As The World Falls Down - Chapter 4/6: "A Greater Plan"

[timelord1]

Behold, the first story in a new series! This was inspired by then_theres_uss Challenge #91: AU., and this photo prompt( Photo prompt ) This will not be the last. This story has eaten my brain, and I have many, many ideas for it, so I hope you read it and enjoy.
Title: As The World Falls Down
Genre: Romance, Adventure, Mystery
Pairing: 9/Rose, other special guests
Rating: Teen
Summary: Rose Tyler rarely speaks. She is invisible. One day, she decides to take a walk down a tree-lined road to meet the madman that lives at the other end.
Author's notes: Yes, this messes with canon a bit. It is an AU. If you don't want canon tinkering, don't read AU.

This story would never have come to be without the help of the greatest betas in the world: kelkat9onabearskinrug and who_in_whoville

Rose bent her head over her sack of work, sorting the garments that needed mending from the ones that only needed washing. She had set herself up at the back of the cottage for the day, near the three massive laundry kettles. It was hot back there, the air sopping with humidity and overwhelmed with the pungent smell of soap and ammonia, but it was better than sitting near the front windows, spending the day waiting for John to not arrive. She was wearing a vest top and high-waisted, three-quarter length trousers, her hair tied back and tucked under a cap, barefoot and sweating. The heat and the smell gave her something to think about other than John. Which meant, naturally, that John was the only thing on her mind the entire morning.
 
She had honestly never seen anyone smile the way that he did. His entire face, from hairline to chin, got in on the action when he smiled. He had lovely little crinkles around his eyes. And she loved to hear him talk with his oddly charming Northern accent. Had loved. He wouldn’t be back, she reminded herself. Not after all that her mother had said and done. For Jackie to act afterwards as if she’d done Rose some sort of favor by getting rid of him only made matters worse. The entire affair was one of the worst things her mother had ever done to her, and that was saying something.
 
When Rose was eleven years old, back before the washing and mending had been enough of a source of income to sustain them both, Jackie had sent her to live with a family of strangers on the other side of the village. The family had taken her in only on the condition that Jackie write a letter of relinquishment to them so that they could count their charity towards the annual Tithe. Jackie’s goodbye to Rose at the time had consisted of shoving her satchel into her arms and reminding her to keep quiet and not be any more of a burden on the family than she had to be. Jackie came back to claim her a year and a half later, once the washing and mending became too much for her to handle alone. The family gave Rose back without argument. Jackie never apologized for sending her away, nor was it mentioned ever again. That had been the year Rose had stopped talking.
 
She pulled a collarless black shirt out of her sack and started to cry.
 
“That’s a unique method for getting’ out stains,” a deep, Northern-accented voice said to her right. Rose gasped and turned to find John leaning in the doorway to the laundry room, arms crossed at his chest with his thumbs hitched out over his armpits. He was wearing a midnight blue shirt with a high collar, smartly-tied black cravat and matching waistcoat, dark jeans and black boots polished to a gleaming shine. He looked as if he’d taken a bath yet again that morning, and shaved his face to boot. Not for her. He couldn’t have gone to all that trouble for her.
 
Rose’s face moved slowly from shock to delight. “You’re here,” she said at last.
 
His eyebrows danced upward. “I am.” He waggled his fingers at her. “Hello!”
 
She raged against the impulse to throw her arms around him and hug him, but she couldn’t smother her grin. “I didn’t hear the Conveyance.”
 
He shrugged. “Why would you? I walked.” He crossed the room towards her and she suddenly felt very disgusting and awkward in her bare feet and sweaty cap. “I have come by this morning, Miss Tyler, to ask if you would be amenable to spending the day in my company.”
 
She had barely started the sack of laundry on the table. Her mother would be livid if she left it, might even smack her for it. What sort of wanton would she be, swanning off for the day with a known madman who had caused a terrible scene just the night before with his noisy contraption and his very public showdown with the formidable Jackie Tyler?
 
“Mister Gatesmith, I would be honored to spend the day in your good company.” She held out her hand and did her best approximation of a curtsey. John took hold of her hand so gently it nearly took her breath away. Then he lifted her hand to his lips, closed his eyes and kissed the back of it not once, but twice, as if he hadn’t gotten enough the first time.
 
