Unforgettable: Chapter 2

[timelord1]

Title: Unforgettable
Rating: Teen
Pairing: 10/Rose/Jack
Series: This Could Be A Little More Sonic
Category: Romance, Comedy, Drama
Summary: During a visit to the golden age of Hollywood, the Doctor, Rose and Captain Jack visit the set of the film "Citizen Kane." What follows as a result of one misstep could tear the Doctor and Rose apart forever, and leave Rose lost in the past.
Author's Notes: kelkat9, onabearskinrug and who_in_whoville are the best betas in the world. All hail the Cult of Eljay!

The Doctor stood up and began pacing again. “Everything I care about is inside that lot, and I’m stuck out here with you. The last thing she did for me was wipe her lipstick off my face. Do you see it? Is there any still there?”
 
“What do you want to do, keep it?” Jack asked.
 
He stared back at the gates, pulling at his hair. “She’s got no identification, no money, no place to sleep. What’s going to happen to her?” His chest was burning and he felt like he couldn’t get a significant breath. He felt a rivulet of sweat run down along his ribcage and no amount of hair-tugging or face-rubbing did anything to slow his hearts from racing. He hated panicking like a human; it was a beast to try to overcome. He’d never faced a cultural paradox before; heard of them, certainly, but he was impeccably careful in his excursions, always knowing where the line was. Yes, he lived his life with both feet on that line, but he never crossed it. No, he never did. The stupid people he brought with him did it for him. And now one of them had cost him both his TARDIS and his Rose.
 
Jack put his hand on the Doctor’s shoulder and gave him a gentle squeeze. “Easy now, Doc. I’m sure somebody will take our Rosie home tonight.”
 
The Doctor turned on him with a look of wide-eyed, blistering rage. Jack stepped away, putting up his hands in surrender.
 
“I’m just gonna shut up and sit down over here.”
 
“You can go play in traffic for all I care right now,” the Doctor spat, not looking at him. He was scoping the gates, formulating a plan for getting to the TARDIS. He had insisted Rose leave her mobile on the TARDIS to avoid potential…paradoxes. He rolled his eyes at the irony. If he hadn’t done that, he could easily have tracked the signal from the phone to find her. As it was, he could lock onto the background radiation signature unique to time travelers to find her. It might just take a little more time, especially if there were other time travelers in the area to interfere with his ability to home in on Rose.
 
“I get it,” Jack said. “You hate me, you don’t need me, I’ve screwed everything up.”
 
“Really? Because I hadn’t noticed. Do you need me to balm your hurt feelings? You want me to stop in the middle of trying to figure out how to get her back so you and I can have an ‘After-School Special’ moment? As far as I’m concerned, Harkness, you can find your own ride home.”
 
Jack sighed. “You don’t mean that.”
 
“Don’t I?” the Doctor snapped. “Who left you on the game station?”
 
“For all of half an hour,” Jack said, rolling his eyes. “I knew you’d be back.”
 
The Doctor shook his head and laughed bitterly. “It was nearly a year. I didn’t want to come back for you, but she wouldn’t stop begging. I did it to make her happy. As of right now, there is no more her, thanks to you, so you’ve lost your reason to be in my sight.”
 
Jack stood up, boring a hard stare into the Doctor’s eyes, his jaw rigid. After several seconds he opened his mouth to say something, but nothing came out. He shook his head and walked away, leaving the Doctor standing alone, watching the last thing he had in the world disappear down the sidewalk. The Doctor reminded himself that this was the way he liked things, anyway, and went across the street to a diner with a view of the gates so he could make his plans.
 
The Andrews Sisters were on the radio, singing about how much Mammy’s little baby loves short’ning bread. The Doctor slid into a booth by the window, leaning his head against the glass so he could stare out at the lot. There was the one main gate; the TARDIS was between the gate and the stage where Citizen Kane was being shot. As long as nobody moved it between now and when night fell, he would sonic the gate, slip inside and get the TARDIS. Which was only the beginning. Once he was in the TARDIS he would have to find Rose and figure out what had happened to her, and then puzzle out how to reverse it. If he could reverse it. He couldn’t get the memory of the disdain with which she’d looked at him at the last out of his mind. It eclipsed every other memory of her face; the hard, wrong sound of her altered voice overthrowing the echo of her sweet cockney lilt in his ears. It was enough to make him want to put his skull through the window just to get that version of her out of his head.
 
