rose tyler

rose tyler, a doctor who-as-jane eyre fic (nine/rose), pg
I got the prompt "Nine as Rochester and Rose as Jane", and this is what resulted.
(3,145 words)


"Do you find me handsome, Rose?"

"No, I do not, Doctor," she replied readily, shifting slightly in her chair.

A smirk twisted his lips. "Then why were you staring at me so intently?"

Because you captivate me, she thought in the private darkness of her mind. I've never met a man like you—you bewilder and challenge and frighten me, and there is something about you that calls out to me. I stare at you because when you sit framed by the firelight, your profile so strikingly outlined, it is impossible for me to look away. She said none of this, despite the truth of it. Instead she said, "You were sitting so still, I thought to make a sketch of you."

"Very well, then. ..And I thought I told you to call me John," he chided after a moment, setting aside his book and folding his hands in his lap.

"It wouldn't be proper for me to call you that," she stood firm, looking back down at the half-finished sketch in her hands. "I am in your employ, here as a companion."

"You're a strange little thing," he said thoughtfully, brushing his thumb against his lip. "A very singular young woman."

"I will take that as a compliment," Rose said with a small smile. "And I will say good night and take my leave. Doctor." She nodded politely and stood, her skirts rustling softly.

His eyes followed her out of the room; she felt them trace the lines of her back as she climbed the imposing staircase to her room, and the shiver that danced across her shoulders had little to do with the chill evening.


---


It was not long until the first light of morning, and Rose lay in her bed sleepless and thoughtful. The Doctor was an impossible sort of man, who could be both rough and gentle. His moods were mercurial—in one moment he could be all gaiety, laughing as they walked through the gardens, teasing her with clever turns of phrases; and in the next he was all black anger and despondence, prone to snapping sharply, teeth biting into his impatient words. There was some great wound there, she suspected, and she wondered what she could do to help ease it—

A sudden, unexpected noise startled her. A laugh, high-pitched and menacing, echoed in the silent hall outside her bedroom door and for a heartbeat the strangeness of it turned her blood to ice. Rose's hand tightened around her bedclothes, and she was suddenly a small girl again, locked in that horrible bedroom… It took all of her concentration to push the memory away and regain her composure, and when she could at last breathe evenly again she realized she smelled something worrying: smoke.

She was throwing off the bedclothes and snatching up her shawl before she could pause to think any further about the unsettling laugh. The scent of smoke was stronger in the hall, and as she squinted in the darkness she realized there were gray tendrils creeping from beneath the Doctor's door.

The sight that greeted her when she threw open the door was a terrifying one: the heavy curtains around his bed were engulfed in flames.

"Doctor!" she shouted, grabbing up the water pitcher and dousing the curtains, extinguishing the fire with a loud hiss of steam and smoke.

"In the names of all of the elves of Christendom, is that Rose Tyler?" he spluttered, suddenly awake. He lurched upright, tearing aside the smoking, ruined curtains as he staggered onto his feet. "What were are you at—trying to drown me?"

"There was a fire!" Rose exclaimed, the pitcher falling from her suddenly nerveless hand and landing heavily on the sodden carpet. "I heard a terrible laugh, and smelled the smoke—"

"A laugh?" He was fully awake now, taking in every detail with a strange expression on his face.

"Yes; shall I fetch someone, Doctor?"

"No, there's no need. Here, but you've only a shawl—aren't you cold?"

"Cold? Doctor, your bed was just on fire!" Rose said, shocked by his sudden and, to her, misplaced concern.

"Sit down, Rose Tyler," he said brusquely, all command and decisiveness. She could do little else but obey, sinking down into the closest chair. He grabbed up a cloak hanging nearby and wrapped it around her. "Wait here for a moment. I'll be back shortly."

She sat in shadowy silence for what felt like hours, confused and concerned, until he returned, slightly breathless but seemingly satisfied by whatever errand he had just attended to. "There's no cause for further alarm," he assured her. "You said you only heard a noise? You saw nothing out of the ordinary?"

"Besides the sight of your bed curtains engulfed in flames, no, Doctor," Rose said curtly. He smiled at that, a wide and rather improper grin given the circumstances.

"Everything's been settled," he said. "There'll be no need to bring this up tomorrow. Thank you, Rose, for your help. You most likely saved my life tonight."

"You are welcomed, Doctor." She stood, removing his cloak and draping it across the chair. She stood awkwardly, arms crossed over her chest, hands clenched around the hem of her shawl. "…Good night, then."

She took a step towards the door, but stopped at the touch of his hand. He had reached out, the tips of his fingers brushing against the back of her hand. She looked up to meet his eyes, shining brightly in the darkness. Something in his face, so stripped and bare, made her heart flutter against her ribs. She let go of the shawl, moving slowly until her hand had slipped into his. They stood in silence for several heartbeats, both of his hands cupped around the one of hers, a great distance stretching between them with her body still half-turned to the door. The smoke that still hung heavy in the air stung at her eyes, and she blinked back a tear.

