damalurbackup | [fic] doctor who

TITLE: Thimblerig (2/2)
CHARACTERS: Ten/Rose
SUMMARY: The Doctor attempts life as a househusband, grows a TARDIS, eats makeup, admits to liking cats, waxes about Lovecraft, and neglects to tell Rose something fairly important. A post-Journey's End fix-it story.
NOTES: I owe an enormous thank you to

cytherea999, who graciously agreed to beta read for a complete newbie to the fandom. The red TARDIS was inspired by a panel in Buffy: Season Eight. Magrathea, Oglaroon, and many of my other throwaway references were lifted directly from that wholly remarkable book, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

THIMBLERIG
— Part 2

They spend the first snowfall of the year huddled down at the local, a row of empty glasses and a heaping basket of chips between them. It's late enough that even most of the regulars have gone home; the bartender is deep in discussion with a woman possibly older than the Doctor. The Doctor himself is coaxing the pub's sleek tabby to their table with a row of chips. "Cats like the salt," he explains. He offers the cat another chip; it leaps onto the table and knocks over the saltshaker.

"Do you think they'll mind it being up here?"

"Hm? Mind what?" Those lovely hands of his sweep over the cat and down its back. "And 'it' is a she."

Rose hides her grin behind the rim of her pint. "Thought you didn't like cats, anyway."

The cat settles herself to the tabletop, tucks her paws beneath her, and starts to purr; the Doctor looks up from his attentions bemusedly. "Don't like cats? Whatever gave you that impression?"

"Oh, you know," she says, and takes a sip in lieu of laughing. "That time in 2012, with the Isolus."

"With the — oh." He tousles his hair. "Well, we'd just had that business with the cat nuns, and it's more that I was temporarily put off cats because I'd nearly been infested with the plague, and it takes some time to recover from that sort of thing, you know, but obviously I don't dislike cats."

"That's funny." She pauses. "Because it seemed to me you were jealous that I paid attention to the cat instead of you."

"Jealous?" He has his affronted lord of the universe face on, his how dare you imply that I am susceptible to such a lowly emotion face. "Jealous? I'll have you know, Rose Tyler, that I was no such thing. Jealous. Really. The mere thought hadn't even begun to speculate about —"

"It was rather adorable," Rose interrupts.

"I might have been a bit jealous," he corrects. "A tiny bit. Not much."

"Of course not."

"'The cat is cryptic, and close to strange things which men cannot see,'" he tells her, peering through his eyelashes and obviously trying to not be obvious about changing the subject.

"Who's that, then?"

"H.P. Lovecraft. They don't have him here. No Cthulhu, no Elder Gods, no Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young," he rattles off, plainly relishing the weight of the title in his mouth. "This is a universe curiously devoid of myth."

"Do you mean that?"

"No, not really." He slumps and addresses the cat. "We could call you 'Menes,' although I'm not positive that's fitting for a lady such as yourself. How about Bastet?" He studies the cat intently; she yawns in response, and he beams. "Bastet it is!"

Rose shovels a handful of chips into her mouth. There is nothing, she decides, more perfect than perfect chips. These are just right, thick and hot, a tad lighter on the inside; if there is a heaven, it surely involves the Doctor and chips. Bastet, too, she thinks magnanimously.

The barkeep lets out a sharp salvo of laughter, and Rose studies him as she chews. He has what look like walnut shells out on the counter; the old lady tilts her head, and then points, birdlike. The barkeep shakes his head and laughs again.

"Ah, the old army game," the Doctor breaks in, easily interpreting her curious stare.

"The army game?"

"Or the shell game. I've heard it called thimblerig. It's a confidence trick, centuries old — since the Middle Ages, at least."

"Seen it on the telly, but I didn't know the name," Rose admits. "Aren't they supposed to be betting?"

"Nah. He's just playing to show off his skill, now. It's impossible to win against a good shell man."

"Why's that?"

"Sleight of hand. The really skilled ones can nab a pea from underneath a shell without the mark ever noticing. When they play it on the street, there's usually a couple of shills in the crowd to lookout for the police," he adds, really warming to the topic. "If you have a good partner, they can help you con a mark into playing. The shill starts a game, and either picks the obviously wrong shell or is allowed to win, at which point the mark jumps in, eager to show the shill up. The mark can't win, of course; I've seen a shell man swap the pea from one shell to another without moving his hands. There are tells, but human eyes can't keep up to spot them. Sometimes you get a human trying the shell game off-world, and some other species with telepathy or faster reflexes catches on —"

"Alright," Rose says, "so were you the mark or the shell man?"

