seen from United Kingdom
seen from Bulgaria
seen from United States
seen from Russia
seen from Germany
seen from Russia
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Maldives
seen from United States
seen from Australia
seen from United States
seen from China
seen from China
seen from Singapore
seen from United States
seen from Poland
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
the glist and the glam I love them
Experimenting with a slight bit more variation in their designs, I think I like the squarer hinge but I’ll keep changing it up regardless lol
also wanted to show off glam’s little claws, he’s insecure about them but the few toons who have seen them think they’re cool :] (also at this point in the story they’re still way too blistered/raw to not wear bandages but they do heal up eventually)
Long time no see!
The People's Republic of TentooRose Discord Server is thrilled to anounce that we're once again organising a gift exchange stretching across various mediums, exclusively for our favs in Pete’s World💞🥰
FAQ
GUIDELINES
SCHEDULE
(Reblogs much appreciated!)
Idk man, boredom? Procrastination? I dunno just doodle this for fun
Anyway, garden duality au belongs to @thesknight
📺💚{ I'm getting old }🌈🌼
(i saw tenna getting old doodles and now i need to make that crt suffer)
2007.
The years had gone by so quickly. It felt like yesterday that Gardenview had shut down. Dandy looked at the fading paint on the walls with a deep sense of sorrow. The nostalgia from the once bright walls plagued their mind. The way each toon had changed as they walked past them in the lobby felt so foreign.
Every time Shelly showed off a crack on her shell she got from surviving a twisted.
Every time Astro and Brightney walked past and made a comment about what would be the most optimal team.
Every time Pebble ran around with Looey to practice catching twisteds’ attention.
Each one a punch in the gut to the Dandy. They would watch the toons from their shop and sigh with longing. Longing for before the shutdown. Longing for the good old days again.
One afternoon, Dandy was sitting at their shop, humming along to the radio’s old songs when the elevator opened. They looked over as Vee stepped from the elevator. She slowly walked over to the group of toons near Dandy’s shop. Brightney waved as she joined the group. Dandy prepared a witty tease for her when they paused. Vee was struggling to tie her bowtie. Dandy watched as her stiffened hands struggled to tie the ribbon, and eventually failed. Her face scrunched into frustration as she gave up.
Dandy’s brow furrowed as they watched her, and were about to offer to help. Brightney turned to them, “All right Dandy! I think we got all the toons we need for the run!” She said. The flower snapped from their thoughts, “Oh! Right! Head on down! I’ll see you soon!” they cheerfully exclaimed. The toons loaded into the elevator. Dandy kept their eyes as vee slowly walked into the elevator. Their eyes held mild concern as the door closed.
Dandy opened up their shop to the party still talking. Light conversation buzzed throughout the elevator. No toons approached Dandy’s shop. That’s fine, it's only floor 2. Their eyes softly wandered to the toons. Brightney was talking with Connie, Looey was getting lectured by Cosmo for having one heart already, Yatta was teasing Shrimpo, and Astro was helping Vee tie her bowtie. Their eyes remained on vee as she was frustratedly trying to push him away. Astro, however, was determined and tied her bowtie anyway. Vee turned away from him afterwards, and Astro headed to the shop. Dandy put on their signature grin as Astro approached. “Heya Astro! Got a few tapes for a flower like me?” they asked. Astro shook his head. “Ah, no, I'm saving them this floor. Sorry dandy.” he responded.
Dandy assured him, “Oh no problem buddy! I've gotta ask though, what's up with vee? I know since the shutdown she’s gotten slower but it's almost… eh…” They began. Astro finished their sentence, “Concerning? Yes… Vee has had a bit of trouble lately with movement and doing precise things with her hands, such as tying a bowtie…” Dandy’s smile faltered to a face of concern. “It’s hard to even think this, but I think all of this is age related…” Astro said, which made Dandy blurt out, “It can't be that! Vee’s a robot, she should be the one who withstands time better than all of us! Right??? You're not saying she’s old, right?” the moon toon looked down a bit, and said “She has been walking slower since the shutdown, and you know that most technology has a limit before it st-”
“Don’t say that Astro.”
Dandy’s voice darkened when they said that. Astro stopped and began to walk away. The flower dug their hands into the table. Time couldn’t be the reason for her slowness right? It couldn’t be.
Vee was struggling.
Her joints ached when she ran, she found it difficult to open the pop cans to replenish her stamina, along with various other things with her stiff and achy joints. It was humiliating. Vee had to be more careful than ever around twisteds, because now it started to hurt to run.
After a handful of floors without buying a single thing from Dandy, the haunted music box began to play. The elevator opened to one of the rainbow floors. Vee pulled out her microphone and tapped it. “Is this thing on?” she said out of habit. Her voice felt like it held more static than usual. Illuminated by her dim green light was Dandy themself, twisted looey, twisted teagen, and twisted connie. A fine batch of twisteds. Vee only had three to worry about. Brightney looked over to vee as the other toons began to walk out. “Vee? Hey… are you sure you're going to be all right on this floor? You haven’t been doing too well recently.” She asked. Vee’s antenna flattened. “I’m fine, I'm perfectly capable of completing the floor on my own.” She responded with a soft hiss from her air vents. Brightney nodded. “I know vee I guess I just worry about you! You’ve got to be careful Vee!” The lamp responded. Vee turned away and slowly walked off to find a machine.
God she hated being such a slow runner.
Most of the time when she saw a machine in the distance, some other toon would beat her to it before she even got there. Her legs were killing her as she ran around, finally getting onto a free machine. Sure the placement was close to the broken elevator, meaning if the last machine was completed as she completed this one, it would be tricky to run to the elevator in time without her body giving out. She barely noticed she finished the machine while thinking. The last machine wasn’t done! She could take her time-
Dandy was right there at the doorway, heading for the completed machine.
Vee yelped and turned around quickly, running into the hallway to go around. Dandy followed her, close on her tail.
Her legs burned from all the running she was doing earlier.
Her fans hummed loudly in her antenna, it didn't feel like they were doing anything to cool her down.
Her joints were aching from all the use.
She slowed down and stopped sprinting, instead leaning against the wall then crumpling to the ground. She sat with her back to the wall. Wincing at the ache in her legs. Dandy stopped completely, staring at her. Vee turned her head to them. “Well?? What are you… what are you waiting for, trash heap?! Get on with it! Just redraw me in the lobby already!” She spat. Her loud fans mirrored heavy breathing. They didn’t budge, instead asking in a more raspy voice, “Why aren’t you running? You still have stamina left and I know it!” Vee looked down with frustration. She hated having to admit this. “I can’t run like i could back when gardenview opened, heck i cant run like i could when the operation began! It-” She buzzed and rested her head on her knees.
“It hurts to run.”
Dandy’s petals quivered as they began to lie down beside her. Vee looked defeated. Their head rested right beside her. “It’s terrifying to me Dan. I feel like im… slowly failing.” She said, and one of her hands went up to her screen. It took dandy time to notice how her signature grin had burned into her screen just faintly, or how the light of her screen would waver every now and then. Signs of age they had seen from other CRT TVs around Gardenview. “Sometimes I wonder if the ‘upgrade’ was actually a good idea in the end. I mean, right now I'm not even sure I have a lot of time-” Vee began, but dandy interrupted her with a snarl, "Don't say that!!! I don’t want to hear some spiel about you being outdated or something! You’re going to be fine! You hear me?!”
She turned to them, and her eyes softened. “I didn’t expect that out of you. What changed Dandy? Heck I would've thought you’d be in favor of the ‘upgrade’.” She said, They looked visibly offended. “In favor- NO! You know well that vee version 2 wasn’t an ‘upgrade’ it was a replacement! Just because you're my rival doesn’t mean I want you dead!” they snarled. Vee scoffed, “don’t want me dead? You were literally just chasing me to kill me.” she said. Dandy snarled, “Not the same! I can redraw you! Plus YOU didn’t buy anything at my shop! It was coming for you! Not the point!” they snapped.
