Flower and Willow: Chapter Three
Sep. 15th, 2011 08:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
timelord1And chapter three. Abbondanza! :) Working on chapters 5 and six now. I want to stay ahead of my posts in case I need to double back to a previous chapter and fix anything. Hope you likey!
The Doctor was using the sonic screwdriver to pinpoint the source of the temporal flux, but Rose noticed that he moved through the streets as if he knew them, pulling her around corners she didn’t see until after they’d turned down them, blazing ahead as if he wasn’t going to need to remember reference points to get them back to the TARDIS.
“When I asked if you’ve been here before, I kind of meant generally to Geisha-town. But you’ve been here before, haven’t you?” she asked.
“Long time ago,” he answered, putting the sonic in his pocket for the moment. “This was Ichisumi-san’s hanamachi.”
Rose held up a finger to stop him. “Right. Now. Speak. English.”
“Sorry,” he said with a wince. “Hanamachi means geisha district. The Gokagai is the collective name for the five major hanamachi in Kyoto. Ichisumi-san is a person’s name and I can’t do anything about that. To answer your question properly, I have been here before.
“It was 1939, and I made friends with Ichisumi-san while investigating alien activity in the hanama- in the geisha district. She let me stay in her geisha-house, which is called an okiya. I told her everything, and she was invaluable in my investigation. We were dear friends, and spent many long hours talking together. She would have made a brilliant companion, but she was in love with one of the local politicians, and they were in the midst of a rocky relationship at the time.
“She was one of the ones where I actually went back to check on her a few years later. She was happy to see me and we had a delightful visit. Then, one night she didn’t come back to the okiya, and we found out that her client for the night decided he wanted more from her than she was willing to offer, and when she wouldn’t give it, he murdered her.”
“That’s horrible,” Rose said. “Did they ever find who did it?”
The Doctor’s eyes darkened. “I found him.”
Rose knew better than to ask for more details. He walked on, and she trailed after him. They went a few more blocks before he stopped walking again. He put his hands in his pockets and Rose heard the sonic buzzing and saw the muted blue glow coming from inside his pants. They were standing in front of an elegant wooden building with an ornate garden in the front and paper screens on the front doors. The sign over the door, handily translated by the TARDIS, read “Chrysanthemum Tea-House.”
“And there it is,” the Doctor said, staring up at the sign.
“Hotbed of temporal flux?” Rose asked.
“Hotbed of temporal flux,” the Doctor answered with a nod. “Right. Now, time to find out what’s what. Allons-y!” He started off down the street again.
“Shouldn’t that involve, oh, I don’t know, investigating that building back there?” Rose asked as she hurried to catch up to him.
He shook his head. “Not my style. What d’you want me to do, walk in the front door? ‘Konnichiwa! It seems you’ve got some crazy timey-wimey stuff going on in here. Mind if I check it out?’ Not in Japan. They don’t even want you to walk through the house with your shoes on. We are going to Ichisumi-san’s okiya to talk to the women in the know.” He led her down a few more narrow streets before they came to a building with a red wooden façade and a plaque next to the front doors with what Rose guessed to be names listed on it.
“Names of the geisha who live here,” the Doctor said, indicating the plaque as he knocked. “Take off your shoes and do what I do.”
Rose slipped out of her trainers and stood on the sidewalk in her socks. The Doctor noticed this and grinned impishly.
“You could have waited until we got in the front door,” he said.
She curled her lip at him. “Very funny.”
“Well, I didn’t expect you to be so literal.”
She gave him a playful smack with her trainers before a little girl wearing a simple blue kimono answered the door.
“Hajimemashite,” the Doctor said with a bow. Rose followed suit. The girl at the door giggled. “Watashi no namae wa Dokutaa desu. Kore wa watashi no yūjindesu. Kanojo no namae wa Rosu desu.”
Show-off, Rose thought.
“Pleased to make your acquaintances, Doctor-san and Rose-san,” the little girl answered with a bow. Rose started to bow again, but the Doctor put his arm surreptitiously on her stomach to stop her. “How can I help you?”
“I was a friend of Ichisumi-san, who used to live here, and I wanted to stop in and say hello to old friends,” the Doctor answered. “Is this a good time?”
“It is always a good time for friends of Ichisumi-san,” the little girl answered, opening the doors. “Please come in, I will fetch Okasan.”
