Flower and Willow: Chapter Two
Sep. 14th, 2011 08:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
timelord1Now, I'm not going to be posting a chapter a day on this one, but I did have a few come out fairly smoothly right at the start, so I thought I'd post a couple and then leave you hanging. Once again, there's a lot of setup for this one, and the next couple of chapters are a bit talky, but there's action to come, in many different facets. ;)
Once dry and dressed in his second-favorite suit, the Doctor input the coordinates for London in 1948; far enough in the future that if Nancy and Jamie were still alive, they should be reasonably established. Rose joined him, combing her hair and flicking drips of water all over the place.
“This is sensitive equipment, you know,” he said. “Could you not get it wet, please?”
“Right,” she said with a smirk. “Keep it dry so nothing slips when you whack it with a hammer?”
He narrowed his eyes. “That whacking is done with precision. Now, please don’t get your hopes up on this whole Nancy and Jamie thing. You know that there’s a good chance one or both of them didn’t survive the war.”
“There’s a good chance that they did,” Rose answered.
“That optimism is going to break your heart one of these days,” he said, turning his attention back to the control console. When he did, he noticed a blip on the monitor. He put on his glasses and leaned in to scrutinize it. “What’s that?”
“What’s what?”
He pointed at the blip. “That shouldn’t be there.”
“Where?”
“Thirty-five degrees, zero minutes, forty-two seconds north, one-hundred-thirty-five degrees, forty-six minutes, six seconds east, Earth reckoning,” he answered, not looking away from the screen.
“Oh,” Rose said. “There.”
“Sorry,” he said. “The Kinki Plain of Japan. Kyoto.”
Rose giggled. “Kinky.”
“You’re such a child,” he said with a laugh. “Seriously, that should not be there. That’s a whopper of a temporal fluctuation. What’s that about, eh?” He had gone from talking to Rose to talking to himself, and his muttering got quieter as he went on. “What are you, my little friend?”
He adjusted the controls and Rose felt the TARDIS shift. “What are you doing?” she asked.
“We have to go check this out,” he answered.
“What about Nancy and Jamie?”
He stopped and looked at her. “I’m sorry, but they’re going to have to wait.”
She made a face. “You’re just dodging –“
“I’m not,” he said, turning the monitor so she could see it. He put his finger on a mauve spot with radiating circles pulsating from its center. “Look at that, right there. That is a massive temporal flux, and it shouldn’t be there.”
“Can’t just leave it, can we?” she asked with a sigh.
He took off his glasses and looked at the ceiling. “I suppose we could. Call in another Time Lord to sort it out. Oh, hang on! There’s only me, isn’t there?”
She frowned. “Getting rude.”
“Sort of meant it. I’m not dodging anything. I don’t dodge. This is serious, and it requires attention before we can go hunt down two people whom we aren’t even sure are still alive at this point in time just to say ‘Hi, how are you?’” he snapped. “This is Japan in 1948. There shouldn’t be anything remotely resembling temporal flux in that country for another hundred years at least. It could be dangerous. Someone could get hurt.”
“All right!” Rose said, putting up her hands. “I’m a selfish haddock. Got it. Let’s go check it out.”
“Thank you,” he said. “I promise you that we’ll go look for Nancy and Jamie as soon as we’ve sorted this.” He flipped another lever on the TARDIS and it stopped. After a quick check of the monitor, he grabbed his trench coat and they went out the doors. The TARDIS had nestled itself in a grove of manicured trees in a remote corner of a park. They walked over a small wooden footbridge and eventually came to a neighborhood crowded with wooden houses, all right up against one another. The Doctor was reading the signs, but not giving much information over to Rose as they walked along the streets. He was walking along as if he had stepped into a photograph he’d seen a hundred times before, but had never had the chance to physically stand on the streets he knew so well until now.
There were white signs all over the place printed in English, and the military presence on the streets was palpable. The bustle of the city was a juxtaposition of Japanese music and voices interspersed with the hard, nasal clattering of American accents shouting over everything else. There were soldiers everywhere, and some of them walked down the streets with their arms around women wearing gaudy kimonos, their faces painted white.
Finally the Doctor whistled and seemed to remember that Rose was with him. “How about that? We are in one of the Gokagai. Well, what will go back to being one of the Gokagai again in a few years. Right now it’s sort of half hanamachi, half red light district. This should be very interesting, indeed.” He pulled Rose closer to himself and put his arm around her.
“I’m gonna need subtitles if you keep spouting off in Japanese. Are those geisha girls?” Rose asked, pointing at one of the giggling women clustered around a lamppost, calling to the passing servicemen.
The Doctor wrinkled his nose. “Nah, not them. They’re dressed up like geisha, pretty poorly so to be honest, but they’re prostitutes. You’d never see a proper geisha hanging out on a street corner.”