Vee couldn’t help but laugh a bit. “Vee, you may be my biggest rival, but I don't want you thinking that about yourself.” Dandy said. Her antenna drooped. Vee said after a brief moment of silence, “thanks for that Dan. Geez you're the last toon I expected to do this for me.” Dandy gently nudged their head against her. “Hey, the only one who can tease my best rival is me! Besides, our rivalry doesn't mean I don't care about you cathode.” They said. The tv smiled softly.
The elevator door opened.
Vee began to get up, leaning against the wall still. “Are you still going to kill me Dan?” She asked. Dandy gritted their teeth, “Oh i cant kill you after that sweet talk we had! It doesn’t feel right!” They sounded so frustrated. Vee laughed and waved. “Then I'll see you when you open up shop!” She said, and turned, stumbling a bit as she got her balance back. “Can you get to the elevator on time?” Dandy asked behind her. Vee shrugged and responded, “I’ll be fine.” As she hobbled, she heard a sudden loud burst behind her. Before she could turn around, she felt Dandy take her hand. They were back in their toon form. “You could do that this whole time?” Vee said, a little taken back by the sudden shift in form. “Don’t worry about it cathode. Come on.” they said, and held her hand so gently. Vee’s gaze softened and she looked away. “Geez quit being all sappy…” She said, and dandy smirked. “Oh come on! Lighten up! Not like we have to be all snippy with each other anymore. It's been quite a long time since the shutdown.”
Vee’s eyes opened and widened at that sudden realization. It had been years since Gardenview shut down. What was keeping their rivalry up anymore?
The toons in the elevator looked stunned as Dandy let go of Vee’s hand, and she entered. She barely was able to wave and say thank you before the elevator slammed on them. “What was up with that Vee??? Did I see that right?” Cosmo asked her cautiously. He went over to check if she was hurt. “I’m fine Cosmo. It was really nothing.” vee said. “I thought you guys HATED each other!! What happened???” Yatta exclaimed. The tv shrugged, “I don’t exactly know, I guess the best way to describe it is...” Vee hesitated before saying,
“It was a friend helping another.”
(the oneshot collection)
"You have a stupid face and it's my favourite one to stare at."
it's just so drunk 12
- 🐢
"Your favourite, really?" You teased, grin wide enough to split your lips spreading across your face. "Out of all the faces on all the planets- mine is your favourite?"
The Doctor squirmed a little under your gaze, clearly perturbed by your intense reaction to this piece of news.
"I, look- don't be giving me that face. That expression, stop it. Stupid face with stupid big eyes."
Of course, this only made you peer at him with even more affection in your gaze.
"It's still your favourite, though," you chuckled, nudging his shoulder with your own.
"Oh, shut it."
Title TBD S1E10: "Setting In"
hii i was gonna wait like another week to post this but im impatient as hell so im just posting it now LOL (also episode 11 is pretty close to being done anyways so like eh)
anyways goob is officially part of the group now!! they're all here omg.. they get to be dysfunctional... tearing up.. NFASKF
also some sprout existentialism in here at the end, be warned! i will never ever treat him well <3
----------
Sprout and Cosmo emerged from the kitchen, Sprout holding the tray of cookies they’d just finished baking. They were heading back to the base to give them to the others, though Cosmo stopped as something near the elevator caught his eye. …It kinda looked like Goob? Hard to tell from that distance. "...Hey, uh- go on ahead, I'll be right there.”
Sprout turned his head to look back at Cosmo. "Everything alright?”
"Yeah”
"Uhh- alright. Be careful.” Sprout nodded before continuing on to the base. Cosmo glanced around to make sure Twisted Brightney wasn't around, before walking towards the elevator. It was Goob! He was standing in front of the elevator, just kind of.. staring at it.
"Goob?”
"Huh-?” Goob turned around. "Oh- heya Cosmo” He greeted, smiling despite not sounding nearly as enthusiastic as usual. Cosmo raised an eyebrow in confusion, taking another glance around before looking back at him.
"Didn't the run already…" Cosmo trailed off as he caught sight of the scratch on Goob's leg, suddenly realizing why he was still there. "...oh..”
"Yeahhh.” Goob shrugged, glancing down somewhat dejectedly.
Cosmo thought for a moment, hesitating for a few seconds before offering his arms out with a small smile. Goob looked back up at him in surprise, before returning the smile and pulling him into a hug.
“You okay?” Cosmo asked softly.
Goob was quiet for a moment before shrugging. “I'm not.. really sure..”
Cosmo nodded, patting his back empathetically. “I- I get it, yeah…”
…
“Hey, um… me and Sprout made cookies if you wanna come eat some with us.. uh- the others are here too.”
Goob pulled out of the hug, visibly intrigued. “Oh- really?”
Cosmo nodded, pointing towards the base. “Yeah, and we have a little safe space you can stay in with us !” He explained with a warm smile, hoping to try and at least help Goob feel somewhat better. Luckily it seemed to work, as Goob smiled again. “Oh neato! Thanks buddy!”
“Mhm! C'mon!” Cosmo gently took Goob's hand as he turned around and started walking towards the base.
Sprout had definitely not just been standing by the doorway watching Cosmo for most of that interaction just to make sure he was safe. Definitely not. Why would he ever. Though he eventually turned around and walked into the base, holding the tray behind his back. The others were just kinda standing around near the boarded up doorway to the other room.
“Oh so you decided to actually come in, okay.” Tisha stated as Sprout walked in. Sprout blinked a few times.
“....Uh- anyways. I know spirits have been kinda low lately, sooo.. me and Cosmo made cookies for everyone!” He held the tray out in front of him as he very unsubtly changed the subject, and the others quickly switched their focus onto the cookies instead.
“We are never eating healthy again” Vee laughed as she grabbed a cookie from the tray.
“Say, where is Cosmo? Shouldn’t he be with you?” Rodger asked.
Sprout blinked a few times. “Oh- uhh, he’s-”
“Right here !” Cosmo called out as he entered the base, waving at the group. He then stepped aside to reveal that Goob had been standing behind him, who waved as well. “..Got room for one more?” Cosmo asked with a sheepish smile.
“No not really” Rodger shrugged, Tisha immediately elbowing him hard as fuck in the ribs.
“Uh-” Sprout glanced behind him. “..We’ll figure something out, it’s alright.”
He set the tray down on a nearby shelf and walked over to Goob, taking a second to look at the scratch on his leg. “We’ve got a few medkits to spare, I could patch that up for you if you’d want.” Sprout offered, looking up at Goob who just suddenly had a cookie now for some reason.
“Oh! That’d be great! It’d be kinda hard to do it with my claws.” He nodded before taking a bite of the cookie.
“Mhm, c’mere” Sprout walked a little further into the base, grabbing a medkit as Goob sat down on a crate. He kneeled down in front of him, opened the medkit and started bandaging Goob’s leg.
Vee tapped her microphone against her chin as she looked over at the boarded up doorway beside them. “So that’s,, 6 toons down here now. That room can only really hold 5 of us, meaning we’ll have to expand our base out here as well. We can probably just move the boards to this entrance though, shouldn't be too hard.”
Sprout nodded. “Alright, we can get to that once I’m done.”
Goob took another bite of his cookie. “Vee, what's-”
Tisha put a hand in front of his face. “Goob, ew, don't talk with your mouth full.”
“Oh-! Sorry !” Goob quickly swallowed, laughing a little before restarting his sentence. “Vee, what's it like knowing so much?”
“Oh god, don't get her started..” Tisha grumbled, putting her face in her hand.
A huge grin quickly formed on Vee's face, and she leaned against the wall with one arm. “Glad you asked! The knowledge and information I've recorded helps in my day to day.”
“Oh! Yeah I bet it would!”
