Fanfiction: "Between The Tick and The Tock and The Bell, We Live" [Doctor Who]

[timepiececlock]

Summary: Something quiet, for the still life. These are the moments he bought with love, and these are the conversations they might have, past the points of the compass and the scope of the sea.

Spoilers: Some months after the events of 4x13

Pairings: Yes.


Setting: Alternate Universe, England.

Notes: This is weird. It started off as one thing, led to another. It's my mildly confused attempt to capture a moment of what life could be like for Rose and Alt!Doctor. These are the moments he bought with love. Not the moment of adventure and thrill, but the moments in between, where time crawls.

It's a mellow ficlet, with lots of dialogue, and I'm not sure where it came from or why I avoided using names in the text. Please overlook any accidents of pacing, imbalances of the humors, or a weak grasp of British colloquial syntax.

****************************

FANFICTION.NET link: here

****************************


Between The Tick and The Tock and The Bell, We Live


"So what's it like, being human?"

"You tell me, Jackie," said the man, and he raised his eyes from the book.

"Right. Because you're only bits and pieces, aren't you? I forgot. Not all the way anything."

There were a number of replies the man considered giving to this, most of them crude enough to start a fight: a good and nasty row. However, the woman he loved was in the kitchen; she was just close enough to hear when something expensive and gaudy gets thrown against cherry-wood-paneled wall.

"Jackie." The man nodded in a way that was almost respectful, and his book covers met in a snap. He left his chair and headed for the kitchen, where he knew he'd find a blond woman pouring over a map too large for the counter space she'd spread it on. He leaned against the nearest pantry cabinet and waited.

Eventually, she looked up at him, and she smiled fondly when she did.

"You're quiet when you want to be, stealthy as mole when you're not talking. I remember that." The man smiled in return.

"You're more studious than I remember. And," he gestured, "you collect maps, now."

The women let her smile slide a little wider, and she pushed on a long crease with a dust-darkened fingertip. "I did some traveling last year, and when I got out into the big wide world, I realized that maps make it a lot easier to get around. If you're actually doing the walking and not popping back and forth. I like to keep track."

The man tapped his slim hardcover against his chin. "Have you tried charts yet?"

"No boat."

The man placed is book on the counter top and clapped his hands once. "That's what government organizations are for. Or so they tell the new guy."

"You want to steal a boat from Torchwood?"

"They wouldn't have any good ones," he said, and a thread of playfulness slipped through. "Maybe from the coastal guard folk--what are they called here?"

The blond woman shrugged. "Shore Watch Something. It isn't a very good name for an agency."

"Let's commandeer one tomorrow. For the greater good of Britain. And trust me, it is."

"Sounds fun." The woman tilted her head, and blond waves dipped between her neck and shoulder. "What's wrong?"

The man sighed. "Jackie." The woman frowned.

"You said you'd try to be nicer--"

"I am being nice. I was nice. I love your mother, she's a powerhouse of a lady. But we don't mix and I've...overstayed. It's not pleasant when I can hear the things she says and the things she doesn't."

"Can't you block it out? You used to."

"Jackie is loud on the inside, and I'm around her more often. Every day."

The woman chuckled at his sour expression. She rose from the chair, walked toward the man, and cupped his face. "There's been a record number of whales beaching themselves off the coast of Southern Portugal. Would you be terribly disappointed if we officially asked for the boat instead of stealing it?"

The man gave a pretend pout, bringing his hands to cover hers. "I'll be put out. I was looking forward to heisting it during the witching hour. We could wear all black."

The woman giggled, and leaned her forehead against his. "We could still wear all black, if you want to be in the spirit of it."

"Portugal, you said. Too hot during the day."

"Well, I do need charts. We could steal those."

"Too easy."

"Tell you what," the woman said, her arms wrapped around his neck now and her form pleasantly leaning on his front. "You fly to Portugal with me, use that brain the size of a planet to translate so we get to the right beach, and I'll let you steal any article of my clothing, when we get there."

"Any?"

