fannishliss

title: Someday, We Kiss

words: 2750

spoilers: none

rating: G

Pairing: Ten/Rose
disclaimer: I do not own these characters, and am not making any money on this transformative creative work.

Summary: Glimpses into his own future free the Doctor to take risks — but his future with Rose is too important to risk. Introspection while Ten and Rose take a mini-break on a volcanically active planet.

For the Who @ 50 Fanworkathon, stories about Ten.
Also for the prompt of Ten and Rose in a fallout shelter for the Sisterhood of Guh 2013 Valentine's Day Ficathon.

Author's note: Part of the fun of Who@50 is trying to portray what makes the Doctor unique in each of his regenerations. Points I wanted to touch on here are Ten's uniqueness compared to other Time Lords, yet the way he dwells on and misses their society; the underlying complex of angst and hope in his character; his desire to show off for Rose in risky ways; and the certainty that he loved her but for some reason wouldn't act on it. Please let me know what you think of this effort!

—

"Push, Rose!" the Doctor shouted.

"I'm pushing!" she shouted back.

Ash was raining down on them. There was a faint but distinct smell of sulphur. The Doctor didn't think there would be an eruption of deadly gas, but it was difficult to predict these things. They needed to get inside as soon as possible.

After much concerted sonicking and wrenching, the blast door unwillingly creaked upon enough for Rose, choking and coughing, to squeeze through, the Doctor close behind. He dragged it shut with an effort, laughing halfheartedly as he heard the locks reset.

He fished around in his pockets until he came up with a proper torch, thumbed it on and handed it to Rose. Her breathing steadied as soon as the heavy darkness succumbed to the bright beam, and her natural curiosity took over. Training her beam up along the glittering corridor, she let out a low whistle.

The Doctor had to admit, this was a better fallout shelter than he had expected. Extreme tectonic and volcanic activity had spurred the Heffascans off their planet and out into space at a very advanced rate, but on their way out, they had perfected the art of the fallout shelter.

Well, you might say "fallout shelter," but it would really be more accurate to say "pyramidal leisure complex built to withstand a direct hit by anything less than a planet buster."

"How do you like it, Rose? Heffascan survival pyramid!" He thought that sounded quite impressive. Not at all bleak, stale, or tomblike.

"Is it… Gold?" she said, capitalizing the G. "Are those -- Diamonds?" Her voice was hushed and reverent.

"Well, yes. I mean, think, Rose. This whole planet is constantly churning its heavy elements to the surface. Rivers of gold, one might imagine. Handfuls of diamonds strewn across the rocky plains. I'd say they picked diamonds like a farmer in Kent might flints."

"Blimey," Rose said, and they laughed together.

He caught her free hand as they strolled up the sloping corridor, spiralling around the outer edge of the pyramid. Diamonds, rubies and sapphires all glittered brilliantly from the walls, which were indeed paneled with thin sheets of hammered gold, broken up by corridors like the one they'd entered through, leading to the outside.

"This is probably, like, a priceless archaeological site, yeah? So, I can't, like, chip them off the walls at all?" Rose asked, waving her torch at the gemstones.

"You could do, I suppose," he said. "No one comes here. Too dangerous."

"For anyone but you," she said, teasing. Once safe, Rose always regained her composure so quickly.

"Anyone but me, yeah," he replied, grinning. Most Time Lords didn't have the gift -- or curse -- he had, of knowing when deadly peril loomed. Sure, the volcanic explosion outside was perilous, but not deadly. He'd feel it when his time came. He always had.

As a rule, precognition was not a talent encouraged in Time Lords. The Pythian Order had excelled in precognition, used it to cow and harry races across the universe to bring them under the sway of the Old Gallifreyan Empire. Rassilon had mandated instead that Time Lords develop the academic study of Time, only interfering when its natural tides had been artificially disturbed. The talent for precognition meant nothing when Time Lords had already chronicled the fixed points of the ebb and flow of the Universe. They had no use for his feelings, his flashes, calling them "intuition" or worse, "superstition."

"The Time Lord brain is a command and computation center," his old professor at the Academy had droned. "Time Lord senses are tuned to gather data from the currents of Time, to monitor its ripples and calculate the causes of its distortions." Privately, the Doctor had imagined the Time Lords as big hairy spiders lurking in the center of their universal web. Only when a line jiggled, they'd sent him instead of going themselves. Time Lords were bred to prefer a serene existence, knowing their place (the very top) among the vastness of all times and places.

Still, of course, the Doctor had never been like other Time Lords, and had bucked them in this, as in all things. As a child, fresh from the Loom, he had remembered, lives before he had poured himself into the Loom of the House of Lungbarrow, and he had suffered under the onus of "prophesies" he suspected his Other self of having forged. He didn't really feel it until his first regeneration, the gossamer veils of his own future, floating across his consciousness like a caul, flashing into his awareness with the brilliance of artron, and fading back just the same: faces, moments, traces of the life he would soon begin to live, glimpses of the beloved ones he would rush to embrace, when Time grew ripe.

