Unfinished Business (1/1)
Nov. 9th, 2010 01:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
amberfocusTitle: Unfinished Business (1/1)
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
amberfocus
Fandom: Doctor Who/Heroes Crossover
Characters/Pairings: Doctor/Rose, Claude Rains
Genre: Action/adventure, angst, fluff, romance
Rating: Teen
Betas:amyo67, jeprdyfrndly, thetesh
Summary: 86 years after Journey's End, and ten years after the death of Ten2, an immortal Rose seeks the help of the invisible man to find her way back to her original universe and the original Doctor.
A/N: Written for challenge 56 at![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
then_theres_us, which is to do a crossover fic using one of the characters from any tv show or movie played by Chris, Billie, David, or Matt. I used Claude from Heroes, played by Christopher Eccleston.
The moment Claude meets her he knows having anything to do with her will be a big mistake. He has lived a very long time and he knows how to read people in a way that those without abilities seldom ever can. Every instinct save one is telling him to run from the young woman. It has been so long though since he’s felt that other instinct stirring, the instinct to jump in—to do, to be, to live, to know her—that he ignores everything else.
“Rose Tyler,” she says shortly, introducing herself with a calculated self-assurance he isn’t sure she really feels. There’s something in the way she stares at him, as if she wants to know him, as if she already does, that unsettles him. He feels as if she can see beneath his disguising mask of unkempt facial hair and dirt, to the man he is hidden deep underneath and he doesn’t like it, not one bit.
“That’s nice,” he replies keeping his name to himself, but holding out his hand. It’s a test, really, to see if she’ll take it, this well-groomed, no-nonsense girl, who wears her black leather jacket like it’s armor. It’s been a couple days since he’s had a bath and he knows the back of his hand is dirty. She shakes it though with quiet dignity, surprising him, testing his grip. She’s strong. Obviously there’s more to Rose Tyler than meets the eye.
“Not particularly,” she replies, “but nice is overrated.” She’s British, he realizes, the longer she speaks. He’s been away so long he’d forgotten what the accent sounded like here in the harshness of New York City.
She lets go of his hand and he watches to see whether or not she’s going to wipe off her hand on her jeans. She doesn’t. “You’re Claude?” she asks, but it’s almost like she doesn’t need to, like she knows who he is. Her eyes bore into his until he nods. “Good. I need your help.”
Always with the people wanting something from him. “And what do I get from this?” he asks. He could walk away. It would be so easy to walk away. All he has to do is turn invisible and he’s gone. Yet, she found him anyway, despite his abilities. He might as well see what she has to say.
Rose’s expression is blank. She throws a bag at him and he snatches it out of the air, opens it and pours the gemstones into his hand. Rubies, sapphires, emeralds and, yes, twelve diamonds, all exquisitely cut. He whistles appreciatively. One doesn’t find stones like this just anywhere anymore. So much has been traded off world that the few gems still in circulation on Earth are hoarded closely amongst certain circles.
“I’m looking for a man,” she says.
“You found me,” he replies. Her eyes narrow and he can tell he’s far too cheeky for her liking.
“A specific man.”
“I can get as specific as you want. I’m very good with specific.” She doesn’t even crack a smile and he wonders if his charm has rusted in the last few decades. He’s had rare occasion to use it after all.
She ignores his words, continues on her own path. “That’s just the retainer,” she says. “You’ll get the rest when you help me get my man.”
“Oh, no, no, no,” he says. “I work alone. I can’t be babysitting some little girl.”
“I am,” she says tightly, “one hundred and six years old. And I can take care of myself.”
He doesn’t even blink at her admission of age. So that’s why he didn’t turn tail and run when she found him. She has abilities. She’s like him. Doesn’t age. Or maybe she’s like that little girl Peter was so fond of, the immortal one, who couldn’t be killed. Claire something or other. He’d gotten a blood transfusion from her when he’d been shot once. He’d never aged a day since.
His eyes sweep over her once more and that strange stirring in his chest begins again. He likes what he sees. More than likes. She looks young and beautiful and her amber eyes are harder than any woman’s Claude’s ever seen as she looks at him. A long blonde pony-tail hangs to her bum and when she catches him looking, both at her hair and at her bum, it doesn’t even disconcert her. He drags his eyes back up her curves and tells himself to focus on her face.
“I’m going to have to see for myself that you know what you’re doing before I’ll take you out in the field with me.”
“Got a place?” she asks.
“Yeah. Come here.” She follows him warily down an alley and he puts his hand against a normal-looking piece of wall. The brick shimmers and disappears and she follows him into the recess and down the hallway to a lift. She steps in behind him and he takes a control out of his pocket, pressing a button and then slipping it into a slot on the panel before them. The doors close and the lift rises swiftly to the top floor.
Rose follows him out into the enclosure on the roof. A force-field of some sort shimmers above, between them and the open sky. Carrier pigeons line one wall.
“What is this place?” she asks.
“Below used to be part of a government installation. Part of the American branch of Torchwood.”
“They were taken out over a century ago,” she tells him.