Vee's tail wagged with pride. “Yep! I know everything I would need to know.”
“Wow!” Goob tapped his chin in thought. “..Do you even know how to give the best hugs?” He asked, tilting his head to the side.
Vee stared at him for a moment. “..I said everything I would need to know, Goob.”
Goob shrugged. “Hey, you never know when it might be useful! Someone could be real upset and need a big hug!”
“Well, then we'll have you for that, Goob.” Vee shrugged, before glancing down at Goob’s leg.
Oh hey.
Hey no they wouldn’t.
Vee went still, a bit startled and disturbed by the realization, despite having already known that was the reason he was there in the first place. She guessed she just hadn’t really thought about it yet. And she didn't want to now either so she quickly decided to change the subject-
“Alright, I'm done.” Sprout announced as he finished bandaging Goob's leg, standing up.
Oh.
“Thanks, Sprout!” Goob said cheerfully, standing up as well.
Sprout nodded. “No problem.” He turned around and walked to the other side of the room to stand next to Cosmo.
The room was quiet for a moment before Vee decided to speak up, clapping her hands together and stretching her arms out. “Welp, uhh I'd say we should go ahead and get these boards moved now.”
The others agreed, and they all soon got to work on taking down the boards and moving them to the other doorway. It definitely took a bit- this wasn't exactly the most coordinated team ever and a few random arguments and distractions made it take way longer than it needed to, but in the end they eventually managed, and hey nobody got hurt. Somehow. None of them really knew how the group had the competence to achieve that but hey they were done so who cares.
“Hey Sprout, we're done.” Vee called out, and a few moments later Sprout walked back over to the base, smiling as he saw the boarded up doorway. “Oh, hey, good job guys.”
Vee leaned back against the boards, resting her elbows on them. “Yep, thanks for helping.”
Sprout rolled his eyes. “Hey- you're all out in the open when there's a dangerous twisted out here, I had to-”
Tisha scoffed. “Oh, ‘dangerous twisted’ as if that's not what we're gonna be in a few days.”
“Wha-”
“Hey uh can we. Not talk about that right now..” Cosmo murmured, shoving his hands in his pockets and looking at the ground. Sprout put an arm around his shoulder. “Yeah guys c'mon don't say that in front of Cosmo.”
Vee blinked a few times. “Wh… uh- okay let's just go inside and like Not think about our mortality right now-”
“Fuck you mean ‘our’ you are not even infected.” Tisha interrupted, though Goob stepped in between them before Vee could respond.
“Guys, hey, c'mon! We're a team, we shouldn't be fighting!”
“Yeah let's just-” Vee went quiet as she suddenly froze up, staring past the group.
“..Everyone get inside.” She murmured, her voice quiet yet holding a seriousness that caught everyone off guard.
“Wha-”
“Inside. Now.”
She quickly ushered everyone into the base, going in after them and just standing there for a moment. “...Hold on.” She pressed her fingers to the side of her head, antennae moving around for a few long, quiet seconds before she let out a quick sigh. “Alright, we should be good now.”
Tisha squinted at her. “So uhh- what the fuck was that-?”
“Anyways we’re way too cramped so like who’s gonna be staying in which room? It’d definitely be more risky to be in this one since we’re in clearer sight of uhhhh-”
Sprout stepped forward. raising his hand. “I’ll stay out here.”
Vee blinked a few times. “..Oh! Yeah I don’t know why I didn’t expect that from you.”
“Uh.. I’ll stay here too then.” Cosmo chimed in. Sprout turned around to look at him.
“You sure?”
“Yeah, I’ll be fine.” He nodded.
Vee glanced around at the others. “Right, so that’d be Sprout and Cosmo out here, and Rodger, Goob, Tisha and I in the main room- that sound good to everyone?”
The group all gave their agreements, and Vee nodded. They all moved to their respective rooms, settling down in preparation to do.. absolutely nothing for the rest of the day. It was only about 1PM and there wasn’t much they could do besides just talk to each other or sleep, so they genuinely just sat there in silence for several minutes.
“..Do you guys do anything down here?” Goob asked, which garnered an astounding “No.” from Vee. Amazing.
Sprout tapped on Vee’s head, making her antennae twitch as she booted up a few moments after. She looked up at Sprout, eyes squinted and unfocused with the grogginess of just waking up. “..Hm? Sprout..?”
“...Where’d everyone go?”
There was nobody in the base.
Vee glanced around before just shrugging and going back to sleep. Seemed like she wasn’t in the mood to worry about that.
Sprout looked up at the clock on the wall. Both hands were on 6, one of them stuttering as if trying to move but not having the momentum to go further than an inch before falling back.
‘Must be broken..’ Sprout thought, turning around and heading out of the base.
The boards were gone from the door, but he hardly even noticed. He was much more concerned about finding the missing Toons. Though he soon did- turning a corner and being met with the sight of them standing in a group- all covered in ichor and staring at him with piercing red eyes.
Sprout stumbled back, panic rushing through him. Though he barely had time to process it before-
SLAM!
Something crashed into his side, sending him flying into the wall nearby. He groaned as he rubbed his head, before quickly looking up and seeing..
“COSMO-!?”
The Twisted in front of him let out a loud- almost pained shriek, raising its clawed, ichor covered hand in the air before-
Sprout’s eyes snapped open, gasping as he felt the wind knocked out of him.
He was back in the base.
He looked to his side- Cosmo was there, sleeping peacefully against him as if nothing was wrong. He peered into the other room and saw that everyone else was where they should be as well, all fast asleep.
Sprout let out a long, relieved sigh, leaning back against the crate behind him and taking a moment to let his heartbeat steady. That was.. that was fake. They were fine. Cosmo was fine. Well- as fine as he could be right now. He glanced back at his friend, taking a good few moments to look over him. The ichor on his face had spread down to his eye.. the poor guy had barely been able to open it lately. His sleeve was stained with ichor that was seeping through from his arm..
Sprout felt his heart twist in his chest- suddenly reminded of just how little time they really had now.
Which.. yeah, they’d literally talked about it earlier that day, but it still hurt each time he fully processed it.
Sprout wiped his eye, hardly registering the tears that were forming in it.
‘I can’t let this get to me.. I can’t..’
He pulled Cosmo closer to himself, taking a deep breath and just trying to force himself to go back to sleep. He’d be there for Cosmo tomorrow, and.. and they could try and make the most of this.. yeah.
...
How many days did they have again?
Rodger said one time that it took.. 9? 9 full days to fully twist..? It’d been… 5 by now. Which meant there were 4 left.
The realization hit like a punch to the gut.
Only 4 days.
It hardly felt real- He’d never had to deal with anything without Cosmo before, what would this even mean?? He genuinely couldn’t even imagine how things would be after this.
He couldn’t hear himself think well enough to focus on that for very long. ..When did it get so loud in there? What was happening? Who was talking to him right now?? He swore he was seeing things in the shadows- His grip on Cosmo only tightened, a groan coming out that his brain processed as being way louder than it actually was before he realized-
The noise was Cosmo.
Sprout had been holding onto him so hard in his panic that he’d accidentally woken him up.
He immediately let go, apologizing profusely as Cosmo rubbed his eye tiredly.
“Ugh… Sprout..? Wha- what’s going on.. you’re shaking…” He murmured, sitting up a little.
Sprout ran his fingers through his leaves, letting out a deep sigh as he leaned back against the crate. “I- I’m sorry, I’m just… I’m thinking about.. stuff, uh…” He glanced at Cosmo, a bit of a dazed look on his face before he looked down at his lap. “I.. I don’t know..” He mumbled, really not having any idea how to put his thoughts together, or if he should even tell Cosmo what was bothering him so much.
Cosmo was quiet for a moment before gently resting a hand on top of Sprout’s, a small but appreciated gesture. “..Hey, you.. you wanna talk about it..?”
