Three Hour Tour (8/?)
Dec. 16th, 2010 08:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
amberfocusTitle: Three Hour Tour (8/?)
Author:![[info]](https://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
amberfocus
Characters/Pairings: Nine/Rose
Genre: Romance, smut, fluff, action/adventure
Rating: Adult, very, very Adult
Betas:amyo67, jeprdyfrndly
Summary: The Doctor and Rose are shipwrecked on a sandbar and left behind by their shipmates after taking a three hour tour. Forced to swim to an uninhabited tropical island they must figure out how to survive until rescued while romance changes the face of their relationship.
A/N: Work safe chapter.
Ch. 1: http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/377809.h
Ch. 3: http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/379912.h
Ch. 5: http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/383709.h
Ch. 7: http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/394378.html
Rose had been right about working together, the Doctor thought, as she helped him haul driftwood up to the high point of the island. It would have been a long, menial, boring task without her, but with her chattering in his ear it made the time go much faster. Even if having her along meant frequent stops for kissing and touching, because now that he had that privilege, if she was in sight he couldn’t keep his hands off her for more than an hour at a time. Once he would have been annoyed at himself for his lack of self-control when it came to his young lover. Now, he didn’t give a damn.
Rose didn’t seem to mind. She was extremely affectionate in return, holding back nothing in her open love and adoration for him. He’d never dreamed how fast she’d go from being dear to his hearts, to being the person they beat for. There were moments he wished they’d never be found, that he’d have her to himself for the rest of her life. He didn’t let himself think about how short a span of time that actually was.
It took them three days to finish building the bonfire, filling the crevices with dry, dead sea grass and seaweed, and then a fourth day to weave a mat to keep the rain off of it so it would be easy to light when the time came. In the event of a ship being sighted whoever was closest would make a run for it and light the fire. They had found sparking rocks and the Doctor had worked with Rose until she could easily start a fire from them within a minute. It was impossible to know who would have the sonic in their position and this way there would be no doubt the tinder could be lit immediately.
After that they finished the basics. The kiln was finally built and they managed between them to make a decent set of cooking containers and tableware. The Doctor had even cobbled together a little table for them to dine at out of broken pieces of an old shipping crate. He’d attempted to carve wooden utensils out of driftwood with the sonic screwdriver but had only succeeded in making a couple of awkward spoons for stirring with. Rose hit on carving spoons out of coconut shells and the Doctor made chopsticks with sharp ends for stabbing and all in all fingers could be used far less in the eating process.
With the basics attended to they spent their time officially exploring the entire island. They found the source of the fresh water stream where it bubbled up out of the ground and a wide enough and deep enough place to not only bathe comfortably, or shower under the twelve foot tall waterfall, but to swim. The salt water had been getting to Rose’s skin so she was delighted with this alternative.
Since they’d gotten to the island, Rose had pestered the Doctor for soap of some sort. Scrubbing their dishes with sand and boiling them in hot water with a sonic dusting for good measure had kept their food preparation and consumption safe, but those weren’t really things that the human body could take. But Rose was sick to death of not being able to easily wash her hair. He had mixed together a concoction of egg, egg white, honey, a bit of citrus juice, and hot water, stirring it until frothy to make a poor man’s shampoo for her.
After initially being grossed out by the substance, Rose had decided it did, indeed, work and that she could put up with it until he figured out something better. At least her hair was no longer greasy and he had promised himself to try to carve a comb for her as a surprise when he had some time. Her finger combing was doing very little to keep down the tangles or the frizz caused in their environment, despite her daily plaiting.
She still lamented the lack of soap, though, for the “shampoo” did not work well on the rest of the body and the slime quotient was more than she could handle on her skin. He had sodium hydroxide that had developed from the hardwood ash in their fire pit, honey from the hive they’d found when exploring the island, and some coconut oil he’d managed to create and store in one of their pots. The only other ingredient he needed was lard, but he knew Rose would be very unhappy with any suggestion he might possibly make when it came to acquiring some.
So to him, it was a fortunate accident when they’d been up on the promontory scanning for ships and checking that the wood was still dry under its mat following a tropical storm that had made the first one they’d endured seem like child’s play, that they’d startled a wild boar that had been rooting around in search of grubs. Both the Doctor and the creature had lost their footing and tumbled down the side of the cliff to Rose’s horrified screams.