“True. But the government never found this facility. It was too well hidden. Long after they stopped signing our paychecks my team maintained this place. Now it’s just me.”
“I remember,” Rose says. At his look she explains, “I worked for a different branch of Torchwood. It’s how I knew about you. I kept some files in a secure location. In case.”
“So you’re immortal?” he says bluntly, no longer willing to beat around the bush. One hundred and six years old in a twenty-five-year-olds’ body. He needs to know her exact abilities.
“Not exactly. I just have issues staying dead,” she says.
“Meaning?”
“I heal.”
“Ah.”
They are silent for a while, each studying the other and then Rose breaks it. “My sources say I can trust you.”
“Never do that,” he tells her, almost snapping. “Never trust a man who can disappear on you.”
She nods. “Should have already learned that lesson,” she says dryly.
“I’d hope so at your age.”
She doesn’t reply as he leads her to the firing range and hands her a gun with a silencer on it. He doesn’t want to scare the pigeons. She’s a good shot, this girl. Nine times out of ten she hits the target’s heart. The tenth time she hits the brain. She’s making a point and he knows he doesn’t need to test her any further than that. He’s confident Rose can handle a firearm. Now he just needs a little more information.
“This person you want me to track down for you--.”
“With me,” she interrupts.
“With you,” he repeats. “Who is he to you?”
“That’s not important,” she says dismissively.
“Yeah, it is. Especially if you insist on doing this together. I need to know what kind of emotional involvement you have in this. It tells me where your head is going to be. You said a man so let’s start with the obvious. Is he family to you?”
Rose is quiet for a long time and he can see her weighing his question in her mind, calculations being made in the depths of her eyes. “Not anymore,” she says finally.
“Do you love him?” Claude asks.
Again she takes longer than he likes to answer. “I don’t know,” she finally says.
“But you did…once. Or something very like love,” Claude says adding up the pieces of her long silences.
“Once he was everything to me,” she finally admits.
“And now?”
“That’s what I need to find out. We have…unfinished business. Things were left unsaid that needed to be said. I have to have answers.”
“And will that make you stupid?” he asks her.
“Not enough to matter,” she says and he senses truth in her words.
“This man…is he like you? Is he like us?” he asks.
“He’s not like us. He’s not like anyone human.”
“Then how do you know he’s still alive?” Claude asks.
“I know,” she replies.
He can tell that she does. He wants to ask another question, but at the closed off look on her face he stops himself. Whatever this man did to hurt the woman before him, he’s not sure he wants to know.
Rose pulls a set of blueprints out of the long thin tube that rests on her back, slung over it like a quiver for arrows. She’s told this Claude that she needs to find a man, but the truth of the matter is that she needs to find the dimension cannon so she can find that man, find the Doctor. The original Doctor, her mind automatically corrects. It’s been ten years since her Doctor, her husband, died and she can’t let go. Not completely. Not when he told her to find him so she wouldn’t have to be alone.
It took ten years to forgive him for that and realize he hadn’t said it because their love and their life hadn’t meant anything, but because he didn’t want her drifting like she had been these last few years without him. She has made her peace with it and knows that she has to try. She has nothing left in this world. She’d had no children, and Tony’s great grandkids were scattered about the globe. At least those who hadn’t gone off world.
It had taken her a few months to track down the location of the cannon, she wasn’t sure it still existed, but once she’d learned it did, she hadn’t been able to get near it. It had taken substantial bribes to get a hold of the blueprints to the building it was housed in and she couldn’t be sure they were as up to date as they needed to be, but right now they were all she had.
Claude moves to look over her shoulder and her entire body tenses at his proximity. It is hard being here, seeing this man. She’d had a photo, old, slightly out of focus, but it had been enough for her to know that the man resembled her first Doctor. What she hadn’t been able to see in the blurry picture was that the man was nearly a doppelganger. Cut the hair, shave the face, and he could be him, this universe’s version, anyway, but human. Or human plus. She needs to remember that. He was dangerous, as dangerous as any human with abilities. And even more dangerous to her heart if she let herself fall back on instinct and believe she could trust him just because she had once trusted that face on another man.
“I need you to break into this building,” Rose says. “There’s something in the vault I need. An object.”
“I thought you said you were looking for a man.”
“I am,” Rose responds impatiently. “But I need this to get to him.”
“I recognize this building. It belongs to the Company,” he says.
“And you used to work for them,” Rose says.
“Not by choice,” Claude says bitterly.
“Doesn’t matter. It means you know the building. You know how to avoid the security,” she replies.
“I think things have changed in the last several decades,” he answers.
“Not as much as you’d think,” Rose says. “Besides, with your gift, you ought to be able to avoid any of the changes.”
“I thought you wanted to do this together.”
“I do. I’ll be the distraction,” Rose tells him. “I’m good at that.”
“I’ll bet you are.”
Rose frowns. He’s eyeing her up again. If this is him flirting, he’s very bad at it, but then he’s a recluse. He isn’t around people more than he can help. Doesn’t matter if he is flirting, though. Doesn’t matter if he’s her type. He’s not the man she remembers and he’s not the man she wants—doesn’t want—wants.
