Just Another Shop Girl (9/18)
Mar. 21st, 2009 01:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
amberfocusTitle: Just Another Shop Girl (9/18)
Author: amberfocus
Characters/Pairings: Nine/Rose, Jack Harkness, Tessa Morgan
Genre: action/adventure, tease/flirt, bit of romance
Rating: PG-13 (Teen)
Summary: After acquiring an accidental passenger while escaping from an alien attack, the Doctor, Rose and Jack find themselves on the planet Tir in the middle of its population's uplifting to full sentience as they come fully into their pyschic gifts. But there is evil in the mix as a man named Harrington Conrad tries to use the creatures' unique abilities for his own ends. It's up to our trio plus one to stop him.
A/N: If you have read this before on Teaspoon, this is an extensive rewrite adding anywhere from 500 to 1000 words per chapter.
3. http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/173300.h
5. http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/174848.h
7. http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/179915.h
Chapter Nine: Choices
“You have got to be out of your mind!” Tessa’s eyes were flashing with anger and her hands were firmly on her hips, staring down the Doctor with an expression on her face that almost matched his at his most stubborn. She was not reacting well to the Doctor’s plan and Rose wasn’t entirely sure the girl wasn’t right. It wasn’t that the plan was bad in the sense that it would fail. She was pretty sure it would work just as the Doctor intended. But…well, the part that involved the Tirawls was making Rose uneasy and since Tessa had developed such a huge attachment to the gentle creatures, she would not be fast to accept that it might be the only way.
“I’m quite sane, thank you,” the Doctor said coldly.
“I don’t think you can stop him,” Rose said. “And it will work.”
“But it’s wrong!” Tessa was spitting fire. “You’re supposed to be helping them, not sacrificing them!” She turned to Jack. “You said they were going to be fully sentient one day. How can you let him do this? It might wipe them out!”
Before Jack could get a word out he was interrupted by the Doctor. “They will be wiped out if we don’t do something!” he snapped. “Not might. Will. They’ll die, Tessa. Every single one of them. No Tirawls now and none in the future! We have to do this or they stand no chance!”
Tessa looked like she was about to cry and Rose reached out for the Doctor’s hand, trying to assert a bit of her calming influence over him. He glanced at her for a moment and she squeezed his hand. He looked back at Tessa. His voice softened. “It’s the only way.”
“Ask them,” she demanded, her own stance hardening as her resolve firmed.
“What?”
“Ask them. The Tirawls. As them if this is what they want to do. Let them have a choice in it. If they say it’s okay then I’ll give. But not until they say so.” She was unyielding.
“I’m not sure that’s possible. I don’t think I can communicate with them telepathically. They’re not that far along on the path to sentience,” the Doctor said.
“The TARDIS could ask them,” Rose said and the Doctor turned to look at her in surprise.
“Rose--.”
“I think she could,” Rose insisted before he could protest further. “You tell me all the time how smart she is and how much she can do. This is her project. She wanted us in on this. She brought us here. Your TARDIS wants us to help the Tirawls. She’ll figure out a way to do it.”
“Very well,” the Doctor said looking back and forth between the two determined young women. He knew when he was beaten. “I’ll ask her.”
“That was rather brave of you, standing up to him that way,” Vincent said when the Doctor had gone off with Jack and Rose to speak with the TARDIS, mumbling something about using the direct interface for something so important. “He’s a bit dominating.
Tessa shook her head. “I’ve not known the man long, but he just makes me so angry! He just assumes that what he thinks is best, that it’s the only way. But it would have been so wrong to just force them to stampede through the base camp. If they want to, fine. I don’t like it, but if they’re willing I won’t try to stop them. The choice should be theirs, though. It shouldn’t be forced upon them or taken away from them. They should get to decide.
“I agree with you,” Vincent said. “Having your choices taken away…well, we’re all dealing with that here and it’s an awful thing to live with.” He glanced over at the Tirawls and then back at Tessa. “I think they are closer to sentience than we may have realized. I think they may have already crossed over the line. Those dreams they sing to us, they wouldn’t be able to do that if all that they were was ordinary animals.”
“I’m glad someone is on my side.”
“Your friend Rose seems to be. She got him to reconsider, anyway,” Vincent said.