Rose felt the floor droop a bit under her feet and she took a step backwards to brace herself against the laundry table. John kept hold of her hand, smiling into her eyes.
 
“Fantastic,” he said, winking. His eyes traveled to her feet. “You might want to put some shoes on before we go.”
 
“Yeah,” Rose said. “I’m gonna change clothes all together.”
 
He finally let go of her hand and stepped aside so she could lead the way to the front of the cottage. He sat down on a chair and put his feet up on the ledge by the window. “I’ll be waiting for you.”
 
Rose was glad her mother was gone on deliveries, but she also sort of hoped that she would come back before they’d left, just so Rose could see the look on her mother’s face when she walked out the door to the jingling of the blessing bell. She slipped out of her sweaty work clothes and paused, looking around the haphazard piles of fabric that made up her wardrobe. She owned absolutely nothing that could remotely be described as fancy. Nothing that would look right next to John, being as smartly dressed as he was. Daughter of the best mender and laundress in London and she didn’t have a stitch of proper clothing. It had never mattered to her until that moment and it was far too late to do anything about it now. She pulled on a cleanish pair of jeans, a pink and yellow top and her most comfortable boots. She threw her hat aside and fluffed out her hair with her fingers. Since she had no glass to check her reflection in, whatever she looked like would have to do.
 
She came out of her bedroom to find John dozing in the chair, his head drooping to the right, snoring softly. She crept up to the chair and put her hand on top of his. His hands were warm and his comforting soap-and-books smell surrounded and emboldened her. She didn’t know if she was a fool to be falling for this strange man so quickly, but she didn’t know if she could stop herself. Literally nothing in her life had ever felt right the way it did when she was with John.
 
“Mr. Gatesmith, it’s impolite to snore,” she whispered, leaning close so that her mouth was right next to his ear. When he turned his face towards her, his cheek brushed her lips. She jumped backward, nearly falling over a footstool. John jumped out of the chair, caught her by the wrists and pulled her back up before she’d fully registered that she was falling. He put his arms around her back and she wound hers around his waist and then the world stopped spinning as the two of them stared into each other’s eyes with absolutely nothing between them.
 
“Hiya,” Rose said at last, making no move to let him go.
 
“Hello,” John said, inclining his head towards her. “You look beautiful. Considering.”
 
“Considering what?” Rose asked, shrinking away from him a bit. Considering her age? Her hair?
 
“That you look more beautiful every time I see you, so in a matter of minutes how you look now won’t even compare to how you’ll look to me then.” He gave her a sunny grin and offered her his arm. She took it and they headed out the door, the blessing bell jangling over them as if to wish them a good day.
 
“I should leave a note,” Rose said before they’d gone ten steps. She turned to head back to the cottage to find Jackie standing at the door, a bundle on either side of her, scowling.
 
“Where you think you’re going?” Jackie shouted, pointing at the door. “There’s work to be done. You can’t leave!”
 
“How much work?” John asked before Rose could say anything.
 
“A full day’s worth,” Jackie answered, gripping her hips. “What’s it to you?”
 
“A full day’s worth for two; I bet we could knock it out in half that with three, if one of them’s me,” he said, leading Rose back towards her mother. “Leaving Rose and I to enjoy the rest of the day together, and yourself to spend some much needed time relaxin’. In exchange for allowing me to court your daughter this evening, madam, I will cut your workload in half. I’m an inventor, see. Bet I could invent something that’d be labor-saving.”
 
Jackie’s face was grim, but she hadn’t said no yet. That unto itself was miraculous.
 
“How you gonna do that?” Jackie asked at last.
 
Rose couldn’t believe what she was hearing, but somehow her mouth understood that she needed to help this along and she began to speak. “Mum, you saw the Conveyance last night. He built that himself – he could make life easier for you.” So easy that maybe you wouldn’t need me any more.
 
Jackie tilted her head to one side, eyeing John shrewdly. “You do that for me, I’ll let you court my daughter. But it better be to my satisfaction, or no deal.”
 
“Fantastic!” John said, holding out his hand for Jackie to shake. She did, warily, and then kicked the bundles in his direction.
 
“For starters, you can carry that lot,” she said, turning to go inside. John grinned at Rose and hefted both bundles with one hand.
 
