Where the laws of the Universe don't always apply...

Friends Only

2009-05-27T12:53:39Z

This journal is mainly Friends Only. Some fandom stuff and fanfic etc will be public, but all private/personal nonsense is FO because, well, who really wants to read my late-night ramblings, lists of random stuff and crazed rants about things that not many people really care about? If, however, you do want to read my late-night ramblings, lists of random stuff and crazed rants about things as well as all things fandom-related, please comment here to be added. Thank you very much! Jen xx

Amazing FO banner made by the very talented claddagh_girl.

miss_jen_b @ 2009-05-07T15:43:00

2009-05-07T14:45:06Z

Clearly, I need to spend some time with an atlas to rectify the giant gaping holes in my geographical knowledge. Still, could be worse...

81

Created by OnePlusYou - Free Dating Site

Request a Fic!

2008-12-28T09:50:44Z

Stolen from madeelly who stole it from someone else...

Because I have writer's block and the second chapter of 'A Quiet Belief in Angels' is killing me:

"Comment with a fandom and some kind of prompt, and I'll reply with a drabble. I don't care how serious or ridiculous or impossible your prompt is; I can take it!"

Hit me, people.

Fandoms I'll definitely write - Doctor Who, Torchwood, Life on Mars, Ashes to Ashes
Any others - ask me and if I've seen it/read it, I'll have a go

Fic: A Quiet Belief in Angels (1/3?), 10/Rose, PG-13

2008-12-20T10:22:35Z

Title: A Quiet Belief in Angels (1/3?)
Gift for: amberwind
Pairing: 10/Rose
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: None as yet, as long as you've seen up to mid-S2 then you're good.
Beta: ladyofgallifrey</lj>
Summary: Rose loses the Doctor in the middle of a snow storm.
AN: A massive thank you to ladyofgallifrey</lj> for the lovely story graphics! The title of this fic is taken from a book by R.J Ellory of the same name. Chapter 2 should be posted in the next few days (hopefully before Christmas). This was written for the oh_she_knows</lj> Secret Santa event. Enjoy the story!

Her breath came in clouds that were instantly swallowed up by the soft white of the world around her. Snow covered the ground and the trees and filled the sky above her. Big, fluffy flakes drifted down with no discernible pattern, landing wet and cold on her hair and her hands. There was no sound, not even the sound of snow crunching underfoot as she walked. She didn’t know where she was walking, only knew that she was walking to find him, wherever he was.

Rose buried her hands in her coat pockets in an attempt to warm them. She was chilled to the bone, but the cold barely registered beyond a faint sense in the back of her mind. There were more important things to think about now. Like finding the Doctor. And finding out where she was. She knew that she couldn’t be very far from where she had started, despite feeling as though she’d been walking forever. Distances always seemed longer when you had no idea where you were going. She had the impression that she was in a large open space, but that may have been because of her limited range of vision; she could see nothing beyond a few metres apart from an expanse of never-ending white. She thought it was beautiful, and any other time she’d definitely stop to admire it, maybe try and catch some snowflakes on her tongue like she used to when she was little, or make snow angels despite the fact that they’d disappear under a fresh blanket of snow within minutes. She felt a little as though she was in a snow globe.

She sighed and clenched her hands into fists. This was useless. She’d never find the Doctor by wandering aimlessly through the snow. All she’d do is get herself into trouble, as usual. She should’ve thought ahead and somehow left a track she could follow to get back to the TARDIS. She should’ve brought some string. Bet the Doctor has string, she thought. Wherever he’s buggered off to. Maybe this was one of those times when it would have been better to listen to his Number One rule of ‘don’t wander off.’ For all she knew, he was frantically searching for her as well. But somehow she got the feeling that he wasn’t. Rose had the distinct sense that something was wrong, and that it was up to her to fix it.

Typical, she thought. He promises me a trip somewhere to play in the snow, and then goes and gets himself lost. Bloody alien. She knew that it was no use getting herself worked up, but it helped to keep her mind busy while she was occupied trudging through the snow. It was like walking through a cloud of candy floss. A big, cold cloud of candy floss. She shivered involuntarily. She wished she’d brought gloves.

Something to her left caught her eye, colours that weren’t white. Something was moving. Something that had the very definitive shape of a someone. It must be him! “Doctor!” she called, hoping he would be able to hear her. She picked up her pace, kicking up the fluffy snow so that it clung to her jeans. She paid it no mind, focusing instead on keeping the Doctor in her line of vision so that she could give him a big hug when she reached him. Then maybe she’d give him the patented Tyler Slap for running off without her (again) and making her worry. In her determination, she didn’t register the way the air seemed to fizz and crackle around her, or the way the falling snowflakes were flecked with shimmering silver. “Doctor!”

She judged him to be only a few metres away now. Surely he would have heard her? His hearing was better than hers no matter the situation, and if she could see him then he would undoubtedly be able to see her. Is it him? It would be just her luck to go running enthusiastically towards what turned out to be a scarecrow, getting herself even more lost in the process. But there was no wind, so if it was a scarecrow the figure wouldn’t be moving. Definitely the Doctor, then. So why hadn’t he seen her? Was something wrong?

Her breathing was slightly laboured from her final push through the snow, and so she was glad when the endless cold flakes seemed to ease up a little as she came abreast of the Doctor. His back was to her and… No, wait. Not the Doctor. The man in front of her was too tall and too broad, and he was wearing a thick, black coat and a scarf. The Doctor never wore a scarf. Or a black coat. The man seemed to be breathing rapidly.

“Um, hello,” she said. There was no response. She circled the man until she was standing in front of him, peering up into his face as snowflakes clung to her eyelashes. The man was staring at some point over her head, not acknowledging or even seeming aware of her presence. Was something wrong with him? She stepped back into his line of sight and gave a little wave. “Hello,” she said again, louder this time.

The man startled a little at the sound of her voice, but he was still slow to look at her properly, seeming as though he was having troubling focusing.

“Are you all right?” she asked, a little concerned. What was he doing here? Was the man lost? He certainly looked lost.

He looked at her with big, watery eyes, although whether they were watery with genuine tears or the cold Rose couldn’t say. His mouth opened several times before any sound came out, and he stuttered twice before saying, “I missed her.” He sounded broken, his voice cracking as though it hadn’t been used in a long while.

“Missed who?”

“I missed her.”

“I’m sorry,” Rose said. It seemed like an appropriate response even though she had no idea what she was apologising for, or why. “Can I help you? And have you seen anyone else around here? A man in inappropriate shoes?” If the Doctor got frostbite for not wearing proper snowshoes, he wouldn’t be getting any sympathy from her.

It was almost a full minute before the man spoke again, long enough for Rose to begin to feel the effects of standing still in the cold. “There’s been no one,” he said eventually. “Just me. And now you.” He studied her curiously. “You look a little like her.”

“Like who?”

There was no response to that. “It’s cold,” he said instead. “She won’t come now.”

“She won’t come because it’s cold?”

He shook his head. “She won’t come because it’s too late.”

“Oh.” She wasn’t entirely sure how to respond to that. She looked back towards the way she had come, trying to imagine where the TARDIS was. They hadn’t been outside for more than two minutes before she lost the Doctor. One minute he had been hiding behind a tree, holding a giant snowball ready to throw at her. She had been circling the tree with her own snowball, trying to stay out of his field of vision. It was only when she had circled the tree three times that she realised he had somehow disappeared. She had gone to look for him, certain that any moment he would jump out and inevitably dump a load of freezing snow down her neck, but he hadn’t. She had been searching for ten minutes before realising that she had no idea where either of them was. She still didn’t know. She looked back to find the mysterious man watching her with something like resignation in his eyes.

“You’ll catch a cold,” he told her.

“So will you,” she replied.

He smiled a little at that. “Where did you lose your friend?”

She waved her hand in the general direction she had last seen the Doctor. “Somewhere over there. Where did you lose yours?”

The man looked up towards the sky. “I’m not sure I ever really had her to begin with.” He looked back at Rose. “I can’t help you find your friend, but I can at least give you shelter until the snow stops and it will be easier to find him.”

She thought that she should be wary of accepting his offer, this strange man who kept looking at her as though he recognised her and then blinking as though to remind himself of the fact that she was a stranger. But something in her felt that he was safe. Perhaps it was the look of hopelessness written all over his features, or the genuine warmth and concern in his voice when he offered her shelter. “That would be lovely, thanks,” she told him.

He nodded, and after one last longing glance at some indeterminate location, set out through the snow, heading somewhere to the right of where Rose thought the TARDIS must be. She followed, absently brushing away a snowflake that landed on her hand. But no, she realised, it wasn’t a snowflake. It was a feather, which was surely strange at this time of year, in these conditions. A soft little white feather that felt wondrously dry in comparison to the wet of the snow. She wondered why she was thinking about a feather when she had much bigger problems right now. Pushing the errant thoughts out of her mind, she hurried to keep up with the man’s long strides, wondering how long it would be until the snow stopped so she could go and find the Doctor.

***

Rose wasn’t sure how long it was before she finally saw the outline of a dark, solid-looking structure materialise through the wall of snow, but she suspected that it hadn’t actually been as long as she thought. She was out of breath after the taxing walk, but the man accompanying her appeared not to show any obvious effects of exertion. He hardly seemed to notice that she was still with him; his gaze was fixed solidly on the ground in front of him as though he was using memory and sheer will to find his way through the blizzard. Still, how he found his way was not an issue for her, as long as he knew where he was going. Which, evidently, he did.

They came abreast of a small stone house with an overhanging porch, which Rose eagerly sheltered under while her companion unlocked the front door. He turned back to her almost as an afterthought, beckoning her inside with a slight incline of his head and a smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

The change in temperature was instantaneous. A fire glowed in a metal stove, its heat warming the room to a comfortable level. Rose brushed the snow from her jeans before it could melt and pulled off her coat, stepping outside briefly to shake it down before placing it over the back of a chair close to the fire. She turned to find the man watching her curiously as he removed his own coat and scarf. She gave him a smile. “Thank you for letting me stay here until the snow stops.”

He gave a little nod in response and picked up an old-fashioned kettle, filling it from the tap that stood over a sink in the corner. It appeared that this room served as both a living room and a kitchen. It was small, and crowded, but cosy. Rose suspected it would also be quite lonely.

“Sorry,” she said, suddenly realising that she’d completely forgotten her manners. “What’s your name?”

He looked surprised at the question. “Mark,” he replied as he turned back to his kettle, flipping the lid shut and crossing the room to place it on the stove.

“I’m Rose,” she said when he showed no sign of asking her name in return.

“Nice to meet you.”

“And you.”

They descended into silence as Mark busied himself with finding cups and teabags and laying them all out neatly on a small work surface. Rose perched herself on the edge of a chair, feeling a little uncomfortable. She wondered how long it would be until the snow stopped so she could go and find the Doctor. She was worried about him. “Can I help you?” she asked.

Her reply was the slow shake of a head. She found herself wanting to ask Mark if he was all right, if he needed anything other than help making tea, but refrained from doing so. If he was anything like the Doctor when he was in one of his quieter, more pensive moods, all she’d get was a short “I’m fine” that told her he was really anything but fine, followed by long silences and moody looks. Something about this man told her that he’d be good at the silences and looks too – it was written into his rugged appearance and broad shoulders that seemed to have a natural protective hunch to them.

A clock was ticking loudly on a shelf, the seconds seeming longer than they ought to. Rose hated awkward silences. She always felt like she should fill them with something, even when she knew that whoever she was with would really much prefer the quiet. It happened with the Doctor sometimes. Now, she instead occupied herself with looking around the room, her eyes drawn almost immediately to an embroidered blanket on the back of a small sofa that sat beneath the shelf. The delicate patterns and silver thread didn’t really sit well with what she had seen of the her new friend so far, and she wondered if maybe the blanket was a gift from his friend, whoever she was. “Why were you meeting your friend in the middle of a snowstorm?” she blurted before she could think of a more tactful question.

“Why did you lose yours in the middle of a snowstorm?” he asked in return. There was silence for a moment before he said, “We have a standing arrangement.”

“A standing arrangement to meet in a snowstorm?”

“A standing arrangement with a time and a place. The weather can’t be helped.” He sounded sad about this, and his shoulders slumped slightly as he crossed the room to pick up the now boiling kettle.

“Is the weather the reason you missed her?”

He shook his head. “The fire went out. I had to relight it but the wood was damp. It took longer than I thought. It made me late.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. There was no response to that other than the sound of hot water pouring over teabags. “Who is she?”

Mark turned to her with a strange sort of smile on his face. “You wouldn’t believe me.”

Rose smiled. “I think I would. You haven’t met my friend yet. If you meet him then you’ll believe in anything.”

“Trust me, Rose, when I say that you wouldn’t believe me.” He added milk to the tea and stirred it in slowly.

Rose couldn’t take the tension. “Do you have a bathroom?” She realised that she actually could use a bathroom; the cold was getting to her despite the fact that she hadn’t had a drink in a while.

“Outhouse,” he replied. “Straight opposite the front door, about twenty metres away. There’s an umbrella by the front door if you want it.”

She stood up and pulled her coat back on while walking to the door. “Thank you.” She decided it would probably be best to take the umbrella with her, picking it up while opening the front door. The icy cold hit her straight away, causing her to shiver. She found herself looking forward to the promise of a nice cup of tea when she got back, and hoped that the Doctor wasn’t stuck somewhere in the snow. She was almost overcome with the urge to go and find him, but knew that it would be useless in such bad conditions. Instead, she sighed and left the warmth of the house, making sure to close the door behind her.

She stood on the porch for a moment, trying to make out the outhouse. She found that if she squinted and focused hard, she could just about make out the shape of a building. “Must be over there, then,” she said to herself. “Right.” Rose opened the umbrella and stepped out of the relative safety of the porch and into the full force of the storm, walking gingerly through calf-deep snow. It looked just as beautiful as before, but it felt more ominous somehow. The Doctor was lost out there somewhere while she had the promise of warmth and shelter and tea to go back to. And Mark’s friend… What if she was still out there somewhere? Still, he didn’t seem to be concerned about that. All he cared about was that he had missed her. So where had she gone? And who was she?

It took Rose a moment or two to realise that she’d veered off her path slightly, and that she could no longer see the building she’d been heading for. All she could see was snow, snow, and more snow. “Damn it,” she whispered, clutching the umbrella tightly. She stopped walking to try and get her bearings, but her coat wasn’t sufficiently thick for her to stand still for more than twenty seconds without making her want to do some star jumps to warm up. She turned back the way she thought she had come, and was glad when she could see the outline of the house about ten metres away. So she wasn’t as lost as she had thought, although she still couldn’t see the outhouse. She decided that that particular adventure would have to wait; she wasn’t willing to get herself lost again over something so trivial, and so pressed on back towards the house and a nice cup of tea.

If it was possible, she thought that the snow was even thicker than it had been earlier. It swirled around her, drifting up and down as thought it weren’t quite sure it agreed with the notion of gravity. Rose was careful to keep walking in a straight line so that she wouldn’t lose her way to the house, although she could hardly be sure where she was going when she could barely see her own hand when she lifted it to brush some hair from her face.

Yes! A few more steps and she had made it, the stone walls looming in front of her welcomingly. She fumbled for the door with one hand while collapsing the umbrella with the other, having a moment of intense frustration before a cloud of snow from the umbrella exploded in her face and the door swung inwards at the same time. She crashed into the house, propping the umbrella against the wall and pushing the door shut against the cold of outside. Although it really wasn’t that much warmer inside.

Wait… she wasn’t in the house. Rose turned to find herself in a large, round room with windows set high up in the wall – too high for her to see out of. The stone walls were bare, and quite obviously doing a very poor job of keeping the cold out. There was no furniture or fittings in the room, nothing to say that anyone had been in there for a very long time apart from some footprints on the floor, and marks that suggested something heavy had been dragged across the flagstone flooring into the centre of the room. A box set to one side of the room held tools of some sort, chisels and hammers and things she didn’t recognise.

Rose followed the marks with her eyes. In the centre of the room was a small circle of cloth-covered shapes, some of them small, some even larger than she was. The eeriness and desolation of the room made her feel as though she was trespassing, but her curiosity had been piqued. She crossed the floor to the inner circle, and grasped the cloth covering of the nearest object.

She pulled at the rough material and it fell to the floor, revealing the exquisitely carved statue beneath. It was of an angel, with wings rising into the air, feathers appearing ruffled and ready for flight. Rose’s breath hitched. She felt as though the statue could take off at any moment; explode into life and flight, whirling up to the high domed ceiling above. She circled around to the front of the statue to find a beautiful face, the features obviously carved with love and attention to detail. Wide stone eyes appeared to be watching her gently, and a rosebud mouth was open as though about to speak. Rose had never before thought of stone having any sort of life, but this… whoever had made this statue was clearly a master of his art.

