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Prologue, Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6,Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10, Chapter 11
Chapter 12. Laying Down The Law
Rose gradually drifted towards consciousness. She felt restricted, and realised a blanket was tucked tight around her, impeding her movement. Only her right arm appeared to be free, yet she couldn’t move it – her hand seemed to be tethered to the spot. Her body felt heavy and bone-tired and her head felt fuzzy, as if she’d drunk a glass of wine too quickly. Only her baby’s presence felt firm and true, the rest of her felt decidedly weary. She must have moved slightly, because she felt whatever was restraining her hand tighten and she recognised that someone was holding her. She sent out a tentative mental exploration and met an overexcited explosion of silver. The Doctor. She winced against the sudden onslaught and opened her eyes.
‘Rosie!’
Ah, Jack was here as well. And here appeared to be the infirmary. Again. Rose smiled, albeit rather weakly.
‘Hiya.’
‘You gave us a bit of a fright, Rosie. Need to give a guy a bit of warning before you decide to be a superhero!’ Jack beamed at her.
The Doctor remained silent; he’d had a slightly abstracted air as he had basked in the renewed sense of Rose in his mind. At Jack’s words, however, he grimaced, releasing Rose’s hand. Springing to his feet, he shoved his hands into his pockets, body growing rigid with disapproval.
Rose frowned. Casting her mind back, she remembered rescuing the Doctor, forcing back the bullets with sheer strength of will. How had she managed that?
‘Telekinesis.’ The Doctor responded to her unspoken question. ‘You manipulated matter with your mind.’ He was angry with her, she realised, very angry. Before she could question him further, he spun on his heel, ‘Now you’re up, I’ll get back to fixing the TARDIS.’ He announced as he stalked from the room.
Rose looked after him in surprise, feeling roadblocks appear in her link to him. The message was clear; he didn’t want to communicate with her by any means at the moment. She cast a hurt, confused gaze at Jack.
‘You scared him. He knows you healed him, then you went all Matrix on us and stopped bullets, before collapsing with exhaustion. He’s pretty pissed with you right now.’
Memories coalesced and Rose looked at Jack in alarm, ‘He was shot! Is he okay?’
Jack sighed, ‘He’s fine. Pretty much fixed, as far as I can tell. It’s you we’ve got to worry about.’
Rose struggled past the blankets to sit up. She felt weak as a kitten but knew she was unharmed. ‘I’m fine, Jack.’
‘Yeah, I can see that,’ he huffed as she attempted to stand, only to wobble and sit back down swiftly.
‘I am! Whatever I did, this telekey-whatnot, took a lot out of me, that’s all. No damage done, to me or the baby, so I’m don’t know why the Doctor’s got his knickers is a twist.’ She eased herself up again, gripping Jack’s bicep as she swayed slightly. Letting go, she began to walk tentatively towards her room. Jack gave a long-suffering sigh, before sweeping her into his arms and lugging her down the corridor.
‘Don’t even think ’bout protesting, Rosie. You’re in no fit state to walk about and I’m damned if I’m going to watch you try.’
Rose smiled and leant her head against his shoulder. She had no intention of protesting; travel by Jack was infinitely preferable to hobbling along under her own steam; it was warm, comfy and smelt divine. She burrowed her head into his shoulder and closed her eyes. She was asleep again by the time they reached her room.
***********
The Doctor had been sulking, or rather, studiously mending the TARDIS and keeping himself busy, for nearly five and a half hours. He had, on the pretext of searching out parts, had recourse to walk past Rose’s room fourteen times during the first four hours. On each occasion an entirely accidental glance into her room (the door just happened to be slightly ajar, after he had inadvertently staggered against the handle on his first trip) had found her sleeping soundly. On the fifteenth pass he had found her room empty. He’d quickly broadened his link to her, seeking her out surreptitiously. She was in one of the garden rooms. She felt stronger, though still weary. He’d withdrawn quickly before she could sense his active presence and slouched back to the console room to resume his tinkering. The TARDIS tolerated him for another thirty minutes before shocking him, turning her time rotor a discontented puce. He’d been mooching in the library ever since, plucking out volumes at random and flicking through them grumpily.
The TARDIS was obviously growing tired of his childish avoidance of Rose, however, and she picked that moment to drop a rather large tome onto the Doctor’s foot. He cursed and bent down to pick it up. It was an ancient Gallifreyian text on parenthood. It had fallen open at a picture of a mother nursing her child. The Doctor swept it up from the floor impatiently and sent the TARDIS a rather curt and inelegant profanity. She twitched and, to all intents and purposes, turned her back on him. Feeling generally put upon, the Doctor tugged on the back of his neck and began a slow and reluctant walk towards the garden room and Rose.
