Flower and Willow: Chapter 9
Sep. 22nd, 2011 08:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
timelord1Here is Chapter 9. It's a little longer, and a bit silly at times, but I thought you might need some silly considering what will be coming in future chapters. Oh BOY what's coming in future chapters. Okay, yes, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
onabearskinrug, perhaps I do have a touch of sadism in me after all...
The Doctor looked up at the okiya when he heard Rose and Ichisumi’s laughter pouring out the windows. He harrumphed and stalked to the TARDIS, stopping short of the doors when he heard two voices calling for him from the okiya balcony. He turned to find Ichisumi and Rose standing out on the balcony, peering down at him.
“Hello!” Rose cried. Ichisumi waved to him.
“I knew you’d change your mind!” he called back, starting back up the stairs. “It’s just not as much fun without me, is it?”
“Oh no,” Ichisumi said. “We’re having a lovely time without you!”
His forehead scrunched and his mouth fell open. “You just got started – how can you know if you’re having a lovely time?”
“We just wanted you to know that this first lesson could take hours and hours,” Ichisumi said. “So don’t bother coming out of your clubhouse until dinner time!”
His upper lip curled up. “What? The TARDIS is not a clubhouse!”
She waved her hand at him. “Go play. We have this well in hand.”
Rose waved as well. “Bye-bye.”
“I’m not going to play, and I think you’re ganging up on me!” he cried, but the women had already gone inside and closed the doors on him. He stood there for a while, staring at the balcony with his mouth still open wide. When their laughter spilled down to him again, he went into the TARDIS and slammed the doors behind him. A few minutes later he came out again, glaring up at the balcony as he passed through the garden to the main level of the okiya, out the front doors and down the street.
Ichisumi decided the first order of business was to get Rose into a kimono so she could get used to the way it restricted her movements. She brought her a red cotton kimono with a gorgeous white crane pattern in the fabric. As Ichisumi showed her how to fold and tie the robe, then affix the obi around her waist, Rose kept admiring herself.
“This is beautiful,” Rose said.
Ichisumi laughed. “Thank you, but it is nothing compared to the one you will wear when you are performing. This is an everyday sort of kimono. As a geisha, you will wear one of the finest quality.”
“I really like this one,” Rose said, holding her arms out to admire the sleeves.
“If you like it so much, please consider it a gift. Red looks much better on you than on me,” Ichisumi said, pulling and tucking the folds of the fabric. “You look lovely.”
“You’re so kind,” Rose said. “I’m glad I got to meet you and spend some time with you.”
“Which indicates to me that our meeting in the future is an impossibility,” Ichisumi said.
Rose looked at her for a long while before she spoke again. “You, ah, well…”
“You don’t have to tell me,” Ichisumi said, grasping Rose’s hand. “To know would put a damper on every moment of my life from now until the end, and what would be the point of living that way? As our mutual friend does, I will live every moment to its greatest potential, and let fate decide when it is time for me to sit out the rest of the dance.”
“I’m sure this is rude,” Rose said, “but I’m going to hug you right now.” She took Ichisumi’s slight frame into her arms and they embraced. Ichisumi laughed.
“You could not be rude, my friend. You’re unfamiliar with our culture and any missteps you make are certainly the act of innocence rather than disrespect, just as I’m sure you would forgive me the same in your home culture. As we both must forgive our friend.”
“Don’t we just?” Rose asked with a chuckle. “Drinking soy sauce.”
“Jamming the entire contents of his breakfast plate into his mouth until his cheeks are bulging,” Ichisumi added.
“Telling me how fantastic someone else is. Well, telling me how fantastic you are. And he was right,” Rose went on.
“And he told me how much you mean to him as well,” Ichisumi said.
“When did he do that?”
“His eyes, when he looks at you. His voice, when he speaks to you. The certain way he smiles when anything has to do with you. He becomes a bright star. I’m certain you’ve never seen it, because when he is around you, that is how he always looks.”