She pushed down the feelings that told her she shouldn’t be in here, that she should find her way back to the house before Mark wondered where she had gone, and instead went around the circle removing the coverings from all of the statues. When she was done, she stood in the centre of them all, turning slowly to take them in. They weren’t all the same, and a couple appeared unfinished or roughly done, but they had clearly all been made by the same person. A person with an obvious fixation and a common object in mind, apparently: from the smallest statue of a tiny child sitting down to the largest of an avenger standing tall with a sword in her hand, every single statue carried the wings of an angel, stone feathers ruffled as though readying for flight.

hate mail from the SLC

2008-11-04T08:58:28Z

Yesterday I got some hate mail from the Student Loans Company in the form of an annual statement of what I owe them and... oh dear. *cries* It was a very large number, and it's only going to get bigger once they add on this year's loan and all the interest. I'm going to be paying them back until I'm grey and old.

I forgot...

2008-11-03T08:42:25Z

Congratulations to Lewis Hamilton on being Formula 1 champion!! Go Lewis!!

Fic: Run (6/6), PG, DW S4 spoilers

2008-08-15T12:49:32Z

Title: Run (6/6)
Author: miss-jen-b
Disclaimer: I don't own anything to do with Doctor Who, apart from some groovy merchandise. I can't take credit for the good stuff.
Characters: The Tenth Doctor, Jenny.
Rating: Gish.
Spoilers: Obvious spoilers for 4X06, general for the rest of S4 (including the finale but nothing specific).
Summary: Jenny runs in space, but she wants to run in time as well. The Doctor runs when and where he wants, but it doesn't stop his loneliness. When their paths cross unexpectedly, on a planet that has less than an hour to live unless something is done, will they be able to save themselves as well as the civilisation in danger?
A/N: This is the last chapter. I hope you like it!

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5

She thinks to be disappointed by the lack of spectacle that comes with travelling in time. Oh, she knows that what they have just done is marvellous. They disappeared from one time and place and reappeared in another without actually physically travelling between the two. Brilliant! She’d just expected to feel more, somehow. She thought that it would change her, when in reality all she experienced was a sense of satisfaction before being thrown unceremoniously to the floor by her dad’s bad driving.

It had taken only moments to release the Lydra, sending them off to their new home. She had wanted to stay a while, see a new world being made as the creatures adapted the environment to their needs. She wanted to watch them creating flora, but she knew that they couldn’t hang around.

And so they left, her and her dad, going back to the TARDIS. And now she sits on the seat next to the console while he recalibrates something (or pretends to). They haven’t spoken in a while. Jenny isn’t entirely sure what to say, if anything at all. She still feels a bit hesitant, not completely convinced that her dad really wants her with him, and she wonders if she should ask him to take her back to her spaceship. She thinks it might be a good test: if he refuses or looks at her like she’s mad or if he looks sad at the thought of her leaving, then she’ll know that it’s all right to stay. If he looks relieved or indifferent or agrees in a way that tells her he thinks it’s about bloody time she left, then she’ll go. She’ll go and travel on through space. She’s been doing very nicely at it until now, after all. She’s not entirely sure how long she’s been alive in accordance with any of the well-known universal calendars, but since she was born she has saved fourteen civilisations from certain death and visited a total of forty-one planets (some she has been to more than once, like the lovely little world where she met a very nice man who danced with her all night and bought her drinks without her even having to ask). It’s not a bad achievement, considering. She’ll be able to manage on her own again, even if it is a bit lonely, especially now she knows what it’s like to have proper company. Still, maybe she could go and find that man again, ask him to come with her. That might be fun. He was nice (and handsome).

She realises that she has been quietly rambling away in her head only when her dad clears his throat noisily, and she looks up to find him leaning against the console, watching her. “Hello,” she says.

“Hi.”

There is a slightly awkward pause. “So, everything’s all right now?” she asks just to check. “The Lydra are fine and so is that planet?”

“Yes and yes,” he answers. “Everything is fine.” He looks down at the floor. “Can I…? I mean, maybe I should…”

“What?”

“Take the mental block out of your mind,” he says. “There’s no need for it now.”

“Okay,” she says immediately. Part of her thinks that she should want to keep the block there, just in case – after all, the thought of anyone being in her head (even her dad) is a bit uncomfortable. But things feel limited with it there, and she has to admit that it was nice to have the comforting presence of him with her even when she couldn’t see him. Maybe if they’re going to have to separate she could use their mental link to contact him if she ever needs help. Plus she’d quite like to be able to talk to the TARDIS. She thinks that they could be friends.

“Right,” he says, moving to stand in front of her. He smiles at her reassuringly and then lifts his hands to her face, positioning his fingers on her temples. “I’ll have to teach you how to do this,” he tells her. “Just in case you ever need to know.”

She’s not entirely sure what he’s doing or why she’d ever need to do it, but she doesn’t say anything and focuses instead on the slight pressure as he reaches out with his own mind to brush against hers. She feels something giving way, and it makes her gasp. Then the pressure dissipates, and she knows that he has removed the mental block. She can feel a soothing hum seep in towards the back of her mind that she instantly associates with the TARDIS, as well as a hesitant presence skirting around the edges, as though asking permission to be there.

“Is that you?” she asks her dad.

Yes, he replies, and it is a moment before she realises that he has not spoken out loud. And then he says, “Is it all right?”

She thinks about it, trusting that he won’t look at her thoughts when he said he wouldn’t. She comes to the conclusion that it is all right, because it doesn’t hurt in the way it did earlier and he feels familiar, and he fits into the big empty space in her mind that she has long felt needs to somehow be filled (although there’s still something of a gap there that she isn’t sure will ever be full). She concentrates and tells him with her mind, It’s okay.

Jenny finds herself caught up in a hug then, and she knows without words that her dad is proud of her for what she has just done, communicating without speech. He laughs and she finds herself giggling along with him, although she is failing to see how the situation is funny. It’s just a natural reaction. She loves to laugh.

“Where do you want to go?” he asks her once they have calmed a bit and he has moved to sit next to her on the seat.

“I… don’t know,” she replies. “It depends.”

“Depends on what?”

She’s just going to have to say it. “On whether I can come with you or not.”

Her dad’s face crumples into an unreadable expression and she can feel just a hint of something in her mind, obviously an emotion she has not yet experienced because she doesn’t know what it is. “Oh, Jenny,” he says, his tone of voice matching the way he feels. “Of course you can come. I’d love you to come.” He tenses slightly as though bracing himself for hurt. “If you want.”

“I want to,” she says, unable to stop the huge grin that breaks out on her face. “If you’ll have me.”

“Oh yes,” he says, his grin matching her own.

It occurs to her that they must look pretty silly, sitting here grinning at each other like lunatics (she’s never understood that expression – most of the true lunatics she’s met have actually been quite sad souls), but she doesn’t care. “Will you teach me how to fly the TARDIS?”

“Of course I will.”

“And you’ll tell me about the Time Lords?”

“Definitely.” His smile drops a bit, and she senses that there is a sense of underlying sadness surrounding the topic of their people, but she can wait a while to find out the exact reasons why.

“And we can go to our planet?”

The smile disappears completely and sadness flows from his mind to hers for all the time it takes for him to catch himself and draw the feeling back inside him. “No,” he says. “It’s gone. Gallifrey is gone.”

“Gallifrey,” she says, turning the word over in her mouth. He doesn’t say anything else, which she takes to mean he doesn’t want to talk about it at the moment. “It died in the war you told me about.” Somehow she knows that this is right, that the war he mentioned on Messaline is what killed their home. “I’m sorry.”

He shakes his head. “It’s fine.”

She knows he’s lying. “No, it’s not.”

Her dad sighs and smiles a self-deprecating smile. “No, you’re right. It’s not.”

“Sorry,” she says again and then takes his hand with hers, because she knows that it’s meant to be a comforting gesture in stressful situations.

“I’m sorry too, Jenny,” he tells her in all sincerity, looking her straight in the eye. “I’m sorry you’ve been alone. If I’d known you were alive, if I’d had even the slightest inkling…”

“It’s not your fault. I ran away from Messaline. I just… I couldn’t resist! There’s just so much to see and I couldn’t wait. I just ran.”

“I can sympathise with that.” He is obviously telling the truth.

“It wasn’t enough, though. I had the whole universe to explore, but I still felt like I needed more, like I needed time as well. I need to run in time.”

He smiles softly and lifts his free hand to stroke her hair, something that she’d only ever do to children. But then, she supposes, she is his child even if she never actually had a child’s body. And as far as her mind is concerned, she’s still very much a child compared to him. “You can now,” he tells her.

She nods. “With you.” She knows that it will be hard, at least for a while. Even if he’s certain about taking her with him (and she’s pretty sure he is), there are still going to be things that are awkward for them, especially when it comes to things she needs to know to be able to understand herself and how she relates to the universe they live in. She senses there are things that will be hard for her dad to talk about, and things that it will take her time to grasp. She knows that she can never replace what he has lost, but she hopes that with time she’ll be able to carve out a distinct place for herself in this life, here with him on the TARDIS. Plus, she tells herself, if things ever get too awkward then they can always go and find a battle to throw themselves into, run for their lives to let off some steam. She really does love the running, and she knows he does too, so at least they’ll always have some common ground.

“With me,” her dad says, echoing her sentiment as he jumps up from the seat and bounds to the other side of the console. “Any time, any place. We have the whole of time and space to choose from. We can go anywhere.” He grins at her and she grins back.

“New worlds,” she says, moving to join him at the console.

“Anywhere you like,” he says, looking at her fondly. “You choose.”

Fic: Run (5/6), PG, DW S4 spoilers

2008-08-13T12:19:07Z

Title: Run (5/6)
Author: miss-jen-b
Disclaimer: I don't own anything to do with Doctor Who, apart from some groovy merchandise. I can't take credit for the good stuff.
Characters: The Tenth Doctor, Jenny.
Rating: Gish.
Spoilers: Obvious spoilers for 4X06, general for the rest of S4 (including the finale but nothing specific).
Summary: Jenny runs in space, but she wants to run in time as well. The Doctor runs when and where he wants, but it doesn't stop his loneliness. When their paths cross unexpectedly, on a planet that has less than an hour to live unless something is done, will they be able to save themselves as well as the civilisation in danger?
A/N: Jenny meets the TARDIS.

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4

Her dad rushes off to guard the door as best he can with nothing but a high-tech DIY tool and a disinclination to violence. Jenny stays with the Lydra, willing them with her mind to speed up so that they can make a run for it while there’s still time. She clutches the jar full of tiny creatures under one arm, holding its lid in her other hand ready to seal it as soon as the transfer is complete.

She’s not worried about the Lydra harming her; she can sense that she has no reason to be. They have enough control over themselves to move around, and hold themselves still if need be. What made them dangerous in the glass cylinder was the threat of their group being ripped apart, drawn upwards through the vent and sent out forcefully, tearing them away from each other and sending them spinning in all different directions. Jenny can certainly understand their need to reside on otherwise uninhabited planets so that they can roam free and not be confined to one place.

And now she knows why they understand her so well. They recognise in her the feeling of being confined, her need to roam through time, her need to not be alone. She feels suddenly exposed.

“Jenny, how’s it coming?” her dad calls from the door, sounding a little frantic. They probably have twenty seconds at most before the soldiers from the jail burst in and find them.

“Almost,” she replies as the last of the Lydra leave their glass prison and enter into their temporary home. She can feel the tension in them as they work to hold themselves still long enough for her to put the lid on the jar and keep them there. Without the lid, their need to be free would be too strong, and they would be unable to stop themselves fleeing, which would render all Jenny’s efforts useless. As it is, she can feel their discomfort in her mind, their hatred at being compressed like this. It’s starting to make her head hurt. She ignores it.

She’s just finished putting the lid on the jar and is hefting it in her arms so that she can carry it properly when her dad says, “Come on.”

“I’m coming,” she snaps, holding the jar securely and then sprinting across the floor to him. “These things have a speed limit, you know.”

He doesn’t answer, instead wrapping one hand around the door handle before reaching forward to slip a key into her trouser pocket and then gesturing for her to be quiet with the other. She nods. Does he really think she’s just going to yell out, alerting the soldiers to where they are? And what’s with the key? She finds herself getting angry with him for no reason. “Stay behind me,” he says quietly and she thinks to argue with him before deciding against it. Now is not the time. Especially not when some well-timed running appears to be the next item on the agenda. She loves running. Especially when there’s a chance she could be caught. Makes it more exciting. “Ready?” he asks.

“Always.”

He grins manically at her and then in the same instant opens the door and steps out, turning to face the direction the soldiers are coming from to see where they are (close, but they have enough time to get away if they’re fast), his smile never wavering. He waves her behind him with one hand and she takes the hint, darting to the exit door while transferring the Lydra back under her arm so that she can open it. She runs outside, holding the door open for her dad, willing him to hurry up with her mind.

She receives a mental image from him. It’s strange, and for a moment she thinks that it’s just an idle thought that’s accidentally crossed from his mind to hers in the confusion of the moment. But then it comes again, more insistently, and she finds herself running even though she doesn’t know where she’s going, or why. She hears yelling coming from inside the tunnel she has just escaped from and she wants to go back to make sure her father is okay, but something compels her to keep on running and so she does.

Jenny runs up a rocky incline near the door she exited from until she comes to a wire fence. A wire fence with a hole in it. She ducks through the hole, her t-shirt catching on a rough edge as she goes. It tears the fabric and nicks her skin. She ignores the pain and instead focuses on the ripped shirt. She likes this t-shirt. She’ll have to repair it, but that will mean having to learn how to repair it, something she thinks will probably be boring (she can’t abide boredom), and suddenly she realises that the landscape here is very different to the landscape she left on the other side of the fence.

There’s grass under her feet instead of rock and dirt and the air is cleaner, purer. Almost instantly her lungs feel lighter. She doesn’t understand it. We bring flora, she hears the Lydra whisper to her. We make it grow. Well, Jenny supposes as she slows her pace slightly to take in the scene, things affect things in different ways. Apparently the Lydra are good for flora even though they’re no good for fauna. Yes, they tell her. That’s it.

And then she comes up against an obstacle. A box. A big blue box with doors and windows. She doesn’t know what it is, but she knows that it’s right. This is where her dad wanted her to go, she can feel it. And suddenly it hits her. This must be his TARDIS, the ship he spoke of. “Wow,” she breathes. She stares at it for a long moment until she feels him nudge against her mind once more, and an image of him placing the key in her pocket appears in front of her eyes. Juggling the jar of aliens, she manages to extract the key and unlock the door, part of her wondering how her dad manages in such a small ship. Maybe she can get him to her adapt her spaceship into a time machine; after all, it’s bigger, and it would give them more space.

The door swings open. She steps inside, and suddenly Jenny understands how her dad manages in the TARDIS. It’s huge! She makes a note to ask him about the physics of it later (she loves physics and knowing how things work, will happily spend hours learning the intricacies of things until she has the full story). “Wow,” she says again as the door shuts behind her. “Transdimensional.”

It’s strange, the feeling this ship invokes within her. The Lydra, the planet, and even her dad are all pushed to the back of her mind as she takes in her surroundings. She walks up a ramp, pausing a moment at the top to place the jar of Lydra on the floor out of the way before she walks a full circle around the central console, trailing her fingers over the controls as she goes.

She hears the ship hum in response to her touch, the lights pulsing slightly. She giggles with the excitement of it all. “Hello,” she says to the ship (she always talks to her spaceship, usually to give the illusion of having another person there with her).

To her surprise, she feels a brush in her mind in response. She knows it’s coming from the ship; this presence feels different to anything she has experienced so far. It’s not the hesitant dance of the Lydra or the slightly guilty weight of her dad, but something else, something more. Something ancient and female and alien, and unlike any other.

“I’m Jenny,” she says. And then, because she has learnt that it’s polite to ask, “What’s your name?”

She feels a sense of amusement within her and the word ‘TARDIS’ appears in her mind. She grins. “The Doctor’s my dad,” she continues, feeling as though she needs to justify her presence here. In reply she is given the feeling that the TARDIS already knew this piece of information. “It’s lovely to meet you. He told me about you. I…” She trails off, a huge amount of pressure suddenly building within her brain, spreading out from the centre.

