Fic:: Summer Is Icumen In [Doctor Who]
Apr. 18th, 2007 01:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ravenEvery time I got bored, revising for my A-levels, I used to write bits of this story. I haven't revised anything at all for collections tonight, but I have finished this.
Fic:: Summer Is Icumen In
by Raven
PG, Doctor Who, gen, humour. Nine, Rose and Jack. One summer, marked in love, loss, and Marxist revolutions.
The summer she turned eighteen, Rose decided she wanted to do her A-levels. The Doctor objected.
“Can’t you sit them later on?” he asked, leaning against the console. “Why does it have to be that year?”
“Well, because.” Rose inclined her head. “I missed my chance, you know? And now I’m in an actual time machine, and I can go back and do my time again.”
“You’ll meet yourself!” protested the Doctor.
“No, I won’t. In case you’ve forgotten, I didn’t take my A-levels. No chance of meeting myself.”
“But,” continued the Doctor, “it might be 2004, but you won’t be eighteen.”
“Nineteen, going on twenty. Same difference. And I know I can pass them this time, Doctor. Just give me the chance. Call it your birthday present to me.” She stared appealingly at him, eyes wide, but the Doctor stood firm.
“Let it go,” Jack advised afterwards. “You know him, he won’t deny you anything. Just catch him in a good mood.”
Perhaps he knew something she didn’t. An hour later the Doctor sent Jack out into fin du sieclé London for milk and teabags, and somehow or other he came back with the brown envelope of examination entry forms for Tyler, Rose.
Rose glanced at the Doctor, but he merely put a finger to his lips. It said a lot about the whole enterprise, that talking the Doctor into it was the easy part, but she’d committed herself now. Once she’d finished filling in the forms, the Doctor grabbed them and skimmed what she’d written. “That’s not your address,” he said.
Rose grinned. “What, you thought I was gonna put down where I really live?” She paused. “The Blue Box, the Universe. It has a ring to it, but no.”
She licked the envelope and sealed it. Unsurprisingly, the Doctor didn’t have stamps, so Jack went with her when she bought them, and she let him post the letter because he insisted. “No-one ever sent me letters, in London,” he said wistfully as the envelope thudded into the base of the post box.
“I’ll send you something,” she promised without thinking about it, and wondered, suddenly, what she was saying; you didn’t send letters back in time, it didn’t work like that, and maybe she’d just spent too much time with the Doctor.
*
Although the Doctor insisted the TARDIS library had every book ever published and then some, Rose went to Waterstone’s for her textbooks. She got back to find Jack alone in the console room, happily tinkering with the mechanisms beneath the panels. He had wedged the outside door open, so the room had bands of sunlight crossing it and smelled pleasantly of fresh summer air.
“Where’s the Doctor?” she asked, putting two heavy plastic bags of books on the floor.
“In the library,” said Jack from beneath the console, sounding like he was at the bottom of a well.
“Right.” Rose reached for her bags again and started off on the trek down the corridors. The sunlight seemed to follow her, although she couldn’t make out where it was coming from, and the air stayed sweet-scented and fresh.
As promised, the Doctor was in the library, standing in front of one of the shelves and studying the book spines very intently. “Get what you wanted?” he asked, without turning round.
“Yeah, thanks.” Rose placed her bags on the table. “What are you doing?”
“Looking for things that might help you... ah.” He held up a large, yellowing book. “How about this?”
Rose squinted at the title. “Exploding Custard Powder For Fun And Profit? Sounds like fun.”
“It is,” said the Doctor with such conviction that Rose wanted to laugh. “Be good for your chemistry, too.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” she said wistfully. She had begun unpacking the books she’d bought; somehow AS Chemistry For AQA didn’t sound like nearly as much fun. Neither did Modern World History or Atomic Structure, Bonding And Periodicity. The next book she took out, however, was eagerly grabbed by the Doctor.
“I love this,” he said happily. “‘If virtue no delighted beauty lack...’”
“‘Your son-in-law is far more fair than black,’” said a voice at the door. Jack was standing there, grinning. “Othello, Act 1 Scene I.”
The Doctor raised his eyebrows. “Very good.”
“Likewise. Did you ever see the original performance, Doctor? It got so gripping near the end, the groundlings actually stopped cracking nuts.”
“I saw it. Saw the first folio, too. I wrote bits of it in for him, you know; he sprained his wrist writing sonnets.”
Jack’s grin became, if that were possible, even broader. “‘Who will believe my verse in time to come?’”
“‘If it were filled with your most high deserts?’”
“Are you two quite finished?” Rose stood up, hands on hips. “It’s me who’s got to actually pass this exam, you know. Now are you going to go away and let me read?”
They both turned to her, looking guilty. “Jack was just going,” said the Doctor quickly.
“Yeah, and so was the Doctor,” Jack assured her. They went out, their squabbling becoming fainter as they got further away, and Rose smiled to herself. They were quite sweet, in their way; and besides, Mickey had never quoted Shakespeare at her.
*
Later on, the Doctor would speak of it as the summer they all took care of unfinished business. Subjectively speaking, it wasn’t; the TARDIS stayed ten degrees below blood heat more or less all the time, and they never stayed in one place long enough to adopt the local nomenclature.
But for Rose, it was summer. At first, she tried to get as much done as possible, like she hadn’t done for her GCSEs. But the Doctor walked across one evening and lifted the folder out of her hands, merely staring down at her as she tried to grab it back. “It’s not the destination, it’s the journey,” he said gently. “Take your time. The one thing we definitely have is time.”
So she let him tell her all about the Reformation, nineteenth-century political alliances, the spoken conventions used by Shakespeare and the chlorination of methane; his wealth of personal experience deepened her understanding until the words on the page lifted and became real. It was as hard going as she’d feared, but the Doctor made it bearable and occasionally fun; when she dropped her very own Shakespeare reference into conversation, his expression almost made the whole thing worth it.
She persevered. She’d picked English language and literature, history and chemistry, all on the basis the Doctor could probably teach her more than all the teachers she’d ever had combined. Not surprisingly, Jack turned out to be an authority on early twentieth-century American history, and night after night ended in animated discussion with her companions about something she’d found in her notes, a textbook or simply something from the cavernous TARDIS library, with the light from the console lifting and falling over the pages.
And there came a point where she could hold her own in a conversation; she could argue a point and grasp all the levels in her head simultaneously, holding off the Doctor’s teasing devil’s advocacy and Jack’s occasional biting comments, and finally the Doctor materialised the TARDIS in early May of 2004 with a smile.
“No more deadly peril for a while,” he said. “Two months of revision for you, Rose. Sit your exams, and then we’ll go back to being the Three Musketeers.”
“Dumas,” said Rose vaguely, and disappeared with books and pencil.
But it wasn’t quite as simple as that.
*
“Doctor! I know you’re in there! If you don’t let me in, I’ll... I’ll...”
“You’ll huff and you’ll puff and you’ll blow my TARDIS down?” asked the Doctor acerbically as he opened the door. Jackie Tyler peered in, looking furious. She didn’t step inside.
“What have you done with my daughter?” she demanded.
“Nothing,” said the Doctor, exasperated. “She’ll come and see you in a moment.”
“As if,” murmured Jackie darkly. “I turn my back for a moment and your box disappears.”
“Mum!” said Rose, appearing in the console room. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m studying for my A-levels.”
“What, really?” Jackie’s face lit up. “Does that mean you’ll be here for a couple of months then? There’s so much you could do while you’re here, and ooh, there’s your Auntie Sarah’s wedding next month, you could come with me, there’s such a lovely dress I’ve seen...”
Rose looked at the Doctor. The Doctor looked at Jack. Jack looked at them both, stepped outside the door and said, “Hello, Mrs. Tyler, I don’t believe we’ve met. I’m Captain Jack Harkness.”