Silly as it was, at that moment Rose wished she could jump in the TARDIS and go to the end of the day so she could look at him and see if she could see the brightness that was there just for her. However, there was work to do, and she had a lot to learn.
Ichisumi’s next task after getting Rose into the kimono was to get her into a pair of geta so she could spend an hour falling down and twisting her ankles as she got used to walking in the high, angle-soled wooden shoes while wearing the movement-restricting kimono. Ichisumi was very kind and never laughed, even the times when Rose went down hard, face-first, and made un-ladylike grunting noises on impact.
After the third face-plant, Rose got to her knees and took a moment to collect her thoughts. Ichisumi knelt beside her.
“Would you like to continue this another day?” Ichisumi asked. “It takes women some time to learn how to walk in geta.”
Rose snorted. “Women where I come from are a bit more used to learning how to handle ridiculous shoes.” She planted her hands, got to her feet, and walked across the room with uneasy grace. “There. They’re nothing but reverse-wedge platform flip-flops, after all. Got it. What’s next?”
Ichisumi smiled. “Now you learn to dance in them.”
The Doctor returned to the okiya after dark. He went straight for the TARDIS to drop off his bundles, and then climbed the back stairs to the okiya’s second story two at a time. They had to be missing him by now; he’d been gone for hours on his little mission. He felt a mix of guilt and hope at the notion that perhaps Rose had been worried about him. He had expected the tense silence of worry inside the guest room as he approached, so he was a little put off when he heard the laughter. He crept up to the door and listened.
“…he handed me his hat,” Ichisumi was saying, breathless with laughter.
“Oh, yeah, don’t want to crush the hat!” Rose cut in.
“And he bent forward, scraped back one foot like a bull, and ran head-first into the belly of the sumo. Of course, the wrestler was the ozeki at the time – the second-highest ranking sumo in Kyoto – and Abunai-san hit him like he was made of stone,” Ichisumi clapped her hands together and she and Rose howled with laughter. “He fell to the floor in a heap and I had to drag him out of the arena by his belt.”
“He’s famous for that sort of thing,” Rose said. “One time he got punched in the face by a giant briar and went about ten feet in the air before he crashed into a patch of poison ivy which, by the way, he is violently allergic to, in case it ever comes up. And afterwards he was all, ‘Oh, Rose, it seems I might be slightly dying,’ and down he went again!”
The longer their laughter went on, the deeper the frown etched into the Doctor’s brow, until Ichisumi spoke again, this time in his direction.
“Abunai-san, perhaps you would be more comfortable on this side of the door.”
The Doctor stepped back from the door, cleared his throat, and slid it open to peek in.
“Sorry, what was that?” he asked. “I was just passing. Did you say something to me?”
“Yeah, we said, ‘Stop pretending you weren’t standing outside the door and listening, because the door is made out of paper and we can see your shadow,’” Rose said.
“Of course you did,” he said, stepping into the room. “Did you miss me?”
Rose cocked an eyebrow. “Were you missing?”
“Oh. Well, no,” he said, scratching his head with a little too much zeal. “What did you learn today?”
“Why do you ask?” Ichisumi said. “Are you conducting a survey?”
“Is there gonna be a quiz?” Rose asked.
“Rose-san did very well,” Ichisumi said. “That is all you need to know. She will be ready by the end of the week.”
“Three days,” the Doctor said, nodding to hide the disappointment on his face. “She’s a quick study, then.”
“You were hoping it would take longer?” Ichisumi asked.
I’m quite convinced I could spend the rest of my life with the two of you in this rickety old okiya in splendid contentment. “Not at all,” he said. “Guess I shouldn’t be surprised. It is Rose, after all. She’s brilliant.” He gave Rose a wink. “Shall we have dinner?”
Rose looked up at him with an odd look on her face, as if she were looking at him for the first time. Her smile brightened, as if she liked whatever she saw, which was good. Ichisumi nudged her in the ribs and she looked as if she'd been roused from a dream.
