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atreegrowsinnorthnywrites · 4 years

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Prompt: Your main character is approached by their long-estranged parent who wants to reconnect. How do they react? Story:

When I was little, my mama convinced me I came only from her.

“It’s why we look so much alike,” She would say with a pinch of my freckled cheeks and a tug on one of my unruly curls. I would look into her light brown eyes that mirrored my own and believe her.

My nana, who shared the same curly hair and freckly face, would shake her head and scold my mama behind closed doors of our yellow house, but neither of them would correct what I knew to be true: I was my mother’s daughter, and hers alone.

It was not until Sunday school in the third grade when mean, white-haired Ms. Martha ominously told the class Jesus was not Joseph’s son, but Mary’s alone! My hand shot up to announce that I was the same, Ms. Mary nearly had a heart attack, and the two women who raised me were forced to set the story straight.

“His name was Jack. I don’t know anything else, and don’t ask me either.” My mama was unable to look me in the eye as she shoved a photograph into my hands. A younger version of my mama and a man in a cowboy hat and a long sleeve button up stood with their arms around each other next to a cactus. His face was hidden by the hat, and all I could see was he was tall and tan. Nana told me later they met in West Texas during mama’s “wild phase” and she came back home with me in her belly, and that was that.

The photograph was pinned to the cork board in my bedroom beside magazine cut outs of the cast from Harry Potter and printed song lyrics I had doodled hearts around. Over time, shirtless cut outs of Ryan Gosling and Zac Efron replaced the actors from Harry Potter, and angsty poems about love replaced the song lyrics, and by my senior year of high school, a college acceptance letter to UT covered it all.

But the photograph remained.

The photograph was there when I came home from college every summer. It was there when we celebrated my first job and Nana’s long overdue retirement. It was there when I left the lake early Memorial Day Weekend brokenhearted because the man I thought was proposing, announced he was in love with someone else. And it was there, at twenty-five years old, when my mama called me during a happy hour with friends, and I had to step outside the restaurant to better hear her trembling voice that whispered to me, “Jack wants to meet you, baby.”

As I look up at the yellow, two-story house with a white wrap around porch that could use a new coat of paint, I know the photograph will be there.

Except this time, for the first time, so will he.

I open the creaky screen door with my stomach in my throat. My nana greets me with a cinnamon sugar cookie (my favorite) and a hug. I am barely able to return her embrace because across the beige carpeted living room, he sits on the couch.

My mama leaps up from her chair at the sight of me, fidgety and anxious. I can guarantee she has been picking her fingernails to the quick. She offers me a tentative smile, but I am too fixated on him. Jack stands up slowly, a cowboy hat in hand. He does not appear nervous like my mama. He is calm, like me.

His hair is peppery, his eyes blue, and his skin like leather.

We look nothing alike, and I have a strange urge to laugh at this stranger across the room from me.

“Hi,” he says.

“Hello,” I reply.

“We’ll let you two get on,” My mama offers quietly, squeezing my shoulder as she walks by to join nana in the kitchen.

“I’ve been wanting to meet you for a while now,” Jack says. I want to ask what he means by a while, but instead I say nothing at all. “Your mama says you got a fancy job in the city.”

I nod. My mama tells everyone that.

“Listen, I…I hope it’s okay that I’m here.”

“It’s okay,” I say, reassuring myself more than him.

“I wanted to reach out a lot sooner than when you were all grown up,” He says, his voice cracking a bit at the end.

“It’s okay,” I repeat.

“You see, I drank a lot when I met your mama,” He attempts to explain. “If I’m honest, I drank a lot up until a couple years back. But I’m sober now.”

“That’s good,” I say, and I want to be genuine, but it comes off flat.

He shrugs. “I just thought it was the right thing to do. To meet you.”

A silence follows and questions gnaw at me. The kitchen is silent, and I know mama and nana have their ears pressed up to the door.