"Any. If I don't figure out what you've stolen or where it's hidden, then on the second day you get to filch something else. But if I catch you..."

"Oi, you'll spoil me for the ending."

"Have I tweaked your interest?"

"Escaping your mum, a free pass at your knickers, and a whale of a mystery?" He chuckled, turned in place, and hoisted her onto the slick corian counter. Their foreheads still rested together, and this time his smile went all the way to his eyes.

"Exotic sea food, too," said the woman, whose name was Rose, who had a passion for jeopardy, and who liked to mark on maps every place on this new Earth that she planned to take him.

"Not the whales, I hope?"

"Well, we'd have to save them first."

"That sounds... fantastic," said the man, whose name was sometimes John Smith, who was all the way in love with Rose Tyler, and who didn't draw on maps anymore because he planned to take her to the places that never quite made it to ink or stylus or GPS device. All the places on her world that whispered, and sang, and lived, past the points of the compass and the scope of the sea.

********************************************

Comments

[mswyrr]

Plus, I don't get it. By making him more human, you're making him less Doctor, and it's the Doctor that Rose is in love with. The point was to have the good of both worlds, not to make him a human. ARGH.

On a completely off topic front, it amuses me to no end that RTD has made it so there's a real, genuine, 100% canonical, unarguably half-human Doctor.

BWAH! After all the shit people have given Eight for not being a real, genuine Doctor, 'cause he's all kiss-y and half-human, omg it pleased me so much.

Not that I didn't wince at that part of the TV Movie, too, but it isn't as if it's a good enough reason to act like Eight never existed.

((shakes wee fist at EightHater fanboys))

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

it amuses me to no end that RTD has made it so there's a real, genuine, 100% canonical, unarguably half-human Doctor.

You're right. XD Does that make him 1/4 TimeLord now? Haha. Just kidding.

I'm partly of the mind--and this has no basis in old who canon, just my head--that a Time Lord isn't just having the biology, it's the whole package, and one is transformative of the other. So the Master could be all Gallifrey while the Doctor is half Gallifrey, half Human, but both boys have two hearts, and both were exposed to the Time Vortex, and both were raised to live with an enormous mental capacity and breadth of knowledge and training, and all the secrets of time and the universe. The extra human biological material doesn't matter, as long as the Gallifrey is dominant. Or the Gallifrey biology is *made* dominant by whatever training/manipulation TL children go through.

BWAH! After all the shit people have given Eight for not being a real, genuine Doctor, 'cause he's all kiss-y and half-human, omg it pleased me so much.

You know, you gave me a thought. If his mother was human, and he didn't witness his mother and father being happy or together, that could be what gives him the fear and pessimism and fatalism about loving Rose. Like, it didn't work for his parents so why would he be any more successful?

Hah, that's so human a reason it'd probably really piss the Doctor off if someone suggested it. Like he'd be above having mother or father issues.

Then again, canon is so all over the place. The doctor's original series granddaughter was human, right?

[mswyrr]

You're definitely on to something, from what I've seen. Apparently, there were Gallifreyans who weren't Time Lords/Ladies in some Old Skool canon. Or, at least, people have assumed from evidence in various eps that Time Lord/Lady is a title bestowed after rigorous training, not merely a species thing. There's one Four ep where his companion Leela ends up going outside the Citadel and there's these Gallifreyan people there living pretty rough, and there was a definite sense of some people being second class citizens on the planet. I don't remember terribly well right now... I wasn't able to get all the eps of that one.

At the very least, it's an arguable point.

Hah, that's so human a reason it'd probably really piss the Doctor off if someone suggested it. Like he'd be above having mother or father issues.

HEH. Your explanation really does work. Though there is that level where I like the idea of him being 100% alien in his origins, and liking us humans because he's a terrible eccentric and we're great fun, not because he's a tormented Spock.


Then again, canon is so all over the place. The doctor's original series granddaughter was human, right?

