A Life Unexpected (14/15) and (15/15)
Apr. 13th, 2008 05:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
amberfocusChapter Fourteen: Two Paths
It felt much like looking into the heart of her Doctor’s TARDIS had. Those memories unlocked completely for the first time. She marveled at the power she had possessed, the power over life and death, and how fearsome and wonderful it was. But this was so much more. She turned to look at Ian who was mesmerized by the green jewel sitting there, sending out little radiant waves of energy that would bang about the walls of the room.
It felt much like looking into the heart of her Doctor’s TARDIS had. Those memories unlocked completely for the first time. She marveled at the power she had possessed, the power over life and death, and how fearsome and wonderful it was. But this was so much more. She turned to look at Ian who was mesmerized by the green jewel sitting there, sending out little radiant waves of energy that would bang about the walls of the room.
The purple light drained out of Ian and into the jewel before her. He reached his hands forward and touched it. Rose saw that it was soft and gave gently as he pressed against it. Ian turned so suddenly into a light so brilliant it was hard to look at him. She watched his physical form dissolve into energy and subsume the glittering faceted sphere. At the very center she saw the silver talisman Ian always carried.
“What are you?” she asked. “What’s happening to Ian?”
“He’s here. We are.” The voice was still recognizably Ian’s though it contained a far different harmonic and echoed only in her mind. For a moment Rose waited, watching as time corridors red and blue opened on either side of the being, large enough to hold a person, then disappearing again abruptly.
“We become.” She heard the noise, the recognizable one above all others, of a TARDIS. Again time corridors opened on either side of the room, then a purple tunnel shot out through the floor, and the being rose up. Again the corridors abruptly collapsed.
“What’s going on?” she demanded trying not to be afraid, for it was marvelous but very frightening all at the same time.
“We shake our wings dry.” For a moment there was complete silence, and then the sound of rushing wind filled the room. An emerald green cyclone appeared around the center of the being, very loud but rotating slowly, expanding to fill the room. When the energy hit the walls that contained it the cyclone began to circle faster and faster. Rose felt it moving all about her and yet she was able to pass through it as though it wasn't there.
The pendant around her neck felt heavy and the TARDIS key on its chain began to burn. She saw Ian’s talisman in the center of the storm. “Your key. Use your key.” It was the Doctor's voice, somehow impinging on her awareness. She took off the key and pressed it against the silver talisman. Her mind expanded, took in golden light from the Time Vortex for just a moment, and then expelled it.
Rose saw beyond the edges of the universe and then she saw the edges of all universes, sliding like tectonic plates, bashing against each other or slipping above or beneath. One shown more brightly than all of the others, moving to the forefront. She recongized it as hers, as his, as home. "Come to me, Rose."
She stepped forward and touched the heart of the being, the beautiful center. “These are your choices, Rose Tyler. The path is ever yours to choose.”
She saw them all stretching off infinitely into her future, so many tangled lines weaving around her, each one different, some dark, some light, some broken, some whole. And then the possibilities narrowed down to two: If she stayed and finally accepted this life or if she made it back to him.
“If you stay…” The voice, and she still thought of it as Ian, still thought of it as a ‘him’ though she knew now what ‘he’ was, echoed in her head. And she saw it, the life stretching ahead of her. Watching her brothers and sisters grow up and get married, Iris and Violet happily, Peter, Jr., not so happily, and David, heartbroken at 30 when his wife and children died in a car accident. He does not find love again until he is 52 and then it is a miracle of amazement. She smiled.
Watching her parents get old, still madly in love, and die of age, within hours of each other for they cannot bear to be apart for even that long.
Watching Mickey and Martha, whose love delights her for some unknown reason, their wedding, with her standing up for Mickey as best mate, the birth of their son Ricky, and then their daughter Rose. She smiled at that also, but then that was Mickey and Martha all over again.
Watching her own life unfold, and she did meet someone, many someones that she could have loved along the way if her heart had started out whole. Even settling down, if you could call it that for they never stayed put, with a man who travelled the globe and had his own heartbreak to heal. But no children, and a feeling that if it all went away, well she’d move along easier than she had before.
And it would be an okay life, a decent life, but it would not be a fantastic life. She closed her eyes, swallowing hard. It was a life she could cope with, with small moments of joy, and a slow unhardening of her core. But it wasn’t what she would have wished for herself… She slowly turned away from it.
She opened her eyes and looked towards the second possibility. “If you go…”
She would take the short path and this time it would be he who took the long one…but the paths would meet up again and--.
Her eye widened in wonder and great joy as her heart filled with promise and hope, faith and belief and indescribable amazement.