“You live in West Texas?” I ask and he nods eagerly. “What do you do?”

“I work the oil fields.”

Of course.

“Did you know about me? When she was pregnant?”

Another nod. Of course. Though I am surprised by how much this fact does not bother me.

“I don’t look like you,” I say. Jack looks dumbfounded, and I can feel him studying me. From my head of unruly brown curls pulled half back right down to my dainty feet.

“No, you don’t.” He admits. “You look your mama.”

Tears fill my eyes. We exchange a few more niceties. I do not invite him to stay for dinner and he does not ask to join. He shakes my hand when we say goodbye and I notice, like me, he does not bite or pick his nails.

“Thank you,” I say at the door, smiling. “For coming.”

He tips his hat at me, hops in his pick-up, and leaves.

“How was that?” Nana asks as her arms wrap around me from behind, holding me close.

“Like meeting a stranger,” I reply. My mama sits on the stairs, watching us with a sad look on her face, but not saying a word.

When I go to bed in my childhood bedroom that night, the photograph is still there.

-----------------------------

The photograph is there, one year later, when I get a call in my new office with a door. Pouring over spreadsheets, I am tempted to press ignore, but mama’s contact photo in my cellphone smiles up at me and the guilt of being her only daughter wins.

“Hey mama, can I call you-“

“Come home,” Mama interrupt, with the emotion in her voice I have heard only once before. “It’s nana.”

The photograph is there on the corkboard of my room as I lay on the bed holding nana’s apron smelling of cinnamon and sugar tight to my face. Hot tears roll down my cheeks and when I see the picture across the room, I feel compelled to rip it down; to tear that stupid photograph in two.

“Goodness did she love you,” Mama says interrupting my rage and I look to the door where she leans against the frame with her own grief pooling in her eyes.

“Yeah?” I say, searching for reassurance even though I already know.

“She saw my belly when I got out of the car all those years ago,” Mama continues, lost in a memory. “And she didn’t ask a single question. She just looked me in the eye and said, ‘well alright, let’s raise this baby up.’”

My vision goes blurry with tears and I can barely see the photograph now.

“You know how I used to tell you that you only come from me?” She asks, and my heart lurches.

“Well, I lied.”

“Mama-” The man I met once is the last thing I want to talk about now.

“You come from me and from her,” She whispers.

I choke back a sob and mama sits down next to me. We sit there, side by side, until the sun rises again.

---------------------------------------------------------

The photograph is not there anymore.

It sits in the bottom drawer of an old oak writing desk in a new home. When my curly haired daughters ask me who my daddy was, I pull it out for them. They laugh with blue eyes like their daddy’s and tell me I don’t look like mine. I smile, nod, and tuck it back away.

On the corkboard I hang in my eldest daughter’s room I pin a photograph of three women in front of a yellow house: my nana, my mama, and me.

The women who raised me. The only ones I come from.

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lostinfic · 4 years

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Hello! If you are still accepting prompts, protective!Nine x Rose would be great!

Anonymous said to lostinfic: Could be any Doctor, all the Doctors, I just want 'em to channel me and ruminate on how gorgeous Rose Tyler is, and you can plop them in any scenario you like (bonus points if it's a Doctor who's never met Rose)

She is defended

Summary: 1943. The Doctor works for MI6 and is the handler of secret agent, Rose Tyler. They meet at a dance hall to discuss her next mission, but things go awry. Just indulge yourself in angsty infatuated pining PTSD!Ninth Doctor.

Word count: 2900 | Rating: T

A/N: Yes, another WWII AU. You can blame @kelkat9 (thank you!) who suggested this setting when I couldn’t figure out what to do with this prompt. Thank you to @goingtothetardis for the beta <3 I like my Rose Tyler being a badass, but for the purpose of this prompt, she’s not (on screen that is), still I don’t think it qualifies as whump.