They came inside and the Doctor removed his trainers, taking Rose’s and setting them beside his on a little straw mat. He looked around the entryway and sighed with a smile, touching a paper screen like it was the face of an old friend.
“Still looks the same. Like I never left.”
“How come I could hear you speaking Japanese?” Rose asked.
He smiled, his cheeks reddening a little. “I snuck around the TARDIS’s translation circuit, purely to impress you. All I said was ‘I am pleased to meet you. My name is the Doctor. This is my friend. Her name is Rose.’ Were you impressed?”
“Oh, gobsmacked,” Rose answered. “You knew both our names.”
“Get on,” he snarked, giving her a poke in the ribs. “You were impressed.”
She shrugged. “A bit.”
The Doctor never heard her answer, as before she was saying it, a woman in a bright green kimono came down the stairs. She had long, sleek dark hair spilling down her back and walked towards them as if she were floating across the floor. Right away Rose began to feel mule-y again.
“Abunai-san,” the woman said with a short bow. The Doctor returned it, and Rose did as well. “It has been a long time.”
Rose noticed that the Doctor’s brow creased for a moment as if he were thinking of something odd. There was a gleam in the woman’s eyes and a fluttering of a smile around her lips that made Rose think that were she less elegant a person, the woman might jump into the Doctor’s arms and give him a hug.
“Sumiko-san,” the Doctor said. “You’ve grown into a beautiful young woman. May I please introduce my dear friend, Rose Tyler.”
Rose and Sumiko exchanged bows. Sumiko looked at Rose with a mixture of delight and affection, and Rose began to feel a little less mule-y at once.
“I thought that little girl said her name was Okasan,” Rose said to the Doctor.
“Okasan is a title,” Sumiko said. “I am the house-mother of this okiya. I inherited it from Ichisumi-san when she died. It is a great pleasure to make the acquaintance of one of the Doctor’s dear friends. He has always been a dear friend of ours. Please come into my office where we can talk.”
“Have you been here since you regenerated?” Rose whispered as they followed her down a narrow corridor.
“No,” he whispered back. “That was a few regenerations ago. I was blonde then. Wore celery on my jacket. Don’t ask why.”
She smiled. “I’ve seen. We played a game of virtual cricket together one afternoon when you weren’t…yourself.”
The Doctor was still giving her a confused look as they came into the office and knelt on the straw mats on the floor. There were pictures of geisha on the walls, as well as filing cabinets and shelves with stuff piled neatly on every available surface. The Doctor pointed to a large portrait on the wall behind Sumiko. The geisha in the picture was so beautiful she almost didn’t look real. She was wearing a pink and white kimono, holding a matching parasol over one shoulder. At once Rose could tell the difference between a proper geisha and the hookers she’d seen in the streets. Their makeup looked clownish compared to the artistry on the face of the woman in the portrait.
Her elaborate hairstyle was topped off by a cascading pink hair ornament that looked like a trail of thousands of cherry blossoms. Rose was typically not a girly girl, but looking at the portrait made her wonder what she would look like dressed like that. What the Doctor would think of her dressed like that. Sumiko called for the little girl who had answered the door and instructed her to bring tea for the three of them.
“That is Ichisumi-san,” the Doctor said, indicating the portrait. This time it was his voice that had the hitchy thing.
“She’s beautiful,” Rose said, taking his hand.
“She was a good friend,” he answered, clearing his throat. The rest of the time they were in the office, he looked anywhere but at the portrait. It was hard to watch his eyes move around the room, swinging arcs to avoid looking at it. She could see flickers of pain cross his otherwise unflappable face every time he caught sight of it, and by the time the little girl brought back their tea, Rose was ready to rip the picture off the wall so he didn’t have to look at it again.
“What brings you to the okiya, Abunai-san?” Sumiko asked when the tea arrived. She poured three cups and Rose understood at once what the Doctor had meant when he said geisha turn even the act of pouring something into a work of art. Sumiko moved like a dancer whenever she moved, and Rose kept noticing her own thick fingers and clumsy way of holding the teacup, though she was proud of herself that she didn’t slurp or spill any.
“I got some strange readings from the TARDIS. An unusual energy signature, and it’s coming from the Chrysanthemum Tea-house,” the Doctor said.
Rose’s eyebrows went up. “Well, nothing like just slapping it down on the table with the biscuits, is there?”
Sumiko smiled and inclined her head towards Rose. “The Doctor has been here many times. We know his truth. Some of it, at any rate. We have no secrets here.”
