Flower and Willow: Chapter 15

[timelord1]

Title: Flower and Willow
Rating: Teen <--Back to Teen rating!!
Pairing: 10/Rose
Category: Drama, Romance, Humor, Action/Adventure
Summay:On their way to visit old friends, the Doctor and Rose come across a mystery in one of Kyoto's geisha districts in US-Occupied Japan, 1948.
Notes: Once again, this chapter is posted without a beta, so any mistakes are mine. Any historical controversy is all on the part of the author, and no offense is intended. Only drama. Ohyes. :)



The dawn found the Doctor on his back, half-drowsing as he watched the room lighten with the slow ascent of morning. Rose was curled up against him, one arm thrown over his chest, her lovely face smooshed against his shoulder. The rhythm of her measured breaths had him partially hypnotized, and his eyelids kept drooping closed even though he didn’t really need the sleep. He yawned and turned onto his side, rolling Rose onto hers so he could hold her close to his chest. He smoothed her hair off her neck and placed three slow kisses on her throat before nuzzling into the softness of her to sleep for another hour.
 
When he awoke again she was still sleeping, which was just ridiculous. He wanted to hear her voice and look into her eyes and listen to her laugh, and he didn’t want to have to wait another minute for her to wake up. Didn’t she understand that that world was renewed and full of promise for the first time in hundreds of years? She was missing it, just lying there with that slight little smile on her face. He jostled her with his arm still draped over her, then cleared his throat close to her ear. She shifted a little in his arms but didn’t wake up, so he coughed a little louder, a little closer to her ear.
 
“Getsomewater,” she mumbled, pulling on his arm. She didn’t open her eyes.
 
“Rose,” he whispered, kissing her ear.
 
She reached back and thumped him gently in the face with the back of her hand.
 
“Shhhplease. Stillsleepin’.”
 
He recoiled from the smack and lay on his back with a sigh, clasping his hands behind his head. Now he was wide awake. He scratched the back of his head and sat up. One regeneration ago he’d worn this sort of haircut all the time; preferred it, in fact. Echoes of former thought processes had mocked him the first time he’d put stuff in his new, big hair to make it stand up all pretty, but even the most cynical, leather jacket-wearing version of himself lingering in his mind had been silenced when Rose saw his hair and gave it an approving smile.
 
He got out from under the covers and pulled on his uniform shirt and trousers, then slipped out the doorway and down the okiya’s back steps to the TARDIS. He had his hands in his pockets and whistled as he went through the garden. The rain from the previous night had blown over, leaving a lovely cool autumn morning in its wake. When he went inside the TARDIS he sang good morning to his beautiful ship and stuck the sonic in one of the ports so the computer could process the readings he’d taken at the teahouse the night before. There was a disapproving vibration coming from the heart of the ship. The Doctor gave the monitor a look as he waited for the calculations to come up.
 
“I don’t want to hear it,” he said. “I know what I did, and I’m not going to apologize.”
 
The disapproval shifted to something more sympathetic, which just made the Doctor even angrier.
 
“That’s just ridiculous. I don’t want your pity. Every person on this planet could lose the person they love at any moment. Just because I’m more conscious of the inevitable than most people doesn’t mean I don’t have the right to enjoy it while it’s here.” He glared at the monitor and tapped a few buttons with more force than was necessary.
 
The screen shifted to an image of a rust-colored planet revolving in a sky scattered with stars. The Doctor’s eyes went wide with fury and he leaned in close, speaking in a low, tight voice.
 
“I know I’m not human. I know exactly where I come from. But it’s not there anymore, is it? What do I have? I have you, and I have Rose, and if you think I’m going to deny myself happiness just because it goes against your ideas of right and wrong, you’re out of whatever passes for your mind. Give me the calculations immediately and keep your judgments to yourself.”
 
The monitor went black, and the ship powered completely down, leaving the Doctor standing in total darkness.
 
He scoffed. “Really? You’re going to have a snit? Fine – we’re on our own, then. You’re not going to ruin this for us.” He snatched the sonic out of the port on the console and stormed out of the ship, slamming the doors behind him.
 
