#char: rt

[mostlynano]

The pair closed the front door behind them and halted on the doormat. Tom's hair was standing on end, caked with mud and the tips were nearly frozen solid. Already they were beginning to melt and little droplets of dark brown sludge fell down onto his face and shoulders. As he moved she saw larger chunks of the slowly melting mud dropping to the floor when he moved. When she looked down at her own jacket she saw that a small circle of wet dirt was forming around her feet aswell. "We should maybe just leave our clothes here for now. I'll wash them later," she suggested while gingerly pulling off her coat and laying it at her feet.  A few minutes later they both stepped shivering out of their clothes and made their way upstairs where the large shower awaited them.

---

"So, do you want to tell me what happened out there?" Rose and Tom had showered in silence, scrubbing away the mud and letting the hot water chase away the cold that had had such a solid grip on them both. Now they were both nursing large cups of hot tea, sitting on opposite ends of the sofa under wooly blankets. It was over an hour, maybe even two hours since they came back from their walk and only now did Rose break the silence. Tom tried to hide his wince at her question but did so very poorly. "You knew I was going to ask," she pressed on, "whatever that was it was unlike anything I've ever seen you go through before. I thought you were having a heart attack." Tom sighed and tried not to let the burning at the corners of his eyes take over. He wanted to explain, to let her in. But to do that he had to understand and right now he felt lost. "I don't know what happened." It was a half-truth, but as close to honesty as he could put into words. "There were flashes of light," he continued, trying to remember. He scrunched up his face, biting back the swell of remembered emotions. They had not been his to start with but once they had run through him he could recall them with painful accuracy."Pain."

Tom felt the cushions of the sofa shift under him as Rose moved closer but he kept his eyes shut and struggled to keep his breathing under control. He took a deep breath and said slowly, his voice wavering  "I felt trapped. Like I was looking out at the world and inside there was only pain." A warm hand closed on his and Rose took the cup from him, placing it next to her own on the table. As she laid down next to him and wrapped her arm around his chest he felt the panic that had been rising inside him abate slightly. Tears finally broke free and ran down his cheeks as he whispered "I couldn't get out." Rose, knowing this was not a time to ask questions, put her head on his chest in quiet comfort and she stayed there for a long moment as Tom wept. His quiet sobs shook his body, and Rose tightened her hug. Eventually, the tremors slowly subsided. Rose didn't move.

Tom's now steady breathing and the warmth under two wooly blanket was lulling Rose to sleep when Tom's voice roused her. "Thank you, Rose." 

[mostlynano]

word count: 7,708

"So, what's the plan?" Rose was propped on the edge of the kitchen counter, nibbling a piece of buttered toast and watching Tom clear away dishes from their Saturday brunch. She had not dressed before going downstairs earlier and over her underwear she was still only wearing Tom's shirt that he had worn to work on Friday -- it still bore a faint trace of his perfume -- and a pair of wooly socks. "There's an exhibition on at..." the incredulous look on Tom's face made the rest of her sentence catch in her throat and she laughed, "... okay, maybe not. I'll ask Gemma if she wants to go next week instead. So then, what do you want to do?" Tom, who found he had been scrubbing the same part of the pan for a whole minute, tore his eyes from Rose's thighs with a small shake of his head and rinsed off the pan and put it on the counter to dry. He stepped up closer to her, resting a hand on each thigh. His fingers felt tiny bumps form on her skin where his warm and still slightly damp fingers touched her. When he looked up at her face and found her giving him a curiously impassive look, as if to say "I'm not letting you fondle your way out of this one."

Silently Rose offered her piece of cold toast to Tom and he took a bite. He chewed thoughtfully for a moment and finally said, "I would really like to do absolutely nothingtoday. Wouldn't that be nice? We could just go back to bed," he emphasised this part by moving one of his hand an inch or so further up Rose's thigh -- still she didn't acknowledge his touch but instead studied the final corner of bread before tossing it in her mouth. "We could go back to bed and we could stay there under the covers and do nothing. Well," he added after a short pause, "almost nothing." Smiling, Rose kissed his cheek. "Get dressed," she chirped, "we're going for a walk."