“When do you want to do this?” he asks.
“Two days from now,” she says.
“Not much time to plan,” he complains.
“I’m more of a wing and a prayer sort of girl,” Rose replies.
“Figures.”
“Do you want this job or not?”
“You said this was just a retainer?” he says, jingling the pouch of jewels instead of answering her question.
“I did. It’s ten percent.” Her eyes narrow and his widen.
“Fantastic. I’ll do it,” he says.
“I thought you would.” It’s his turn to narrow his eyes, but he says nothing more and Rose is relieved. This is hard enough as it is without him sounding exactly like his double.
It shouldn’t be this easy, Claude thinks two days later, as they creep through the building. He keeps thinking it’s a trap, that at any moment now alarms will blare and strobes will flash and he’ll be right back in the custody of the Company. No matter how many times it’s been disbanded, it’s always risen from the ashes again in some new form. This form is apparently very lax on security.
Rose stuns the one guard they run into before he can trigger a response and all in all he feels rather useless. He watches her rappel down an air duct then clumsily follows her down, wondering why he doesn’t turn invisible and just use the stairs. He’s an old man despite still looking forty and he ought to know better, but he doesn’t want Rose to think he can’t do anything she can do.
He looks on as she jams the lock to the outside door and then puts a small amount of plastic explosive against the vault door. “When this blows, the alarms will trigger. Just make sure I get in and then go invisible and get yourself the hell out.”
“What about you?” he asks.
“Once I have the device, I can get out on my own,” she tells him.
“You’re sure?” She nods. “What about my payment?” he asks. He feels proud of himself for asking after her safety first. Two days ago he wouldn’t have cared enough about anyone to have done that. Two days spent in her presence has changed everything for him.
Rose digs in her pocket and hands him a larger pouch. He doesn’t insult her by opening it to examine its contents, simply shoves it into his jacket instead. He watches as she sticks a fuse into the explosive and backs away, trailing it across the room. When he just stands there she grabs his hand and pulls him to the opposite wall. They crouch behind a desk together and he can smell the faint scent of her shampoo. After a moment he identifies it as strawberries, a fruit that’s been extinct for nigh on twenty years.
Rose reaches into a different pocket and pulls out a silver lighter. She lights the end of the long fuse. She watches as the flame licks its way across the floor and up the wall then puts her head down and covers her ears. He follows suit and seconds later a violent bang rings out. As the smoke clears Rose jumps to her feet and dashes to the door of the vault. Sirens shriek and lights flash and as he climbs to his feet he can’t help but watch her manhandle the door open with admiration.
Despite himself he follows her. He should get out, but something makes him go forward instead. “What are you doing?” she says as she sees him beside her. “Get out while you can.”
“I promised I’d keep you safe,” he says. He hadn’t, in fact, promised any such thing, but something inside him says maybe he’s keeping a promise for another man.
The look Rose gives him is soft and he’s not seen softness from her since he met her two days ago. He loses a piece of his heart to that look and it’s painful and beautiful all at once. He shouldn’t ache for a woman he doesn’t even know.
“I want you safe,” she says, hesitating. It’s almost like there should be more words that follow that sentence. It hangs incomplete in the air. She stares at him like he’s someone important, like once upon a time he might have been her world. Her composure has cracked and the urge to do something about it almost overwhelms him, but he’s locked, frozen under her gaze.
Sudden pounding on the outside door breaks that lock and she’s flushing and glancing away from him. She turns and moves quickly as something smashes against the outside door. They must have a battering ram. The lights go out and Rose pulls a torch from her capacious pockets. He’s starting to think they might be bigger on the inside than the outside.
She moves to the shelves with fluid grace and quickly sweeps them with the little light until she finds what she’s looking for. She examines the liquid crystal display on the front and then her fingers fly over the keypad.
“What are you doing?”
“Setting coordinates,” she says abruptly. She picks up the device and loops it over her neck from its strap. It looks like a giant gun and he wonders if it doubles as a weapon. “You need to get out of here.”
“I’m not leaving you,” he shouts over the increasingly loud sirens.
“No, you don’t get it. I’m leaving you. This thing, it’ll transport me out of here. It’ll transport me back to where I can find him. Now go. I can’t have you standing this close to me when I transfer,” she says, “or you’ll come too.”
“Maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing,” he says.
Her surprise is clear and for the first time since they met she smiles at him. She reaches for his hand and when he gives it to her she squeezes it. “Maybe in another life, but,” she shakes her head, “I’m going to a different world. A different universe. Back where I belong. It’s different from here. They don’t have people like you there, people with abilities. You wouldn’t fit there and I wouldn’t be able to protect you.”
“I don’t need protecting.”
Her free hand reaches up to cradle his face and he leans into the unexpected tenderness. “But you do,” she says.
He can’t help himself. He dips his head and meets her lips and she doesn’t seem in the least surprised. She kisses him back gently and with ineffable tenderness and then she steps away. “I’m sorry there wasn’t enough time,” she tells him. He nods and turns invisible and sees the solitary tear that slides down her face.