“Oh,” she said. “I’m actually goin’ out. With Ichisumi-san.”
“I thought it would be best if she observed geisha at work,” Ichisumi said. “I am going to take her to a friend’s tea house for the evening. We should be back around dawn. There is cold natto in the icebox if you get hungry. Don’t wait up.” The women got up and left the room, leaving the Doctor once again standing in gapemouthed silence.
“Cold natto? Beans?” he whined, hurrying after them. “That stuff’s nasty enough when it’s hot. Let me come with you!”
Ichisumi held up her hand to stop him. “You will stay here. You will only get in the way, Abunai-san.”
“Or cause trouble,” Rose added. “When you go out places, it usually turns into us running for our lives. I have to study.”
He scowled at them. “Oh yeah? Well, so do I,” he cried after them, using his American accent.
“Stroppy!” Rose sang as the women walked down the hall to Ichisumi’s room. The door closed and he heard them giggling again, which did serve to send him stroppy. He stalked out of the okiya and into the TARDIS. He did have work to do, getting his disguise ready. It would take him all of an hour to pull it all together, but at least that would be an hour that he wasn’t driven to distraction thinking about Rose.
He went to the wardrobe and dug around in boxes and disused racks of clothes until he found a period-appropriate American uniform. According to the clothes, he was going to be a second Lieutenant in the US Army Air Corps. He had a chuckle as he changed his nametag to reflect his chosen alias for this excursion, then went back to the control room to browse the historical data on Occupied Japan to get an idea of how he should look. When that was done, he pressed the uniform, hung it in his bedroom, and went to float around in the antigravity gym for a while.
He was upside down, trying to bounce a ball in zero-g, as he attempted to pinpoint the source of his agitation. They left me behind! I never get left behind. I’m not Mickey the Idiot – I’m not the tin dog! This is terrible. I’m actually bored. His trainers bumped the ceiling and he began to float towards the floor. Why would they make me stay behind? Me! The Doctor! The fun one! Doesn’t the universe sort of revolve around me? It’d have been a lark, the three of us in a teahouse together. He held the ball over his head and bounced it and himself off the floor back towards the ceiling. I should go somewhere. Skip ahead to dawn. Or, better, skip ahead to noon tomorrow and let them worry. Am I really having this conversation with myself? Scheming up ways to make a girl worry about me? Yes, I am. You remember that look on Rose’s face when you came back from dancing with Reinette. It was delicious. Come along, Doctor, if she’s going to call us stroppy, let’s be stroppy.
He zapped the antigravity control with the sonic screwdriver and dropped out of the air, doing a somersault as he fell to land on his feet. With no pretty-eyed blondes to distract him he was able to pinpoint the jump in time and he moved to just after noon the next day. After the TARDIS materialized, he loosened his tie and pulled it up onto his forehead, unbuttoned his shirt to the waist, and affected a stumble as he walked out of the TARDIS into the garden.
And immediately realized that he was in Jackie Tyler’s flat in the Powell Estate.
“What are you doing, parking that thing on top of my coffee table? That was brand new from Ikea, you wanker!” Jackie shouted, jumping up from the couch. She took one look at him and her eyes went wide. “You’re drunk!”
“Oh, Jackie,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”
“Where’s Rose?” she cried, pushing past him into the TARDIS, still clutching the television remote. “Rose!”
“Oh, Jackie,” he said again, rubbing the back of his neck. “Big mistake.”
It was happening too fast for him to react properly. Jackie’s eyes were burning into his. She grabbed the lapels of his jacket and dragged him towards her. “Where. Is. My. Daughter?”
“Okay, let’s be calm, because she’s fine.”
She twisted his lapels. “Where is she?”
“I left her –“ was all he managed to get out before Jackie began slapping and kicking him, spewing a fount of obscenities as she went. One well-aimed fist got him right in the eye and sent him back towards the control console.