Tessa waved that away. “I think he’d do anything if Rose asked him to. It wouldn’t matter whether it was wrong or right. He’s in love with her.” She sighed. “Maybe I’m judging him too harshly. It’s not every day you get kidnapped from your job following an attack by a rampaging alien creature, carried onto an alien space ship while you are unconscious and wake up with a crazy guy from outer space, a man from the future and a normal 21st century girl who thinks it’s all perfectly normal to be travelling with them. Next thing I know I’m halfway across the universe and he doesn’t care. No, wait, I don’t think I’m judging him too harshly.”
Then she broke into ridiculous giggles as she realized just how surreal her life had become in the last couple of days and started to appreciate the humor underneath the severity of the situation. The fit was so contagious soon Vincent was laughing along with her. When she finally got a hold of herself she grinned at him. “I was,” she said, “extremely bored until all this happened. I was wishing for something exciting to come into my life and shake it up. Guess I got my wish.”
“I’d say you got it in spades,” Vincent said, grinning at her. “Look, I’ve got to go check on Amy, but then I’m going down to see the refugee herd. Would you like to come along with me?”
Tessa nodded. “I’d like that a lot.”
“She was right,” Jack said after getting fed up with listening to the Doctor’s diatribe about crazy shop girls from planet Earth and how easily they could get under his skin.
“I bloody well know she was right!” snapped the Doctor in annoyance. “But does she have to be so in my face about it?”
“Pretty much, yeah. You weren’t exactly listening to her opinions before that,” Rose said softly.
“Give her a break, Doc. It’s not like the last few days have been normal for her,” Jack said. “We’ve kind of turned her world upside down and given her a few hard shakes for good measure.”
“Rose was never like that,” the Doctor grumbled.
“Rose has held her own against you plenty of times,” Jack pointed out.
“Yeah, but Rose isn’t openly defiant about it.”
“Oh, really? What about on Santraginus Five? Or Metebelis Three? Or Delphi?” Jack asked.
“Rose was invited to come,” Rose said. “Rose got to make that choice for herself and not have the decision made for her. And can we please not talk about Rose like Rose isn’t standing right here?” she asked.
“Sorry,” the Doctor said absently.
“It is true, though. I did get to choose. She didn’t. And you’re lucky there, because I do not like having my decisions made for me. If you’d kidnapped me we’d have a whole different relationship, mister. With me, you did it right and then you gave me the universe. With Tessa all you did was take away her world. She’s clinging to the only thing she has right now and that’s her innate sense of justice, of what’s right and wrong.”
“She’s attached herself to these beings because she can see black and white when she looks at them. It doesn’t challenge her sense of reality the same way a space ship, time and travel, and you do, Doc,” said Jack.
“And she’s a good kid,” said Rose. “Her heart--.”
“Is in the same place you keep yours, right smack in the middle of her sleeve,” interrupted the Doctor condescendingly. “And that’s not always a safe place to keep it!”
“Better that then locked up like a creature in a cage filled with nothing but anger, loneliness and regret!” Rose snapped back.
The Doctor stopped walking. He turned slowly around to look at Rose. She steeled herself, thinking she’d gone too far with her own defensive words. She waited for his angry response to the words that had just flown out of her mouth. Instead an ineffable look of tenderness crossed his face. “I haven’t been lonely, Rose Tyler,” he said in a soft voice, “since the day I met you.” He reached out gently and cupped the side of her face and she felt the edge of emotional tears beginning to form in her eyes.
“I’m going to go scout ahead for a while,” Jack said deftly removing himself from the little tableau and jogging off ahead, sensing a sudden need for privacy.
The Doctor pulled their joined hands up to rest over his chest. “And I’m working on the rest. You help with that, too.”
Rose’s heart pounded painfully in her chest. She felt like something huge had just occurred between them but she wasn’t sure exactly what. She stared into his eyes trying to make sense of his sudden emotional response to her. A moment later he dropped his hand from her face and let go of the hand he’d been holding. He turned around and began following Jack. Rose stood there for a moment wondering what had happened.
When he realized she wasn’t with him, he turned back and held out his hand. “Coming?” he asked. She hurried to catch up with him and slipped her hand back into his, marveling at the perfectness of the fit. She knew right at that moment that she would follow him anywhere. And that she’d do it for the rest of her life if he let her.