The Doctor had managed to catch himself on a nest of outlaying tree roots, but the boar had fallen several more yards to the ground below and died instantly. It had taken him several minutes to get his breath back and haul himself the ten feet he’d fallen back to the top. Rose helped him boost himself over and after making sure nothing was broken or cut open, thrown herself on him, her arms and legs wrapping around him so tightly it felt like he’d grown a second skin.
“Shh, shh, now, I’m all right,” he said patting her back and kissing her shoulder.
“You…you could have died. You could have left me all alone on this island. How would I survive without you, Doctor? I need you. Not just to live, but to…be. I need you so much now," Rose cried out.
He set her down on the ground and pushed her back from him then took her chin in his hand and tilted her face up so he could meet her eyes. “I’m right here. I’m not leaving you. And I’m not dying on you. I just…found you.”
He trailed his hands over her temples and attempted to sooth the maelstrom of emotions rioting around in Rose’s mind. He let his emotion, his warmth, his love, his desire to always be with her wash through her and her trembling began to still. He kissed her then, slowly and with deep passion and she melted against him. They made love for a long time and when they at last lay sweating in each other’s arms the Doctor broached the subject of the boar.
“We’re going to have to go and take care of it,” he said.
“Yeah, I suppose it’s not good to have a dead animal like that attracting other wild creatures,” Rose said coming back to reality. She sat up and reached for her clothes. “We’ll bury it and then get on with the rest of the work. The shelter needs to be patched and—.”
“I’m not going to bury it, Rose. I’m going to butcher it,” the Doctor said as he put his boots back on. He buttoned his shirt in silence and when he looked up from the task Rose was staring at him in horror.
“Butcher it?”
“Be practical, Rose. I know you don’t want me hunting or trapping anything that isn’t seafood but this creature is dead. We might as well make the most of it. It’s a good fifty pounds and there will be enough fat to render. We’ll have lard. I can make soap. Actual soap, Rose.”
“But…”
He reached out and stilled her lips with his fingers. “I love your heart Rose, but we’ve got to think with our heads.”
Rose looked mutinous, but bit her lip and didn’t say anything more. She followed him silently down the cliff and into the jungle where they found the wrecked body of the boar. The Doctor tied its legs together with vines and then hung it from a large branch that they carried between them back to their makeshift kitchen.
Rose had helped him in silence, biting her lip hard and looking sick to her stomach as he had butchered it with the large stone knife and set up a smoker inside a hollow log, leaving a large roast for the spit. “I hate this,” she muttered once.
“Rose. It’d be a waste not to use it.”
“I know!” she’d practically shouted.
He sighed and began to render the fat over the fire. It would likely take all day. “Rose, I’m sorry this is so hard for you.”
“Why isn’t it hard for you?” she demanded. “It should be hard for you, too!”
“Why do you think it isn’t?” he asked calmly.
“You’re not reacting to it at all!”
“I’ve ended the lives of thousands of species, Rose, and I’ve felt every one. Maybe I just have no tears left,” he said abruptly and with more curtness than he’d used on her since coming to the island. “I don’t need any more help with this. Why don’t you go and,” he made a broad, sweeping gesture with his arm, “find a way to make yourself useful.”
With a small gasp of disbelief at his dismissal, Rose ran into the jungle. He was pretty sure he heard the words “unfeeling bastard,” drifting back to him.
Rose had helped for as long as she could stand it, but when the Doctor had failed to show any emotion at the death of the boar or be anything other than practical about the situation, it had frustrated her. She knew she’d hit a nerve with her comments. He almost never brought up the time war and what he had had to do then. For him to mention it like that even in passing, she knew she had been wrong and that he did feel it. She’d been about to apologize when he’d dismissed her.
She had stalked off pouting for a while. She understood the necessity, she really did, and the Doctor had not killed the animal deliberately, but she was having a little bit of a hard time dealing with just how much killing went into eating and surviving. It was one of the disadvantages of growing up in a city where the most she’d ever had to do to get her meat was go to a shop and pick it out.
The reality of it was much harder on her tender heart. She’d been pretty good about it up until today. The Doctor must think her a little fool. Maybe he’d even decide that their new relationship was a mistake, that she was too young and too immature to handle it. Her stomach turned at the thought. She loved that man more than was probably good for her and to lose him now...
