who fic: "Toccata in Blue" (Doctor/Rose AU, G)

[fannishliss]

title: toccata in blue
author: fannishliss
pairing: Doctor/Rose
rating: G
spoilers: none — this is an AU
length:  1200 words

Summary: No matter who he is or how they meet, she'll never give up till she finds him. 

A/N:  This was one of those crazy ideas that grabbed me and made me write it down.   Thanks so much to jessalrynn and tala_hiding for their insightful comments — any remaining opacities or eccentricities are my own.

=?=

The shop where Rose worked burned in '08. They said it was arson, said a madman had started it off, torching a flat above a shop two or three down, and the whole block had gone up.

Her mum was worried, pestering Rose to sue for compensation, but she couldn’t seem to find the motivation. When she wasn't staring off into space, or crying, she sat up on the rooftop wondering how she'd gotten there, nineteen, a waste of time and space.

She took to walking the streets, hunting like a wolf on the prowl.  She told her mum she was looking for work, but it wasn't work she was looking for.

When the homes and shops of the block had burned, one man in the crowd had drawn her attention.  He was handsome, not very old, with beautiful hair in curls around his neck, and he was wearing the most outrageous frock coat, singed and blackened as though he’d dared too near the fire.  More than one person watching was in tears, but Rose was struck by the devastation on his face, his limp hands, his stiffened spine.  He looked like a work of art, a study in nobility and tragedy, transcendent in his woundedness. She edged through the crowd, working her way closer to him, just to say or do something, to be with him as one human with another,  but before she could reach him, he had gone. 

Something about him had touched her, dark and golden, destruction and bitter survival. She saw his pain and strength, and sympathy sang out vast from inside her.  No one should suffer like that alone.

She had to find him again.

Walking the streets of a city as big as London took time.  But Rose had time.  She left her room early every morning, running out into the world at first light.  Her mum said she was a stranger, said her whole year would be lost before she knew it.  

"Where do you go, sweetheart? What's so terrible that you can't even tell me where you've been?"

But she couldn't ever put it into words. She didn't spend all her time looking back. There was nothing there to look at. All she had was one man's firelit face, and the chance of looking forward.  

Sometimes the streets of London seemed to Rose like the whole world, or even the universe.  All kinds of people from every corner of the globe ended up in the city.  You could see girls painted blue, boys with green hair —then the future would crash into the past as an ancient cry to worship rose wailing into the shivering air from the top of the corner tower.  Rose was determined to see it all, no matter how worn down her shoes became.  

Summer faded into fall and days grew shorter.  She bundled up against the cold and hurried out as soon as dawn tinted the sky.  

The winter of '08 had died into early '09 when she found him in the Cathedral, lying on a bench looking up at the distant ceiling.  He was quiet, so no one had disturbed him.   

She pulled out a kneeler, and knelt, but her thoughts were all for him, offered up to him like incense on the curling wisps of her obsession.

He sat up.  He'd shorn away his hair.  The frock coat was gone, replaced by somber workman's clothes.  But she'd never mistake those eyes.  The flames still seemed to dance in his crystalline gaze.  

"Have you ever seen anything like it?" she whispered, into the echoing, radiant gloom.

"Oh yeah, a thousand things," he answered, meeting her hush for hush.

"Like what?" she said.

"Wind. Stars.  Faces of people. Do you know how many times this place has burned?"

"No," she said. Already, the lilting sound of his voice had engraved itself in her heart.  

"Can you imagine it? the flames, devouring the city, reaching up to pull down the very house of god?  the people, running, throwing water — everyone left who hadn’t been killed by plague..."

She listened as he rambled on, whole worlds in his mind's eye opening up to hers.  

They paced the aisles, basking in the stained glass light and whispering in the shadows, till she heard his stomach rumble.  

"Do you want chips?" she asked.  

He looked away, blushing.  

"I'll pay," she said.  She'd guessed he'd been transient. Even the dole couldn't catch everyone who stumbled and fell.

He shouldered his battered blue rucksack and followed her home.  Her mum wasn't too keen, but underneath his wildness and flashpoint fury he was gentle, and a charmer.  He was clearly half mad, or at least scattered, but on his good days, he was brilliant.  He took her everywhere, showing her every hidden marvel of the city.  One day they'd be in ancient Rome, marveling at stone goddesses, the next day gazing at Van Gogh's Provençal sunshine captured forever in a vase full of flowers.  

Day by day he grew tamer. His shorn hair grew longer.   His past came out little by little.  He'd been meant for university, but was traveling instead, when his sister called, begging him to come home.  Their brother was getting worse, always complaining of the pounding in his head.  He'd returned only to find the whole street in flames, his whole family gone.    

It was too much loss for his beautiful mind to bear.  He never made it to school, drifting, distracted, starveling, until Rose searched him out.

Eventually she found work, and the anxiety in his eyes when she left each morning was made tolerable by his delirious joy at her return.  At the end of the day when she stepped into sight, he jammed his heap of notebooks back into his rucksack and swept her into his arms.

All he had left from before was that old blue pack, which seemed impossibly bigger on the inside, crammed with the fragments of his former life.  He didn't mean to dwell in the past, but the heat of that fire had crazed the glass he looked through, and now he saw life through a strange lens, as though every atom were alive, chaotically unpredictable.  His tears were a storm, but so were his gales of laughter.  To Rose, every part of him was a treasure.

It was early 2010 when he finally showed her the key.  It lay in his open hand like a gateway into the future. He peered at her through the specs he'd taken to wearing when he filled his notebooks with swirling indecipherable script.

He dressed up dapper in a suit she'd found him in a charity shop — not as fancy as his old frock coat, but he wore it with a flare all his own.   They carried the precious key to Barclay's, where it opened a safe deposit box full of jewels, actual jewels, an old family inheritance hoarded away against worse days.

"One sapphire carried me all around Europe. Romana would've worn them on her wedding day," he said, his gaze going distant at his sister's name. "Will you wear this for me?"

He picked out a red-gold signet ring with a convoluted knotwork design. It fit perfectly on her finger and he sealed it with a kiss.  

At last, better days outnumbered worse and he found work too.  He worked in a lab, clearing things away.  They called him the Doctor, because he said his name was a secret, though his name tag said John Smith. Only Rose knew his real name, the fire in his heart that beat strong enough for two.   

Someday soon he'd be well enough for uni, and with his brilliance they'd be on their way.  He was a strange one, mad maybe, but Rose loved him, and she swore she'd stay with him forever — or as near to forever as this life allowed.

Comments

[emraldeyedauter.livejournal.com]

This is lovely. There just aren't enough alternate Universe fics out there. I can just imagine Jackie's reaction at Rose bringing home this strange man but she'll grow to like him I bet.

Wonderful parallels and awesome writing as always.

[fannishliss.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I had a lot of fun developing the parallels, adding ones in and cutting others out. For instance if I'd included his brother's name as Koschei that would have seemed way too romanticised Gypsy with their secret box full of jewels! Then again I left the matter of their parents open as well... I like the idea that it was just the three of them and that Romana was trying to hold things together, that the threat of madness is always there in their family.

I love Jackie and I can just imagine her worried, angry, and stubborn resistance to Rose taking her new man in. But he's not actually putting Rose in danger in this AU, so I bet she'd warm up to him pretty fast. Though, my mum called my husband "that dumb boy" almost up until the day we were married!