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Here is chapter five. Hope you enjoy. Wrote some things last night for upcoming chapters that got me all choked up, so those will be coming soon. For now, hope you like it!



“I can’t be a geisha!” Rose cried.

“Why not?” he asked, still using the American accent as he paced around the console. “Why can’t you? Hm. Hi there. I’m the Doctor. Why must Americans talk almost entirely through their noses? Hey buddy, where can I find a teeeeeee house ‘round here?”

“Don’t talk like that,” she said.

Too nasal?” he asked.

“Doctor!” Rose shouted, stomping her foot. “Are you hearing me? I can’t be a geisha. All that you said about dancing and singing and making everything a work of art. That takes practice, yeah?”

“Oh, yeeeears,” he answered. The more he practiced the accent, the more nasal it became.

Rose let her head droop backwards. “Can you please stop practicing until we’ve sorted this out?”

“Sorry.” It was the last thing he said with the accent for the moment. “There’s nothing to sort out. It’s one night; two at the most. You’ll just have to serve tea and make nice conversation and, most importantly, snoop around behind the scenes to see if you can spot anything out of the ordinary, while I check things out from the American angle. I’ll be with you almost the entire time.”

“They’ll know I’m a fake. I don’t know the first thing about being a geisha,” she said.

He scratched his head as he looked her over. “You’re right. You don’t.”

The degree to which his assessment stung almost brought tears to her eyes. Even if he was right, his frankness made her want to hit him over the head with something heavy. “I’ll go in there looking like one of those prostitutes and just make a mess of the whole thing,” she said.

“No, you won’t,” he said. He went to the controls and input new coordinates, starting the TARDIS on its way. “I’d never let that happen to you.”

“What, we’re leaving?” she asked. He couldn’t be that disappointed in her, could he?

He shrugged. “We’ll be right back. At least, as far as this timeline is concerned.”

The TARDIS stopped a few moments later. When the Doctor opened the doors, they were still in the same park, in the same spot. Except that now it was a chilly early spring morning. The skies were clear and the trees were heavy with cherry blossoms. The branches of what had been nothing but boring black trees before now covered the outside of the TARDIS in piles of little pink and white blooms, and the scent of the flowers in the air was almost too much. The Doctor was watching Rose take in the sight, hands in his pockets, a look of unabashed adoration on his face.

“It’s 1940 now,” he said, leading her back over the wooden footbridge. Rose noticed that while had thought the park was beautiful before, the way it looked now made the 1948 version look sad and shabby. The footbridge had a fresh coat of paint on it, and everything looked new and clean. The English signs were gone, and the neighborhood was quiet, completely devoid of a military presence as well as the prostitutes. Now she understood how the Doctor had felt when they’d arrived in 1948. She was having the same ‘old photograph’ reaction to the place, but in reverse.

As they went down the brick street towards Ichisumi’s okiya, they passed a group of geisha on their way somewhere. Every inch of them was perfection; from the folds of their kimonos to the way they held their parasols, to the impossible way they walked along the uneven bricks on their tall, oddly-slanted platform shoes. The women and Rose scrutinized each other as they passed, and where the geisha turned to one another to whisper about her, Rose clutched the Doctor’s elbow.

“What are we doing here?” she asked.

“Geisha lessons,” he answered. “With Ichisumi.”

“For me?”

He gave her a look. “Well, not for me. I’d look a bit silly, wouldn’t I?”
“It’s a safe bet you’d be better at it than me,” she muttered. That comment made the Doctor stop walking. He was glaring at her.

“Do you know that I really don’t like it when someone says something nasty about you?  That includes when you do it! You’re beautiful and brilliant, and you’re my absolute favorite person in the entire history of the universe. Which is saying something, because I’ve seen the entire history of the universe. You’re up for anything, you handle yourself so well that I can trust you with just about any task, you’ve saved my life so many times I stopped counting. So, Rose Tyler, I say this with all the respect and admiration I can muster: Shut up!”

Her hand shot out and cracked him hard across the cheek. He brought his hand up to the reddening spot and held it there, his mouth open in shock as Rose stuck her finger in his face.

“How about you shutting up?” Rose cried. “How about you tell me that sort of thing more often, instead of acting like a stupid git who’s afraid to say how he really feels?”

“And how do I really feel?” he shouted, nodding at her.     

“You love me!” she bellowed.

“What if I do?” he roared back.

Rose’s heart stopped beating. The geishas that had been whispering about Rose were staring back at her and the Doctor, as was everyone else on the street. Someone rode by on a bicycle and jingled their bell as they passed.