"Thank you, Rose," he said softly. He squeezed her hand, a gentle pressure that made her ache.

And then she had slipped away, leaving him with hands that still tingled from the warmth of her skin.


---


Of the guests who had invaded her quiet, echoing sanctuary, Rose disliked none of them as much as Miss Poisson. She was all elegance and refinement, beauty and charm. She glittered with an internal radiance, her smile as dazzling and charming as her laugh. Miss Poisson was a true lady, with fashionable dresses and a well-rounded education of everything a fine woman should know. Her list of accomplishments would fill a room, and she only had eyes for the brooding Doctor. As soon as she entered a room, she would look for him, and when she found him she was quick to slip a delicate hand through his arm, or engage him in a light and witty conversation.

Rose had long ago accepted that she was far too common and vulgar to wear diamonds and flutter fans, but to be daily reminded of all of her flaws and lack of accomplishments was almost too much. She desperately wished the party gone, or that she could at least hide away in some dark, undisturbed corners with her sketchbook and pencils. But no, propriety demanded that she be present at the evening dinners and gatherings, and every time the Doctor directed everyone's attention in her direction she felt herself burn with embarrassment.

Her sole comfort was that she gave none of this turmoil and displeasure away. She had learned to school her face into a neutral mask, and her voice never trembled when she was questioned or teased. She submitted to everything with an outward equanimity that belied the welter of emotions beneath.

Because it had occurred to her, just as the rumors had begun amongst the staff that the Doctor had at last determined to marry and was indeed courting Miss Poisson in earnest, that she was herself in love with him. Now she could not help but watch every moment between her mysterious Doctor and the fine lady without thinking of all she would lose when they formally announced their betrothal. She would lose the only place she had ever considered a home; but more than that, she would lose the only person she had ever thought of as a true friend and companion, a person she could have spent the rest of her life with, despite his eccentricities and unwillingness to talk of the past.

Rose held her tongue and watched from her solitary chair and tried to harden her heart in preparation of the final blow.


----


When the blow came, it managed to be both unexpected and even sharper than she had feared.

"Rose, why do you persist in speaking of leaving?"

"What else do you expect me to do, Doctor?" she said brusquely, turning her back to him and taking several hurried steps through the garden. "You've already said as much that you'll be sending me off to Ireland and new employment."

"If I were to say it was nothing but a test—"

"If that is the case, you were cruel in doing so," she said sharply, turning to glare at him. "You care nothing for my feelings. You are made of stone—there is no heart beneath your ribs. But then it would be too much to ask for understanding and kindness from a great man such as yourself. I am of nothing, from nothing."

"For all of my disingenuous words, none were so far from the truth as those you just spoke," he replied angrily, heatedly, the passion in his eyes startling. "You are everything good in the world, Rose Tyler. The hardest, strongest woman I have ever met, and it is hidden beneath such an unexpected façade of delicate frailty. You are like steel and fire made flesh, Rose. Rather more than nothing."

"Now you say this," she said quietly, her heart a heavy and hot pain in her breast. "You talk as if I mean something to you—"

"You are everything to me." His voice was rough, harsh, and he moved towards her as if gripped by a violence of emotion. She wanted to shrink away, to run to the solid safety of the huge house she still didn't know completely, to take comfort in its vast unknown rather than risk everything with this unpredictable enigma of a man. But instead she stood firm, determined to face the storm coming towards her, drawing strength from her firm conviction that she would never again be bullied. "I had nothing before you came into my life, Rose. I was a shell of a man, plagued by ghosts and regret. From the moment you stepped through my door, it has been as if I have awoken from a long and terrible dream. You have challenged me as no other woman has."

"Stop," she demanded, clutching at her shawl. "You mustn't go on like this."

"You call me great and important, but I am not. This life I have been living has been a pretense, a lie. I was empty and poor, lost and alone, the last of my people, before you came here. You have given me hope of a happier, fuller life. When I said I meant to be a bridegroom in a month's time, I was not speaking of Miss Poisson."

"You can't mean any of this," she said, confused. "I am a little, plain thing—"

"You are a walking contradiction, with all of your youth and wisdom. There is a strength of spirit in you I never could have expected, a fire that melts my ice. You take simple words and make them powerful; every sentence you speak is like an arrow aimed at my heart. You mean more to me than anything Miss Poisson could offer, for all of her cultivated ways and charms—there is nothing shallow or impermanent about you, Rose. And I love you for it."

It must be a dream, a hallucination crafted from her secret longings and the plaintive song of the nightingale. She stepped back and shook her head in disbelief.