The pyramid was dark inside, but the air wasn't as stale as the Doctor had feared. He tasted more sulphur than he would have preferred Rose to breathe, but not at dangerous levels.

"We've turned a lot of corners," Rose said, as they walked.

"We should be almost to the top," the Doctor surmised.

After a moment they round a corner that opened out onto a larger room. Around the edges, skylights let in a dim glow of natural light.

"The eruption doesn't seem to be that serious," the Doctor noted, peering at the skylights. "It's primarily ash."

"That's good," Rose said. "I'd hate to think of the Tardis buried in lava."

"Well, I did try to leave her parked on high ground," he said.

"Yeah, as long as that ground doesn't explode," Rose parried.

The Doctor shuddered. She could easily survive being buried in lava — but how would they ever retrieve her? Chipping away at cooled basalt? He refused to think about it. He really needed to install a device that would bring the Tardis to him in cases like this.

"How did people ever evolve here?" Rose wondered.

"Their planet captured an asteroid after they were already technological. The cataclysm and resulting seismic upheavals convinced them they needed to get off planet fast, so they progressed rapidly and left en masse."

"Wow," Rose said, "an entire planet, evacuated."

"Seems a little extreme to me," the Doctor admitted.

Reddish light filtered in through the skylights. It reminded him slightly of home. He sighed, and clapped his hands together. "Let's go down and see what we can find."

They headed for a corner stairwell and started down. The top level seemed to be administrative — records, communications equipment, not very interesting. The next several levels opened onto emptied, abandoned apartments, so they pressed on.

The lower levels had large open chambers — ballrooms, gymnasia, meeting rooms. There were even the remnants of shops. The Doctor looked on as Rose surveyed the abandoned merchandise — so many things left behind, unneeded.

"People don't need as many things as they imagine," he said, hoping to cheer her up.

"No," she said, "they don't." She turned away and they continued to explore.

Finally they reached the sub-basement and found what the Doctor had been hoping for — long term supply storage. Here was everything he and Rose would need, no matter how long the eruption continued.

He led Rose from one end of the giant warehouse to the other, pointing out all the supplies the Heffascans had learned to stockpile. They found a cart and began to load up water and selected food. Rose looked sceptical, but the Doctor assured her that Heffascans and Humans shared similar nutritional needs. Besides, he would check everything with his sonic before they ate.

"I have a suspicion," the Doctor said, piling some blankets he'd found onto the cart.

"About what?" Rose asked. The Doctor held up his sonic dramatically, scanning this way and that.

"Aha!" he shouted, and darted off.

Rose dropped the cart handle and followed, catching up to him just as the Doctor darted into a room off the main storage.

"Brilliant!" he said. "Rose, shine the torch here —"

She did, illuminating a row of switches on the wall.

"Here goes," the Doctor said, and threw the switches one by one. He felt a vibration through the soles of his converse.

"Eh? Eh?" he said, expecting applause.

"What?" Rose said, nonplussed.

He licked his finger and held it up dramatically, motioning for Rose to do the same.

"Is that — a breeze?" Rose asked.

"Yes!" he exclaimed. Then, he reached near the doorway and flipped another switch, flooding the room with soft bluish light.

"Wow!" Rose said, blinking.

"Geothermal of course!" they both said in unison.

"Now let's find the lift to the penthouse suite," the Doctor grinned.

The lift was easily found, and after they sent it off on a trial run, they pulled the laden cart in and took it all the way to the top.

There was one level above the apex of the pyramid— a spectacular living suite, with thick windows that looked out in every direction. The soft hum of ventilation and lighting made the place seem so much more alive.

"Oh, wow," Rose said, "look at that volcano."

A thick black cloud was rolling from the top of the nearby volcano. Ash was pluming high up into the sky, which was striped with amazing sunset colors because of all the particles in the atmosphere.

"There's the Tardis!" Rose pointed out. The familiar blue police box was parked a short way off from the base of the pyramid. The Doctor hadn't been able to resist checking out whether they could get in to snoop around, and then the ash had started falling, so getting in rather than running back to the Tardis had been the safer option.

The Doctor was glad to see that the Tardis was fine so far, and he expected her to be fine for the duration. Still, the stripped bare accommodations of the Heffascan survival pyramid did leave something to be desired. They would try to make their way back as soon as possible.

Suddenly Rose jumped back, screaming and pointing.

The Doctor whipped out his sonic and pointed it defensively at — a floor cleaning robot. A little round robot, mechanically scouring the floor free of the accumulated dust — trundling around the room and revisiting its hatchway to dump debris.