It’s not the same as before, when the pain in her head had made her want to explode, but it’s more intense, and threatens to overwhelm her. She can feel them all inside her – the Lydra, the TARDIS, her dad – and it’s too much. She can’t separate the three strands well enough for them to remain distinct or coherent any longer. They’re all melding together into a big cacophony, a jarring dissonance screeching through her head. She feels light-headed. She feels concern from the TARDIS and thinks that she hears the door open as her legs fail her and she tumbles to the floor.

Her vision blurs and darkens. She just wants to sleep. She’s so tired and she can’t focus and oh, it hurts and it would be so sweet to just give in to the darkness and let it take her for a while. She lets her eyes close. The last thing she is aware of is someone saying, “Jenny. Jenny!”

She lets unconsciousness overtake her.

-8-8-8-

The Doctor runs full pelt up the hill, more than aware that he is being chased by several angry men wielding some rather angry-looking truncheons. He feels a sense of relief that Jenny will by now be safe in the TARDIS. He can already picture her expression of awe at the marvellous ship and the image spurs him on, through the fence and back into the lush landscape he arrived into not so very long ago.

It’s strange to think that it’s been less than an hour since he arrived here with the intention of helping a creature in distress and found not only what he was looking for, but also prevented a genocide and found the daughter he thought was dead. It’s been an eventful hour, and he is very grateful when the TARDIS comes into view.

He reaches his ship within seconds, and he has pushed through the door and is in the process of slamming it shut when he hears the soldiers chasing him yelling in frustration. Serves them right, he thinks. He can feel the timelines snapping back into place now that they have prevented the release of the virus and the population of the planet are no longer destined to die. He decides that he’ll have to teach Jenny the difference between timelines in a state of flux and those that are fixed, just to make sure she never interferes where she’s not supposed to.

He shrugs off his coat after the door has shut, and it is then that he becomes aware that something is wrong. He can see the jar of Lydra on the floor by the railing, but Jenny isn’t in the console room. The hum of the TARDIS is concerned, willing him to hurry. “Jenny,” he says as he rounds the console. He sees her. “Jenny!”

He rushes to where she is lying on the floor, her cheek pressed to the grate and her brow furrowed with pain. Oh no. He should have expected this, expected that the presence of the TARDIS in her head would be too much for her to handle along with him and the Lydra. He should have made her let him put a temporary block in her mind until the situation was resolved and he could teach her how to deal with multiple telepaths in her head. Stupid. He should have known.

Carefully, oh-so-carefully, he picks up his unconscious daughter, cradling her gently in his arms as he carries her to the medical bay to reverse whatever damage has been done to her. Releasing the Lydra will have to wait: this is far more important.

-8-8-8-

Jenny wakes to the sound of the TARDIS machinery and the sight of stark white walls and ceiling. There is the smell of cleanliness and disinfectant in the air. Her dad is sitting by the side of the bed she is lying on, his head in his hands. “You have your own private hospital?” she murmurs.

His head snaps up at the sound of her voice. “You’re awake,” he says.

“Of course I’m awake,” she tells him in all seriousness. “I can’t talk in my sleep, can I?”

“I suppose not,” he concedes.

“Bet you do though, Mr Motor Mouth.”

He laughs, but it comes across as slightly strained. He takes one of her hands in his and places his other hand on her forehead. “How are you feeling?” he asks.

She thinks about it. She’s definitely feeling better now; the pain in her head has gone and she doesn’t feel dizzy anymore. That’s definitely a good thing. But now the loneliness is back. Everything that was in her head has now gone; she is once again alone with her thoughts. It can only be because of something her father has done. Doesn’t he know she hates the empty spaces in her head? “My head has stopped hurting,” she tells him, but nothing else. If she tells him how the renewed emptiness aches then he’ll think she’s weak. After all, he’s survived on his own for longer than she’s been alive. She has no right to complain, especially when it is all she has ever known. He probably thinks that she knows no different.

“That’s good,” he replies.

She brushes his hand from her head so that she can sit up. He’s looking at her intently, concern written all over his face but she finds she can’t bring herself to meet his gaze to reassure him. “What did you do?” she asks instead.

“I set up a block in your mind,” he tells her, at least having the good grace to sound apologetic. “Just until we’ve taken the Lydra somewhere else. Then there’ll be less interference in your mind and I’ll remove the block. I’ll teach you how to cope with me and the TARDIS.”

She ignores the fact that he’s just as good as welcomed her into his life and says instead, “You went into my head. You said you wouldn’t.”

“I know, Jenny.” His grip on her hand tightens as though he is afraid she is going to pull away from him because of what he has done. “I’m sorry. I know I said I wouldn’t but I had to. It was too much for you to handle. And I didn’t look at anything - I just pushed the TARDIS and the Lydra out of your head and set up the mental blocks as I left. I didn’t see anything you wouldn’t want me to, I promise.”

She nods, accepting his explanation. It’s not like she can do anything to change it now. “What happens now?” she asks.

“Now we take the Lydra somewhere they can be safe.” She senses that he wants to say more but is holding himself back. He smiles instead. “Your first trip in the TARDIS!”

She has to admit that it’s a pretty exciting prospect, even though there are lots of things she’d like to talk to him about before she decides properly what to do now he is back in her life. “Can we travel in time?” she asks hopefully.

His face relaxes into a huge, beaming smile at her question. “Of course we can. I know just the place we can go, as well. The Lydra will love it.”

“Brilliant!”

-8-8-8-

The Doctor feels a strange sense of satisfaction standing at the TARDIS console, Jenny waiting eagerly by his side. Ever since he told her that they could travel in time in order to re-home the Lydra, she has stuck to him like glue. It occurs to him that she must have been craving it, perhaps without even realising, craving to move through time in the way he does every day almost without thought. “Right!” he exclaims. “We’re off to the primary moon of Cyrus Minor! History says that it stays uninhabited throughout its entire lifetime due to deadly toxins floating through the air, and who am I to argue with history, eh?”

“The Lydra are the toxins?”

Oh, she’s quick. She’s brilliant, Jenny is. “Exactly,” he praises her. “Or they will be, as soon as we take them there, right back when the moon began to bloom.”

“Maybe a bit before that,” she suggests and he gets the distinct impression that she knows something he doesn’t. “They were responsible for all that vegetation on the hill even though the rest of the planet is in ruins. They create the flora.”

“How do you know that?” If she’s going to turn out to be cleverer than he is, he wants to know how she does it. Maybe she could give him some tips.

“They told me,” she says as though it’s perfectly obvious.

Well, that makes sense. “Of course. You ready to go?”

She hesitates a moment, and he gets the feeling that she wants to tell him something, but she stops herself and instead grins brightly at him. “Yes, please!”

That’s all it takes. He’s bounding around the console, flipping switches and pulling levers and, if he’s entirely honest, showing off a little bit. He stops only when he sees Jenny watching him with her hands on her hips and looking distinctly unimpressed with his extravagant attempt to impress her. “What?”

“I want to help,” she says simply.

“Oh.” He has to admit, he wasn’t really expecting that. But then, he realises, he can’t just expect her to sit back and let him be in charge all the time. Like she worked so hard to make him understand on Messaline, she’s her own person. She has a mind and independent thought, and pretty bloody brilliant independent thought it is at that. And if anyone has a right to help him fly the TARDIS, it’s her. “Of course,” he says. He guides her to the console and then places her hands on the controls. “Hold that one down,” he says, pointing to the lever he means. “Then when I flick that switch over there, let go of the lever and press that button, all right?”

She nods. “Got it.”

“Okay.” He has to admit to himself that he’s a little nervous about this. It’s not every day he has a co-pilot.

Jenny pulls on the lever he pointed out to her, practically humming with excited energy. Her enthusiasm is infectious and he finds himself grinning as he reaches out and flicks the switch next to his right hand. Jenny immediately lets go of the lever and presses the button. Then he pulls the dematerialisation lever, and they’re off.

Show time.

Chapter 6

Fic: Run (4/6), PG, DW S4 spoilers

2008-08-11T09:59:29Z

Title: Run (4/6)
Author: miss-jen-b
Disclaimer: I don't own anything to do with Doctor Who, apart from some groovy merchandise. I can't take credit for the good stuff.
Characters: The Tenth Doctor, Jenny.
Rating: Gish.
Spoilers: Obvious spoilers for 4X06, general for the rest of S4 (including the finale but nothing specific).
Summary: Jenny runs in space, but she wants to run in time as well. The Doctor runs when and where he wants, but it doesn't stop his loneliness. When their paths cross unexpectedly, on a planet that has less than an hour to live unless something is done, will they be able to save themselves as well as the civilisation in danger?
A/N: This chapter contains some slightly dodgy, RTD-style 'skience' but hopefully it won't detract too much from the story!! Enjoy :)

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3

The silence in the room is so thick that it feels as though she has cotton wool in her ears. It’s cloying, this absence of sound. It’s twisting itself around her until all she can think of is righting the wrongs that have been committed no matter what she has to do to do it.

Her gaze is locked on the light pulsing within the glass cylinder when she says to her dad, “They’re the virus aren’t they.” It’s not a question. “Those creatures. It’s why they’re locked away.”

“Yes,” he says with just as much steel in his voice. “They’re being held captive because they have the power to kill. And they will kill if we don’t stop this.”

“Don’t worry, Dad. We’re going to stop it.”

They turn to look at each other in the same moment, and they are perfectly in tune, acting instinctively, chasing what’s right. They’re both soldiers, but right now she can’t bring herself to care. Not when he nods once, sharply, and says, “Yes, we are. This ends now.” This is how it’s meant to be. The two of them, doing what needs to be done to preserve the integrity of reality by whatever means necessary.

“We have to rescue them before they’re released,” she says even though she knows he already knows this. How can he not know? “How?”

He doesn’t reply, and she takes his silence to mean that he doesn’t know. The silence threatens to engulf her. She can’t stand silence. She’s had too much of it in her life. Fear of silence is why she throws herself into so much action despite the possibility of danger, and it’s why she loves dancing and music, and celebrations. She doesn’t like silence. It makes her sad, and sadness reminds her of all the things she doesn’t have.

The miniscule creatures dance around the edges of her mind but go no further, and she’s grateful for that. Her mind is precious to her. She’s scared that if anyone other than her dad were to see inside her head they’d be terrified of her. They wouldn’t understand her, just like she doesn’t understand herself. But she can understand certain aspects of herself and know why certain aspects of her personality are the way they are. Like the way she knows that her single-mindedness comes from her original purpose as a solider, but her compassion and abhorrence of violence comes from her dad. Jenny is all too aware of the fact that she is a very complex creation.

The beings enclosed in glass are almost the exact opposite. They’re simple things – they have to be, she guesses, because they’re too small to fit too many complexities. But they are intense. She aches with them.

“They’re called Lydra,” her dad says. “They usually live on otherwise uninhabited worlds, billions and billions of them all bound together by energy and light. Great clouds of them drift across landscapes, floating aimlessly. They’re peaceful creatures, and they don’t do any harm to anyone as long as they’re left alone.”

There is anger in his tone and it frightens her a little. “But what if they’re interfered with?” she asks, her gaze fixed on the Lydra. She smiles at them in the hope that they will be reassured even though she highly doubts they can see her. Hopefully they will be able to pick up on the sentiment instead.

He doesn’t answer for long moments, instead striding back to the timer and fiddling with the wires attached to the back. “They’re deadly, Jenny,” he tells her, his jaw set in a hard line. “It’s why they stay with each other, and only with each other. They’re deadly to every other living being in the universe.”

“So they can be used as a virus.”

“Against their will, yes.”

“But how is it being done?” She isn’t really asking him, she’s just putting the question out there so it cannot be ignored. She can’t imagine what it must be like for such peaceful creatures to be harnessed and then unleashed on an entire planet full of people. She knows that the Lydra know they’re in captivity; she senses that they feel confined, that all they want is to roam free in peace. They’re terrified of hurting people. They know what they’re capable of, know what they’ll do if they are released from their glass confines.

You’re like us, they whisper in her head. You’re confined like us. Oh, they know. They know how she feels, how the universe is too small for her boundless mind. She hates it.

Not for much longer, she thinks as hard as she can. None of us. None of us will stay like this. And then, because it is the most important thing, she says aloud, “I promise.”

“Jenny?” Her dad sounds concerned, although whether that concern is for her or the Lydra she isn’t sure. “What do you promise?”

She swallows heavily, and refuses to look at him as she says, “That we’ll save the Lydra.” It’s not really a lie. At most it’s a lie by omission. She just can’t bring herself to admit to him out loud that she needs to save herself as well. Her father would never succumb to such weakness. She can’t tell him.

“We’ll save them,” he says reassuringly, but she gets the feeling he knows she wasn’t telling the complete truth. “Keep them company, Jenny,” he continues. “Let them know that we’re working on it and it will all be over soon. Just a few minutes more, that’s all. Keep them calm while I work it out, all right?”

She nods and tries to send comforting thoughts to the Lydra, but she is finding it hard to keep her mind on the task. She is wondering if he gave her the task of damage control because he genuinely thought it might help or because he thought that she’d otherwise be in the way. She wonders if he thinks she’s incapable.

Arrrgh! She shakes herself, telling herself to stop wallowing in self-pity. Until she’d run into him, she’d known exactly what she was doing. Her plan had been simple: escape jail, locate the virus, stop the virus. She would have done it if he hadn’t come crashing back into her life, filling her head with his pain and alerting her to the fact that the virus is sentient. It would have been so much easier without additional variables cluttering up her plan.

She hates clutter. It reduces her capacity to reason, and reason is something she values very highly. So is logic, and it is logic that she turns to now in her attempt to find a way to stop the Lydra being released.

It must be something simple, she thinks. For the virus to be self-releasing on a timer, the mechanism can’t be too complicated or else there would be risk of error. And that certainly wouldn’t do for the would-be committers of genocide. They would want their plan to be flawless.

She’s almost sure that it is flawless – almost. The people who set this plan in motion obviously didn’t count on her or her father showing up to disrupt their catastrophic ambitions.

So, something simple. Something obvious. She gazes intently at the Lydra, their blue and gold light growing ever more frantic as the timer counts down, getting closer to zero with every passing moment. They seem to be spiralling upwards in a bid to escape, to be away from here. She follows their progress with her eyes, and that’s when she spots it. The thing that this whole plot is hanging on. So simple. She smiles in spite of herself. “Dad,” she says. “I think I know what to do.”

-8-8-8-

The Doctor is at a loss, almost frantic with inaction and his inability to disconnect the timer and stop the virus. The Lydra, he corrects himself. And so when Jenny speaks, saying that she thinks she knows what to do, he cannot stop the grin that breaks out on his face as he turns and sprints back across the room to his daughter. His wonderful, amazing, brilliant daughter. He should have known she’d work it out first. She’s brilliant, she is. “What is it?”

“There’s a vent. Look.” She points upwards to the top of the glass tube, and there is indeed a vent of sorts. More like a fine mesh, it’s covered over at the moment, keeping the Lydra in, but he’s pretty certain that as soon as the timer hits zero it will open up and send them on their destructive way.

“Jenny, you’re a genius!” he exclaims, grabbing her into a hug. It makes his insides judder, having her so close after she has been lost for so long. Something is reawakening inside him.

She pulls away first, looking up at the vent. “They’ll be sucked up, right?” she says. “Like an air conditioning system in reverse. They be sucked up there and sent out into the sky.”

He doesn’t answer because he doesn’t know for sure. He thinks that she’s right though; it certainly seems to be the most likely option. “We have six minutes,” he says instead.

“Right then.” Jenny is fully into action mode now, and he is struck by the soldier-like qualities that remain within her, her ability to drop everything until her war is won. He refuses to acknowledge how similar that makes her to himself. “Your lock-picking device wouldn’t happen to have any settings to disable vents, would it?”

Ah, now this is something he can deal with. “The sonic screwdriver,” he corrects her. “It’s called a sonic screwdriver.” He holds it up for her to see.

“I need to get one of those,” she says. “Or at least something like it. Something to make things easier, like breaking out of jail cells or dismantling bed frames.”

“Like dismantling what?” He doesn’t really want to know why she would have cause to dismantle a bed frame but the words come out of his mouth anyway.

“Sometimes it’s necessary,” she replies breezily.

Well, he can relate to that. “I’ll make you one,” he says as he jumps up on the bench next to the container full of Lydra, peering up into the vent to try and work out its mechanism.

“You’ll make me a bed frame?” She doesn’t sound impressed, and he can’t help but smile at her literalism. He wonders what she makes of irony and sarcasm and makes a mental note to try them out on her.

“No,” he replies, doing his best to keep the smile out of his voice so she won’t be insulted. “I’ll make you a sonic screwdriver.”