"You reject me?" he said quietly, and the sorrow in his words and face shattered the surreal spell of the night.

"But you cannot mean what you say!" Rose exclaimed, biting her lip. "How can you? A man so great, as important as you—"

"You are my equal, Rose, and I never want you to doubt it again!"

In a rush his arms were around her, pulling her close, and she was clutching at his jacket, tears hot in her eyes. The nightingale's song was like thunder in her ears, and then his lips were against hers and it was like tasting Heaven. Here was something real and tangible and hers, something that would not be stolen from her, a perfect moment of incandescent happiness. She was poor, friendless Rose Tyler no more—as she kissed her Doctor, she felt whole for perhaps the first time in her life. His hands were in her hair, and he was kissing her as if she was his lifeline and heartbeat.

There was a distant roll of thunder—a storm was approaching.

If only she had known the true fury that would soon destroy everything.


---


It took the space of a gasp, and that was all: afterwards, her every hope for happiness and a future with the man she loved was gone. The man's words still echoed in her ears; This man cannot marry, for he already has a wife.

She stood beside her simple bag, every possession she could still call her own tucked inside it, and listened to the terrible story as dispassionately as she could. It was a story of young love soured by madness, of a beautiful woman named Romana who had fallen into an incurable psychosis. Finally, here was an explanation for the Doctor's grief and regret and hollow eyes, of the disembodied laughter in the night and the smoke in the hall.

When he had exhausted himself with the telling, when the words had finished spilling from him like blood from a mortal wound, she desperately wanted to cradle his head in her arms and comfort him, to smooth away the lines of his face with her kisses and soft fingers. But she could not. It was as if some great wall had risen between them, and there could be no breaching it.

"I must leave," she said finally, and she could feel the crushing weight of the words as they struck the air. "Farewell, my love."

And so she left him, crumpled in his chair and face covered by shaking hands, forcing her feet to steadily take her away from the only man she had ever loved.


----


She walked for days, weeks, months. She traveled and suffered and persevered. The world was colder and darker, and felt even emptier than it had during her childhood. In time she found new occupation, where she felt appreciated and even loved. Rose Tyler made something of herself.

Many, many weeks after that terrible day in the wedding chapel, Rose found herself facing another offer of matrimony. And as she refused this man's offer—as gently as she could, but as honestly as was in her nature—she realized that she had become a new woman. This Rose Tyler had learned much from the world, and could face all of its cruelty and evils and sadness now without flinching, and was both wholly independent and self-sufficient. And she could not settle for anything less than what she deserved; this man before her now was a good man, who had been kind and fair to her, but she could never love him. She was as sure of this as she was of what she must do next:

She must go home.


---


She found him by the edge of the creek, sitting as if carved from stone, a fixed expression of brooding melancholy etched across his face. She had already been to the old house, now charred and empty, now a home only to whistling wind and the old ghosts trapped within. The old groundskeeper had recounted the dramatic tale of how the lunatic wife had started the blaze before throwing herself from the roof to her own demise. The Doctor had refused to escape the inferno before he had satisfied himself that there was no one else trapped inside, and in the ensuing chaos he had lost more than his grand estate and regrettable wife—the Doctor that sat before her now was blind.

But he was in no way else unchanged. The long months spent apart had not robbed him of his inherent dignity, or banked the passionate fires that drove him forward each day. There was still a mesmerizing energy about him, sitting as still and silent as he was.

She stepped forward as quietly as she could, but she had taken less than three steps forward before he had turned, staring blankly ahead. "Who is that?" he demanded. "Is that Mary, come to fuss over me for sitting out in the rain?"

"No, Doctor, it is not Mary, and I doubt you would allow me to fuss over you for long."

"Rose?" Her name on his tongue was like a prayer, uttered reverently.

"Yes, Doctor. I've come back to you."

"Give me your hand," he said, his own outstretched. She took it immediately, wrapping her fingers tightly around his as she sank to her knees before him, heedless of the wet soaking through her dress.

"I thought you had forsaken me completely," he murmured, raising her hand to his lips. "I've dreamt of you for so many nights—swear to me that you are real, and not another dream come to torment me."

"I am flesh and blood," she assured him, caressing his face. He smiled, the same smile she remembered and loved with every fiber of her being, and she laughed with relief and happiness.

"I'm not the same man you left," he said. "I have changed. You cannot recognize me now, I'm sure."

"Nonsense," she said firmly. "You are still my Doctor. The same man I fell in love with."

"And you are my Rose, the woman that kept me fighting through the dark nights and empty days. Oh, Rose, tell me you have come back for good, to make me a better man again. Tell me that you'll stay."

"I will stay, Doctor. I will stay with you forever."

She kissed him, and as he wrapped his arms around her in the embrace she had desired for an untold number of weeks, she was finally whole again.