Entry tags:
Flower and Willow: Chapter 17
Title: Flower and Willow
Rating: Teen
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.
Jackie Tyler’s phone rang shortly before teatime. She was in the middle of retouching her roots and almost let it go to answerphone, but she got one of those odd motherly twinges that she sometimes got, and dove to catch it on the last possible ring.
“Rose?” she said, knowing full well who was on the line before she heard her daughter making little snuffling noises on the other end. “Honey, what’s the matter? What did he do?”
“No, mum,” Rose’s voice was taut with tears. “It’s…he’s…we…”
“Slow down,” Jackie said, putting up her hands and holding the phone against her ear with her shoulder. “Take it easy. Breathe first, talk second.” Rose had never been an overly high-strung child, but when she did get a bit unraveled, she always forgot to breathe. She heard the whooshing of an actual breath going in and out on the other end, and it was a moment before Rose spoke again.
“We were in Japan,” Rose began. Jackie bit back the urge to start in about how dare he make her little girl dress up like some sort of Chinese prostitute or whatever it was and just let her little girl talk. “There were these energy readings…I don’t…you can’t understand. Doesn’t matter. Point is, we ended up in Hiroshima when the bomb went off –“
“What?” Jackie screamed. Rose was still talking.
“…and he saved us, shielded me from the worst of it, but he looked up at the flash, and now he’s blind and he’s being so brave, but I’m scared!” Rose dissolved into tears again. Jackie knew, the way mothers do, that Rose was sitting on her bed with her knees up close to her chest, her head bent forward, her face lost in a curtain of blonde hair. She could tell just by the way her voice sounded on the phone.
“Shhh, now,” Jackie cooed, holding her hand out as if she could pet her daughter’s head through whatever impossible distance of space and years separated them. “Aside from that, are either of you seriously hurt?”
“No,” Rose sniffed. “He had these pills to get rid of the radiation sickness. I’m getting better.”
“And how is he, except for that?” She felt another motherly twinge, not the first one she’d ever felt that was pointed in his direction.
“I think he’s all right,” Rose said. “He won’t tell me anything.”
Protecting her. He always does. “Well, then he’s probably doin’ just fine, love. It’ll get better. I bet it’s like when you look at a camera right when the flash goes off and you’ve got those nasty blue trails in front of your eyes. They go away; just give it some time.”
“What if it doesn’t get better?” she asked.
Jackie smiled, understanding at last why Rose had called. “Then, if it doesn’t get better, you two come back home and you, me and Mickey will take care of ‘im. He’s saved the world so many times, we can do that for him, can’t we?”
“He’d hate that,” Rose sighed. But Jackie could hear the relief in her daughter’s voice. Rose could face anything, as long as she knew in the end she could always come home.
“What’s he gonna do about it? Leave? It’d mean I finally get you two here for a proper sit-down meal. What’s he got against my cooking, anyway? You ask him that. And, you tell him from me I think he’s a right scoundrel bringing me that beautiful coffee table just to come smash it up a few days later.”
Rose laughed, and the muscles in Jackie’s neck relaxed. “I’ll tell him,” Rose said, then added, “I love you, mum.”
Jackie’s eyes burned. “I love you too, sweetie. Now, go give that scarecrow of an alien boyfriend of yours a smack on the bum from ol’ Jackie and tell him to cut out this nonsense.”
They said goodbye and Jackie kissed the phone before putting it back on the cradle. Her roots were going to be fried. She tried not to think too hard on the fact that, for the first time, Rose hadn’t balked at her having called the Doctor her boyfriend.
*******
The pain was coming from the corneal burn, and if that was all that was wrong with him, it would potentially subside and improve over time, though he might have to wear sunglasses even inside the TARDIS for a while. This, he mused, wouldn’t be too terrible, since he could rock a pair of sunglasses. But that wasn’t all that was going on. The flash had seared his retinas, and he’d known it from the moment it happened. He knew because when he opened his eyes as far as he could, there was no change whatsoever in the view. His sight wasn’t coming back until after he regenerated next. He was going to miss this face – his favorite one in quite a while – but his hearts ached most at the notion that he wouldn’t be able to see Rose again until he saw her with a brand new set of eyes.
