Between Man and God (2/?)
Title: Between Man and God
Characters: Ten, later Ten/Rose
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Angst (I love how this will surprise no one)
Spoilers: Through JE and then spoilers for other stories of mine, but nothing major there.
Word Count: 1966
Summary: Because that's what she does, my Rose. She lives everything so fully that the rest of us can't help ourselves. As we move into the Vortex--and by 'we' I mean the TARDIS and I--a thought strikes me and I start to laugh, even as tears leak out of my eyes. Even when she's universes away, on the other side of that damned white wall, she's still saving me.
A/N: Yay for part two! This chapter (and the one following it) are much darker than the first one and a bit disjointed, since I'm using stream of consciousness from an insane person's point-of-view. There is a light on the horizon though! I promise that chapter 4 gets better! (And by better I mean less angsty)
Three months.
Well, about three months.
Relative time.
It’s been three months since Norway Mach II. And this is the first break for breathing I’ve had since then. Feels good to be able to set the TARDIS into the Vortex and just relax. Put up my feet and listen to the quiet hum of the ship’s constant energy.
It’s about 75.23 seconds before I remember why I’ve not stopped moving in those months. It’s too damn quiet here on my own. The quiet seems to take on a life of its own if I let it. And it’s hard not to let it when it sneaks up on me like this… The only things breaking that silence are the gentle pulsing of the console, the subtle shifting of the wardrobe room downstairs and a lovely crash that sounds like it’s right behind me.
Wait. Crash?
Spinning the console captain’s chair, I drop my feet from the console and whip around to stare at the heap of human on the grate. Well. Human-ish. I think.
Pulling the sonic screwdriver from my jacket pocket, I dash quite madly down the ramp towards the um. Thing. The not moving thing.
“Forgot to re-add the custom settings…” I keep meaning to fix that. Damn inconvenient when your screwdriver goes missing. Rolling it–oh, a her!–onto her back, I feel the rather nasty sensation of my stomach turning over. That key… That face… Oh Rassilon the universe just isn’t /fair/.
Seated in the med bay, head in my hands, I can hear the silence broken by two things. One is the soft beep, beep, beep of the machine monitoring her vitals. And the other is the soft hum of the scanner letting me know I’ve a Void Thing on my ship. Only it’s not a Void Thing. It’s her. Honest to Bob, it’s her.
Longer hair–much longer, her natural color has grown out so the blonde doesn’t appear until halfway down her back. Interesting look to it really. I think I’d like it if it was clean and smooth–not a ratted, filthy mess. Same face, though it’s gaunt and hollow, the skin nearly translucent with lines of worry and hardship written in the corners of her eyes and mouth. Same smell–underneath the layers and layers of sweat and fear and…and blood, it’s still her smell. The very human smell that identifies one from the other, defines whether they like or hate each other on first sight. Or first smell rather. It’s still there, so this is her…
But how?
I left her on that beach–again Shut up! --back on her Norway. Pete’s Norway. I left her with him. She can’t be here. She just–just can’t. And slathered in Void Stuff? The last time she passed through the TARDIS there’d been a bit more, yeah. The whole jumping thing picked up some, but… Not nearly this much. How she’s still alive is…nothing short of a miracle, really. Well, mostly alive. She’s not regained consciousness yet. She’s just on the edge of a coma, hovering between that deepest sleep and one of a more natural, healing persuasion.
Wouldn’t that just be the ball-bearing on the icing on the cupcake? Her, back here, with me. Where she belongs, but never to know she made it… I’d have to live with a ghost on my ship more real than she’s ever been. Here but not. A life-sign in my head, but never a life. Never her smile or laughter. Never a hug or a hand to hold. Never the anchor I need her to be. Just an even more painful reminder of what I could have had. Always what I could have had. Always ‘could have’ because thinking about what I ‘had’ is just…just too painful.
You’re an idiot.
…
Yes, yes I am. It’s how I’ve lived this long.
There! The blips on the machine are getting stronger, settling into a deep, steady–shit. Head buried in my hands, I feel roaring pain rise up into my chest like a foul and hungry beast.
No, nonononono!
She’s gone. Slipped into that comatose state which provides static existence for the body. Now I’ll never get my answers. Never know just what happened, what could have happened to leave her like this.
You could live without the answers.
I have to think about that. Damn that annoying voice but she’s right. I could, if it came down to choosing between them and her. But now that I can have neither, it seems…less painful to focus on the loss of answers rather than the loss of her.
I wonder what horrible crime I’ve committed against Nature this time, that the Universe would punish me with this. Drop my l-lo--her right into my lap, but leave her like this. The perfect ghost. The perfect warden.
