Pushing the Boundaries (1/3)

[amberfocus]

A/N:  This is a companion piece to The Boundaries of Consent found here:  http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/82661.html.  This story gives the viewpoints of Donna and Ten of the events at the ball the night Nine and Rose first consummate their relationship, after a mysterious stranger dances with Rose and pushes Nine to make his feelings known.  That mysterious stranger is Ten with a perception filter.  Rated PG-13 for sexual themes but not situations.  Character/Pairings: Ten/Rose, Nine/Rose, Donna

Chapter One

 

“But why can’t we go to the Blast of the Turning? It’s the biggest ball this century has ever seen. You did all that work getting the treaty ratified for the Nine Star League and now you don’t want to take any of the credit?” Donna Noble was frustrated and her irritation with the skinny man in the pinstriped suit was growing by the second. She crossed her arms and gave him one of her patented glares.

 

“It’s just a dance, Donna,” the Doctor said absently, his mind a million miles away as it had been for most of the day. He had that look on his face that he often got. Donna called it his Rose face, but never out loud. Normally she wouldn’t bother him when he had his Rose face on, but this was something she wanted quite badly. She wasn’t one to whine or sulk to get her way.  She’d leave that sort of behavior to the Doctor. But she was perfectly willing to bulldoze right over him to get what she wanted.

 

“It’s just a dance that the ambassador to Montcrief asked if I was going to,” Donna said mutinously. “And he was gorgeous. Big piece of steak, that one. Something to hold onto.”

 

“Mon’tec Rief,” the Doctor corrected. “And not really that impressive.”

 

“He is so! Just because you’re nothing but bacon--”

 

“I meant the ball,” the Doctor interrupted a little sharply. “It’s not that impressive.”

 

“Well, maybe not to you, but I want to go! And anyway, how would you know?” Donna demanded.

 

“Because I’ve already been, all right?” the Doctor snapped at her, pulled fully out of his Rose face now, his expression one of anger before he reined it tightly back under control. “I’ve been. I went there with…I was there with Rose.” The way he still said her name after all this time twisted something painfully in Donna’s heart. She was special, his Rose. What she wouldn’t do to recover his lost love for him.

 

“I’m sorry,” she said softly.

 

“That night has a lot of memories for me and I don’t…it’d be too painful for me to relive them again.”

 

“If we went…maybe you could sneak a few minutes with her,” Donna said gently. “I could distract the other you.”

 

“Donna Noble, that would not be ethical! Not even a little bitty bit ethical. Not to mention the timey whimey implications. Things could get seriously out of hand.”

 

“And you might run into yourself,” Donna said ignoring his protests. She was nothing if not practical. He’d told her about Reapers and Paradoxes, enough that she thought of them with capital letters in her head, having given her quite a little speech about them. She didn’t particularly want to run up against either. “And I suppose that would be catastrophic.”

 

“Weeeeell, not really. Maybe if it were the same me it would be, but this is a different me and if I took the appropriate precautions he’d never really know,” the Doctor said. “But I won’t. Crossing my own time line is dangerous under the best of circumstances.”

 

“What do you mean, a different you?” Donna asked curiously.

 

“Different me, different incarnation,” he said impatiently. At her blank look he said, “Different body.”

 

“You have more than one body?” Donna stared at him in horrified fascination. “Where do you keep the spare?” She glanced nervously around the console room.    She’d not been travelling with the Doctor long and every once in a while he’d let something slip that was very alien and it’d give her sudden pause to question the soundness of her judgment in running off with this mad man that she adored more than she’d ever admit to anyone, especially him, save under torture because she was into self-preservation after all, thank you very much. “Is that why the blue and brown suits? So you can tell the main one from the extra?”

 

“What? No, Donna. Of course not! I only have one body at a time. One wears out or gets too severely injured and it triggers a regeneration, a bodily renewal process. I keep my memories, but my body is totally different and my personality often changes a good deal. The last me was rather gruff and arrogant, moody, thought he knew everything, bit bossy really.”