Sprout was quiet for a moment before shaking his head. “...No”
Cosmo nodded, letting out a small yawn before responding. “Alright… well, if you do tomorrow, I’m… here to listen…” He murmured drowsily, slowly leaning against Sprout as his eyes began to close again. He was clearly about to fall back asleep, and Sprout really didn’t wanna keep him up anymore- he wasn’t supposed to have woken him up in the first place.
“Alright… Thanks, Coz..” Sprout mumbled, placing a hand on top of Cosmo’s head, causing a small smile to form on his face as he started to doze off. “Mhm…”
Sprout was definitely up for a little while after that. Mostly just watching over Cosmo, watching the rise and fall of his chest as he breathed, feeling the weight of his hand on top of Sprout’s own, it helped to ground him a bit and remember that; at the very least; he was still here right now. All wasn’t lost yet. And for now, that’d have to be enough.
----------
Extemporary Intimacy
[ TenRose, Explicit, First Time (literally) ]
What if the Doctor was bluffing when he told Rose that he "danced"? What if this new-new Doctor is the first incarnation that actually wants to dance?
I wound up spending nearly my entire Sunday rereading/re-editing/generally punching up one of my older smutfics. If you're a fan of this fic, you would probably enjoy it much more now 💖
Read on Ao3
OR read the first chapter right here, below the cut.
NOTE: This is not a WIP! The entire fic has been tweaked/“remastered” (for lack of a better word). I just threw the first one on here as a preview for anyone who hasn’t read it :)
Part I
It all happened quite abruptly once his face went and changed on him.
Same man, same memories, same consciousness.
New face, new body, new brain.
Quite suddenly, the Doctor had become pleasantly youthful in ways he hadn’t experienced in several hundred years. He truly did feel like a new man, and not just in the physical sense. He felt younger and lighter on his feet, filled with a vibrant, wonderfully manic energy that he embraced with every bit of nuance that accompanied the revitalization of everything that made him, him.
Regeneration had never gone so well.
All of his senses were teeming with a fresh and sprightly effervescence, driving pleasurable stimuli and all sorts of sensory input with a level of clarity he’d never experienced so crisply.
He wanted to touch and taste everything in new and exciting ways he’d never conceived of before, which he’d been going about quite enthusiastically — often in the company of his favorite companion, Rose Tyler.
Interesting tidbit about that particular companion: in only a year, without so much as an inkling of intention on his end, he’d begun to develop some very… human feelings for her.
He hadn’t been trying to, really. Well, not even “really”- he had not been trying. She just went right along and burrowed her way into his hearts before he’d even realized it was happening, and before he knew it, he was being quite reckless indeed — and not just in the interest of ensuring her safety.
With Rose, he found himself divulging information about his past that he’d never shared with anyone, allowing his eyes to linger shamelessly on her smile, holding her so very close for what might be considered far too long… All things he’d managed to get through life just fine without needing to do with anyone else.
For over nine hundred years, the Doctor hadn’t pursued romance (rather — not much, comparatively speaking), nor some of the other more, erm… carnal activities typically associated with such a thing. Bloody distraction was all that was, as far as his species was concerned, given that Time Lords and Gallifreyans alike had long since evolved past such biological proclivities. There was no need for it.
He’d been, for lack of a better word, asexual.
He’d never needed sex; never craved it.
Never had it.
Never cared.
Why would he? He wasn’t human and didn’t pretend to be (or so he told himself). He’d gotten on fine without sex, and he intended to keep it that way. It wasn’t even so much as a fleeting thought or conscious choice. He might as well ponder the reality of what life would be like if he’d instead existed as a blade of grass, because that was about as relevant as the thought of sex. It was like trying to hear out of your big toe.
Then came Rose Tyler.
… Right. You’re still asexual, but you’re also changing. You’re less callous. Less miserable. Less serious.
From her perspective, it had to be a gradual thing. Of course it was gradual for her. She was only nineteen when he met her, and one year was only 1/19th of her entire life.
For the Doctor, however, the transformation happened so fast that it took his breath away.
Rose was probably used to blokes becoming enraptured with her in a trice, bending to her every whim, swarming around her like randy little bats out of hell. He may not have desired her the way a human would, but he also wasn’t blind.
From the first time he saw her, he knew she was gorgeous. He could look at Rose and feel himself become imbued with pleasant tingles the way he would when looking upon the supernova of Cassiopeia, recognizing the beauty therein and appreciating it as a lovely and splendid thing. It brought him joy, watching her.
That didn’t mean he wanted to have sex with her.
Honestly, it seemed to work out just fine for both of them.
Then came Jack Harkness.
Really, it shouldn’t have been as jarring as it was — hearing Rose hold this strange man in such high regard immediately after meeting him. He was a bit pretty. Pompous. Overly confident, maybe. Reprehensibly charming, unfortunately.
And Jack wasn’t that bad. He was a decent enough… bloke.
Suffice to say, perhaps the Doctor’s main gripe was that the so-called “Captain” made him more than a little aware of something he never thought possible:
He was jealous of him.
He didn’t want to admit it (so thank god he didn’t), but in his hearts, he knew it to be true. Made even more glaringly obvious when Rose had the audacity to suggest, with no shortage of innuendo, that Captain Jack was preferable to him because he ‘danced’.
That was frustrating for two reasons: the first of which was that she was right.
The second, was that he cared.
Actually, there were three reasons: the third one being that he felt insecure enough in that moment to lie to her in hopes of shifting her perception of him, thus making him the more suitable bachelor in her eyes. Him! The 900-year-old libidoless extraterrestrial who most certainly did not ‘dance’ — the more suitable bachelor! The universe’s most unavailable bachelor, even. Molto bene.
And how did he expect that to work out, exactly? Sweet, stunning, sexually-viable human female Rose Tyler choosing him over pretty, ‘dancing’ Jack Harkness? “Well, isn't that fantastic? I’m happy you prefer me to Jack. Now, if you wouldn’t mind never engaging in sexual intercourse ever again in favor of preventing my inevitable jealousy despite us not actually being in an explicitly defined romantic relationship, that’d be brilliant. Cheers!”
What was his plan, then? There wasn’t one. And, instead of even attempting to come up with a plan — something that he generally excelled quite brilliantly at, ta — he chose to continue on with the way things were, denying his archaic feelings of budding romance.
There was no call for such feelings leaking in just because Rose happened to stumble into his life when he was on the brink of letting himself go out in a blaze of [no] glory [whatsoever]. She may have gently swept up the broken pieces of his soul and fused them back together with a woman’s tender touch, but that didn’t necessitate the development of feelings.
Which is why it’s a shame he went and developed them anyway.
The Doctor still had control, of course. He was a calculated man. Finding himself flirting with the onset of an innocent crush couldn’t be that bad as long as he never acted on it — never gave her false hope. He had a duty across time and space; something bigger and more important than foolish, primitive love. Rose would just have to accept it, he thought. She would have to understand the same way that he did. It was for the greater good of the universe that he did not become entangled with her.
Then came Bad Wolf.
Rose Tyler risked her life to save him, and in doing so, she not only saved his life but the whole of reality.
He could still see it. Could still hear her: ‘My Doctor’. Everywhere, he could feel her.
Then that kiss… The kiss of life and death. Rose’s pillowy-soft lips, the fire of the Time Vortex flooding his brain and body, ripping apart every cell at the seams until it finally happened: Regeneration.
Rose didn’t care for it at first, of course. Bit barmy when the man you (presumably, given the pre-death speech) fancy goes and shape-shifts in a burst of light in front of you.
Straight away, he’s rushing madly about in an old leather jacket that’s practically melting off of him like one of Dali’s fabled clocks, wittering on about how he’s the same man, attempting to babble his way through the fact that things are about to be very different now and there’s absolutely nothing either of them can do about it — but no matter, do you remember hopping, Rose? Hopping for our lives?
