rivendellrose | fic - "You and I"

Fandom: Doctor Who
Characters: The Tenth Doctor and Dr Elizabeth Shaw
Summary: The Doctor's getting older, and not all his former companions are all that broken up about not staying with him forever. And that's not a bad thing.
Warnings: Just a bit of fluff. No spoilers.
For

seachanges, because she had a seriously crummy week. I hope everything lightens up on you, and that 2010 is an awesome year for you. ♥

The Doctor stared at the peach. The peach... did not quite stare back. Which was a good thing, now that he’d thought of it - peaches were lovely, absolute heaven compared to a pear, but every now and then with the fuz and the softly dimpled curve to their flesh, they did look a bit alive, didn’t they? They looked a bit like the larval phase of a species he’d met on Mirandex XI. Charming people, very friendly and kind and ever-so helpful once he’d figured out that running up and biting a person was their way of saying hello. Getting the DNA, tasting the person’s intentions and their history and all of that - absolutely ingenious.

He really should asked one of them to come with him, he thought. If he’d done that, he wouldn’t be sitting alone on a rocky beach in Brittany staring at a piece of fruit as if it was about to talk to him.

“One of these days,” he told the peach, “I’ll learn not to travel alone.”

“And what will the pitted fruit of the world do on that day?”

The voice was so familiar the Doctor almost didn’t want to turn to see its source, afraid that his mind might be tricking him, that he was getting old and nostalgic and perhaps just the slightest bit delusional. But he couldn’t resist. Drawn as if by magnetism, he turned his head to face a long-legged woman in loose trousers and a light jacket, her long, curly white hair caught up into a loose bun. Slightly frizzy, grizzled curls wisped all around her face in the wind.

“Sorry, I was sure you were English,” Elizabeth Shaw continued, and the Doctor realized that he’d done nothing but stare since he turned to her. “Parlez-vous--”

“I am, English, yes, that’s me. John... er... Smith. Yes!”

“John Smith?” A wry eyebrow quirked, taking one side of her lips with it. “What a coincidence. I had a... colleague, once, who called himself that from time to time.”

“A colleague?” the Doctor asked. He’s not sure he really wants to know what she thinks of him after all these years, but he can’t help himself. “Not a friend?”

“He was a funny fellow. Thought I’d gotten degrees in physics and inorganic chemistry and gone through med school just so I could pass him his test tubes and make him coffee.”

“He sounds like an idiot,” the Doctor told her. He’d been so young back then - so confident and full of himself and his impotent frustration with being trapped on Earth that he hadn’t bothered to pay the least attention to this brilliant, fascinating woman UNIT had assigned to him.

“Oh, he wasn’t that bad. They were all like that in those days, you know? You’re too young to remember how it was, I suppose.” Liz smiled indulgently at him. “I got to like working with him, and I learned a bit there I suppose, but I was young and cocky and too impatient to deal with his crap for long, so I left. Never was cut out for military work to begin with.” Her grin took on a slightly feral edge. “I never did take orders well.”

“Did you ever wonder what happened to him?”

“Wonder?” She laughed. “A guy like this, you could hardly miss him.”

“But you said--”

“Oh, I left. But I kept in touch - with a few of the soldiers who hadn’t been too horrid about working with a woman scientist, and with the girl they got in to replace me. She adored him - she was always the mothering type, even at that age, and I think she enjoyed taking care of someone, particularly with how much older he was than her. She had that whole base eating out of her hands, but he was the worst of the lot of them, deep down, I think. I heard a lot of stories from them over the years - some of them about him, some not, but always interesting. The other girl - the one who replaced me, she married a scientist down in South America, and when they came back to England to raise a family we got together for tea a few times.”

Jo... The Doctor grinned wistfully. Now she had been brilliant - he hadn’t thought of her in years. “Did you ever marry, then? Have a family, all of that?”

“Not me, no.” She grinned back at him, though. “Too busy. I worked for a few more agencies, saved the world a few times, you know the drill. And then I went back to Cambridge, taught inorganic chemistry. Had a few truly brilliant students, a lot of friends, a lot of fun. Traveled the world, too - it’s handy knowing people in the service - they tend to end up in the funniest places, and then you have a grand excuse to go wandering to see them. I’ve been to Peru, Brazil, Argentina, China, Tibet... all sorts of places. And look at me now, acting the stereotyped old lady and nattering on while I haven’t asked the first thing about you.” She looked him over, measuring and intent. “What’s your story, then? Young fellow like you, sitting alone on a beach... with a peach?”

“Just a traveler,” the Doctor replied briskly. “Just... wandering. On my own for the moment, I usually travel with people.”

“As you said, yes.” Another smile. How had he forgotten in all those years how brilliant her smile was, how absolutely devilish it made her eyes look?

“This Doctor friend of yours made a big mistake letting you leave.”

“Isn’t that sweet. And do you know, young man... I’m quite sure I never said he called himself the Doctor.” Liz crossed her arms over her chest and tried to look stern, but her eyes danced with light. “I thought something about you looked familiar. Doctor.”

“Elizabeth.”

“You’ve changed. Gotten younger. I didn’t quite believe Alistair when he told me you could do that. But you’re still just as strange. What are you doing here?”

My planet’s destroyed, I’ve lost more than a dozen friends since I last saw you, and I’m alone because I’ve had to leave all my friends behind, lately... None of that seemed the right answer to Liz, though. She always had seen right through him - never took any of his nonsense. And she really had been right about him relegating her to test tube duty - he’d been such a cranky little sod back in those days. “I was trying to decide... whether I should eat this peach.”

Liz laughed. “How very Prufrock of you, Doctor.”

“Care to share it with me?”

“As long as you don’t make me make the coffee...” she teased.

“I really am sorry about that, you know.”

“Oh, Doctor. There’s been a lot of water under the bridge since then. I’m not mad anymore. Although if you’d caught me thirty years ago, I might’ve been tempted to give you a right good wallop.”

A shiver went down the Doctor’s spine as the perfect thought occurred to him. “I could make it up to you. The TARDIS works, now... we could go traveling together for a bit. Anywhere you like.”

For a moment as she sat smiling, the sun in her eyes and the wind in her hair, he imagined it - the two of them, traveling the universe together, exploring every corner, unraveling all sorts of fantastic mysteries... And then she shook her head. “I’m sorry, Doctor. I have people here who I care about - students, colleagues, friends. I couldn’t forgive myself if I left.”

“The whole universe, Liz!”

“Not even for that.” But she touched him gently on the arm, and smiled. “Thank you for the offer, but I’ve had plenty of adventures on my own. We can’t all just sit around waiting for you to get the idea, you know.”

“Yeah... well. It would have been brilliant. You were brilliant.”

“I still am, and I’m sure it would have. You know what you could do, though... to make up for all those times back then?”

“What? Anything. Anything you want--”

“Share that peach with me, Doctor?”

He laughed, and accepted the penknife she handed him. He cut open the fuzzy, pale orange flesh and breathed in the rich sweetness over the salt of the sea, and handed a perfect half to his old friend. They sat on the rocks and watched the waves roll in, and for a while he the world was perfect for him.