“You don’t have to do this,” Rose said.
 
“All part of a greater plan,” he said, winking at her. “Step one: win your mother over so I can see you as often as I like without threat of gettin’ slapped again.”
 
“What’s step two?” she asked. He set the bundles down and put his hands on her arms, tracing his thumbs up and down her skin. He looked at her so tenderly it brought tears to her eyes.
 
“Make you fall in love with me,” he said. Before she could answer he let her go, picked up the bundles, and hurried inside, jingling the blessing bell with his finger as he went.
 
“That’s not going to be hard,” Rose said under her breath.
 
****
 
John had stripped out of his shirt and waistcoat and was inside one of the kettles in his jeans, vest and braces, banging away on the metal. Jackie and Rose were sitting on stools in the room, watching him work. There was nothing left for them to do; the day’s work had been finished hours before, but John had yet to stop. It was dark outside, and Jackie had turned the lamps up all the way to give him plenty of light by which to work. He popped up at last, screwdriver clenched in his teeth.
 
“Hehmmy yat,” he said, pointing at a metal ring with three wide, dull blades on it. Rose hopped off her stool and gave him the indicated piece. He nodded his thanks and put the blades down onto the shaft he’d constructed, and once it was screwed into place, gave it a test spin and laughed, hopping out of the kettle again. He sprawled out on his belly under the middle kettle and pulled a length of chain from the gear he’d installed beneath it and brought it to the newly-installed gear at the bottom of the last kettle. He wound the chain around it, back to the middle kettle and then brought it back around the first one and on to a fourth gear with a crank handle, so that when he turned the crank, the bladed apparatuses in all three kettles turned at once.
 
“There!” he cried, snapping his fingers. “You can agitate all three kettles at once, with a lot less strain on your arms. I’ll build a motor for it next week, and you won’t even have to turn the crank.”
 
Rose and her mother jumped up at once to applaud him. He bowed with a flourish and Rose ran up to give him a hug, their fourth that day. First he’d worked the kettles for the wash so Rose and Jackie were free to do what little mending had come in that day. Once that was done he fixed the shabby little wringer that hadn’t worked in years so that it worked better than it ever had, set up three new clotheslines in the back garden and then had started in on the kettles. Rose, meanwhile, had spent the day watching a layer of ice melt off of her mother. By the midday meal, she had even stopped referring to him as ‘you,’ and had started calling him John.
 
“Clever man,” Jackie said, stepping up to give the handle a turn. She cranked it back and forth a few times before turning towards him, her face serious once again. “Thank you, John. Nobody’s ever done nothing like this for me before.”
 
“Does that mean I have your permission to court Rose?”
 
Jackie looked at Rose with a look of blithe confusion, as if she couldn’t understand what this handsome man would want to do with her. “I suppose it does.”
 
“It’ll have to be an abbreviated night tonight,” John said, holding his hand out for Rose to take. “Just time for a stroll around the village. Tomorrow I’ll be here bright and early with the Conveyance to make up for it. With all this labor-saving convenience, you can spare Rose for a day, can’t you?”
 
Jackie frowned. “For a day, I suppose.”
 
“Then, next day, I’ll bring you that motor and you’ll be able to spare her even a bit more,” John said, flashing Rose an almost imperceptible wink.
 
Jackie laughed, or came as close to laughing as she was able to do. “If I’m not careful, you’ll labor-save me right out of a daughter.”
 
“Maybe that’s my plan,” John said, giving Jackie a gentle nudge in the ribs. He laughed with her and Rose couldn’t tell if the two of them were sharing a joke she didn’t get, or if John had one up on Jackie and she didn’t realize it. Either way, she was glad a few moments later when they walked out of the cottage arm in arm and began wandering through the village together.
 
They were both mussed and filthy, dressed in clothes that smelled of laundry soap and sweat, and not at all as pretty as they’d been when they’d first left for their walk earlier that morning. Still, Rose couldn’t have been happier, just to be with him alone again. The sky was overcast, but the aurorae were still visible flickering behind the veneer of clouds. They walked past a sentinel fire and the group of men standing around it stopped talking with each other and watched them pass with mild suspicion.
 
“Lively neighborhood,” John muttered as he offered the men a friendly smile and upwards-head-nod combination which only one of them returned.
 