Tom's disappointment didn't last long after stepping out into the crisp fresh air of the afternoon. He grasped Rose's gloved hand in his own and they turned round the side of their house to go through the garden. Through an opening in the hedge at the back of their well-maintained lawn was a path that they used regularly. Tom still ran there every week, and when Briony was little they both used to take her in the pram around the area -- she never slept so well as when she was outdoors. Now, the couple turned left and strolled in silence along the soft path. Around them was the kind of quiet you found on Saturdays in the country. They could hear a tractor somewhere in the distance, a few birds in the field beyond the hedges, but mostly the silence was made up of the wind rustling the leaves that still clung to trees and bushes around them. People said they moved to the country for the quiet, but soon after moving in to their house, Tom had realised there was no real quiet to be found. Even on days when there was nobody around for miles he had trouble finding anywhere without sound.

In another life, in another world -- on another world -- he had regularly sought out the absolute silence of the vaccuum. It had cleared his head, ridding it of the tangles of thought he sometimes got himself into. There was nothing like that here on earth. Then again, he thought with a pang of bitterness, his mind wasn't really capable of that level of complexity anymore. Silently he scolded himself. He pulled his mind back to the here-and-now and glanced at Rose. "I love you," the words coming out of his mouth in a straight line from his heart, without passing through his brain first. Her wide smile greeted him and she squeezed his hand in return. There had been a time when those words were impossible to say. Impossible to feel. Impossible. Now, it was his whole truth. He relaxed his brow which had been crinkled in a pensive frown and returned her smile. Rose and Briony. What else was there?

A little while later, they had reached the end of a field and were about to turn around to walk back to the house, when Rose suddenly felt Tom's grasp on her hand loosen. He had stopped and was swaying on the spot, looking as though he was about to faint. All the colour had drained from his face and his eyes were glazed over, as if he had suddenly gotten a high fever. She called his name, tentatively at first and then again when he didn't respond, more forcefully -- worry cracking her voice. Her hands grasped the lapel of his jacket and she shook him, trying to shake him back to reality. Suddenly his face contorted in a voiceless scream of pain, his whole body shook in a spasm and he staggered forward, leaning into her -- unseeing. He struggled to remain standing and reached out, past Rose, for support that wasn't there to be found. With a gasp he fell to his knees. Rose had no choice but to let him fall, to step back as he clung to thin air instead of her.

Properly frightened now, she dropped to her knees next to him -- the cold mud of the path immediately began seeping in through her jeans but she didn't notice. Tom dropped to his hands, seemingly unaware of the fact that he had plonked them down in a pool of thick, icy mud, and his body spasmed again; he was in a lot of pain but Rose was unable to do anything about it but stand on her knees next to him. "What did you say? Tom? What's going on?" Through gritted teeth he had mumbled something, but she couldn't make it out. Crawling closer to him she took his head in her hands and held it up to hers. "What's going on, Tom?" she realised she was crying, her tears chilling her cheeks which were flushed with anxiety. Through her tears she saw Tom finally focusing his eyes on her and she drew a sigh of relief. Too soon.

"I heard it," Tom whispered. There was a look in his eye she hadn't seen in... No, she corrected herself, she had never seen this look in his eye. He wasn't in pain, or if he was the pain was being overshadowed by something worse, by something so unfamiliar that it shook her to her core; what she saw in his eyes was fear. Tom was petrified -- but why? Rose tried to stand up, to pull Tom to his feet and get him back to the house, but when she moved she realised that Tom hadn't been focusing on her at all. His eyes did not follow her when she stood up, but instead remained focused on the spot where she had been just moments before.

She tried to gather herself, wiped away her tears with her gloves and took a firm grasp around Tom's waist. Just as she was bracing herself for another attempt at pulling him to his feet, she felt him relax in her arms and as she was completely unprepared for it, when he slumped sideways she was forced down, bottom first, into the muddy puddle. "Tom?" she found her voice, but was too scared now to move. From walking and talking and laughing to lying in a muddy heap on the ground had taken less than a minute, but she felt as though she had been through a boxing match. Tom was absolutely still, but she could feel him breathing against her legs. The mud had finally soaked through her gloves, and she took them off and put them in her pocket. Tentatively she reached out and touched Tom's cheek. It was cold and clammy and his skin was ivory white. But, she reminded herself, he was breathing.