Ao3 | self-indulgent prompts

London, 1943

Agent handler, John Noble, can never be sure his asset, Miss Tyler, is still alive. Not until he sees her in the flesh, on rare encounters between missions. Every coded message she sends by telegraph from occupied France, he has to suspect could come from an enemy impersonating her to gain information. Each meeting confirms she is still alive. Each meeting, he carries orders for her next mission. Each meeting could be their last.

The rendezvous point, set by his superior, is a dance hall in the West End. It’s one of those supposedly safer, underground clubs. Strings of Union Jack pennants criss-cross the low ceiling. John doesn’t think much of it, he meets his agents in all sorts of places. But what he hasn’t foreseen is that Miss Tyler would dress up for the occasion: pink dress with black trims and buttons, fire-red lipstick, hair in soft waves. She’s cut it and dyed it blond for her next mission, and it frames her lovely face like a halo.

She smiles at him across the dance floor.

She’s alive. So alive.

He crosses the room in long strides as she bounds towards him, and they stop short of jumping in each other’s arms.

“Doctor! It’s so good to see a familiar face.” She touches his cheek briefly.

He takes off his fedora and fiddles with the brim.

She only knows him by his codename, one he inherited after his first undercover mission in 1916.

“Miss Tyler, you look… you look a picture.”

“Thank you. After five months over there I wasn’t going to miss a chance to dress up.”

But no amount of makeup, nor the dim lights and heavy cigarette smoke in the dance hall, can hide her emaciated figure and the dark circles under her eyes. Every time he sees her, she looks wiser.

At 19 (now 23), she was the youngest of his recruits. He’d doubted she would make it through his rigorous training. Week after week she’d proved her worth, although not without defying him at every turn. She was hot-headed but never foolish. If an ability to think for oneself wasn’t high on the list of qualities sought by the military, it was necessary for intelligence work. She and other girls had spent months in a manor in York, requisitioned by MI6, enduring countless drills and exercises in abhorrent conditions. Some girls quit, some failed. Rose had persevered. Her courage, he discovered on those quiet nights when they had sat alone under the stars, didn’t stem from youthful innocence, but from compassion. It’s what drove her. It’s what would cause her to suffer. He knew firsthand how war wrecks a person with good intentions. Yet he’d agreed to send her behind enemy lines.

The dance hall is packed with Canadian and American soldiers and British girls, many of them in uniforms. Between rationing, threat of air raids and intensive work shifts, dancing is one of the few escapes left, necessary to maintain morale. He could use some of that himself, but they are here to conduct important, top secret business. Rose, however, has other things in mind.

“You’ll buy me a drink, yeah?” she says. “It would look suspicious if we didn’t drink when everyone else is.”

John bows down to her logic and heads for the bar as she secures a corner table.

She drinks the watered-down beer from her pint glass until she is out of breath, then rolls her eyes in delight. “Oh, it’s gorgeous.”

“Don’t tell me you haven’t been gorging yourself on great French wines and pastries,” he says sarcastically.

“Only on weekends.”

She gives him that tongue-touched smile that reduces enemy spies to obliging puppies.

He asks her the usual questions though he’s read all the details in her report. She’d single-handedly took down Oberführer Van Statten’s operation in Poitiers. Yet, she talks more about the people who helped her along the way.

He readies himself for the transfer of documents, for the moment their legs and hands will meet under the table.

But Rose is distracted. Her gaze keeps drifting to the couples Lindy hopping on the dance floor to the jazz tunes of an energetic quartet. A mix of sweat, cheap cologne and hormones arises from them.

“Oh, won’t you dance with me, Doctor?”

“Miss Tyler, I’m trying to impart vital information to you.”

“It will look suspicious if we don’t dance in a dance hall. It’s like you taught me: blend in.”

“How many times are you going to use that excuse?”

“As often as it takes,” she says, shamelessly. “Just one song, please. Unless you’d rather I ask someone else.”

She scans the room. When her gaze lands on a group of GIs, a burning sensation radiates through his chest.