“They don’t trust outsiders,” Rose said.
 
He looked at her aghast, putting his free hand to his chest in mock affront. “I’m no outsider – I live just over there. I’ve been to town lots of times. I don’t grow all me own food, you know. And I come every year for the Tithe.”
 
“Have you heard?” Rose asked, squeezing his arm tighter as they walked. “There’s a rumor the Master himself is coming to London for the Tithe this year.”
 
“Ah,” John scoffed, waving his hand. “They say that every year. Why would he come to London?”
 
“It would be something though,” Rose said, tilting her head back to look at the flickering sky. “To be in the same place as the Master. ‘Course they also say the Doctor might come back some day, so who can believe rumors?”
 
John was quiet at this. He gave her an odd, sideways glance and kept walking, not saying anything for quite some time. Rose could see the thoughts racing behind his eyes and worried a little at the gathering of his brow.
 
“Did I say something wrong?” she asked, after they’d walked several feet in silence.
 
He looked down at her, his head pulling slightly back as if he were surprised to see her there, hanging on his arm. “Not at all. Just got me thinking about a dream I had last night. I have vivid dreams most every night. Most of ‘em more nightmares than dreams. Last night’s was pretty disturbing.”
 
“What was it about?” Rose asked.
 
“I’m sort of nervous to tell you, honestly,” he said. “You might think I’m daft or have me dragged to the centre of town to be stoned for it.”
 
Rose chuckled. “That’s silly. You can’t help what you dream about. Can’t be all that bad, anyway. Tell me, and I promise I won’t drag you to the centre of town to be stoned.”
 
He studied her for a while, his eyes narrowed. “Nah, it can wait. No need to ruin a lovely night like this.”
 
“Come on,” Rose urged, tugging his arm. “Tell. You started the conversation.”
 
“I never did,” he said with a laugh, pulling away from her. “You started it. I was being quiet and pensive.”
 
She smirked. “All right; I started it, but you continued it. You could easily’ve said, ‘No, you didn’t say anything wrong, I was just enjoying the night air.’ And I would have thought you were lying, but I wouldn’t have pressed you.”
 
It was John’s turn to smirk. “I have a hard time believin’ that, Miss Tyler.”
 
“Well, I would,” she said, turning playfully away to stick her chin in the air. “I would have been on my best behavior and not asked a second time. But you said it right out, so clearly you wanted to tell me about it, and now you’re just being coy which simply isn’t fair. I’m not going to beg you to tell me.”
 
“No, you’re going to manipulate me into tellin’ you,” he laughed.
 
She had never flirted with anyone until that moment, but she was surprised to discover something of a natural affinity for it. She tossed her hair and looked into the distance. “If you don’t want to tell me…”
 
He threw his head back and blew out a long sigh. “I have a new word for you. I’m compiling a list, you know. ‘Words That Describe Rose Tyler.’ The new word is ‘formidable.’”
 
Rose stopped walking. John stopped as well, turning so they were facing each other. They were at a point between two sentinel fires, standing near the rusted shell of a boxy car that had once belonged to someone named Mr. Whippy, but which was now home to a family of feral cats. It was dark enough where they stood to feel somewhat intimate, with just enough light from the fires to make it easy to look into each other’s eyes. Rose had never felt more alive in her life, nor more vulnerable.
 
“What’s another word on your list?” she asked, her words coming out soft and sort of dreamy. She didn’t sound like herself at all. The hard, spinsters edge was gone from her voice and she sounded as young as she felt at that moment, as if nineteen were just the beginning of life for a woman, rather than the end of the marriageable age.
 
There was nothing in the world but his blue eyes and the sweet earnestness of his face, lit perfectly by the glow of the sentinel fires. He had put his arms around her at some point, had drawn her close.
 
“Clever,” he whispered, leaning down to touch his forehead to hers. “Bright. Beautiful.”
 
His lips were so close to hers now she could feel his breath on her face. She felt the most wonderful sort of dizziness threatening to knock her off her feet, or throw her forward so her lips met his.
 
“I like those words,” she said. She tried to look up into his eyes but found his gaze was fixed on her mouth. She wet her lips with the tip of her tongue as she felt a thrilling rush going from her belly to her heart and back again. Her hands were trembling on his back despite the warmth of the evening.
 