“Are you even gonna say hello?” a brassy voice barked in his ear. The Doctor turned his head to find himself staring at the considerable bosom of a dark-haired woman in a polka-dot dress and apron, a pencil behind her ear. She seemed to be made entirely of curved lines, from the elaborately rolled hairstyle to the exaggerated curve of her shoes, and everything in between. “’cuz I’m not gettin’ any younger standing here, growing into the floor.”
 
“Oh, yes,” the Doctor said, reaching into his pockets. Of course there was no money there. “Erm…”
 
The woman smirked. “Cup of coffee on me?”
 
The Doctor managed something like a smile. “That would be very nice, thank you.”
 
“Sure thing, fella.”
 
He resumed looking out the window. His mind was churning with questions and theories and posits, none of which could be answered without the TARDIS. He was dead in the water until night fell, which was not for another four hours. He shifted against the glossy vinyl booth seat and sighed.
 
I will get you back, my Rose. If I have to punch a hole in reality to do it, so help me, I will.
 
“Pie,” the brassy voice said, her words accompanied by the soft clink of two plates being set on the table. The Doctor drew his eyes away from the window again. The waitress was sliding into the booth opposite him. She pushed a cup of coffee and a napkin full of silverware across to him. “You like banana cream?” she asked, quirking her immaculately drawn-on eyebrows.
 
“Brilliant,” he said, giving her a real smile. “Thank you.”
 
“I’m joining you. Don’t get any ideas about that, because you just look like you could use some company. Never saw somebody look as alone as you do. It’s like you’ve got a little raincloud over your head – your own personal thunderstorm. What you got to be sad about, cutie?” As she talked she unrolled her silverware and his, put her napkin in her lap, added sugar and cream to her coffee and his and started eating her lemon pie with exaggerated movements of her mouth to keep from smearing her lipstick.
 
The Doctor sighed, taking a bite of pie. “I couldn’t begin to explain it.”
 
The waitress shrugged. “Readers’ Digest.”
 
“How’s that?” the Doctor asked.
 
“Gimme the Readers’ Digest version. If I think it’s worth hearing more, I’ll ask you. Otherwise, I’ll just say ‘Oh, you poor thing,’ and change the subject,” she said around a mouthful of lemon. She pointed her fork at him, waving it in little circles. “Out with it, Sad Sack.”
 
“Well,” the Doctor began, picking his words as carefully as he could. “In less than an hour I lost my house, my…I guess you could call it my car, my good friend and my best friend – my best friend being also the love of my life - and that was about ten minutes ago, so I’m still sort of reeling.”
 
The waitress nodded as she finished her current mouthful of pie. “And you’re either sitting here feeling sorry for yourself, or workin’ out a way to get ‘em all back.”
 
The Doctor looked into the waitress’s eyes for the first time and both their smiles warmed. “Oh, I’m working out a way to get them all back, to be sure.”
 
“That’s the way,” she said, winking as she held out her hand. “I’m Carmilla DeCastris.”
 
He took it and, turning it, kissed her knuckles. “I’m the Doctor. Pleasure to meet you.”
 
Carmilla put her elbows up on the table, resting her chin on her fists. “So, how’re we getting them back?”
 
*****
 
Rose still had a lingering twinge of a headache after the strangeness on the sound stage. She attributed it to the flight and the stress of losing all of her luggage, her purse, and everything she’d brought with her from New York. How was she supposed to start a new life in Hollywood when she didn’t have a single possession to her name? Now that she knew that the job with Orson was an admittedly unfortunate lock, she knew she would land on her feet, but it was nevertheless distressing. She walked into George Schaeffer’s office and sat in a chair on the opposite side of the desk to wait for him. The aging RKO executive was an old friend, and had been the one to call her to invite her to Hollywood in the first place.
 
Orson had called when he learned she was coming out and had joked that she was Dorothy’s unofficial understudy on the film, so if Dorothy got hit by a bus or something, she would be in. And now it had come true, right in front of her eyes. She had been standing next to that handsome madman with the ridiculous hair and the sneakers when everything had happened all at once. The camera fell, her headache struck, and then chaos.
 