“Oh.” She tries to sound casual, but he can feel her surprise and pleasure in his mind. It is then that he realises she still thinks he doesn’t really want her, but that his offer to make her a screwdriver has helped her to see that this – him and her – is not just a temporary crossing of paths. “Well, that would be lovely. Thank you!”

He smiles down at her. “You’re more than welcome.”

He turns his attention back to the vent, all too aware that time is running out and that if they don’t do something soon everyone will die. Ah. He thinks he has it figured out, and he has just the sonic screwdriver setting that will lock the mechanism and buy them some time to get the Lydra out. He clicks through the screwdriver options until he finds the one he wants and then holds it to the vent, watching the pulse of the light and listening to the whirs that tell him it is working.

“Can you feel it too?” Jenny asks quietly.

He glances down at her to find her watching the Lydra with an expression somewhere between awe and sadness. “Feel what?”

“Them. In your mind. I can feel them in my mind.”

“No,” he tells her. “I can’t.” And that is another conversation they will have to have in the near future, about mental barriers and his scarred mind and their shared sense of isolation.

“But you can feel other things.”

He wonders what she is getting at and busies himself with adjusting the sonic screwdriver while he takes a moment to think. He almost has the mechanism, and he wills it to hurry up so that he can move onto the next task and avoid her uncomfortable questions for a little while longer.

“Time,” she states. “You can feel time, like me. You can tell when something’s wrong because you feel it in your head.”

He nods. “Yeah,” he replies shortly.

She giggles. “Bet you understand it more than I do, though! It’s all just a mess to me. All I know is that nothing feels right until I’ve fixed it.”

This saddens the Doctor, the idea that his little girl is so confused about something that is part of her nature. It saddens him that he hasn’t been there to help her as her senses developed, help her to understand the ways she can deal with things without becoming overwhelmed by them. “I’m sorry, Jenny,” he tells her, and then says no more because it has worked, the vent mechanism is well and truly stuck and there’s no chance of it releasing any time soon. “All done!” he says cheerfully, with a smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

“Brilliant!” she says, all melancholy gone from her stance like someone has flipped a switch and turned it off. “Now we can save them.”

“Yes, we can.” He jumps down from the workbench to find himself engulfed in a hug. It lasts no more than two seconds before she’s moving away again, saying to the Lydra very matter-of-factly, “Just hold on another minute. We’ve almost sorted it.”

She runs to a bank of cupboards on the other side of the room, surprising him with her speed and energy. He wonders if this is what he looks like to other people, all manic and determined and unstoppable. Jenny is opening the cupboards to reveal stacks of jars and containers. “Come on,” she says to him. “Stop dawdling, Father.”

Father. Ooh, he’s not sure what he thinks of that. He prefers ‘Dad.’ ‘Father’ makes their relationship seem too formal. He’ll have to have a word with her about it later. But for now he goes and joins her with the cupboards, helping her search for a container large enough to hold all of the Lydra so they don’t have to split them up. Whatever they find is going to be tight fit, he knows, but it will only be temporary until they can get away from here and find a planet for them to roam free.

“What happened on this planet?” he asks her as they search, realising that he doesn’t actually know. He never took the time to find out.

“War,” she says simply, and he doesn’t like the sound of the word on her lips. “Will this one do?” She drags a large jar from the back of a cupboard, pulling it out to rest on the floor.

He nods, not failing to notice the brevity of her answer to his question. Still, he supposes, ‘war’ covers all manner of sins. “Yeah, that’ll do. Think you can hold it while I release the Lydra into it?”

“I’m not a child!” she tells him indignantly. “I’m more than capable of holding a jar.” And then, to prove her point, she picks up the jar and stalks off back to the glass cylinder.

“I didn’t say you weren’t!” he retorts, following her. He decides that father/daughter domestics will have to wait. There’s less than three minutes until the timer reaches zero, and although he’s bought them some time by blocking up the vent, he doesn’t want to take any chances. “I’m going to heat the glass to make it more malleable,” he says. “And then I’m going to make a small hole in it. You’ll need to cover the hole with the jar straight away, okay?”

She nods. “Right. I take it that this is another job for the sonic screwdriver?” He can practically hear the italicisation in her speech, her awe of the little device all too apparent. Making her one of his own becomes his top priority once they have completed this mission.

“Oh, most definitely,” he agrees. He takes the aforementioned screwdriver and focuses its power on as small a portion of the glass as possible. As he concentrates on the task, he can hear Jenny talking to the Lydra, her excitement about the situation evident in her tone of voice. He loves that she loves adventure so much. It bodes well for the future.

Once the glass has heated and begun to warp, he changes the setting on the screwdriver and uses it to make a small hole about the size of a penny. As soon as he moves away, Jenny is covering the hole with the jar so the Lydra can’t escape. He can hear her talking to them with her mind, but he doesn’t know what she’s saying. He could look and find out, of course he could, but he promised her he wouldn’t and he meant it. Her mind is private, off-limits to him, and he knows that he’s lucky she didn’t insist on chucking him out of her head altogether.

The process of transferring the Lydra from one glass container to the other is slow, due to their large number and reluctance to be crammed into an even smaller space, but progress is steady. He just wishes it would speed up a little bit so that they could get out of here.

The muffled sound of a door slamming followed by pounding feet coming from the opposite end of the corridor outside makes him wish that it would speed up even more. “Jenny,” he murmurs, “I think we’d better get ready to run.”

Chapter 5

Fic: Run (3/6), PG, DW S4 spoilers

2008-08-09T08:39:42Z

Title: Run (3/6)
Author: miss-jen-b
Disclaimer: I don't own anything to do with Doctor Who, apart from some groovy merchandise. I can't take credit for the good stuff.
Characters: The Tenth Doctor, Jenny.
Rating: Gish.
Spoilers: Obvious spoilers for 4X06, general for the rest of S4 (including the finale but nothing specific).
Summary: Jenny runs in space, but she wants to run in time as well. The Doctor runs when and where he wants, but it doesn't stop his loneliness. When their paths cross unexpectedly, on a planet that has less than an hour to live unless something is done, will they be able to save themselves as well as the civilisation in danger?
A/N: This fic is finished apart from a bit of editing, so hopefully chapters will be posted every other day. I'm quite nervous about posting this, so I'd love to know what people think!! Enjoy :)

Chapter 1 Chapter 2

He’s gone mad, he’s sure of it. It can’t be real – she can’t be real. She died, she’s dead. She can’t be there, sitting in front of him and looking up at him with big eyes filled with a pain he has only ever seen before in himself. She’s not there. She’s not.

But then she speaks, sucking a breath into her lungs as though it is a great effort, her head lolling slightly as though it is too heavy for her to hold it up any longer. “Help,” she says weakly, sounding like a child.

And he cannot deny her. He can’t. She’s right there, despite logic telling him that she can’t be. She’s really there and she’s looking at him and she’s hurting like him. And she needs his help. He pushes everything out of his mind but her, stepping inside the bunker and taking a moment to shut the door behind him, lending them some privacy. It’s dim in here, but that doesn’t matter. He can see plenty well to be able to see his daughter. Daughter. The word hurts as it makes itself known in his mind, the fact that she is his child and he has failed her, in every way possible.

The Doctor kneels down beside Jenny, reaching out to gently move her hand away from where it pressed tight against her temple. “It’s okay,” he murmurs, surprising himself with the tenderness of his tone. “It’s all okay now.”

He knows now that the new presence in his mind came from her, that she has been broadcasting, her mind seeking his without him having the faintest idea it was her because this situation is just so impossible. It’s impossible, but that’s something that can be dealt with later. Nothing else matters now.

“My head,” she says and instantly his hand is resting against her cheek, fingers smoothing hair away from her temple in an effort to soothe her.

“I know,” he replies, guilt crashing through him. It can only be him that’s done this to her, no matter how unknowingly. He can cope with her presence in his mind: his years of training and development coupled with her newness and limited wealth of experiences mean that she slots nicely into the space that the death of his people created. But he is too much for her to handle. If he’d only known it was her, he would have shielded his mind, protected her. He hasn’t had to do that in so long; he’s been alone for a long time. He never thought he’d have to worry about her still-developing mind being able to cope with his overwhelming presence. Not when he thought she was dead. “I’m sorry.”

And she would be able to feel his pain, he knew. It would be that that’s hurting her now. Hastily, he throws up barriers around his mind, leaving it just unguarded enough that she can feel his presence but not his intense emotions. He tries to calm her, brushing her mind with his, feeling her resulting surprise inside his own head that he can do something so precise with something as sprawling as his Time Lord consciousness. He feels her anguish begin to lessen, and her breathing becomes less laboured as his presence reassures her. He strokes her hair back from her forehead, her face looking tiny next to his large hand. He wants to protect her but he doesn’t know how. He hasn’t done this in so long.

“Hello Dad.” She gives him a small, hesitant smile as his hand drops away from her face to rest against her arm.

He returns the smile just as unsurely. “Hello,” he whispers.

“How’ve you been?” She struggles to sit up properly, letting him support her as she pushes herself upright.

He wants to laugh at the absurdity of this situation, this family reunion. On more than one occasion, he has indulged himself in wondering how this moment would possibly go, but never did he come up with this. He’d always pictured smoke clearing from a battleground and a figure appearing in front of him, walking out of the dust to give him the shock of his life. He never thought that he’d be so shocked he’d be stunned into long moments of silence. He never thought it would make him quite this happy just to see her lovely face again. He never even wanted her, and yet here he is, about to burst with joy at being reunited with his daughter despite the pain it causes in him, old memories making themselves new again. “Oh, you know,” he says in response to her question. “Saving the universe, seeing the sights, running for my life. The usual. How about you?” He wants to ask her how, how she’s here, how she’s even alive. But this is not the time for that.

“Same,” she replies. “Exploring planets, meeting people. Lots of running.” She smiles then, the first proper smile she’s given him and it inspires a big cheesy grin to plaster itself across his face. “Love the running.”

“Yes.” A little laugh erupts from him as he says the word, and it occurs to him that he is nervous. All the other times he has imagined this moment, he has never had to deal with the consequences of its actuality. But now he does, and he is unsure of what to do. He doesn’t really know anything about her or her life, whether she’s really happy or if she’s learned how to put on a front like he so often does. He finds that he wants to know everything.

She catches his eye. “That was you in my head, wasn’t it?”

He nods guiltily. “Yes. I’m sorry. I didn’t know it was you, I didn’t mean to hurt you. Jenny, I thought you were…”

“Dead?” She says the word lightly – too lightly – as though the idea means little to her. He hates her flippancy even though he has been guilty of being careless with his own life on more than one occasion.

He nods again. “I saw you die,” he says quietly. “I saw it.” He can’t help the accusing tone that creeps into his voice, as though daring her to challenge the fact of her death.

“I did die,” she agrees. “But then I lived.” She looks at him hopefully, and it occurs to him then that she is terrified, scared that he doesn’t want her, that he’s going to deny her and leave her.

“Yes, you did,” he says emphatically, willing her with his mind to feel how glad he is that she’s here with him despite the absurdity of its happening. He reaches for her at the same moment she lifts her arms up for a hug. His arms wrap around her slightly awkwardly, their position on the floor not really providing the best of angles, but that doesn’t matter. He holds her tight, his eyes squeezing shut in disbelief as he feels her against him, her arms around his neck. He can feel her smile against his shoulder. He wants to run. He wants to run with her, anywhere and everywhere, the two of them rushing through time and space, drinking it all in. He wants to show her everything, teach her everything.

“I need to ask you some questions,” she says matter-of-factly, pulling away from him. “I need to know some things about… about me, and you. About us. You know.”

He knows what she means. She means Time Lords. She wants to know why she’s different to everyone else. Of course she does. There will have been no one to explain to her about the timey-wimey nature of the universe or how to deal with the things that happen inside her mind, because there is no one in the universe who could teach her about those things apart from him. And he thought she was dead. She’s been all alone, just like him, and that thought makes him ache. “Of course,” he tells her sincerely. “Anything.”

Jenny nods, apparently satisfied with his reply. “But not now,” she says. “There are more important things to do first. We need to stop the virus.”

Ooh, that caught his attention. “Virus? What virus?”

“The one that’s going to be released and kill the whole population of the planet if we don’t stop it soon.”

We. She said ‘we.’ He likes that. “Sounds like you’ve already got the lay of the land.”

“Oh, you know,” she says breezily. “The land, the people, their jails.”

“Jails?”

She smiles wryly. “Like father, like daughter.”

He has to smile at that, even though he hates the thought of her locked up in jail for trying to help (not that it hasn’t happened to him a good few thousand or so times, but still…). “Oh, hang on,” he says, remembering the thing that brought him here in the first place. “There was a distress signal. The TARDIS picked it up.”

“The TARDIS?”

“My ship.” He realises that she doesn’t know about the TARDIS, that she wasn’t around long enough to hear about it the last time they were together. “Time and Relative Dimensions in Space.”

She stares at him, excitement flaring from her mind to his. “It’s a time machine?”

He grins and nods, thinking that he’s never seen anyone quite so excited. Pride wells up inside him. “Yep! And she picked up a distress signal, which is why I came here in the first place. Hold on.” He gets out his sonic screwdriver, clicking it on. A few moments of observation and he has his answer. “Found it! We’re close.”

“But shouldn’t we find the virus first and then find whoever is in distress? They’ll die anyway if we don’t stop the virus.”

He thinks about that for a moment. “Maybe,” he says, hoping he sounds intelligent and mysterious, “they’re the same thing.”

She jumps up from her position on the floor, brushing the dust from her trousers before looking down at him with her hands on her hips and a stern look on her face. “Are you trying to show off?”

The Doctor tries to look innocent. “No?”

She keeps the glare up for another few seconds, just long enough for him to start wondering if she is actually annoyed with him for some reason, but then she relaxes her stance and gives him an expectant look. “Well, are you coming?”

Oh, he most definitely is.

-8-8-8-

Jenny’s mind is reeling. She’s trying to come to terms with the fact that the man she had so recently been thinking of as lost to her is standing right in front of her, looking at her with a kind of scared fondness. To learn that the unfamiliar sensations in her mind came from him is slightly baffling, as well as a little scary. What if he’s reading her thoughts right now? She’d never know because she doesn’t know how to access his mind in the way that he evidently can hers. She doesn’t even know how to protect herself from intrusions into her mind. It’s all so new to her.

She snaps out of her internal monologue to find her father watching her intently and then, as if he is reading her mind (and perhaps he has been) he says, “Jenny, I’d never invade your privacy. I’d never go into your mind without permission.” And then, sounding slightly unsure of himself, he asks, “Do you believe me?”

“Yes,” she says without hesitation and she finds that she actually means it, although she’s still a little wary. As happy as she is to find this man, she can’t help but remember how he rejected her on Messaline, belittled her as being not as good as him, despite them being essentially the same. He may have come around to the idea of her in the end, but she knows that he will have had time to reflect on things and it’s entirely possible he’s here only to help this planet and then he’ll be off again in his TARDIS (she loves that word), leaving her alone to her travels.

And suddenly, she knows without a doubt that that’s not what she wants. She wants to go with him. But she can’t think about that now.

She brings her mind back to the present situation, and one look at him convinces her that he has been rambling inside his head just as she has. “So then,” she says brightly. “We’d better be quick. I broke out of jail about twenty-five minutes ago, and they’ll be looking for me by now. So we should get moving.”

He nods silently, watching her. She thinks that he might be testing her, even if it is subconsciously, and it makes her feel vulnerable.

“Right,” she continues, turning to face the second door. “Before you and your consciousness interrupted me, I was on my way here. I think it’s where the virus is. Is this where you found your distress signal, too?”

“It must be,” he replies. “I took the reading outside, but there was nothing around except grass and sky. It has to be below ground.”

“So that’s why you think the virus and whatever’s in distress is one and the same?”

“There are a lot of ways to kill a lot of people, Jenny,” he says cryptically, sounding as though he is speaking from experience. She decides that it’s something she’ll have to ask him about later – after.

She doesn’t reply, instead reaching out to open the door, but finds that it’s locked. She sighs in frustration. She thinks that she might be able to kick it down, but doesn’t want to in case she hurts whatever it is that may or may not be inside (or in case he thinks that she’s too violent and thinks twice about her). “I need to get a lock-picking device,” she says.

The Doctor – Dad – steps forward, holding up the tool he used to scan for the distress signal. “Oh, like this one?” he enquires casually. He steps to the side so that she can watch as he flicks through the settings of the small, silver, tube-like device. Finding the one he wants, he aims the tool at the lock and clicks it on. The end glows blue and there is a whirring from the tool followed by a clicking from the lock. He holds a finger to his lips, gesturing for her to be quiet. Then he steps in front of her, putting himself between her and the door. Part of her is pleasantly surprised at the idea of him placing himself between her and potential danger, but part of her wants to stamp her feet in frustration. Does he think that she can’t protect herself if she needs to?