At her touch, Tom stirred and opened his eyes. The process of orientation was visible on his face, she could see he was taking in his surroundings before moving. Without a word, he stood up, pulling Rose up with him. He was trembling slightly but at least he was present in the here and now, Rose thought gratefully. They were both muddy from head to toe, both shivering from the cold and the wet. For a moment Rose thought she was going to burst into tears but when she saw the bewildered look on Tom's face, sudden relief flooded her and she burst out laughing. Tears mingled with the laughter and Tom took her in his arms, a sad but benevolent smile across his lips. A moment later she calmed down and found that they were already walking towards the house.

[mostlynano]

Day 6 ~~ Word Count: 6,211

Rose listened to the clink of glasses being put in the dishwasher downstairs as she crawled under the covers and stretched out across it, yawning widely. From where she was lying she could see the sliver of the moon through the sheer curtains. The light of a few stars were discernable through the fabric when the few clouds that drifted in the sky didn't cover them. She got out of the bed again and went to sit on the seat in the bay window, pulling the curtain aside so she could see the sky more clearly. Despite knowing that the temperature outside was probably below freezing, she unlatched the two windows and pushed them open. There was no rush of air into the room when she opened the windows instead the coldness seemed to billow in slowly, as if to give her a chance to acclimatise. She pulled her feet up and filled her lungs with the crisp air, her drowsiness falling away more and more with every breath. The voice of Jackie echoed in her head, reminding her that things could be worse and she should count her blessings. Though Rose would scarcely admit it within hearing distance of Jackie for fear of inflating her maternal ego even further, she knew very well that there was a point to her words.

"You spend too much time looking out of windows," Tom's warm hand grazed her arm and she heart a smile in his voice. "Why did you open the window, it's freezing in here. Your skin is ice cold." Rose, who didn't feel the cold even after sitting by the open windows for almost ten minuntes shrugged and pointed up at the pitch-black sky dotted with bright stars. "I was counting my blessings," she said and tugged at Tom's hand, urging him to sit down next to her. He did, his gaze following her finger to peer out at the dark night. "Is that so?" he wrapped his arms around her waist from behind her and rested his chin on her shoulder. "How many have you counted to so far?" His tone of voice was slightly teasing, as if he thought counting ones blessings was a silly pastime. "Well," she replied calmly and raised her finger again, pointing up at the brightest star just above the treeline in the distance, "there's you. There's mum and dad," she pointed at another two dots of light close together. She fell silent for a moment. Eventually Tom whispered, "... and Briony?" Without a word, Rose lifted her finger and pointed up at the sky. Tom looked to where she was pointing; the moon.

They had been sitting like that for a long time, Rose couldn't quite tell how long, staring at the twinkling lights in the distance when Tom stirred. His arms encircled her tighter and she could feel his lips and warm breath on her neck. It felt almost painfully hot in contrast to the night air which now filled their bedroom, and suddenly she realised how cold she was. When she tried to lean forward to shut the windows she was held back by Tom's long arms and she fell back into his embrace without struggle. He resumed kissing her neck softly, breathing in her intoxicating smell and feeling her soft skin on his lips. The open windows forgotten already, Rose tilted her head and their lips met. Even though their relationship had always been physically intimate Rose suddenly felt a sense of urgency – as though they hadn't seen each other for months and were now finally back in each other's arms.

Their kiss quickly intensified and Rose's sense of urgency seemed to be reflected in Tom's response to her movements. Soon they were both standing up, pulling off each other's clothes, framed in the open window and their skin – sensitive from the cold – bathed in grey moonlight. His arms around Rose's waist Tom pulled away from their kiss, put his nose to hers and looked into her eyes. "You know I love you, don't you?" "I know," her words came out husky and she cleared her throat slightly before adding, "I love you too."

*

Waking up was a slow process for Tom the next morning. The first thing he became aware of was that he could hear some sort of machinery in the distance. The humming, whirring noise first seemed part of his strange dream and only as he was slowly dragged towards consciousness did the dream fall away, leaving the noise ringing in his ears. Next he became aware that he was not covered by the covers. His eyes still closed and his head still fuzzy with confused and fading memories of his dream, he wiggled his toes – they were icy cold. Opening one eye just wide enough to make out his surroundings he saw that the window was still open from the night before and that Rose, in an apparent effort to stay warm, had wrapped herself twice in the duvet. With a groan he stood up, wincing as the cold rushed to chill the places of his body which had been kept temporarily warm by contact with the mattress and pillow. His fingers trembling he latched the windows shut and tip-toed to the bathroom.