The thing in her arms begins to whine and he stares at it as it generates a bright blue energy bubble. “Go!” Rose shouts as the door splinters and men rush into the room. The sizzling scent of ozone fills the air and bright green beams of light flash from the security team’s weapons. Rose disappears in a clap of thunder and blue light and he sneaks out behind the stunned security team.
He makes good his escape, his heart pounding all the while and slowly walks home. He’s a little bit sad and he hopes that Rose makes it wherever she needs to go, hopes that she finds the man she’s searching for, and hopes that whoever he is, he’ll wipe that lonely, aching look from her face. He touches his lips and tries not to think of what might have been.
The dimension cannon is truer in its aim than Rose ever could have hoped for. Rose laughs as she recognizes the inside of the TARDIS, the only place it is truly safe for her to have materialized in this universe. The Doctor, her Doctor, had claimed he’d tweaked the device back before it had been confiscated, but she’d never been entirely sure.
Small differences infringe on her senses. It’s orange now instead of blue-green and there’s glass and steel where coral once stood, but it’s the TARDIS. She recognizes it in the underlying hum of the ship’s cheery hello, a heart similar to her own welcoming her home.
A man appears at a full on run a moment later and slips and slides in his socks across the glass flooring to the console. He’s different than she expected, but it’s been a long time. Regeneration was always a possibility. He’s dressed in tweed, a light blue shirt and dark blue braces and bow tie. Jeans complete the eccentric look. His hair is soft, brown, floppy, unkempt, and longish, his eyes are—she squints—green and he’s tall, not quite as skinny. His face is a little odd, his nose a bit large, but he’s not unattractive. Her heart recognizes him even as her eyes continue to catalogue the differences.
“What is it, girl?” he asks the console.
“Doctor? What’s wrong?” Rose lifts her eyes as a flame-haired girl in nightgown and bunny slippers and a tall, sandy-haired bloke in black silk pajamas appear in the entryway above, peering down into the console room. They’re holding hands and wearing wedding rings and Rose smiles.
“Amy, Rory, go back to bed,” he says. The girl looks mutinous but the man pulls her back out of the way mumbling something about it still being their honeymoon and the girl allows herself to be pulled away.
“Doctor,” Rose says softly and his eyes flash towards the ramp where she stands.
He doesn’t say anything for a long moment, just stares at her in surprise and a sort of shattered awe. “Am I dreaming?” he asks. She shakes her head no and he leaps around the console, his gangly body moving before his mind even has time to catch up, and he shoves the cannon off over her head. It clunks to the floor as he pulls her into his arms. “Rose,” he says and the heartbreak of a thousand lifetimes fills his voice. “Rose.”
She melts into him. She can’t stand unyielding in the face of all that emotion. She feels tears, hers, his, both, she doesn’t know and she doesn’t care. She didn’t think she still loved him, but she does. Her hands are in his hair and it’s as lovely as it ever was before. “Rose.” He keeps saying her name, stroking her back, her hair, her arms, like he can’t believe she’s real. “Rose.”
“Doctor,” she says and she laughs. She laughs and she knows it’s going to be okay. No matter what she was expecting, no matter how much she’s been hurt, she’s going to be okay.
He pulls back and meets her eyes. “I have missed you,” he says.
“Me, too.”
“Was it a good life?” he asks her and there’s something almost pleading in his tone.
She smiles. “The best,” she says.
“But you came back.”
“He died, about ten years ago. And I…didn’t. I don’t. I can’t die,” she told him. “He wanted me to find you again. He didn’t want…either of us to be alone.”
He smiles a half smile. “Can you forgive me?” he asks.
“Yes,” she says, realizing it’s true as she says it. It had been the best life and she’d not trade it for anything, but she’s so glad to be back. So glad.
“We’ll have to get to know each other all over again,” he says. “I’m a new man, new teeth again,” he says and she laughs.
“New everything,” she says.
“Same hearts.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes.” He kisses her then. It’s chaste and almost prim, but it’s filled with so much love and honest emotion that it overwhelms her. He hugs her again afterwards and she sighs.
“You’ve redecorated,” she says inanely.
“Your room’s still the same. The only thing she didn’t change. I didn’t want her to.” He takes her hand and leads her up the ladder and down the corridor to her room. Everything is incredibly familiar even though it’s been a bit more than three quarters of a century since she’s seen it. “Why don’t you get settled in and then we’ll talk?” he says.
“Don’t leave.”
“Wasn’t planning on it. This time…this time, Rose, it really can be forever. If you want.”
She smiles at his shy hesitation. “I think I’d like that,” she says.
He laughs and it sounds almost disused, like he hasn’t made that particular sound in a long, long time. She joins in and he hugs her again and they spin and they spin until they fall down into a tangled heap of limbs and bodies on the floor. Words that need saying finally get said and Rose knows with the surety of all that is right and true in the world that she made the right decision. She’s home, back where she belongs, and come hell or high water, she’ll never leave again.
