Story Downloaded from Open Scrolls Archive (https://www.openscrolls.net) Title: 100 Themes, Doctor Who Style (#4254) Author: kika988 Chapters: 3
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Archive: Doctor Who Category: TV-verse Description: In which I undertake the 100 themes challenge, most of which will lean very strongly in a Doctor/Rose direction! Rated PG-13 for now, may change in the future. No limits, so they can be any length -- warnings and characters will be added as I add more chapters. Published: 08 Jul 2010 Updated: 03 Aug 2010 Warnings: Type: Romance Characters: Doctor (9 and 10); Rose Chapter 1 - Introduction AN: Thanks for stopping by to take a look at my new fic! I've written fics for years and have written Torchwood before, but this is my first Who fic, so please let me know what you think. Constructive criticism is welcomed with open arms! All rights to these characters belong to the BBC... I just borrow them when I'm bored, and try to return them in one piece. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- She'd been inside about fifteen minutes when it happened. The first ten had been spent watching the Doctor rush around turning dials, flipping switches, turning cranks in a seemingly random fashion. He seemed to know what he was doing, though, so she tried not to worry about it too much. Tried. Watching him mutter under his breath as if talking to the machine had started to unnerve her, so she announced that she was going to have a look around, and he had waved her on without so much as a glance in her direction, still fully focused on the display screen before him. The first hall she encountered seemed endless and contained rooms as random as the array of controls she had been watching previously. She found three bathrooms in a row, all on the right-hand side, before encountering a broom closet that was exactly that -- a closet filled with nothing but brooms. Another bathroom, still on the same side, then finally a door on the left. Like all the other doors, this one was unlocked. Rose stepped through the door to see a bedroom, sparely furnished but comfortable-looking. Her first thought was that perhaps this room belonged to the Doctor, and she immediately turned around to leave, not wanting to trespass in his personal space, but the door she had left open swung closed. Slightly alarmed, she grabbed the handle and jerked on it, half-expecting to find herself locked in. The door swung open easily, though, and on the other side was something new -- a plaque bearing the name 'Rose' was hanging on the outside of the door. Frowning, Rose tried to remember if the sign had been there before, but could not imagine that she would have missed something so obvious. She nervously stepped back into the room, keeping a hand on the doorjamb... just in case. "Is that to mean this is where I'm to sleep?" she wondered aloud, leaning around the corner to open the closet, blinking at all the clothes it was filled with. As she spoke, the panel where her hand rested seemed to... *pulse* for a moment before settling down and becoming a normal wall again. Rose jerked her hand away and stared at it as if it had offended her. "Okay, that was weird," she said quietly, swallowing a bit hard before pressing her hand back to the wall. "Doctor, is that you?" she asked hesitantly, wondering if this was some odd form of communication. The wall warmed quickly, more quickly than it should have, under her hand, and though she heard nothing, she knew somehow within moments that the answer to her question was 'no'. "This isn't possible," Rose muttered, squaring herself in front of the wall. "Of course, neither is time travel, so..." She continued to rest her hand lightly on the wall. "You... you, the Tardis, are you answering me, somehow?" The wall pulsed again under her hand, and Rose's mind was filled with a sense of *yes*, of agreement. Rose's lips parted in amazement and she stared at her hand where it connected with the wall. "Kind of like meeting the parents, innit?" she finally said with a nervous smile. "I suppose telling you that you have a lovely home would be a bit odd, wouldn't it?" Amusement seemed to fill the air around her. "I don't quite understand all this," Rose said quietly. "Any of it, really. I'm just trusting him. I just hope you don't mind me being here. I don't think he should do all his traveling alone, you know?" There was a long pause during which Rose wiped her free hand nervously against her jeans, then a feeling of acceptance all but flooded the air around her. She let out a breath slowly, feeling as if she had passed some test. "Making friends, are we?" came the Doctor's voice from behind her. She whirled around, clasping her hands behind her back. "It's alive," she blurted out, eyes wide. "The Tardis... it's alive?" The Doctor nodded. "Well, sentient, anyway. She takes good care of me," he added affectionately, running a hand down the nearest wall. "I'm impressed, though," he said, turning back to Rose with that goofy grin of his. "Most people I have to tell before they realize it. They get that something's odd, sure, but you got it all on your