The perfect torment.
Six months.
Six months I’ve had a dead woman on my ship. Six months I’ve lived with a ghost in my head, little flickers of the minimal brain activity needed to keep her system running. She’s got tubes running in, out and sideways, keeping her nourished and alive. I can’t help it, I have to keep her. Those tiny little flickers warm and thaw that part of my mind that hasn’t had use for far too long. It feels good whenever she has those ‘lucid moments’. Whatever I’m doing, I stop and bask for a while, just let myself soak up the sensation of not being alone in my head.
I shouldn’t do that. It’ll just make things harder in the end.
I know it’s not fair to her. I know that. She should be running about and saving worlds and galaxies and races and time and me! But she’s not. She’s a collection of tissue, tubes and synapses wired into my TARDIS for her very survival. There are times, when we’re just hovering in the Vortex and it’s been weeks since the last time her mind touched mine, that I think of letting Nature take her course. I think of disengaging her from all of the tubes and carrying her to the grate and the doors, let her drop behind us where the Vortex will burn away the flesh and let her mind join with it. Other times I contemplate making the jump, do one thing right by her and bring her to her family–they who have the right to decide–universal collapse be damned.
But I can’t. I’m too weak. Because inevitably, I’ll think these things and almost work myself up to them, but then I’ll look at her, or she’ll touch my mind and I just can’t.
I just can’t.
Eighteen months.
I’ve had her here so long I can’t remember her not being here. The coma has stabilized, leaving her just ‘lucid’ enough to be a warm candle’s flame in my mind all the time. I don’t know how she does it. In quiet moments–there are more of them now–I think about it and theorize. The most plausible idea is that comatose, the part of her touched by the Vortex, by the TARDIS is allowed freer rein and recognizes where it is. There are far darker ideas and far more romantic ones that slosh about in my head when I watch her sleep, but that seems the most probable.
Oh yes, I watch her sleep.
It’s like picking at a scab that should have healed long ago, but each time I pick, a little more of the infection drains away and it hurts so much worse. I sit in my chair in the corner of the room, legs curled to my chest and chin resting on them. And I watch.
She’s changed since she arrived. Her hair’s been washed and combed, braided and laid along her side. I redo the process once every so many days. It keeps the hair healthy and it gives me an excuse to touch her, to help in some small way she’ll never even know about. It’s so long now, I really should cut it, but I can’t bring myself to do it. Time may change her. I will not. Her skin is healthy again, soft and malleable–not that dehydrated mess it was when she came to me–though she’s still deathly pale. The clothes she came in have long since been burned. By the time she reached me they’d lost all sense of color or style, torn and filthy.
I burned them.
It was the last time I’d ever seen her unclothed. I had to. There were so many scars and cuts and bruises that needed to be healed. But seeing her like that…it hurt. Badly. Now the TARDIS mercifully takes care of that ablution. She could take care of her hair too, but indulges me. That ritual is sometimes the only sanity I have.
Because I haven’t stopped. Oh no, not just because of her. I couldn’t. She wouldn’t let me. I go out and I explore, I see old friends and meet new ones and save planets and peoples and stars… And I bring back stories. Tales to tell her while I wash her hair or sit in my corner. Stories she would know firsthand if the universe had been a little kinder.
Thirty-six months.
I got a call last month from someone I’d not seen in a long time. Martha Jones, first class doctor and a good friend… She did what she always does and called me up when the world needed saving. Oddly enough it’d been ten years since the mess with the Daleks. Awful long time to go without needing me. I’m almost disappointed, though I know it means they’re growing.
Saw Mickey and Jack too while I was there. Neither of them asked, so I never said. Mickey and Martha are getting old, but Jack never changes. He still feels…wrong but watching him and his agony as his Ianto grows old without him…I can’t help but make the offer for him to join me again. He declines. Says he won’t miss a moment. Not yet. Come back in thirty years, forty years, he says. I have to respect that. He declines, Martha doesn’t.
One more go-round, she says. But it turns into five, then ten. After a while it seems like she’s always been here, too. We laugh and share stories of our pasts–ghosts and triumphs. I tell her about the fall of Arcadia and she tells me about losing her husband to a rogue band of Judoon. We share a lot, Martha and me, but I just can’t bring myself to tell her about her. For awhile I keep everything from her, but she’s too sharp, that Martha Jones. After a time, she notices that I disappear every ‘night’ and can’t be found. And that every few ‘days’ I do the same.
She followed me once, right to the very door, but the TARDIS wouldn’t unlock it and she respected that. I can’t say how grateful I am. I do love Martha, in my own way, but there are some secrets I can’t and won’t share. Not with her. Not with anyone alive.
