Fic: Seuls - Chapter 1

[mtemplar_fic]

Title: Seuls
Author: mtemplar
Rating: Adult
Characters: The Doctor (Tenth), Rose Tyler
Disclaimer: I do not own 'Doctor Who' and am making no profit from this fanfiction.
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Graphic Sex, Graphic Violence, Romance
Spoilers: Set mid Series 2
Author's Notes: This story follows the events in To Have And Not To Hold (first chapter of that story is here) and Not Here (the first chapter of that short follow-up is here). It is loosely based on the Fourth Doctor serial 'Image of the Fendahl', and contains elements from the 1996 TV movie and the novel 'The Taking of Planet 5'. Huge hugs to principia_coh for the amazing icon and banner!
Betas: Many, many thanks to platypus, brit_columbia and garpu!

Summary: The Doctor and Rose have been mysteriously diverted to the ice planet Seuls, located within the constellation of Canthares. It soon becomes apparent that things are not at all as they should be, and the newly-formed bond between them will be tested as the trap of an ancient enemy is sprung.

Crossposted to time_and_chips, dwfiction, Teaspoon and The Zero Room.







Chapter 1

"Try again."

Rose shuddered at the seductive tone in the Doctor's low voice. She wondered how close he was to her and decided that keeping her eyes closed was going to be impossible at this rate.

"No, no, no, no. Stop that! Try to clear your mind and concentrate on one thing. One thing other than me, that is."

That did it. Rose couldn't suppress her snort of mirth and burst into the giggles, opening her eyes to see a rather annoyed expression on the Doctor's face. "'M sorry," she got out between fits of laughter.

The Doctor rolled his eyes at her. "I should be the one laughing. You do look rather silly."

Still snickering, Rose pulled the helmet-like device off her head and placed it beside her in the captain's chair. "How'd I do this time?" she asked, leaning to the side in an attempt to see the odd, circular symbols on the monitor.

Her companion raised a single eyebrow at her in a mock glare, and turned the monitor away from her toward himself. Only his head was visible over the top, a pale face crowned with a spiky mop of unruly brown hair, with prominent sideburns present on the sides. Chocolate brown eyes peered at her over the thick rims of his glasses, which had slid to the very end of his nose. "No peeking," he growled as he brandished an index finger at her, a scowl darkening his handsome face.

Rose struggled to suppress a shiver as her light-hearted mood did a complete one-eighty. Her current relationship with the Doctor was... complicated... to say the least, made more so by the recently realized 'bond' between them. While Rose was unable to sense the presence of the bond, the effects of it on the Doctor were quite dramatic. His normally flirty, yet somewhat detached exterior would give way, leaving him intensely drawn to her and vulnerable, but only when his 'mental barriers,' as he called them, were down. While he had told her that, in theory, a Time Lord's mental barriers were quite difficult to get down, the exact opposite seemed true in practice. Rose had inadvertently dropped them quite readily recently, resulting in an unfortunate incident at her mum's flat. Mercifully, Jackie had thought that the Doctor's shy, hurried departure was due to the fact that she'd 'over-mothered' him, not realizing how embarrassed he was by what had happened.

Which led to Rose's current situation. The Doctor had thought that Rose might harbor some latent telepathic abilities, which might explain how she was able to drop his barriers so very easily, but it now appeared that this might not be the case after all, given the frown on the Doctor's face. "Everything ok?" she asked nervously.

The Doctor leaned away from the monitor he had been looking at so intently, sighing and pushing his glasses back up his nose. Then apparently he thought the better of it and pulled them off, slipping them into the breast pocket of his brown pinstriped suit. "Fine, everything's fine," he said tiredly, rubbing at his eyes with his long fingers. "Except that the instruments aren't picking up anything from you. Not a smidge of telepathic impulse. Zip, zilch, nada."

Rose shrugged, not at all bothered by this information. "Maybe it's just one of the mysteries of the universe, then? One of those things that'll never be explained?" She frowned as he picked up the helmet from beside her and shook it before placing it on the TARDIS console and sitting heavily beside her in the captain's chair. "'S not bad, is it?" she asked, suddenly worried.