“I sense a history lesson coming on,” Rose muttered. The Doctor was distracted, studying every building as they walked along.
“Proper geisha are artists, not hookers. Beautiful, talented women who make every single thing they do, from the way they dress to the way they pour you a cup of sake, into a work of art. Musicians, dancers, entertainers. Kind of a dying art at this point in history, but there are a few still working. They live in houses called okiya, and the local tea houses call up and request the presence of particular geisha for their clients. The geisha come, they perform dances and sing songs, and they spend the evening with their clients playing games and having good conversation. No sex. Just beautiful.” He put his hands in his pockets and looked around with a sigh. “The Flower and Willow world, they call it.”
“So, you’ve been here before,” Rose said.
His only answer was a smile.
“What happened? Did you Madame Butterfly her?” Rose asked, poking him in the side with her elbow.
“She died,” he answered, slamming the door on any questions Rose might have with just the tone of his answer. When he saw the look of hurt embarrassment on her face, his tone softened a little. “It wasn’t like that at all, just so you know. She was a dear friend, and utterly in love with someone else. I hadn’t seen that kind of grace in a human being before, and I haven’t seen it since.”
Rose put a little distance between herself and the Doctor, suddenly feeling big-boned and clumsy. She pulled the hem of her t-shirt down and zipped her sweatshirt closed to tidy herself a bit, and then felt a flash of resentment towards the Doctor for inadvertently making her feel like a mule.
“So, where’s this flux thing coming from?” she asked.
The Doctor stopped walking. “What’s wrong with your voice?” he asked.
“Nothing,” she said as she watched a US Army jeep drive by, honking at people crossing the street.
He gave her a sideways look. “Oh, no, that’s definitely a something. You’ve got that hitchy thing in your voice, like I hurt your feelings and you don’t want to tell me I did it. Also, you’re standing more than eight inches away from me, which confirms my suspicions that in the last fifty-five seconds, I said something flip that made you feel badly. What was it?”
“Well, I could never be a geisha, could I? Not enough grace.”
He drew his head back like an ostrich. “I didn’t say that. I never said anything about you just there. I was talking about Ichisumi-san the whole time.”
Rose put her hands on her hips and faced him. “I know me and Sarah Jane aren’t the only girls that have traveled with you, right?”
“Right,” he said, his face serious.
“Okay, so there’s me, and Sarah Jane, and Ichisumi-san, and Madame de-freakin’ Pompadour,” she said.
“And Nyssa, Tegan, Peri, Ace, Leela, my granddaughter Susan, Barbara, Polly, Zoe, Jo, Melanie –“
“Alright!” Rose shouted. “Oi – hang on. Granddaughter? We’ll talk about that in a minute. Anyway, I’m not the first woman you’ve ever encountered.”
He scoffed. “Not by a long shot.”
“You really need to stop right now, because I’m trying to make a point,” Rose barked.
He bit his upper lip with his bottom teeth and raised his eyebrows, but stayed quiet.
“For someone who has spent a lot of time around women, you are completely dense when it comes to how much you can hurt someone by pointing out how fantastic someone else is.”
He smirked. “Apparently.” After a pause, he went on. “Well, that means I must make a lot of people uncomfortable when I talk about you.” With that, he started off down the sidewalk, holding his open hand out at his side. Rose rushed up beside him and took his hand, but didn’t show him her smile for half a block.
Once dry and dressed in his second-favorite suit, the Doctor input the coordinates for London in 1948; far enough in the future that if Nancy and Jamie were still alive, they should be reasonably established. Rose joined him, combing her hair and flicking drips of water all over the place.
“This is sensitive equipment, you know,” he said. “Could you not get it wet, please?”
“Right,” she said with a smirk. “Keep it dry so nothing slips when you whack it with a hammer?”
He narrowed his eyes. “That whacking is done with precision. Now, please don’t get your hopes up on this whole Nancy and Jamie thing. You know that there’s a good chance one or both of them didn’t survive the war.”
“There’s a good chance that they did,” Rose answered.
“That optimism is going to break your heart one of these days,” he said, turning his attention back to the control console. When he did, he noticed a blip on the monitor. He put on his glasses and leaned in to scrutinize it. “What’s that?”
“What’s what?”
He pointed at the blip. “That shouldn’t be there.”
“Where?”
“Thirty-five degrees, zero minutes, forty-two seconds north, one-hundred-thirty-five degrees, forty-six minutes, six seconds east, Earth reckoning,” he answered, not looking away from the screen.
“Oh,” Rose said. “There.”
“Sorry,” he said. “The Kinki Plain of Japan. Kyoto.”
Rose giggled. “Kinky.”
“You’re such a child,” he said with a laugh. “Seriously, that should not be there. That’s a whopper of a temporal fluctuation. What’s that about, eh?” He had gone from talking to Rose to talking to himself, and his muttering got quieter as he went on. “What are you, my little friend?”