Jackie giggled as he kissed her hand. “Aren’t you the charming one? Unlike some I could mention,” she added, with a glance in the Doctor’s direction. “Would you like to come up for... some tea?”
Jack looked back at the Doctor, who nodded. The TARDIS dematerialised in a sequence of creaks and hums, and there were three audible sighs from within the console room. “It’s not that I don’t love her,” said Rose forlornly. “It’s just, well, that’s probably why I failed my GCSEs.”
*
Some time later, they arrived on a pleasantly green, mostly primitive planet, although the Doctor assured Rose they had moved in space only and it was still May 2004. “Although it’s actually the Third Cycle of the Greater Spotted Snorkshack,” he added, “talking local time.”
“But we’re not talking local time,” Rose interrupted quickly. “In fact, we’re not talking local at all. I’m not even going outside.”
“You don’t have to.” The Doctor was quite firm on that. “You sit, you revise. Nothing’s going to happen.”
“We’re out of milk,” reported Jack at that point, coming into the room waving an empty pint bottle.
“I’ll go,” said the Doctor decisively. “I know this place quite well. They have these things that are sort of like lactating llamas.”
“I’m going to pretend he didn’t say that,” said Jack, but Rose and her books and her folders and her increasingly chewed pencil were gone.
Six hours later the Doctor was back, breathless and ragged with bloodstains on his hands. “I think I may have started a coup,” he said weakly. Behind him, they could hear the revolutionary chanting.
Rose glared at him and started the dematerialisation herself.
*
Somehow or other they ended up somewhere dark, damp, cold and vaguely smelly. The Doctor claimed it was the vaults of the Braxiatel Collection in the year 3060, and Jack claimed it was Aldwych Tube station circa 1995, but it was quiet, and there were no angry natives or revolting peasants, so she resolved not to complain.
After two weeks of revision, she was only three days behind her timetable – chlorination reactions and Marxism in Othello – and woke up just as the ship’s artificial night was beginning to fade.
“Something’s up with him this morning,” Jack warned her as she passed him on the way to the bathroom.
There wasn’t any need to ask who “him” was. “What do you mean?” Rose asked guardedly.
“He’s acting a bit. weird.” Jack inclined his head. “Keeps walking around muttering to himself, and I bet he hasn’t slept in a while.”
“He doesn’t need to sleep,” Rose said. “Does he?”
“He’s a Time Lord, not the walking dead. He’s got to sleep sometime. Anyway, he’s got that look – you know, that one he gets just before someone gets their ass kicked.”
Rose nodded slowly. “I know. I’ll see you in a minute.”
She thought about it in the shower, in between being annoyed with Jack for using up all the hot water – she knew if she mentioned it to him, he’d only suggest sharing – but to no particular avail; trying to get the Doctor to talk when he didn’t want to was, in her now fairly considerable experience, a generally fruitless task. If he wanted to tell her what it was about, he would; and if he didn’t, she had things to do.
Satisfied with this conclusion, she dried herself off, got dressed and wandered down to the console room. It was empty, so she peered at the viewscreen and the swirling time vortex, and then made her way back to the kitchen. Jack handed her two slices of toast. “He’s disappeared, now,” he complained. “Said something about elephants before he went.”
Rose nodded to herself. “Elephants,” she repeated, and took the toast through to the library. She ate it while setting up her books, and she was just pushing away the plate and reaching for her pencil when she saw a flash of movement through the shelves. It was gone as quickly as it had come, so she read a page.
It happened again. She dropped her pencil and waited. It happened again.
Getting to her feet, she walked round the shelf and looked round the other side. The Doctor was pacing. There was no other word for it. “Doctor.”
“Mmm?” He was staring at his feet.
“You know the TARDIS?”
“Yeah..."
“You know how it’s bigger on the inside than on the outside?” Rose tapped her fingers against her book to make the point. He didn’t get it, and she sighed. “Doctor. No offence, but you’ve got the whole ship to pace up and down in and you’re doing it in here just to annoy me.”
He ignored her entirely. “I’ve forgotten something.” He waved a hand around. “I don’t know what it is. I’ve forgotten something…” He paused. “Or someone. Yeah, I’ve forgotten someone.” As Rose watched, he started to count on his fingers. “Rose. Jack. Me. Ace. Tegan. Nyssa. Susan. Jamie. Sarah. Harry. Fred... no, Romana. Someone else. Who?”
Still staring at his fingers, he wandered round the shelf, around the table Rose was sitting at, round again in the other direction and then out the door.
Rose watched him go, shaking her head.
*
Two days after that – she was up to political economy in literature and the reactions of transition metals – the combination of dark, damp and smelly was beginning to get to them all, and the Doctor steered them carefully to a pretty rose-garden somewhere in England in the late twenty-second century. Jack claimed they were at least four months off-target, as the hybrid varieties weren’t yet blooming, and the Doctor decided that for that, he could stay inside and help out with the TARDIS control maintenance.
“How about spaceports?” Jack asked suddenly, chewing one end of a wire.
“What?” asked the Doctor. “Jack, get that out your mouth if you don’t want a nasty shock. No pun intended, of course.” He grinned.
Jack spat it out and wiped it with an oily rag. “Spaceports,” he said. “They’re the sort of place you forget to pick people up from.”
“That’s interesting,” said the Doctor thoughtfully. “Rose, they didn’t have spaceports on twentieth-century Earth, did they?”
“No, they didn’t.” Rose wandered in through the outside door. “Either of you want a cup of tea? I’m just going to make one.”
“Yes, please.” The Doctor was still thinking, the mass of wiring he and Jack were tinkering with forgotten for the moment. “What did you have instead?”
“How do you mean?” Rose asked. “Jack, it’s milk, no sugar, right?”
“Thanks, doll.” He submitted with a grin as she punched his shoulder. The Doctor ignored them.
“Airports,” he said. “I think we should visit an airport. Just in case it reminds me.”
“I wasn’t suggesting you visit every spaceport – or airport – in existence,” argued Jack. “That’s ridiculous. According to you, there is someone in the entire history of space and time who arranged to meet you somewhere, and you forgot about it. Now, hundreds of years later, you’ve remembered it for apparently no reason at all and you want to retrace all the steps you’ve taken for the last nine centuries. Like I said, ridiculous.”
The Doctor frowned. “Well, if you put it like that...”
“Damn right I’m putting it like that.”
“But I don’t like leaving unfinished business.” He paused, and his eyes slipped out of focus for a moment. “That’s how people become ghosts.”
Jack didn’t say anything.
“You can’t abandon people to their fate,” the Doctor continued. “And you may not be aware, but I do occasionally suffer from amnesia. I didn’t mean to forget.”
“Didn’t mean to forget what?” Rose entered with three cups of tea on a tray, which she set carefully on the floor by the Doctor’s feet. “Doctor, what’s the lowest oxidation state of cobalt?”
“Two. No, Jack, if I can remember, I should. I triggered this for a reason, presumably.”
“I don’t get it.” Without thinking about it, Jack was chewing on the wire again. “Triggered it how?”
“Right, I’ll leave you to it,” Rose said, amused, and took her tea outside. Her companions didn’t turn.
“I’ve lived a long time. I’ve forgotten more things than you’ve ever known, probably.”
“My grandfather said the same.”
“And so,” – the Doctor ignored him – “if it’s important I remember something, there’s such a thing as hardwiring an association into the brain. Like tying knots in your handkerchief. Something’s happened in the last couple of days to trigger my memory. I just can’t remember what it was. What’s funny?”
“Nothing, nothing at all,” said Jack quickly, and removed the wire from his mouth. “So why a twentieth-century airport, of all places?”
“No particular reason.” The Doctor lay back on the floor. “I just get the feeling I’ve left someone at an airport before...”
