Title: Somewhere A Clock Is Ticking. (Part One of Two)
Rating: PG-15.
Genre: Angst, romance, traces of the philosophical.
Characters and Pairings: Rose Tyler, The Tenth Doctor, a few small new characters; Rose/Ten.
Author's Note: A lot darker than my usual stuff, but...well, this is me. Inspired by the myth of the Fountain of Youth.

Summary: The Doctor curses his longevity, Rose curses her mortality. They cannot live out their lives side by side; she will fade and he will go on, alone. They both long, in deepest parts of their hearts, for different life-spans. What happens when they are given a choice?



The title comes from a beautiful Snow Patrol song.

. . . .

Rose Tyler, all of twenty-three, never finds it hard to believe that she is growing older with every passing day. She knows that the Doctor can feel Time slowly creeping over her body, and even though she can’t feel it she knows it, just as she knows that it makes him sad.

Her bones feel strong, her skin feels smooth, her muscles feel responsive, but thoughts of old age and wrinkles and walking slowly and oxygen tanks fester in the back of her mind. Sometimes in the front.

Whenever her thoughts turn particularly dark, she inevitably ends up thinking about Bessie, one of her old childhood friends. Bessie’s dad died of cancer when she was fourteen, and throughout the pain and the mourning, there had also been a hint of anger. Anger that thoughts of death and mortality had been thrust upon her at such a young age whilst everybody else was busy thinking about boys and bands.

Rose supposes it’s the same with the Doctor; sometimes she gets angry at him for forcing thoughts of her own mortality on her, even though it’s not his fault. Even though he’s always a little angry at himself, for loving her and for letting her love him.

She never goes so far as to wish she hadn’t met him, hadn’t fallen in love with him. She knows what a gift she’s been given, but sometimes she is envious of the couples she passes in the streets who map our their lives from mutual beginnings to mutual ends.

So, it is with both joy and despair that she tries and fails to button up her shirt. She’s got the first three hooked, but her breasts, bigger and rounder now, spill out of her bra and push against the material, making it gape. There’s no point in even trying to do up the lower buttons; the sides of her shirt don’t reach each other, no matter how hard she tugs them.

She wonders where the first four months went, wonders where the Time went. She feels like she went to bed the night before with a stomach that was firm but still flat, and has woken up with a swollen, round belly.

Even though it is pregnancy, not age that has altered her body and even though it is birth, not death that she marches towards, it is still indicative of Time passing and for the first time she can feel it ghosting over her body.

She can’t help but cry, even when the Doctor walks into the room and cuddles her close. She sniffles against the lapels of his coat as he peels the too small shirt off her body, slides the too small bra from her shoulders and gently dresses her in his clothes. First a Henley, which stretches and then an Oxford, which buttons up with barely an inch to spare.

She points out that he’s not exactly the bulkiest of men, and that even his clothes won’t do her much good for too long, but he just shushes her and says that the TARDIS will come up with something and failing that, they’ll go shopping.

She is not a person predisposed to depression, but she is predisposed to contemplation and in some ways that’s even worse.

Time passes, the baby grows, stretching skin that’s never been stretched and pushing her in all sorts of directions that she’s never been pushed.

There are days when she is overcome with joy. Days when she thinks that even if she is marching towards the end, she’s doing something fantastic and lovely on the way. She’s growing Infinity in her belly and if the Doctor’s nose, squashed up excitedly against the medical monitor which their unborn baby graces is any indication, she’s growing a gift.

Four months becomes nine, nine months becomes eleven and eventually the baby is born. The dark thoughts crawl back in and make her even angrier; angry that one day the two of them will have each other, and that she’ll be gone. Jealous of the times they’ll share together, without her. She feels like she’s going to be left behind, feels like she's already being left behind, even though she's still alive.

That she can feel something other than joy whilst holding a sleepy bundle of New upsets her, the awkward thoughts and feelings reek of something that is taboo, even in her own brain.

It passes, ironically enough, with time. The Doctor helps, his delight in her and their daughter is so bright and infectious that she can’t help but catch it. She begins to look forward to things; first teeth, first words, first steps, first display of mathematical brilliance.

She begins to welcome the passing of time, because it means that her daughter will grow. She begins to crave the future, because it means that her daughter will become, develop into a person with quirks and dislikes and favourite songs and penchants and funny sayings.

Days and months and years roll by.

She wakes up to her thirty-fourth birthday, the wild mop of hair that is the Doctor to her left, the toothless grins that are her daughters to her right, a cooked breakfast (bless him, it’s charred) sitting on the bed-side table and a round belly, her third, in front of her.

She is growing older, and she no longer fears death for herself. She only fears leaving them behind.

. . . .

Rose watches, horror struck, as the man before her crumples to the ground beside the fountain. She thinks that his knees have given out, and darts forward to catch him. It is only when she touches him that she realizes his knees haven’t given out, rather they’ve disappeared entirely. Crumbled to dust, and beneath her fingers the rest of him is quickly crumbling also.

What isn’t crumbling is withering, wilting, greying. His lips go from pink to blue to white but just before they blow into the wind they whisper, “More time. I only wanted more time.”