A few moments later he was standing under the scolding hot rain of water in the shower, feeling the muscles he hadn't realised were tense slowly relax. He had been cursing the open window, but as the hot water returned warmth to his body and his head cleared out the cobwebs of sleep the memories of the night before returned and he smiled to himself.  That was a good way to spend a Friday night even if the price to pay was icy toes on Saturday morning, he mused.

A long while later he had dried himself off and, towel around his waist, he returned to the bedroom. The room had warmed up quickly. Rose had relinquished most of the duvet and now lay spreadeagled on the bed, one leg wrapped around one edge of the cover. Tom paused and stood for a moment, smiling to himself, before draping the towel over the back of a chair and crawling back into bed next to Rose. She stirred and turned to wrap her arms around him. "You're warm," she mumbled and sniffled. The tip of her nose was slightly red and felt like an ice cube on his chest. "I am now," he replied. Soon he had drifted back to sleep and neither of them woke until well after noon.

[mostlynano]

Day 3 ~~ Word Count 4,294

Rose's office was quite large and spacious. Unlike most offices at Torchwood, she had large windows facing the billowing landscape beyond the fence that surrounded the compound. Whenever she needed to focus, she would sit in one of the armchairs by the window and look out at the grassy hills and wooded valleys that stretched as far as she could see. This morning she had left her paperwork on her desk and brought what tea Gemma had left her and curled up on one of the chairs. Though the sun was up fully now the mist hadn't let up and the dips between the hills were shrouded in a grey haze, giving the landscape a ghostly appearance.

A shiver shook her and she sipped her quickly cooling tea, pulling up her legs underneath her. Tom's mood the night before had shaken her and she was trying to process what had happened. When first getting used to his human form many years ago, she had dealt with the whole thing much better. Even though the situation they were in was far from normal by any stretch of the imagination, she had believed that the fact that he had been created from the parts of... of him... meant that there might be an adjustment phase. What he went through then she couldn't really begin to understand, and she had been there right next to him through it all.

"I can't even begin to tell you how incredible it feels to have you here." Tom, though it would be almost a year before he went by that name, smiled in response to her words and put his nose against hers in an eskimo kiss. She closed her eyes and filled her lungs with his smell. A few days after what they would later come to refer to as his birthday he was finally starting to smell like... Like a man. She had never noticed how he had smelled of many things before; like the TARDIS, like dirt, like soap, like snow, like the sea... but now he smelled like him.

"What would you like to do today?" his face was so close to hers she only had to whisper for him to hear her, and close enough for him to give her his non-verbal response to her question – a warm, soft and loving kiss. His chest rose and fell with his quickened breath and Rose smiled. Suddenly she felt a drop of something warm on her nose and pulled away in surprise. Putting her fingers to her face she felt a drop of water on the side of her nose. First she looked up, as though she expected rain clouds to be hovering over their bed, but when she looked down she saw that tears were streaming down Tom's face.

He looked at her, his face reflecting the confusion she was feeling. He held his fingers to his own face and sat up, startled, when he felt the tears running down his cheeks. "What's... what's going on?" his voice was cracked and if it weren't for the look of shock on his face Rose might have believed he really was crying. It was as though he was an actor who had just finished an emotional scene and now found himself handling the aftermath of feeling emotions that weren't really his.

On the bedstand stood a box of tissues. Rose reached over and pulled out a couple of them and handed them to Tom. He wiped his eyes and blew his nose, the confusion never leaving his eyes. It was turning to fear and confusion now, because he realised that the tears were still coming. "Why are you sad?", Rose asked, handing him another couple of tissues. He shook his head, "I'm not sad. At least I don't think I'm sad." After thinking for a minute or so, wiping the foreign tears from his eyes every so often, he added, "I know I'm not sad, Rose. I feel extraordinarily happy, actually." A smile that made his wet eyes sparkle told her that he meant what he said, but then... "Why are you crying?" she reached over and stroked the side of his face and he tilted his head into her hand with closed eyes, the smile still on his lips.

Taking a final sip of her now completely cold tea she stood up and walked over to her desk but didn't sit down. She peered down at the papers that lay scattered from end to end and shook her head – frustrated with her fundamental lack of basic organisational skills. Her hand was halfway towards the console on the edge of her desk where the buzzer to call Benjamin in his office when he came through the door. A large stack of folders was propped in his arms, threatening to fall over any second. He teetered over to the desk and set them down gingerly on top of the scattered papers.