And then it dawns on her. He’s fully aware that she can take care of herself – after all, she was made to be an independent and self-sufficient soldier – but he wants to protect her anyway. How very ‘dad’ of him, she thinks.

“Okay,” he murmurs after a moment. “Ready?”

She doesn’t think before answering, “Always.”

He opens the door and it swings open into a wide room. Lights flicker on inside automatically. A quick glance around his shoulder tells Jenny that it’s deserted, and then she’s pushing past his shoulder to get inside, jostling him as she does.

“Careful!” he says. “We have to make sure not to disturb anything. The room might not be as empty as it looks.”

He’s right. She can feel the tingling in her mind again as she steps more carefully into the space, taking in the sterile white of the ceiling, walls and floor. The room is lined with workbenches and shelves but there is nothing on them except for a clock placed on a desk directly opposite where she is standing. Wait, no, not a clock, she realises as she looks more closely. It’s a timer. And it’s counting down. “Dad,” she says. “Look.”

“I see it.” He strides past her, sonic whatever-it-is clasped in one hand. He crouches down in front of the timer, watching the numbers tick by. “It’s using old Earth time,” he says. “Thirteen minutes left.”

Jenny is mesmerised by the sight of seconds ticking away. She knows she’s wasting time by standing and watching when she should be helping her dad work out what the timer is connected to or by searching the room for the virus, but she can’t tear her eyes away. She has lost count of the number of hours she has spent staring at her watch, watching the seconds tick by as time moves around her. It gives order to things, she thinks, by being able to see time. She knows that her dad will probably think she’s silly for wearing a watch, especially one that’s only useful to a limited number of civilisations, but she loves to see time slipping by. She has all the time she could ever want, and it’s beautiful. To be able to run in time like her father would be perfection.

Slight movement to her left catches her attention and she turns, snapping herself out of her semi-meditative trance and leaving her dad to attempt to disable the timer that will otherwise release the deadly virus. In a shadowed corner of the room is a cylindrical glass container stretching from floor to ceiling. The glass cylinder is glowing, and if she’s not mistaken then it’s also getting brighter, pulsing blue and golden light. She walks to it and then stops just in front of it, raising one hand to touch it but at the last moment thinks better of it. If this is the virus then she needs to be careful.

And then she feels something new in her mind, something skirting around the edges as though searching for a way in. It’s not her dad though, she’s pretty certain he’d tell her if it was him. So what is it? The light in the cylinder pulses again and it is then that she realises that it is made up of tiny little particles all suspended in air, and all glowing separately to make up a much brighter whole. They’re beautiful. It makes her smile.

The feeling in her mind comes again, stronger this time, and she is suddenly awash with sadness. The billions of glowing particles seem to dim, and now she associates the sadness with them. They’re calling to her.

“Dad, I think I’ve found your creatures in distress,” she calls softly, not wanting to alarm the tiny beings locked behind the glass.

She can hear her dad standing and making his way over to her, but she’s barely aware of him as he comes to stand beside her. All she knows is the sadness of these beautiful creatures, their anguish at being used as part of a deadly scheme. Help us, they whisper inside her mind. Help us.

“We’re going to stop this,” she says, and the tone of her voice makes it obvious that failure is not an option.

The soldier in her is reawakening.

Chapter 4

Fic: Run (2/6), PG, DW S4 spoilers

2008-08-07T08:25:38Z

Title: Run (2/6)
Author: miss-jen-b
Disclaimer: I don't own anything to do with Doctor Who, apart from some groovy merchandise. I can't take credit for the good stuff.
Characters: The Tenth Doctor, Jenny.
Rating: Gish.
Spoilers: Obvious spoilers for 4X06, general for the rest of S4 (including the finale but nothing specific).
Summary: Jenny runs in space, but she wants to run in time as well. The Doctor runs when and where he wants, but it doesn't stop his loneliness. When their paths cross unexpectedly, on a planet that has less than an hour to live unless something is done, will they be able to save themselves as well as the civilisation in danger?
A/N: This fic is finished apart from a bit of editing, so hopefully chapters will be posted every other day. I'm quite nervous about posting this, so I'd love to know what people think!! Enjoy :)

Chapter 1

Jenny can’t find a way out, and she is beginning to suspect that there isn’t one.

Well, that isn’t strictly true. She found the exit, but it was heavily guarded by men with truncheons and she knew there would be no way she could take all of them on and win, despite her feminine wiles. And so she has spent the past seven minutes skulking through corridors searching for the back door, seeing as the front one is clearly out of bounds to her.

She is hardly daring to breathe for fear of being caught and thrown back in her cell, and she knows that it is only a matter of minutes – mere moments, probably – until the soldier she locked up in her place is found. And then they’ll be hunting for her, and right now she has nowhere to run.

Part of her contemplates letting them capture her again. That way maybe she could keep them talking, get some information out of them. But that would mean having to escape again, and she knows that would be next to impossible seeing as she’s already done it once. They’d be watching her more closely in case she tried a second time. So recapture is not an option.

She comes to the end of the corridor she has been walking down. Her only option now is to turn right, unless she wants to go back the way she came (which she doesn’t). She rounds the corner, moving quietly in case it is guarded by more soldiers. She breathes a sigh of relief as soon as it is obvious that the way is clear. Most of the soldiers are off in the fight, she supposes.

There is another long corridor in front of her, and at the end of it is a door. A door with a window. A very dusty window with bars across it, but a window nonetheless. Jenny walks quickly to the door, keeping an ear open in case anyone tries to creep up behind her. Standing on tiptoes, she can just about see through the window. Whatever is on the other side is dark and appears to be deserted. Good. After one last check behind her to make sure she is alone, she pulls down on the handle and the door swings open.

Guess they didn’t feel the need for locks around here, she thinks to herself as she shuts the door behind her. She feels somewhat privileged that the soldiers felt it necessary to lock her up when the rest of their prison is so lacking in security. They must have decided her to be dangerous. The thought makes her giggle for a moment before she catches herself and stops. She doesn’t want people to think she’s dangerous. She doesn’t want to hurt anyone, and it hurts her that people might think that she would. Just because she was born a soldier doesn’t mean that she is one now. She only wants to help.

She needs to stop the virus. But how?

Jenny takes a moment to lean back against the door, collecting herself. It’s at times like this - when she’s struggling to know what to do even though she knows she must be close - that she feels most alone. The space in her mind hurts her. She knows that it needs to be filled with encouragement and support, but she has nowhere to get it from. It’s all up to her. It makes her tired, all this responsibility. She’s tired now. She hasn’t slept properly in weeks (or months, depending on which calendar she chooses to go by), and it’s beginning to catch up with her. She isn’t sure how much she is supposed to sleep, but she guesses it’s more than she does. She wishes she didn’t have to do it at all.

When she sleeps, she dreams.

Pushing all thoughts of fatigue and loneliness to the back of her mind, she takes in her new surroundings and then wonders how she could have wasted even a few seconds lost in self-pity, because suddenly the answer she has been searching for is staring her in the face. In front of her are two dark corridors, both signposted although the signs are dusty and faded, almost impossible to read. But she has good eyesight, and so can decipher the words without a problem. The one to the right says ‘Storage and Exit’ The one to the left says ‘Scientific Research.’ It takes her less than a second to pick one. Naturally, she goes left.

-8-8-8-

The Doctor is puzzled. He cannot work out why a fence should have such an impact on the immediate environment. One side green, the other side brownish. One side blue sky, the other side grey sky. He knows that logically the fence will have nothing to do with it – it’s clearly nothing more than a dividing line between two very different sides of the same place – but he can’t help but think that something is strange.

Something must be affecting the atmosphere – or rather, not affecting the atmosphere in one place but having a huge impact on it in another. His sonic screwdriver readings are a bit wobbly, and he cannot be certain what’s going on. One thing he can be certain of, however, is that he has found a door.

Set back into the side of the slope he has just come down, there is what appears to be a buried bunker, with only the ‘Keep Out: Emergency Exit’ sign to identify it as anything other than a bumpy bit of hill with a small drop below. The Doctor looks around him: there’s no one about, and he finds that odd. He can hear people nearby, can hear shouting and noises that sound scarily like fighting, but as far as he can see, he is alone.

The distress signal that bought him here is weaker than it was on the other side of the fence, and now he has come to a conclusion. Well, not really a conclusion, more like a theory of sorts. Not even a theory; it resembles more accurately a vague hypothesis that he’s hoping will be true. He’s pretty certain that it might be. Definitely maybe, at least. He thinks that the door in the hill leads to a secret underground base of some sort, which leads to the further hypothesis that the aforementioned secret underground base will be where he locates the source of the mysterious distress signal. Excellent. He’s sure he could draw more hypotheses and theories from that, but he has already wasted enough time babbling away inside his head – and how he prefers it when he has someone with him to babble to out loud because it’s just not the same when he’s on his own in his head (it’s too lonely) – and he needs to press on.

Keeping an eye out for intruders and cameras – he hates bloody cameras, always catching him unawares – he walks the short distance to the door and then stops in front of it, studying its construction. It’s made out of iron, and looks pretty study. A single rap of his knuckles on its surface tells him that it’s at least two inches thick, and a cursory glance shows that the hinges are on the inside. Why, he thinks, are the hinges always on the wrong side?

He feels a hint of amusement in his mind, a fleeting brush that lifts him slightly, and he finds it strange. He was being deadly serious about the hinges; the amusement didn’t come from him. He wonders if maybe the creature in distress is telepathic, if it can feel him. He decides that must be it: there is no other plausible explanation.

Right, then. Telepathic creature (creatures?) in distress. I’m coming, he thinks as hard as he can, willing whatever it is to hear him. I’m coming to get you. He doesn’t foresee it taking long; the door in front of him is hardly cutting edge technology. Nothing the sonic screwdriver can’t handle.

Except… Apparently the sonic screwdriver can’t handle it. He holds the device against the lock, hears it click as the tumblers fall back and then reaches out to push the door open but… nothing happens. The door rattles slightly and shifts a bit, as though it is jammed on something. The Doctor puts his shoulder into it, shoves hard against it – hard enough, he’s sure, to leave a bruise even on his tough old Time Lord skin – only to end up with a dull pain in his arm from too much resistance and not enough give in the construction. He tries again, this time putting his weight behind his hip, only to end up with the same result as before. “Ouch,” he mutters to himself, rubbing at the new sore spot on his body and glaring at the offending door.

He tries the sonic screwdriver again to no avail before using it to try and unbolt the hinges from the wrong side of the door. His frustration is growing exponentially with his failure to open a single bloody door – not even any electronics to disengage and it still won’t open! – when he feels another brush in his mind. This time he feels relief coupled with anticipation, and it makes his skin tingle. What is it? The presence feels familiar but new at the same time, as though it somehow fits with him. He wonders if whatever it is he is here to help is some distant relation of the TARDIS. That could explain the familiarity, as well as the newness and youth and excitement he senses with it. That must be it, he tells himself firmly. There’s nothing else.

A sound comes from somewhere on the other side of the door. Footsteps, he thinks, light-sounding footsteps coming closer. Confident footsteps. It must be someone who knows what they’re doing. They sound like they have a purpose. But then suddenly they stumble. He hears a scuffle come from behind the door and then the sound of a small body hitting a wall and sliding down it. The feeling in his mind becomes stronger; whatever is trying to connect with him is overwhelmed, struggling. He hears a small whimper from through the door – female, he decides, definitely female – and not wanting to take a chance, he calls, “Hello? Are you all right?”

The presence in his mind stills as though in shock and so does the person behind the door. Are they one and the same? he wonders, feeling his hearts quicken in his chest at the prospect. Are they hurt? What and who are they? “Can you open the door for me? I can help.”

There is panic inside his head, panic and surprise and a tiny spark of hope, glimmering away brightly in the background. There is more shuffling on the other side of the iron barrier, and the sound of something being lifted away from the door. Then it is being opened, pulled backwards into a corridor. The light streams in, creating shadows at the edges.

The Doctor looks down and finds the source of the new presence in his mind. Time stills around him.

-8-8-8-

She appears to be in a tunnel of sorts. There is little natural light, only just enough to see by so that she doesn’t stumble as she walks. Jenny has the distinct feeling that she is walking away from the light rather than towards it, but that doesn’t matter. She knows she’s going in the right direction; she can feel the tingling in her mind that always occurs when things begin to fall into place. It’s yet another thing she doesn’t understand about herself, and now the feeling is stronger than ever. It’s threatening to burst out of the confines of her mind and go zipping all around her body, this strange sense of effervescing completeness although she has doesn’t think she has ever been quite so alone.

She wonders why other people don’t feel it, or why they can’t sense time the way she can, or why they are perfectly content to stay in one place their whole lives when the entire universe feels constricted to her. Maybe, she thinks with a wry smile, I’m just the most advanced being in creation. Nothing can top me. The thought amuses her, the idea that she could be so important – she who was made in a machine from genetic material procured from a reluctant man who denied he was a soldier but clearly was. She keeps on walking – slowly, so as to be sure not to miss anything.

The tunnel is damp, and smells slightly earthy. She thinks that she might be underground; the floor she is walking on is made of compacted dirt and the walls are too soft to be stone. A secret underground base, she reckons. Like Messaline.

She loses herself for a moment in thoughts of the planet where she was born and died all in the same day. The planet where she was saved, and where she met her father and lost him before she ever really had him.

Her lapse of attention causes her to trip over her own feet as the floor turns into a gentle downward slope and she feels herself falling. Bracing herself, she manages to catch herself before she hits the ground, instead stumbling hard into the opposite wall. She feels relieved, glad that she didn’t fall. Every time she falls it reminds her that she has no one there to catch her, and that no matter how much fun she may have running from planet to planet, one day she might fall never to get back up again because there is nobody to help her.

The tingling sensation makes itself known in her mind again, but this time it is different. Usually it occurs as a little tickle towards the back of her skull, the kind of sensation that sends a shiver down her spine but nothing more. Now, it is threatening to fill her head, pouring into her and she wonders just how important this virus she is hunting is. She decides that the feeling in her head must be stronger now because if she doesn’t stop this virus, the consequences will be huger than anything she has yet encountered in her short but action-packed life. She thinks that she’s really going to need some simple, heated action after this adventure is over. Some traditional but classic running for her life while being chased by a herd of angry aliens back to her spaceship. That’s what she needs. Definitely. And a shower.

She stops herself before she can ramble on any further, anticipation growing inside her at the prospect of righting a terrible wrong and the pre-emptive satisfaction of a tangled timeline snapping itself back into place inside the web of her thoroughly complex mind.

And there, just up ahead, there’s a door. Two doors, to be precise. One straight ahead that is letting in little slivers of light and must lead outside, and one to the left, about ten metres away from her. Something tells her that is the one that she wants.

She strides forwards confidently, the floor beneath her boots now lined with wood instead of dirt. The sound echoes loudly. She’s six metres away… five…

Pain suddenly explodes in her head and she comes to an abrupt halt, pressing one hand to her temple in a bid to alleviate the sharp stabbing sensation. It feels as though it is coming from inside her mind, from inside the deep, lonely places, as though they are angry she has been trying to ignore them and are reminding her of their existence.

The feeling threatens to overwhelm her, even as the pain eases off slightly and lessens to a dull throb. She stumbles forwards, hand still pressed to her head. Jenny hits the wall, letting it hold her as she slides down to the ground, her breathing laboured. She can feel confusion in her mind but she knows that it can’t possibly be her own. She knows what she’s doing, she has a purpose, so why is there confusion? Is something wrong with her? What’s wrong with her head?

She can barely cope with the plethora of feeling inside her mind and it hurts. It hurts more than the feeling of emptiness she has mostly become accustomed to. This is the feeling of so much suffering, none of it hers and yet it somehow is because it’s somehow the same as her but she doesn’t know why and she doesn’t understand and she wishes it would stop… “Oh,” she whimpers, although she would much rather scream. She just can’t find the energy.

And then there is a voice – a man’s voice – cutting through the fog in her mind, calling to her from the other side of the door, saying, “Hello? Are you all right?”

What? She knows that voice. She’d know it anywhere despite having not heard it other than in her own head since her first day of life. She knows it. She knows him. But it can’t be. Can it? Can it really be him? She wonders if maybe she’s imagining things, imagining his voice because it soothes her despite the fact she hardly knew him. Imagining him because really, when all is said and done, she’s just a lost little girl who wants her daddy.