“You get back to wherever you left her and pick her up!” Jackie screeched, planting her shoe in his right hipbone. “Driving drunk, wrecking my Klubbo table –“
“Klubbo?” he sputtered, which earned him another smack to the forehead.
“Get out of here and get my daughter!” she cried.
“Jackie, in order for me to do that, first you are going to have to get out of my TARDIS!” he shouted, turning her towards the doors and giving her a gentle push. He poked his head back out of the doors and she threw the television remote at him, hitting him so hard in the center of the forehead that the battery door popped off and the batteries flew out. “Ouch. Before I go, I just want to assure you of two things. A: Rose is perfectly fine, and in the hands of a good friend of mine. 2: I am not drunk. I was having a bit of fun with her.”
“Get goin’!” Jackie screamed.
He shut the doors and took off for the okiya, dabbing his forehead with the end of his tie. He stepped out of the TARDIS to find himself in the okiya’s garden with the noonday sun high in the sky and Rose, Ichisumi and Sumiko sitting on the back steps, faces pale and drawn with worry. Rose was in his arms as soon as he stepped outside, squeezing him tight.
“Oi, watch it!” he cried, pulling away. “I’ve got bruises.”
“You’re bleeding!” Rose said, staring at his forehead. “What happened? Where did you go?”
“We were so worried about you, Abunai-san,” Ichisumi said. She had tears in her eyes. “We thought you had abandoned Rose-san in time.”
“Nah, I just got bored and popped in to say hi to Jackie. She was so happy to see me. Did you have a good time at the tea house?” he asked.
Rose took a huge step away from him. “You left, without a word, letting me think all night that you’d left me here because you were bored?”
“Well,” was all he got out before Rose, Ichisumi, and Sumiko began slapping and kicking him.
onabearskinrug, perhaps I do have a touch of sadism in me after all...The Doctor looked up at the okiya when he heard Rose and Ichisumi’s laughter pouring out the windows. He harrumphed and stalked to the TARDIS, stopping short of the doors when he heard two voices calling for him from the okiya balcony. He turned to find Ichisumi and Rose standing out on the balcony, peering down at him.
“Hello!” Rose cried. Ichisumi waved to him.
“I knew you’d change your mind!” he called back, starting back up the stairs. “It’s just not as much fun without me, is it?”
“Oh no,” Ichisumi said. “We’re having a lovely time without you!”
His forehead scrunched and his mouth fell open. “You just got started – how can you know if you’re having a lovely time?”
“We just wanted you to know that this first lesson could take hours and hours,” Ichisumi said. “So don’t bother coming out of your clubhouse until dinner time!”
His upper lip curled up. “What? The TARDIS is not a clubhouse!”
She waved her hand at him. “Go play. We have this well in hand.”
Rose waved as well. “Bye-bye.”
“I’m not going to play, and I think you’re ganging up on me!” he cried, but the women had already gone inside and closed the doors on him. He stood there for a while, staring at the balcony with his mouth still open wide. When their laughter spilled down to him again, he went into the TARDIS and slammed the doors behind him. A few minutes later he came out again, glaring up at the balcony as he passed through the garden to the main level of the okiya, out the front doors and down the street.
Ichisumi decided the first order of business was to get Rose into a kimono so she could get used to the way it restricted her movements. She brought her a red cotton kimono with a gorgeous white crane pattern in the fabric. As Ichisumi showed her how to fold and tie the robe, then affix the obi around her waist, Rose kept admiring herself.
“This is beautiful,” Rose said.
Ichisumi laughed. “Thank you, but it is nothing compared to the one you will wear when you are performing. This is an everyday sort of kimono. As a geisha, you will wear one of the finest quality.”
“I really like this one,” Rose said, holding her arms out to admire the sleeves.
“If you like it so much, please consider it a gift. Red looks much better on you than on me,” Ichisumi said, pulling and tucking the folds of the fabric. “You look lovely.”
“You’re so kind,” Rose said. “I’m glad I got to meet you and spend some time with you.”
“Which indicates to me that our meeting in the future is an impossibility,” Ichisumi said.