Holding her head in her hands, Rose sighed, "I don't know where to begin today, Benjamin." "Oh, don't worry", he grinned, "I'll help you sort this out in no time. Then we need to prepare for your meeting tomorrow. Did Gemma finish the projections?" A look gave him the answer he was looking for, "I'm not surprised. Well, that gives us more time to finish up here at least. Right, first things first. Maybe I take these three, four... six cups back to the kitchen?"

[mostlynano]

Day 2 ~ Word Count: 3,381

"Got your bag? Got your lunch? Your mittens? Hat?" Each of Rose's prompts was greeted with a nod and smile from Briony and with the last one she pulled the hat onto her head and skipped past her mother to the front door. Halfway out the door she suddenly stopped and turned back and ran to her mother. "I love you, mummy. Have a good day!" she said as she was wrapped in Rose's arms. Without waiting for a response, she skipped out the door and slammed it behind her. A melancholy smile crossed Rose's lips as she walked to the narrow window next to the front door and waved to Jackie in the car in the driveway outside. "Have a good day." she said, quietly.

Dry leaves whirled around the back of the car as it reversed down the drive to the street. It was late and they were already late for work but the sun had only just crept over the horizon, bathing the landscape in a dull gold haze as it hit the morning mist on the field beyond the road. The darkness of autumn gave her conflicted emotions. Part of her loved the cold air and the beauty of the landscape around her, but she didn't think she was really made for cold weather. Not for the first time she asked herself why, with all the options her family money provided her, they didn't follow the birds and move south in the winter.

"You okay there?", Tom's voice behind her made her look away from the bend in the road where the car had disappeared minutes earlier and turn around to face him. "Yeah, I'm fine." The smile on her face didn't quite reach her eyes. "Are you sure we shouldn't put her in regular day-care, though? I feel like she should meet some other children her age. Tony is fantastic, but just the two of them all day? That can't be good for her. Or him, come to think of it." Tom paused in tying his shoes and looked up, a slight frown creasing his forehead.

"Do you remember five years ago, when we picked up Tony from nursery?" Rose sighed exasperatedly and was about to say something, but he stopped her. "You do. Good. Then you also remember the bruises? The torn clothing and his soiled books? And you remember well how you felt when you saw." Her eyes were swimming in tears, and he decided not to press the issue any further. Standing up and pulling on his coat he adopted a more soothing tone, "That's why we can't. She's worth more than that, and I don't trust kids today to be any less cruel than kids five years ago." He took her hand and kissed her cheek, feeling the wetness of a single tear against his lips. "Come on. We need to go."

*

In the car on the way to work Rose managed to compose herself and by the time they pulled up to the gate to Torchwood compound she and Tom were chatting as though this morning's moment hadn't happened. The guard approached the window of the driver's seat, Tom rolled it down to greet him and in a moment they were parked in the garage under the compound.

The area was enormous, the parking garage alone taking up five floors below ground to accommodate staff and visitors. A myriad of tunnels and stairwells led off each floor to various departments and a series of lifts in the centre of the large echoing concrete rooms led to the above-ground offices. Tom and Rose worked in separate departments and barely saw each other during a working day and so they said their good-byes behind the car each morning.

"Behave yourself," Rose grinned as she wrapped her arms around Tom's neck and standing on tip-toes to put her nose against his, "and be sure to crack that formula today. I know Frank is waiting for it." Tom responded with a snort and a quick kiss, evidently feeling like this was the only response Frank's expectations were worth. "Be good," he said finally and after giving her bum a little squeeze  he walked off towards the stairs to his department, turning to give her a wink before disappearing down the lines of cars.

Feeling decidedly more up-beat, Rose got in the lift that would take her to her office. The doors were just about to close when a familiar voice called "Hold that lift, please!". Quickly she pressed the Open Doors-button and as the doors slid back open Benjamin, her assistant, came jogging up to the lift. He stepped in and drew deep breaths to steady himself – he had obviously run to catch the lift. "You know, you could have taken another lift," she said, stifling a giggle, "no reason to run like that for a lift." He was bent almost double, his messenger bag hanging down off his shoulders around his neck. "I.." rasping breath, "I took..." another breath, "... bike." He stood up, his face spread in a wide grin and his cheeks flushed red with exertion. He took another few deep breaths and finally managed to get his breathing under control, all the while Rose was staring at him with her eyebrows raised in bemusement.