*
Tegan decided very quickly that she needed to be elsewhere. The TARDIS was gone, the Doctor was gone with it, and it wasn’t as if he was coming back any time soon. Trying to hold her head up high, she stalked back to the terminal building with hands in pockets. The automatic doors opened for her, but she wasn’t looking where she was going and walked straight into someone on the other side. They both went flying.
“Whoa, there.” The voice was gentle and American, Tegan noted. “Are you all right, miss?”
“I’m fine,” she muttered.
The man helped her to her feet and straightened her hat. “Are you sure? You don’t seem it.”
She looked up, ready to tell him it wasn’t any business of his, but his attention was diverted; he was looking over his shoulder at another man walking towards to the two of them.
“Hello,” he said, nodding to Tegan. “You’ll have to forgive Jack, he’s congenitally clumsy. Practically a natural hazard to be around. Did he hurt you?”
Tegan finished dusting herself off. “No, I don’t think so,” she said, uncomfortably thinking to herself that the tumble had been her fault, and they both must know it. The first man – Jack – was smiling, so she resolved to put it out of her mind and go back to re-planning her life.
“If you’ll excuse me...” she began, but got no further.
“Just a moment, miss,” said the man in the leather jacket. “You look familiar. Have I perhaps seen you somewhere before?”
“Probably not,” she said bluntly. She wasn’t in any mood to be chatted up, she thought grimly, and again made to go.
“Are you sure?” he persisted. “Perhaps in the company of a young man in cricketing whites?”
Tegan sighed inwardly. “Maybe,” she admitted.
“Ah, just wondering. We met him a few minutes ago, heading towards the tarmac.”
“He’s gone now,” Tegan said softly, wondering as she did why she was telling this to a stranger.
“So it would seem,” said the man. “He’s an old friend. I’m sure he’ll come back.”
“I hope so,” said Tegan, and this time they did let her pass. They seemed to linger as she walked away, and she turned to look back at them both – Jack, the man she had pushed over, and his friend with the leather jacket and big ears – but neither appeared to move.
After a minute, they departed from her mind. She had to get money from somewhere, she had to get a taxi home, and right now she wasn’t all that sure she was going to stay pulled together.
“Well?” asked Jack, as the TARDIS door closed behind them both. “Was she the one? Who was she, anyway?”
“Her name was – is – Tegan Jovanka,” the Doctor replied. “And no, she’s not the one. She was picked up and met by someone, but not by me.”
“Her friend the cricketer?”
“That’s right. Well, that’s one person eliminated.”
“Any luck?” Rose called out. They were walking down one of the long ship corridors, and turned into the kitchen to meet her. Perched on a high stool, she had spread all her books over the counter and seemed to be in the middle of a marathon highlighting session.
“Not really,” Jack reported, “but only because the Doctor’s totally useless.”
“I am not,” said the Doctor mildly. “I’m just not perfect; I’m only human. Except I’m not, of course, but the point stands.”
“You might as well be,” said Rose thoughtfully. “You don’t look any different from us.”
“I have two hearts,” he reminded her.
“Big deal,” she said, grinning. “Now are you two going to leave me in peace or what?”
“We’re going, we’re going.” The Doctor grinned; he and Jack both raised their hands in defeat and backed slowly out.
“So,” said Jack, as they moved away from the library. “I guess our Rose didn’t go to a school where they teach Time Lord Biology 101.”
“Guess not,” said the Doctor, in a credible attempt at Jack’s accent. He took his sonic screwdriver out of his pocket and began tossing it from hand to hand.
“But,” continued Jack, undaunted, “I did.”
The Doctor didn’t look up. “Really.”
“Really.” Jack smiled. “It was taught as mythology, yeah, but we were taught it all the same. I know all about your squidgy bits, Doctor.”
“Do you now?” The Doctor’s own smile was enigmatic, daring Jack to go on further. There was silence for a moment as they carried on towards the console room.
“That man we met today,” said Jack suddenly. “Nice guy, I thought.”
“Which man would that be?”
“Oh, you know the one. Young, pretty, blonde. Looked almost human.”
The Doctor was still playing with the screwdriver. “Yes,” he murmured non-commitally, and Jack lost his patience with the game.
“Come on, Doctor,” he said softly. “I saw the way you were looking at him. I know that look. Two reasons I can think of for it. Either you shagged him, or...”
The Doctor said nothing, his expression carefully neutral.
“Oh, okay,” Jack said. “You did shag him.” Off the Doctor’s look, he continued, happily, “You shagged him carefully... thoroughly... passionately... up against a wall... in public... twice...”
“
All right!” the Doctor snapped, and Jack grinned. “All right, all right. I admit it.”
“That you shagged him?”
“No!” The Doctor frowned. “You’re much too clever for your own good, Captain. But this time, you are right. Now can we change the subject?”
“Just one last question.” Jack was serious again. “Which was he and which are you?”
“Fifth and ninth, respectively. And I hope for your sake you’re not planning to breathe a word of this to Rose.”
“I wasn’t going to, but why – don’t you think she’d understand?” Jack was genuinely curious.
“I don’t think she needs to know unless it becomes relevant.” The Doctor’s face had taken on the set, hardened expression that always reminded Jack that the only reason he was alive was the Doctor’s whim.
“Yeah, okay.” Jack nodded. They had reached the console room now, and the Doctor moved off in the direction of one of the over-reaching girders, grabbing a torch off the floor. Jack was content to sit beneath the control panel and pull out some fibre-optic cables. He squinted at them. No two of them looked like they’d come from the same century.
“Did you ever think about it?” he called to where the Doctor was perched.
“Think about what?” The Doctor didn’t turn round, focusing the torch beam on one particular rivet in the girder.
“Shagging him!”
The sonic screwdriver made an interesting clanging sound as it hit the wall just above Jack’s head.
*
The console room was dimmer than usual as Jack and Rose entered it, both rubbing their eyes. The Doctor was a silhouette in the doorframe, standing out against a grey landscape beyond. “I remembered,” he said quietly.
Rose wanted to say it was about time, but she couldn’t muster up the energy to talk; instead, she silently followed the Doctor outside, Jack right behind her. Her feet crunched into sand, and she looked up and around her at strange, bleak emptiness. The police box was the only thing for miles with any appreciable colour, sitting like a squat monument on a long, curving beach. There was water, lapping in and out, but no sign of life and Rose thought she had never heard such thick silence. Only the wind, occasionally stirring the sea into tiny wavelets, made any sound at all.
When the Doctor spoke, his voice was almost deadened. “Welcome to the end of the world.”
You’ve said that before, Rose wanted to say, but her voice still wouldn’t work. With a start she realised it wasn’t just her own headache that was causing the difficulty; the air around her somehow ate up any sound she made.
“The atmosphere is going,” said Jack, and his voice was quiet, too. “The air is too rarefied to carry sound.”
The Doctor nodded. “Come on.”
The three of them started walking along the curve of the bay, but neither horizon seemed to move. Everything about the panorama was featureless and flat, and after some minutes Rose realised why. There were no shadows. Even Jack and the Doctor, walking on either side of her, seemed to obstruct no light at all. She looked up, and the Doctor followed her gaze.
“The planet’s orbit has changed,” he explained. Close to, she could just about hear him clearly. “Like it used to be with Earth’s moon, the same face of the planet is turned towards the star at all times, and the light always comes from directly overhead. Hence no shadows.” He waved an expansive arm. “Not a top holiday destination.”
“Where is this?” Rose asked nervously.
He glanced at her. “No-one lives here now, so it doesn’t have a name. All life is gone, dead. When there were people living here, they named it Earth.”
Rose shivered. “Oh.”
After that she couldn’t bring herself to talk any more; the lack of oxygen was beginning to make her head heavy, and while he showed no sign of it, it was probably getting to the Doctor, too.
They carried on walking.