He adjusted the controls and Rose felt the TARDIS shift. “What are you doing?” she asked.
“We have to go check this out,” he answered.
“What about Nancy and Jamie?”
He stopped and looked at her. “I’m sorry, but they’re going to have to wait.”
She made a face. “You’re just dodging –“
“I’m not,” he said, turning the monitor so she could see it. He put his finger on a mauve spot with radiating circles pulsating from its center. “Look at that, right there. That is a massive temporal flux, and it shouldn’t be there.”
“Can’t just leave it, can we?” she asked with a sigh.
He took off his glasses and looked at the ceiling. “I suppose we could. Call in another Time Lord to sort it out. Oh, hang on! There’s only me, isn’t there?”
She frowned. “Getting rude.”
“Sort of meant it. I’m not dodging anything. I don’t dodge. This is serious, and it requires attention before we can go hunt down two people whom we aren’t even sure are still alive at this point in time just to say ‘Hi, how are you?’” he snapped. “This is Japan in 1948. There shouldn’t be anything remotely resembling temporal flux in that country for another hundred years at least. It could be dangerous. Someone could get hurt.”
“All right!” Rose said, putting up her hands. “I’m a selfish haddock. Got it. Let’s go check it out.”
“Thank you,” he said. “I promise you that we’ll go look for Nancy and Jamie as soon as we’ve sorted this.” He flipped another lever on the TARDIS and it stopped. After a quick check of the monitor, he grabbed his trench coat and they went out the doors. The TARDIS had nestled itself in a grove of manicured trees in a remote corner of a park. They walked over a small wooden footbridge and eventually came to a neighborhood crowded with wooden houses, all right up against one another. The Doctor was reading the signs, but not giving much information over to Rose as they walked along the streets. He was walking along as if he had stepped into a photograph he’d seen a hundred times before, but had never had the chance to physically stand on the streets he knew so well until now.
There were white signs all over the place printed in English, and the military presence on the streets was palpable. The bustle of the city was a juxtaposition of Japanese music and voices interspersed with the hard, nasal clattering of American accents shouting over everything else. There were soldiers everywhere, and some of them walked down the streets with their arms around women wearing gaudy kimonos, their faces painted white.
Finally the Doctor whistled and seemed to remember that Rose was with him. “How about that? We are in one of the Gokagai. Well, what will go back to being one of the Gokagai again in a few years. Right now it’s sort of half hanamachi, half red light district. This should be very interesting, indeed.” He pulled Rose closer to himself and put his arm around her.
“I’m gonna need subtitles if you keep spouting off in Japanese. Are those geisha girls?” Rose asked, pointing at one of the giggling women clustered around a lamppost, calling to the passing servicemen.
The Doctor wrinkled his nose. “Nah, not them. They’re dressed up like geisha, pretty poorly so to be honest, but they’re prostitutes. You’d never see a proper geisha hanging out on a street corner.”
“I sense a history lesson coming on,” Rose muttered. The Doctor was distracted, studying every building as they walked along.
“Proper geisha are artists, not hookers. Beautiful, talented women who make every single thing they do, from the way they dress to the way they pour you a cup of sake, into a work of art. Musicians, dancers, entertainers. Kind of a dying art at this point in history, but there are a few still working. They live in houses called okiya, and the local tea houses call up and request the presence of particular geisha for their clients. The geisha come, they perform dances and sing songs, and they spend the evening with their clients playing games and having good conversation. No sex. Just beautiful.” He put his hands in his pockets and looked around with a sigh. “The Flower and Willow world, they call it.”
“So, you’ve been here before,” Rose said.
His only answer was a smile.
“What happened? Did you Madame Butterfly her?” Rose asked, poking him in the side with her elbow.
“She died,” he answered, slamming the door on any questions Rose might have with just the tone of his answer. When he saw the look of hurt embarrassment on her face, his tone softened a little. “It wasn’t like that at all, just so you know. She was a dear friend, and utterly in love with someone else. I hadn’t seen that kind of grace in a human being before, and I haven’t seen it since.”
Rose put a little distance between herself and the Doctor, suddenly feeling big-boned and clumsy. She pulled the hem of her t-shirt down and zipped her sweatshirt closed to tidy herself a bit, and then felt a flash of resentment towards the Doctor for inadvertently making her feel like a mule.
“So, where’s this flux thing coming from?” she asked.
The Doctor stopped walking. “What’s wrong with your voice?” he asked.
“Nothing,” she said as she watched a US Army jeep drive by, honking at people crossing the street.
He gave her a sideways look. “Oh, no, that’s definitely a something. You’ve got that hitchy thing in your voice, like I hurt your feelings and you don’t want to tell me I did it. Also, you’re standing more than eight inches away from me, which confirms my suspicions that in the last fifty-five seconds, I said something flip that made you feel badly. What was it?”