*************
Rose sat beneath a canopy of bronze and silver leaves, her back resting against the smooth trunk of an enormous tree. Before her, in mid air, hovered a silver leaf. It twisted and twirled on the spot. Slowly, a bronze leaf rose from the ground to join it. Together they danced around one another. A third, fourth and finally a fifth joined the fray, twirling to form a circle in the air. Concentrating, Rose moved a small pebble and had it fly through the circle. She caught it in mid-flight, sending it into a loop at a right angle to the leaves’ trajectory. Slowly, other pebbles joined the fray until the two circles whirled in unison like an organic gyroscope.
‘You’re supposed to be resting!’
The dancing leaves and pebbles collapsed in disarray at the harsh interruption. Rose blinked, and cast an accusing glare at the Time Lord who loomed above her.
‘It’s rude to sneak up on people, you know! And anyway, I am resting. Look at me, this is me, under a tree, resting!’
‘That wasn’t resting,’ his foot scuffed at the fallen objects, ‘that was manipulating matter, the very thing that caused you to collapse in the first place!’
Rose got to her feet and faced him defiantly, ‘I’m fine. A little bit of practice isn’t gonna hurt me!’
‘How do you know that, Rose? You can’t be so cavalier with your health. It isn’t just about you anymore!’
‘I would never risk our child!’
‘But you did, Rose! You put what you wanted before the best interests of our baby.’ He ignored the fact that she had safeguarded the foetus at her own expense, and that everything she had done had been to help him. He had a point to make and he was going to make it.
‘Well, that’s rich, coming from the bloke who swanned off and left us, getting himself caught and tortured in the process!’
‘I’m not pregnant!’
‘No, but you are going to be a dad, you have to think before you act!’
‘I have to think? You’re the one who nearly killed yourself and our child with your stubborn rescue attempt and foolhardy little display of power. You were stupid and selfish. I won’t have it, not when you are going to be the mother of my child!’
Rose, who had been trying to reign in her temper, felt her ire rise at this autocratic and paternalistic injunction. ‘You won’t have it? What about me? Where do I come into this? I’m not just a bloody broodmare for the last of the Time Lords, you know.’
‘While you are pregnant the baby comes first, Rose. If you don’t like it, tough.’
‘So you get to carry on as normal and to hell with me? And you call me selfish! It’s your bloody fault I’m pregnant in the first place!’
‘So that’s it? You don’t care that you put our daughter at risk because you don’t want the baby?’
‘I didn’t say that!’
‘Is that why you were so careless? Did you want to lose her? Neat little solution to an unplanned pregnancy?’
Rose’s face drained of all colour at his accusation. ‘How could you? I protected her!’
‘That was just an accident of instinct!’ The retort was released automatically, without conscious thought.
Rose recoiled from him in horror, shaking her head, eyes wide and disbelieving. She felt as if she’d been punched. She gasped, tears flooding her eyes. Her arms moved instinctively to wrap round her belly, protecting both self and child, as she stepped back, trying to get away from him, only to hit up against the tree trunk she had been sitting beneath.
The Doctor looked appalled by what he had said. He gaped at her, frantically trying to think of a way to undo what he had done. He reached for her with his mind, only to a find a guillotine slam down on their connection.
‘Rose, no, I didn’t mean it, I’m sorry …’ He stepped towards her, hands outstretched, only to be repelled, physically thrust back by an angry wave of energy.
‘Don’t come near me. I don’t know you anymore.’ Her voice was quiet and pained but there was force and threat simmering behind it.
Slowly he felt himself begin to move, without volition, towards the entrance to the room.
‘Everything I risked was for you,’ she continued as she pushed him away from her. ‘I didn’t think about me. Maybe I didn’t think about the baby either. But I’ve only been pregnant a day, I’ve loved you forever.’ Her voice broke and she sobbed, hugging herself more tightly.
He was at the door now, he could feel it opening behind him. She stared him in the eye and he could almost feel her heart breaking as her cold little voice followed him; ‘I might be frightened and confused and not very good at being pregnant, but I never, I never wished our baby dead.’
She thrust him out into the corridor, slamming the door to the garden in his face before merging it into the wall, sealing her off from him entirely. Only when there was no hint of an entrance left did she allow herself to break.
Chapter 13
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Hee! I know that icon! ;)
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Next chapter up - whole story up in fact! I aim to please :-)
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*bounces excitedly, blushes and ducks head nervously*
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I have become so used to reading your stories straight through to the end, and now you put it on a cliff hanger!
AH!!
this is absolutely fabulous!
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I'm now all caught up with my backlog of fics, though, so now more complete stories as I'm still writing them :-)
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Bad Doctor what'd ya have to go and say that for?
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