They still had to get somewhere for medical help. Even if his sight was a lost cause, he had burns that he could tell were beyond the infirmary’s ability to treat properly, and he couldn’t be certain Rose wasn’t seriously hurt and simply not telling him. He had found his way to the control room while Rose was crying on the phone to her mother – he’d only been blind for less than an hour, but his other senses were already taking up the slack brilliantly – and he was sitting in the seat beside the controls, arms folded across his chest.
“I hope you’re speaking to me again,” he said. “Rose is going to have to pilot, so maybe you can give the controls a bit of a hand so she doesn’t fly us into a sun or something.”
He got up and felt along the console to see if he could find his way around enough to help her, and his hand passed over something resting on the controls. Cool, slender metal, freshly straightened and good as new. The Doctor grinned and lifted the object to his lips to kiss it. He pressed the button and the familiar buzzing noise warmed him to the core.
“You beautiful ship, you fixed my sonic screwdriver! I love this one, you know.” He patted the console and stood for a moment. “I owe you an apology. Shouldn’t have snapped at you back there in Kyoto, but I thought you were making some sort of judgment on what had happened between me and Rose. Maybe you were at first, and that’s fine, but now I know you weren’t shutting me out at the end, and I apologize for yelling at you.”
His mind was overtaken by the image of a sappily grinning teddy bear with a heart on its stomach. It was wearing what looked like his brainy specs, and had a shock of hair sticking up at the front.
“Oh, shut up. Next time I won’t bother apologizing,” he said.
The sappy bear was replaced by a pink ribboned basket full of kittens.
“If you’re not going to be serious, I’m not going to talk to you at all.”
One of the kittens mewed before they were replaced by an image of Rose, and a feeling of overwhelming gratitude and love.
The Doctor smiled. “Yeah, well, you don’t love her half as much as I do.” He patted the console once more and went to find Rose. The TARDIS moved a pillar out of his way and snatched up the cabling strewn across the floor when he passed so he didn’t trip. She then moved the doorway six inches to the right so he didn’t hit his shoulder again, and put the door to Rose’s bedroom immediately opposite the doorway to the control room, sliding it open so he could follow the sound of Rose’s voice.
She was just hanging up the phone with her mother when he came in.
“Wait,” she said, sliding off her bed. He heard things being tossed around the room. “Floor’s a mess and I don’t want you to fall.”
He laughed a little. “At last! I finally found a way to get you to clean up this pigsty.”
Once the floor was clear, she took his hands and led him to the bed, sitting beside him. She touched his face gently with her fingertips. Her skin was cool, which meant the radiation fever had subsided, but he wouldn’t feel at ease until she’d been properly assessed.
“Is it any better?” she asked.
“Not a bit,” he said. There was no point in lying to her. “I don’t think it’s going to come back.”
“Well, you can’t know that for sure,” Rose said.
“Yes, I can,” he said. “The cells are dead, Rose. I can feel them.”
“Well, that’s just not an answer I’m willing to accept.” Rose snapped. “Maybe we can go somewhere to get some help.”
“Oh, we’re going for help. You’re going to fly us to the planet of Czeython – medicine is a religion there rather than an art. Finest doctors in the galaxy. Well, those kind of doctors anyway. You’ve already got the finest Doctor in the galaxy right here,” he said, wiggling his eyebrows at her. She was silent, and he couldn’t tell if she was smiling or not. “Eh?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she said, and he heard the sadness in her voice. He didn’t want that any more than he wanted her pity. He was the last of the Time Lords, the Oncoming Storm, not a thing to be coddled and fawned over. Definitely not a basket of kittens. If Rose began to see him as someone to be pitied, he’d never be able to look her in the eye again. Well…figuratively speaking, anyway.