No, she couldn’t think that way. It was just an argument. They argued all the time. She’d seen how much he felt about her when he’d allowed their thoughts to mingle during lovemaking. And he’d held her so desperately after he’d fallen. He’d made love to her like he feared he’d never be able to again. The accident had shaken him. She’d just been too selfish to realize it. If she’d been terrified of being left alone on the island, it must have scared him even more to think he could have died on her.
The scent of the cooking meat began to permeate the air and her stomach growled violently. She wandered toward the stream in the opposite direction but the smell still followed her. She reluctantly admitted to herself that she was heartily sick of seafood and eggs and if she never saw another coconut again in her life it would be a good thing. She cursed the stomach that seemed to overrule her heart as the aroma of pork invaded her senses.
The death of the animal, the possible death of the Doctor, had gotten all mixed up in her head. She needed to unravel them, realize that the Doctor was safe and that the boar was a cautionary tale for not getting too close to the edge of the promontory. She sighed. Maybe the Doctor would let her bury part of the creature, the parts that they couldn’t use. Maybe that would help her to deal with these fears, if she could figuratively bury them with the animal’s bones.
While she was by the stream she looked about for some of the wild rice that grew in the shallows and when she found a likely stand, decided to harvest some of it. The Doctor had said to make herself useful, and useful she intended to be. She took off her shirt and laid it flat on the shore and then used a stick to scrape the mature grains into a coconut shell. When it was full she dumped it out into the shirt and filled the shell once more. Once dumped, she tied the shirt into a small ball and waded out to the fastest part of the stream. Carefully she washed the grains, letting the grit rise up and float away, but keeping the good parts confined within the fabric.
She headed back to the Doctor, then. Rose opened the bundle and dumped it into one of the large bowls and set about preparing it. The Doctor watched her quietly. She didn’t comment on the hide that was stretched across a nearby log, curing in the sun. Of course they would need that, too. Their clothes were starting to wear out and the hide would be sturdier than cotton and denim.
“I’m sorry,” she said eventually. “I just…”
She didn’t have to continue. The Doctor gathered her into his arms. “Me, too. And I understand, Rose,” he said. She sniffled. “I do. Almost everything we eat on the TARDIS is formed out of a basic pool of nutrients. She can make it look and taste and smell like almost anything. Not milk, mind, but almost everything else. I’m not a hunter and gatherer by nature. I don’t even think about these things most of the time, even on alien planets where we’re eating natural food. But we can’t waste what we’re given. We can’t afford to.”
“I know,” she said, her arms tightening around him. “And it’s more than that. I almost lost you today. You fell over that cliff face and I…” She shook her head, her throat closing as emotion washed up in her.
“I wouldn’t have died from that fall, Rose,” he said matter-of-factly. He pushed her back from him and indicated she should sit down. She did and he took a place beside her on the sand. He picked up her hand. “There’s something you should know about me, about the fact that I’m an alien.”
“What?”
“My body does this thing when I’m injured too badly and am close to death. It has a rather spectacular way of healing itself. So if I’d fallen all the way to the ground and I’d been hurt badly enough, I wouldn’t have died, I’d have regenerated.”
“Regenerated?” she asked, her brow wrinkling at the unfamiliar word.
“Yeah. It’s a process in which every single cell in my body renews itself. It’s why I’ve been alive for so long.”
“Nine hundred years.”
“More or less,” he said with a shrug. At her look he said, “Maybe a bit more. Linear time was never my strong suit.”
“So this regeneration business, it heals you when you break badly enough?”
“Yeah. I’d have been okay.” He reached out and brushed the loose fringe back from her face. “You, though.” He shook his head and swallowed hard. “You might have a problem with the result.”
“I can’t imagine why. You’d be alive. That’s all that would matter.”
“Even if I looked different?” he asked.
“What?”
“Every regeneration scrambles the genetic code. I look like someone new every time it happens.”
“Every time?” Rose asked. “How many times has this happened?”
“This is my ninth body,” he admitted.
“You’ve had a different face nine times?” she asked.
“Different face, different body, different…emotions and personality,” he said hesitantly.
“What’s that mean?” she asked. “You won’t be you?”