That life stretching before her, that life glistening and golden, that life that would restore three hearts and so much more. She chose the second life, the fantastic life, of course she did, and she jumped, grabbed hold of that line, and held on not for dear life, but for a life most dear.
Chapter Fifteen: Together
She rushed through the Void, the power of Ian surrounding her in beautiful green light, following the golden line that turned into a rope and then a path and then a tunnel. It was so beautiful here, there was singing, such beautiful singing, and warmth and love and laughter.
The travelling took a long time and yet it didn’t, a year of her life, while Ian slowly overwrote her DNA and built a proper ship around them. A year wasn’t so much in a life that would stretch on so long before her now. And she was happy even in his absence, because when she got there, it would be a life spent with him.
Finally, finally her destination was reached and Ian materialized inside the TARDIS of her youth where the old man lay dying. “Hold out your hand,” he told Rose and when she did his talisman materialized in it.
Then he let Rose go after making sure she held the talisman, the pendant, and the Doctor’s key. She stepped outside her ship and then she pressed them together with the key in the center. Her body was suffused with energy from the Time Vortex, though not as it had been with Bad Wolf. She glowed golden, but not so brightly as to blind.
Rose stepped from the corridor she had materialized in and directly through the door that led to the Doctor’s sleeping chamber. She saw him laying there and swallowed hard, but it was the way it must be done. Rose shook herself and moved to the side of the bed, settled softly upon it and lifted the hand of the old man. His eyes opened and she was surprised to see they were familiar, though everything else about him had changed, she now knew so many times. “Rose?” He whispered. “My Rose?”
She smiled at him and her smile did burn bright like the sun. “My Doctor.” He brought her hand to his face and held it against his timeworn cheek.
“I’m dying Rose,” he said. “My last incarnation. Everything must come to dust.”
“I couldn’t leave you to die alone,” she said, tears coming to her eyes.
“My Rose,” he repeated. “I wish you’d come sooner. So little time left.”
She smiled at him gently this time, no longer burning, knowing there was time enough. “Did you ever get to be ginger?” she asked irrelevantly, running her free hand through his hair.
He laughed and it sounded the same, though his voice was not, and then that grin that she would recognize anywhere, even on a stranger’s face. “I did, until it turned silver.” The tears started to fall down his face and he closed his eyes, his breath coming in shallow gasps. He slept then for some time and she sat there with him, one hand in his, waiting.
When his eyes opened for the last time, he looked at her, into her eyes and into her heart. “I’ve loved you for 1000 years. Time has never dimmed that memory.”
“For me as well. I’ve loved you for a lifetime. I loved you before I knew you. I’ll love you for forever.”
“Thank you for coming; for not letting me die alone.”
“I could never let you die alone, my Doctor.”
One last gasp and Ian said, “Now, Rose.”
Rose leaned forward and kissed him, the energy of the Time Vortex flowing between them, staying partially in her and partially in him. The glow surrounding them, suffusing them. Then the green light of Ian enveloped them both.
She saw the Doctor as he was, every regeneration stretching before her, then all of them merging down into one man, wavering a bit between two, the first she had met, the second she had lost. She settled on the one she had told she would stay with forever, the one she was last with, his tenth, and it solidified. “What’s happening Rose? Is this death?”
He stood before her, for the first time in his life without the answers, and they clasped hands, facing each other. “No, Beloved. This is birth.”
And she explained it all to him. How he was no longer the last of his people but now the first. How the very Heart of Gallifrey, which despite herself she still called Ian, itself had survived with the Doctor’s help and how those memories had been hidden from him. How it had hidden itself in a place where Rose would one day find it and bring it back to the Doctor, as it would bring her back to him. How he had been chosen to rebuild his race and how she had been chosen to build it with him, chosen by the Heart of a sentient planet, a planet that had hid its sentience, the hidden survivor of the Time War.
“But it can’t be.” The Doctor looked awed, denying the evidence of his own eyes, in the healthy body he now wore.
“It can. It is. It was. It will be.”
“But you’re human.”
“I am beyond that now. My DNA has been altered, as yours was moments ago.”
“But…it’s impossible!”
She smiled, shaking her head lovingly at him. “Have you never wondered why you loved the stupid apes so much?” she asked him. “Your people, mine, they are connected through time by the very Heart. It is why Time Lords meddle in human affairs when they are not supposed to, why you did. It is why only a human can restore your people. Humans have only one heart but twice the capacity for love.”
“But I can’t be the father of my people; I was born of my people. It’s a paradox. It’s a paradox, Rose.”
