Calling @megabadbunny!! ‘Tis your @dwsecretsanta, erm, Santa!
EDITED TO ADD: I forgot to mention this! I have a larger version of both images I will gladly send you, since tumblr only takes up to 1280px wide.
One of your prompts was NinexRose and fake marriage. And, welllll... this happened. I’m not sure about the painting, but I hope you like it! (I usually take more time and of course all I can see is every little thing wrong with it and urk, nerves!) As it needs some ‘splaining, here’s a silly and horrendously schmoopy Blurb of Explanation for which I really have no excuse but Regret Nothing (TM). ;)
He’d only wanted to show her Stonehenge. Really, not a major destination, just a bit of a side trip. And not the ancient, crumbling relic from her time – what would be the fun in that? No, he wanted her to see it in its full glory.
Not in the past, of course – nothing dangerous. No, he only wanted to take Rose forward to the Wiltshire of the Fourth Great and Bountiful Human Empire, where she could see the henge fully restored, as if it were brand new. Of course, that lot had gotten the history of the place completely wrong, but it was nothing he couldn’t correct.
At least they were in the right place...
As soon as he checked the console, he knew their landing was off timewise by at least a few centuries. But Rose’s curiosity had gotten the better of him – after she’d finished laughing.
When had it happened? Exactly when had her wish truly become his command?
He was a doomed man. Doomed, a word he’d not dared even think – love, for Rassilon’s sake – roaming his brain freely. He just wasn’t going to say it aloud. He’d resolved a good while back (had he really been in love with her that long?) that she would never know. She didn’t, couldn’t possibly love him in return.
But facts were facts, he could not say no to her, and the two of them ventured hand in hand out into the verdant countryside, wide open and beautiful and unspoiled, at a time very far in her future.
Apparently it was just not far enough, not nearly far enough to avoid, avoid –
It was Earth’s Third Great Dark Age, and they’d plunged themselves into the middle of it. Which would not have been so bad, had they not been inside the henge and holding hands when the caravan of Queen Scary Spice VI had made its presence known by halting abruptly alongside them.
Explanations were demanded and heated words exchanged, and What Is the Meaning of Such Conduct?! Intimate contact, and inside the henge, no less. Disgraceful!
The Queen Herself had asked him only one thing. “Give us one reason, ‘Doctor’,” she commanded, actually peering down her nose at him, “that you should not be summarily separated from your head.”
Beside him there was a sharp intake of breath, and then, like a fizzy drink shaken once too often, Rose exploded, blurting out, “But we’re engaged!”
As it turned out, impromptu marriage right there, on the spot, was a fairly easy choice over decapitation. Even if if didn’t really mean anything; even though he didn’t do domestic; even if he knew Rose was only agreeing to save his life; even if it was all a bit of clever acting from the woman he... well. Even.
Rose was whisked away in a sudden flurry of activity and pulled into the largest carriage. Except the Queen, every woman in the caravan (there turned out to be several) followed after her, shooing men away as they went, ready to help prepare her for her wedding.
They kept him waiting for two hours (and apparently all he had to do was take off his jacket), but when she emerged, his mind went blank and he had to remember how to breathe.
He’d beheld nebulae forming, borne witness to the births of entire galaxies... but when she caught his eyes and gave him a shy smile, Rose was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.
Halfway through a strange mishmash of vows that included references to “the Dot Com Most High” and “His Holiness of Microsoft,” she promised to love him.
Rose promised to love him. Him. And she was not pretending at all.
She was not pretending, and neither was he. By the time the priest had finished the handfasting ritual, she was his wife, with a handwritten Decree of Marriage bearing the royal seal.
On the walk back to the Tardis, his left hand still bound to her right, they laughed and talked and read the decree and discovered it was Christmas Day.
The Doctor and Rose, married on Christmas, travelling the universe together. As it should be.