“I’ll be me. Same memories, same thoughts, just…a different way of expressing them. And what is felt intensely in one incarnation—.”
Rose felt sick. “Are you telling me that you might love me now, but in the next body you won’t?” she asked in horror.
“No,” he said. “I won’t let that happen. I will adore you in any life, Rose Tyler. If anything, I’ll feel more intensely than I do now. You…we’re connected. You’ve felt it, up here.” He tapped his temple and she nodded. “That sort of bond survives regeneration. I’m more worried about how you’ll cope with it if I don’t look the same.”
“Doctor, I didn’t fall in love with you for your looks, you know,” Rose said in a mildly sardonic voice.
“Oi!”
“Oh, I think you’re gorgeous,” she said soothingly. “But I fell in love with you. The man, not the face. And yeah, it might take me some time to adjust but…I can’t imagine I’d stop loving you just because you look different,” she said. “Not the way I feel. Now if you’d kept it from me, and it happened without my knowing it could, I’d probably have had a good general freak out, but I’m sure given time I’d have accepted it. Now I know it can happen, it’ll be easier on me if the time comes.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes.” She sighed and looked at the fire pit. “How much longer until that’s ready? I think the smell will taunt me for the rest of my life.”
“About a half an hour or so. Just enough time to mix the soap. It’s caustic to human skin so stay back, okay?”
Rose nodded and moved several yards away as he mixed the sodium hydroxide, honey, some dried lavender flowers shredded fine, lard and coconut oil he’d managed to create a few days ago. He poured the resultant mess into several of their empty coconut shells to harden. “There we go. It should make soap,” he said. “Eventually. I think. Take a while though. About three days and then if all goes well we’ll have something nice and can actually feel clean again.”
Rose smiled. “Thank you, Doctor.”
The sudden blast of a shipping horn had them both jumping to their feet. “Do you see it?” she asked him, her eyes scanning the horizon.
It took him a moment to answer. “Yes, there,” he said pointing. Rose tried to follow his finger but she couldn’t make out anything at all. It was too far away. “Stay with the food. I’ll run up and light the signal fire,” he said.
He dropped a quick kiss on her forehead and then raced down the beach.
Ch. 9: http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/416463.html
Author:
amberfocusCharacters/Pairings: Nine/Rose
Genre: Romance, smut, fluff, action/adventure
Rating: Adult, very, very Adult
Betas:
amyo67, jeprdyfrndlySummary: The Doctor and Rose are shipwrecked on a sandbar and left behind by their shipmates after taking a three hour tour. Forced to swim to an uninhabited tropical island they must figure out how to survive until rescued while romance changes the face of their relationship.
A/N: Work safe chapter.
Ch. 1: http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/377809.h
Ch. 3: http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/379912.h
Ch. 5: http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/383709.h
Ch. 7: http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/394378.html
Chapter Eight: Working Together
Rose had been right about working together, the Doctor thought, as she helped him haul driftwood up to the high point of the island. It would have been a long, menial, boring task without her, but with her chattering in his ear it made the time go much faster. Even if having her along meant frequent stops for kissing and touching, because now that he had that privilege, if she was in sight he couldn’t keep his hands off her for more than an hour at a time. Once he would have been annoyed at himself for his lack of self-control when it came to his young lover. Now, he didn’t give a damn.
Rose didn’t seem to mind. She was extremely affectionate in return, holding back nothing in her open love and adoration for him. He’d never dreamed how fast she’d go from being dear to his hearts, to being the person they beat for. There were moments he wished they’d never be found, that he’d have her to himself for the rest of her life. He didn’t let himself think about how short a span of time that actually was.
It took them three days to finish building the bonfire, filling the crevices with dry, dead sea grass and seaweed, and then a fourth day to weave a mat to keep the rain off of it so it would be easy to light when the time came. In the event of a ship being sighted whoever was closest would make a run for it and light the fire. They had found sparking rocks and the Doctor had worked with Rose until she could easily start a fire from them within a minute. It was impossible to know who would have the sonic in their position and this way there would be no doubt the tinder could be lit immediately.