Suddenly, Jack shouted out: “Doctor!”
Rose looked up in the direction he was pointing. Down below the water, some distance away, she could see movement. There was something – someone – there.
Beside her, the Doctor began to run. Their hurrying footsteps rose sand which drifted down, perhaps the only disturbance to the even surface in centuries, and the figure near the sea turned round to look at them. As they got closer, Rose could see he was human, staring in their direction with mouth dropping open. There was an unidentified mass next to him, which gradually resolved into a machine of some sort, made up of gleaming metal bars and cogwheels, with a leather saddle somewhere near the middle.
The Doctor skidded to a stop, with Jack and Rose close behind. “Hi,” he said cheerfully. “I’m the Doctor. That’s Captain Jack over there, and this is Rose. We’ve come to take you home.”
The man stared at the three of them for a moment, looking rather as though he was about to cry. At the last moment, he brought himself to speak. “Who,” he croaked, “who... how...?”
The Doctor sat down with a flump on the sand and motioned the others to join him. “I was meant to come and get you,” he said, still cheerfully. “It slipped my mind for a while, but I’m here now. Come on now, your machine’s not taking you anywhere.”
Rose had been peering curiously at it. It gave off an aura of precise engineering, but it was clearly damaged; a lever near the front had snapped off, leaving an ugly break in the metal.
The man nodded. “You have another machine?” he asked, his voice rusty from disuse and the effect of the thin air.
“Something like that.” The Doctor sat still for a minute, then bounced to his feet. “Jack and I will carry this back, if you like.” He rested his hand on the machine, but its owner shook his head.
“Leave it.” His voice carried authority, and Rose decided that whatever and whoever he was, he must have been something important at one time. “I am tired of my folly. I will come with you.”
The Doctor nodded. “Good man.”
They left the machine behind them to rest on the sand. The walk back to the TARDIS seemed to be shorter than the outward journey had been. The Doctor and the stranger were a little way in front, and Jack whispered in Rose’s ear, “Who is this guy?”
Rose shook her head. “No idea.”
Shortly afterwards, they were back in the TARDIS, and in the electric light and sudden presence of shadow, Rose studied their visitor more closely. He was taller than he looked, walking with a stoop, with steady, expressive grey eyes. In a way, he reminded her of the Doctor.
“Next stop, home.” The Doctor grinned and began the dematerialisation. For a stupid moment, Rose thought about London in 2005, but as the noise of the plunging rotor faded away and the Doctor moved to open the door, she thought better of it.
They were in a laboratory. It was still and quiet, with little furniture except for a bench covered with papers and various scientific instruments, but there was activity beyond the window, people passing by on a busy street lit with gas lamps. The Doctor looked around, satisfied. “London, 1898. August. You’ve been gone for three years. Better think up some sort of explanation, now you don’t have the machine any more.”
“The machine is rusting on the sands at the end of the world, and long may it be so,” said the stranger happily, rubbing his hands together. “Thank you, Doctor. I am eternally in your debt.” He paused. “I shall, of course, speak of this to no-one.”
“And thank you for that. Enjoy your life, sir.” The Doctor grinned, and turned to Jack and Rose. “Shall we depart?”
They nodded dumbly. With a last wave, the Doctor led them back into the TARDIS. After a moment, the Victorian laboratory began to fade from the viewscreen. “Well,” said the Doctor. “Nothing like a job well done, that’s what I always say.”
“And that was nothing like a job well done,” Jack said sharply. “Doctor, what just happened? Who was that?”
The Doctor looked pensive. “He never had a name, or if he did I never knew it.”
“It must be contagious,” muttered Rose under her breath.
“No,” – the Doctor was smiling broadly – “to me, he was always the Time Traveller.”
“Your sex life never ceases to amaze me,” muttered Jack.
The Doctor didn’t hear. “And now, thanks to us, he won’t die alone at the end of everything, the winter at the end of the world. Isn’t that a job well done? Even if it did take me a while to get round to it,” he added ruefully.
Rose couldn’t help grinning back at him. Moving quickly, she went across to the hat stand and leaned down to grab her bag from beneath it. “Here’s your trigger,” she said, smiling. “Though I did think it was made up.”
The Doctor took the book from her. “H.G. Wells, The Time Machine.” He paused. “What did you have to compare it with, in your exam?”
“Utopia by Thomas More.”
“Ah, that was made up. At least I hope so.” He sat down in the chair and swung around.
“Now what?” asked Jack after a minute. “Now you’ve finished dragging us round the universe running errands, that is.”
The Doctor leaned back. “One more impossible thing before breakfast,” he said.
*
Jack wouldn’t have thought you could have fitted two humans and a Time Lord behind a twenty-first century wheelie bin, but with the Doctor all things were possible. Still, it was a bit of a squash, and his heels were resting on the wall with Rose half on top of him and the Doctor wedged in front of her, mostly pressed against the back of the bin. They’d been there ten minutes and Jack was beginning to lose all sensation in his feet.
The Doctor leaned forward, nearly causing all three of them to fall sideways, and muttered, “Quarry sighted, nine o’clock.”
Rose peered to her left, and Jack tried to look over her shoulder. “That’s him,” she reported.
“Sure?”
“Sure."
“Go, go, go!” whispered Jack in his best SWAT team impression, and Rose leapt to her feet. Unfortunately, her foot caught the Doctor and sent him rolling backwards into Jack. They hit the wall behind them with identical groans as Rose collected herself, took a deep breath and walked forwards.
“Excuse me!” she called.
“What’s going on?” asked Jack after a moment. It was hard to talk with most of the Doctor’s weight on top of his chest.
“Dunno,” muttered the Doctor, and then Jack felt him freeze. They both recognised the unmistakeable sound of a postman falling off his bicycle.
Slowly, Jack shifted the Doctor off him and peered round the edge of the wheelie bin. Rose was busy in conversation with the postman, waving her hands around to make her point. “I’m really sorry,” she was saying. “I didn’t mean to make you fall off like that.. So sorry.”
The postman had just about recovered, getting to his feet. “It’s all right, love. You gave me a bit of a shock, that’s all.” He gazed in the direction of the bin. “Those blokes weren’t bothering you, were they?”
“What? Oh, no.” Rose smiled beatifically and Jack and the Doctor exchanged glances. “Um... do you have any post for me?”
The postman frowned at her. “I’m not supposed to do that, miss. How do I know you’re who you say you are, mmm?”
“Oh, please.” Rose leaned in and said confidentially, “It’s results day, you know.”
“Well...” He was wavering, and finally reached into his bag and rummaged. Rose stood there, not tapping her feet, until he handed her a brown envelope. “There you go, love. Hope they’re what you wanted.”
With that, he limped off, wheeling the bike in the direction of the closest block of flats. “I’m sorry!” Rose called after him. He didn’t turn round.
When they were quite sure he was gone, Jack and the Doctor emerged painfully from their hiding-place. “Tell me again why we did that,” said Jack conversationally.
“I had to get to him first,” Rose explained, “because I already know I did, ‘cause I know I didn’t get my A-level results in the post in 2004. D’you see?”
There was a long pause before they both nodded. “We’d better get out before your mum sees us,” the Doctor added as the three of them started walking back to the TARDIS.
“Doesn’t matter if she does, surely?” Jack asked. “She hasn’t met you yet.”
“That has nothing to do with it.” The Doctor strode onwards, leather jacket swinging behind him. “Rose, aren’t you going to open that?”
Rose’s thumbnails were already slicing into the envelope. She pulled out the single sheet of paper inside and unfolded it. After a second she looked up at Jack, then at the Doctor.
Jack grinned. “Where next?”
The Doctor said, “Wait and see.”
*
At that time of year, and of century, and in that part of the world, the Doctor explained, they made good champagne.