“May I kiss you?” he asked. His question sucked all the air out of her lungs and she had to swallow several times before she could get enough air to answer.
 
“Yes.”
 
She hadn’t known what to expect from a kiss; her days of imagining what it would be like, of kissing the back of her hand to practice for her future husband as she fell asleep were long behind her, and were the closest she had ever come to being kissed. John came in slowly, his eyes closing as his mouth came gently to hers, and from the first whisper of contact Rose never wanted the feeling to end. It was over far too soon, but John stayed close, his forehead pressed against hers, as they both smiled shyly at each other for a long while.
 
“That was…” she said.
 
“Yeah,” John answered, and kissed her again.
 
She knew it was most likely improper to enjoy it as much as she did, but she was beginning not to care. “This is happening so fast,” she whispered, her token attempt at propriety. She hoped with all her heart John would rebuff it.
 
“I have calculations that say otherwise,” he answered, kissing her once more. This was the longest one yet, and Rose could have happily died long before it ended. When they pulled apart at last, her lips felt warm and swollen.
 
“You still have to tell me your dream,” she teased, daring to wink at him as she pulled herself away from their embrace.
 
“’Formidable’ might end up being the only word on that list,” he said. “But I’ve got a word for you to add to your list of words about me.”
 
“What’s that?” Rose asked, lifting her chin towards him in the hopes that he would be inspired to kiss her again.
 
He kissed his fingertip and touched it to the end of her nose. “Stubborn,” he said. “I’ll tell you tomorrow. Gives you something to look forward to.”
 
He brought her home shortly after that, and they kissed three more times before he finally let her go inside the cottage. She didn’t bother listening at her mother’s door to see if she were alone or not; that night Rose only cared about John, his lips, and his list of words all about her. She flopped into bed still in her clothes, and rolled over to find that her mother had put John’s forgotten shirt and waistcoat on her pillow, washed and neatly folded. Rose wriggled out of her clothes and slipped into his shirt, her arms vanishing in the bulk and length of his sleeves. She could still detect John’s soap-and-books smell and she buried her face in the fabric to breathe in his scent as she slept.
 
 
John sat up in bed, eyes wide and awake as he searched the darkness. He hadn’t been ejected from sleep by a nightmare for a change, but because of a sudden bang coming from somewhere on the grounds. He got out of bed and shrugged on his dressing gown as he whispered for K-9, reaching for the sonic screwdriver on his bedside table. There was nothing there but a half-consumed mug of drinking chocolate and his journal. Of course there wouldn’t be a sonic screwdriver on his bedside table. There shouldn’t be – such a thing didn’t exist outside the perimeter of his mad dreams. Why in the world had it felt so natural to reach for it, and why had he been so surprised by its absence?
 
“Master, the security perimeter has been breached,” K-9 said, his voice at half volume. “We must investigate.”
 
John snapped out of his thoughts and followed K-9 to the windows that made up the western wall of his bedroom. He flattened himself against the wall and peered out into the night. The overcast sky made it harder to see clearly, but the man-sized shadow that scuttled between the ruins of the laboratory and the next building was unmistakable. John sprinted to the stairs and down through the hallway and across the living room floor, barefoot and silent as a breeze. There was a length of steel pipe by the door that he’d fashioned into a crude mace with scrap steel, nails and screws that he’d attached to one end of the pipe. The other end was counter-weighted with a lead handle, wrapped with a leather grip. Far more effective than some glowing fanciful screwdriver from his dreams. He snagged it and opened the door a fraction to get a second look outside.
 
The grounds were still as a held breath. John couldn’t even hear the cow moving about in the vegetable patch. He moved onto the doorstep just as K-9 came up behind him, the blue light in his eyes turned to Security-mode red.
 
“Between the lab and the wide shed,” John muttered.
 
“Biothermal scan indicates single adult human male, age unknown.”
 
“Come out!” John shouted, his voice booming in the silence. “Don’t make me come find you.”
 
The ground crunched between the buildings and John flinched like a tiger ready to spring, hefting the mace into the air with one hand. A man stepped out of the shadows between the buildings, his hands raised over his head.
 
“I give up,” he said, walking slowly towards the house. He had the strangest accent John had ever heard; hard and nasal and completely foreign.
 
