Hey I saw your post about wondering what "trained" artists think of your art. I just thought I stop by and say not only does it not matter, but you are trained. Every moment you're working hard to improve or even critiquing yourself more than you like, you're training yourself. Teachers can make the path easier but no one can create art without teaching themselves. Keep going, and don't forget to appreciate how much you've taught yourself.
Thank you, that’s a really encouraging way of putting it. I know that it shouldn’t matter and I should be doing art to make myself happy (especially since I don’t plan on making it my career) but I really do end up being too hard on myself sometimes. So thank you for reminding me, and for bringing a new perspective on how I see my own work.
In answer to "The Last First Time" by valueturtle. I asked Paige if I could explore the lasting consequences of the Doctor falling into bed one such night with Rose Tyler. (she said yes)
Prologue
Ten x Rose
Rated T for implications
Vita ante acta - a life done before, thus, a previous life, usually due to reincarnation
January 1, 2005
She awakes to nature's call, a decidedly human trait some foggy part of her brain is telling her. Rose extricates herself carefully from the stranger's sleeping embrace, desperate not to wake him. She knows he's a traveler, loves history, art, and music but hates hospitals and pears. She's heard all about the one that got away and the friends he's loved and lost. He's in her bed now, tangled up beneath her sheets, but she doesn't even know his real name.
Rose stumbles to the bathroom, exhausted and jittery at once. Right now, she's barely held together by nicotine, caffeine, and the last traces of liquid courage in her system. These substances course through her veins and move her limbs clumsily, like strings on a marionette. Her business in the en suite is quick and quiet. She thanks her lucky stars for the adjoining bathroom, no need to get dressed or face her mother.
Speaking of Jackie, it's really very early and she should be thinking of how to sneak her late night stranger out the door before her mother wakes. She could probably still manage it at this point. But as she returns to her room, looking fondly over his thin form beneath the blankets and the unruly mass of brown hair on her pillow, she can't bear to make him leave. It's only been a few hours and there is just no logic to how insanely attached she's become to this man.
Like a stray, she brought him in drunk off the street offering shelter from the cold, snowy night and coffee to sober him up. He took her up on the warmth but declined the coffee in favor of tea. It really was just supposed to be a friendly gesture. By all appearances he's the December to her May. Something behind his dark eyes makes him seem even older.
But then they started talking, about everything and nothing at all. Everything about him enthralled her, and he seemed just as fascinated with her - with her, just a shop girl from South London. And the looks he gave her when she thought he wasn't looking...like she was some sort of fucking long lost love, star-crossed and tragically impossible.
He'd tried to play it off, told her 'you remind me of someone.' Maybe she did, maybe her face resembled that one special person, but it was more than that. It had to be. Because she felt it too, even though he didn't remind her of anyone she'd ever met. There was an instant connection, love at first sight and kindred spirits, the kind of trite clichés only found in storybooks.
But here he is, sprawled out in her bed as though he's meant to be there. Her heart swells and breaks at the same time. It feels like hello, the beginning of something fantastic that will change her entire life for the better. It feels like goodbye, the loss of a million beautiful things that will never be.
The Doctor wakes slowly, pulled to consciousness by the burning ache searing his flesh from skin to bones. It's a painful reminder that this delay is just temporary. Regeneration is imminent, an excruciating inevitability only put off by these blissful extra hours spent with Rose Tyler. This was his bargain, his reward for giving up a future in this body for the life of a human. The tea helped a little to postpone the inescapable conclusion, but now he can feel it closing in. It's time. It will be over soon and he needs to get back to the TARDIS quickly before it starts.
But he is loath to leave this bed. Rose is everywhere; her scent, her warmth, her very essence permeates this room. He remembers the electric shock of touching her intimately for the first time, desires realized in the brush of skin against skin. Now he knows what it is to kiss her, to tease her, and finally to be inside her, to hear Rose's voice cry out in pleasure and feel her nails and teeth mark his skin. He was already hers long ago, but here at the end she has claimed him body and soul, a circle completed. He will lose her just before he finds her for the very first time.
He remembers the feel of her naked body curled up against his, fragile and warm and alive. He remembers, but reaches out to find her missing from the space beside him, the sheets gone cold in her absence. The Doctor sits up, blinking against the pain radiating in his skull. Rose is sitting up on the edge of the bed, watching him. The resplendent glow of dawn pours in from the window behind her, illuminating her in a golden brilliance that is startlingly reminiscent of the Bad Wolf.
The ache in his body changes and intensifies. This isn't the vital, restorative pain of regeneration; it's something different altogether. Reality is shifting all around them. He's done something that has undone everything; time is splintering, ripping apart at the seams. And it starts with him, is centered around his body in this very room. Rose was beautiful and mercifully kind and there on this worst night of his life. He didn't think of the consequences; he just wanted and he took. He finally allowed himself a little bit of selfishness before the end.
But this is all wrong; it reeks of altered time and paradox. And it's too late; it's already happening and there is nothing he can do to change it now. He sees Rose's face, hysteric yet somehow serene. There's a recognition that wasn't there the night before. She knows him and some part of her knows what he has done. She speaks, and it's the last thing he hears before he's torn apart, his timeline ripped and splintered only to be reformed into something new.
"Doctor," she says, her voice echoing in the silent room and in the turbulent storm of his mind. "What have you done?"