Rose looked at her for a long while before she spoke again. “You, ah, well…”
“You don’t have to tell me,” Ichisumi said, grasping Rose’s hand. “To know would put a damper on every moment of my life from now until the end, and what would be the point of living that way? As our mutual friend does, I will live every moment to its greatest potential, and let fate decide when it is time for me to sit out the rest of the dance.”
“I’m sure this is rude,” Rose said, “but I’m going to hug you right now.” She took Ichisumi’s slight frame into her arms and they embraced. Ichisumi laughed.
“You could not be rude, my friend. You’re unfamiliar with our culture and any missteps you make are certainly the act of innocence rather than disrespect, just as I’m sure you would forgive me the same in your home culture. As we both must forgive our friend.”
“Don’t we just?” Rose asked with a chuckle. “Drinking soy sauce.”
“Jamming the entire contents of his breakfast plate into his mouth until his cheeks are bulging,” Ichisumi added.
“Telling me how fantastic someone else is. Well, telling me how fantastic you are. And he was right,” Rose went on.
“And he told me how much you mean to him as well,” Ichisumi said.
“When did he do that?”
“His eyes, when he looks at you. His voice, when he speaks to you. The certain way he smiles when anything has to do with you. He becomes a bright star. I’m certain you’ve never seen it, because when he is around you, that is how he always looks.”
Silly as it was, at that moment Rose wished she could jump in the TARDIS and go to the end of the day so she could look at him and see if she could see the brightness that was there just for her. However, there was work to do, and she had a lot to learn.
Ichisumi’s next task after getting Rose into the kimono was to get her into a pair of geta so she could spend an hour falling down and twisting her ankles as she got used to walking in the high, angle-soled wooden shoes while wearing the movement-restricting kimono. Ichisumi was very kind and never laughed, even the times when Rose went down hard, face-first, and made un-ladylike grunting noises on impact.
After the third face-plant, Rose got to her knees and took a moment to collect her thoughts. Ichisumi knelt beside her.
“Would you like to continue this another day?” Ichisumi asked. “It takes women some time to learn how to walk in geta.”
Rose snorted. “Women where I come from are a bit more used to learning how to handle ridiculous shoes.” She planted her hands, got to her feet, and walked across the room with uneasy grace. “There. They’re nothing but reverse-wedge platform flip-flops, after all. Got it. What’s next?”
Ichisumi smiled. “Now you learn to dance in them.”
The Doctor returned to the okiya after dark. He went straight for the TARDIS to drop off his bundles, and then climbed the back stairs to the okiya’s second story two at a time. They had to be missing him by now; he’d been gone for hours on his little mission. He felt a mix of guilt and hope at the notion that perhaps Rose had been worried about him. He had expected the tense silence of worry inside the guest room as he approached, so he was a little put off when he heard the laughter. He crept up to the door and listened.
“…he handed me his hat,” Ichisumi was saying, breathless with laughter.
“Oh, yeah, don’t want to crush the hat!” Rose cut in.
“And he bent forward, scraped back one foot like a bull, and ran head-first into the belly of the sumo. Of course, the wrestler was the ozeki at the time – the second-highest ranking sumo in Kyoto – and Abunai-san hit him like he was made of stone,” Ichisumi clapped her hands together and she and Rose howled with laughter. “He fell to the floor in a heap and I had to drag him out of the arena by his belt.”
“He’s famous for that sort of thing,” Rose said. “One time he got punched in the face by a giant briar and went about ten feet in the air before he crashed into a patch of poison ivy which, by the way, he is violently allergic to, in case it ever comes up. And afterwards he was all, ‘Oh, Rose, it seems I might be slightly dying,’ and down he went again!”
The longer their laughter went on, the deeper the frown etched into the Doctor’s brow, until Ichisumi spoke again, this time in his direction.
“Abunai-san, perhaps you would be more comfortable on this side of the door.”
The Doctor stepped back from the door, cleared his throat, and slid it open to peek in.