“Can you open the door for me? I can help.”

It’s definitely him. He sounds concerned. He’s worried about her and he doesn’t even know it’s her! Jenny feels panic build up inside her as for a moment she struggles to pull herself out of the overwhelming heaviness inside her head, before quashing it down and heaving herself along the last little stretch of the tunnel to the door that separates her from the man that made her.

What if it’s not him? What if she’s hallucinating? What if something else is doing things to her mind? No, she tells herself. Not hallucinating. I don’t hallucinate, not even after six shots of hypervodka. It’s him.

A little spark of hope flares inside of her and is quickly stoked to become a slow burn as she pulls herself upwards, grabbing at the iron bar that blocks the door and pulling it away with a strength that surprises her. She places it carefully on the ground, not sure her throbbing head can take any more jostling just now. Then she grasps the door handle and pulls it open before collapsing back to lean against the wall, her legs sprawled out in front of her. Her hearts are pounding harder than they ever have before.

She looks up as he comes into view in the doorframe. His eyes lock onto her and he stands and stares. Time stills, and there is silence.

Chapter 3

Fic: Run (1/6), PG, Doctor Who S4 spoilers

2008-08-04T13:55:10Z

Title: Run (1/6)
Author: miss-jen-b
Disclaimer: I don't own anything to do with Doctor Who, apart from some groovy merchandise. I can't take credit for the good stuff.
Characters: The Tenth Doctor, Jenny.
Rating: Gish.
Spoilers: Obvious spoilers for 4X06, general for the rest of S4 (including the finale but nothing specific).
Summary: Jenny runs in space, but she wants to run in time as well. The Doctor runs when and where he wants, but it doesn't stop his loneliness. When their paths cross unexpectedly, on a planet that has less than an hour to live unless something is done, will they be able to save themselves as well as the civilisation in danger?
A/N: This fic is finished apart from a bit of editing, so hopefully chapters will be posted every other day. I'm quite nervous about posting this, so I'd love to know what people think!! Enjoy :)

The room is sparsely furnished to say the least. A bed, a chair, a table. The table and chair are made out of wood, and both are chained to the floor. The bed frame appears to be some sort of welded metal, and the white sheets covering the mattress look more flimsy than a butterfly wing. The single window is too high for her to reach without being able to move the chair, and what little light it lets in is dimmed by the thick, black, wrought-iron bars crossing it at regular intervals. The door is made of sturdy metal, and locks from the outside. The hinges are on the other side, too, so no hope there. No cameras though, which is good. It wouldn’t do for the men who caught her to catch her on their cameras tearing apart their jail cell and trying to escape. She learned that one the hard way.

She thinks that her best bet for escape probably lies in the bed frame: if she could somehow dismantle it then she might be able to flatten out one of the tubular legs and get to work on finding a weakness in the door frame by using it as a lever. Failing that, she could use the metal pipe to hit the next person who comes into the cell, and then tie them up with the bed covers before making a run for it. She really hopes it won’t come to that.

Sighing in temporary defeat, Jenny sinks down heavily on the bed. It creaks noisily under her weight, swinging a little to one side as she shifts to get as comfortable as she can on a mattress that can’t be more than two centimetres thick. She can feel the springs that support her weight, and hopes that she won’t be here long enough to need to sleep. She doesn’t fancy adding chronic backache to her already fairly lengthy list of problems.

She scuffs the toes of her shoes against the flagstone floor, hands gripping the edge of the bed until her knuckles turn white with the strain. She feels terribly confined in here – constricted, as though time and space and oxygen are limited, even though she’s never been claustrophobic before. She blames the feeling on the rapid nature with which everything went so wrong when she had been having such a lovely time only a few short hours ago. That, and the fact that she has been feeling increasingly lonely inside her head ever since she ran away from Messaline, a space in her mind that feels as though it ought to be filled with something though she isn’t entirely sure what.

And now she’s stuck, alone in a cell, unable to help any of the people that had been in trouble when she was unceremoniously hauled away. She isn’t even sure if she can help herself.

I’ve got to get out of here, she tells herself firmly. She feels a strange compulsion to right the wrongs that have been taking place on this planet, no matter what the cost, and she knows that the people have no other hope but her.

Jenny takes a moment for a few deep, calming breaths to try and soothe her racing mind and hearts pounding frantically in her chest. She knows it will do her no good to be so worked up she’s shaking and unable to do what needs to be done to save the planet. Its infrastructure is collapsing and she has precious little time to stop the release of a virus that will kill the entire population, and it really won’t help if she ends up shivering in a corner trying to get a handle on her rather easily distracted, mind-of-its-own mind. Ooh, when did she start rambling so much? She isn’t sure.

Course of action decided, she opens her eyes and drops to her knees beside the bed. She studies the construction of the frame: the legs are bolted and welded to the main part of the frame, but the construction looks pretty flimsy. She’s sure she can get it apart if she tries. Reaching up, she tears a strip of fabric from one of the sheets. It rips easily. She then wraps it around one of the bolts, gripping as hard as she can and twisting it violently. The force of the action flings her hand upwards into the metal frame. It clangs off her watch (she likes being able to see time – it makes it easier to bear when she can feel it moving around her in ways she hasn’t yet learned to understand) and she muffles a cry as her fingers throb from the collision.

Deciding that a softly-softly approach may be more effective, if only to minimise personal injury and avoid alerting her captors to her intent, she ignores the pain in her hand and grips the fabric-covered bolt once again, this time pushing her weight behind it and using that to try and twist it out of its anchor. It doesn’t work, but it does loosen some. She decides that she’ll have to get herself a device that can do this sort of thing for her more easily. Sighing, Jenny rests for a minute, trying to ignore the growing pressure behind her forehead. The room feels smaller than it should, and she’s cold and scared and could really do with a good cry right about now.

But she has no time. Pushing all thoughts other than dismantling the bed out of her mind, she takes a deep breath, and tries again.

-8-8-8-

The Doctor straightens his tie, pulls down the sleeves of his jacket, and then steps out of the TARDIS into warm sunshine. He locks the door behind him and then turns, pulling out his sonic screwdriver. The landscape surrounding him makes him pause a moment; this wasn’t what he had been expecting. He’d been expecting concrete and metal and lots of beige and brown and grey, not… not green and blue and grass and sky. This wasn’t part of his plan.

His plan had been so simple. Step one: find the galactic coordinates of the distress signal the TARDIS had picked up when he’d been drinking tea, the sudden beep from the console causing him to spill milky free radicals and tannin all over his shirt. Step two: set the coordinates (and change shirt). Step three: end up on a predictably devastated planet indistinguishable from all the others he’s been to this week, find the source of the distress signal, save/help it, back in time for tea. Lush green grass and flowers weren’t part of the plan.

He decides not to let the unexpected prettiness throw a spanner in the works - partly because he thinks it’s rather nice to have a change of scenery, and partly because throwing a spanner in the works is always really rather impractical. Causes all sorts of problems, problems that aren’t even necessary. Ooh, but he does like a good problem. Bit of a riddle, something to reason out.

No, that’s not why he’s here. Distress signal. Right.

He clicks on the sonic screwdriver, smiling as it lights up in his hand. He’s close to whatever it is he’s here to find. Very close. Pretty much right on top of it, in fact.

The smile drops off his face. That can’t be right, surely. There’s nothing around apart from him and the TARDIS and so much nature, certainly nothing that could be emitting a distress signal powerful enough to alert the attention of his magnificent ship. He wonders briefly if it’s perhaps nothing more than a transdimensional blip, before deciding that the TARDIS would not have alerted him to that. Blips happened all the time. Full volume beeping from the console didn’t.

The Doctor begins to wander, both in body and mind as he looks around for a Likely Suspect. He can still smell the tea he spilt, can still taste the remnants of it on his tongue, and his teeth feel a bit fuzzy because he let it brew for too long before drinking. It’s only when he feels the muscles in his legs begin to pull that he realises he has crested a hill, and it’s only when he looks up from the blue glow of the sonic screwdriver that he realises what is now in front of him.

The landscape in front of him is different to that behind him. In front of him there is a fence, and then beyond the fence the grass disappears to be replaced by dirt and rubble leading down a slope, and the blue sky fades into roiling grey clouds that must be full of dust and pollution. In front of him are his concrete and metal and beige and brown and grey. He refuses to let himself dwell on the state of his nature as he uses the sonic screwdriver to cut through the unattended chain link fence and thinks to himself, now this is more like it. He crosses over to the other side.

-8-8-8-

The room is immaculate. She has straightened the chair and the desk and the edge of the bed sheets hang parallel to the floor. There is no evidence of her tampering, apart from a few scratches on the door where she tried to lever it open (and failed).

Jenny sits on the floor opposite the bed, the door to her left. She is watching it carefully while trying to give the impression of being nonchalant. She feels that time has slowed down around her, but inside, she’s racing. She can feel the rush of blood in her veins, and if she closes her eyes she can almost see the neurons firing in her brain and sense the ebb and flow of the universe. She wonders sometimes if she may be crazy. No one else she’s met in her short life has any idea of what she’s talking about when she’s suddenly overtaken by a wave of nausea because time has changed suddenly, irrevocably, or the way her head hurts when she’s caught up in the middle of something that’s wrong, so wrong, and she doesn’t have any idea of how to fix it because no one ever showed her how.

There’s a whole universe worth of running out there for her to explore, and still it feels limited to her. She wants to be able to run in time as well. She loves the running, wants to run as far and wide as possible, doesn’t understand why most people don’t. She doesn’t understand why she’s different to everyone else, but the one person she could ask about it thinks she’s dead, gone, didn’t even really want her in the first place. She wishes that he had wanted her, that she could have gone with him and his friends. She could have asked him why her head feels so empty when it’s full of so much knowledge.

A clanging sound comes from somewhere outside her cell, further down the corridor but it’s coming closer quickly. A man, she thinks. A large man walking with heavy boots on. Heavy boots with laces that can be tied together so he’ll trip over if he tries to chase her. He’ll probably have a weapon, she thinks. A knife or a truncheon or both, because he thinks she’s dangerous. She’ll have to act carefully, quickly. She lays both palms flat on the floor, bracing herself.

The man stops outside her door and she hears him breathing heavily and rattling keys. Then a key slides into the lock, metal on metal. She hears the tumblers turn, can picture what they look like in her head based on how they fall. Then the key is pulled back and the door is being pulled open and light streams into the small room, creating a silhouette in the doorframe. Jenny is sitting in the shadows, and she takes advantage of her position.

She waits until the man steps into the cell and turns slightly to close the door behind him before she makes her move. He obviously thinks he’s keeping her in by shutting the door; it makes her want to laugh. She lunges forward and pulls the metal bed leg out from its loose anchor, jumping to her feet as she does so and in one fluid movement swings her arm out to hit the man in the side with her weapon. The tray of food he had been carrying is flung to the bed as he doubles over. She makes the most of the upper hand and the element of surprise, grabbing onto the man’s arm while kicking his feet out from under him.

He falls to the ground with a soft thud before he even knows what’s hit him, and she’s busy gagging him with a bed sheet by the time he thinks to shout out, his yell muffled by the linen and thick walls of the cell. He kicks out at her as she binds his arms with another sheet, ready torn into strips for just this purpose. When she’d failed to get the door open earlier she decided that she ought to be prepared. Arms bound, and then comes her favourite part of the plan. The man is face down and she sits on his legs while she reaches down and unties his shoe laces before tying them up together.

She stands and then with some difficulty lifts one side of the table, rearranging it so that one of the wooden legs is placed between the man’s own. She hopes it will buy her some time. She is more than aware that her solution is temporary, and decides that she will have to learn some new jailbreaking techniques. Maybe when she gets a device to open doors and make mundane tasks easier, she could add a stun setting. That might work.

Once the man is restrained as well as she can manage, she reaches down and searches through his clothes, finding a small truncheon but no other weapon. She takes it just in case, as well as stealing his keys, before walking over to the door.

The door is open and she’s just about to walk through it before she thinks to stop and turn back, looking at the man with regret. “I’m sorry,” she says, meaning it, and remorse fills up inside her. It’s a sign, she thinks, that she is definitely a product of pacifist stock. She hates violence now.

All the same, she leaves the man where he is, knowing that there are more important things right now. She has to stop the people he works for releasing the virus that would kill a billion innocent people, and make sure they can’t do it again. Then she can come back and make sure the man is okay.

With one last look behind her, Jenny leaves the cell, locking the door as she goes.

Chapter 2

Fic: Out of Desire

2008-07-31T07:17:00Z

Title: Out of Desire
Author: miss-jen-b
Disclaimer: is necessary.
Characters/Pairing: Ten/Rose.
Rating: PG-13
Summary: A bad experience causes the Doctor to think some Important Thoughts about Important Things, and he realises that time is not something to be wasted no matter how much he has of it.
A/N: This is shamelessly romantic fluff written for ladyofgallifrey's birthday. So Happy Birthday!

x-posted to time_and_chips and oh_she_knows.

There were occasions when he… wanted. Times when he forgot himself – forgot his past and all the things that have happened in his life – and became all too aware of himself as a man, a man with needs and desires begging to be satiated. And at times, he was all too aware of her as a highly desirable woman.

He had been wrestling with said urges for the best part of three days, unable to quell them or even dissipate them slightly. It had all started after their visit to Maginus Four, where there was a war going on and he had somehow managed to lose track of her before being unable to find her for over a day. And when he did find her, covered in bruises after falling in the crowd where he lost her and in dire need of tea and chips and sleep, he hadn’t been able to stop himself from pulling her against him, pressing his lips against her own in relief and murmuring, “Rose, I can’t lose you. I can’t.” It was later that night, as he sat by her bed and watched her sleep in case she had nightmares that he had felt the tingling onset of desire. He had told himself that it was fleeting, there only because of his relief at finding her and his need to keep her close, but he hadn’t been able to keep up that charade when it continued all the next day and into the night as well.

It was then that the Doctor decided to have a Good Think, the result of which was several conclusions:

1) He was very much a man.

2) Rose was very much a woman.

3) His desire for her, whilst there in some form practically since they had met, was getting stronger and persisting more frequently, and was always there, lingering deep down inside of him, making him want her.

4) He wasn’t sure how much longer he could go without acting on the contents of Conclusion Number 3.

5) Most terrifying of all, what he felt for her wasn’t the simple desire a lonely man feels for an attractive, warm woman. It went a lot deeper than that, to things he wasn’t willing – nor would he probably ever be - to put a name to.

6) He didn’t want to deny himself (or Rose, if she’d have him) any longer.

Which is how it came to be that he was dressed up to the nines in a tux – complete with bow tie and shiny shoes – waiting in the TARDIS console room for Rose to finish changing so that he could take her to the Bi-Annual Summer Ball at the Great Palace of Kasternan on the planet of Cyrus, and maybe start dropping some hints as to exactly how he felt about her.

-8-8-8-

Rose entered the console some time later, wearing a dress that could only have been made to drive him crazy upon sight. Toffee-coloured and long, it had a slit up the right side that flashed a tantalising glimpse of leg and clung to her curves as though it had been made especially for her. Which, he supposed, it might well have been. In his experience, the TARDIS was not above meddling with the dimensional properties of things if the situation called for it. Rose had a lovely amount of cleavage on display, just enough to tempt (and it definitely did) but not enough to be considered indecent or trashy. Even her bleached hair looked classy and sophisticated all mussed up and shiny. Dark, smoky eyes completed the effect that he was currently working so hard to memorise for future reference.

“What d’you reckon?” she asked, biting her lip nervously.

His mouth made a movement approximating that of a very stunned goldfish, but no sound came out.

“Not too mutton dressed as lamb, is it?” Rose continued on, smoothing her hands down her sides to flatten out imaginary wrinkles in the dress.

He realised when she looked at him expectantly that she was waiting for him to say some actual words instead of standing there looking at her with his eyebrows off somewhere in his hairline. “Not at all,” he eventually said.

She frowned at him, and he instantly wanted to rid her face of the expression. “Doctor, are you all right? You’re a bit… twitchy.”

Hmmm, thinking about it, he supposed that he did look a bit ‘twitchy.’ He stopped moving, holding his hands by his sides even though all he wanted to do was reach out and twirl Rose around so he could see her from every possible angle. “I’m fine,” he assured her. “It’s just…” He gave up on standing still then, crossing the console room until he stood a couple of steps away from her. One of his traitorous hands brushed a wisp of hair away from her face without prior permission from his brain. “You look gorgeous, Rose,” he murmured. “All the men will be jealous that I get to dance with you and they don’t.” And, he decided, if he had any say in the matter then they would be very jealous indeed. He intended to show Rose a bloody good time tonight. He was rapidly forgetting the reasons why he usually held himself back from such things.