"I was the — I don't know what you're talking about, Rose Tyler."

"Just saying, you seem to know an awful lot about a con game —"

"I know an awful lot about an awful lot of things."

"You were the mark, weren't you?" she crows.

He scowls; the cat yawns again and resumes her rumble. "Look," he says. "You upset Bastet. Poor girl, did Rose bother you with her lying ways?"

Rose fights a fit of laughter and loses.

::

She's nearly packed up and out of the office for the holidays when Jill Everett drops her bombshell. One last, blessed form to file, one final audio recording to hand off to the languages team, and she's free. Jillian pops by just as she's adding a flourish to the end of the penultimate signature.

"Rose Tyler," Jill chides, "I know that look. You're about to swan off early, aren't you?"

Rose glances up, guiltily. "Well, maybe. How d'you know?"

Jill's smile reminds her of Ida Scott, just a bit; it could be the hair. "Your blinds are drawn, your computer's off, and you're wearing your coat even though it's warm enough to boil water in here." Her grin turns mischievous. "And if I had a man waiting for me like your Doctor, I'd be swanning off early, too."

Rose feels herself flush. "I'm entitled to look forward to Christmas, same as anyone."

"That you are," Jill says, "and we're glad to see it. Anyway, I just came up here to tell you thanks for helping with that android the other day. I didn't fancy losing my free will to a paranoid, manic-depressive robot."

"Robots are old hat, by now." She tucks her tongue between her teeth and shoots Jillian a sly look. "Give me an alien any day of the week."

The other's woman's laugh is low and contained; she always laughs like that, as if she doesn't want anyone else to overhear. "I'll leave both to you. Speaking of aliens, though, you remember that ship we tore apart last spring?"

"Which? The Altairian?"

"No, that black one — nearly frictionless surface; we never could figure out where it came from, even with the Doctor's help. We scavenged some parts from it, though, that's what the new bioscanner security system's based on. The thing is, Rose —"

"Yeah?" Rose says, slowly. Jill's deadly serious now, dropping quick glances over her shoulder and clenching the doorframe with both hands.

"Your Doctor — he isn't human, is he? His heart rates, his life signs...everything screams Martian." She hesitates. "Look, it's not the sort of thing I mind — he's a good bloke, and I'm not here to pry. I didn't know where you'd be if anyone else noticed, though."

A cold tendril unfurls inside Rose's chest. "Not human. Not at all human? Can you detect hybrids?"

Jillian looks surprised. "Hybrids are easy, because of the human side. Incredible technology — but you mean you didn't know?"

Rose forces herself to smile. "No, I...knew. Thanks, Jill."

"No problem." A beat. "Are you okay? I thought —"

"I'm fine. Just anxious to get home."

"Alright, then. Happy Christmas, Rose."

"Happy Christmas," Rose returns automatically, and doesn't notice when the other woman pulls the door shut behind her. It's difficult to think at all, past the roar of confusion and shock and other things best left unnamed. Someone else wearing her body finishes the paperwork, someone else takes the lift down to the parking garage, someone else opens her car door and starts the engine. She sees from a great distance that her hands are trembling, and clutches at the steering wheel with a white-knuckled grip to compensate.

The drive home is a blur, the hike up to their third-floor flat equally so. She fumbles the keys and almost drops them; it takes long, precious moments to work the deadbolt and turn the doorknob, and when the door swings open her vision is entirely consumed by something red.

"Rose!" The Doctor ambushes her from behind the sofa. "Merry Christmas! Isn't this fantastic? I was going to tell you, but then I thought I'd keep it for a surprise. The kitchen isn't quite finished, of course, unless we want a dishwasher that belches soap bubbles, and it doesn't have much by way of furnishings — I thought you'd want to help with that, or we could just take everything from here, whichever you'd like — but the best part," he pats at his pockets and finally withdraws a key, "is that she's finally ready for a test run! Where should it be? Damogran? Oglaroon? Eleventh-century Indonesia?"

He's practically vibrating in place, his hair even more disordered than usual, his glasses perched crookedly on his face, one hand pressed against the red TARDIS simply to feel her beneath his fingertips; and in that moment he's very dear to her.