Author:
amberfocusFandom: Doctor Who/Heroes Crossover
Characters/Pairings: Doctor/Rose, Claude Rains
Genre: Action/adventure, angst, fluff, romance
Rating: Teen
Betas:
amyo67, jeprdyfrndly, theteshSummary: 86 years after Journey's End, and ten years after the death of Ten2, an immortal Rose seeks the help of the invisible man to find her way back to her original universe and the original Doctor.
A/N: Written for challenge 56 at
then_theres_us, which is to do a crossover fic using one of the characters from any tv show or movie played by Chris, Billie, David, or Matt. I used Claude from Heroes, played by Christopher Eccleston.Unfinished Business
The moment Claude meets her he knows having anything to do with her will be a big mistake. He has lived a very long time and he knows how to read people in a way that those without abilities seldom ever can. Every instinct save one is telling him to run from the young woman. It has been so long though since he’s felt that other instinct stirring, the instinct to jump in—to do, to be, to live, to know her—that he ignores everything else.
“Rose Tyler,” she says shortly, introducing herself with a calculated self-assurance he isn’t sure she really feels. There’s something in the way she stares at him, as if she wants to know him, as if she already does, that unsettles him. He feels as if she can see beneath his disguising mask of unkempt facial hair and dirt, to the man he is hidden deep underneath and he doesn’t like it, not one bit.
“That’s nice,” he replies keeping his name to himself, but holding out his hand. It’s a test, really, to see if she’ll take it, this well-groomed, no-nonsense girl, who wears her black leather jacket like it’s armor. It’s been a couple days since he’s had a bath and he knows the back of his hand is dirty. She shakes it though with quiet dignity, surprising him, testing his grip. She’s strong. Obviously there’s more to Rose Tyler than meets the eye.
“Not particularly,” she replies, “but nice is overrated.” She’s British, he realizes, the longer she speaks. He’s been away so long he’d forgotten what the accent sounded like here in the harshness of New York City.
She lets go of his hand and he watches to see whether or not she’s going to wipe off her hand on her jeans. She doesn’t. “You’re Claude?” she asks, but it’s almost like she doesn’t need to, like she knows who he is. Her eyes bore into his until he nods. “Good. I need your help.”
Always with the people wanting something from him. “And what do I get from this?” he asks. He could walk away. It would be so easy to walk away. All he has to do is turn invisible and he’s gone. Yet, she found him anyway, despite his abilities. He might as well see what she has to say.
Rose’s expression is blank. She throws a bag at him and he snatches it out of the air, opens it and pours the gemstones into his hand. Rubies, sapphires, emeralds and, yes, twelve diamonds, all exquisitely cut. He whistles appreciatively. One doesn’t find stones like this just anywhere anymore. So much has been traded off world that the few gems still in circulation on Earth are hoarded closely amongst certain circles.
“I’m looking for a man,” she says.
“You found me,” he replies. Her eyes narrow and he can tell he’s far too cheeky for her liking.
“A specific man.”
“I can get as specific as you want. I’m very good with specific.” She doesn’t even crack a smile and he wonders if his charm has rusted in the last few decades. He’s had rare occasion to use it after all.
She ignores his words, continues on her own path. “That’s just the retainer,” she says. “You’ll get the rest when you help me get my man.”
“Oh, no, no, no,” he says. “I work alone. I can’t be babysitting some little girl.”
“I am,” she says tightly, “one hundred and six years old. And I can take care of myself.”
He doesn’t even blink at her admission of age. So that’s why he didn’t turn tail and run when she found him. She has abilities. She’s like him. Doesn’t age. Or maybe she’s like that little girl Peter was so fond of, the immortal one, who couldn’t be killed. Claire something or other. He’d gotten a blood transfusion from her when he’d been shot once. He’d never aged a day since.
His eyes sweep over her once more and that strange stirring in his chest begins again. He likes what he sees. More than likes. She looks young and beautiful and her amber eyes are harder than any woman’s Claude’s ever seen as she looks at him. A long blonde pony-tail hangs to her bum and when she catches him looking, both at her hair and at her bum, it doesn’t even disconcert her. He drags his eyes back up her curves and tells himself to focus on her face.
“I’m going to have to see for myself that you know what you’re doing before I’ll take you out in the field with me.”
“Got a place?” she asks.
“Yeah. Come here.” She follows him warily down an alley and he puts his hand against a normal-looking piece of wall. The brick shimmers and disappears and she follows him into the recess and down the hallway to a lift. She steps in behind him and he takes a control out of his pocket, pressing a button and then slipping it into a slot on the panel before them. The doors close and the lift rises swiftly to the top floor.
Rose follows him out into the enclosure on the roof. A force-field of some sort shimmers above, between them and the open sky. Carrier pigeons line one wall.
“What is this place?” she asks.
“Below used to be part of a government installation. Part of the American branch of Torchwood.”
“They were taken out over a century ago,” she tells him.
“True. But the government never found this facility. It was too well hidden. Long after they stopped signing our paychecks my team maintained this place. Now it’s just me.”