When they left, Rose took with her the cork, a ticket stub, a provisional statement of results, a pressed rose and the scent of summer, sparkling pink and lingering in her hair.
finis
Fic:: Summer Is Icumen In
by Raven
PG, Doctor Who, gen, humour. Nine, Rose and Jack. One summer, marked in love, loss, and Marxist revolutions.
The summer she turned eighteen, Rose decided she wanted to do her A-levels. The Doctor objected.
“Can’t you sit them later on?” he asked, leaning against the console. “Why does it have to be that year?”
“Well, because.” Rose inclined her head. “I missed my chance, you know? And now I’m in an actual time machine, and I can go back and do my time again.”
“You’ll meet yourself!” protested the Doctor.
“No, I won’t. In case you’ve forgotten, I didn’t take my A-levels. No chance of meeting myself.”
“But,” continued the Doctor, “it might be 2004, but you won’t be eighteen.”
“Nineteen, going on twenty. Same difference. And I know I can pass them this time, Doctor. Just give me the chance. Call it your birthday present to me.” She stared appealingly at him, eyes wide, but the Doctor stood firm.
“Let it go,” Jack advised afterwards. “You know him, he won’t deny you anything. Just catch him in a good mood.”
Perhaps he knew something she didn’t. An hour later the Doctor sent Jack out into fin du sieclé London for milk and teabags, and somehow or other he came back with the brown envelope of examination entry forms for Tyler, Rose.
Rose glanced at the Doctor, but he merely put a finger to his lips. It said a lot about the whole enterprise, that talking the Doctor into it was the easy part, but she’d committed herself now. Once she’d finished filling in the forms, the Doctor grabbed them and skimmed what she’d written. “That’s not your address,” he said.
Rose grinned. “What, you thought I was gonna put down where I really live?” She paused. “The Blue Box, the Universe. It has a ring to it, but no.”
She licked the envelope and sealed it. Unsurprisingly, the Doctor didn’t have stamps, so Jack went with her when she bought them, and she let him post the letter because he insisted. “No-one ever sent me letters, in London,” he said wistfully as the envelope thudded into the base of the post box.
“I’ll send you something,” she promised without thinking about it, and wondered, suddenly, what she was saying; you didn’t send letters back in time, it didn’t work like that, and maybe she’d just spent too much time with the Doctor.
Although the Doctor insisted the TARDIS library had every book ever published and then some, Rose went to Waterstone’s for her textbooks. She got back to find Jack alone in the console room, happily tinkering with the mechanisms beneath the panels. He had wedged the outside door open, so the room had bands of sunlight crossing it and smelled pleasantly of fresh summer air.
“Where’s the Doctor?” she asked, putting two heavy plastic bags of books on the floor.
“In the library,” said Jack from beneath the console, sounding like he was at the bottom of a well.
“Right.” Rose reached for her bags again and started off on the trek down the corridors. The sunlight seemed to follow her, although she couldn’t make out where it was coming from, and the air stayed sweet-scented and fresh.
As promised, the Doctor was in the library, standing in front of one of the shelves and studying the book spines very intently. “Get what you wanted?” he asked, without turning round.
“Yeah, thanks.” Rose placed her bags on the table. “What are you doing?”
“Looking for things that might help you... ah.” He held up a large, yellowing book. “How about this?”
Rose squinted at the title. “Exploding Custard Powder For Fun And Profit? Sounds like fun.”
“It is,” said the Doctor with such conviction that Rose wanted to laugh. “Be good for your chemistry, too.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” she said wistfully. She had begun unpacking the books she’d bought; somehow AS Chemistry For AQA didn’t sound like nearly as much fun. Neither did Modern World History or Atomic Structure, Bonding And Periodicity. The next book she took out, however, was eagerly grabbed by the Doctor.
“I love this,” he said happily. “‘If virtue no delighted beauty lack...’”
“‘Your son-in-law is far more fair than black,’” said a voice at the door. Jack was standing there, grinning. “Othello, Act 1 Scene I.”
The Doctor raised his eyebrows. “Very good.”
“Likewise. Did you ever see the original performance, Doctor? It got so gripping near the end, the groundlings actually stopped cracking nuts.”
“I saw it. Saw the first folio, too. I wrote bits of it in for him, you know; he sprained his wrist writing sonnets.”
Jack’s grin became, if that were possible, even broader. “‘Who will believe my verse in time to come?’”
“‘If it were filled with your most high deserts?’”
“Are you two quite finished?” Rose stood up, hands on hips. “It’s me who’s got to actually pass this exam, you know. Now are you going to go away and let me read?”
They both turned to her, looking guilty. “Jack was just going,” said the Doctor quickly.
“Yeah, and so was the Doctor,” Jack assured her. They went out, their squabbling becoming fainter as they got further away, and Rose smiled to herself. They were quite sweet, in their way; and besides, Mickey had never quoted Shakespeare at her.
Later on, the Doctor would speak of it as the summer they all took care of unfinished business. Subjectively speaking, it wasn’t; the TARDIS stayed ten degrees below blood heat more or less all the time, and they never stayed in one place long enough to adopt the local nomenclature.
But for Rose, it was summer. At first, she tried to get as much done as possible, like she hadn’t done for her GCSEs. But the Doctor walked across one evening and lifted the folder out of her hands, merely staring down at her as she tried to grab it back. “It’s not the destination, it’s the journey,” he said gently. “Take your time. The one thing we definitely have is time.”
So she let him tell her all about the Reformation, nineteenth-century political alliances, the spoken conventions used by Shakespeare and the chlorination of methane; his wealth of personal experience deepened her understanding until the words on the page lifted and became real. It was as hard going as she’d feared, but the Doctor made it bearable and occasionally fun; when she dropped her very own Shakespeare reference into conversation, his expression almost made the whole thing worth it.
She persevered. She’d picked English language and literature, history and chemistry, all on the basis the Doctor could probably teach her more than all the teachers she’d ever had combined. Not surprisingly, Jack turned out to be an authority on early twentieth-century American history, and night after night ended in animated discussion with her companions about something she’d found in her notes, a textbook or simply something from the cavernous TARDIS library, with the light from the console lifting and falling over the pages.
And there came a point where she could hold her own in a conversation; she could argue a point and grasp all the levels in her head simultaneously, holding off the Doctor’s teasing devil’s advocacy and Jack’s occasional biting comments, and finally the Doctor materialised the TARDIS in early May of 2004 with a smile.
“No more deadly peril for a while,” he said. “Two months of revision for you, Rose. Sit your exams, and then we’ll go back to being the Three Musketeers.”
“Dumas,” said Rose vaguely, and disappeared with books and pencil.
But it wasn’t quite as simple as that.
“Doctor! I know you’re in there! If you don’t let me in, I’ll... I’ll...”
“You’ll huff and you’ll puff and you’ll blow my TARDIS down?” asked the Doctor acerbically as he opened the door. Jackie Tyler peered in, looking furious. She didn’t step inside.
“What have you done with my daughter?” she demanded.
“Nothing,” said the Doctor, exasperated. “She’ll come and see you in a moment.”
“As if,” murmured Jackie darkly. “I turn my back for a moment and your box disappears.”
“Mum!” said Rose, appearing in the console room. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m studying for my A-levels.”
“What, really?” Jackie’s face lit up. “Does that mean you’ll be here for a couple of months then? There’s so much you could do while you’re here, and ooh, there’s your Auntie Sarah’s wedding next month, you could come with me, there’s such a lovely dress I’ve seen...”
Rose looked at the Doctor. The Doctor looked at Jack. Jack looked at them both, stepped outside the door and said, “Hello, Mrs. Tyler, I don’t believe we’ve met. I’m Captain Jack Harkness.”
Jackie giggled as he kissed her hand. “Aren’t you the charming one? Unlike some I could mention,” she added, with a glance in the Doctor’s direction. “Would you like to come up for... some tea?”