"Rose? Rose, is something the matter?"

He's very dear to her, but it isn't enough.

"Doctor," she says, "why do you have two hearts?"

His face falters. "I'm part Time Lord —"

"No, I'm certain you said that you — this you — only had one heart." He looks away, and that's answer enough for her. "Why did you lie to me about being human? Did you think I needed —"

"It seemed like the best solution for everyone," he says, quietly. "We'd hoped that — well, between Donna and the...other me, they had one whole human and one whole Time Lord, and there had to be a way to make Donna right again without doing something silly like erasing her memories —"

She slides to the floor. The world starts to spin, and her respiratory reflex kicks in, and she gasps for air, because all she can do is breathe.

"Rose! Rose, are you —"

"Oh my God," she says. "You switched places. The half-human one — he went back to the other universe with Donna — you switched —"

"Yes," he says. "Just after we dropped Jack and Martha and Mickey off."

"You switched places," she says again.

"Yeah." His voice drops to a low, almost gravelly register. "Nipped off when you and Jackie were caught up with Donna, changed suits, I got the piece from the TARDIS, and — well. That was it."

When she looks up he's kneeling in front of her, his eyes large and liquid. "Why didn't you tell me? You just — dump me back on that beach, with some duplicate of you —"

"He is me, Rose. I wasn't lying about that."

"No. No, but you aren't him, are you?"

He doesn't answer.

"Yeah," she says, and laughs, or cries, or — "That's what I thought."

"You have an entire human life here, Rose," he says, gently, and for that gentleness she hates him. "I only wanted to be part of it."

"But you're not human!" The words tear out of her. "You can't just play at it!"

"Rose, I'm not — I'm not playing. Is that what you think of me?"

Her cheeks, she realizes, are damp. "I don't know what to think anymore," she says, finally.

He looks at her, something ancient and aching behind his eyes; but when she gathers her keys and walks out the door, he makes no motion to stop her.

::

Her mum doesn't ask questions, just opens her door and gathers her close. "There, there, sweetheart," she says, "get it all out." When Rose finally calms down enough to speak, Jackie leads her to the kitchen, shoos the staff out, and sits a hot cuppa in front of her daughter. "Now, Rose, what's the matter?"

Rose hitches a breath. There's no best way to explain this, and nothing to be gained by stalling. "Mum," she starts, "do you know how the Doctor, this Doctor, is supposed to be human?"

"Of course," her mum says. "And the first one took off in his space box again."

"They switched places, Mum. I thought — I thought at first that he'd just lied about the human part, that there was some mistake, but he switched places on me, he's been here all along."

"But Rose, sweetheart, isn't that a good thing?"

"I don't know!" She's surprised by the sudden vehemence that rushes through her. "He left me, Mum, he left me on that beach, and it killed me. And then he let me think he'd left me again."

"Well, he's not helping matters by letting two of him run around." Jackie clucks. "Everything would be so much easier if he kept himself in one body, like a normal man."

"Mum."

"Oh, alright. Did you ask him why he did it?"

Rose slumps over her tea, sucking in the steam between her teeth. Maybe the free radicals will jumpstart her synapses. "He said it was partly to do with Donna, that if he'd gone back he'd have to erase her memories. I don't know why, maybe the other him can sort of — swap the human and Time Lord bits, or something."

"Is that all?"

"He said...he said that I had a human life here, and he wanted to be a part of it."

"Good on him," Jackie says, to Rose's clear shock. "What? Even he's got to get something right once in a decade."

"Guess so," Rose says, still reluctant to give the Doctor any quarter.

"Look, sweetheart." Her mum reaches across the table and wraps her hand around Rose's. "I saw you after we came back here. You were angry, and more hurt than I'd ever seen you, and you didn't know how to move on. You'd spent the entire time after Canary Wharf tryin' to get back to him, and when you finally did he left you back here with himself."

Jackie pauses and gives her a squeeze. "Now, you moved on, and you fell in love with the new one just as much, and sweetheart, you've been happy. But you never really stopped wondering about the other, did you?"

"No," Rose admits, and wipes her eyes with the back of her wrist.

"Well, there you go then." Her mum sits back with a satisfied look. "Seems to me you've got a second chance."

"Will we...Do you really think so?"