“It’s going to be all right,” he said, fumbling like a git to find her hands so he could squeeze them. “We’re alive, and we’re safe, and I don’t want you feeling sorry for me one second. I can’t have that. What I need from you right now, more than anything else in the world except possibly my next dose of Pethedine, is a smile.”
“Not now,” Rose said. She was sniffling.
“Oh, come on,” he urged, leaning closer. “There’s got to be one in there for me. One smile for the Doctor? Please?”
She’d stopped sniffling, but he couldn’t tell what else she was doing. That was going to take some getting used to.
“Okay, I’ve never done this before, but I’ve seen Lionel Richie’s video for ‘Hello,’ so I think I know what to do,” he said. He reached out both hands and put them on her face and Rose immediately began giggling as he felt around, pulling on her cheeks and smooshing her lips all over the place. “Oh, this is lovely, a whole new way to look at a person. I had no idea you were so…squishy.” He didn’t have to tell her that he was feeling to check her for burns as long as it made her laugh. He stopped laughing when he felt the two bald patches on either side of her head.
“What’s this?” he said, passing his hand over her hair. More clumps came out in his fingers. “Rose!”
“It’s all right,” she said. “It was the radiation, that’s all. It doesn’t hurt.”
“How much of it’s fallen out?” he cried. He was still holding some of her hair in his hand and he set it on the bed and reached for her again. She stopped his hands with hers.
“Not much more,” she said. Lying. He reached for her and she dodged his grasp.
“Let me see. Don’t keep things from me – how can I help you if I don’t know what’s going on?” How could he have been so stupid? So focused on himself when she was worse off than she was letting on. The black pill should have stopped the hair loss.
“I am just fine,” she said. She was going to start crying again; he could hear tears seeping into every word. “I’m not the one that’s burned his eyes out of his head!”
“That is a patently inaccurate medical assessment. They’re still there, they just don’t work!”
“Don’t!” she cried, startling him with a sudden hug. She rested her head against his neck and whispered his name. The sound of it made him ache to see her face. “You have to be all right. You’re always all right.”
“I am all right,” he said. He took hold of her face and kissed her lips, brushing his hands delicately over her hair to see how much had fallen out. Not as much as he’d feared, but more than should have come out. He needed to get her checked out and soon, in case the little black pill hadn’t caught all the radiation in time. Czeython would have better facilities to purge any insidious molecules of radiation that might be hiding in her cells, weakening them, weakening her. The more he thought about it, the harder his hearts began to pump, and the broader the fake smile he plastered on his face. They had to get to Czeython and she had to get them there, and she wouldn’t be able to do it if she knew he was afraid for her life.
“Now, are you ready for your first flying lesson, Rose Tyler?”
She eased out of the hug and he felt her get off the bed. He got up, a little shakily, he admitted to himself, and took her hand so she could help him to the control room. Rose brought him to the seat and he sat down, swinging his leg up to bring it to rest on the edge of the controls. He sent a silent thank-you to the TARDIS for letting him pull that move off as smoothly as if he had been able to see where his foot was going, and especially for not letting him fall out of the seat in the execution.
“Now, this is the control console,” he began. “I know you know that. You’ve seen it before. There are a lot of controls, as you can see. We’re going to concern ourselves with first the spatial coordinate modulators, and then the temporal controls only if we need them. Temporal controls are defaulted to transport to TARDIS Local Time, heretofore referred to as TLT. Or, you know, as ‘right now.’ Fine flight adjustments are made on the two northerly panels, which are the ones closest to me. They’re the ones you’ll need the hammer for.” He heard her chuckle a little. “So, orient yourself in front of the big squeaky wheel.”
“Okay,” she said, slight hesitation in her voice.
“That’s your main spatial coordinate modulator. This will get you to the right constellation. From there we choose the correct system – the systems are named for their central star –“
“Like the Solar System?” Rose asked.
