcelona?" he said, hopefully and helpfully. "Dogs with no noses?" He kept asking. He stared at the other Rose. "I. Have no idea what you're talking about," he told her, less helpfully. |
| She shook her head, moving a little closer to the other Rose, like she was going to have to grab her to protect her. "Like that old joke?" |
| "I wouldn't expect you to. Unless you've seen a man about who looks entirely lost in his own head, and doesn't respond to..." She paused, shrugging after a brief second. "Well, just about anyone. Might talk to you, though. Time Lord, and all that."
She looked over at the other Rose, frowning slightly. "Which old joke?" she asked quietly. "I've forgotten a lot over the centuries." |
| He could not deal with this. Rose wasn't dead and was talking about centuries and the other one was confused and lost and didn't remember regeneration. The combination was going to make his head explode.
"I'll deal with that later," he said, pointed to the Rose who was the more confusing. May as well start with the easier one first. "And you." he pointed to the one he almost understood and knew he remembered. "Time lord's have a way of cheating death, Rose. Every cell, different, but I'm still me. Plastic men and Gelth and Cardiff and Jack and Dalek's and=" He snapped his fingers, looked at them, frowned and snapped them again. "Oh, right, Adam and Ricky." |
| "Mickey," she corrected automatically, putting her hand on the other Rose's back, "I've got a dog with no nose. How does he smell? Terrible!" She said softly, eyes on the Doctor, "That's the joke."badwolfrose: badwolfam UTCRose chuckled softly, resting a hand on the younger Rose's shoulder for a moment. "Mickey stayed behind the first time the Doctor and I went to Pete's World. He was called Ricky there."
She watched the Doctor, her eyes narrowing. "When you say you'll deal with it later, Doctor, how much later do you mean? Or are you just avoiding talking to me?" |
| "I'm avoiding talking to you until she's sorted. And she is clearly much easier to sort than you. Honestly. Centuries? Really?" |
| "That's impossible, anyway, innit?" |
| "It should be." Rose's voice was hard, her expression closed. "I should be long dead, not still wandering across space, and time now, wondering if I'll die. Wondering how much it will take, and never quite suicidal enough to face hard vacumn or the heart of a star." She took a deep breath, closing her eyes a moment. "But 'impossible' just means you haven't found a way around something, doesn't it, Doctor?" |
| "Well, unless you're Jack," he told the younger Rose. To the other he just lifted his eyebrows. "Which is more or less what you said, isn't it? Only with more words and added," he waved his hand. "flash?" |
| "What happened to Jack?" she asked immediately, worried. |
| "I brought him back. I didn't want him to die." Rose shook her head, a darkly amused smile on her face. "I screwed it up. I'll get over it." She paused, glancing away a moment before looking back to the Doctor. "I hope Jack does too. I never got a chance to tell I was sorry. I didn't mean to make it impossible for him to die."
She could remember wanting Jack alive, wanting him to stay with them, to travel with her and the Doctor always. Not entirely certain of what she was doing, and changing the universe in the process. One of the scraps of memory that didn't fade, just kept getting more vivid everytime she brought it up. "Though I wonder, Doctor. Did you know what I'd done to myself when I opened the TARDIS? That I'd made it impossible for myself to die, like I'd made it impossible for Jack to die?" She tilted her head to one side, raising an eyebrow. |
| "Are you insane?" He asked, seriously but not, because he was fairly sure of the answer. "I can't stand being around Jack, because he damn near broke my heart and turned my stomach being immortal. You? I'd have probably thrown myself into hard vacu-"
He stopped. "Well, no, that's a lie, but I'd have run like hell from you, that's for sure." |
| Rose had gone stark white at the idea of being immortal, not being able to die. Ever. Not changing, not getting older, not.
Changing actually. Getting older, forgetting jokes, being someone else. Something else. She took a step back, horrified at both of them. Scared that she'd done the same thing to herself that both of them were saying she'd done to Jack. All of time and space, singing in her head and this is what she became. |
| "Nice to know I mean so much to you," Rose said with no little irony lacing her tone. "You would run away if you knew I'd done this, you'd send me away to keep me alive, and you..."
She shook her head, turning away, looking out a nearby window as she spoke, her voice steady and almost distant. "You run away from people, Doctor, even when they're mortal and can wither and die. And the frightening part is, I think I'm beginning to understand why. To watch everyone you love grow old, to loose their vitality, to loose what makes them who they are, even. It hurts. Especially when you know you're the same as you were, still young, still able. When you know that when they die, you'll live on. And on, and on." |
| "Well, since I told you that, apparently centuries ago, it's really nice to know it's finally sunk in," he said, almost dismissively. "It has nothing to do with how much you did or didn't mean to me, has everything to do with how things work and I work, and I sure as hell didn't lie about it, now would you kindly employ some sense of common sense and whatever little empthaty the time vortex didn't burn out of you and SHUT UP."
He was snarling thing, all fire and ice and rage and power, but subdued and quiet. He knew, he knew what this was doing to the still very human Rose, the one he remembered and knew who was standing right there, listening to every word. He could see it in the pallor and the step back. "If you want to yell at me for my mistakes, do it without hiding behind the shield of your own lost innocence and humanity, and I'll take it and even deserve it, but not now, do you hear me?" |
| That sounded like her Doctor and she wrapped her arms around herself, because he wasn't. None of this was hers, as much as it was terrifying her, she wouldn't let it be. She took another step back towards the corridor, choosing the better part of valor and trying to slip away. |
| "I didn't come looking for you to yell at you, Doctor." Rose rolled up on the balls of her feet a moment, and back again, trying to center herself, banish the frustration at herself.
"I didn't even know which you we'd find." She focused on the reflections in the mirror, looking at her younger self, and flinching at the fear in her expression. "I just intended to look around, and see if I couldn't find an answer to where we are, and how we got here." |
| "Good. I'm glad. I'm glad to see you, and I'm sorry for what happened." God he was sorry for everything, wasn't he, "I'm so sorry. But."
He nodded, and stepped to one side. "Rose," he said, gentle and a little gruff. "Come here and listen." He held his hand out, and held his breath. |
| She saw the wince in the same mirror, meeting her older self's eyes. And felt like she'd just been judged and found wanting, an embarrassment. It didn't diminish her. It pissed her off.
She crossed her arms over her chest, tilted her chin up, and tried not to respond to the gruff and gentle voice that was so her Doctor. "I've been listening. None of this is right and ...neither are either of you. I'm going to find my Doctor and I'm going to get back home." Home was the TARDIS. Always. |
| Rose turned to look at her younger self. "You don't even know if your Doctor's here. Or if he's still on the TARDIS, on the Gamestation." She glanced over at the Doctor. "Or could her Doctor have come here too, without the TARDIS being here as well?" |
| He dug into his pocket and pulled out his sonic screwdriver, and a TARDIS key on a chain. "Her Doctor's here, somewhere. And both TARDIS'." He held the chain out to Rose, so she could take it if she wanted. |
| She pulled out her own necklace, showing it. "Thank you." she said quietly, sincere, before backing out of the room. |
| Rose sighed softly, watching her younger self left. Shoving her hands into her pockets, she stayed quiet a moment.
"I should find my traveling companion before he gets himself lost in his mind again." She looked over at the Doctor, smiling. "You're not traveling alone, are you?" |
| He sighed and rubbed his eyes, then let his hand fall to his side and forced a grin. "What? Don't be ridiculous, of course I'm not. Go on, find your companion. Lost in his mind sounds like a nasty place to get lost." |