"Oh, no - it's not bad, it's just a bit unexpected," the Doctor replied, looking at her out of the corner of his eye. "I thought for sure there'd be something." He tapped his chin thoughtfully for a moment before suddenly springing to his feet, startling Rose. "The equipment might be faulty - it is rather old, I'll admit, but the opportunity to use it hasn't presented itself of late. Maybe there's something here we can use...." He trailed off as he began to tug at a hatch in the grating of the floor. After he disappeared beneath the TARDIS floor, Rose watched in alarm as several unidentified objects began to be tossed to the surface.

"Doctor? Really, can't you just leave it?" Her question fell on deaf ears as the pile of mechanical devices and cables continued to grow.

"I know it's down here somewhere, saw it just the other day... ah! Here it is!" Rose watched as he hauled himself up from beneath the grating, the strap of a weathered canvas bag clutched in one hand. "Guess what I have!" he said, grinning broadly.

She gave him a wary look. "Besides that bag, I've really no idea," she replied dryly.

"Oh, come on, Rose. You're no fun. At least guess," he implored.

She couldn't help herself and giggled. "Ok, then. The bag's bigger on the inside?" she asked, pausing briefly before continuing in a low voice. "There's not something slimy inside, is there?"

He laughed brightly. "No and no."

"Is it going to make me want to kill you?"

"Probably not," the Doctor said with a smile. "Give up?"

"Ok. Tell me," Rose said, bracing herself to be hooked up to another strange contraption.

"Look," the Doctor said while opening the bag with a flourish, revealing what appeared to be several pieces of shiny medical equipment, similar to what she'd see if she walked into any general practitioner's office. Rose watched as he rummaged through the tools, grabbed up a stethoscope and jammed the ends into his ears, confirming her suspicion. "Diagnostic equipment of the finest caliber! We'll get to the bottom of this in no time."

"No," Rose said flatly. "Please tell me you're joking." She looked around furtively for a possible escape route, failing miserably.

"Nope, this'll only take, oh... say three or four hours tops?" the Doctor replied as he climbed up on the captain's chair and tried to press the bell of the stethoscope to her temple.

Rose flushed to the roots of her hair as the Doctor closed his eyes to concentrate, his warm breath ghosting across her cheek as he moved closer. "I don't believe this," she murmured.

He opened one eye to wink at her. "Just like before - try to think of one thing. And nothing naughty, please."

Rose grinned. "Ok, but I have something I want to ask you after."

"Deal."

***************

After what seemed like an eternity of being poked and prodded by medical instruments, Rose was rapidly becoming annoyed. When the Doctor shone what seemed to be an everyday ophthalmoscope into her eyes for the umpteenth time, she batted the offending instrument away and he blinked at her, startled.

"I suppose you've had enough, then?"

"Yeah, I'm done," she responded. "Now it's your turn. Why is it that you're so affected by the bond and I'm not? Is it because I'm not..." She hesitated, trying to remember the name he'd given her. "...Gallifreyan, like you are?"

"Possibly," came his cryptic answer. "It could also have something to do with the fact that you don't appear to have any telepathic ability whatsoever, which I find extremely odd." He replaced the instruments in the canvas bag, and Rose felt her eyes beginning to prick with disappointment - disappointment that he might find her deficient in some way and might regret his decision, however unconscious it might have been, to bond with her.

"Why's it so odd? I don't know anyone, other than you, of course, who can really read someone else's mind," she mumbled, fighting to keep her composure.

"Well... it's odd in the sense that most humans do have a low-level latent telepathic ability. You just need a bit of training up. But it's not a talent the human race is ready for in your timeline - not just yet, anyway. Still - I'm not reading anything from you at all."

"Is that bad?" she asked, her voice unsteady. "I mean, for... for you?" He looked over at her and Rose quickly averted her gaze to her shoes, unable to meet his eyes.

The captain's chair shifted, and she felt him take a seat next to her. "No, Rose - it's not bad at all." Several moments passed before he spoke again. "Just different."

"Different?"

"Good different, really," he said in a small voice.

"You said before that you put this, this bond on me because you wanted to be close to me," Rose said, wondering if he was telling her the truth. "Do you really not remember putting it on me at all? 'Cause I don't remember what happened after I looked into the TARDIS - all I know is that I woke up in the TARDIS just before you changed."