“Sorry, what was that?” he asked. “I was just passing. Did you say something to me?”
“Yeah, we said, ‘Stop pretending you weren’t standing outside the door and listening, because the door is made out of paper and we can see your shadow,’” Rose said.
“Of course you did,” he said, stepping into the room. “Did you miss me?”
Rose cocked an eyebrow. “Were you missing?”
“Oh. Well, no,” he said, scratching his head with a little too much zeal. “What did you learn today?”
“Why do you ask?” Ichisumi said. “Are you conducting a survey?”
“Is there gonna be a quiz?” Rose asked.
“Rose-san did very well,” Ichisumi said. “That is all you need to know. She will be ready by the end of the week.”
“Three days,” the Doctor said, nodding to hide the disappointment on his face. “She’s a quick study, then.”
“You were hoping it would take longer?” Ichisumi asked.
I’m quite convinced I could spend the rest of my life with the two of you in this rickety old okiya in splendid contentment. “Not at all,” he said. “Guess I shouldn’t be surprised. It is Rose, after all. She’s brilliant.” He gave Rose a wink. “Shall we have dinner?”
Rose looked up at him with an odd look on her face, as if she were looking at him for the first time. Her smile brightened, as if she liked whatever she saw, which was good. Ichisumi nudged her in the ribs and she looked as if she'd been roused from a dream.
“Oh,” she said. “I’m actually goin’ out. With Ichisumi-san.”
“I thought it would be best if she observed geisha at work,” Ichisumi said. “I am going to take her to a friend’s tea house for the evening. We should be back around dawn. There is cold natto in the icebox if you get hungry. Don’t wait up.” The women got up and left the room, leaving the Doctor once again standing in gapemouthed silence.
“Cold natto? Beans?” he whined, hurrying after them. “That stuff’s nasty enough when it’s hot. Let me come with you!”
Ichisumi held up her hand to stop him. “You will stay here. You will only get in the way, Abunai-san.”
“Or cause trouble,” Rose added. “When you go out places, it usually turns into us running for our lives. I have to study.”
He scowled at them. “Oh yeah? Well, so do I,” he cried after them, using his American accent.
“Stroppy!” Rose sang as the women walked down the hall to Ichisumi’s room. The door closed and he heard them giggling again, which did serve to send him stroppy. He stalked out of the okiya and into the TARDIS. He did have work to do, getting his disguise ready. It would take him all of an hour to pull it all together, but at least that would be an hour that he wasn’t driven to distraction thinking about Rose.
He went to the wardrobe and dug around in boxes and disused racks of clothes until he found a period-appropriate American uniform. According to the clothes, he was going to be a second Lieutenant in the US Army Air Corps. He had a chuckle as he changed his nametag to reflect his chosen alias for this excursion, then went back to the control room to browse the historical data on Occupied Japan to get an idea of how he should look. When that was done, he pressed the uniform, hung it in his bedroom, and went to float around in the antigravity gym for a while.
He was upside down, trying to bounce a ball in zero-g, as he attempted to pinpoint the source of his agitation. They left me behind! I never get left behind. I’m not Mickey the Idiot – I’m not the tin dog! This is terrible. I’m actually bored. His trainers bumped the ceiling and he began to float towards the floor. Why would they make me stay behind? Me! The Doctor! The fun one! Doesn’t the universe sort of revolve around me? It’d have been a lark, the three of us in a teahouse together. He held the ball over his head and bounced it and himself off the floor back towards the ceiling. I should go somewhere. Skip ahead to dawn. Or, better, skip ahead to noon tomorrow and let them worry. Am I really having this conversation with myself? Scheming up ways to make a girl worry about me? Yes, I am. You remember that look on Rose’s face when you came back from dancing with Reinette. It was delicious. Come along, Doctor, if she’s going to call us stroppy, let’s be stroppy.