"I took the bike this morning," he explained, finally being able to string words together properly again. "I had just parked it when I saw you at the lift. Seemed silly to not hurry to... Well, I was right there."  Rose nodded and smiled, "Right. Well, good morning." Benjamin's smile widened even further, "Morning!" he adjusted his messenger bag and reached in for a blue folder which he handed to her. "Here is the research you asked for, by the way. I thought you might like that first thing." She took the folder and flipped through the papers inside. "But...", she stared at him in disbelief, "I asked for this yesterday. When did you have time to do this?" "Oh, I stayed a bit later last night, that's all. No big deal."

The lift lunged to a halt and the doors slid open. They both stepped out, Rose still with a look of incredulity on her face. "Well done, Benjamin. Thank you." she finally managed to get out. "This will speed up the designs we're working on significantly. Really. Well done." With that she turned and headed with quick steps towards her office, leaving Benjamin behind. She knew that in a few minutes there would be a hot cup of tea on her desk and she knew it would be made just like she liked it.

When she was first offered the title of Assistant Director of Design she was hesitant, because she had never pictured herself as a Senior anything, let alone senior management at a multi-billion dollar coorporation. But after having Briony and settling in to the role as a mother and getting used to the routines of family life, her thirst for adventure had abated and she found herself actually wanting to climb the corporate ladder so she had accepted. The job came with an assistant, Benjamin, and he certainly made her life easier – the cups of tea was the smallest job he did. She had asked him a few times to let her make her own tea but he was adamant that the duty was part of his job description. Besides, they were the best cups of tea.

"Thanks, just put it on the table." she said without looking up from her paperwork when she heard the door to her office slide open. "Put what on the table?", a voice that did not belong to Benjamin responded. Rose snapped her head up and saw Gemma in the doorway. She laughed at the look on Rose's face and plonked herself in the chair on the opposite side of the desk, putting her feet on the edge of the desk.

Before either of them had the chance to say anything else, Benjamin appeared in the doorway Gemma had just vacated with the large cup of tea in his hands. "Thanks," Gemma trilled, "just put it on the table." Benjamin's smile came out looking more like a wince as he put the cup down. "Hey Ben, how about one for me?" Gemma smirked and nodded her head in the general direction of the kitchen. Rose interrupted Benjamin's retort with an apologetic look and a wave of her hand, indicating that he should just leave  and not listen to Gemma. When he had shut the door behind him, Rose turned to Gemma.

"You know he hates being called Ben. You should be nice to him. Who knows, you might actually like him if you gave him half a chance. And get your feet off my desk." Gemma snorted a derisively and reached for Rose's tea. "He's a brown-nose and you don't even see it. You could do better. Hire me! He probably makes more than me..." Rose laughed and waved the blue folder Benjamin had handed her earlier, "Do you think you could have done all the research on that power-station i Dubai in an evening?" Gemma slammed the cup down on the desk, sloshing tea over the rim, and snatched the folder from Rose's hands. "He didn't!", she called, disbelievingly. "The little sneak. How did he manage that? I haven't even started running the numbers." What sounded frighteningly like a snarl escaped her lips, "I swear he's doing it to make me look bad."