“Light the outer lamps,” John said to K-9, keeping his eyes on the approaching shadow. K-9’s ears twirled and the gas lamps at the front of the house lit with a flaring puff of gas. The intruder was a handsome man, by appearances the same approximate age as John was. He was wearing a clean shirt, braces and trousers, clean-shaven with his dark hair neatly combed. Hardly the sort that looked like he should be skulking around in the dark on a stranger’s property.
 
“Easy now, Doc,” the man said, keeping his hands high. The man had a strange look on his face; a smile that was somewhere between relief and adoration. Again, not what he’d expected from a late-night intruder. “I’m so glad I found you. Are you all right?”
 
“What did you call me?” John bellowed, swinging the mace as he came down the steps. His blood was ice in his veins. There was no way the man had said the word he’d thought he’d heard.
 
The man jumped backward, though he was nowhere near the range of the weapon. “Ohboy! Hold on a second there. This might’ve been a bad idea.”
 
“You’re damn right it was a bad idea. Who are you?” John shouted, taking another step towards the man and swinging the mace once more.
 
“Nobody. I’m nobody,” the man said, scrambling further backwards, his hands raised to protect himself. “You’re not ready. But I know where you are now, and I know you’re all right, so I can wait a little longer. Because as long as you’re still alive, everything’s going to come out all right. Just know this, before I go. You’re not alone.”
 
The man turned and ran off without another word. John heard the man’s boots hammering over the bridge before his footsteps faded out of earshot. He stood on the doorstep for nearly ten minutes, mace in hand, staring in the direction the man had gone. K-9 patrolled the perimeter for the rest of the night. John sat up on the sofa, passing out at last when the sky began to lighten at the horizon.
 
In the scattering of dreams he had before K-9 finally woke him late the next morning, he was the Doctor again. The man he’d seen in the yard that night was there, in all his dreams, fighting beside him.

Comments

[who-in-whoville.livejournal.com]

JACK!!!! Yahoo!

And the kiss. Just lovely. You write Nine (even if he doesn't know who he is) so very, very well. Glad you have discovered this new muse.

[timelord1.livejournal.com]

Thank you!!! :) I'm already doing notes for story 2... it blows canon to bits, but I'm okay with that.... :) So glad you're enjoying it!! :D

[isilienelenihin.livejournal.com]

I'm detecting a hint of Captain Jack. :D

[bloose09.livejournal.com]

Wow, what a chapter. I like how John wins over Jackie with his inventiveness. John and Rose's stroll around the town was nicely done. Their first kiss was delightful to say the least. Rose s really starting to bloom, if you'll pardon the pun.

Jack alert! I can hardly wait to see where this story goes. It is very intriguing.

I like this better than "..that you're human":
“Hello,” John said, inclining his head towards her. “You look beautiful. Considering.”

“Considering what?” Rose asked, shrinking away from him a bit. Considering her age? Her hair?

“That you look more beautiful every time I see you, so in a matter of minutes how you look now won’t even compare to how you’ll look to me then.” He gave her a sunny grin and offered her his arm. She took it and they headed out the door, the blessing bell jangling over them as if to wish them a good day.

This is so much fun!

[timelord1.livejournal.com]

Hee hee!!!! You could be right!!! :D

[timelord1.livejournal.com]

I liked it better than "that you're human" as well, though I will say I'm sure that's what he meant, underneath that subtle shell of humor... :)

Yeah, Jack's here - I just adore Jack, and any chance to bring him into a story, I take it. :) Thank you again for reading and for the lovely comments!!!

[kelkat9.livejournal.com]

So that I do not risk having all my bananas taken away from me, I am finishing this tonight - I promise!

That was a really sad story about Jackie. Poor Rose! This chapt had an almost cinderella feel to it. So, Jack has now entered the story. Very happy about that. Off to read next chapt.

[timelord1.livejournal.com]

Oh, your bananas are quite secure. I knows this is a crazy week, so no worries! Thanks for taking the time to read it though...glad you like it!! :) *hugs* Here, have a spare banana

[(Anonymous)]

CAP'N JACK! Awesome! Reading 5 now...BYE!

[falkenheart.livejournal.com]

that was me!

[timelord1.livejournal.com]

I had a feeling...