“That won’t be necessary,” he declares, promptly standing up. “Need I remind you, you’re forbidden from forming attachments?”

“Too late for that.”

He barely hears her over the music. His stomach drops.

“In France?” he asks.

She shakes her head and looks at him with something close to pleading in her eyes. For a moment he can almost believe she means— no, surely not.

The saxophonist launches into the opening arpeggio of “In the Mood”. The dancers cheer.

Rose grabs his hand. “Show me your moves, Doctor.” She pulls him towards the lively crowd.

Though stiff at first, the catchy melody and Rose’s encouragement soon loosen his limbs. They swing and jive and jitterbug, and he twirls her through a second and a third song.

She’s losing herself in the music, closing her eyes and thinking of nothing else. Carefree. Light-hearted. Brilliant.

The next song is “I don’t want to set the world on fire”, a fast-paced rendition, not the original ballad from which he would have walked away. The lyrics hit him nonetheless.

I don't want to set the world on fire I just want to start a flame in your heart In my heart I have but one desire And that one is you, no other will do I've lost all ambition for worldly acclaim I just want to be the one you love And with your admission that you'd feel the same I'll have reached the goal I'm dreaming of, believe me

The tempo decreases, and she rests her head on his chest, just above where his heart beats wildly.

Oh, to keep Rose like this forever, safe in his arms, sheltered. Sod MI6 and the next mission. He could hide her, keep her. And then what? Wrap her in cotton wool? Tell her, “Here, I could let you fight fascism, but I’m not going to in case you get hurt? There’s so much you can do, you’re fantastic, but I want you to stay at home and work in a shop?”

He breaks their embrace abruptly.

“We have work to do.”

And he sets about following protocol, describing her next target. When he hands her the documents under the table, he doesn’t let his fingers brush hers. But Rose grabs his hand. He shakes her off and avoids her gaze full of confusion and hurt.

John’s efficiency means the meeting ends too soon.

On the pavement, in front of the dance hall, they say their goodbyes.

“I’ll see you in six months or so? If all goes well,” she says. “It will be Christmas!” She smiles, but it’s tight-lipped.

Christmas. Around them, magnolias are in bloom and a warm breeze stirs Rose’s hair. He can barely imagine what it will be like in such a long time. So many things could happen until then.

They could win the war. Tides are turning in the Allies’ favor lately.

They could win, but still lose her.

“Do you really want to go on this mission?” he asks as professionally as he can. “You could refuse, ask to stay here.”

“No. Not after everything I’ve seen.”

“Of course.” He takes in a deep ragged breath and tips his hat. “Be safe, Miss Tyler.”

“Goodbye, Doctor.”

He watches her walk away. Her arms swing at her sides, her fists are clenched and she rubs her thumb over her knuckles.

After about a minute, he follows her as he has done before. He keeps a long distance between them, longer than he would usually keep. After all, he taught her himself how to tell she’s been followed, and she’s his best student. He only wants to make sure she arrives safely at her boarding house. Of course, she faces more dangerous streets as a spy in occupied France, than at home in London, especially now they aren’t bombed every night, but here, should something happen, he can be there for her.

It’s dark outside, more so with the blackout in place. No streetlights or neons, heavy black curtains obscure windows. White paint on the curb and on top of mailboxes reflects moonlight and dots the way like Little Thumb’s rocks in the tale. They say cars driving without their headlights on has caused more fatalities than bombs.

As per official guidelines, Rose keeps her torchlight beam aimed at the ground. He follows her pink shoes.

She turns left, and he loses sight of her. He slows his pace. Footsteps that keep following when you turn onto a street is a dead giveaway. He’ll wait a beat, remove his hat, then he’ll resume walking, but with a different gait. She can’t know he’s following her, or that he’ll watch her window until he’s smoked a whole cigarette. How would he explain? What would she think of him? What would his superiors think?