After that they finished the basics. The kiln was finally built and they managed between them to make a decent set of cooking containers and tableware. The Doctor had even cobbled together a little table for them to dine at out of broken pieces of an old shipping crate. He’d attempted to carve wooden utensils out of driftwood with the sonic screwdriver but had only succeeded in making a couple of awkward spoons for stirring with. Rose hit on carving spoons out of coconut shells and the Doctor made chopsticks with sharp ends for stabbing and all in all fingers could be used far less in the eating process.
With the basics attended to they spent their time officially exploring the entire island. They found the source of the fresh water stream where it bubbled up out of the ground and a wide enough and deep enough place to not only bathe comfortably, or shower under the twelve foot tall waterfall, but to swim. The salt water had been getting to Rose’s skin so she was delighted with this alternative.
Since they’d gotten to the island, Rose had pestered the Doctor for soap of some sort. Scrubbing their dishes with sand and boiling them in hot water with a sonic dusting for good measure had kept their food preparation and consumption safe, but those weren’t really things that the human body could take. But Rose was sick to death of not being able to easily wash her hair. He had mixed together a concoction of egg, egg white, honey, a bit of citrus juice, and hot water, stirring it until frothy to make a poor man’s shampoo for her.
After initially being grossed out by the substance, Rose had decided it did, indeed, work and that she could put up with it until he figured out something better. At least her hair was no longer greasy and he had promised himself to try to carve a comb for her as a surprise when he had some time. Her finger combing was doing very little to keep down the tangles or the frizz caused in their environment, despite her daily plaiting.
She still lamented the lack of soap, though, for the “shampoo” did not work well on the rest of the body and the slime quotient was more than she could handle on her skin. He had sodium hydroxide that had developed from the hardwood ash in their fire pit, honey from the hive they’d found when exploring the island, and some coconut oil he’d managed to create and store in one of their pots. The only other ingredient he needed was lard, but he knew Rose would be very unhappy with any suggestion he might possibly make when it came to acquiring some.
So to him, it was a fortunate accident when they’d been up on the promontory scanning for ships and checking that the wood was still dry under its mat following a tropical storm that had made the first one they’d endured seem like child’s play, that they’d startled a wild boar that had been rooting around in search of grubs. Both the Doctor and the creature had lost their footing and tumbled down the side of the cliff to Rose’s horrified screams.
The Doctor had managed to catch himself on a nest of outlaying tree roots, but the boar had fallen several more yards to the ground below and died instantly. It had taken him several minutes to get his breath back and haul himself the ten feet he’d fallen back to the top. Rose helped him boost himself over and after making sure nothing was broken or cut open, thrown herself on him, her arms and legs wrapping around him so tightly it felt like he’d grown a second skin.
“Shh, shh, now, I’m all right,” he said patting her back and kissing her shoulder.
“You…you could have died. You could have left me all alone on this island. How would I survive without you, Doctor? I need you. Not just to live, but to…be. I need you so much now," Rose cried out.
He set her down on the ground and pushed her back from him then took her chin in his hand and tilted her face up so he could meet her eyes. “I’m right here. I’m not leaving you. And I’m not dying on you. I just…found you.”
He trailed his hands over her temples and attempted to sooth the maelstrom of emotions rioting around in Rose’s mind. He let his emotion, his warmth, his love, his desire to always be with her wash through her and her trembling began to still. He kissed her then, slowly and with deep passion and she melted against him. They made love for a long time and when they at last lay sweating in each other’s arms the Doctor broached the subject of the boar.
“We’re going to have to go and take care of it,” he said.
“Yeah, I suppose it’s not good to have a dead animal like that attracting other wild creatures,” Rose said coming back to reality. She sat up and reached for her clothes. “We’ll bury it and then get on with the rest of the work. The shelter needs to be patched and—.”
“I’m not going to bury it, Rose. I’m going to butcher it,” the Doctor said as he put his boots back on. He buttoned his shirt in silence and when he looked up from the task Rose was staring at him in horror.
“Butcher it?”
“Be practical, Rose. I know you don’t want me hunting or trapping anything that isn’t seafood but this creature is dead. We might as well make the most of it. It’s a good fifty pounds and there will be enough fat to render. We’ll have lard. I can make soap. Actual soap, Rose.”
“But…”
He reached out and stilled her lips with his fingers. “I love your heart Rose, but we’ve got to think with our heads.”
Rose looked mutinous, but bit her lip and didn’t say anything more. She followed him silently down the cliff and into the jungle where they found the wrecked body of the boar. The Doctor tied its legs together with vines and then hung it from a large branch that they carried between them back to their makeshift kitchen.