She smirked at him, clearly not believing his words. “Doctor, it’s a nice dress. It’s not a magic dress.”

He touched her cheek gently. “The dress has nothing to do with it.”

Her mouth opened and closed a few times before she said, “Oh.” Her cheeks flushed, and she bit her lip in that adorable way she had when she was a little unsure of something. Then, just as quickly as she had lost it, she recovered her composure, looking up at him with a smile on her face. “Thanks,” she said. “And, if I may say so, you’re looking very handsome tonight.”

He grinned. “Ah, now this actually is a magic suit. Belonged to a magician on Cyrus – that’s where we’re going, by the way – and he… I’ll shut up, yes?”

Rose giggled. “You don’t have to. I like it when you tell me things.”

“Really?” He thought that maybe he sounded a little bit too eager but couldn’t bring himself to care, not when his lovely companion started fiddling with the pendant that fell to just above her breasts, naturally drawing his gaze.

“Really,” she replied, apparently not noticing that he’d been distracted. “So what exactly is this ball celebrating?”

“Summer,” he replied absently and probably far too briefly. He lifted a hand and let his fingers brush against hers where they played with the necklace, feeling the heady combination of cool stone and warm skin and letting it wash over him. “Summer and all the things that it helps bring to fruition,” he elaborated, thinking that he was doing a pretty good job of speech considering the situation.

Rose’s breath hitched in her throat as his hand slipped into hers, fingers locking together as he bought their hands down to swing gently in between them. She was looking up at him with eyes big and intent and oh-so-deep. Her free hand came up to rest on his chest, and he felt the desire that had been bubbling under the surface for three days begin to spill over. “Your hearts are beating really fast,” she said, concern in her voice and on her face.

“You’re really warm,” he retaliated, slightly unnerved by the gravely tone of his voice.

She grinned at him. “Like summer?”

“Yes!” Bit loud, that. He lowered the volume of his voice. “Yes,” he said more quietly, more intensely. “You’re all warm like summer and you smell like flowers and you’re named after a flower, so it’s really quite appropriate if you think about it. And that’s largely what these people are celebrating, flowers. Their seasons are a bit strange, you see. It means they only get summer every other year, hence we’re going to the Bi-Annual Summer Ball, and because of their climate it means everything flowers and comes to life in the summer so there’s lots of baby animals and new life about. Magic! Just like the man who owned my suit. He was magic. He turned water into roses once – you would’ve loved it! Not quite Jesus, seeing as he couldn’t manage the wine, but still very good and I haven’t really breathed in a while, have I?”

Rose shook her head. “No.” The hand that was held in his gripped him tighter while her other hand slid up to feel his forehead. “You’re hotter than normal. Are you sure you’re not sick? Because we can do this another time if you are.”

Awww, bless her. She really was concerned about him. Her brow was all furrowed and she was willing to give up their night out and everything. But this night had a very important purpose, one that could not be ignored. “I’m not ill, Rose,” he said in what he hoped was a reassuring manner. “In fact, I’m better than I’ve been in a good long while. And do you know why?”

“Why?” she asked softly.

There it was. His opportunity to let her know that he wanted her as more than just his companion, that he wanted to stop wasting time with her and soak up every little bit of her. He stepped into her, so close that he could feel the rise and fall of her chest against his as she breathed. His head dipped towards hers, his lips level with her temple. He let his lips brush over her skin once, twice, and then he said, “Because of my magic suit.”

Oops.

-8-8-8-

The ball was wonderful, full of people and music and atmosphere, and ordinarily she’d be soaking it all up and having the time of her life (and making the Doctor dance with her against his better judgement). Tonight, however, Rose was feeling a little distracted due to the recent actions of her Time Lord companion.

The Doctor was being weird. Granted, he was always a little bit weird and so it was largely to be expected, but this was weird on a whole new level. Ever since they’d been reunited on Maginus Four a few days previously, he’d been acting strange. He’d kissed her. He’d kissed her on Maginus Four when he found her again after their separation, a fact that she had put down to relief and spur of the moment actions until the odd behaviour had continued. He’d been watching her sleep, she knew. Not that it bothered her, but it wasn’t something he usually did and so it troubled her a little. Then there was the excessive touching. Sure, he always touched her and hugged her – perhaps even a little excessively on occasion – but nothing on this scale. It was like he couldn’t bear to let her go, but as though he was holding back at the same time.

Desperate but hesitant, she thought it was. Like he needed her but was scared to. Especially earlier this evening on the TARDIS, when he’d been looking at her as though he was drowning and she was his salvation. She wondered if perhaps she should ask him about it, see if anything was wrong. Not that he’d tell her, of course. He never told her when things were wrong, just pretended that he was fine even though both of them knew better.

She wondered if he was looking for comfort after their somewhat harrowing experience a few days previously. Maybe something had happened to him while they were apart, something he was scared to tell her about. Maybe he was looking to her for reassurance.

She took a sip of the fruity champagne-like drink the Doctor had acquired for them and then turned to face him. He was watching the huge ballroom from where they stood on its fringes, next to a set of large glass doors that led out onto a balcony. He was standing still, but he looked to Rose as though he was in permanent motion. He appeared to be vibrating slightly, humming with unspent energy.

Right, enough is enough. She used the hand that wasn’t holding her glass to coax his hand out of his suit pocket and then held it, her thumb brushing over his skin. He turned to look at her, a soft smile and a startlingly open expression on his face. “Rose,” he said with tender affection in his voice. His fingers wrapped around hers, squeezing lightly. He opened his mouth as though going to continue, but she cut him off.

“Doctor, I need to know something,” she said.

He looked at her quizzically. “What? Anything.”

She tugged on his hand and led him out onto the balcony so that they could have a little privacy, leaving her glass on a table as they went. The cool night air washed over her skin and a gentle breeze blew her hair back over her shoulders. Her dress brushed against her legs, sending little shivers through her at the contact of silk and skin. She ignored it. “I need to know if you’re okay,” she told him. “You’ve been a bit, I dunno, a bit different lately. Is anything wrong? And don’t you dare say you’re fine if really you’re not.”

He closed his eyes, dropping his head slightly. He shook his head, as though resigned about something, as though she had caught him out. When he opened his eyes once more and lifted his gaze to hers she was startled by what she saw there. In his eyes was the usual care and affection that she saw every time he looked at her, but coupled with something else. Something that was familiar but new at the same time. Something which, if she didn’t know any better, she’d be inclined to call want.

It caught her off guard a bit, the way he was looking at her. Part of her was elated; she wanted the Doctor, felt more for him than she ever had for any other man. She loved him. Always had, always would. But she’d been resigned to ignoring those feelings and being content with whatever it was he was prepared to give her, which most of the time seemed to be an intimacy just chaste enough for them to remain friends instead of something more.

And she was fine with that, she really was. She loved her relationship with the Doctor, although it didn’t do anything to lessen the way she felt about him, especially on those days when he was feeling more inclined towards affection than normal (if such a thing as ‘normal’ even existed when he was around). Sometimes the tension almost killed her.

The tension that currently hung between them seemed enough to actually kill her if something didn’t happen to relieve it soon.

The Doctor cupped her cheek with one hand, his thumb brushing over the soft flesh as he gave her a smile that would do a pretty good job of melting the iceberg that sank the Titanic. “I have been different lately,” he admitted, ignoring her question as she suspected he would. “But that’s not a bad thing, not necessarily. In fact, I’d say it was a very good thing, although…” He trailed off, and the expression on his face changed until he was watching her with something that she would probably call fear if she didn’t know better.

“Although what?” Her voice sounded quiet amid the babbling voices that came from the ballroom.

He gave her an apologetic smile. “I’m a little nervous,” he admitted.

He never said things like that. What did he have to be nervous about? What was going on? “Why?”

His shoulders were tense and his hands were damp and trembling against her skin. “Because I’m about to do something I more than likely shouldn’t and I’m worried that it’s going to scare you.”

Rose barely had time to register the words in her mind, let alone wonder what it was he was about to do that might scare her before the Doctor stepped forward, closing the gap between them. She felt his breath on her face for the smallest of moments before he leant towards her and sealed his mouth to hers, kissing her with all the passion she had only ever before imagined in the more detailed of her daydreams.

Naturally, she couldn’t help but kiss him back.

-8-8-8-

Relief… sort of. The Doctor felt something give inside him as his lips pressed to Rose’s, his cool flesh meeting her warm mouth and instantly melting into her. She felt wonderful against him, all soft and curves and pliable as his arms came up to wrap around her, bringing her as close to him as it was possible to get. Her hands moved to clasp the back of his neck, her fingers playing in the short hair there, tugging the strands and using it to deepen the kiss.

She was kissing him back. He wondered idly if he should be surprised at that, or if really he’d known all along that she’d want him in the same way he wanted her. He wondered if she’d been waiting for him all along. He decided that he didn’t really care, not when she seemed just as eager as he did and was currently brushing her tongue lightly against his own to send little shockwaves flying through his body.

He pulled back slightly after several long minutes exploring her mouth with his tongue and running his hands over her back and sides with as much decorum as he could muster (didn’t want to get them chucked out of the Ball, after all – at least, not yet). Rose’s lips were swollen with his kisses, and she had a lovely flush on her cheeks that he was rather proud to be the cause of.

“Well, that wasn’t scary,” she murmured.

He smiled. “Good.”

“It was good.”

His smile grew wider. “Good. I thought so, too.”

She grinned at him. “Good.”

He laughed then, desire unabated but somewhat calmed for the moment. He took her hand and led her to the stone wall that ran around the edge of the second floor balcony, positioning her in front of him to look out on the lush gardens that surrounded the Palace of Kasternan. He looped his arms loosely around her waist and her hands came up to rest on his.

“It’s a lovely night,” she said as a gentle breeze blew her hair back over her shoulders to tickle the skin of his throat.

“It is,” he agreed, thinking that their beautiful surroundings were only a tiny part of what made this a lovely night. Any other time he was certain that right about now he would babble on for a time about summer and plants native to Cyrus, but tonight there were more important things, more lovely things that deserved his attention far more than did alien flora and fauna. He kept quiet despite his natural disinclination to be brief.

There was a loaded pause before she spoke again. “Why now?”

Oh. He hadn’t been expecting that question. He wasn’t entirely sure how to go about answering it without sounding like a bit of a ninny. He thought about it for a few moments before answering, knowing that he couldn’t lie to her, not about this (at least not totally). “Because I did some thinking, and decided that I didn’t want to wait any more,” he said eventually, honestly. It was easier to be honest when she couldn’t see his face. “I didn’t want to be in the TARDIS one day years from now, looking back on our time together with regrets when I could have beautiful memories instead.” He waited a moment, a flicker of worry beginning to creep up on him. “Is that okay?”

He could hear the smile in her voice when she replied, “Yeah. It’s definitely okay.” She laced her fingers with his and pulled him closer to her so that his chest brushed against her back with every breath he took. He was careful to keep his lower body away from hers for now, however, to avoid her coming into contact with a part of his anatomy that was entirely too happy for their semi-public situation and hesitant first steps towards becoming closer. “More than okay,” Rose continued. “As long as it’s all right with you, that is…”

“Yes,” he said simply. “I started it, didn’t I?”

She hummed in her throat in response. “That’s good. Because that kiss was very… satisfying. I don’t think it will be able to remain a one-off for very long.”

The Doctor couldn’t resist that one. “Oh, Rose, you have no idea how close I am right now to being satisfied.” Semi-public situation be damned, he let his hips brush against hers for a moment to make sure he got his, um, point across.

She didn’t miss a beat, his wonderful human who he wanted more than anything and, more amazingly, wanted him too. “Then maybe we should go back to the TARDIS so I can make sure you’re completely satisfied.”

He’d been expecting a snappy comeback – after all, he wasn’t foolish enough to think that Rose was a blushing virgin (although there was something strangely appealing about that notion) – but her words still managed to provoke a sharp rush of blood somewhere south of his head, leaving him a little light-headed. He tried to form some words into the shape of a coherent reply, but failed. “Guhhnsh,” was the approximate sound he managed instead.

“Indeed,” Rose replied dryly. And then, as though she was completely unaffected by the events of a few minutes ago (he knew better though; he could sense her elevated heart and respiration rates), she moved away from him before holding out her hand and nodding towards the doors. “Shall we?”

What could he do but follow her anywhere, everywhere?

-8-8-8-

Some time later…

They lay together in his bed, Rose sprawled across his chest and sleeping soundly while he idly traced patterns up and down her arm and thought some Important Thoughts about Things.

Tonight had gone well, he decided. Very well. His lips quirked upwards slightly as looked down at Rose, all pink and yellow and bare skin and in his bed. It hadn’t really been the great seduction he’d envisaged when he’d planned this evening, but that was largely due to him being so distracted by her that he didn’t have the concentration left to make even the slightest attempt at subtle seduction. The same went for his plan to drop a few hints about how he felt for her and nothing more.

Things had definitely been more explosive than anticipated, but, he thought, perhaps that was only right. He and Rose did nothing by halves. They threw themselves into things wholeheartedly, be it danger or new experiences or bed (apparently). They did things with passion, because in this life there was never any time to be cautious. Caution or hesitancy could mean the loss of something that should most definitely not be lost if it had even the smallest chance of existence. Action was everything in the Doctor’s world, and currently, everything was the way it should be.

He smiled, and let his eyes drift closed as he tightened his arms around Rose. There was, he thought, something to be said for desire, and he was very much looking forward to exploring the notion further now that the way was open. That, however, could wait for another day. For now, he was satisfied.

Ouch

2008-07-16T20:07:00Z

Melon + mouth ulcer = Pain

*goes on frantic search for Bonjela*

Tea = Magic

2008-07-14T13:07:39Z

Mmmmmm tea. *drinks some* It's so good. And so warm when it's cold in JULY. I'm convinced we've been cheated out of a summer here. There's the odd day of sun followed by days and days of rain. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. The tea does help, though. *marries the lovely tea*

I really need to do some writing...

This post has no purpose. Sorry.

Too Tired For A Title

2008-07-13T12:02:37Z

Have been up for 29 hours (through no fault of my own). Am actually going to explode. Gaaaaaaaah!!! I refuse to go to bed until tonight though because I don't want to mess up my sleeping pattern. *head is a bit woozy* Right, am off to supermarket to stock up on chocolate and garlic bread so can spend the rest of the day slobbing out watching endless amounts of drivel on the God Of TV Channels that is Dave. Hopefully there'll be a Top Gear marathon or similar. I can use my blurry vision to pretend Richard Hammond is David Tennant. And then there's new Top Gear on BBC2 later. Hurrah!

I really hate cars. I don't get why I like Top Gear so much. Hmm...

Right, chocolate and garlic bread. Yes yes.

DW Icons

2008-07-08T20:42:16Z

I made icons! *shock* They're really bad, but I thought I should probably post them instead of just leave them collecting dust on my hard drive. Someone might get some enjoyment out of them, even if it's only to laugh at my atrocious Photoshoppery.

5x Donna
3x Jenny
1x Jenny and the Doctor
1x Donna, Martha, Rose
1x the Doctor
7x the Doctor and Rose
2x Jack, Donna, Rose

Comment is love :) Please comment/credit if you take/use.

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Created with angelamaria's Icon Table Generator @ Bauble

Book Meme

2008-06-27T20:32:14Z

Stolen from various places/people because I'm bored and ill and have too much time on my hands.

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed. Well let's see.

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them ;-)

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens - my all time favourite Dickens.
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (yuck)
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett - abridged kids' version about 10 years ago, but I'm counting it.
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom - I was surprised I like this book, but I'd definitely recommend it.
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Hmmm I don't think that's too bad, considering I still have many years in front of me to get through the rest!

Fic: Top Rank (1/1), 10/Rose, PG-13

2008-06-20T09:59:31Z

Title: Top Rank
Author: miss_jen_b
Rating: PG-13
Musical Inspiration: Ian Dury and the Blockheads
Genre: Fluff, romance, more fluff, mild humour (ish)
Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who, nor do I have any rights to Ian Dury and the Blockheads or Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick. Shame.
Summary: The Doctor and Rose finally make it to Sheffield to see Ian Dury. Metaphors involving rhythm sticks ensue.
A/N: This was written for ladyofgallifrey, who needs fluff (which this unashamedly is). It's also the first thing I've written in ages due to temporary Inspiration Death so, um, I apologise...

Cross-posted to songs_in_time, oh_she_knowsand time_and_chips.

“We never made it to Sheffield, did we?”