“I remember,” Rose says. At his look she explains, “I worked for a different branch of Torchwood. It’s how I knew about you. I kept some files in a secure location. In case.”
“So you’re immortal?” he says bluntly, no longer willing to beat around the bush. One hundred and six years old in a twenty-five-year-olds’ body. He needs to know her exact abilities.
“Not exactly. I just have issues staying dead,” she says.
“Meaning?”
“I heal.”
“Ah.”
They are silent for a while, each studying the other and then Rose breaks it. “My sources say I can trust you.”
“Never do that,” he tells her, almost snapping. “Never trust a man who can disappear on you.”
She nods. “Should have already learned that lesson,” she says dryly.
“I’d hope so at your age.”
She doesn’t reply as he leads her to the firing range and hands her a gun with a silencer on it. He doesn’t want to scare the pigeons. She’s a good shot, this girl. Nine times out of ten she hits the target’s heart. The tenth time she hits the brain. She’s making a point and he knows he doesn’t need to test her any further than that. He’s confident Rose can handle a firearm. Now he just needs a little more information.
“This person you want me to track down for you--.”
“With me,” she interrupts.
“With you,” he repeats. “Who is he to you?”
“That’s not important,” she says dismissively.
“Yeah, it is. Especially if you insist on doing this together. I need to know what kind of emotional involvement you have in this. It tells me where your head is going to be. You said a man so let’s start with the obvious. Is he family to you?”
Rose is quiet for a long time and he can see her weighing his question in her mind, calculations being made in the depths of her eyes. “Not anymore,” she says finally.
“Do you love him?” Claude asks.
Again she takes longer than he likes to answer. “I don’t know,” she finally says.
“But you did…once. Or something very like love,” Claude says adding up the pieces of her long silences.
“Once he was everything to me,” she finally admits.
“And now?”
“That’s what I need to find out. We have…unfinished business. Things were left unsaid that needed to be said. I have to have answers.”
“And will that make you stupid?” he asks her.
“Not enough to matter,” she says and he senses truth in her words.
“This man…is he like you? Is he like us?” he asks.
“He’s not like us. He’s not like anyone human.”
“Then how do you know he’s still alive?” Claude asks.
“I know,” she replies.
He can tell that she does. He wants to ask another question, but at the closed off look on her face he stops himself. Whatever this man did to hurt the woman before him, he’s not sure he wants to know.
Rose pulls a set of blueprints out of the long thin tube that rests on her back, slung over it like a quiver for arrows. She’s told this Claude that she needs to find a man, but the truth of the matter is that she needs to find the dimension cannon so she can find that man, find the Doctor. The original Doctor, her mind automatically corrects. It’s been ten years since her Doctor, her husband, died and she can’t let go. Not completely. Not when he told her to find him so she wouldn’t have to be alone.
It took ten years to forgive him for that and realize he hadn’t said it because their love and their life hadn’t meant anything, but because he didn’t want her drifting like she had been these last few years without him. She has made her peace with it and knows that she has to try. She has nothing left in this world. She’d had no children, and Tony’s great grandkids were scattered about the globe. At least those who hadn’t gone off world.
It had taken her a few months to track down the location of the cannon, she wasn’t sure it still existed, but once she’d learned it did, she hadn’t been able to get near it. It had taken substantial bribes to get a hold of the blueprints to the building it was housed in and she couldn’t be sure they were as up to date as they needed to be, but right now they were all she had.
Claude moves to look over her shoulder and her entire body tenses at his proximity. It is hard being here, seeing this man. She’d had a photo, old, slightly out of focus, but it had been enough for her to know that the man resembled her first Doctor. What she hadn’t been able to see in the blurry picture was that the man was nearly a doppelganger. Cut the hair, shave the face, and he could be him, this universe’s version, anyway, but human. Or human plus. She needs to remember that. He was dangerous, as dangerous as any human with abilities. And even more dangerous to her heart if she let herself fall back on instinct and believe she could trust him just because she had once trusted that face on another man.
“I need you to break into this building,” Rose says. “There’s something in the vault I need. An object.”
“I thought you said you were looking for a man.”
“I am,” Rose responds impatiently. “But I need this to get to him.”
“I recognize this building. It belongs to the Company,” he says.
“And you used to work for them,” Rose says.
“Not by choice,” Claude says bitterly.
“Doesn’t matter. It means you know the building. You know how to avoid the security,” she replies.
“I think things have changed in the last several decades,” he answers.
“Not as much as you’d think,” Rose says. “Besides, with your gift, you ought to be able to avoid any of the changes.”
“I thought you wanted to do this together.”
“I do. I’ll be the distraction,” Rose tells him. “I’m good at that.”
“I’ll bet you are.”
Rose frowns. He’s eyeing her up again. If this is him flirting, he’s very bad at it, but then he’s a recluse. He isn’t around people more than he can help. Doesn’t matter if he is flirting, though. Doesn’t matter if he’s her type. He’s not the man she remembers and he’s not the man she wants—doesn’t want—wants.