"Well," Rose laughed, "If he is – it's working. I'd start work on those numbers now, if I were you." Obviously fuming, Gemma stomped out of Rose's office. As she was closing the door Rose called after her "On my desk by five, please!"

~~~~

please keep in mind that none of this has been proofed or really even re-read before posting. some of it might not make sense in the short term… but this is nanowrimo! the start of epic re-writes. I would love your feedback and suggestions so feel free to put them in my ask or as an answer to this post. ?

[mostlynano]

Day 1 ~ Word Count: 1,745

"The adventurer shut the door of his spaceship behind him, laughing manically as he did so and wiping his sweaty brow with a dirty sleeve of his heavy overcoat. The people of the planet of Yorbs were a strange race, but highly amusing. His companion turned to him and with heaving breaths (for she was also laughing) congratulated him on a job well done – who would have expected him to win the local equivalent of the Olympics, especially in a sport so silly as that. Shrugging his coat off his shoulders and chucking it onto the railing of the walkway he walked over to his console..."

"No," he thought and put down his pen. He looked up without seeing, and rubbed his temples. His head would not leave him alone, again, and he was getting sick of not being in full control of his own thoughts and feelings. "It sounds too familiar," he whispered to himself and shaking his head he started crossing out the paragraphs he had already written. He wasn't quite sure why this was happening to him or how he could stop it, but there had been a long respite from the intrusive feelings and their sudden return had brought down his mood significantly.

The chair he was sitting in creaked familiarly and he could hear the muffled thuds and quite voices filtering through the floor from upstairs. He closed his eyes, leaned back and listened. Four quick but quiet thuds, one after another and then two heavier ones in quick succession followed by a piercing shriek of horror mingled with delight. He smirked to himself and in his mind's eye he could clearly see Rose chasing Briony around the nursery. Bath time, no doubt. He sat for a while longer, enjoying the mundanity of the moment and the safety and calm he was feeling. Ten years ago these moments were completely unknown to him. Not only that; they were unfathomable. He wouldn't only have been unable to imagine that moments of what seem to be dullness could hold such peace and serenity – but he would have been utterly unable to experience them.

His brain was not what it had been. Though he did not mourn the loss any longer he had spent a long time coming to grips with what he felt was a slow and unresponsive brain. While he was certainly more quick-witted than any person knew of he found that his brain worked differently. Slower. More human. The frustration had taken long to pass, but even now he would sometimes become slightly overwhelmed when a problem he knew he should be able to solve – had been able to solve – in a moment took him days. What he had lost in mental capacity he had gained in peace, however. Being able to sit in peace, worrying about nothing, enjoying mundanity and thinking only about... nothing was immeasurably pleasing to him.

Another shriek pulled him back to reality and he opened his eyes slowly, blinking in the late autumn sunlight which was filtering in through the window. He pulled the papers from the desk into the top drawer of the dresser with a practiced motion that showed how many times he had done it. The desk itself was dark cherry; wide and heavy with brass handles. It was a very old desk, given to him on his birthday nearly ten years ago now. He ran his hand over the surface which was nicked and worn, showing signs from previous owners who had not been kind to it. Every imperfection was well known to his fingertips and he had stories to match each of them. One particularly deep gash near the top left corner of the desktop was, he had decided, the result of a jealous wife confronting her unfaithful husband in his office. There were also traces of words here and there where the heavy penmanship from times gone by had left their mark. "IS LEAVING." was printed – indented –  in large block letters where he rested his right elbow when he wrote. He never had decided on which story he liked best for those markings...

He rose slowly and stretched and was about to turn to head upstairs when he felt two thin arms wrap around his left thigh and a small voice, muffled by his trousers, crying "Daddy, daddy, I don't want to have a bath!" He had not heard her footsteps down the stairs, but Briony – his four-year-old daughter and his pride and joy – had obviously thought coming downstairs was a smart move. But he knew better than to cross Rose on issues such as these. He loosened her grip of his leg gently and knelt down to face her; a stern look in his eyes but a smile betraying his true feelings. "But tonight is bath night! Having a bath is what we do on bath nights, you know that." Knowing him too well and playing him like a fiddle, she looked at him with watery eyes. "If I have a bath, will you read to me before I go to sleep?" He uttered a single-syllable burst of laughter and picked her up by the waist, heading for the stairs. "Sure think, kiddo." He closed the door behind him.

*

"You're such a softie," Rose punched his shoulder playfully as they crossed paths in the bedroom while getting ready for bed. "You know she's quite happy to take a bath, really. We were doing fine getting ready before she remembered about the story. That's when she snuck down to get you. She said she was getting her plastic boat from the bedroom, the little trickster." She began pulling the covers off the bed, dropping the decorative pillows on the little bench by the window as she did so.

"Well," Tom said with a sly grin, "I wonder where she gets that from. Certainly not from me. Anyway, I enjoy reading to her, you know that." He had his shirt halfway over his head but he could hear the look she was giving her. "Okay, fine. I shouldn't indulge her like that. I know, I know." He tossed his shirt in the hamper and went to the bathroom. The brightly lit room was definitely not decorated by him. After all these years he still didn't have the heart to tell Rose's mum Jackie that he hated it; the turquoise tiling had been her choice. Yawning, he reached for the toothbrush and toothpaste. "I wrote three more tonight," he called to Rose. Her head appeared in the doorway behind him and seeing at the look of concern in her mirrored face he shrugged. "I don't know why," was the answer to her unasked question. "I had to." He paused for a moment, dropping his gaze to the sink and then repeated, "I don't know why."

When he looked up again Rose had left the doorway and, he assumed, gone to bed. He brushed his teeth for a while longer than was strictly necessary and washed his face slowly and carefully, stalling for time and hoping she might be asleep by the time he finished. Or maybe at least pretending to be asleep. When he turned out the lights in the bathroom, both it and the bedroom fell into darkness. For a moment he was sure that she was asleep, but he had only taken a couple of steps beyond the threshold onto the soft carpet next to the bed when her voice pierced the silence. "I'm worried about you." Tom let out the breath he hadn't realised he was holding; it sounded like he was releasing a deep sigh. In response, Rose sat up and propped herself up on her elbows – he could see the frown on her face even in the gloom. "You should be worried about you, too," her voice had a tone of sharpness in it now. "You remember as well as I do last year when you started writing. How you felt. How you acted."

Tom sat down on the edge of the bed and kicked off his slippers. He smiled. "I know. I've tried to explain it, but I can't." His shoulders were beginning to quiver with laughter of joy which was bubbling up from inside him. The joy he was feeling was not his joy and he wanted nothing more than to not laugh at this moment so he drew deep breaths in an effort to calm himself down and bring himself back to the moment he was currently in. He sensed Rose's tension behind his back and knew that she was torn between anger and curiosity about what he was feeling. The urge to laugh abated and his true emotions were allowed space in him again. A hand closed around his shoulder and he sagged slightly. Despite the fact that Rose might seem – or even be – upset with his fickleness sometimes, he knew that she really was genuinely worried about him.

He laid down and pulled the covers over him, enjoying the warmth of Rose curled up next to him with her head on his shoulder. They wouldn't speak more tonight, he knew. Years of experience had made her well aware of how little he was able to put to words what he was going through. He ran his fingers through her hair absent-mindedly and closed his eyes. But sleep didn't come. His thoughts were focused on sorting through the wave of feelings he had felt just then. While confusing to feel emotions that didn't fit the moment he was in he knew that they weren't not his feelings. The belonged to him, and he didn't feel as though they were intrusive – instead they were only confusing and sometimes more than a little distressing. Experiencing alarm, fear or panic that didn't fit where he was or what he was doing at the time was almost as strange as feeling joy, excitement or even vertigo while doing something so banal as mowing the lawn. As he was used to the wave of exaltation he had experienced while sitting on the edge of the bed had left him feeling slightly empty when it had abated.

He drew a deep breath, trying to clear his head and the gentle perfume of Rose's shampoo filled his nose and he burrowed his nose into her curls. For the moment, the empty and unhappy feeling was pushed to the back of his mind and he drifted off to sleep soon thereafter.