“What’s that other name you keep calling him? That Japanese for ‘Doctor?’” Rose asked.
“Abunai-san is our nickname for the Doctor,” Sumiko replied. “We know so many doctors in our trade that it would be hard to keep them all straight if we did not have nicknames for them.”
Rose took another sip of the tea. “What’s it mean?”
“‘Dangerous,’” Sumiko answered.
The Doctor grinned and winked at the two women. “That’s me. What do you know about the Chrysanthemum?”
“None of our geisha go there,” Sumiko said. “It is a strange establishment. They have only been open a few weeks. They only allow American soldiers as guests, and only want one geisha from each okiya for engagements, unaccompanied. I will not allow my girls to attend any functions there.”
“That’s wise,” the Doctor said. “Keep it that way.”
“You will be investigating,” Sumiko said. “You’ll need a place to stay where you can think and keep the TARDIS safe. No one uses Ichisumi-san’s old room. You can stay there as long as you need.”
The Doctor beamed at her. “Ichisumi-san chose well in picking you to inherit the okiya.”
“I had to inherit it – don’t you remember? I was the only other one who knew about you and the TARDIS. She said you would be back for a fourth time, and she wanted someone in charge who knew about you and would be willing to help you without question.”
“Fourth time?” the Doctor asked. “I’ve only been here twice before.”
Sumiko eyed him as she took a long drink of tea. “It seems there are some secrets about yourself that even you do not know yet.”
The Doctor was using the sonic screwdriver to pinpoint the source of the temporal flux, but Rose noticed that he moved through the streets as if he knew them, pulling her around corners she didn’t see until after they’d turned down them, blazing ahead as if he wasn’t going to need to remember reference points to get them back to the TARDIS.
“When I asked if you’ve been here before, I kind of meant generally to Geisha-town. But you’ve been here before, haven’t you?” she asked.
“Long time ago,” he answered, putting the sonic in his pocket for the moment. “This was Ichisumi-san’s hanamachi.”
Rose held up a finger to stop him. “Right. Now. Speak. English.”
“Sorry,” he said with a wince. “Hanamachi means geisha district. The Gokagai is the collective name for the five major hanamachi in Kyoto. Ichisumi-san is a person’s name and I can’t do anything about that. To answer your question properly, I have been here before.
“It was 1939, and I made friends with Ichisumi-san while investigating alien activity in the hanama- in the geisha district. She let me stay in her geisha-house, which is called an okiya. I told her everything, and she was invaluable in my investigation. We were dear friends, and spent many long hours talking together. She would have made a brilliant companion, but she was in love with one of the local politicians, and they were in the midst of a rocky relationship at the time.
“She was one of the ones where I actually went back to check on her a few years later. She was happy to see me and we had a delightful visit. Then, one night she didn’t come back to the okiya, and we found out that her client for the night decided he wanted more from her than she was willing to offer, and when she wouldn’t give it, he murdered her.”
“That’s horrible,” Rose said. “Did they ever find who did it?”
The Doctor’s eyes darkened. “I found him.”
Rose knew better than to ask for more details. He walked on, and she trailed after him. They went a few more blocks before he stopped walking again. He put his hands in his pockets and Rose heard the sonic buzzing and saw the muted blue glow coming from inside his pants. They were standing in front of an elegant wooden building with an ornate garden in the front and paper screens on the front doors. The sign over the door, handily translated by the TARDIS, read “Chrysanthemum Tea-House.”
“And there it is,” the Doctor said, staring up at the sign.
“Hotbed of temporal flux?” Rose asked.
“Hotbed of temporal flux,” the Doctor answered with a nod. “Right. Now, time to find out what’s what. Allons-y!” He started off down the street again.
“Shouldn’t that involve, oh, I don’t know, investigating that building back there?” Rose asked as she hurried to catch up to him.
He shook his head. “Not my style. What d’you want me to do, walk in the front door? ‘Konnichiwa! It seems you’ve got some crazy timey-wimey stuff going on in here. Mind if I check it out?’ Not in Japan. They don’t even want you to walk through the house with your shoes on. We are going to Ichisumi-san’s okiya to talk to the women in the know.” He led her down a few more narrow streets before they came to a building with a red wooden façade and a plaque next to the front doors with what Rose guessed to be names listed on it.
“Names of the geisha who live here,” the Doctor said, indicating the plaque as he knocked. “Take off your shoes and do what I do.”