By the time he got back to the bedroom he had successfully shoved his anger at the TARDIS off his face and replaced it with a slightly less-relaxed-than-usual smile that he flashed to Rose, who was now awake and sitting on the futon, wrapped in the blanket.
 
She narrowed her eyes at him. “What happened?”
 
“Oh, what? One time together and I’m suddenly transparent to you?” he asked with a wink. “Nothing’s wrong, just a bit of a hiccup with the TARDIS. Sort it out later. For now, Miss Tyler, get up and get dressed. You and I are going to be complete rubbish tourists knocking around postwar Kyoto today. We’ll have a nice lunch and buy your mum a souvenir and have ourselves a jolly time.”
 
“That bad, eh?” Rose asked.
 
He nodded, holding out his hands so he could help her up. “Pretty bad. Let’s go.”
*******
The weather was perfect for sightseeing, if a little cool, and they spent a delightful afternoon touring the temples in the neighborhoods surrounding the hanamachi. He took her to the steps of the Yakasa shrine where he’d first told Ichisumi the truth about himself and Rose kissed him there the same way Ichisumi once had. After that they walked along the Philosopher’s Path by the stone canal. The Doctor swung Rose’s hand in his as they walked, his other hand in his pocket as he stared at the bare, black branches overhead.
 
“This place is breathtaking when the cherry blossoms are in bloom,” he said. “If I was thinking, I would have brought you here in 1940. It was the perfect time to see them. As soon as we’re done at the teahouse and things are all sorted out, I’ll bring you back here and take you on a proper date.”
 
“Is that what we’re doin’ now?” Rose asked, leaning in to rest her head on his arm as they walked.
 
The Doctor considered this for a while before answering. “I suppose it is. Our first official one.” He gave her a little twirl, and then put his arm around her shoulder. “We’re on a date. Can’t remember the last time I was on one. There was that dinner with Blon Slitheen in Cardiff, but that was really more just her trying to kill me over a couple glasses of wine.”
 
 Rose chuckled. “If it would make you more comfortable, I could stab you when we stop for lunch or something.”
 
“That would help,” he said with a laugh. “I’d be on more solid ground then.”
 
“You’re nervous?” Rose asked.
 
“About what happens next,” he said. About how long I have with you before you’re gone. “How long are you going to stay with me?”
 
“Forever,” she said, giving him a little squeeze.
 
He nodded, kissing the top of her head. “Not long enough.”
 
A few hours later he walked her back to the okiya to start getting ready for the evening at the teahouse, and then walked to the post to see if he could find Lieutenant Pace. Bob was in the Officer’s Club, sitting at the table where they’d sat the day before, watching the door. When the Doctor came inside, Bob jumped up and waved, pointing at the table. He went to the bar and got two beers and the Doctor smiled as graciously as he could. If he had to suck down another glass of infection that could only allegedly be classified as beer, he was going to throw up all over Japan.
 
“You made it home all right,” Bob said, nodding.
 
“Thanks to you,” the Doctor answered. He raised his glass and gulped down a huge swallow. Drinking it in chunks meant he didn’t have to taste it as often.
 
“What’s the plan for tonight?”
 
“Rose and I will go to the teahouse for the evening, and have our private tea ceremony afterwards. Presumably ‘private’ means just the two of us in the room together, so we will slip out of the private room and investigate once we’re left alone.”
 
Bob eyed him for a while before speaking. “That’s a pretty flimsy plan, you know that?”
 
“Well, I always reserve the right to improvise once I get into a situation.”
 
“Make it up as you go along.”
 
The Doctor grinned. “I do it beautifully.”
 
“All right, so you’ve improvised your way around the teahouse and found out all you need to know. Now what?” Bob asked.
 
“We deal with what needs to be dealt with in the immediate moment, and when things are secure, we come to the post to get you so you can do the messy cleanup. Once the universe is safe, I don’t hang around to tidy the furniture or fill things out in triplicate. You military types love that sort of thing and I wouldn’t want to get in your way.”
 
Bob was not smiling. “And what happens if you two don’t show up at the post tonight?”
 