“When do you want to do this?” he asks.
“Two days from now,” she says.
“Not much time to plan,” he complains.
“I’m more of a wing and a prayer sort of girl,” Rose replies.
“Figures.”
“Do you want this job or not?”
“You said this was just a retainer?” he says, jingling the pouch of jewels instead of answering her question.
“I did. It’s ten percent.” Her eyes narrow and his widen.
“Fantastic. I’ll do it,” he says.
“I thought you would.” It’s his turn to narrow his eyes, but he says nothing more and Rose is relieved. This is hard enough as it is without him sounding exactly like his double.
It shouldn’t be this easy, Claude thinks two days later, as they creep through the building. He keeps thinking it’s a trap, that at any moment now alarms will blare and strobes will flash and he’ll be right back in the custody of the Company. No matter how many times it’s been disbanded, it’s always risen from the ashes again in some new form. This form is apparently very lax on security.
Rose stuns the one guard they run into before he can trigger a response and all in all he feels rather useless. He watches her rappel down an air duct then clumsily follows her down, wondering why he doesn’t turn invisible and just use the stairs. He’s an old man despite still looking forty and he ought to know better, but he doesn’t want Rose to think he can’t do anything she can do.
He looks on as she jams the lock to the outside door and then puts a small amount of plastic explosive against the vault door. “When this blows, the alarms will trigger. Just make sure I get in and then go invisible and get yourself the hell out.”
“What about you?” he asks.
“Once I have the device, I can get out on my own,” she tells him.
“You’re sure?” She nods. “What about my payment?” he asks. He feels proud of himself for asking after her safety first. Two days ago he wouldn’t have cared enough about anyone to have done that. Two days spent in her presence has changed everything for him.
Rose digs in her pocket and hands him a larger pouch. He doesn’t insult her by opening it to examine its contents, simply shoves it into his jacket instead. He watches as she sticks a fuse into the explosive and backs away, trailing it across the room. When he just stands there she grabs his hand and pulls him to the opposite wall. They crouch behind a desk together and he can smell the faint scent of her shampoo. After a moment he identifies it as strawberries, a fruit that’s been extinct for nigh on twenty years.
Rose reaches into a different pocket and pulls out a silver lighter. She lights the end of the long fuse. She watches as the flame licks its way across the floor and up the wall then puts her head down and covers her ears. He follows suit and seconds later a violent bang rings out. As the smoke clears Rose jumps to her feet and dashes to the door of the vault. Sirens shriek and lights flash and as he climbs to his feet he can’t help but watch her manhandle the door open with admiration.
Despite himself he follows her. He should get out, but something makes him go forward instead. “What are you doing?” she says as she sees him beside her. “Get out while you can.”
“I promised I’d keep you safe,” he says. He hadn’t, in fact, promised any such thing, but something inside him says maybe he’s keeping a promise for another man.
The look Rose gives him is soft and he’s not seen softness from her since he met her two days ago. He loses a piece of his heart to that look and it’s painful and beautiful all at once. He shouldn’t ache for a woman he doesn’t even know.
“I want you safe,” she says, hesitating. It’s almost like there should be more words that follow that sentence. It hangs incomplete in the air. She stares at him like he’s someone important, like once upon a time he might have been her world. Her composure has cracked and the urge to do something about it almost overwhelms him, but he’s locked, frozen under her gaze.
Sudden pounding on the outside door breaks that lock and she’s flushing and glancing away from him. She turns and moves quickly as something smashes against the outside door. They must have a battering ram. The lights go out and Rose pulls a torch from her capacious pockets. He’s starting to think they might be bigger on the inside than the outside.
She moves to the shelves with fluid grace and quickly sweeps them with the little light until she finds what she’s looking for. She examines the liquid crystal display on the front and then her fingers fly over the keypad.
“What are you doing?”
“Setting coordinates,” she says abruptly. She picks up the device and loops it over her neck from its strap. It looks like a giant gun and he wonders if it doubles as a weapon. “You need to get out of here.”
“I’m not leaving you,” he shouts over the increasingly loud sirens.
“No, you don’t get it. I’m leaving you. This thing, it’ll transport me out of here. It’ll transport me back to where I can find him. Now go. I can’t have you standing this close to me when I transfer,” she says, “or you’ll come too.”
“Maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing,” he says.
Her surprise is clear and for the first time since they met she smiles at him. She reaches for his hand and when he gives it to her she squeezes it. “Maybe in another life, but,” she shakes her head, “I’m going to a different world. A different universe. Back where I belong. It’s different from here. They don’t have people like you there, people with abilities. You wouldn’t fit there and I wouldn’t be able to protect you.”
“I don’t need protecting.”
Her free hand reaches up to cradle his face and he leans into the unexpected tenderness. “But you do,” she says.
He can’t help himself. He dips his head and meets her lips and she doesn’t seem in the least surprised. She kisses him back gently and with ineffable tenderness and then she steps away. “I’m sorry there wasn’t enough time,” she tells him. He nods and turns invisible and sees the solitary tear that slides down her face.