Jack looked back at the Doctor, who nodded. The TARDIS dematerialised in a sequence of creaks and hums, and there were three audible sighs from within the console room. “It’s not that I don’t love her,” said Rose forlornly. “It’s just, well, that’s probably why I failed my GCSEs.”
Some time later, they arrived on a pleasantly green, mostly primitive planet, although the Doctor assured Rose they had moved in space only and it was still May 2004. “Although it’s actually the Third Cycle of the Greater Spotted Snorkshack,” he added, “talking local time.”
“But we’re not talking local time,” Rose interrupted quickly. “In fact, we’re not talking local at all. I’m not even going outside.”
“You don’t have to.” The Doctor was quite firm on that. “You sit, you revise. Nothing’s going to happen.”
“We’re out of milk,” reported Jack at that point, coming into the room waving an empty pint bottle.
“I’ll go,” said the Doctor decisively. “I know this place quite well. They have these things that are sort of like lactating llamas.”
“I’m going to pretend he didn’t say that,” said Jack, but Rose and her books and her folders and her increasingly chewed pencil were gone.
Six hours later the Doctor was back, breathless and ragged with bloodstains on his hands. “I think I may have started a coup,” he said weakly. Behind him, they could hear the revolutionary chanting.
Rose glared at him and started the dematerialisation herself.
Somehow or other they ended up somewhere dark, damp, cold and vaguely smelly. The Doctor claimed it was the vaults of the Braxiatel Collection in the year 3060, and Jack claimed it was Aldwych Tube station circa 1995, but it was quiet, and there were no angry natives or revolting peasants, so she resolved not to complain.
After two weeks of revision, she was only three days behind her timetable – chlorination reactions and Marxism in Othello – and woke up just as the ship’s artificial night was beginning to fade.
“Something’s up with him this morning,” Jack warned her as she passed him on the way to the bathroom.
There wasn’t any need to ask who “him” was. “What do you mean?” Rose asked guardedly.
“He’s acting a bit. weird.” Jack inclined his head. “Keeps walking around muttering to himself, and I bet he hasn’t slept in a while.”
“He doesn’t need to sleep,” Rose said. “Does he?”
“He’s a Time Lord, not the walking dead. He’s got to sleep sometime. Anyway, he’s got that look – you know, that one he gets just before someone gets their ass kicked.”
Rose nodded slowly. “I know. I’ll see you in a minute.”
She thought about it in the shower, in between being annoyed with Jack for using up all the hot water – she knew if she mentioned it to him, he’d only suggest sharing – but to no particular avail; trying to get the Doctor to talk when he didn’t want to was, in her now fairly considerable experience, a generally fruitless task. If he wanted to tell her what it was about, he would; and if he didn’t, she had things to do.
Satisfied with this conclusion, she dried herself off, got dressed and wandered down to the console room. It was empty, so she peered at the viewscreen and the swirling time vortex, and then made her way back to the kitchen. Jack handed her two slices of toast. “He’s disappeared, now,” he complained. “Said something about elephants before he went.”
Rose nodded to herself. “Elephants,” she repeated, and took the toast through to the library. She ate it while setting up her books, and she was just pushing away the plate and reaching for her pencil when she saw a flash of movement through the shelves. It was gone as quickly as it had come, so she read a page.
It happened again. She dropped her pencil and waited. It happened again.
Getting to her feet, she walked round the shelf and looked round the other side. The Doctor was pacing. There was no other word for it. “Doctor.”
“Mmm?” He was staring at his feet.
“You know the TARDIS?”
“Yeah..."
“You know how it’s bigger on the inside than on the outside?” Rose tapped her fingers against her book to make the point. He didn’t get it, and she sighed. “Doctor. No offence, but you’ve got the whole ship to pace up and down in and you’re doing it in here just to annoy me.”
He ignored her entirely. “I’ve forgotten something.” He waved a hand around. “I don’t know what it is. I’ve forgotten something…” He paused. “Or someone. Yeah, I’ve forgotten someone.” As Rose watched, he started to count on his fingers. “Rose. Jack. Me. Ace. Tegan. Nyssa. Susan. Jamie. Sarah. Harry. Fred... no, Romana. Someone else. Who?”
Still staring at his fingers, he wandered round the shelf, around the table Rose was sitting at, round again in the other direction and then out the door.
Rose watched him go, shaking her head.
Two days after that – she was up to political economy in literature and the reactions of transition metals – the combination of dark, damp and smelly was beginning to get to them all, and the Doctor steered them carefully to a pretty rose-garden somewhere in England in the late twenty-second century. Jack claimed they were at least four months off-target, as the hybrid varieties weren’t yet blooming, and the Doctor decided that for that, he could stay inside and help out with the TARDIS control maintenance.
“How about spaceports?” Jack asked suddenly, chewing one end of a wire.
“What?” asked the Doctor. “Jack, get that out your mouth if you don’t want a nasty shock. No pun intended, of course.” He grinned.
Jack spat it out and wiped it with an oily rag. “Spaceports,” he said. “They’re the sort of place you forget to pick people up from.”
“That’s interesting,” said the Doctor thoughtfully. “Rose, they didn’t have spaceports on twentieth-century Earth, did they?”
“No, they didn’t.” Rose wandered in through the outside door. “Either of you want a cup of tea? I’m just going to make one.”
“Yes, please.” The Doctor was still thinking, the mass of wiring he and Jack were tinkering with forgotten for the moment. “What did you have instead?”
“How do you mean?” Rose asked. “Jack, it’s milk, no sugar, right?”
“Thanks, doll.” He submitted with a grin as she punched his shoulder. The Doctor ignored them.
“Airports,” he said. “I think we should visit an airport. Just in case it reminds me.”
“I wasn’t suggesting you visit every spaceport – or airport – in existence,” argued Jack. “That’s ridiculous. According to you, there is someone in the entire history of space and time who arranged to meet you somewhere, and you forgot about it. Now, hundreds of years later, you’ve remembered it for apparently no reason at all and you want to retrace all the steps you’ve taken for the last nine centuries. Like I said, ridiculous.”
The Doctor frowned. “Well, if you put it like that...”
“Damn right I’m putting it like that.”
“But I don’t like leaving unfinished business.” He paused, and his eyes slipped out of focus for a moment. “That’s how people become ghosts.”
Jack didn’t say anything.
“You can’t abandon people to their fate,” the Doctor continued. “And you may not be aware, but I do occasionally suffer from amnesia. I didn’t mean to forget.”
“Didn’t mean to forget what?” Rose entered with three cups of tea on a tray, which she set carefully on the floor by the Doctor’s feet. “Doctor, what’s the lowest oxidation state of cobalt?”
“Two. No, Jack, if I can remember, I should. I triggered this for a reason, presumably.”
“I don’t get it.” Without thinking about it, Jack was chewing on the wire again. “Triggered it how?”
“Right, I’ll leave you to it,” Rose said, amused, and took her tea outside. Her companions didn’t turn.
“I’ve lived a long time. I’ve forgotten more things than you’ve ever known, probably.”
“My grandfather said the same.”
“And so,” – the Doctor ignored him – “if it’s important I remember something, there’s such a thing as hardwiring an association into the brain. Like tying knots in your handkerchief. Something’s happened in the last couple of days to trigger my memory. I just can’t remember what it was. What’s funny?”
“Nothing, nothing at all,” said Jack quickly, and removed the wire from his mouth. “So why a twentieth-century airport, of all places?”
“No particular reason.” The Doctor lay back on the floor. “I just get the feeling I’ve left someone at an airport before...”
Tegan decided very quickly that she needed to be elsewhere. The TARDIS was gone, the Doctor was gone with it, and it wasn’t as if he was coming back any time soon. Trying to hold her head up high, she stalked back to the terminal building with hands in pockets. The automatic doors opened for her, but she wasn’t looking where she was going and walked straight into someone on the other side. They both went flying.