Rose had helped him in silence, biting her lip hard and looking sick to her stomach as he had butchered it with the large stone knife and set up a smoker inside a hollow log, leaving a large roast for the spit. “I hate this,” she muttered once.
“Rose. It’d be a waste not to use it.”
“I know!” she’d practically shouted.
He sighed and began to render the fat over the fire. It would likely take all day. “Rose, I’m sorry this is so hard for you.”
“Why isn’t it hard for you?” she demanded. “It should be hard for you, too!”
“Why do you think it isn’t?” he asked calmly.
“You’re not reacting to it at all!”
“I’ve ended the lives of thousands of species, Rose, and I’ve felt every one. Maybe I just have no tears left,” he said abruptly and with more curtness than he’d used on her since coming to the island. “I don’t need any more help with this. Why don’t you go and,” he made a broad, sweeping gesture with his arm, “find a way to make yourself useful.”
With a small gasp of disbelief at his dismissal, Rose ran into the jungle. He was pretty sure he heard the words “unfeeling bastard,” drifting back to him.
Rose had helped for as long as she could stand it, but when the Doctor had failed to show any emotion at the death of the boar or be anything other than practical about the situation, it had frustrated her. She knew she’d hit a nerve with her comments. He almost never brought up the time war and what he had had to do then. For him to mention it like that even in passing, she knew she had been wrong and that he did feel it. She’d been about to apologize when he’d dismissed her.
She had stalked off pouting for a while. She understood the necessity, she really did, and the Doctor had not killed the animal deliberately, but she was having a little bit of a hard time dealing with just how much killing went into eating and surviving. It was one of the disadvantages of growing up in a city where the most she’d ever had to do to get her meat was go to a shop and pick it out.
The reality of it was much harder on her tender heart. She’d been pretty good about it up until today. The Doctor must think her a little fool. Maybe he’d even decide that their new relationship was a mistake, that she was too young and too immature to handle it. Her stomach turned at the thought. She loved that man more than was probably good for her and to lose him now...
No, she couldn’t think that way. It was just an argument. They argued all the time. She’d seen how much he felt about her when he’d allowed their thoughts to mingle during lovemaking. And he’d held her so desperately after he’d fallen. He’d made love to her like he feared he’d never be able to again. The accident had shaken him. She’d just been too selfish to realize it. If she’d been terrified of being left alone on the island, it must have scared him even more to think he could have died on her.
The scent of the cooking meat began to permeate the air and her stomach growled violently. She wandered toward the stream in the opposite direction but the smell still followed her. She reluctantly admitted to herself that she was heartily sick of seafood and eggs and if she never saw another coconut again in her life it would be a good thing. She cursed the stomach that seemed to overrule her heart as the aroma of pork invaded her senses.
The death of the animal, the possible death of the Doctor, had gotten all mixed up in her head. She needed to unravel them, realize that the Doctor was safe and that the boar was a cautionary tale for not getting too close to the edge of the promontory. She sighed. Maybe the Doctor would let her bury part of the creature, the parts that they couldn’t use. Maybe that would help her to deal with these fears, if she could figuratively bury them with the animal’s bones.
While she was by the stream she looked about for some of the wild rice that grew in the shallows and when she found a likely stand, decided to harvest some of it. The Doctor had said to make herself useful, and useful she intended to be. She took off her shirt and laid it flat on the shore and then used a stick to scrape the mature grains into a coconut shell. When it was full she dumped it out into the shirt and filled the shell once more. Once dumped, she tied the shirt into a small ball and waded out to the fastest part of the stream. Carefully she washed the grains, letting the grit rise up and float away, but keeping the good parts confined within the fabric.
She headed back to the Doctor, then. Rose opened the bundle and dumped it into one of the large bowls and set about preparing it. The Doctor watched her quietly. She didn’t comment on the hide that was stretched across a nearby log, curing in the sun. Of course they would need that, too. Their clothes were starting to wear out and the hide would be sturdier than cotton and denim.