“Yes,” she smiled. “It is. And there’s only one thing in the whole of creation strong enough to overcome a paradox. And it’s right here.”
“She speaks the truth.” Ian’s voice rang in their heads.
“What are you, really?” the Doctor asked, still not believing, quite what was happening. And the Heart opened its memories and the Doctor’s own and they poured freely over the Doctor and Rose and they saw all of it, all of time and all of space, all of life and all of death, all the light and all the dark, all the good and all the evil, all that is, all that was, all that ever will be, and finally the very middle of it all. The Center. Unending. Eternal. Love. But not an ordinary love. Theirs. The only thing strong enough to overcome a paradox.
“Our people begin again in love, Doctor,” the Heart said. “The greatest love the universe has ever known. Somewhere along the way they lost it, but you have come back, are reborn in this moment to show the universe what it is to love another enough to create the future and the past. You are the only exception in a lifetime, my lifetime of waiting. You love with both hearts, this human girl, from the moment she first touched your life. And she has loved you beyond all reason. Now let her save your people. I give you both 1000 years to love and live together. And if you then choose to live beyond it, I will give you more. You are bonded. You will never be alone again.”
“The one adventure I could never have, I’m granted,” the Doctor said turning to her, a tear trailing from one eye. “And you, you came back for me.”
“You told me to have a fantastic life, my Doctor. And this was the only way to do it.” She smiled as she blinked back her own tears. “It had to be with you.”
“I love you,” he said intensely. And he took her into his arms and he kissed her as the Heart of Gallifrey withdrew and dropped beneath them, pulling them outside the TARDIS. And as they held each other in their long embrace the ground was built beneath their bodies, the planet was reformed with the Heart at the very center. Mountains rose up, valleys sank down, oceans formed and crashed against new land, again and again, while rivers riddled the world in a stately dance. It grew and grew as their love expanded, grew and grew as their joy increased, grew and grew into something that could never be broken again.
How long it lasted they never quite knew, hours, days, weeks, and they both suspected weeks, for they almost touched forever between two bodies, hearts, and minds joined together as they would now always be in that oh, so shining life. And at last when they had finished their exuberant loving however many hours, days, weeks it had lasted, and the planet was finished growing, and the TARDIS and the Heart had stopped singing, Rose said, “I love you, too,” and they broke apart, both already completely aware that the cells of the first child of the new race that was to become jointly theirs was already dividing in her womb.
“Rose Tyler,” he said happily. “This will be a fantastic life. Together.”
He pulled her to her feet, placing one hand protectively over her belly, so much joy upon his face. Her hands covered his for a moment. And then he took her hand, the same hand he had first held so very long ago, and met her beautiful, life-changing smile with the wildly manic grin she so adored and said, “Run!” And they ran towards their future across the beautiful reborn planet of Gallifrey, a planet that had believed so completely in their love.
“What are you?” she asked. “What’s happening to Ian?”
“He’s here. We are.” The voice was still recognizably Ian’s though it contained a far different harmonic and echoed only in her mind. For a moment Rose waited, watching as time corridors red and blue opened on either side of the being, large enough to hold a person, then disappearing again abruptly.
“We become.” She heard the noise, the recognizable one above all others, of a TARDIS. Again time corridors opened on either side of the room, then a purple tunnel shot out through the floor, and the being rose up. Again the corridors abruptly collapsed.
“What’s going on?” she demanded trying not to be afraid, for it was marvelous but very frightening all at the same time.
“We shake our wings dry.” For a moment there was complete silence, and then the sound of rushing wind filled the room. An emerald green cyclone appeared around the center of the being, very loud but rotating slowly, expanding to fill the room. When the energy hit the walls that contained it the cyclone began to circle faster and faster. Rose felt it moving all about her and yet she was able to pass through it as though it wasn't there.
The pendant around her neck felt heavy and the TARDIS key on its chain began to burn. She saw Ian’s talisman in the center of the storm. “Your key. Use your key.” It was the Doctor's voice, somehow impinging on her awareness. She took off the key and pressed it against the silver talisman. Her mind expanded, took in golden light from the Time Vortex for just a moment, and then expelled it.
Rose saw beyond the edges of the universe and then she saw the edges of all universes, sliding like tectonic plates, bashing against each other or slipping above or beneath. One shown more brightly than all of the others, moving to the forefront. She recongized it as hers, as his, as home. "Come to me, Rose."
She stepped forward and touched the heart of the being, the beautiful center. “These are your choices, Rose Tyler. The path is ever yours to choose.”