Several more moments passed before he responded. "I don't remember actually bonding myself to you, but I think I did have some degree of awareness that the bond was there. After I regenerated, that is. I knew I felt quite drawn to you, well... I should say more so than I had before."

"What?" she exclaimed incredulously. "You felt that way, and you never...." She trailed off, looking down at her hands. "Doctor... why didn't you ever tell me?"

He sighed. "I don't know if I can put it into words."

"Try."

He nodded, looking more tired than ever. "All right." He sat up straighter, and took both of her hands in his. "My mentor, K’Anpo Rinpoche, taught me a lot of things, but one of the most important things he told me was that dealing with the dark forces at work in the universe is discouraging and disheartening, and if you're going to fight the darkness, you need to have somewhere to retreat to, a place that's right and pure, a place untouched by evil." He looked up into her eyes, his expression unfathomable. "I look at you, and I remember what I'm fighting to protect. You are my sanctuary, Rose Tyler."

Rose blinked back tears at his confession, unable to speak, and held his gaze for a few seconds - just long enough for it to become uncomfortable before they both looked away. "Doctor... I don't know what to say." He was silent, staring down at their clasped hands. "Are you... you're saying, really, that you... you... "

"Yes?" he said, Adam's apple bobbing.

"Are you trying to say," she said softly as she squeezed his hands within hers, "that you lo…"

A sudden lurch from the TARDIS cut her off, and the Doctor was sent sprawling to the grating while Rose clung to the captain's chair for dear life. The ship continued to shudder violently as the Doctor clawed his way up the side of the console to the monitor to see what had happened. "Hang on!" he shouted.

"What happened?" Rose yelled back while struggling to maintain her grip on the chair. "Have we hit something?"

"No," the Doctor responded as he looked incredulously at the monitor. "It can't be - we're caught in a relative continuum displacement zone... and it's dragging us in!"

"Relative what?" Rose exclaimed, clinging to the captain's chair. "Can we get out?"

The Doctor grappled with the controls he could reach while trying to hang on. "I don't know," he yelled. "I've had this happen before, but.... " He trailed off as he glanced at the monitor, his eyes widening. "Hang on, Rose," he shouted. "We're going to crash!"

Comments

[mtemplar-fic.livejournal.com]

Still thinking about it....

[roxyk630.livejournal.com]

*thinks about bribery...*

The comedic options are ENDLESS. ;3

[mtemplar-fic.livejournal.com]

She would, of course, have stolen Ten's brainy specs. I think this would have to be an omake. *grins*

And bribery totally works. *points to 'Moments'*

[roxyk630.livejournal.com]

I am HEREBY bribing you with pictures of Ten in Specs AKA. Spexy Ten. :3 I will bribe further if I must!




"You want her to write what?!"






Doctor: Rose! Look at what I've been wearing around all bloody day! Where are my-?
Rose: *grin*
Ten: ... clevage noted. They look quite cozy there.

[roxyk630.livejournal.com]

Images courtesy of a quickie google search :X

[mtemplar-fic.livejournal.com]

Aaaaaaaaah! You play dirty! *grins*

[roxyk630.livejournal.com]

>:}

[mtemplar-fic.livejournal.com]

And naughty! *grins some more* See outfit description below with principia_coh's thread.

[roxyk630.livejournal.com]

EHEHEHEHEHE I LIke!!!

[mtemplar-fic.livejournal.com]

I think YOU should write this! *grins*

[roxyk630.livejournal.com]

I thought we were bribing YOU to write this? I have to write the pink traveling case novella still!

... hmmmm... I still need to do that...

[mtemplar-fic.livejournal.com]

*glances at the pile of work generated from the Morning From Hell yesterday*

It won't be today or anywhere in the near future for me, unless I'm struck by lightning or something (don't get any ideas!)

And yes, you do still have to write about the pink traveling case that's bigger on the inside, don't you?

[roxyk630.livejournal.com]

I do...

Admittedly I've been preoccupied with a rather long post JE fic I've been working on? XD;;; It's SO close to being done... but then it needs beta work. SO Pink case is post that and then I can always shove this on the backburner for ideas. Feel free to take it on if you DO get time... :3

[mtemplar-fic.livejournal.com]

Oooh! Fic from you! *claps hands*

[roxyk630.livejournal.com]

XD;;; That's encouraging!