Rose slipped out of her trainers and stood on the sidewalk in her socks. The Doctor noticed this and grinned impishly.
“You could have waited until we got in the front door,” he said.
She curled her lip at him. “Very funny.”
“Well, I didn’t expect you to be so literal.”
She gave him a playful smack with her trainers before a little girl wearing a simple blue kimono answered the door.
“Hajimemashite,” the Doctor said with a bow. Rose followed suit. The girl at the door giggled. “Watashi no namae wa Dokutaa desu. Kore wa watashi no yūjindesu. Kanojo no namae wa Rosu desu.”
Show-off, Rose thought.
“Pleased to make your acquaintances, Doctor-san and Rose-san,” the little girl answered with a bow. Rose started to bow again, but the Doctor put his arm surreptitiously on her stomach to stop her. “How can I help you?”
“I was a friend of Ichisumi-san, who used to live here, and I wanted to stop in and say hello to old friends,” the Doctor answered. “Is this a good time?”
“It is always a good time for friends of Ichisumi-san,” the little girl answered, opening the doors. “Please come in, I will fetch Okasan.”
They came inside and the Doctor removed his trainers, taking Rose’s and setting them beside his on a little straw mat. He looked around the entryway and sighed with a smile, touching a paper screen like it was the face of an old friend.
“Still looks the same. Like I never left.”
“How come I could hear you speaking Japanese?” Rose asked.
He smiled, his cheeks reddening a little. “I snuck around the TARDIS’s translation circuit, purely to impress you. All I said was ‘I am pleased to meet you. My name is the Doctor. This is my friend. Her name is Rose.’ Were you impressed?”
“Oh, gobsmacked,” Rose answered. “You knew both our names.”
“Get on,” he snarked, giving her a poke in the ribs. “You were impressed.”
She shrugged. “A bit.”
The Doctor never heard her answer, as before she was saying it, a woman in a bright green kimono came down the stairs. She had long, sleek dark hair spilling down her back and walked towards them as if she were floating across the floor. Right away Rose began to feel mule-y again.
“Abunai-san,” the woman said with a short bow. The Doctor returned it, and Rose did as well. “It has been a long time.”
Rose noticed that the Doctor’s brow creased for a moment as if he were thinking of something odd. There was a gleam in the woman’s eyes and a fluttering of a smile around her lips that made Rose think that were she less elegant a person, the woman might jump into the Doctor’s arms and give him a hug.
“Sumiko-san,” the Doctor said. “You’ve grown into a beautiful young woman. May I please introduce my dear friend, Rose Tyler.”
Rose and Sumiko exchanged bows. Sumiko looked at Rose with a mixture of delight and affection, and Rose began to feel a little less mule-y at once.
“I thought that little girl said her name was Okasan,” Rose said to the Doctor.
“Okasan is a title,” Sumiko said. “I am the house-mother of this okiya. I inherited it from Ichisumi-san when she died. It is a great pleasure to make the acquaintance of one of the Doctor’s dear friends. He has always been a dear friend of ours. Please come into my office where we can talk.”
“Have you been here since you regenerated?” Rose whispered as they followed her down a narrow corridor.
“No,” he whispered back. “That was a few regenerations ago. I was blonde then. Wore celery on my jacket. Don’t ask why.”
She smiled. “I’ve seen. We played a game of virtual cricket together one afternoon when you weren’t…yourself.”
The Doctor was still giving her a confused look as they came into the office and knelt on the straw mats on the floor. There were pictures of geisha on the walls, as well as filing cabinets and shelves with stuff piled neatly on every available surface. The Doctor pointed to a large portrait on the wall behind Sumiko. The geisha in the picture was so beautiful she almost didn’t look real. She was wearing a pink and white kimono, holding a matching parasol over one shoulder. At once Rose could tell the difference between a proper geisha and the hookers she’d seen in the streets. Their makeup looked clownish compared to the artistry on the face of the woman in the portrait.
Her elaborate hairstyle was topped off by a cascading pink hair ornament that looked like a trail of thousands of cherry blossoms. Rose was typically not a girly girl, but looking at the portrait made her wonder what she would look like dressed like that. What the Doctor would think of her dressed like that. Sumiko called for the little girl who had answered the door and instructed her to bring tea for the three of them.
“That is Ichisumi-san,” the Doctor said, indicating the portrait. This time it was his voice that had the hitchy thing.
“She’s beautiful,” Rose said, taking his hand.