own." Rose shrugged self-consciously. "It kind of... talked to me," she admitted grudgingly. "Not with words, but..." she trailed off and shrugged, glancing back up to the Doctor, who was still grinning widely. "Fantastic! She likes you, you know," he added as an afterthought. "Anything you need, just ask her. She'll help you if she can. This will be your room, I suppose, if she set if up for you." He looked around it as if seeing it for the first time. "Got a nice one." He returned his gaze to Rose, who was looking around a bit wide-eyed as if wondering what she had gotten herself into. "Come on, then," he said, stepping forward and holding out his hand. "Let's take her somewhere nice, shall we?" Chapter 2 - Theme #2 -- Stars Rose wrapped her arms a bit tighter around herself, staring out the viewing screen to the wide expanse of space before her. The Doctor wondered for a moment if she had heard him come in, but surely the sound of his boots-- "It's so weird," she said, answering his unspoken question. The Doctor nodded and stepped up behind her. "Yeah," he agreed. "It will be, your first few trips, being in different time--" "No," she interrupted him. "Not that. Well, yeah, that too, but..." She let out a soft, breathless laugh at herself. "Yeah, like you said, that part is weird. But... it's gone. The whole world. All my family long dead, *me* long dead..." She trailed off, her lips quirking up sadly. "Any evidence we ever existed at all, all gone in that one moment. And yet..." She gestured out the viewing screen, capturing all the stars in the brief sweep of her arm. "Life goes on. Life I never even knew about until today, and it will just keep on going like nothing ever happened." She turned around, her eyes alight with thoughts flying through her mind as she tried to process the enormity of what she had witnessed. "It's like when my Granddad died when I was fourteen," she explained. "I loved him so much, *so* much, and when I heard he had died I couldn't imagine a world without him. But when I got up the next morning, the sun was still shining, the school bus still came by. The mail still came." She turned back to the screen and rested her hand on it, fingers splayed. "Life went on," she said softly. "Just like it will now. All those stars out there," she said wonderingly. "The same ones I used to look at when I was a kid, and they're still there, still going even after the end of the world." The Doctor rested a hand on her shoulder. "It's a huge universe, Rose," he said, smiling down at her reflection. "Humans are still out there, some of them probably your descendants, spreading out across the universe. You lot are amazing, you are." Rose smiled up at him. "We are that, aren't we?" she said cheekily, dragging herself out of her thoughts. "Well, you've shown me the end of the world, Doctor. My world. Now show me some others," she said eagerly. "Show me something wonderful." The Doctor grinned widely, her enthusiasm catching. "Alright then," he said, putting hands on her shoulders to turn her around. "You are so fond of your stars, Rose Tyler. Pick one." After a moment's hesitation, she pointed at a small one towards the left of the viewing screen, with a bluish tint. "Fantastic. Let's go see it!" With that, he grabbed her hand and tugged her back toward the Tardis, his mind already whirling with all the things to show her on the fourteenth planet from the sun she'd pointed out. Chapter 3 - Theme #3 -- Sorrow He'd done all he could. He'd said all his goodbyes, or all that were feasible to say, at the very least. Tied up all his loose ends, saved a planet. Saved the universe, for that matter, and at the expense of his own people. Again. Gave his life to save a man, a strong, good man. But here, at the very end, standing in the heart of the Tardis where he had spent so much time, time with her, he railed against fate. So much laughter, and as many tears. Even as his body filled with fire, his mind was filled with sparkling hazel eyes, blonde hair, strong hands that so often gripped his own as they shot across the galaxies. The sound of her laughter filled his ears as he submerged himself in memory to help ease his pain; the sight of her smile -- she smiled with her whole face when she really meant it, a sight he was willing to cross the universe for -- was bittersweet here at the end. The memories distracted him from his physical pain, but the heart that was rebuilding in his chest broke as he regenerated. "I don't want to go," he choked out, as he held onto that last memory of her smile, her whole face lit up. He didn't want to go; the man he was to regenerate into might be a good man, a great man, but that man wouldn't be in love with Rose Tyler, and that was the hardest thing the Doctor had ever had to let go of. At least now he knew she was safe and happy somewhere; in five minutes, he might not even care if she was happy. And that, he thought, as a lone tear evaporated from his face in the heat of the regeneration, was true sorrow. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Downloaded from Open Scrolls Archive (https://www.openscrolls.net) on Sun Nov 15, 2026 12:54 am