“Doctor!”

Blood drains from his face. He doesn’t hesitate and dashes in the direction of her voice; she’s cried his name.

Her torchlight lies discarded on the ground.

“Rose?!”

“Doc—”

To his right, behind that shop.

He sprints across the street. Struggling noises. Silhouettes hunched behind a dumpster. A man.

“Don’t you dare touch her!”

John rages and groans, topples him over. Teeth clenched, blood boiling. He could rip the man’s head clean off.

Rose moans in pain, and John pushes off the man to rush to her side.

She’s slouched on the ground, eyes closed.

Suddenly he’s back at the Somme, half-sunk in mud, gunfire echoing around him, and Adric in his arms, dying.

A loud noise brings him back to reality. The assailant is fleeing. John stands up to run after him. He needs to know who he works for. But Rose…

He squats back beside her. A syringe sticks out of her arm, plunger depressed, barrel emptied out.

What did he give her? Drugs? Poison?

His fingertips seek her pulse on her wrist. Nothing. On her neck. Yes, there. Weak. Tears well up in his eyes.

“Miss Tyler, can you hear me?”

No answer.

In his distressed state of mind, there’s only one person he thinks of who can help. Someone he hasn’t talked to since 1918.

The stolen car’s brakes screech to a halt in front of a quiet herbalist shop. Adrenaline helping, John lifts Rose in his arms and runs to the front door. He knocks loudly, relentlessly.

The door cracks open, revealing a middle-aged black woman holding a cast iron pan. John pushes past her, into the front room and carefully lays Rose on the floral couch.

“Doctor?” the woman says. “Is that you? But that’s impossible.”

Kneeling beside the couch, he speaks without taking his eyes off Rose, “Jabe, I need your help. Someone injected her with this.”

Jabe takes the syringe from his hand.

“What is it?”

“I don’t know. You’ve helped us with poisons before.”

“I made them. I didn’t identify them.”

“Take a shot at it.”

He gently wipes Rose’s hair away from her face. She’s still breathing. For now.

“But Doctor, poison in her food or drink, she could throw it up, but in her blood—”

John springs up and towers over Jabe menacingly.

“Help her.”

Fear spurs her into action, not her own fear, but his.

Jabe pushes on a bookcase, it slides aside, revealing a small workshop. Dried herbs, tiny brown glass bottles and antique apothecary cabinets hide lethal drugs and modern chemistry equipment.

She gets to work, to concoct a generic, broad-spectrum antidote.

“I heard about your unit. It’s remarkable that you’re even still alive. I just want to say how sorry I am.”

John swallows thickly. He doesn’t need grief on top of distress.

“I’m not losing her too,” he declares to convince himself.

Jabe stirs droplets of a pink liquid into a vial.

“Why did they attack your wife?” she asks.

“She’s not my wife.”

“Partner?”

“No.”

“Prostitute?”

He glares at her.

Rose remains unconscious.

Reluctantly, he leaves her side to fetch a flannel damp with cold water. He dabs it over her forehead and cheek.

“I promised her mother I would always keep her safe. She was just a kid. Nineteen, she was, when I met her. She was fighting off looters in a bombed-out shop.”

“Am I a ghost?” Rose mumbles.

Relief floods his veins. He engulfs her in a hug.

“You’re talking like I’m not here anymore,” she slurs.

“No, love. You’re not a ghost.” Still cradling her head, he leans back, just enough to see her face. “Rose, look at me. Talk to me.”

Her eyelids flutter open with great difficulty.

“Your eyes are so beautiful,” she says. “You’re so handsome. I miss you when I’m in France. Why aren’t you in France with me? I miss you.”

“Shh, I’m here now.”

He kisses her forehead, but Rose seeks his mouth. He doesn’t fight his desire. Their lips meet in a slow, desperate kiss. A sluggish kiss. She’s too limp in his arms. Her eyes have closed again.