“She was a good friend,” he answered, clearing his throat. The rest of the time they were in the office, he looked anywhere but at the portrait. It was hard to watch his eyes move around the room, swinging arcs to avoid looking at it. She could see flickers of pain cross his otherwise unflappable face every time he caught sight of it, and by the time the little girl brought back their tea, Rose was ready to rip the picture off the wall so he didn’t have to look at it again.
“What brings you to the okiya, Abunai-san?” Sumiko asked when the tea arrived. She poured three cups and Rose understood at once what the Doctor had meant when he said geisha turn even the act of pouring something into a work of art. Sumiko moved like a dancer whenever she moved, and Rose kept noticing her own thick fingers and clumsy way of holding the teacup, though she was proud of herself that she didn’t slurp or spill any.
“I got some strange readings from the TARDIS. An unusual energy signature, and it’s coming from the Chrysanthemum Tea-house,” the Doctor said.
Rose’s eyebrows went up. “Well, nothing like just slapping it down on the table with the biscuits, is there?”
Sumiko smiled and inclined her head towards Rose. “The Doctor has been here many times. We know his truth. Some of it, at any rate. We have no secrets here.”
“What’s that other name you keep calling him? That Japanese for ‘Doctor?’” Rose asked.
“Abunai-san is our nickname for the Doctor,” Sumiko replied. “We know so many doctors in our trade that it would be hard to keep them all straight if we did not have nicknames for them.”
Rose took another sip of the tea. “What’s it mean?”
“‘Dangerous,’” Sumiko answered.
The Doctor grinned and winked at the two women. “That’s me. What do you know about the Chrysanthemum?”
“None of our geisha go there,” Sumiko said. “It is a strange establishment. They have only been open a few weeks. They only allow American soldiers as guests, and only want one geisha from each okiya for engagements, unaccompanied. I will not allow my girls to attend any functions there.”
“That’s wise,” the Doctor said. “Keep it that way.”
“You will be investigating,” Sumiko said. “You’ll need a place to stay where you can think and keep the TARDIS safe. No one uses Ichisumi-san’s old room. You can stay there as long as you need.”
The Doctor beamed at her. “Ichisumi-san chose well in picking you to inherit the okiya.”
“I had to inherit it – don’t you remember? I was the only other one who knew about you and the TARDIS. She said you would be back for a fourth time, and she wanted someone in charge who knew about you and would be willing to help you without question.”
“Fourth time?” the Doctor asked. “I’ve only been here twice before.”
Sumiko eyed him as she took a long drink of tea. “It seems there are some secrets about yourself that even you do not know yet.”
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-09-15 02:09 pm (UTC)He smiled, his cheeks reddening a little. “I snuck around the TARDIS’s translation circuit, purely to impress you. All I said was ‘I am pleased to meet you. My name is the Doctor. This is my friend. Her name is Rose.’ Were you impressed?”
Of course she was! Even though she pretended not to be at first...
I know the "mule" feeling. I think most women have someone around whom they feel mule-ish. It is a horrible feeling. Poor Rose :( But I'm SURE the Doctor does NOT think of her in any way like that.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-15 02:16 pm (UTC)Thank you so much - I'm very happy you're enjoying it. I am all giddy over the plot myself. Every day I ask Mr. Timelord "Can I tell you how it ends?!?!" and he is quite vehement that he wants to be surprised, but I SO want to tell it all out, which I guess is good when you're writing it.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-15 02:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-15 02:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-15 02:49 pm (UTC)OHHH, I am loving this!
no subject
Date: 2011-09-15 03:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-15 03:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-15 04:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-15 07:00 pm (UTC)Also, your geisha are so gorgeous and graceful, but personally, I prefer Rose and her habit of being able to be herself, not putting on a show for everyone and feeling less like you're in a museum and can't touch anything lest you break it. Hopefully the Doctor will realize this soon too. I can't wait for your next update because, again, I found myself in Japan: I could hear the music and smell the smells and I agree with one of the above posters - I've never before read a Who fic like this. Thank you for something so original and unique.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-15 07:42 pm (UTC)That makes me so happy to hear that you're enjoying it so much. There's a lot more to come - I'm excited about it all the time - I think I'll go ahead and post another little bit today. Why not? :D
no subject
Date: 2011-09-15 07:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-15 09:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-15 09:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-15 09:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-16 02:43 am (UTC)Love it so far!
no subject
Date: 2011-09-16 02:45 am (UTC)