“Give us until morning. If we haven’t gotten back to you, do things your way; MPs, amphibious armored landing craft, General MacArthur – send in whomever you like.”
 
Bob chuckled without humor. “It’s probably going to be me busting in there with a gun at dawn, just so you know.”
 
“I figured as much,” the Doctor said. “I can assure you that it’s probably not going to come to that.” It was time to change the subject before Bob pressed any further. “Well, now I find myself with a few hours to kill before I’m due at the Chrysanthemum. How about you?”
 
“My work is done for the day,” Bob said.
 
“And what is it you do around here, Lieutenant?”
 
“I’m the requisitions officer. You’d like it; lots of things to fill out in triplicate.”
 
The Doctor smiled. “Got plans?”
 
“You asking me out on a date?”
 
“I am,” the Doctor answered.
 
“Do Time Lords know how to play cribbage?”
 
“Not yet, but I have the feeling I’m about to learn,” the Doctor said.
 
Bob laughed and drained the rest of his beer. “You’re going to get schooled, that’s for sure.”
 
*****
Sumiko was in the middle of Rose’s makeup when she stopped and set her brushes down.
 
“I hope this is not too forward of me, Rose-san, but you haven’t said a word in over an hour. Is everything all right?” she asked.
 
“Yeah,” Rose sighed. “Just trying to get myself ready for tonight. I dunno why, but I’m more nervous about tonight than I was about last night. Like maybe I could get away with faking it once, but they’re not going to believe me twice.”
 
Sumiko nodded and went back to her work. “Everybody feels that way. For me, my second night out was the worst night I’ve ever had as a geisha. You are so concerned with being perfect the first time that you are either going to be perfect or you will make so many  mistakes you lose count. If that is the case, you can blame it on first night jitters. The second night, there is no excuse for failure. The pressure to be perfect begins tonight.”
 
“Great,” Rose said, rolling her eyes. “At least my stomach isn’t in knots over nothing.”
 
“But,” Sumiko went on. “You have already done it once, and you were successful. You know what to do, and once you are there, it will be easier than it was last night. Abunai-san will be there; just keep looking at him and you will be all right.”
 
Rose smiled. “That’s how I get through just about everything.”
           
*****
 
The Doctor left the post shortly after sundown, after promising Bob four more times that they would be in touch with him as soon as they left the teahouse. He now had an intimate understanding of the game of cribbage, and understood just as intimately that Bob Pace was nearly impossible to beat at the game. Thirdly, he knew that he would never willingly drink another glass of beer as long as he lived. He was going to have to gargle toilet bowl cleaner to get the taste of hops out of his mouth.
 
He got to the Chrysanthemum and was seated at the table where the Marines had been the night before. He wondered if the young kid he’d decked would be back, or if his pals would come looking for him to finish the fight for their friend. He hoped not – the evening before the tea ceremony needed to go off without a hitch.
 
The room filled up with more servicemen and, just before the geishas were introduced, the Doctor felt the familiar sickness creeping into his stomach. His face flushed and the pins-and-needles feeling moved across his skin, settling in his brain as Mikazuki came into the room and knelt at his table.
 
“Welcome back, Tyler-san. Are you excited for your private performance following the show?” she asked. The sickness he’d felt the night before was nothing compared to the throat-clenching nausea he was feeling now as he sat with the proprietress alone.
 
“Yes, ma’am,” he answered, shifting into his American accent before she’d noticed anything was wrong. The pressure in his head from the pulsations of pins-and-needles made it almost impossible to think.
 
“Okamimomo-san is very excited for her time with you as well. Enjoy the rest of your evening, and please just linger in this room after the performance and we will take good care of you.” she said. She got to her feet and began introducing the geishas. The further she got away from him, the clearer the Doctor’s head became and by the time Rose emerged, he was almost fully recovered. He had no trouble recognizing her this time, and had to smile when he saw the pink obi tied at her waist. He’d made quite a mess of the blue one the night before, hadn’t he?
 