Actually, I don't think so, no. She never regenerated, but One's speech about he and her being exiles from their home sort of suggests she was Gallifreyan. But one could argue that there are far better planets he could have taken her to school on, and say that maybe she chose low-tech earth because she wanted to know about the human part of her ancestry. But it's never said, from what I know.

[mswyrr]

I rather stopped trying to pin down canon too neatly after reading this Eight novel called Unatural History which was well and truly mindfucking. There's a singularity/paradox thing going on and the Doctor's personal history is woven into it so that one minute he's half human, and the next he's not, and there's a flashback to his childhood one way, and then it's gone.

Dizzying.

[mswyrr]

There's also unicorns and jugglars and it's set in San Francisco and the jugglars have noticed that there are pockets of lighter gravity (caused by the paradox, natch) and are taking advantage of these pockets in their acts and Eight leaps into one of their acts and one point and does this fantastic impromptu tandem juggling thing.

And the book is vaguely Buddhist, too.

[mswyrr]

*jugglers

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

I wonder if they used the paternity crazy plot to try to account for the half human thing? To explain it away and deny it at the same time.


Sounds like I really need to read some Eight books. I've never read any.

I tend to stay away from tv books because the ones I've tried-- Buffy, X Files, etc... they tend to either be simplified to the point where all the characters are superficial one-use versions of themselves, or they veer too far from canon for my liking. I read a few BTVS books but the only one I liked was the Spike & Dru book Pretty Maids All In A Row because it was genuinely creepy. But even that had some characterization elements that I thought differed from canon Spike. (well, as best as I could try to see through my intense shipper lens... is it still a shipper lens when it's canon on screen in front of you?)

[mswyrr]

I found Unnatural History ultimately frustrating because of all the meta the author was trying to work in (multiple versions of events are all well and good, but I do like to know at the end of a story that something happened in it and have a rough idea of what that something WAS, exactly) and I found it rather bleak, which is a sad and difficult to understand mood which plagues the 8th Dr books.

But there's this one called Vampire Science which is GENIUS and I will now contact you in email about getting it to you, if you'd like.

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

Oh babe, you had me at "Vampire Science"!

[mswyrr]

It's so good! And there are all kinds of strong women in it at various places in their lives, who are all strong in different ways. WOMEN AS INDIVIDUALS FTW.

And, unlike the vampires that annoy me (ANNE RICE'S!), these ones worked.

And I LOVED the vamp leader. Because she (yes, she's one of the awesome women!) is a horrible person in ways that make perfect sense.

And the Doctor says "I could succeed in many things, fail in many more, but as long as I've petted the cat I've done everything that really matters" at an important moment and it was REALLY GOOD.

[mswyrr]

And his mindset is Proper Alien throughout, I felt. Which I love. Sometimes one felt as if his love for the cats and the humans and the vampires was... not terribly different? It's hard to explain without spoilers. But there's this sense of... alienating affection for all life which doesn't make the kind of Us and Them distinctions that humans do.

There's the vampires using and depersonalizing the humans from instinct and for survival, and the humans depersonalizing and having the gut-deep visercal need to slay any creature that would prey on them, toppling them from their position as at the top of the food chain, and there's the Doctor... who, in subtle ways, is not part of this food chain, doesn't have those gut-level drives associated with the situation, and wants everyone to live. Including the cat.

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

Sounds a bit like Death from Discworld. Well, except for the "everybody lives" part.

[mswyrr]

;) It seemed to me that Nine had moments where he did things like that, but I'm blanking on specific examples at the moment...

((concentrates))

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

Random, but... My favoritest favorite Nine line is "Rose, I'm trying to resonate concrete."

CE says it just right, mildly frustrated but willing to stop and listen, a little petulant, a little too distracted. But he's saying all that... about concrete!

Yeah, had a bit of a fangirl flashback right there.

[mswyrr]

((smile))

Oh, Nine. First love of my young Whofan heart.

I think it was Nine's reaction to the Gelth and his belief in their right to live despite human feelings otherwise that felt the same to me as Eight's POV in Vampire Science. The pig-in-a-spacesuit kindness moment, too, I suppose.