(Some genius he was.)
As much as her initial rejection hurt, the Doctor didn’t blame her. He couldn’t. He also couldn’t allow himself to be too upset when she asked if he could change back — it was a perfectly human reaction to an utterly alien phenomenon, and he hadn’t even warned her.
He hadn't realized the depth of just how much he’d changed until after that, however.
He'd had a taste of it when he first met her frightened gaze with brand new eyes; felt it even more so when he took her hand. Initially, he chalked it up to post-regeneration buzz, not having much time to dwell on it before he went and lost consciousness in the street near her flat.
But it didn’t let up.
Suddenly, holding her hand stirred feelings and sensations inside his body and mind that he’d never experienced before. And oh, how her hand fit so perfectly in his now... His lingering stares became caresses with his eyes each time she looked away; he buried his face in her hair (and at times, her neck) when they shared long, arguably quite intimate hugs; he resisted the urge to follow her into her bedroom every single night…
He just wanted to hold her. Touch her, constantly. Smell, watch, listen to her. Taste her.
He wanted her.
He wanted Rose, which— for all intents and purposes— was a brand new phenomenon for him. He’d never known what it was like to want anyone that way, and it was terrifying, knowing there was no guessing how that “want” would come to manifest itself in his new body.
That is, until about a week into his regeneration.
x
‘Rose’s hair looks exceptionally soft today’.
Hm.
That thought was… new.
The Doctor had been having a lot of those since he changed: new thoughts about Rose.
Another new thought would be, ‘How long is too long to stare at your companion’s hair before it becomes inappropriate?’
Logic would indicate that if you have to ask, you’ve probably been doing it too long.
It’s unfortunate, then, that the logic didn’t come into play until Rose caught onto his burst of hyper-fixation, spotting his spacey gaze from the other side of the TARDIS console and narrowing her eyes.
At the realization that she was staring inquisitively back at him, the Doctor brushed it off as though he’d spotted an errant lock of hair and was having difficulty deciding between whether he should fix it himself or inform her of the dire situation at hand.
He chose the former, of course; practically catapulted himself into her personal space and brought his fingers up to the side of her head to tuck a random, perfectly-placed strand down with the rest of the equally perfect strands.
Just for good measure, his rebellious fingers soon found themselves framing her head on either side; gently patting downward to ensure everything was even, almost stroking at the sides of her head.
Oh, yes. It was very soft.
Had her hair always felt so nice? Had he ever touched it before? Not deliberately, he supposed — why would he? That would be, erm, inappropriate, maybe. Except he’d just gone and done it, and the adorable, confused expression on her face actually made him blush. Blush! He could feel warmth spreading through his body rapidly, washing over him in ways he wasn’t familiar with at all, but — to his immense chagrin — seemed to welcome quite readily.
Mm, he couldn’t possibly get close enough to Rose. At proximity, her scent was almost too much, but in the best way. He could just about taste her. Which he really, really would have liked to. She was so close to his face; nearly perfect tasting distance. I’ll bet even having a lick of her forehead would taste nice, he thought.
Without any conscious direction on his part, his gaze charted off course, soon finding itself marooned over luscious, perfect lips. The gloss clung perfectly to the shapely rises of her mouth; a soft magenta hue that'd clearly been applied by practiced hands.
Distantly, the Doctor felt the unfamiliar heat return; it gathered deep before spreading downward, sinking through his lower abdominopelvic quadrants.
Yes, he could remember exactly what it felt like to kiss her. He found himself wishing he’d have told her about the kiss on the Game Station, because now would be a really good time to verify whether or not she’d be receptive to perhaps repeating the gesture. Her lips were parted just so; pulling him in…
“Er, Doctor?” Rose’s soft, quiet voice snapped him out of his trance. "Is... something the matter?"
Blinking rapidly, he met her gaze with wide eyes.
“Oh! Erm, yes. Yes, I’m- aah…”
He froze, mouth hanging uselessly ajar.
Because something was happening.
Something had… changed.
Something that, while only just becoming apparent to him, may likely be quite shockingly apparent to anyone else — to the point that the Doctor was terrified to look down and verify it.
He was even more terrified for Rose to look down.
So he bolted out of the room before she even had a chance, ignoring Rose’s questioning call as it faded beneath the sound of his feet hitting the grating.
He made his way to his bedroom, where he swiftly flung the door shut behind him. He twisted the lock and spun around, pressing his back into the wood as though he was worried his companion was going to attempt to break in after him.
Warily, the Doctor looked down to assess the situation at hand; to confront this new affliction of which he was a perfect stranger.
His eyes grew round again.
Blinking a few times, he drew a long, steady breath that he blew out through tightly pursed lips, reaching up to press his palm against his forehead.
"Oh."
x
‘What the hell was that about?!’
With an audible huff, Rose crossed her arms and leaned against the console.
The Doctor was acting strange, as per recent usual. Had been since he changed, really.
He was still him, of course — she’d accepted as much fairly quickly, embracing the new him wholeheartedly — but she wouldn’t deny there were… changes.
Not just in the way he looked, either.
He was sweeter. More affectionate. Bloody near communicating exclusively through flirting and teasing and touch, and he always seemed so bubbly and happy when they were around each other. Not to mention, he was absolutely eyeing her constantly, whether he’d admit it or not.
Rose would've been hard-pressed to consider a single one of these things a problem, but she was a little miffed they hadn’t once discussed the potential for these things.
At all.
As if that wasn't mad enough to puzzle through, the Doctor had to go and do something daft, like stare almost wistfully at her lips for five whole seconds before sprinting off to god-knows-where, like a fire’s just broken out across the ship.
Basically, there’d been a shift. A great, big shift that he was obviously fighting and didn’t want to talk about, but Rose didn’t want to just go and bring it up independently, either. The risk of potential awkwardness and an infinite added distance between them was too great.
Plus, she was sort of, well — elated that he was suddenly so affectionate with her. It wasn’t that much of a secret, how she felt about him.
Though obviously, he was still resistant.
Maybe he was just more affectionate now as a quirk of his regeneration. Maybe he never wanted to look for anything more, and yeah, that’d been fine with her before, right? A bit of a bummer, but fine. She adored him too much to hold it against him, and plus, he was an alien. No need to throw unfair human expectations on him. Instead, she learned to adapt.
Whatever was going on, she had to trust that he would tell her in his own time. She’d more than made herself available to talk to about anything and everything, but if he didn’t want to, she wouldn't force him. She couldn't. He wouldn't budge, besides.
Deciding a distraction was the best thing for now, she pushed off the controls and began slowly making her way to the media room.
A long movie sounded nice. It’d give her something to get her mind off of the Doctor, as well as free up a good, comfortable place for them to hang out if he decided to emerge from the depths of wherever he’d gone to hide.
x
“Right,” the Doctor sighed to no one in particular, “suppose there’s that, then.”
He’d moved to stand in front of his full-length mirror, sliding on his specs to examine his new little dilemma.
Well.
He could have used a lot of different adjectives, but in retrospect, ‘little’ most certainly wouldn’t have been one of them — were he to give himself a second go of it.
Of course, the Doctor knew what erections were. Knew they were necessary to be able to function sexually as a male in the vast majority of species, even his own, at one point in the distant past. He’d witnessed the phenomenon a number of times across the galaxies in all sorts of off-kilter scenarios, typically in situations he'd been quite keen to get himself out of.
Once, he'd even encountered a planet that seemed to worship the erect phallus, having spotted a generous and proud statue of one looming over their city square.
(He never visited that planet again.)
Not to mention the time or two he and Rose had watched some Earth movies that included an unplanned erection for easy, lazy comic relief. It’d been just a bit awkward, but no more than the one singular time they ever watched a film with a full-on sex scene.