He zapped the antigravity control with the sonic screwdriver and dropped out of the air, doing a somersault as he fell to land on his feet. With no pretty-eyed blondes to distract him he was able to pinpoint the jump in time and he moved to just after noon the next day. After the TARDIS materialized, he loosened his tie and pulled it up onto his forehead, unbuttoned his shirt to the waist, and affected a stumble as he walked out of the TARDIS into the garden.
And immediately realized that he was in Jackie Tyler’s flat in the Powell Estate.
“What are you doing, parking that thing on top of my coffee table? That was brand new from Ikea, you wanker!” Jackie shouted, jumping up from the couch. She took one look at him and her eyes went wide. “You’re drunk!”
“Oh, Jackie,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”
“Where’s Rose?” she cried, pushing past him into the TARDIS, still clutching the television remote. “Rose!”
“Oh, Jackie,” he said again, rubbing the back of his neck. “Big mistake.”
It was happening too fast for him to react properly. Jackie’s eyes were burning into his. She grabbed the lapels of his jacket and dragged him towards her. “Where. Is. My. Daughter?”
“Okay, let’s be calm, because she’s fine.”
She twisted his lapels. “Where is she?”
“I left her –“ was all he managed to get out before Jackie began slapping and kicking him, spewing a fount of obscenities as she went. One well-aimed fist got him right in the eye and sent him back towards the control console.
“You get back to wherever you left her and pick her up!” Jackie screeched, planting her shoe in his right hipbone. “Driving drunk, wrecking my Klubbo table –“
“Klubbo?” he sputtered, which earned him another smack to the forehead.
“Get out of here and get my daughter!” she cried.
“Jackie, in order for me to do that, first you are going to have to get out of my TARDIS!” he shouted, turning her towards the doors and giving her a gentle push. He poked his head back out of the doors and she threw the television remote at him, hitting him so hard in the center of the forehead that the battery door popped off and the batteries flew out. “Ouch. Before I go, I just want to assure you of two things. A: Rose is perfectly fine, and in the hands of a good friend of mine. 2: I am not drunk. I was having a bit of fun with her.”
“Get goin’!” Jackie screamed.
He shut the doors and took off for the okiya, dabbing his forehead with the end of his tie. He stepped out of the TARDIS to find himself in the okiya’s garden with the noonday sun high in the sky and Rose, Ichisumi and Sumiko sitting on the back steps, faces pale and drawn with worry. Rose was in his arms as soon as he stepped outside, squeezing him tight.
“Oi, watch it!” he cried, pulling away. “I’ve got bruises.”
“You’re bleeding!” Rose said, staring at his forehead. “What happened? Where did you go?”
“We were so worried about you, Abunai-san,” Ichisumi said. She had tears in her eyes. “We thought you had abandoned Rose-san in time.”
“Nah, I just got bored and popped in to say hi to Jackie. She was so happy to see me. Did you have a good time at the tea house?” he asked.
Rose took a huge step away from him. “You left, without a word, letting me think all night that you’d left me here because you were bored?”
“Well,” was all he got out before Rose, Ichisumi, and Sumiko began slapping and kicking him.
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no subject
Date: 2011-09-22 02:02 pm (UTC)"Stroppy" is such a great word. :D
You remember that look on Rose’s face when you came back from dancing with Reinette. It was delicious.
I rather liked this... makes that whole Reinette debacle a leetle bit better. Rose does affect him, doesn't she? Loved Ichisumi's observations of Ten's affection for Rose.
As always, wonderful chapter, J. Loved it!
no subject
Date: 2011-09-22 02:08 pm (UTC)Stroppy is one of my favorite British words. We should use words like that around here. To me, British English just makes everything sound more elegant. Even their thugs sound more proper than ours.
"Oh, pardon me, but could I just nick your handbag, please?"
Hm. I'm babbling. More coffee is required.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-22 02:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-22 02:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-22 02:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-22 02:37 pm (UTC)What a marvelous opportunity!!!! Sounds like you've been a lot of different places, which is just super cool. Mr. T and I want to go to England so badly, but we are so, so po. :D If we ever get there, I don't think we'd ever leave.