She came and knelt at his table, carrying a pot of tea. “For tonight’s special guest,” she said, looking at him as if he were a near total stranger. She poured him a cup and handed it to him, brushing his palm with her fingertips as she passed him the cup. He bowed his head in thanks and took a drink. It was green tea, fairly weak, with just a touch of something sweet in it. It was a lovely departure from the nasty beer at the Officer’s Club and he drank the first cup in one swallow.
 
“Are you having a good night, ma’am?” he asked.
 
“Very good, Tyler-san. It will be better later,” she added with a wink as she poured him another cup.
 
“Won’t it just?” he said, cocking an eyebrow at her.
 
They spent very little time together that night, as Rose flitted from table to table before and after the performance. She did a repeat of her fan dance from the night before, adding a few more flourishes that she could only have gotten from studying with Ichisumi. The Doctor finished his pot of tea and the geisha at his table had to bring him another one before the end of the night.
 
“You enjoy our tea?” she asked as she poured him what had to be his eighth cup. It seemed the more he drank of it, the thirstier he became.
 
“We don’t have nothing like this back home,” he said. He thought he heard a bit of a drawl creeping in to his accent and reminded himself to play it straight. It was just that he was getting to be so relaxed in the part that he was losing a bit of focus. Between that and Rose being so lovely and distracting, it was hard to keep his mind on things. One thing he did notice; Rose was staring at him just as much as he was staring at her. One night with a Time Lord is all it takes.
 
At the end of the night, when Mikazuki came in to thank the guests for coming, the Doctor realized with a vague pique of curiosity that he hadn’t felt sick at her approach this time. That should have made him more nervous than it did, but he was having such a delightful evening that he simply couldn’t bring himself to care all that much. He heard the woman thanking the guests as if her voice was coming from another room and when he tried to stand up to get ready for the tea ceremony, he found that he’d been kneeling for too long and his legs were partially asleep. So was his tongue, for that matter. And his throat, like he’d swallowed Novocain or something.
 
Rose had disappeared after the show, presumably to prepare for the tea ceremony, and he was left by himself for a moment while Mikazuki helped prepare the private room. It felt like someone had shoved cotton wool down into his ears and wrapped it around his brain. He gave his head a shake to get his thoughts to free up, but all he wanted to think about was being alone with Rose again. He wiped the sweat off his face with his sleeve and was surprised at how wet it was, considering the chill in the room.
 
“Tyler-san, we are ready for you down the hall,” Mikazuki said from the doorway. Again, her voice sounded so far away. How was she doing that? Not that it mattered all that much; he was just enjoying himself for a change. See how you like that, TARDIS!
 
“Did you fly many missions out of Tinian, Tyler-san?” Mikazuki asked as she led him down the slightly tilted hallway. He kept losing his footing as he tried to navigate the awkwardly angled floor, and once he mastered the angle, it shifted just enough that he had to re-calibrate his internal gyroscope, which seemed to be having a little trouble keeping up. Come to think of it, so was his respiratory system. He couldn’t get more than a sip of a breath, and he could actually feel the bypass trying to kick in to bring him more air, but it just couldn’t seem to get going.
 
“Oh, dozens,” he said, not entirely sure what the question was that he’d been asked. They came to a little room off the hallway just down from the kitchen. There was a low table in the middle of a bunch of tatami mats, and Rose was there, kneeling on one side of the table. He knelt down on the opposite side with a little help from Mikazuki, and leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table to hold himself up. He felt like his bones were made out of very sleepy rubber. Rose looked angry. Mikazuki had not yet left the room.
 
“What were the name of the planes you flew out of Tinian?” Mikazuki asked. She was clutching her hands so tightly they were going white. Her face was still impassively pleasant, though – that was good. Whatever was upsetting her mustn’t have been too terrible.
 
“It’s so hard to recall,” he said. His accent sounded all jumbled, and his voice was coming from another room now as well. “It was a long time ago.”
 
“One plane in particular interests me, Tyler-san,” Mikazuki said, kneeling at the table with the two of them. What was with this woman and the planes? “Have you heard of the Enola Gay, Tyler-san?”
 