“No!” He shakes her. “I miss you too, okay. Rose, do you hear me? I love you.”

“You’re like a storm.” Her speech is lethargic. “There was a storm when we crossed the Channel. The pilot was scared. He ate my sandwiches. I don’t want the pilot to eat my sandwiches. Tell him not to do that. Mum made those. Where’s she? I’ve to get back home before ten. Don’t go. I love you.”

John laughs through his tears. Rose babbles on, none of what she says makes sense.

“Jabe, I know what it is: sodium pentothal. It’s a barbiturate. They keep trying to use it as a truth serum.”

“Does that really work?” Jabe asks, joining him beside Rose.

“It’s not as simple as that. It reduces inhibition. People talk without thinking. The problem isn’t getting information, is you get too much of it, you can’t tell reality from imagination. Listen to her.”

Rose is talking about a boat trip that may or may not have been a dream. John smiles fondly.

“And they’re highly suggestible,” he adds. “Miss Tyler, have you ever been to Russia? When did you go to Russia?”

Her eyebrows are drawn together. “I’ve been to Russia. It was cold.”

“No you haven’t been to Russia.”

“No, I haven’t been. We went to York.”

“Yes, we did.”

“You taught me how to pick a lock. I knew how to do it, but I failed. ‘Cause when I couldn’t do it, you stood beside me. Close. To show me. I went to a castle. There were no crocodiles.”

With the new mission orders fresh in her mind, who knows what she could have revealed to their enemies? And it wouldn’t have been her fault.

“How do you know that’s what it is?” Jabe asks.

“I’ve used it.”

It’s not the whole truth.

After the Great War, psychiatrists used it to treat soldiers with acute shell shock. A lower dose than what Rose had received reduced anxiety. With a conscientious doctor, it allowed patients to talk about their trauma and eventually recover from it. He had been one such patient.

“She’ll be fine, she only needs to rest. Can we stay here?”

“Is it safe?”

“I don’t think they’ll come after her again.”

Jabe leaves them alone for a moment.

He moves, but Rose grapples blindly with his shirt. Carefully, he sits on the couch to hold her in his arms. Her pulse is still slow, but close to a normal rate. He keeps caressing and kissing her hair. He rocks her, like the slow dance he denied them earlier.

Jabe comes back with two cups of herbal tea and sets one down on the coffee table for John. She sits in the armchair and studies him. Fine wrinkles now surround her piercing almond-shaped eyes.

“You’re still working for them, aren’t you? After everything that happened,” she says accusingly.

“I couldn’t go back to a normal life. I needed… action.”

“Perhaps a man only enjoys trouble when there is nothing else left,” she says. “Although, sounds like you have Miss Tyler now. That’s good, isn’t it?”

John sighs and his gaze moves to the syringe. “A dose like that… I think they aimed to learn everything they could about her new mission, then release her. Let the mission take its course, then thwart it in the worst possible way.”

“How could they have let her go?”

“Because a dose like that, Jabe, it causes memory loss.”

“She wouldn’t have remembered being interrogated… She won’t remember any of this. Your confession…”

“Probably not.”

“Will you tell her?”

He looks down at Rose, safe in his arms as he had wished. He tightens his embrace.

“Probably not.”

“Oh, Doctor.”

“After the war. Maybe.”

End not: Here is a ASMR (but not really) version of “I don’t want to set the world on fire” (Spotify), feel free to listen to it while picturing post-war Rose, signing it softly around the house where she lives with the Doctor. Maybe she’s washing the dishes, and maybe he comes in and wraps his arms around her waist from behind, and maybe they sway softly to the melody of their song.

#ETA: why the fuck is the 'keep reading' in the ask?#ficandchips #Nine x Rose #Doctor x Rose #hurt/comfort #angst #WWII AU #Nonnie I know it's been a while #please let me know if you saw your fic #thank you!#self indulgent prompts #lostinfic writes stuff #Anonymous

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