I'm utterly PARANOID about posting this fic...So every bit helps!

[mtemplar-fic.livejournal.com]

But why? *is all about enabling*

[roxyk630.livejournal.com]

Fan-fic is not something I consider a strength? So I'm always paranoid I'm the only one that enjoys it? Everyone else just might think it sucks? XD;

A general concern, but one I always have to get over before I post anything.I don't always follow "fandom" conventions (which is fine) but you never know how it will be received when you do that? It's a nice feeling when it's liked though. :3

[mtemplar-fic.livejournal.com]

I find this amusing because I feel the same way about my crap. I have to physically remove myself from the computer after posting because otherwise I'd be peeking through my fingers waiting for the 'YOU SUK!' comments that I'm always sure will be there.

I have no idea what fandom conventions are for fic. Is that bad?

[roxyk630.livejournal.com]

WHAT?! CRAP!? I love your stuff! I got addicted during To Have and to Hold! Seriously, I really DO love it, and I'm quite picky. Then again, we are our own worst critic? Swankkat seems to like what I'm writing well enough? But it's definitely going to need some strong beta work... and I'm just concerned about some of it coming off as Meta but... UGH. I dunno, its nerve wracking.

Criticism on my art I can handle... on my writing? um... unless its constructive I'm not sure?

XD; No. I'm not sure that there are "Stated" conventions... just ones I've notice tend to repeat. I think the reason I like YOURS so much... is because then tend to fall OUTSIDE of that and are intelligently written. I love good fluff but I appreciate a well written romance that fits into the environment so much more!

I'm also paranoid because the post JE one... contains a lot of personal experiences that I draw from (most of which are humorous... well okay ALL of which are humorous). I guess mine would fall under flangst? I just get paranoid about it. I'm not a writer... I've been trained TO write... but... its not something I consider one of my strongest points? I have original ideas... I'm just not sure they come across?

[mtemplar-fic.livejournal.com]

I suppose we're all our own worst critics! I am by no means a writer - I'm used to writing reports in code that someone in the profession would understand immediately - much of which is known affectionately as 'waffling'! *grins* Fiction is very, very foreign territory, and my crap takes a crack team of betas to make presentable! And I have no idea what 'Meta' is, or what the repeated 'stated' conventions are. Hopefully that's not bad. *has lived under a rock for a really long time....*

Looking forward to seeing your stuff! *hugs*

[roxyk630.livejournal.com]

*hughug* Hopefully I'll get it out there soon... I JUST realized... I've been working on it for a few months now... since the night after JE ended!

[mtemplar-fic.livejournal.com]

*laughs* You're as bad as me! 'Seuls' has been rolling around since THANTH ended!

[roxyk630.livejournal.com]

XD;;; GOOD GOOD WOMAN! ;) It's worth the wait tho. :3

I've written in between the one I'm writing and the last one I posted... but I didn't like them or I scrapped them. XD; What WAS the last fic I wrote!? OH The Simplest thing! I had to scrap that. XD; It got too far into S4 and I didn't like what I was writing any longer...

[mtemplar-fic.livejournal.com]

I know! I'm awful! Rubbish! Cringeworthy!

In my defense, though, I won't start writing unless I have the entire thing figured out in my head. The only problem is I get a bit bored with it after that, but... *shrugs* Nice comments always help when one is feeling unmotivated.

Now I will be needing a link to your stuff, of course....

[roxyk630.livejournal.com]

XD; No worse than me. I can't fault anyone that does the same! XD;

SEE! I'm the opposite. I start and then get to a point and go... hmmmmm... I KNOW (for the first time ever) where I'm ending the one I'm writing. I just need to get to that point. :3 Almost there though. I think my concern about writing it is that its Post JE. Ten can be ANYTHING... and... I've taken him OUT of a very Doctor role/environment... on purpose. I personally think its interesting and fun... others might find it dull?

XD; Well my stuff on LJ is here.
http://roxyk630.livejournal.com/tag/doctor+who+fanfic

my stuff on teaspoon is:
http://www.whofic.com/viewuser.php?uid=3458