“Are you finished?” Rose asked.

“Are you?”

“Yes. Fine,” she said, continuing down the street. “Geisha lessons.” She saw him grinning out of the corner of her eye as he followed her.

Kyoto disappeared beneath her feet as she slipped into the other universe again. There had been fear in his voice when he’d asked the question. What if I do? Did he not know, or was he scared to admit it? All the times they’d danced around each other; the kiss on the game station just before he’d regenerated, the kiss on New Earth that she’d missed (thanks a lot, bitchy trampoline and your brain-stealing contraption), all that had happened on Wenoska-Four. She knew things about him that nobody else alive knew, and still he was afraid to say it. She was starting to think that was the only thing in the universe that truly frightened him.

When they reached Ichisumi’s okiya, Rose was surprised to see the red façade she had so admired in 1948 was even brighter now. Like everything else, its newness made the 1948 version appear run-down in comparison. The Doctor knocked at the front door and smoothed his suit, fussed with his hair and smoothed down his sideburns. He was running his tongue over his teeth when a young girl of about thirteen came to the door, dressed in a gray kimono. Rose recognized her, but the Doctor spoke her name before she could.

“Sumiko-chan,” he said with a bow. “What a pleasure to see you again.”

Sumiko looked up at him and gave a slight bow in return. “Sir? Please excuse me, but I do not know who you are.”

“Oh, that’s right!” he cried, doing a little spin on his heel. “I look different. Do you remember a man who came to stay with you some time ago? Odd man – foreign, like me – had on a white suit with a bit of, you know, celery in his jacket? I hate having to use that bit to get people to remember me,” he muttered the last sentence to Rose.

“Abunai-san,” Sumiko answered with a smile. “He was very kind. He used to give me-“

“Jelly Babies,” the Doctor finished. Sumiko’s eyes went wide. He reached into his trench coat and pulled out a packet of sweets. “Remember these? Your favorites were the green ones, I believe.”

Sumiko opened the door and let them come into the entryway. Rose could hear music playing on a radio from somewhere inside the okiya. There was an air of comfort and ease in the okiya now that had been missing in 1948. It felt like they were stepping into someone’s home rather than into a business establishment. Rose wondered how much of that had to do with the presence of the Doctor’s mysterious friend.

“But you are so different, Abunai-san. And where is your aoi-hako?” Sumiko asked.

“What’s that?” Rose asked as she slipped off her shoes.

“Blue box,” he said. “It’s parked in the park for now, Sumiko-chan. This is my friend Rose, by the way. Is Ichisumi-san in at the moment?”

“I will get her,” Sumiko said. The Doctor thanked her and gave her the packet of Jelly Babies as she went down the hall. Once she was gone, the Doctor began straightening himself again.

“You’re acting like a schoolboy on his first date,” Rose teased, tweaking his tie into place. When they heard footsteps approaching, the Doctor tensed slightly and grabbed Rose’s hand.

Rose recognized Ichisumi immediately, considering she’d just spent quite some time staring at a giant photograph of her in the upstairs office a few years from now. She was shorter than Rose had imagined; the top of her head came to the bottom of Rose’s chin, and her frame was so slight that she looked almost unnatural, like a doll come to life. She was wearing a simple black and white kimono, her hair tied up in a careless bun. Even without makeup, her face was flawless. Where the future Sumiko walked almost as if she were floating across the floor, Rose was certain Ichisumi actually was floating. The Doctor was floating too, beaming at the little woman with shining eyes.

“Good afternoon,” Ichisumi said, bowing. “Sumiko-chan has informed me that you claim to be a friend of mine. I do not recognize you, but my friend mentioned that might be a possibility one day.”

“It is delightful to see you again,” the Doctor said, squeezing Rose’s hand. “The last time I saw you, I told you that if I ever saw you again and you didn’t recognize me, I would tell you something only you and I could know, so that you would be certain it was me.”

Ichisumi’s eyes gleamed, but her expression gave away nothing else. “Yes, that is what my friend said to me.”

“We were walking together on the steps outside the Yasaka Shrine when I told you that I was not human,” he said. Sumiko, who had followed Ichisumi back into the entryway, gasped.  “I pointed to the stars in the direction of Gallifrey and you listened to my two hearts, and then you kissed me. You said you would never forgive yourself for betraying your lover, but that you’d wanted to kiss the stars since you were a little girl.”

“And that is how I came to call you ‘Abunai-san,’” Ichisumi replied. “Welcome back from the stars, my dear, dangerous friend.”

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