She saw them all stretching off infinitely into her future, so many tangled lines weaving around her, each one different, some dark, some light, some broken, some whole. And then the possibilities narrowed down to two: If she stayed and finally accepted this life or if she made it back to him.
“If you stay…” The voice, and she still thought of it as Ian, still thought of it as a ‘him’ though she knew now what ‘he’ was, echoed in her head. And she saw it, the life stretching ahead of her. Watching her brothers and sisters grow up and get married, Iris and Violet happily, Peter, Jr., not so happily, and David, heartbroken at 30 when his wife and children died in a car accident. He does not find love again until he is 52 and then it is a miracle of amazement. She smiled.
Watching her parents get old, still madly in love, and die of age, within hours of each other for they cannot bear to be apart for even that long.
Watching Mickey and Martha, whose love delights her for some unknown reason, their wedding, with her standing up for Mickey as best mate, the birth of their son Ricky, and then their daughter Rose. She smiled at that also, but then that was Mickey and Martha all over again.
Watching her own life unfold, and she did meet someone, many someones that she could have loved along the way if her heart had started out whole. Even settling down, if you could call it that for they never stayed put, with a man who travelled the globe and had his own heartbreak to heal. But no children, and a feeling that if it all went away, well she’d move along easier than she had before.
And it would be an okay life, a decent life, but it would not be a fantastic life. She closed her eyes, swallowing hard. It was a life she could cope with, with small moments of joy, and a slow unhardening of her core. But it wasn’t what she would have wished for herself… She slowly turned away from it.
She opened her eyes and looked towards the second possibility. “If you go…”
She would take the short path and this time it would be he who took the long one…but the paths would meet up again and--.
Her eye widened in wonder and great joy as her heart filled with promise and hope, faith and belief and indescribable amazement.
That life stretching before her, that life glistening and golden, that life that would restore three hearts and so much more. She chose the second life, the fantastic life, of course she did, and she jumped, grabbed hold of that line, and held on not for dear life, but for a life most dear.
Chapter Fifteen: Together
She rushed through the Void, the power of Ian surrounding her in beautiful green light, following the golden line that turned into a rope and then a path and then a tunnel. It was so beautiful here, there was singing, such beautiful singing, and warmth and love and laughter.
The travelling took a long time and yet it didn’t, a year of her life, while Ian slowly overwrote her DNA and built a proper ship around them. A year wasn’t so much in a life that would stretch on so long before her now. And she was happy even in his absence, because when she got there, it would be a life spent with him.
Finally, finally her destination was reached and Ian materialized inside the TARDIS of her youth where the old man lay dying. “Hold out your hand,” he told Rose and when she did his talisman materialized in it.
Then he let Rose go after making sure she held the talisman, the pendant, and the Doctor’s key. She stepped outside her ship and then she pressed them together with the key in the center. Her body was suffused with energy from the Time Vortex, though not as it had been with Bad Wolf. She glowed golden, but not so brightly as to blind.
Rose stepped from the corridor she had materialized in and directly through the door that led to the Doctor’s sleeping chamber. She saw him laying there and swallowed hard, but it was the way it must be done. Rose shook herself and moved to the side of the bed, settled softly upon it and lifted the hand of the old man. His eyes opened and she was surprised to see they were familiar, though everything else about him had changed, she now knew so many times. “Rose?” He whispered. “My Rose?”
She smiled at him and her smile did burn bright like the sun. “My Doctor.” He brought her hand to his face and held it against his timeworn cheek.
“I’m dying Rose,” he said. “My last incarnation. Everything must come to dust.”
“I couldn’t leave you to die alone,” she said, tears coming to her eyes.
“My Rose,” he repeated. “I wish you’d come sooner. So little time left.”
She smiled at him gently this time, no longer burning, knowing there was time enough. “Did you ever get to be ginger?” she asked irrelevantly, running her free hand through his hair.
He laughed and it sounded the same, though his voice was not, and then that grin that she would recognize anywhere, even on a stranger’s face. “I did, until it turned silver.” The tears started to fall down his face and he closed his eyes, his breath coming in shallow gasps. He slept then for some time and she sat there with him, one hand in his, waiting.
When his eyes opened for the last time, he looked at her, into her eyes and into her heart. “I’ve loved you for 1000 years. Time has never dimmed that memory.”
“For me as well. I’ve loved you for a lifetime. I loved you before I knew you. I’ll love you for forever.”
“Thank you for coming; for not letting me die alone.”
“I could never let you die alone, my Doctor.”
One last gasp and Ian said, “Now, Rose.”