“Exactly! Solar System, named for your sun, Sol. In some circles, Earth is known as ‘Sol Three.’ Typical designation for an unknown planet is central star name, followed by the number indicating the planet’s order in the arrangement of orbiting planets. Every planet out there has its own name, or several names, but if you don’t know the name when you arrive, you just call it by its unknown planet designation, or UPD. Or, alternately, its Navigation Name.”
“Well, goin’ blind hasn’t slowed your mouth down at all,” Rose snarked. The Doctor only offered a broad smile in what he hoped was her direction.
“Czeython is in the constellation of Hester’s Bonnet. Spin that wheel until you see the designation HB-604 come up on the display along the side.”
He heard the familiar squeaking of the wheel for a few seconds before it stopped.
“Got it,” She said.
“Oh, you’re brilliant – quick study, you are. Now, there’s a blue button on the side of the wheel. Push that to lock it in.”
“Done.” He could hear her smile, which was rapidly becoming his new favorite sound.
“Secondly, see the dial just to the left of the big wheel? That’s your central star finder. Czeython’s UPD or Navigation Name is Rexis 7. So, you want to find…?”
“Rexis?” Rose asked.
“Correctamundo!” he cried, then raised an eyebrow. “There’s that word again. Swore I’d never use it, and there it is. Anyway, yes. Set that dial to Rexis and lock it in with the green button at the top. That done, move on to the lever down and to the left of the dial. Seven pumps, hit the red button, and away we’ll go.”
He heard the lever squeak seven times in succession and the TARDIS jerked suddenly to the left, tossing him out of the seat and, from the sound of it, throwing Rose to the floor as well.
“Oi, come on!” the Doctor shouted at the controls. “That wasn’t nice! She did just fine! Rose, are you all right?”
“’m fine,” Rose said, grunting as she sat up. “What did I do wrong?” He heard her moving towards him on her hands and knees.
“Nothing,” the Doctor said, feeling to find the edge of the console so he could give it a kick. “That was rude.”
She stood up and helped him to his feet. He grabbed the edge of the controls and as he did, he became aware of the sudden lack of vibration in the floor and the ship in general. “Why’ve we stopped?”
“Great. I broke it,” Rose said, stalking away from the console.
“No,” he said, leaning in to listen. He could just discern the soft hum of the engines at full stop. “She’s fine. She’s just stopped.” Out of habit, he started to put on his brainy specs, stopping before he put them on his face. He stuck them back in his pocket. Don’t need those. “Rose, darling, come here and read something to me.” The ‘darling’ had just slipped out. If she heard it, she made no mention of it, but when she came to stand beside him she put her arm around his waist.
“See this readout? What does it say in the slot marked PPT?”
“What’s that then, ‘Planet P…something Time?’” she asked.
“Present Planet Time,” he answered, tapping the glass on the little readout. “I never remember to check this since I installed the big monitor. Would have saved me a couple o’ bob at Ikea recently if I had checked this first.”
“Says November 12, 1948,” Rose said.
“That can’t be right,” the Doctor said, leaning in. “Why am I leaning? I can’t see anything close up any better than far away. What are we doing here? Where is here? That’s Earth time reckoning, and Czeython uses Xinthin Chronometry. Have a look out the doors, will you? If we’re anywhere that looks like Japan, I’m going to bed.”
Rose went to the doors and opened them and the Doctor felt a blast of chilly, moist air, as well as the familiar smell of the Thames.
“That can’t be London,” he said, coming around to the doors. He banged his shin on the railing just beyond the console, lost his footing, stumbled down the walkway and ran into Rose, who held him up as she braced herself against the doors.
“It’s London,” Rose said. “You won’t believe where in London we are, either.”
“Where?” he asked, sticking his head out to get a good whiff of the air of his favorite city.
“Albion Hospital. I only saw it once, in the dark, and we spent most of our time there running from gas-mask wearin’ zombies, but I’ll never forget it. Guess we might get to see Nancy and Jamie after all.”