She couldn’t get the image of that man out of her head. He had been so gentle with her right after the accident, if a little strange, and she had been downright rude in response. And the look on his face when she’d been so rude. She’d immediately wanted to apologize – she had never seen someone look so wounded by a rebuff from a stranger. Both he and his friend had looked horrified that she did not know them, and for a moment she’d wished she had. She hoped they were all right, that the guards hadn’t hurt either of them when they were thrown out.
 
The door to the office opened and George came inside, resplendent in a pale blue linen suit. His thinning hair was combed back with more Brylcreem than the rest of the male population of the United States used in a week. He smelled like Old Spice and cigars, just as he had every time she saw him.
 
“How does a garden cottage at the Chateau Marmont sound?” George called in way of greeting. Rose got up and embraced her old friend. They kissed each other on the cheek and as he walked past, though she had seen him dozens of times, it was as if she were seeing him for the first time in her life, like she was in the room with a stranger. It was a momentary confusion, gone as soon as it had come, and she dismissed it as he poured her a drink.
 
“So, we’ll have the contracts written up and you can start work in the morning,” George said, tipping his highball back to sip the straight bourbon she knew he loved so well. He handed her a Tom Collins, her favorite drink.
 
She took one sip and her face involuntarily puckered at the unexpected sourness. Her tongue flicked out of her mouth. “Do not like,” she said, crinkling up her face in confusion at her own words. Her thoughts flashed to the wild-haired madman, wiping his mouth with the sleeve of his jacket.
 
“Did I mix that wrong?” he asked, taking the drink back to give it another quick stir.
 
“It seems all right,” she said, taking it back and drinking again. The second drink was much more familiar. “Just took me by surprise the first time.”
 
“Orson’s very much looking forward to working with you,” George said, gesturing for her to sit before he took his own seat. “I think he’s quite taken with you.”
 
Rose laughed. “Oh, he’s taken with every girl he meets.”
 
George shrugged. “I don’t know – he only ever talks about you. Why do you think we flew you out here when we didn’t have a picture ready for you yet?”
 
“Really?” Rose asked. For some reason the notion didn’t thrill her half as much as she knew that it should. Her thoughts were fixed on the two men that had been thrown off the soundstage. “George, what happened with those two men from earlier?”
 
He shrugged again. “Security threw them off the lot, I suppose. Why?”
 
“I don’t know,” Rose said, sighing. “They just seemed so earnest; like they knew me and couldn’t believe that I didn’t know them.”
 
“Just a couple of screwballs,” George said. “You had your share of screwball fans in New York, didn’t you?”
 
“I suppose,” she answered, her gaze drifting out the window to the lot below. For an instant her eye caught a flash of blue in the distance, and the words ‘Police Public Call Box’ jumped out as if to grab her and lead her home. A moment later she saw nothing unusual; just a clutter of discarded set pieces waiting to be junked. She scanned the junk pile to see what it was that she had noticed so distinctly, but nothing caught her attention.
 
She sighed again. “I think I’m just tired. Nothing’s making sense today.”
 
“Well,” George said, leaning back in his chair to light a cigar. “Once you get to the Chateau and settle in, everything will feel normal again.”
 
Rose knew, with a slight, nagging tremor of unease in the back of her mind, that he was right.

Comments

[kelkat9.livejournal.com]

Oh good you posted it! I am so excited for this one. I just love the way you create the settings for your period piece stories. Carmillia is pretty awesome. I can't wait to see what all you do with her and how she will help Ten sneak back into the studio or maybe help him reconcile with Jack.

[fogsblue.livejournal.com]

Wonderful chapter. Poor Jack and Doctor, hopeless without Rose.
I like this idea of a cultural paradox, makes for an interesting story. Looking forward to the next chapter :)

[tracy-lousia.livejournal.com]

Yay new chapter. Love the confusion bit with Rose knowing/not knowing stuff. Poor Doctor, did he have to run Jack off like that :-( Looking forward to more :-)

[falkenheart.livejournal.com]

Brava, bravisimo! Loved it, loved reading it!

[wander-realtai.livejournal.com]

Ouch, the Doctor is REALLY being an ass to Jack! But I suppose he's not exactly at his best right now.

[a-phoenixdragon.livejournal.com]

FLAWLESS. UNGH!! I just...I can't!!

*Squeals in delight!*

[timelord1.livejournal.com]

lol your comments are always my favorite. :) Thank you!!! :) Know that you always bring a huge smile to my face, and I really need that most days!!!