 

“I thought you said the personality changes,” Donna remarked with a grin.

 

The Doctor eyed her for a moment before deciding pouting wouldn’t really work with her, and that she wasn’t that far off with her remark. He admitted, “I don’t think you can call me gruff.”

 

“No,” she agreed. “Rather the friendly puppy, you.”

 

“Oi, I’m the Oncoming Storm!” he told her indignantly.

 

She sobered for a moment, remembering that at times, he was indeed that. She changed the subject. “Well, if he’s in a different body, one that came before this one, then he wouldn’t recognize you, would he?”

 

“He’d sense another Time Lord and since they’re all dead, he’d know it was another version of himself,” the Doctor explained. “And I really don’t want to be told off by me. I was a bit intimidating in that form.”

 

“What? You’re scared of yourself?” Donna asked astonished.

 

“You didn’t know me.”

 

“I’ve seen you face down monsters. How could this be any worse?” she demanded.

 

“You ever hear the expression ‘he was his own worst enemy,’ Donna?” the Doctor asked her. “That me was…well…it was…I was…dangerous.”

 

“You’re dangerous now,” Donna protested. 

 

“Thought I was a pup,” he muttered darkly.

 

“I was kidding. I haven’t forgotten what you did to the Racnoss,” she said quietly.

 

“But…I was worse then. It was before Rose really…before she’d gotten her hands in there and fixed me.”

 

“What, were you broken? Before Rose, I mean? I know you were when you lost her,” Donna said sympathetically. “But…before you met her?”

 

“I was…before I found Rose, I was…so broken and even after I met her, for a while…” He stared off into the distance and she was just about to say something when he continued on. “Then that night, the night of the dance…she and I…we were…” He broke off and ran a hand through his hair in frustration. “We…it got better.”

 

“Ah,” said Donna. “I get it.”

 

“Get what?” he asked irritated. Here he was baring his heart to her and she acted like she understood the most precious night of his life, his first night with Rose.

 

“That was the night you first got a leg over,” Donna said matter-of-factly. “And you don’t want to do anything that might prevent that from happening.”

 

The Doctor glared at her. “You don’t have to put it quite that crudely, do you?” he protested. “Rose and I, we were better than that.”

 

“No one’s better than that,” Donna insisted. “You may be an alien, Doctor, but you’re still a man. It’s all about the penis with you lot.”

 

“Donna!”

 

“Men, women, we’re all about sex when it comes down to it.”

 

“We’re not,” the Doctor said. “Or are you trying to tell me something, Donna?”

 

“Eww!” she said. “Don’t you even think about it, alien boy!”

 

“Wasn’t,” he said with a sour look, but there was a glint in his eye that said he’d enjoyed baiting her into that reaction. 

 

“Are you saying that the two of you weren’t lovers?” He continued to glare at her but didn’t deny her words. “All these rules you profess to live by, Doctor, how can they matter if it means you can’t spend just a few minutes to catch a glimpse of the woman you love? After all, if there’s no one left to stop you, why are you still following the rules?”

 

“It’d be wrong.”

 

“Why?”

 

“Because I had my time with her and it can’t come again!” he said angrily. “There’s too many things that could go wrong and if I lose the memories I already have, if they’re rewritten, if I never...” He broke off. “I can’t.”

 

“But if we’re very, very careful, could you do it? Get the chance to sneak a dance with your lost love? ” she asked gently. He didn’t answer her, instead turning sharply on his heel and stalking out of the console room.

 

 

 

Donna’s words echoed in his head off and on for the next couple of hours. He didn’t like the feelings that were rising up in him, because he desperately wanted to do what Donna had suggested. The temptation to cross his own path was overwhelming and more than that, it was completely wrong. But Rose, oh, Rose! Just to see her again, watch her from afar, catch a glimpse of that smile that had often times driven him to utter distraction, especially that night when it had been focused on someone else.