~~~~ please keep in mind that none of this has been proofed or really even re-read before posting. some of it might not make sense in the short term... but this is nanowrimo! the start of epic re-writes. I would love your feedback and suggestions so feel free to put them in my ask or as an answer to this post. ?

[mostlynano]

This is my Gallifreyan translation of the name Rose Tyler, as written by Tentoo. His perspective is important, as you'll see.

The first, small, circle (top left) is a symbol I took from the centre of the symbol for 'birth'. I mentioned this in an earlier post, but I decided that it symbolises belonging/family - and so I use it in all names.

The second and largest circle is an amalgamate of three symbols: grow, land and water. The three together have been used to symbolise flower (and/or plant) in general, and so here it stands for Rose.

The symbol at the bottom right is also an amalgamate, of the symbols for land and touch, with the raselion link 'will'. Together they make up a symbol for labourer/worker (literally "someone who touches the land"), and as the name Tyler has the meaning "the maker/layer of tiles" it stands for her surname here.

The middle symbol is of particular significance to Tentoo when writing her name. While the symbols for Rose and Tyler might stand alone to make up her name, this symbol - an amalgamate of the symbols for rock, laugh and we - symbolises companionship and/or friendship. This doesn't necessarily contrast or exclude symbols for love, family or partner, but holds particular significance in Rose's name due to their relationship as it was and as it is.