"That thing just took a year off my life!" Rose exclaimed.

The Doctor knew how she felt, after too many cybermat incidents.

"Too bad there's not a robot maid with clean linens," the Doctor said. "I guess the blankets we found downstairs will have to do."

Rose agreed, and when the little cleaner had finished with the room they were in, she unfolded all the blankets into a pile on the floor.

"I'm knackered," she said, cross-legged in the middle of the nest. "You?"

"Nah," he said. "I don't really need..."

"Well, you're welcome..." she said, patting the blankets.

The Doctor felt so much longing rising up within himself. The drawbacks of precognition sometimes made themselves painfully obvious. The Doctor had seen, quite clearly, that someday, on a cold and windblown beach, he would declare his love for Rose Tyler, and she would fling her arms around him at last and kiss him with every bit of strength she possessed. That day, that beach, had not yet come — nor the strange point of view he couldn't quite understand, that seemed to show him kissing Rose from an outsider's vantage. The love flowering within that someday kiss was so powerful, overwhelming him, renewing his strength and his lost sense of purpose. He could wait for it — for such a love as that, he would wait forever if need be.

Until that day, he told himself, he would savor Rose's friendship from a remove. He held himself back, knowing that one day, the perfect moment would come. He would lean down and whisper in her ear, letting his love pour into her like the healing balm she was to him.

"Are you hungry?" he asked.

"A bit," Rose said.

"Then let me see what I can whip up," he said, bowing. He went over to rummage in the cart and came up with several packages of well-preserved food. The sonic identified one as protein, and one as starch supplemented with nutrients. None of it was harmful to Rose, so he might as well try and encourage her to eat.

She made the most of the meal without really relishing it. He ate a few bites for her sake, shuddering. She was a good sport.

Outside, the local sun went down, and night fell. The rim of the volcano glowed with fiery light, casting eerie shadows across the rolling plain. He could still see the Tardis, which was a comfort.

Rose fell asleep, but she turned and tossed, her hair straying into a cloud around her face. She was a very active sleeper. He stationed himself protectively on the edge of the blankets beside her, sitting cross-legged as she had done.

He wanted very much to touch her, to reach out and just lay his hand on her shoulder. Instead, he closed his eyes and recalled his premonition.

Fire, golden light everywhere. Sadness, loss — but hope, so much hope. She would be safe. He pulled her to him. He whispered in her ear, and she pulled him into the kiss. He watched the premonition play out in the knowledge that first and foremost in this life, he was made for her, and he would be with her in the end. It was all he could hope for.

Night was short on this swiftly spinning planet. When morning came, the ash had slackened off, enough for them to leave. The Doctor imagined, briefly, days spent in the pyramid, exploring the abandoned rooms, collecting useful things and bringing them to the penthouse, surrounding themselves with comforting domestic trappings. He imagined himself tinkering and Rose tidying; Rose reading to him while he tried concocting new combinations of preserved food to delight her palate. He imagined the nights he would spend, watching over her, while outside a planet fell prey to fire and ash.

He'd thought about it all night: he reached over and gently laid his hand on her shoulder. She opened her eyes.

"Rose — good morning," he said, smiling.

"Morning, Doctor," she murmured, sleepy-eyed and soft. Moments like these, she forgot to put up her guard. There in that sleepy smile was all the love she felt for him, bright as the new dawning day.

"We can go now," he said. He pointed down at the Tardis. Ash had piled up against her in drifts but not enough to bury her.

Rose smiled. "I knew she'd be all right." Humans and their sweet little assurances— but he couldn't really condemn her as superstitious when so many had said the same to him.

They folded up the blankets and left them there in the largely vacant penthouse. They took the lift back down to the basement level to shut off the power. The Doctor imagined the little cleaning robot making one last sweep of their penthouse, It didn't take long, after all, to climb back up the inside of the pyramid by torchlight and then down the long spiralling hallway. The main blast door was much easier to open from the inside, the Doctor discovered, as he twisted the latch and swung it open.

Rose pulled a cloth over her face and headed for the Tardis. The Doctor let the blast door fall closed. It rang with some kind of finality that sent a shiver down his spine. He shook it off.

"Doctor — look!" Rose called, waving something.

He hurried to catch up with her. She held up a large, cloudy gray-green stone a little bigger than her fist.

"Isn't this what I think it is?" she asked.

"Yes, it is," he grinned.

"Wait till Mum sees this!! Whoo!" Rose exalted. She carried the enormous rough diamond back to the Tardis, and grinned up at him brilliantly when he let her in.

"Not your typical mini-break," she said, "but fun anyway."

The Doctor smiled down at her, closed the Tardis doors with a clang, and pulled the lever to dematerialize.