 

He remembered that night so clearly, watching her dance with the stranger. His fingers clenched into fists as the memory of the jealousy he’d had overtook him, how in an act of possession he had dragged his Rose away from the man she’d been dancing with, out of the dance hall and back to the TARDIS. His breathing got ragged as he remembered that moment in the TARDIS when she’d naively offered him anything to make him happy, how he’d torn her bodice trying to get at her body, how she’d reacted to his kiss, to his touch. How he’d moved her to the bedroom and had taken what she offered him, what he’d wanted so desperately.

 

With a bit of speed he made his way to the bedroom they had shared that night, and for the rest of her nights on board the TARDIS, a room he had not used since the day he lost her. He groaned as he surveyed the room, as he remembered every bit of their encounter that night and how she’d come for him with such blinding intensity and more than once. He didn't dare even think about how she'd undone him that night.  He had to focus very carefully on controlling his breathing then, bringing the memory back under control.

 

He sat down on the bed he had spent so many hours making love to Rose in. It couldn’t, it couldn’t possibly hurt just to catch a glimpse of her, could it? Just a few moments to stare at her and reimprint her beauty on his memory, refresh the images stored away that had begun, despite his best efforts, to blur. A few moments to take in her beauty and her grace and then he could leave Donna at the ball and return for her later that evening. He could easily avoid himself, avoid Rose, and just watch from afar. 

 

It’d be simple enough, really. He thought back to that night, thought back to how he had stood there against the wall, refusing to dance with Rose and glowering as some interloper had swept his Rose off to dance. He’d been, he admitted now, sulking. But he hadn’t done anything about it for far too long, he’d just let it go on, getting all the more jealous, all the more angry that Rose was practically throwing herself at the stranger.

 

He remembered suddenly the beautiful, mouthy, red-haired woman who had come up and distracted him, got in the way of his view as the man in the well-cut tuxedo with the…crazy…brown…hair… No. It couldn’t be! But what if it was? He jumped to his feet and sprinted down the hall to the wardrobe room. He searched through the racks of formal wear, first finding a tuxedo that matched very well with his memory of what the stranger had been wearing. Then the carefully mended dress that Rose has painstakingly fixed after he’d torn it off her was sitting on the next hanger. And beside it, as if just waiting for him to find it, was the emerald green dress with a well-built corset next to it--.

 

His mouth fell open, he snatched up the gown and the undergarment, and he dashed back to the control room where Donna was still hanging out, curled up on the jump seat and reading a magazine.

 

“Here,” he said thrusting the clothing at her.

 

“What’s this then?” she asked.

 

He looked closely at Donna as she held the dress up and realized that yes, with the right make-up, with her hair pulled up into a fancy twist with little tendrils hanging down, and that corset that would keep her impressive attributes pushed up but prevent them from falling out of the rather spectacular dress… 

"Oi, space man, I'm up here," Donna said when his gaze had lingered just a bit too long on her chest while he was lost in thought.  He flicked his gaze away and focused on his memories intently and saw past what he suddenly remembered realizing was the moment he’d recognized the man had had a perception filter surrounding him. He’d dismissed it at the time as he’d sensed no danger, but he wouldn’t have done from himself. 

 

He looked harder at the moment and noted a telepathic dampener had been in place as well. He had been the interloper! Or rather he would be. Well, now, that was different. Not going would be the thing to change history, because he had been the catalyst of the night's events. He had to go or there would be a paradox. Oh, he’d been brilliant! Or was about to be.

 

“Time to get dressed for the ball, Donna,” he said. She frowned at him before realizing the import of his words.

 

“Change your mind then, did you?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“What about the danger?” she asked. “Do you really think you can do this without cocking up the time lines?”

 

He grinned manically at Donna, suddenly cheerful at the prospect of not only seeing Rose again, but of spending an entire hour talking and dancing with her. “I’m the Doctor,” he said joyously. “And I can do anything!”

 

“So long as anything doesn’t include trying to catch a glimpse of me in this corset!” she shot back and leaving him stuttering in rapid denial that he would never, she flounced out of the console room to get ready.

Ch. 2:  http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/136262.html