Did you happen to have a Whippy while you were there? I think that's what they're called - I've heard them called that on a few shows...it's soft-serve ice cream with a Cadbury Flake bar stuck in it. Incidentally, the show "Blackpool" once showed me the most lovely thing I'd ever seen: David Tennant eating a Whippy while singing the bass line to a song. My head came clean off during that as well. :)
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Date: 2011-09-22 02:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-22 02:45 pm (UTC)Oh, but how lovely. The whole thing just sounds like a dream. :) I hope you get to go!!! If you do, you might have to ship me a Whippy. Srsly. :D
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Date: 2011-09-22 02:57 pm (UTC)"I PITY THE FOOL WHO LEAVES MY WOMAN A BAD REVIEW!"
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Date: 2011-09-22 03:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-22 04:21 pm (UTC)Oh I hope you get that assignment. One of the things I remember most about my trip was hee the alcohol over there seemed a tad bit stronger. I may have had a wee bit too much at the pub one night. It was an interesting walk back to the hotel for our group.
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Date: 2011-09-22 04:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-22 02:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-22 02:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-22 03:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-22 02:40 pm (UTC)Also, LOVE Jackie's cameo :-) Will she make an appearance later to tell Rose that the Doctor came to her flat completely smashed and destroyed her new coffee table? He does seem to have an agenda against them.
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Date: 2011-09-22 02:48 pm (UTC)And I swear it's all in the name of good fiction! :) You gotta make the readers adore the character before you drop a house on them. ;)
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Date: 2011-09-22 03:01 pm (UTC)I'm gonna trust you...for now
Also, are you gonna shun the nonbeliever if I admit that I truly detest salt and vinegar ANYTHING? Seriously, can't take it. Hubby puts it on everything deep fried. And hot sauce. Not sure if he puts it all together, I'm generally too grossed out to look at that point...
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Date: 2011-09-22 03:09 pm (UTC)Hot sauce I fear. Mr. T and I tried Ghost Pepper sauce in Galena (a nifty little town with lots of shops) and it literally took our breath away. We staggered out of the shop, hiccuping and whispering "Burn with me" to passersby until we found milk to put out the fire.
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Date: 2011-09-22 03:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-22 03:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-22 03:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-22 03:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-22 04:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-22 04:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-22 03:50 pm (UTC)Excellent Job TL1!
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Date: 2011-09-22 04:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-22 05:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-22 05:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-22 06:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-22 06:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-22 09:25 pm (UTC)J'adore the Jackie-Doctor minisode going on in the overall story and how the Doctor was acting like a pouty little girl.
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Date: 2011-09-22 09:32 pm (UTC)That was the best I could do without giving away much of the episode, spoiler-wise. I hope I did all right.
At any rate, TAKE THAT, MOFFAT!!!!! Grr
Also at any rate, thank you for reading. :)
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Date: 2011-09-22 10:00 pm (UTC)Yes, Moffat needs some sense kicked into his testicles is all I've got to say. Also, forgot to mention that I love how you oh so slyly slipped in this chapter what happened in Briar Rose, with the Doctor being slapped in the face like a bitch and thrown into poison ivy. Love, love, love!
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Date: 2011-09-22 10:25 pm (UTC)True on the "who invited HIM" point, but after all alien though he man be, the Doctor is essentially a man, and therefore can distort facts into his mind such as turning "I invited him here" into "Rose wanted him here because she loves him and not me, so I am going to be a Dbag" :)
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Date: 2011-09-22 11:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-22 11:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-23 12:07 am (UTC)Okay, I'd never hate you, but still. omg. this fic. <3
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Date: 2011-09-23 12:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-23 08:50 am (UTC)*Dances with joy*
OW.
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Date: 2011-09-23 01:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-10 04:27 pm (UTC)I love Jackie's appearance.
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Date: 2011-10-10 04:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-22 11:57 pm (UTC)