“What?” Rose looked up from her book at the sound of the Doctor’s voice to find him half under the console, legs sticking out at what looked to be a very awkward angle.

There was a moment of shuffling and heavy breathing before he said, “Sheffield. 1979, remember? We were going to go and see Ian Dury at the Top Rank, only we met Queen Victoria instead.”

She frowned, not entirely sure where he was going with this piece of seemingly idle chit-chat. “I remember. It was definitely worth missing the concert to meet her, though!”

“Oh.” His voice was muffled by the TARDIS console, but she thought that he sounded a bit disappointed. A loud bang emanated from his general direction and the TARDIS lights flashed as though in protest. “Oops,” he muttered.

“Why?” she asked. “Do you want to go and try again?”

The Doctor pulled himself out from under the console, jumping to his feet and coming to stand next to where she sat on the jump seat. He turned so that he could lean next to her. “Well, maybe,” he replied. “If you want to, that is. Thought that it might be fun if we went dancing. Y’know, for a change. Take the day off, so to speak. We can jump around to music with people with crazy hair who hate Thatcher and go on strike every other Thursday. Leave the running for our lives for another day. What do you say?”

Rose smiled at his enthusiasm for bad pop culture. “Yeah. That sounds good. When?”

He took her book from her hands and laid it face down on the seat. Hopeful brown eyes caught hers. “Now?” he said.

-8-8-8-

The Doctor hovered eagerly by the door, waiting to Rose to finish getting ready. Really, he thought, what could be taking so long? The 1970s were hardly a beacon of high-grooming and glamour, particularly where they were going. He’d meant it the last time they’d tried to go to Sheffield when he said that she’d be better off in a bin bag, and not just because it meant there’d be lots of lovely Rose skin for him to look at (a new favourite pastime of this body of his – it seemed to be rather fond of Rose’s skin.). He suspected that whatever beautifying task she was currently undertaking would be highly unnecessary, for multiple reasons.

Reason One: Shiny up-dos and porcelain make-up would look more out of place at Top Rank than the Conservative Party’s annual conference. Reason Two: It would be dark, and so no one would see her efforts. Reason Three: The Doctor was very much of the opinion that Rose didn’t need half the beautifying processes she went through; she was lovely enough without them.

He sighed, tapping his foot as he leant against the door. If she didn’t hurry up then they’d miss the start, which would be awful, especially as he’d taken such care to get them to the right place at the right time. It may be fashionable to be late, but he really didn’t want to miss Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick. That would almost be worse than missing the concert altogether.

Patience expired, he was just about to go and search for his erstwhile companion when she finally deigned to grace him with her presence, bounding into the control room wearing… very little. A denim mini skirt, purple t-shirt, and the same tights and boots as last time. She also had… crazy hair. It made her look as though she’d been a little bit electrocuted, but he found he quite liked it. It gave the appearance of having just got out of bed, which, he had to admit, was one of his favourite Rose styles. Rumpled and bleary-eyed with sleep was a good look for her, he thought, only now her eyes were bleary with eyeliner instead of sleep. The effect, however, was very similar.

Oh. He realised she was looking at him expectantly, mouth quirked into a little smile. “Talking inside your head again?” she queried.

He tried to look indignant. “I don’t do that!”

“You always do that.” She bumped against his shoulder with her own to let him know she was teasing him, and then slid her hand into his. “You not changing your clothes?” She looked his suit up and down.

“I’ve undone my collar,” he informed her sagely. “Ready to go?”

She nodded. “Yeah.”

“Excellent.” He gave her a smile and opened the door, ushering her out in front of him. It was cold outside – at least, cold enough to notice the November chill – and the sky was dark with heavy clouds. The Doctor was rather proud of himself for having managed to park the TARDIS so close to their destination – right across the road from the venue, next to the stage door of the Lyceum theatre. Of course, if someone came out of the door and turned to the right without looking where they were going then they’d end up with a face full of blue police box, but that couldn’t be helped. Surely, he thought, they’ll realise what a clever parking job this is.

Minor TARDIS issue pushed to the back of his mind, he grinned down at Rose before tugging on her hand and leading her across the road. “So, where are we exactly?” she asked.

“I told you,” he replied, wondering if she’d had a bump on the head. “We’re in Sheffield.”

“Yeah, but where in Sheffield? I mean, I know you, and I know about your skill for getting into trouble. I just thought I might need a point of reference for if we get separated and I end up in Manchester or Aberystwyth or somewhere.”

He quirked an eyebrow at her. “I do not have a skill for getting into trouble! You must be confusing me with yourself.” Seeing her cheeky grin, he relaxed his defensive stance. “We’re near the train station,” he told her, pointing in its direction. “And the theatres and the library. Arundel Gate, remember that.”

She nodded. “Right.” And then, apparently feeling like she had to explain, she added, “Sorry for suggesting you might get us into trouble. It’s just…”

“It happens,” he conceded. “But not today. I promise.” He winked at her. “Come on! Can’t be late or old Ian will corner us with his rhythm stick.”

Rose shuddered and followed him to the entrance of Top Rank. “He’s not an alien, is he?”

The Doctor flashed her a grin in reply.

-8-8-8-

The music, Rose thought, could have been better. A lot better. In truth, she thought her head might explode if she had to listen to another of Ian Dury’s ‘songs.’ It was not what she would call Her Sort of Thing. But that’s not to say she wasn’t having fun, because she was. The Doctor evidently had a great deal of caffeine and/or adrenaline in his system, judging by his enthusiastic ‘dancing’ to the music, which wasn’t really dancing at all. More like ‘jumping about like a loon.’ Rose loved it, and his enthusiasm was infectious.

Thus she had spent the last forty-five minutes holding his hand and jumping up and down without any sort of rhythm or style. They were easily the most exuberant people in attendance of this ‘concert’ but she didn’t care. She never had to come to the 1970s again if she didn’t want to. It didn’t matter if people thought she and the Doctor were crazy (which they evidently did).

“Having fun?” she bellowed in his ear.

He grinned manically. “Oh yes. You know, Rose, I don’t think I’ve had this much fun since…” He trailed off as one song ended and another began. If possible, his smile became even wider. “This is fantastic!”

Suddenly, he tugged her in front of him and splayed his hands out over her hips, moving them in time to the not-quite-music. Rose’s head spun. The Doctor had his hands on her hips. He had his hands on her hips, holding her against him so that they were pressed tight up against each other and she could feel the strength of him through his suit. Was she dreaming? She thought that she might be dreaming. Ian Dury was on stage singing that he wanted someone to hit him with his rhythm stick (Hit me, hit me…) and the Doctor had his hands all over her. It was, surely, too surreal to be real.

But then she heard the Doctor’s voice in her ear, and apparently he wanted to be hit with the rhythm stick as well, (Hit me slowly, hit me quick…) and she wasn’t entirely sure if she was expected to oblige in some way. Not that she had a rhythm stick (whatever one was), but she could always improvise.

She could feel her temperature rising as the Doctor moved her against him and her hands came up to cover his without seeking prior permission from her brain to do so. He twined his fingers with hers, and she could feel him beaming as he pressed his mouth to her hair to say, “Absolute classic, this song.”

Yeah, classic rubbish, she wanted to say but decided not to in case her unfavourable opinion caused him to move away from her. He felt amazing against her. It was so rare that she got to see him like this, completely lost in the moment as though his past didn’t exist and she was all that mattered to him. It made her fall for him all over again. Hit me with your rhythm stick, sang Ian Dury and the Doctor. Rose laughed and leaned back until she could rest her head on his shoulder, looking up at him. He looked back at her and what she saw in his eyes made her stop laughing. He stopped ‘singing.’ He moved his head closer to hers, and she felt tension/expectation/excitement rise up inside her. He opened his mouth as if to say something…

Someone who had apparently been undertaking some over-the-top dancing in their vicinity crashed into them from behind, sending them both stumbling forwards into the crowd in front of them. The Doctor’s arms moved to hold her firmly by the waist, keeping her upright as she righted her footing. It was only when she was standing completely straight again and the slight ringing in her ears had stopped that she noticed what was happening: Ian Dury was saying something in French, and the Doctor’s hand was a little higher up her body than it had been before their position had been jostled.

In fact, it was quite a bit higher. His fingers curved around her breast as though they were made to fit there, and he was using just enough pressure that she was able to tell. Heat shot through her. “Doctor?” she said – loudly, to be heard above the music and the crowd.

He gave her a little squeeze in reply, moving his mouth next to her ear for a moment so that she could feel and hear his breath before returning to his previous task of being entirely too excited about the frankly awful Blockheads and acting as though nothing out of the ordinary was going on.

Seriously, she thought, if he doesn’t either stop or DO something soon, I’m going to combust. How could he be so casual about feeling her up at a gig? In the 1970s? As though it was something he did every day?

But then, she supposed, he did do it every day, just never quite so blatantly as this. He usually did it with hugs and touches that lingered just a little too long to be called platonic, and looking at her in that way he had that made her insides turn to jelly. Was that what this was all about? Bringing her somewhere where there was no trouble or alien threat, so that his actions couldn’t be misconstrued as anything than what they were?

It was a risk, and she was by no means certain that the Doctor was up to something – for all she knew, he really had wanted to come and see Ian Dury, and he might be completely oblivious to the positioning of his hand on her chest – but she decided that this risk was worth it. She had to take a chance and see.

The awful rhythm stick song finally finished and Rose gathered up her courage, taking a deep breath and turning around in the Doctor’s arms to face him. Both of his hands slipped to her waist. He looked at her expectantly. Drums and bass started playing on the stage behind her, the rhythm flowing through her until she could feel it moving her, compelling her, driving her. She stretched up on her toes and kissed the Doctor.

And he kissed her back.

At best, she’d been expecting some hesitation on his part, anticipating that he’d probably pull back to look at her and see what the hell she was doing before realising she was serious and, most importantly, not possessed. Realistically speaking, she had been expecting him to pull away from her, moving his hands away from her body and closing off to her for the rest of the day.

But he kissed her back. No hesitation, no pause or delay, just his lips moving against hers earnestly as if he’d been waiting for her, Ian Dury blabbering on about Sweet Gene Vincent in the background. His lips were smooth and firm, and warm from the still air that surrounded them. He was smiling.

The shock of his compliance stilled her actions. He did pull away from her then, but only enough so that they could breathe, although even breathing was difficult with his nose bumping against hers and his own breath on her face. “Doctor?” she queried, although entirely what she aimed to ask him she wasn’t sure.

“Yes, Rose,” he said, sounding completely unaffected. Only the dilation of his pupils and the fact that his skin was abnormally warm against hers gave him away.

“I kissed you,” she stated before her brain could catch up with her mouth.

He nodded casually. “Yes, you did. Was wondering if you would. Started to get a bit nervous, actually, thinking that I’d been reading you wrong for months.”

“You planned this. That’s why we came here?” Was that her voice, all high and squeaky and sounding just a little bit accusing even through the high levels of satisfaction that were currently coursing through her?

He scratched the back of his neck, apparently uncomfortable at this mini interrogation. “Weeell,” he said, stretching the word out until it became multi- instead of mono-syllabic. “Partly. Mostly. And because Ian Dury’s an alien.”

That one caught her off-guard. “Seriously?”

“Yep!” The Doctor sounded excited by that fact. “Just thought we should pop in, make sure he’s not causing any trouble, which he’s not, by the way. Completely harmless, if a little crude.” He leaned forward until his mouth brushed hers once more. “Although I sort of like that, don’t you?”

“I’m starting to,” she replied honestly, tightening her arms around him.

“Good.”

She opened her mouth to say something, but then he kissed her again, and Rose was oblivious to the rest of the concert.

-8-8-8-

Later that night – figuratively speaking of course; the TARDIS didn’t have proper nights – the Doctor sat on the jump seat, head leaning against the back rest and feet propped up on the console. It had, he thought, been a most successful outing in numerous ways.

Success Number One: They made it to the right place, at the right time, and avoided Trouble for a whole day. They’d even been able to explore Sheffield and have a late dinner after the concert without a single bad thing happening. Success Number Two: Ian Dury had adapted well to human life, and seemed to be loving contemporary pop culture. Success Number Three: The most important one, in the Doctor’s never humble opinion. Rose had kissed him. And he had kissed her back. And it had been lovely. And now she kept kissing him, which he liked even more, because it meant that he was able to kiss her too.

He had told her a slight lie earlier, when he suggested that he had been planning a change in their relationship by taking her to the concert. The concert had merely been the culmination of everything they had been building towards since the day they met, a fixed point in the timelines. He liked the simplicity of it, that there was no danger or death-defying situation that they could blame their intimacy on. It brought it down to him and her – to two people lost in a moment and taking what they had always wanted. It had served to take the decision away from him and give it to her, because at the end of the day he had been too scared to make the first move for reasons far too plentiful for his liking. True, he’d made a pretty good job of groping her before she gave in and snogged his face off, but the final step had been hers to make. It had always been hers to make, he realised.

Rose Tyler had him wrapped around her finger. And he found that he liked it. So much so that when she appeared in the console room dressed in pyjamas some minutes later and held her hand out to him, he took it without hesitation and followed her into her bedroom, where they spent the next few hours happily experimenting with his rhythm stick.

All in the name of (fanfic) research...

2008-06-19T13:04:32Z

So, in my attempt to write something that isn't angst and/or generally pathetically bad, I decided to actually do some research (shock horror!)... And as a result I've spent the past half hour listening to Ian Dury and the Blockheads in the name of fluffy fic research. From this, I have concluded the following:

1) I'm not a fan of Ian Dury and the Blockheads.
2) 'Wake Up and Make Love With Me' is a very scary song, but is potentially a gold mine for fic-related happenings/inuendos/amusing incidents.
3) 'Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick' has great comedy value.
4) I'm glad I wasn't around when Thatcher was PM (this fact is related, honest!).
5) Fluff isn't as easy to write as it used to be.

*wanders away to YouTube and the frightening 'music' of the Blockheads*

A Big Bee Coincidence?

2008-06-17T12:48:12Z

So... The bees are disappearing in Doctor Who. And then I find this. It amused me somewhat. Coincidence? Or has RTD been collaborating with Newsweek? Haha.

Severe lack of inspiration

2008-06-14T13:39:07Z

I've just spent the past hour and a bit staring at a blank Word document in the hope I'd be able to write something. Apparently not. *sigh* It's not even a case of not knowing what to write, because I do, I just can't bloody do it. Grrrrrrrrr!!! *is mad at self* Anyone have any good remedies for tragic situations such as this?

Crazy Week

2008-05-31T21:57:15Z

This past week has been crazy busy - two exams, plus revision for two more and sorting out my modules for next year and trying to think of a dissertation topic (I'm thinking of 'Utopianism in Fact and Fiction: Does Reality Measure Up?') and loads of other random stuff that had to be sorted out.

So today, I spent the entire afternoon watching an Agatha Christie mystery on ITV3 - The Secret Adversary, I think it was called. Then I switched over to BBC1 to watch I'd Do Anything, Doctor Who, Doctor Who Confidential, and the I'd Do Anything Results show. And now my eyes really hurt from watching too much telly. My own fault though!

And.... I get to go home on Monday!!!!! Only for a few days, but I can't wait. I get to see my mum and my dad and my brother, hurrah! And I get to go to Wagamamas without worrying about the bill, which is always good. But then it's back to exams :( *sigh*

I've broken my LJ

2008-05-27T17:01:43Z

I think I've done something to my LJ. I was messing around with different themes earlier, and now.... my Friends Page is different to my Recent Entries page, but when I click on the Friends Page link when it's on the screen just after log in it has no style at all and is just in a big list down the side of the page. I don't know what I've done! Aaaaaaaargh!!!!!!!

Maybe if I log out and then back in again it will fix itself...

EDIT: Nope! Still broken!!!! Hooooow did this happen?? *despairs*

EDIT 2: FIXED!!!! Thank God for default settings...

Also, does anyone know how to install banners without completely destroying LJ?

EDIT 3: All sorted! Hurrah!

Message to Facebook

2008-05-21T15:47:12Z

Dear Facebook,

I very much appreciate how you've made keeping in touch with people so much easier, especially people I don't see very often or haven't seen in ages (or indeed have never even met other than on the internet). Also thank you for organising my social calendar with minimal effort.

However...

Stop telling me to invite people to applications!! It's really annoying.
Stop inviting me to rubbish applications!! This is also annoying.
Stop being so distracting when I'm meant to be revising/beta reading someone's story/writing my own story/tidying my room/doing the seminar reading/sleeping!!!! This is, admittedly, partly my fault, but still I'm blaming you and your cunning distracting ways.

Thank you.

Lots of frustrated appreciation,
Jenni