“Whoa, there.” The voice was gentle and American, Tegan noted. “Are you all right, miss?”
“I’m fine,” she muttered.
The man helped her to her feet and straightened her hat. “Are you sure? You don’t seem it.”
She looked up, ready to tell him it wasn’t any business of his, but his attention was diverted; he was looking over his shoulder at another man walking towards to the two of them.
“Hello,” he said, nodding to Tegan. “You’ll have to forgive Jack, he’s congenitally clumsy. Practically a natural hazard to be around. Did he hurt you?”
Tegan finished dusting herself off. “No, I don’t think so,” she said, uncomfortably thinking to herself that the tumble had been her fault, and they both must know it. The first man – Jack – was smiling, so she resolved to put it out of her mind and go back to re-planning her life.
“If you’ll excuse me...” she began, but got no further.
“Just a moment, miss,” said the man in the leather jacket. “You look familiar. Have I perhaps seen you somewhere before?”
“Probably not,” she said bluntly. She wasn’t in any mood to be chatted up, she thought grimly, and again made to go.
“Are you sure?” he persisted. “Perhaps in the company of a young man in cricketing whites?”
Tegan sighed inwardly. “Maybe,” she admitted.
“Ah, just wondering. We met him a few minutes ago, heading towards the tarmac.”
“He’s gone now,” Tegan said softly, wondering as she did why she was telling this to a stranger.
“So it would seem,” said the man. “He’s an old friend. I’m sure he’ll come back.”
“I hope so,” said Tegan, and this time they did let her pass. They seemed to linger as she walked away, and she turned to look back at them both – Jack, the man she had pushed over, and his friend with the leather jacket and big ears – but neither appeared to move.
After a minute, they departed from her mind. She had to get money from somewhere, she had to get a taxi home, and right now she wasn’t all that sure she was going to stay pulled together.
“Well?” asked Jack, as the TARDIS door closed behind them both. “Was she the one? Who was she, anyway?”
“Her name was – is – Tegan Jovanka,” the Doctor replied. “And no, she’s not the one. She was picked up and met by someone, but not by me.”
“Her friend the cricketer?”
“That’s right. Well, that’s one person eliminated.”
“Any luck?” Rose called out. They were walking down one of the long ship corridors, and turned into the kitchen to meet her. Perched on a high stool, she had spread all her books over the counter and seemed to be in the middle of a marathon highlighting session.
“Not really,” Jack reported, “but only because the Doctor’s totally useless.”
“I am not,” said the Doctor mildly. “I’m just not perfect; I’m only human. Except I’m not, of course, but the point stands.”
“You might as well be,” said Rose thoughtfully. “You don’t look any different from us.”
“I have two hearts,” he reminded her.
“Big deal,” she said, grinning. “Now are you two going to leave me in peace or what?”
“We’re going, we’re going.” The Doctor grinned; he and Jack both raised their hands in defeat and backed slowly out.
“So,” said Jack, as they moved away from the library. “I guess our Rose didn’t go to a school where they teach Time Lord Biology 101.”
“Guess not,” said the Doctor, in a credible attempt at Jack’s accent. He took his sonic screwdriver out of his pocket and began tossing it from hand to hand.
“But,” continued Jack, undaunted, “I did.”
The Doctor didn’t look up. “Really.”
“Really.” Jack smiled. “It was taught as mythology, yeah, but we were taught it all the same. I know all about your squidgy bits, Doctor.”
“Do you now?” The Doctor’s own smile was enigmatic, daring Jack to go on further. There was silence for a moment as they carried on towards the console room.
“That man we met today,” said Jack suddenly. “Nice guy, I thought.”
“Which man would that be?”
“Oh, you know the one. Young, pretty, blonde. Looked almost human.”
The Doctor was still playing with the screwdriver. “Yes,” he murmured non-commitally, and Jack lost his patience with the game.
“Come on, Doctor,” he said softly. “I saw the way you were looking at him. I know that look. Two reasons I can think of for it. Either you shagged him, or...”
The Doctor said nothing, his expression carefully neutral.
“Oh, okay,” Jack said. “You did shag him.” Off the Doctor’s look, he continued, happily, “You shagged him carefully... thoroughly... passionately... up against a wall... in public... twice...”
“
All right!” the Doctor snapped, and Jack grinned. “All right, all right. I admit it.”
“That you shagged him?”
“No!” The Doctor frowned. “You’re much too clever for your own good, Captain. But this time, you are right. Now can we change the subject?”
“Just one last question.” Jack was serious again. “Which was he and which are you?”
“Fifth and ninth, respectively. And I hope for your sake you’re not planning to breathe a word of this to Rose.”
“I wasn’t going to, but why – don’t you think she’d understand?” Jack was genuinely curious.
“I don’t think she needs to know unless it becomes relevant.” The Doctor’s face had taken on the set, hardened expression that always reminded Jack that the only reason he was alive was the Doctor’s whim.
“Yeah, okay.” Jack nodded. They had reached the console room now, and the Doctor moved off in the direction of one of the over-reaching girders, grabbing a torch off the floor. Jack was content to sit beneath the control panel and pull out some fibre-optic cables. He squinted at them. No two of them looked like they’d come from the same century.
“Did you ever think about it?” he called to where the Doctor was perched.
“Think about what?” The Doctor didn’t turn round, focusing the torch beam on one particular rivet in the girder.
“Shagging him!”
The sonic screwdriver made an interesting clanging sound as it hit the wall just above Jack’s head.
The console room was dimmer than usual as Jack and Rose entered it, both rubbing their eyes. The Doctor was a silhouette in the doorframe, standing out against a grey landscape beyond. “I remembered,” he said quietly.
Rose wanted to say it was about time, but she couldn’t muster up the energy to talk; instead, she silently followed the Doctor outside, Jack right behind her. Her feet crunched into sand, and she looked up and around her at strange, bleak emptiness. The police box was the only thing for miles with any appreciable colour, sitting like a squat monument on a long, curving beach. There was water, lapping in and out, but no sign of life and Rose thought she had never heard such thick silence. Only the wind, occasionally stirring the sea into tiny wavelets, made any sound at all.
When the Doctor spoke, his voice was almost deadened. “Welcome to the end of the world.”
You’ve said that before, Rose wanted to say, but her voice still wouldn’t work. With a start she realised it wasn’t just her own headache that was causing the difficulty; the air around her somehow ate up any sound she made.
“The atmosphere is going,” said Jack, and his voice was quiet, too. “The air is too rarefied to carry sound.”
The Doctor nodded. “Come on.”
The three of them started walking along the curve of the bay, but neither horizon seemed to move. Everything about the panorama was featureless and flat, and after some minutes Rose realised why. There were no shadows. Even Jack and the Doctor, walking on either side of her, seemed to obstruct no light at all. She looked up, and the Doctor followed her gaze.
“The planet’s orbit has changed,” he explained. Close to, she could just about hear him clearly. “Like it used to be with Earth’s moon, the same face of the planet is turned towards the star at all times, and the light always comes from directly overhead. Hence no shadows.” He waved an expansive arm. “Not a top holiday destination.”
“Where is this?” Rose asked nervously.
He glanced at her. “No-one lives here now, so it doesn’t have a name. All life is gone, dead. When there were people living here, they named it Earth.”
Rose shivered. “Oh.”
After that she couldn’t bring herself to talk any more; the lack of oxygen was beginning to make her head heavy, and while he showed no sign of it, it was probably getting to the Doctor, too.
They carried on walking.
Suddenly, Jack shouted out: “Doctor!”
Rose looked up in the direction he was pointing. Down below the water, some distance away, she could see movement. There was something – someone – there.