He’s gone, dead, dust on the wind, on the grass, on her hands and on her shoes. A few speckles of it dislodge from her cuff and fall into the water. She looks at the fountain in horror, a simple steady trickle that moves from rock to rock and pools at the bottom into a small pond.

“Poison?!” Rose yells in accusation and question to the man who sits beside the fountain, apparently its keeper. He ignores her, looking neither startled nor upset, very much unlike the other woman in the forest clearing. She drops her cup in fear, water spilling and sloshing out of it and onto the grass.

“He only wanted a drink. He was thirsty! You killed him!”

At this, the man looks at her curiously as if seeing her for the first time. “You do not know?”

Rose worriedly watches the woman flee back into the trees before replying. “Know what?” she snaps, stooping to pick up the wooden cup.

The man rises, an excited glint in his eye. He pries the cup from her fingers, delves it into the pooling water and then turns to stare at her. He seems to be sizing her up and she shuffles awkwardly, not used to anybody but the Doctor looking at her so intently.

He visibly comes to a decision that he likes and tries to hand her the cup. Rose darts back. “No!”

The man shakes his head emphatically and pushes the cup against her chest. “I am the Keeper of the Fountain. Safe. For you, it is safe.”

“No, no,” she steps back again, hands outstretched in defence. “No!”

“Don’t touch her!” she hears the Doctor shout from somewhere behind her. She turns to see him running, watches as he shouts at James and the girls, “stay there! Stay right there!”

Before she knows it, he is beside her, hand resting on her shoulder protectively, eyes trained on the Keeper. “What do you want?” he bites out.

The Keeper looks at him, studies him for a moment, and then tilts his head to the side in understanding. “Is it safe, for her.” He nods at Rose. “She does not drink for herself, but for you.”

Rose ignores his words. “Doctor, a bloke died. He drank the water from the fountain and he crumbled to dust!”

The Doctor turns to study the fountain curiously, and Rose doesn’t like the story his changing expressions tell. Curiosity, anger, disbelief and strangely, the tiniest spark of hope.

She’s about to ask him what the hell this is all about when a man breaks out of the tree-line and into the clearing. He yelps with glee when he catches sight of the fountain and runs towards it as if it’ll fade like a mirage. “I found it!" he shouts to the sky victoriously. "I found it!” He falls to his knees by the water's edge and picks up a cup from the ground.

“No!” The Doctor and Rose shout simultaneously, diving for him. “No, don’t! It’ll kill you.”

The man looks at them as if they’re a little dim. “Kill me!?” he shouts in disbelief, as if the very notion is laughable. “No! I’ve been searching for years and years and now I’ve found it! The Fountain of Youth!”

He scoops the cup into the water and the Doctor tries to stop him, but receives only a kick to the shins for his troubles. “Trust me,” he says, his voice almost breaking. “It’ll kill you. It'll kill you.”

The man shakes his head, clutching the cup tightly to his chest like a prize. “No, It'll save me! I'll live forever!”

The Doctor tries to tear the man’s fingers away from the curved wood. “Why?! Why would you want that? Why would you want to live forever? To see everyone you love grow old and fade away until you’re all alone?”

The man isn’t listening, his eyes wide with wonder and excitement and hope, with life. It's like he is drugged by the possibility of immortality, or mad from the years of longing. The Doctor is shaken violently until he falls to the ground and in that moment the man tilts his head back and gulps down the water.

Dust and crumbling and withering and ageing and wilting, and all Rose, frozen on the spot, can think about is that her children are watching and that there had been the faintest glimmer of hope in the Doctor's eye.

Again, lips turn blue and then white and then they're gone, an invisible addition to the breeze.

Heavy silence sits over them like a thick blanket on a too-warm day. It is finally broken by the Keeper, "safe, safe, for her it is safe. She did not come in search of it. She does not drink for herself, but for you." He nods at the three little ones hovering on the edge of the clearing, "for them."

She's not sure how, but somehow Rose knows that the Keeper is speaking the truth; if she drinks, she won't die. Judging by how still the Doctor is, rigid like a frightened gazelle in front of a car, he knows this too, knows that if she drinks...

...if she drinks, she'll live forever.

Ironically, time slows as she deliberates. She can't feel it ghosting over her body, can't feel it stretching her skin.

The Doctor blinks, long eyelashes almost kissing his skin and he is so still that she thinks that Time might have actually frozen until she realizes that he has just closed his eyes against a faint sheen of tears.

She knows how he feels about his longevity. Knows that he feels it to be a curse, although with three children under the TARDIS' roof it is now a bearable one. Still, she can't help but hope that if she was to shoulder half of the curse, it would somehow become a gift. She promised him forever and she knows that if she could really give it, he would take it.

She doesn't know what to do. It's not what her body was made for, her human limbs and her human hair and her human heart and her human mind. Will she go mad? Will her brain, made for eighty or ninety years be able to cope with so many memories?

The Keeper steps towards her, cup held out like an offering, but the Doctor hisses at him to stop, eyes still closed.

She looks at the plain wooden cup, so dull in the face of what it holds. She studies the water, so innocuous, so ordinary that it could have just as easily have come from her mum's kitchen tap.

She doesn't know what to do.