The thing in her arms begins to whine and he stares at it as it generates a bright blue energy bubble. “Go!” Rose shouts as the door splinters and men rush into the room. The sizzling scent of ozone fills the air and bright green beams of light flash from the security team’s weapons. Rose disappears in a clap of thunder and blue light and he sneaks out behind the stunned security team.
He makes good his escape, his heart pounding all the while and slowly walks home. He’s a little bit sad and he hopes that Rose makes it wherever she needs to go, hopes that she finds the man she’s searching for, and hopes that whoever he is, he’ll wipe that lonely, aching look from her face. He touches his lips and tries not to think of what might have been.
The dimension cannon is truer in its aim than Rose ever could have hoped for. Rose laughs as she recognizes the inside of the TARDIS, the only place it is truly safe for her to have materialized in this universe. The Doctor, her Doctor, had claimed he’d tweaked the device back before it had been confiscated, but she’d never been entirely sure.
Small differences infringe on her senses. It’s orange now instead of blue-green and there’s glass and steel where coral once stood, but it’s the TARDIS. She recognizes it in the underlying hum of the ship’s cheery hello, a heart similar to her own welcoming her home.
A man appears at a full on run a moment later and slips and slides in his socks across the glass flooring to the console. He’s different than she expected, but it’s been a long time. Regeneration was always a possibility. He’s dressed in tweed, a light blue shirt and dark blue braces and bow tie. Jeans complete the eccentric look. His hair is soft, brown, floppy, unkempt, and longish, his eyes are—she squints—green and he’s tall, not quite as skinny. His face is a little odd, his nose a bit large, but he’s not unattractive. Her heart recognizes him even as her eyes continue to catalogue the differences.
“What is it, girl?” he asks the console.
“Doctor? What’s wrong?” Rose lifts her eyes as a flame-haired girl in nightgown and bunny slippers and a tall, sandy-haired bloke in black silk pajamas appear in the entryway above, peering down into the console room. They’re holding hands and wearing wedding rings and Rose smiles.
“Amy, Rory, go back to bed,” he says. The girl looks mutinous but the man pulls her back out of the way mumbling something about it still being their honeymoon and the girl allows herself to be pulled away.
“Doctor,” Rose says softly and his eyes flash towards the ramp where she stands.
He doesn’t say anything for a long moment, just stares at her in surprise and a sort of shattered awe. “Am I dreaming?” he asks. She shakes her head no and he leaps around the console, his gangly body moving before his mind even has time to catch up, and he shoves the cannon off over her head. It clunks to the floor as he pulls her into his arms. “Rose,” he says and the heartbreak of a thousand lifetimes fills his voice. “Rose.”
She melts into him. She can’t stand unyielding in the face of all that emotion. She feels tears, hers, his, both, she doesn’t know and she doesn’t care. She didn’t think she still loved him, but she does. Her hands are in his hair and it’s as lovely as it ever was before. “Rose.” He keeps saying her name, stroking her back, her hair, her arms, like he can’t believe she’s real. “Rose.”
“Doctor,” she says and she laughs. She laughs and she knows it’s going to be okay. No matter what she was expecting, no matter how much she’s been hurt, she’s going to be okay.
He pulls back and meets her eyes. “I have missed you,” he says.
“Me, too.”
“Was it a good life?” he asks her and there’s something almost pleading in his tone.
She smiles. “The best,” she says.
“But you came back.”
“He died, about ten years ago. And I…didn’t. I don’t. I can’t die,” she told him. “He wanted me to find you again. He didn’t want…either of us to be alone.”
He smiles a half smile. “Can you forgive me?” he asks.
“Yes,” she says, realizing it’s true as she says it. It had been the best life and she’d not trade it for anything, but she’s so glad to be back. So glad.
“We’ll have to get to know each other all over again,” he says. “I’m a new man, new teeth again,” he says and she laughs.
“New everything,” she says.
“Same hearts.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes.” He kisses her then. It’s chaste and almost prim, but it’s filled with so much love and honest emotion that it overwhelms her. He hugs her again afterwards and she sighs.
“You’ve redecorated,” she says inanely.
“Your room’s still the same. The only thing she didn’t change. I didn’t want her to.” He takes her hand and leads her up the ladder and down the corridor to her room. Everything is incredibly familiar even though it’s been a bit more than three quarters of a century since she’s seen it. “Why don’t you get settled in and then we’ll talk?” he says.
“Don’t leave.”
“Wasn’t planning on it. This time…this time, Rose, it really can be forever. If you want.”
She smiles at his shy hesitation. “I think I’d like that,” she says.
He laughs and it sounds almost disused, like he hasn’t made that particular sound in a long, long time. She joins in and he hugs her again and they spin and they spin until they fall down into a tangled heap of limbs and bodies on the floor. Words that need saying finally get said and Rose knows with the surety of all that is right and true in the world that she made the right decision. She’s home, back where she belongs, and come hell or high water, she’ll never leave again.
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Date: 2010-11-10 10:22 pm (UTC)