Rose leaned forward and kissed him, the energy of the Time Vortex flowing between them, staying partially in her and partially in him. The glow surrounding them, suffusing them. Then the green light of Ian enveloped them both.
She saw the Doctor as he was, every regeneration stretching before her, then all of them merging down into one man, wavering a bit between two, the first she had met, the second she had lost. She settled on the one she had told she would stay with forever, the one she was last with, his tenth, and it solidified. “What’s happening Rose? Is this death?”
He stood before her, for the first time in his life without the answers, and they clasped hands, facing each other. “No, Beloved. This is birth.”
And she explained it all to him. How he was no longer the last of his people but now the first. How the very Heart of Gallifrey, which despite herself she still called Ian, itself had survived with the Doctor’s help and how those memories had been hidden from him. How it had hidden itself in a place where Rose would one day find it and bring it back to the Doctor, as it would bring her back to him. How he had been chosen to rebuild his race and how she had been chosen to build it with him, chosen by the Heart of a sentient planet, a planet that had hid its sentience, the hidden survivor of the Time War.
“But it can’t be.” The Doctor looked awed, denying the evidence of his own eyes, in the healthy body he now wore.
“It can. It is. It was. It will be.”
“But you’re human.”
“I am beyond that now. My DNA has been altered, as yours was moments ago.”
“But…it’s impossible!”
She smiled, shaking her head lovingly at him. “Have you never wondered why you loved the stupid apes so much?” she asked him. “Your people, mine, they are connected through time by the very Heart. It is why Time Lords meddle in human affairs when they are not supposed to, why you did. It is why only a human can restore your people. Humans have only one heart but twice the capacity for love.”
“But I can’t be the father of my people; I was born of my people. It’s a paradox. It’s a paradox, Rose.”
“Yes,” she smiled. “It is. And there’s only one thing in the whole of creation strong enough to overcome a paradox. And it’s right here.”
“She speaks the truth.” Ian’s voice rang in their heads.
“What are you, really?” the Doctor asked, still not believing, quite what was happening. And the Heart opened its memories and the Doctor’s own and they poured freely over the Doctor and Rose and they saw all of it, all of time and all of space, all of life and all of death, all the light and all the dark, all the good and all the evil, all that is, all that was, all that ever will be, and finally the very middle of it all. The Center. Unending. Eternal. Love. But not an ordinary love. Theirs. The only thing strong enough to overcome a paradox.
“Our people begin again in love, Doctor,” the Heart said. “The greatest love the universe has ever known. Somewhere along the way they lost it, but you have come back, are reborn in this moment to show the universe what it is to love another enough to create the future and the past. You are the only exception in a lifetime, my lifetime of waiting. You love with both hearts, this human girl, from the moment she first touched your life. And she has loved you beyond all reason. Now let her save your people. I give you both 1000 years to love and live together. And if you then choose to live beyond it, I will give you more. You are bonded. You will never be alone again.”
“The one adventure I could never have, I’m granted,” the Doctor said turning to her, a tear trailing from one eye. “And you, you came back for me.”
“You told me to have a fantastic life, my Doctor. And this was the only way to do it.” She smiled as she blinked back her own tears. “It had to be with you.”
“I love you,” he said intensely. And he took her into his arms and he kissed her as the Heart of Gallifrey withdrew and dropped beneath them, pulling them outside the TARDIS. And as they held each other in their long embrace the ground was built beneath their bodies, the planet was reformed with the Heart at the very center. Mountains rose up, valleys sank down, oceans formed and crashed against new land, again and again, while rivers riddled the world in a stately dance. It grew and grew as their love expanded, grew and grew as their joy increased, grew and grew into something that could never be broken again.
How long it lasted they never quite knew, hours, days, weeks, and they both suspected weeks, for they almost touched forever between two bodies, hearts, and minds joined together as they would now always be in that oh, so shining life. And at last when they had finished their exuberant loving however many hours, days, weeks it had lasted, and the planet was finished growing, and the TARDIS and the Heart had stopped singing, Rose said, “I love you, too,” and they broke apart, both already completely aware that the cells of the first child of the new race that was to become jointly theirs was already dividing in her womb.
“Rose Tyler,” he said happily. “This will be a fantastic life. Together.”
He pulled her to her feet, placing one hand protectively over her belly, so much joy upon his face. Her hands covered his for a moment. And then he took her hand, the same hand he had first held so very long ago, and met her beautiful, life-changing smile with the wildly manic grin she so adored and said, “Run!” And they ran towards their future across the beautiful reborn planet of Gallifrey, a planet that had believed so completely in their love.