She is one of them.
Characters: Ten, later Ten/Rose
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Angst (I love how this will surprise no one)
Spoilers: Through JE and then spoilers for other stories of mine, but nothing major there.
Word Count: 1966
Summary: Because that's what she does, my Rose. She lives everything so fully that the rest of us can't help ourselves. As we move into the Vortex--and by 'we' I mean the TARDIS and I--a thought strikes me and I start to laugh, even as tears leak out of my eyes. Even when she's universes away, on the other side of that damned white wall, she's still saving me.
A/N: Yay for part two! This chapter (and the one following it) are much darker than the first one and a bit disjointed, since I'm using stream of consciousness from an insane person's point-of-view. There is a light on the horizon though! I promise that chapter 4 gets better! (And by better I mean less angsty)
Three months.
Well, about three months.
Relative time.
It’s been three months since Norway Mach II. And this is the first break for breathing I’ve had since then. Feels good to be able to set the TARDIS into the Vortex and just relax. Put up my feet and listen to the quiet hum of the ship’s constant energy.
It’s about 75.23 seconds before I remember why I’ve not stopped moving in those months. It’s too damn quiet here on my own. The quiet seems to take on a life of its own if I let it. And it’s hard not to let it when it sneaks up on me like this… The only things breaking that silence are the gentle pulsing of the console, the subtle shifting of the wardrobe room downstairs and a lovely crash that sounds like it’s right behind me.
Wait. Crash?
Spinning the console captain’s chair, I drop my feet from the console and whip around to stare at the heap of human on the grate. Well. Human-ish. I think.
Pulling the sonic screwdriver from my jacket pocket, I dash quite madly down the ramp towards the um. Thing. The not moving thing.
“Forgot to re-add the custom settings…” I keep meaning to fix that. Damn inconvenient when your screwdriver goes missing. Rolling it–oh, a her!–onto her back, I feel the rather nasty sensation of my stomach turning over. That key… That face… Oh Rassilon the universe just isn’t /fair/.
Seated in the med bay, head in my hands, I can hear the silence broken by two things. One is the soft beep, beep, beep of the machine monitoring her vitals. And the other is the soft hum of the scanner letting me know I’ve a Void Thing on my ship. Only it’s not a Void Thing. It’s her. Honest to Bob, it’s her.
Longer hair–much longer, her natural color has grown out so the blonde doesn’t appear until halfway down her back. Interesting look to it really. I think I’d like it if it was clean and smooth–not a ratted, filthy mess. Same face, though it’s gaunt and hollow, the skin nearly translucent with lines of worry and hardship written in the corners of her eyes and mouth. Same smell–underneath the layers and layers of sweat and fear and…and blood, it’s still her smell. The very human smell that identifies one from the other, defines whether they like or hate each other on first sight. Or first smell rather. It’s still there, so this is her…
But how?
I left her on that beach–again Shut up! --back on her Norway. Pete’s Norway. I left her with him. She can’t be here. She just–just can’t. And slathered in Void Stuff? The last time she passed through the TARDIS there’d been a bit more, yeah. The whole jumping thing picked up some, but… Not nearly this much. How she’s still alive is…nothing short of a miracle, really. Well, mostly alive. She’s not regained consciousness yet. She’s just on the edge of a coma, hovering between that deepest sleep and one of a more natural, healing persuasion.
Wouldn’t that just be the ball-bearing on the icing on the cupcake? Her, back here, with me. Where she belongs, but never to know she made it… I’d have to live with a ghost on my ship more real than she’s ever been. Here but not. A life-sign in my head, but never a life. Never her smile or laughter. Never a hug or a hand to hold. Never the anchor I need her to be. Just an even more painful reminder of what I could have had. Always what I could have had. Always ‘could have’ because thinking about what I ‘had’ is just…just too painful.
You’re an idiot.
…
Yes, yes I am. It’s how I’ve lived this long.
There! The blips on the machine are getting stronger, settling into a deep, steady–shit. Head buried in my hands, I feel roaring pain rise up into my chest like a foul and hungry beast.
No, nonononono!
She’s gone. Slipped into that comatose state which provides static existence for the body. Now I’ll never get my answers. Never know just what happened, what could have happened to leave her like this.
You could live without the answers.
I have to think about that. Damn that annoying voice but she’s right. I could, if it came down to choosing between them and her. But now that I can have neither, it seems…less painful to focus on the loss of answers rather than the loss of her.
I wonder what horrible crime I’ve committed against Nature this time, that the Universe would punish me with this. Drop my l-lo--her right into my lap, but leave her like this. The perfect ghost. The perfect warden.
The perfect torment.
Six months.