Beside her, the Doctor began to run. Their hurrying footsteps rose sand which drifted down, perhaps the only disturbance to the even surface in centuries, and the figure near the sea turned round to look at them. As they got closer, Rose could see he was human, staring in their direction with mouth dropping open. There was an unidentified mass next to him, which gradually resolved into a machine of some sort, made up of gleaming metal bars and cogwheels, with a leather saddle somewhere near the middle.
The Doctor skidded to a stop, with Jack and Rose close behind. “Hi,” he said cheerfully. “I’m the Doctor. That’s Captain Jack over there, and this is Rose. We’ve come to take you home.”
The man stared at the three of them for a moment, looking rather as though he was about to cry. At the last moment, he brought himself to speak. “Who,” he croaked, “who... how...?”
The Doctor sat down with a flump on the sand and motioned the others to join him. “I was meant to come and get you,” he said, still cheerfully. “It slipped my mind for a while, but I’m here now. Come on now, your machine’s not taking you anywhere.”
Rose had been peering curiously at it. It gave off an aura of precise engineering, but it was clearly damaged; a lever near the front had snapped off, leaving an ugly break in the metal.
The man nodded. “You have another machine?” he asked, his voice rusty from disuse and the effect of the thin air.
“Something like that.” The Doctor sat still for a minute, then bounced to his feet. “Jack and I will carry this back, if you like.” He rested his hand on the machine, but its owner shook his head.
“Leave it.” His voice carried authority, and Rose decided that whatever and whoever he was, he must have been something important at one time. “I am tired of my folly. I will come with you.”
The Doctor nodded. “Good man.”
They left the machine behind them to rest on the sand. The walk back to the TARDIS seemed to be shorter than the outward journey had been. The Doctor and the stranger were a little way in front, and Jack whispered in Rose’s ear, “Who is this guy?”
Rose shook her head. “No idea.”
Shortly afterwards, they were back in the TARDIS, and in the electric light and sudden presence of shadow, Rose studied their visitor more closely. He was taller than he looked, walking with a stoop, with steady, expressive grey eyes. In a way, he reminded her of the Doctor.
“Next stop, home.” The Doctor grinned and began the dematerialisation. For a stupid moment, Rose thought about London in 2005, but as the noise of the plunging rotor faded away and the Doctor moved to open the door, she thought better of it.
They were in a laboratory. It was still and quiet, with little furniture except for a bench covered with papers and various scientific instruments, but there was activity beyond the window, people passing by on a busy street lit with gas lamps. The Doctor looked around, satisfied. “London, 1898. August. You’ve been gone for three years. Better think up some sort of explanation, now you don’t have the machine any more.”
“The machine is rusting on the sands at the end of the world, and long may it be so,” said the stranger happily, rubbing his hands together. “Thank you, Doctor. I am eternally in your debt.” He paused. “I shall, of course, speak of this to no-one.”
“And thank you for that. Enjoy your life, sir.” The Doctor grinned, and turned to Jack and Rose. “Shall we depart?”
They nodded dumbly. With a last wave, the Doctor led them back into the TARDIS. After a moment, the Victorian laboratory began to fade from the viewscreen. “Well,” said the Doctor. “Nothing like a job well done, that’s what I always say.”
“And that was nothing like a job well done,” Jack said sharply. “Doctor, what just happened? Who was that?”
The Doctor looked pensive. “He never had a name, or if he did I never knew it.”
“It must be contagious,” muttered Rose under her breath.
“No,” – the Doctor was smiling broadly – “to me, he was always the Time Traveller.”
“Your sex life never ceases to amaze me,” muttered Jack.
The Doctor didn’t hear. “And now, thanks to us, he won’t die alone at the end of everything, the winter at the end of the world. Isn’t that a job well done? Even if it did take me a while to get round to it,” he added ruefully.
Rose couldn’t help grinning back at him. Moving quickly, she went across to the hat stand and leaned down to grab her bag from beneath it. “Here’s your trigger,” she said, smiling. “Though I did think it was made up.”
The Doctor took the book from her. “H.G. Wells, The Time Machine.” He paused. “What did you have to compare it with, in your exam?”
“Utopia by Thomas More.”
“Ah, that was made up. At least I hope so.” He sat down in the chair and swung around.
“Now what?” asked Jack after a minute. “Now you’ve finished dragging us round the universe running errands, that is.”
The Doctor leaned back. “One more impossible thing before breakfast,” he said.
Jack wouldn’t have thought you could have fitted two humans and a Time Lord behind a twenty-first century wheelie bin, but with the Doctor all things were possible. Still, it was a bit of a squash, and his heels were resting on the wall with Rose half on top of him and the Doctor wedged in front of her, mostly pressed against the back of the bin. They’d been there ten minutes and Jack was beginning to lose all sensation in his feet.
The Doctor leaned forward, nearly causing all three of them to fall sideways, and muttered, “Quarry sighted, nine o’clock.”
Rose peered to her left, and Jack tried to look over her shoulder. “That’s him,” she reported.
“Sure?”
“Sure."
“Go, go, go!” whispered Jack in his best SWAT team impression, and Rose leapt to her feet. Unfortunately, her foot caught the Doctor and sent him rolling backwards into Jack. They hit the wall behind them with identical groans as Rose collected herself, took a deep breath and walked forwards.
“Excuse me!” she called.
“What’s going on?” asked Jack after a moment. It was hard to talk with most of the Doctor’s weight on top of his chest.
“Dunno,” muttered the Doctor, and then Jack felt him freeze. They both recognised the unmistakeable sound of a postman falling off his bicycle.
Slowly, Jack shifted the Doctor off him and peered round the edge of the wheelie bin. Rose was busy in conversation with the postman, waving her hands around to make her point. “I’m really sorry,” she was saying. “I didn’t mean to make you fall off like that.. So sorry.”
The postman had just about recovered, getting to his feet. “It’s all right, love. You gave me a bit of a shock, that’s all.” He gazed in the direction of the bin. “Those blokes weren’t bothering you, were they?”
“What? Oh, no.” Rose smiled beatifically and Jack and the Doctor exchanged glances. “Um... do you have any post for me?”
The postman frowned at her. “I’m not supposed to do that, miss. How do I know you’re who you say you are, mmm?”
“Oh, please.” Rose leaned in and said confidentially, “It’s results day, you know.”
“Well...” He was wavering, and finally reached into his bag and rummaged. Rose stood there, not tapping her feet, until he handed her a brown envelope. “There you go, love. Hope they’re what you wanted.”
With that, he limped off, wheeling the bike in the direction of the closest block of flats. “I’m sorry!” Rose called after him. He didn’t turn round.
When they were quite sure he was gone, Jack and the Doctor emerged painfully from their hiding-place. “Tell me again why we did that,” said Jack conversationally.
“I had to get to him first,” Rose explained, “because I already know I did, ‘cause I know I didn’t get my A-level results in the post in 2004. D’you see?”
There was a long pause before they both nodded. “We’d better get out before your mum sees us,” the Doctor added as the three of them started walking back to the TARDIS.
“Doesn’t matter if she does, surely?” Jack asked. “She hasn’t met you yet.”
“That has nothing to do with it.” The Doctor strode onwards, leather jacket swinging behind him. “Rose, aren’t you going to open that?”
Rose’s thumbnails were already slicing into the envelope. She pulled out the single sheet of paper inside and unfolded it. After a second she looked up at Jack, then at the Doctor.
Jack grinned. “Where next?”
The Doctor said, “Wait and see.”
At that time of year, and of century, and in that part of the world, the Doctor explained, they made good champagne.
When they left, Rose took with her the cork, a ticket stub, a provisional statement of results, a pressed rose and the scent of summer, sparkling pink and lingering in her hair.
finis
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on 2007-04-18 08:50 am (UTC)no subject
on 2007-04-18 09:27 pm (UTC)