“Well, I could never be a geisha, could I? Not enough grace.”
He drew his head back like an ostrich. “I didn’t say that. I never said anything about you just there. I was talking about Ichisumi-san the whole time.”
Rose put her hands on her hips and faced him. “I know me and Sarah Jane aren’t the only girls that have traveled with you, right?”
“Right,” he said, his face serious.
“Okay, so there’s me, and Sarah Jane, and Ichisumi-san, and Madame de-freakin’ Pompadour,” she said.
“And Nyssa, Tegan, Peri, Ace, Leela, my granddaughter Susan, Barbara, Polly, Zoe, Jo, Melanie –“
“Alright!” Rose shouted. “Oi – hang on. Granddaughter? We’ll talk about that in a minute. Anyway, I’m not the first woman you’ve ever encountered.”
He scoffed. “Not by a long shot.”
“You really need to stop right now, because I’m trying to make a point,” Rose barked.
He bit his upper lip with his bottom teeth and raised his eyebrows, but stayed quiet.
“For someone who has spent a lot of time around women, you are completely dense when it comes to how much you can hurt someone by pointing out how fantastic someone else is.”
He smirked. “Apparently.” After a pause, he went on. “Well, that means I must make a lot of people uncomfortable when I talk about you.” With that, he started off down the sidewalk, holding his open hand out at his side. Rose rushed up beside him and took his hand, but didn’t show him her smile for half a block.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-09-14 02:09 pm (UTC)He smirked. “Apparently.” After a pause, he went on. “Well, that means I must make a lot of people uncomfortable when I talk about you.” With that, he started off down the sidewalk, holding his open hand out at his side. Rose rushed up beside him and took his hand, but didn’t show him her smile for half a block.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-14 02:21 pm (UTC)Maybe I'll post one more bit later. ;)
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Date: 2011-09-14 03:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-14 03:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-14 03:49 pm (UTC)can you link me?
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Date: 2011-09-14 03:57 pm (UTC)http://timelord1.livejournal.com/12305.html
I'm not sure how to make that link be live - you might have to copy and paste. Or maybe it is live. Again, I'm very new.
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Date: 2011-09-14 04:24 pm (UTC)THE BANTER. I love it. <3 I can't wait for more!!
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Date: 2011-09-14 06:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-14 03:41 pm (UTC)*DANCES*
WONDERFUL, honey!!
*hugs you happily*
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Date: 2011-09-14 03:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-14 03:52 pm (UTC)*Waits patiently, shushing Musie*
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Date: 2011-09-14 04:02 pm (UTC)But, at last, Rose and the Doctor have stormed into my brain and are sitting on my head, arms folded, glaring at me as they DEMAND I get back to writing, so I'm off!
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Date: 2011-09-14 04:12 pm (UTC)Well - off to it then!! You know they own you *nods*
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Date: 2011-09-14 04:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-14 06:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-14 04:27 pm (UTC)That was a nice comparison to Martha. Not sure if that was your intention but it was right on point.
Also, the point made about the art of the Geisha being about elegance and fluid movements etc and not sex really falls into a Time Lordy thing.
I'm curious if you're going to have Rose learn a bit of the Geisha art.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-14 06:19 pm (UTC)I wish I could say that it was a nod to Martha, because I do have a throwback to something else coming up, but that one was a happy accident.
He is being quite Time Lordy in this one. Also coming soon: he has a little tantrum in the middle of the street.
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Date: 2011-09-14 05:22 pm (UTC)I'd love to offer my services to help orient you to LJ... I've felt like a noob forever, but I do know a few tricks by now! just email fannishliss at gmail :)
thanks for sharing this story -- like someone said, the banter is perfect!!
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Date: 2011-09-14 06:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-14 08:15 pm (UTC)Also, the Doctor needs to be taken down a notch and Rose needs sterner nerves because just because he extols Rose's virtues to other people (and apparently never tells Rose how wonderful she is), the fact that he did it not only with the geisha but with Madam de Popmadour (which is worse since he did it right in front of Rose) is just nit right. Not right at all. /rant Sorry. I was just kinda hoping Rose would still be mad at him and make him feel it even though he said some very well-placed words to get her to forgive him. Course, you might not have meant him to look as manipulative as I saw him in that moment.
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Date: 2011-09-14 08:52 pm (UTC)I'm with you on the whole Doctor/Rose dynamic. The whole Madame de Pompadour episode really bugged me for that very reason (because yeah, he'd just ditch Rose because he's suddenly gone all fanboy over some 18th century hooker). There might be a bit of a reaction to that episode, subconsciously.
Fear not - there's more on this topic to come!!! :)
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Date: 2011-09-15 12:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-15 03:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-15 12:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-15 03:25 am (UTC)