“Yeah,” he lilted. His head felt like it was full of lead. He swung a rubbery arm up so he could rest his chin on his fist, and missed the first time he tried to set it down.
 
“Then you know about its hateful payload,” Mikazuki said. Still with the plane obsession. Why did Rose look so angry? He studied her face for a moment. Maybe that wasn’t anger. Was it fear?
 
“The Enola Gay was the plane that delivered pika don to the city of Hiroshima,” Mikazuki said. “The city was obliterated. Were you on that plane, Tyler-san?”
 
“No,” he said. He had enough presence of mind to say that. Where was the tea ceremony? Why wasn’t this crazy woman with her questions leaving him and Rose alone so they could snoop around? The rest of his face was going as numb as his tongue. Not good.
 
“I was in Hiroshima that day,” Mikazuki said. “I worked there as a geisha. It was just after eight in the morning, and I was on my way to the market to get things for supper. A beautiful day, without a cloud in the sky. I was rather surprised to see the plane flying overhead, as there hadn’t been an air-raid warning siren that morning. I thought nothing of it, and neither did anyone else, until everything around me went white and someone slammed into my right shoulder.
 
“I woke up some time later, and my face was on fire. I couldn’t see out of my right eye and when I touched my face, I felt this horrible scar there that went down the right side of my body. But that was not the worst of my trouble. I knew something was wrong when I felt my injuries as scars rather than fresh wounds. I was also not in a hospital, as one with injuries such as mine should have been. Nor, I found out quickly, was I even in Hiroshima anymore. I was in Kyoto, lying in a park in my burned kimono, and three years had passed. For me, Hiroshima happened six weeks ago today, and yet the world has moved ahead three years without me.
 
“When I finally saw myself in a mirror and saw the mangled remains of my face, I was most surprised to see how much I had aged. How old would you guess me to be, Tyler-san?”
 
A question posed to him. He needed to answer it. He lifted his leaden head and tried to look into her face, but his vision was blurred and even with one eye closed he couldn’t see her properly. He remembered the look of her; he would guess perhaps fifty, fifty-five.
 
Mikazuki shook her head with disgust and turned to Rose. “Why don’t you answer for him, you little gaijin whore?”
 
Rose looked to the Doctor for help, but he felt like his insides were turning to goo. It was all he could do to keep his head up.
 
Mikazuki slammed her hands on the table. “I am twenty-two years old!”
 
“Doctor,” Rose said. He tried to scold her for blowing his cover, but he couldn’t make his mouth work right.
 
Mikazuki went on, her voice drifting further and further away from him as she spoke. “I found out what happened to my beautiful Hiroshima, found out the Americans were the ones responsible, and I found out just one more thing. It happened first through a dream. I dreamt of my family, all dead from the bomb, and suddenly I was wide awake, standing on the street in Hiroshima again. It was untouched, perfect and oblivious to the destruction that was about to rain down from the sky. In the next instant I was back in my bed in Kyoto. I thought it had been nothing more than a dream, but I could smell the smells of the street and feel the sun on my face.
 
“I thought about it all day, and when I thought hard enough about it, I was transported once again. I was actually there, standing on the street the morning the bomb struck. When I saw the silver plane gleaming in the sky I concentrated on my flat in Kyoto and I was immediately transported back there, safe from the blast.
 
“I knew at once it was a gift from the gods – an opportunity to get revenge on the Americans for what they had done. I obtained the Chrysanthemum and turned it into a teahouse specifically for American soldiers. Every night they come for the geisha, and one soldier stays behind for a special, private tea ceremony. Tonight was your turn. Yours, and your gaijin whore’s. I hope you enjoy this little glimpse of life in Japan.”
 
The Doctor felt his heartbeat starting to change. For a moment the two hearts pounded their opposite rhythms, but then the right one fell into synch with the left and they both began to race. A second later they were out of synch again, pattering wildly out of rhythm. And then, at last, clarity broke through the chemical wall in his mind and he understood. His jaw went slack as the tetraodontoxin began shutting down the last of his neurological function. The last thing his awareness grasped was a flare of tingling energy and the sound of Rose screaming.