Neither had seen that film before, so it managed to catch them completely off guard, considering they were sitting side by side on the couch with their thighs touching — and the Doctor had absolutely no idea how to react to it. The whole thing was an awkward mess.
That was before he’d changed his body, and it was before he and Rose had grown quite as close — though, given the nature of their relationship, he imagined it’d have been uncomfortable regardless.
That night, he'd ended up surreptitiously staring at the wall behind the television until it was all over, praying that Rose wouldn’t pack her bags and demand to return home as soon as the credits rolled.
Their friendship survived the farce, thank goodness.
That said, having never experienced sexual arousal firsthand meant the Doctor had never actually been erect in the first place. Now that he’d gotten himself back into his private space, however, his horror of offending Rose had morphed into genuine, almost boyish curiosity regarding this previously undiscovered feature.
He stripped off all of his clothes.
Yes, this was very new — and not just the obvious bit. How daft he felt now, having never cared to survey his various bodies throughout the years with any level of intense scrutiny. It wasn’t something he bothered with much, at least not so thoroughly, and this was absolutely the youngest and most objectively attractive form he’d taken.
Though he'd struggled to concede as much in the moment, a great deal of the inspiration for this self-assessment stemmed from Rose's perception of him. Just how attractive was he to a young human female? She did seem to have a thing for pretty boys, and if he was in the running with his nine previous bodies, this one was by far the strongest contender to fit that bill.
Standing before the mirror completely starkers, he began to give himself a thorough inspection, ignoring for a moment that part of him was still very much at attention — almost egregiously so; nearly to the point of pain. He was too busy examining the way his sharp hip bones carved a valley into his lower abdomen, then the subtle musculature of his pectorals and deltoids, blending into his biceps with wonderful definition, his strong forearms and oh my god how do humans manage sexual arousal, his cock was absolutely aching.
Without giving himself time to overthink it, the Doctor wrapped a hand around the throbbing mass of his length and nearly fell forward at the immediate burst of relief.
“Mmfh.” He slapped his free hand against the mirror, bracing his weight on his outstretched arm as he treated himself to a slow, firm stroke from base to tip. It felt grand. He did it again, acting on buried instincts, exhaling sharply as his eyes sealed themselves shut. “Ah,” he gasped.
Well, it felt so good that he figured he had no real reason to stop doing what he was doing… Plus, he wanted to make sure everything was in working order, just in case Rose would maybe fancy a bit of sexual intercourse at some point in the future. The thought was reckless and where the hell had that even come from to begin with, but the more he thought about it, the better the idea sounded. The less it scared him.
Quite suddenly, it seemed as though sex in this body was inevitable. There was no fighting his very sudden, desperate and primal need to experience a thing he’d lived without for so long, and if he was going to do it with anyone, he’d be foolish to pretend he wanted it with anyone but Rose. It was her fault he came out so bloody human this time, after all.
Not that she necessarily needed to know just how heavily she imprinted on this regeneration.
Just thinking about his sweet Rose sent a jolt of electricity straight through his cock, and he was immediately pumping quickly into his tightened fist, panting quietly between soft moans as he began to feel her circumfuse every dark corner of his mind. He imagined his lips on hers; fingers tangling in that lovely, soft hair he’d just been patting down no more than five minutes prior.
What would it be like to have sex with her? Would he be terrible at it? Would she reject him? Would he be bloody brilliant? Beginner’s luck? Would she guide him? He knew he was a fast learner, but he only hoped she’d have the patience to show him how to give her pleasure, since this was still such an alien concept to him.
For the love of all that was good in the universe, he wanted to please her… Wanted her to enjoy it even a fraction as much as he was enjoying himself within that particular moment. Which was… a lot.
He was nearly gasping for air, his respiratory bypass long forgotten as he felt sweat beading up on his neck and forehead. He fucked his hand with might and main, almost feeling as though he was slipping away from himself, and it was intoxicating. He’d been eagerly building tension that he chased desperately with each push of his hips, groaning deeply and endlessly, driving his cock into his twisting grip, rocketing towards something he didn’t even know how to describe.
Theoretically speaking, he could have stopped by then — probably should have — but something was caressing the back of his mind, encouraging him, telling him just a little more… Just a little longer…
Without warning, a wave of searing, incredible heat broke through him and he cried out, his voice loud and broken as his hips jerked beyond his control. He felt himself spasming in his hand to accompany the indescribably wonderful sensation, and he was so overwhelmed with the intensity and euphoria of it all that he lacked the capacity to care that he’d just expelled a stream of thick, almost viscous fluid all over his nice mirror.
Wide-eyed and gasping, he released his hold on himself, allowing his hand to slide down the mirror and land at his side. After taking a moment to catch his breath, he teetered bonelessly over to the bed, barely making it in one piece before flopping unceremoniously onto his back.
“God,” he panted, still out of breath and properly lost regarding what had just happened to him. It was so incredible that he honestly wanted to shout it from the mountaintops, or at least pop his head out the door and alert the entire corridor.
The Doctor had been aware of the act of touching oneself, but he somehow missed the part where doing so triggered an explosion of spellbinding sensation coursing through the body. He’d never felt anything like that — what he imagined regeneration might feel like, were it a pleasurable affair.
He wondered what Rose was up to. He’d probably given her a bit of a fright, flying out of there without any explanation whatsoever. It all seemed ridiculous now, of course, considering he now knew with fearless certainty that he wanted to share his new body with her... If she’d have him.
He really, really hoped she’d have him.
Human girls don’t just go risking their lives and turning into goddesses for men they aren’t attracted to, right?... He had to assure himself he was right, because there was no way that conversation wasn’t happening immediately.
… Immediately after a kip. A bit of sleep sounded good.
If you want prompts for ninerose I'd love to read something about Nine speaking to/about Rose in Gallifreyan and her learning the language in secret to understand him
nonny, i cannot stress enough how much i loved this prompt. that said, i took it and kind of spun off a little. it's not precisely what you asked for, but i hope you enjoy it anyway! (and please forgive any mistakes. i was too excited to do much editing.)
—
𝐓𝐢𝐦𝐞 𝐋𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐂𝐮𝐥𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐃𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐢𝐞𝐬
[read on AO3]
—
He only ever did it when he thought he was alone.
The first time, she thought he must have hit his head or something—after all, if the TARDIS wasn't translating, the Doctor was surely talking gibberish. Strange syllables that sounded musical and otherworldly, with long vowels stretched between, reminding her of wind chimes—they tickled her ears and the back of her brain in just the same way.
But when she’d come into the console room, calling out to him with a note of worry in her voice, the Doctor had turned and grinned at her. Wide and crooked and pleased—as pleased as he always was to see her, which made her grin back, sort of embarrassed and thrilled at once. “Rose,” he'd said.
Perfectly clear, perfectly English. Northern-tinged as usual. Nothing odd about it.
And then some sensor or other had started going off, and she didn't have time to ask.
She caught him at it again, a few weeks later, down in the TARDIS storage cellar that he was in the process of “re-purposing” into a workshop. This mostly involved negotiating with the ship and moving precarious stacks of boxes around, grumbling to himself. But that day, the usual back-and-forth had turned to a full-blown argument loud enough to call her over from the media room: on one side, with flashing lights and hissing pipes, and on the other, with shouting in that same semi-melodic way. The ends of each… well, sentence, she supposed… were more clipped off, though. Irritated.
Rose was fascinated.
"What is that?" she asked, poking her head through the door.
The Doctor's shoulders, somewhere up near his ears, dropped suddenly. And rather than meeting her gaze, he looked with suspicious intensity at the crate he held.
"What's what?"
"You were shouting just now."
"I was making a point," he shot back.
"Yeah, in a different language."
"So?" He shrugged too forcefully, then wheeled on one foot and stalked off to put the crate down on the far end of the room. "I speak loads of languages. So does the TARDIS. She prefers Romance languages, or else Ancient Manussian, but there's no accounting for taste." It was such an obvious attempt to distract her that Rose almost took pity on him and allowed it. But she was too curious to let the subject drop.