Six months I’ve had a dead woman on my ship. Six months I’ve lived with a ghost in my head, little flickers of the minimal brain activity needed to keep her system running. She’s got tubes running in, out and sideways, keeping her nourished and alive. I can’t help it, I have to keep her. Those tiny little flickers warm and thaw that part of my mind that hasn’t had use for far too long. It feels good whenever she has those ‘lucid moments’. Whatever I’m doing, I stop and bask for a while, just let myself soak up the sensation of not being alone in my head.
I shouldn’t do that. It’ll just make things harder in the end.
I know it’s not fair to her. I know that. She should be running about and saving worlds and galaxies and races and time and me! But she’s not. She’s a collection of tissue, tubes and synapses wired into my TARDIS for her very survival. There are times, when we’re just hovering in the Vortex and it’s been weeks since the last time her mind touched mine, that I think of letting Nature take her course. I think of disengaging her from all of the tubes and carrying her to the grate and the doors, let her drop behind us where the Vortex will burn away the flesh and let her mind join with it. Other times I contemplate making the jump, do one thing right by her and bring her to her family–they who have the right to decide–universal collapse be damned.
But I can’t. I’m too weak. Because inevitably, I’ll think these things and almost work myself up to them, but then I’ll look at her, or she’ll touch my mind and I just can’t.
I just can’t.
Eighteen months.
I’ve had her here so long I can’t remember her not being here. The coma has stabilized, leaving her just ‘lucid’ enough to be a warm candle’s flame in my mind all the time. I don’t know how she does it. In quiet moments–there are more of them now–I think about it and theorize. The most plausible idea is that comatose, the part of her touched by the Vortex, by the TARDIS is allowed freer rein and recognizes where it is. There are far darker ideas and far more romantic ones that slosh about in my head when I watch her sleep, but that seems the most probable.
Oh yes, I watch her sleep.
It’s like picking at a scab that should have healed long ago, but each time I pick, a little more of the infection drains away and it hurts so much worse. I sit in my chair in the corner of the room, legs curled to my chest and chin resting on them. And I watch.
She’s changed since she arrived. Her hair’s been washed and combed, braided and laid along her side. I redo the process once every so many days. It keeps the hair healthy and it gives me an excuse to touch her, to help in some small way she’ll never even know about. It’s so long now, I really should cut it, but I can’t bring myself to do it. Time may change her. I will not. Her skin is healthy again, soft and malleable–not that dehydrated mess it was when she came to me–though she’s still deathly pale. The clothes she came in have long since been burned. By the time she reached me they’d lost all sense of color or style, torn and filthy.
I burned them.
It was the last time I’d ever seen her unclothed. I had to. There were so many scars and cuts and bruises that needed to be healed. But seeing her like that…it hurt. Badly. Now the TARDIS mercifully takes care of that ablution. She could take care of her hair too, but indulges me. That ritual is sometimes the only sanity I have.
Because I haven’t stopped. Oh no, not just because of her. I couldn’t. She wouldn’t let me. I go out and I explore, I see old friends and meet new ones and save planets and peoples and stars… And I bring back stories. Tales to tell her while I wash her hair or sit in my corner. Stories she would know firsthand if the universe had been a little kinder.
Thirty-six months.
I got a call last month from someone I’d not seen in a long time. Martha Jones, first class doctor and a good friend… She did what she always does and called me up when the world needed saving. Oddly enough it’d been ten years since the mess with the Daleks. Awful long time to go without needing me. I’m almost disappointed, though I know it means they’re growing.
Saw Mickey and Jack too while I was there. Neither of them asked, so I never said. Mickey and Martha are getting old, but Jack never changes. He still feels…wrong but watching him and his agony as his Ianto grows old without him…I can’t help but make the offer for him to join me again. He declines. Says he won’t miss a moment. Not yet. Come back in thirty years, forty years, he says. I have to respect that. He declines, Martha doesn’t.
One more go-round, she says. But it turns into five, then ten. After a while it seems like she’s always been here, too. We laugh and share stories of our pasts–ghosts and triumphs. I tell her about the fall of Arcadia and she tells me about losing her husband to a rogue band of Judoon. We share a lot, Martha and me, but I just can’t bring myself to tell her about her. For awhile I keep everything from her, but she’s too sharp, that Martha Jones. After a time, she notices that I disappear every ‘night’ and can’t be found. And that every few ‘days’ I do the same.
She followed me once, right to the very door, but the TARDIS wouldn’t unlock it and she respected that. I can’t say how grateful I am. I do love Martha, in my own way, but there are some secrets I can’t and won’t share. Not with her. Not with anyone alive.
She is one of them.