"Course I do. But that doesn't mean he shouldn't suffer for making you cry, Rose. If he shows his face round here —"

A sound cuts her off, a familiar sound, the sound of all of space and time coalescing into a single point.

"I'll smack him upside the head," Jackie finishes, and something large and red materializes in her kitchen.

"Thanks, Mum," Rose says, and Jackie must read the depth of Rose's gratitude, because she gives her daughter's hand a last squeeze before letting go.

"Anytime for you, sweets." A pause. "I'll just be in the parlor, but there's a cast iron skillet under the sink if you need it."

::

When the TARDIS door swings open, Rose is composedly sipping her tea. The Doctor emerges cautiously, first a hand and then his head, before stepping out; he's still disheveled and liberally streaked with grease, but he apparently takes the lack of tears as an invitation for levity. "Rose Tyler," he says, "rule number one is no wandering off."

She takes another sip of her tea. He wilts.

"Rose —"

"Let's go outside." She thumps her cup and saucer back on the table and leads the way to the back terrace. The staff has cleared all the walkways, but the snow stretches fresh and untouched over the lawn. It's nippy out, crisp but not uncomfortable, and Rose leans against the rail and fixes her eyes on the horizon so she doesn't have to look at the Doctor.

"Rose," he says, and hesitates. She wonders how many thoughts whirl through his mind in the span of that hesitation. "Do you know how many years the average person lives in this world?"

"Doctor —"

"Not a tangent, I promise. Do you?"

She tugs at her scarf. "I hadn't thought about it."

"One hundred forty," he says. "Maybe another decade, maybe one less. The health care here is remarkable, really."

"A hundred and forty's still nothing next to nine hundred," she points out.

"You've seen the time vortex. We can't be sure what that's done to you, but it's not the sort of thing that shortens a lifespan. And I'm already on my tenth regeneration, Rose, and I've burned through the last few at a rapid rate. In two centuries I might very well be dead."

"And that's supposed to make me feel better?"

She feels him shrug. "Well. I had hoped it might."

"No," she says, and shakes her head. "No, Doctor — it's never been about how long I'll live, because I'd rather have two years with you than two centuries without. It's about you lying to me, and you pretending to be something you're not, and you letting me think you'd left me on the beach again."

"Rose," he sighs. "I did think this was for the best."

"Because of Donna."

"Because of Donna, and because of you. Donna was safe, there was another Time Lord ready to step into the gap left by my absence, and we had the opportunity for a normal life."

"A normal life? A normal life? Why bother to build the TARDIS, then, if we were supposed to have a perfect, normal life?"

"I..."

"I'll tell you why, you stupid man." She turns to face him for the first time. "Because neither of us want to go to work everyday and have lawns and — and mortgages — and two and a half kids! If we weren't waiting for the TARDIS, we'd have taken off to Cairo, or Bangkok, or Alaska!"

His brow knits. "...Two and a half? Is that possible?"

"Oh, shut up," she says, but her lips quirk. "It wasn't ever about having any of those things, Doctor. It was about having you."

"Ah. Well."

"You can't make decisions for me."

"No matter how I try," he agrees.

"You should have told me."

"Yes."

"And now you're going to apologise."

"Absolutely," he says, and kisses her.

When they pull apart, he rests his forehead against hers and studies her from beneath heavy lids. "I have never," he says, quietly and distinctly, "in all my long years, met a being I less want to hurt than you, Rose Tyler. It seems my good intentions sometimes get the better of me. Fortunately, you persist in insisting on not being treated as anything other than my complete partner."

She sets her fingers against his face, and there's the brush of something warm and ephemeral against her mind. "Hear you've got a space ship," she says.

"Oh, yes." He smiles at her, that broad, wholly happy smile that he reserves entirely for her, and the universe slips neatly back into place. "But it isn't only a space ship."

"No?" she says.

"No," he answers, and takes her hand. "Did I mention that it travels in time?"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

mintbunny.livejournal.com

I guess after taking the time to read both parts, I might as well make a comment. The summary is what got me. Mostly about growing a TARDIS. I want a baby TARDIS.

It was a really cute story and I could so imagine the Doctor. I want a Doctor husband really badly. I squealed at some points trying to imagine the Doctor in 'real life'. It was hilarious.

From:

[fic] doctor who - thimblerig (2/2)

Page Summary

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags