#and and mitski literally cry together on saturdays | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

regenderate-fic · 2 years

Text

All the Quiet Nights You Bear: Epilogue (Chapter 29)

Fandom: Doctor Who Rating: General Ship: Thirteenth Doctor/Rose Tyler, Thirteenth Doctor/Yasmin Khan, Yasmin Khan/Rose Tyler, Thirteenth Doctor/Rose Tyler/Yasmin Khan, Past Metacrisis Tenth Doctor/Rose Tyler Characters: Thirteenth Doctor, Yasmin Khan, Rose Tyler, Najia Khan, Hakim Khan, Sonya Khan, Dan Lewis, Jack Harkness, Ryan Sinclair Series: And We’re Not Out of the Tunnel Word Count (Chapter): 1,720 Other Tags: Fluff and Angst, Angst, Emotional, Disabled Character, Chronic Illness, Bad Wolf Rose, COVID-19, Self-Quarantine, Domestic, Autistic Characters, Polyamory, OT3, Slow Burn, Disability Read on AO3 / Read in order

Summary: Rose Tyler-Noble jumps out of her parallel universe, leaving her husband and family behind in the hopes that being back in the right universe will improve her well-being.

Yasmin Khan is out for lunch with the Doctor when she sees a blonde woman sitting on the sidewalk, crying.

The Doctor, Yaz, and Rose travel back to Sheffield to see Yaz’s family, but they have to leave the TARDIS so it can reset, and when they come back, it’s gone. The police have confiscated it, and they want to see proof of ownership before they give it back. And the Doctor left her psychic paper on board. And they’ve landed in March of 2020, just before everything shuts down.

Stranded in Sheffield, they have no choice but to get a flat and quarantine together. Which, when you have three emotionally volatile people who care for each other more than they’re willing to admit, can be complicated.

(Sequel to And Still I Will Live Here, but hopefully readable out of context. Updating on Saturdays and Wednesdays.)

NOTES: HI I WROTE AN EPILOGUE. i lost the original when i got my computer fixed but i actually kind of think this one is better. mitski i will came on while i was finishing this and i almost cried.

also i might write a sequel featuring space adventures with your favorite polycule and MAYBE featuring some timey wimey side effects for yaz from her thing with the mouri but. we'll see

Rose sits on her bed, her laptop perched on her crossed legs. She peers at an array of boxes on her screen, each box featuring the tiny image of a person in their own home. Her own backdrop is just the white wall behind her, the edge of a poster just barely visible, but she likes looking at other people’s bookshelves and houseplants and, in some cases, children sitting on their laps.

The meeting is something Yaz found for her, or possibly something Ryan found and passed on to Yaz— it’s a support group for people with chronic illnesses, and Rose has been going for a few weeks now. She can’t decide what she thinks of it. It mostly feels weird. Or, it’s just that it’s the kind of thing that would’ve been really useful for her back in the other universe, if she’d thought to look for it, but now she knows what’s going on, and she knows it’s not like what any of these other people are experiencing. Sure, she relates to their struggles with pain and limited mobility— she feels the same frustration when she realizes she can’t take a walk without getting dizzy, or remembers she might never again ride a roller coaster and actually enjoy it. But she’s not facing death. It’s the opposite, actually. She might never die. And everyone complains about going to six different doctors without finding answers, but Rose doesn’t go to doctors’ appointments anymore. There’s no real reason to. She just gets the Doctor, with a capital D, to scan her with the sonic and tell her how agitated the artron energy in her head is. And anytime she wants to contribute to the conversation, she has to censor whatever she says, make her illness sound human.

Still. It’s better than nothing. There’s not exactly a support group for people who looked into the time vortex and are now going to live literally forever with the consequences— unless you count Jack, who Rose has stayed in touch with since arriving back in this universe.

But Rose appreciates community, or whatever semblance of it she can find, so she sits in front of the computer screen, listening as people commiserate, offer advice, complain. She’s sitting in her room, Yaz lying on her stomach on the other bed, fixing a tear in one of her blouses. Anytime Rose says anything, Yaz looks up, just for a second, before going back to her sewing. Ruby’s cuddled up next to her on the bed, and every so often Yaz reaches over and scratches between her ears.

It’s just Yaz and Rose in the flat. The Doctor said she was going out for a walk, which could mean anything: she might just be going around the block, or she might be careening across Sheffield. She and Yaz together have managed to convince the Doctor that she can’t be going into random businesses or interrogating random strangers, not during the pandemic; the Doctor claims she can’t carry or transmit the coronavirus, but that doesn’t mean people are going to react well to her being in their proximity. Still, she manages to get into plenty of trouble. Sometimes with Yaz, and sometimes with Rose, and sometimes with both of them. Rose has been feeling well enough to wind up wandering through back alleys with the Doctor, who’s searching for just about anything to do, and she’s even gotten a cane and crutches to help her get around now that the wheelchair has started to feel like overkill most of the time.

The meeting wears on, and Rose finds herself zoning out. She fiddles with a bit of blanket, running it under her hands over and over, the sounds from the laptop washing over her without sinking in.

She’s startled back into reality by a loud bang: the door to the flat, swinging open. The Doctor is home.

“Yaz! Rose!” she’s yelling, before she gets anywhere near the door to their room. “We can get the TARDIS!”

Ruby jumps up with a squeal, and Rose glances at her screen and sighs. Of course she’s forgotten to mute her microphone. Got to go, she types with clumsy fingers. Thanks for the meeting! She hastily hits the Leave meeting button, finally closing the window just as the door to the room bangs open to reveal the Doctor, her hair a mess, her eyes wide.

“Are you serious?” Yaz asks. “We can go?”

The Doctor nods. “I was walking,” she says, “and I realized the nearby police station looked really open, like, more than just the basic patrolling type of open, and I thought, ‘I wonder if they’re all open!’ So I went all the way back to the one by Park Hill, and they said I could have it back!” She frowns. “Well, first I forgot to put on my mask, and they tried to give me one of the scratchy paper ones before I remembered I had mine. And then I had to show them the psychic paper. And pay an exorbitant fine. But they said I could have it.”

“So did you get it?” Rose asks.

The Doctor shakes her head. “I was waiting for you two.” She’s practically jumping up and down as she adds, “C’mon, let’s go!”

Rose pushes herself to her feet. She grabs her cane from the foot of her bed. Yaz scoops up Ruby, who doesn’t seem too excited about the prospect until Yaz hands her to the Doctor. Somehow, the Doctor always seems to be able to keep Ruby calm. Together, the three of them leave the flat.

Masked, they take the bus, even though the Doctor can barely sit still long enough to wait: Yaz and Rose have to remind her that they’ll get there faster if they take the bus, even if it feels slower. Truthfully, though, Rose understands how the Doctor feels. The TARDIS has always meant everything to her. She’s excited to see it again. And if the little smile on Yaz’s face is any indication, the feeling is unanimous.

Fortunately, they don’t get in any trouble carrying a cat without a carrier or a leash or anything on the bus. Rose is reasonably sure they should, but the driver doesn’t even seem to notice. They find two open seats, and Rose sits with the Doctor, Ruby still curled up in the Doctor’s arms. She’s a bit squirrely, hissing at anyone who passes them, but the Doctor, despite her general jitters, keeps a firm hold on her. They manage the bus ride without incident.

And then finally, finally, they’re walking to the police station. Rose is out of breath in a second, just like she always is when she walks, but she can’t bring herself to ask to slow down. There’ll be all the time in the universe to rest, after all, when they get to the TARDIS. Rose’s stomach leaps just to think of it. The walk seems to take forever, even though Rose is sure it’s only about five minutes. Time is funny like that, dilating and compressing at everyone’s inconvenience.

Still. It’s not long until the station is in view. The Doctor starts running, then, and Yaz has to catch her hand, saying, “Why’d you even wait to come get us if you weren’t going to go our pace?” She’s laughing even as she says it, but the Doctor does slow down.

“Sorry,” she mumbles. “Got excited.”

“Nothing wrong with excitement,” Rose says. She’s grinning herself, in fact. “But it won’t take that much longer to go my speed. Promise.”

It’s true. Fifteen seconds later, the Doctor is pushing open the door of the police station and declaring, “I’ll have that box now,” to anyone who happens to be in the room to hear it. There’s a rustle throughout the lobby, and then a young cop pops up in front of them, her uniform pristine.

“You were Doctor Smith?” she asks.

The Doctor nods.

“Right.” The cop looks from the Doctor to Yaz to Rose, only a little bit of confusion on her face. “These two are with you?”

The Doctor nods again.

“Right. This way.” The cop turns, and the Doctor, Yaz, and Rose follow her through the station’s halls, turning this way and that.

“This is where you used to work?” Rose whispers to Yaz.

Yaz grimaces. “Don’t remind me.”

Finally, the cop takes them to an outside door. The station, as it turns out, butts up against a parking lot, mostly full of police cars, but Rose’s eyes immediately go to the far corner.

There, stalwart on the black tarmac of the police station parking lot, is the most beautiful blue box in the world.

“You got a way to get it out of here?” the cop asks, eyeing Rose’s cane.

“Just you watch,” the Doctor replies, and Rose is sure there’s a grin hiding under her mask. “It’ll be gone in a second.”

“If you say so.” The cop, still followed by Yaz, Rose, and the Doctor, crosses the parking lot and takes out a key. There’s a padlock on the door, Rose realizes as she gets closer to the TARDIS, and the cop unlocks it. The padlock opens with a thunk and falls into her hand, and that’s when the Doctor really runs. She pushes the TARDIS door open and practically leaps inside.

“You’re all going to go in there?” the cop asks, when it’s clear Yaz is about to follow.

“It’s bigger than it looks,” Yaz says blithely, and then she steps inside.

Rose follows a second later, peeling her mask off as she goes. As she steps into the TARDIS, she lets out a breath: an involuntary sigh, brought on by the instantaneous feeling of home that this space has. It’s different, yes, the crystals and chrome a far cry from the dingy metal and coral she was once accustomed to, but it’s still the TARDIS. Still Rose’s home.

The Doctor drops Ruby and runs to the console. “Co-pilots?” she asks.

Rose comes up next to her, overlapping her hand on the controls. Yaz’s hand covers it a moment later, and the three share wild grins.

“Co-pilots,” Yaz and Rose echo in unison.

Moving together, they launch the TARDIS into the time vortex, off to their next adventure.

#doctor who #my fic #fanfiction #all the quiet nights you bear #and we're not out of the tunnel #thirteenth doctor #rose tyler #yasmin khan #thirteenrose #thirteen x rose #doctorrose #thasmin #thirteen x yaz #yaz x rose #thirteen x yaz x rose

1 note · View note

reminiscences · 4 years

Text

another attempt at blogging

i started this tumblr a couple years ago at the same time kate did. i can’t remember why—i’m sure tumblr was in the news again for some reason. i guess it was before the great porn purge. i was talking about blogging again this week with my friend daniel, and i woke up this morning and he had sent me a blog he wrote on a new tumblr account early in the morning, so to continue my regression to the early 2010s, i too have rebooted tumblr, given it an era-appropriate name, and decided to give it another go.

the problem with having a newsletter is that i don’t think anyone wants to hear from me in their inbox daily, so i’ve become very precious about the things i write there. it feels like it has to really matter. i like blogs because they’re disposable and can be dumb and not your best writing. how many two-graf tumblr posts did i write in 2011 that were just thoughts i idly had during a statistics lecture? anyway, here’s the first blog, they won’t all be this long probably.

When I think about eventually looking back at this year I think about what I want to remember from it. I will remember the first week of March. I’ll remember the last birthday party I attended in person at Branch Ofc, a perfectly serviceable Crown Heights bar that was very full of people. I’ll think about that night and how I showed up to the party with a Ziplock full of homemade salted chocolate chip cookies in my purse, how I shared them with a table where the birthday-haver and their friends sat. Breathing in the same air as the four dozen other people crammed into the bar. I can’t imagine it now. I like Branch Ofc because it is unpretentious without pretending to be a dive, unlike Sharlene’s, which tries too hard to mimic the aesthetic trappings of an authentic dive bar but is really just a normal Park Slope bar. Branch Ofc is just a bar where you can buy drinks, and it was an eight-minute walk from my old apartment. It used to be a bar with a photobooth and Big Buck Hunter but I think both of those are gone now.

For a few days in March, it felt like people were preparing for a snow day. Everyone was slightly more on edge than giddy—but only slightly. “WFH but make it a coffeeshop” I saw on someone’s Instagram story, a selfie with four of their friends coworking somewhere in Bushwick, completely nullifying the point of a work-from-home edict. I ran into my friend Maddie at the renovated Key Food on Nostrand the next week. Maddie, her roommate and I were in the aisle with the Pop Tarts and the Oreos. “I feel like I should get those?” we asked each other, pointing at junk food. I wasn’t wearing a mask or gloves; nobody was. Some guy wearing a Cornell University Sigma Chi tshirt walked by us with the largest bag of dried beans I’ve ever seen in my life slung over his shoulder. That was a man who had never soaked dried beans in his life. I wonder if he ever ate the beans. We were a bunch of idiot 20-somethings blindly grabbing for cans of soup and Fritos for the end of the world. What were any of us doing there? Why was it imperative that day that I make and freeze a lasagna? Maddie’s roommate had fresh lasagna noodles from Eataly she wasn’t going to use before she left for her parents’ house, and she said I could have those. She brought them over for me and I idly wondered if you could get Coronavirus from someone else’s fresh pasta noodles or if the heat of the oven would kill the germs. I made my lasagna.

I’ll think about how March-to-May is just one long gray blurry streak in my head. I baked, I got into running, I said “running with a mask? No thank you, no more running for me,” I got a job, I felt bad about getting a job when everyone I knew in journalism was getting laid off. I did a lot of Zoom Zumba. At first I slept terribly, and then I started sleeping too much, and then I stopped sleeping again at some point during that stretch. There was a novelty to suddenly being inside all the time that made it feel like an excuse to get “really into martinis.” I got really into martinis. Then I stopped drinking for a couple months. Remember “Zoom happy hours”?

The thing I use most as a means of setting apart different eras in my head is the music I used as a soundtrack at the time. I rang in the 2014 new year in my cute apartment on Westcott Street in Syracuse with my college boyfriend, drunk and blaring Cold Cave, before we walked down the street to Alto Cinco and got Mexican food and passed out. It was my senior year and I only had a few more months of living like this and I loved the small life I’d built for myself there. Of course, it couldn’t stay. When we broke up a year and a half later after he moved to New York, where I had been living for most of a year, I walked around the neighborhood near the Myrtle-Wyckoff stop, close to where we were living together, listening to Mitski’s 2014 album Bury Me At Makeout Creek. I sat in Maria Hernandez Park and watched a bunch of kids play Red Rover. I didn’t especially want to go home because I hadn’t taken an escape route into account when we broke up and somehow timed it out so that things ended after the first of the month, leaving me with three-and-a-half weeks of continuing to share an apartment with someone whose heart I had just broken. In retrospect it’s clear to me that I had just outgrown a relationship with someone five years older than me who hadn’t grown up at all, but I hear that Mitski album now and all I think about are the cold early April days of 2015 when no place and no person felt like home. There’s a line in First Love/Late Spring, by Mitski, where she sings “胸がはち切れそうで,” which translates to something like “My chest is about to burst (with grief).” My advice to recent college graduates moving to New York is to simply not do anything the way I did it.

So when I think about 2020, I do not want to associate any music I previously had fond memories of with this year. This is unfortunate because every musician I like who produces sad music has nothing but time on their hands now and they’ve all come out with new songs and albums. My recently played selections on Spotify look like a cry for help: Phoebe Bridgers, Bright Eyes, even Tigers Jaw.

On Saturday I couldn’t sleep in. I woke up at 5:30 and watched the sun appear through my bedroom windows. I kept rolling over, trying to sleep again, but it was futile. Eventually I got up and got dressed, and left my apartment on foot. The walk into lower Manhattan is a few miles from my new place in Fort Greene. I walked west on Fulton, and then down Flatbush. It would have saved me ten minutes to take the Manhattan Bridge, but I’ve always regarded it as the ugliest of the bridges to cross on foot or on bike—last fall, I would walk home from Ben’s apartment over the Manhattan Bridge, and it was just so grey. You get an okay view of Dumbo, I guess, on the walk east, but it isn’t much to look at. When I got back to the Brooklyn side on those walks, I’d get on the A at High Street and take it back to Nostrand instead of walking the last couple miles.

So I chose the Brooklyn Bridge this time. It was as busy as you’d expect it to be in a non-pandemic event. Instagram boyfriends took pictures of their girlfriends, who took off their masks for a few seconds for the right shot. I saw a couple taking engagement pictures in front of the lower Manhattan skyline. It felt so normal, pedestrians and bicyclists squeezing past each other at the narrow points.

I was listening to Saint Cloud, the Waxahatchee album that came out a few months ago, turning it over and over in my brain like a rock you pick up at the beach and end up carrying with you on a long walk. The album, outwardly, has this gauzy blue-sky Americana vibe but when you listen to the lyrics of some of the songs it feels like peeling back layers of skin until you hit a raw nerve ending. Every song feels like a eulogy for this year. “You might mourn all that you wasted/That’s just part of the haul,” Katie Crutchfield sings on Ruby Falls. I got to the title track, which closes out the album, as I ascended the bridge. When you get baaaack on the M train, watch the cityyyyyy mutaaaaaaate, she sings. I guess she’s singing about New York. Is there another M train somewhere? I don’t know. I’m going to think about this stupid year whenever I listen to this album, I thought.

I got off the bridge at City Hall, surveyed the ongoing occupation movement there and the literal dozens of cops that had seemingly been deployed to stand there and, at best, do nothing. I walked down Centre Street, eventually winding through the little park by Baxter Street where two adults were playing ping pong, which felt like a socially distanced sport, all things considered. I walked down all those side streets in Chinatown as the sun struggled to break through the oppressive clouds. I walked by Nom Wah, past the salon Polly taught me will give you a very good $12 blowout, past that annoying bar where the bartenders are dressed like scientists, past the place where Kate and I got our auras read on her birthday in January, and ended up at Deluxe Green Bo. I ordered my spicy wontons in peanut sauce and ate them right there, the hot plastic container burning my knees as I sat on the sidewalk.

Afterwards I walked by all my favorite places—the skatepark under the bridge, Cervo’s, Beverly’s (RIP), Little Canal, Jajaja, the Hawa Smoothie near the East Broadway F. The skaters were hanging out in Dimes Square. Everything had changed but standing outside Kiki’s, it felt for a second like almost nothing had. It was almost a normal Saturday on Canal Street. The sky stayed electric blue until I got back to Brooklyn.

2 notes · View notes