"The TARDIS wasn't translating it, though," she went on, "the words you were saying. I've heard you doing it before and it's just, like… nonsense sounds."
The Doctor turned on her, looking indignant. "Excuse me, that's my native language you're talking about! And if any language is nonsensical, look to your own butchered tongue. So many diphthongs!"
She didn't know what to say to that for several seconds. She could only look at him, standing there in his jumper with his sleeves rolled up and a smudge of some kind of grease across his chin, his hands on his hips like he was about to launch into one of his lectures.
Native language. She couldn't believe it, but… didn't it make perfect sense? He wasn't human. He was alien—a Time Lord—no matter how often he made her forget it, looking how he did. Behaving how he did.
"But… if it's a real language," she tried slowly, carefully, "your language—how come the TARDIS doesn't translate it? She's from there, right? From…?"
For some reason, she couldn't say it.
"Gallifrey," the Doctor answered for her.
The syllables seemed to sparkle, even though he'd spoken them flat, without affect. And fast, like he was ripping off a bandage.
"So she understands it." She gestured all around her at the ship's recessed lights, which had gradually receded to their usual, steady glow. "But she doesn't… translate? Using the telepathic field thingy?"
The Doctor blinked at her. And didn't look away.
It wasn't his usual kind of stare; his there you go again, asking the right questions look, the one that made her feel so proud, was nowhere to be seen. Eyes not cold, but not warm either.
He was just… looking at her. Sort of through her.
After a little while, she prompted him. "Doctor?"
Then he jerked back into motion, walking back across the cellar to where his leather coat was draped over a tall metal bench, mixed in with scraps of machine parts. He shook the jacket off, and nuts and bolts went flying this way and that, prompting a fresh, irritable hiss of steam from one of the nearby pipes. The Doctor spoke as he moved, as sharp and sudden as a lightning strike.
"She doesn't need to," he clipped out. "Nobody really speaks it anymore, 'sides us two. For all intents and purposes, it's a dead language." And then he said, just as quickly, "Come on. Just remembered we're out of eggs," before striding out the door.
—
A dead language.
The phrase stuck in her head all the rest of that day, as they wandered around the Predoran market, the burble of automatically translated speech humming all around. Fishmongers and cargo haulers and sailors on shore leave. Thousands of people speaking a language she couldn't really hear, but nonetheless understood.
The thoughts lingered the next morning, when she stumbled back into the TARDIS, salt-crusted from their tip overboard a cargo ship, and all but collapsed into her silent bed.
She couldn't shake it, though the Doctor flew her back to London for her mum's birthday—though he made a production of taking her to the Centennial Carnival on Cortago—though he helped her "bump into" Jane Austen in an old friend's drawing room—though he dragged her halfway across the universe and back, narrowly averting disaster, saving lives, meeting new people, grinning wildly as he always had. Speaking in that elemental tongue they somehow shared: the one that spelled adventure.
But…
A dead language.
She couldn't stop remembering. And she was sure he couldn't either.
—
"Gallifrey."
The library terminal beeped. The golden text across the darkened screen said, Results: 0/0.
Rose puffed out a breath. "Okay. What about 'Gallifrey-ish'?"
Results: 0/0.
"Seriously? Nothing in Time Lord-ese?"
The terminal gave another sad-sounding beep.
Rose frowned, chewing on her thumbnail while her other hand hovered over the screen.
She'd never really bothered with the TARDIS library, except the visual media section and the few times she'd checked out the The Collected Works of Charles Dickens. The massive room had been included on her initial hasty welcome tour, but she'd been too intimidated to spend much time there.
There were so many dusty, fragile-looking old books—not to mention hundreds of thousands of hardbacks and paperbacks, scrolls and tablets and comics—all categorized in endless towering rows that made her head spin. The Doctor claimed this wasn't the largest library in the universe, but Rose thought that had to be a lie.
And it didn't seem possible that a room this big didn't contain a single volume with the name of the Doctor's home planet in the title.
Her eyes flicked up, and she bit her lip, feeling silly as she said, "Look, just give me something. Please," to the empty room. "It's for him. I'm trying to… help."
She winced.
Help was possibly not the right word. Maybe there was a reason for the zero results. Maybe the Doctor didn't want any reminders of his past, his people—the world that was now gone, with he the only living remnant. Maybe he'd purged the library or something.
But if he didn't want to be reminded of home, why did he still speak the language? Why had he looked like he'd swallowed a stone when she'd caught him at it?
Sighing, Rose realized that the TARDIS wasn't going to magically intervene, raining down Time Lord Culture for Dummies and English-to-alien dictionaries on her head. She turned from the search terminal, ready to give up the hunt.
But before she could fully turn her back, the computer gave another little beep. And then two together, like synthesized chirps. Then several more in rapid succession.
She looked back.
The screen had tabbed over from the default library results to a page with the header 'Local Audio Logs.' Beneath that was a subheading of 'Relative date: 5000 AD'.
Results: 1-9/77.
"Oh my god."
She immediately went back to the terminal, the base of which had opened, projecting out a narrow tray. Nestled in its foamy lining were a pair of thin, silvery-blue headphones, and she reached for them eagerly, sliding them onto her head without a second thought. She tapped one of the logs at random and an audio player sprung to life, crackly sound immediately filling her ears.
"—sense in giving the game away. Just a few short, simple commands, you know, could make all the difference next time. I'll try one now." And then she heard it: the fluid string of sounds, the chiming vowels, pronounced with much more theatricality than she was used to from the Doctor. She wondered who was speaking.
The voice was fuzzed with age, but was clear enough to make out it wasn't the Doctor; the accent, the tone were all different. It had to be someone he'd travelled with in the past. Someone who spoke his language.
"Well? That means, 'Watch out.' Did you get it?"
"Negative."
The second voice almost made her jump. It sounded mechanical, robotic.
"Listen, K9, just listen!" The man repeated the same sounds, and this time, Rose strained her ears the way she imagined the robot-thing called K9 might have. She tried to pick out the unique sounds, to make sense of them in her mind. "Yes? Got it?"
There was a brief pause. Then: "Affirmative, Master."
"Very good! Well done, K9." The man laughed, and it was a warm laugh. Almost impish at the same time, too, and Rose felt herself smiling confusedly before the audio log continued. Was that his name, like the Doctor was the Doctor? Was this man called 'Master'?
She scrambled to hit the pause button and dragged her finger back, so the audio could play again.
"Listen, K9, just listen!" And then the Gallifreyan words.
She played that bit back once, twice, first mouthing along with the sounds and then whispering them. They strained her voice in an odd way, like she had too many vocal cords and they were tripping over one another—or maybe like she didn't have enough. But after a dozen times or so, she peeled one of the headphones off to hear herself mumbling along.
It didn't sound like anything, really, certainly not like words. But it also didn't sound wrong. She grinned.
"Affirmative, Master."
"Very good! Well done, K9."
"Oh," she realized suddenly. "Like, K9. It's a robot dog." And then she burst into giggles.
—
Progress was, of course, very slow.
Rose figured out a way to get the audio logs onto her MP3 player, but even compressed the files were enormous, so she could only fit three or four of them at a time on there, even after giving up her whole Spice Girls collection.
It was probably better that way. All of the logs were just that same man, and he seemed to like talking as much as the Doctor did. He sped along at warp speed, tossing out the words and phrases he seemed to think a robot dog ought to know. Simple things, mostly.
Rose drank in every syllable.
She listened to the logs a few at a time, in the morning while she was putting on her makeup and after she'd crawled into bed. She turned the phrases over, whispering them into the silence like a great secret. She immersed herself, as much as she could.
