The Veil Between the Worlds

Aftermath

The Doctor and Rose had several fun adventures soon after that dreadful Halloween. They saw the Clash perform "London Calling" in 1979. It was even better than the Blockheads would have been, and they didn't get sidetracked to 1879 Scotland this time. On the trip back, the Doctor finally made a note in the TARDIS' log to avoid Elphame and its Unseelie Fairy Queen forever.

The Doctor said triumphantly, hopping around: "With that type of bargain, you have to figure out where the trick is. And we did it, Rose! We outsmarted the Fae! No one has outsmarted the Fae in 3,000 years-well, I suppose if you're counting the ancient Greeks' sphinxes and Furies. . ."

"I still don't quite understand how," said Rose.

"Well, I said the Fae are tricky, and so they are. But they also have a certain logic. You knew that when you gave her your second middle name. It's your real name but not really you--genius."

He didn't want to explain how he'd been subject to the Fairies' logic, which was rapists' "logic." Once he made the initial deal, he ceded his body to the Fairy Queen until he and Rose won it back, and he knew it. It was a trick, a mockery of consent.

Instead, he explained: "'Hold him,' she told you. Well, that's too easy. You hug me all the time. But she made it virtually impossible by forcing me to change. We outsmarted her and passed her test, so then, she was compelled to let us go. The magic bargain was binding and worked both ways. So, if you were afraid the Fairy Queen was going to rape me at the end-" He'd never said it before, even to himself.

Rose gasped.

He waved his hand. "You know, I know. No sense in talking around it. I thought it, too. She wanted me and was trying to humiliate me. You know I don't regenerate naked. She did that. Her choice. But, if she wanted to hurt me that way, she couldn't because she was bound by the fairy bargain, too. And we'd already won.

"'Take me,' I said. I knew what I was doing! I saw the way she looked at me. Lots of women look at me like that, but she did it once I had no choice. And I knew her from-er, before." His expression closed off. "She knew I'd do anything-or let her do anything she wanted to me-to stop her from murdering a child."

The events of that Halloween still impacted them in distressing ways. The Doctor hoped he wouldn't have to regenerate again anytime soon. It wasn't just his vanity or Rose's and his attachment to his current body. He wondered exactly what the Fairy Queen had done to him: if she'd damaged his regenerative powers in some way. She had forced him through partial regenerations with her magic, and none of that should have been possible.

One day, he explained, "No one had ever seen that before, Rose. You're not supposed to. It was like having the time vortex running through your head."

Right before the previous Doctor had died to save Rose, he'd told her she'd never see him again: "Not like this. Not with this daft old face." Then, on one of the worst nights of her life, she had seen that face again, and he'd smiled at her. Rose told him now, "I saw you again that night. The way you looked when I first met you."

The Doctor said, "Aww, Rose, I knew it! I remembered how it felt to live in that body. And then some of the transformations felt totally new to me. But promise me something. If any version of me asks what you saw that night, please don't tell me."

"Of course. But why?"

"I think it would be like a human going to a fortune teller. Learning the date they're going to die or something. Wouldn't work for me, of course. I don't live in a linear fashion. But I don't need to know what I'll look like in the future, or how many regenerations I have left."

"Doctor, don't even worry about that. You think I remember the rest of them? I was thinking: if I let go of him, he dies right in front of me. And can I drag him back into the TARDIS to regenerate? I can't ask the murder cultists to help me! I was scared shitless!"

"Oh. That's what makes me remember, though. I was thinking, too. Just let my brain run in the background, like a computer. I was creating the force field around us with my sonic screwdriver, to deflect her magic. Dune is wrong about fear, at least for me. Fear isn't the mind-killer. It's a shot of cortisol and adrenaline straight to my hearts and brain. I love that feeling!"

"You LOVE that feeling?! This is why I always say I'm gonna kill ya, if I wasn't so scared you'd die anyway."

"You must love it too. In some way. Otherwise, you wouldn't stay with me."

I love traveling. I love YOU, she thought. The romance, the passion, the adventure, the friendship, things no one else could even dream of experiencing. Saving each other.

On New Earth, Cassandra had broken a dam between them by making them kiss. Maybe, in an even more horrible way, the Fairy Queen had too, the Doctor thought. Because, after sharing that unfathomable experience, taking the leap to sex would seem easy. Maybe he'd reached a point of no return where he'd miss Rose for eternity anyway. Maybe missing her without ever having slept together would be the loneliest option. Still, he didn't deserve someone who was so pure, perfect, and generous.

"Rose, you said you didn't know anything about me, and I know everything about you," the Doctor said. "I understand why it feels like that for you, but it doesn't for me, at all. You saved me from who knows what. You've seen the latent regenerations inside me, which I don't even see until each time I die."

"I never thought of it that way."

"No one else has ever experienced this or thought about it! After that, what's seeing me naked? What's sex?"

"That sounds like a line," Rose laughed. Or it would, with any other guy.

"I know, but it's not. It can't be. No one but us has ever had that experience before. Who cares if no one can know my name? What's in a name, right? As Juliet says:

'It is nor hand, nor foot,

Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part

Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!

What's in a name? That which we call a rose

By any other name would smell as sweet.'

She giggled. "Romeo and Juliet? With my name in it? You're so smooth, Doctor. Well, you should be! You've been talking for over 900 years."

She'd found Shakespeare boring in school, but then, her teachers found her not smart. That had been a huge part of it. The previous version of the Doctor had kissed her hair and said, "Rose Tyler, you're a genius!" She had never been told anything like that before, especially by a genius. She'd never understood Shakespeare, but it made sense when the Doctor recited it. He saw something in her no one else had.

She said, "I know. I've wanted you since our picnic on New Earth. I'm just afraid it could ruin our relationship, be awkward like, or you'd be disappointed."

They didn't have sex that night, either. The Doctor knew that he had more power than all his traveling companions, and that persuasion could be manipulative and slimy. They ended up having sex the next time they kissed, though.

Until then, they'd rarely kissed on the mouth. He loved to pick Rose up and hold her. She played with his hair, his ties. They cuddled more now. Rose sat on his lap with her back to his chest, feeling relaxed and floaty. He tried to be subtle about inhaling the apple shampoo scent of her hair, but she noticed and giggled. He'd thought of her as his girlfriend sometimes, but it was an inadequate word. She was everything to him.

The next time, they didn't pull back after kissing each other's foreheads, faces, or lips. They snogged intensely and then had sex. Like everything else with them, it was a paradox. The feeling that they could stop if needed urged them forward: invigorated and safe.

He loved to say her name, like he was savoring it. Once or twice, he'd called her by her full name, Rose Marion Janet Tyler, or just Janet, in bed. It wasn't a kinky thing, really. It was far too soon for that, if ever. It was more like Janet was her private name, which only he knew. Some people underestimated her. Rose Marion Janet Tyler was her full, fascinating, heroic self, and he adored her. That was one way he told her how he felt.