“I’m sorry,” she said eventually. “I just…”
She didn’t have to continue. The Doctor gathered her into his arms. “Me, too. And I understand, Rose,” he said. She sniffled. “I do. Almost everything we eat on the TARDIS is formed out of a basic pool of nutrients. She can make it look and taste and smell like almost anything. Not milk, mind, but almost everything else. I’m not a hunter and gatherer by nature. I don’t even think about these things most of the time, even on alien planets where we’re eating natural food. But we can’t waste what we’re given. We can’t afford to.”
“I know,” she said, her arms tightening around him. “And it’s more than that. I almost lost you today. You fell over that cliff face and I…” She shook her head, her throat closing as emotion washed up in her.
“I wouldn’t have died from that fall, Rose,” he said matter-of-factly. He pushed her back from him and indicated she should sit down. She did and he took a place beside her on the sand. He picked up her hand. “There’s something you should know about me, about the fact that I’m an alien.”
“What?”
“My body does this thing when I’m injured too badly and am close to death. It has a rather spectacular way of healing itself. So if I’d fallen all the way to the ground and I’d been hurt badly enough, I wouldn’t have died, I’d have regenerated.”
“Regenerated?” she asked, her brow wrinkling at the unfamiliar word.
“Yeah. It’s a process in which every single cell in my body renews itself. It’s why I’ve been alive for so long.”
“Nine hundred years.”
“More or less,” he said with a shrug. At her look he said, “Maybe a bit more. Linear time was never my strong suit.”
“So this regeneration business, it heals you when you break badly enough?”
“Yeah. I’d have been okay.” He reached out and brushed the loose fringe back from her face. “You, though.” He shook his head and swallowed hard. “You might have a problem with the result.”
“I can’t imagine why. You’d be alive. That’s all that would matter.”
“Even if I looked different?” he asked.
“What?”
“Every regeneration scrambles the genetic code. I look like someone new every time it happens.”
“Every time?” Rose asked. “How many times has this happened?”
“This is my ninth body,” he admitted.
“You’ve had a different face nine times?” she asked.
“Different face, different body, different…emotions and personality,” he said hesitantly.
“What’s that mean?” she asked. “You won’t be you?”
“I’ll be me. Same memories, same thoughts, just…a different way of expressing them. And what is felt intensely in one incarnation—.”
Rose felt sick. “Are you telling me that you might love me now, but in the next body you won’t?” she asked in horror.
“No,” he said. “I won’t let that happen. I will adore you in any life, Rose Tyler. If anything, I’ll feel more intensely than I do now. You…we’re connected. You’ve felt it, up here.” He tapped his temple and she nodded. “That sort of bond survives regeneration. I’m more worried about how you’ll cope with it if I don’t look the same.”
“Doctor, I didn’t fall in love with you for your looks, you know,” Rose said in a mildly sardonic voice.
“Oi!”
“Oh, I think you’re gorgeous,” she said soothingly. “But I fell in love with you. The man, not the face. And yeah, it might take me some time to adjust but…I can’t imagine I’d stop loving you just because you look different,” she said. “Not the way I feel. Now if you’d kept it from me, and it happened without my knowing it could, I’d probably have had a good general freak out, but I’m sure given time I’d have accepted it. Now I know it can happen, it’ll be easier on me if the time comes.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes.” She sighed and looked at the fire pit. “How much longer until that’s ready? I think the smell will taunt me for the rest of my life.”
“About a half an hour or so. Just enough time to mix the soap. It’s caustic to human skin so stay back, okay?”
Rose nodded and moved several yards away as he mixed the sodium hydroxide, honey, some dried lavender flowers shredded fine, lard and coconut oil he’d managed to create a few days ago. He poured the resultant mess into several of their empty coconut shells to harden. “There we go. It should make soap,” he said. “Eventually. I think. Take a while though. About three days and then if all goes well we’ll have something nice and can actually feel clean again.”
Rose smiled. “Thank you, Doctor.”
The sudden blast of a shipping horn had them both jumping to their feet. “Do you see it?” she asked him, her eyes scanning the horizon.
It took him a moment to answer. “Yes, there,” he said pointing. Rose tried to follow his finger but she couldn’t make out anything at all. It was too far away. “Stay with the food. I’ll run up and light the signal fire,” he said.
He dropped a quick kiss on her forehead and then raced down the beach.
Ch. 9: http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/416463.html
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Date: 2010-12-17 10:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-07 12:56 pm (UTC)