Before long, those audios started to feel like a song she'd listened to over and over. They got stuck in her head. When she found herself racing down the shop floor of an abandoned textiles mill, the Gallifreyan word for faster shot through her mind. When a Quellian high noble kept interrupting the Doctor during peace negotiations, she had to stop herself from snapping out the phrase for be quiet.
Sometimes, though, she turned on some of the audios and just listened. Not because she wanted to practice, even, but because she liked the man who spoke in them. She liked how his voice had a smile in it. How affectionate he was toward K9. How quick and clever he seemed, as he came up with increasingly specific commands for his robot dog to learn.
Rose found herself wishing that the logs were in video format, so she could see the man's face.
She considered asking the Doctor about him, but quickly abandoned the idea. A friend of the Doctor's, most likely travelling with him, speaking the language—he had to be a Time Lord. Which meant he was gone.
The thought made her feel lonely… as if somehow, she had lost him, too.
—
Rose lay sprawled across the media room sofa, eyes closed with her MP3 player resting on her belly.
"Want to—earn—other one, K9?" the man in the audio log asked, his voice somewhat muffled. There was a clanking noise that kept interrupting, drowning out snatches of his speech. For some reason, she had a vision of the Doctor with his head under the TARDIS console, fiddling with some loose wire or bit of piping.
"Affir—tive, Master."
"I do—ish you'd give—this 'Master'—usiness. I have—name, you know."
Rose's eyebrows pinched in concentration, while her heart rate steadily climbed, thudding eagerly in her chest. She realized, all of a sudden, she'd been waiting for this moment. Was she finally going to learn the man's name?
"Here, I'll tell—you in—allifreyan."
Gallifreyan. That's what the language was actually called.
She barely had time to take the new information in before there was an extra loud clang and a shuffling scrape. The man's voice was clearer when he spoke.
Rose hadn't been sure she was piecing together anything very meaningful about the structure of the Doctor's native language, up 'til then—she knew nothing about what made it work, what the individual bits and pieces amounted to. The grammar of it evaded her, and she'd mostly felt like a baby mimicking the world around them, repeating noises without real comprehension.
But this particular jangle of sound lodged itself in her ear, and she felt like she understood it perfectly. Like it made absolute sense; the sound was the man, the man was the sound.
"Really rolls off the tongue, doesn't it?" the man joked. "But I guess it's better than Theta Sig—"
She raced to pause the audio log, to rewind. To play it from the start.
And again.
She realized she was hearing something in the name, something a shade off of one of K9's commands—a syllable that was like the word for 'find,' or maybe… 'help'? They were so similar, it was hard to tell. But it made her feel something, a lightness in her chest. This man had been a helper, a finder, a seeker of something. She'd heard it in his voice, and now she could hear it in his name.
She played the clip back again, and again, and again, lips moving in time. Then she paused, pulling off the headphones, saying the name aloud for her own ears. She was getting better at the ringing bell vowel sounds, and she smiled proudly as she said it again, a little more confidently.
"What are you doing?"
She snapped upright, looking over the back of the couch, at where the Doctor stood in the doorway.
He looked shell-shocked, his usually bright eyes curiously glossed over. And he had his coat on, his hands stuffed in his pockets, like he'd been coming to fetch her for another adventure and had instead stumbled upon a crime scene, or an alien artifact he could make no sense of.
"Doctor!" she began, too brightly. "Are we going somewhere?" She flung her legs off the couch, hurriedly pulling the headphones off her neck. They'd come disconnected from the MP3 player, which had clattered to the floor. "Let me just—get my—"
"Rose, what are you doing?"
His voice stopped her in her tracks, and she stared back, wide-eyed. His voice was raspy like he'd been yelling—or maybe as if he was about to cry. But his face was cold and remote as the snow-capped waves of Women Wept. Rose could barely stand to look at it.
She swallowed thickly and, for a flash of a second, really considered lying. And after she lied, she decided, she would go and delete the latest audio files; she would put away her MP3 player and never even look at it again without feeling furtive guilt.
But she couldn't do that. The Doctor didn't deserve that.
Her mouth ran ahead of her.
"I was learning Gallifreyan," she said.
The Doctor said nothing.
"I… stumbled across some old audio logs where this man—this really nice man—was teaching his robot dog some commands in your language, and I thought…" Weakly, she trailed off, trying to smile. "Well, if this robot dog could learn, so can I, right?"
"K9," he replied. "That's his name."
Her smile came a little easier now. "Yeah, I heard. And the man teaching K9, did he travel with you? I thought, since the TARDIS called it a log that it must have been recorded on the ship, but… Was he a friend of yours?"
His face remained impassive, but his hands dug further and more obviously into his pockets. "That word you said. Did he say what it was?"
"Oh, yeah," Rose nodded fervently. "He told K9 it was his name in Gallifreyan." Then she repeated the sounds as she remembered them, knowing her pronunciation was clumsy—there was none of that chiming rightness in her voice now, from nerves—but it must have been understandable. Because she watched the Doctor's expression contort, his eyes fluttering shut, jaw ticking.
She hesitated, then asked, "What does it mean, in English?"
"The Doctor," the Doctor said heavily.
She felt an odd, hysterical urge to giggle. "What? You had a friend called Doctor, too?"
"No."
"Then…" Her mind swam, torn between the sound of the word echoing off her grey matter and the information she was being presented with. "You're the… man in the audio log? That was you?"
Slowly, the Doctor nodded.
It didn't make sense. "But you sound so different!"
"'Cause I was different. My people were alive back then, and an endless source of bother. I wore a hat, and a scarf, and I had long hair. Corkscrews," he added, gesturing at his own close-cropped head. "And I was taller, I think." He spoke each word like doing so strained his muscles. "I've changed a lot, Rose. Many times."
"What d'you mean, changed?"
Her voice came out sharp, and the Doctor's eyes batted open.
"Why did you want to learn Gallifreyan?" he asked, as if she hadn't even spoken.
"So I could talk to you." It was an automatic answer, and her mouth screwed up with its inadequacy. "In your own language. And because… I didn't like what you said. About Gallifreyan being dead."
"Rose," he said.
"It seemed wrong. I mean, you're alive, aren't you? And as long as you can speak it, and someone else can answer, then it's like—the language is still alive, too. Or at least, there can be people who remember it." She realized her hands had balled into fists, and there was an unwelcome prickle in the corners of her eyes. She didn't want to cry; this wasn't about her. But she couldn't seem to help it. "Someone should remember," she said, pleading.
For a long moment, she thought he would simply turn around and leave again. He looked like he wanted to.
But then, after a little longer, he said. "Your pronunciation is off. You need to hold the 'o' a little longer, and not turn it into a 'u'." The Doctor scoffed to himself. "You Brits and your ridiculous diphthongs."
Rose tried again, said the name—his name, she marvelled—and his posture eased. The lines crowding his forehead smoothed out a bit, and she felt herself exhale, too, the relief heady. Blood rushed back to her uncurled fingers.
"Is that right?" she asked.
"It's better."
And that was good enough for her.
—
A few days later, they were back in the media room, talking on the sofa as they sometimes did after a particularly eventful day.
The Doctor hadn't been in the mood to read aloud—tired, for once, of his own voice, she assumed—and she was somehow too tired even to watch the telly, ten billion channel package or not. So they both rested their heads against the back of the couch and just sat, facing one another, talking now and then. Sometimes they tried to pepper in the bits of Gallifreyan Rose understood. She wanted to ask him, still, what he'd meant when he said he'd changed.
Mostly they were quiet.
But then:
"Doctor?"
"Hm?"
"What's my name? In, er, your language, I mean."
His smile was strangely soft, and his mouth made the syllables, and Rose heard them. She tried to listen for root words, to make meaning out of the musical jangle, but her name wasn't like the Doctor's. It was shorter, sweeter. Simpler. But he said it warmly, and the same warmth spread in her chest.
"I like that," whispered Rose.
"Yeah," said the Doctor. "Me too."
