by AC Chapin
Rated NC-17

The 7th Doctor gets the 5th Doctor to take care of Ace.
WARNING: contains borrowed characters in sexual situations

=========

"Massacre," he whispered. "And someone she . . . cared deeply for is dead." He was pale, haggard. He clutched a large bundle of black satin in his hands.

"It will never work, you know," the younger Doctor insisted. But he went along with it all just the same. They stood close together like lovers, faces angled like lovers.

"Just go there. Be . . . with her," the shorter Doctor shook his head tiredly, dropped it to an angle of defeat. "I can't."

The younger Doctor reached down then, touched the seamed cheek, bridging the gap of time. There should have been an explosion of artron energy as the fabric of spacetime pulled through its own weave and ripped apart; the Doctor merely twisted the strands a little, changing memory.

A girl, screaming in the wood, hatred in her eyes.

"She's alone," the other Doctor said softly, pulling away from the touch. His whole back bent in despair.

The groaning sound had barely faded in the younger Doctor's wake hen the older clutched at his right heart, the sorrowscar lines of his face netting around a grimace of pain. "No. Not that. Please."

======

He was what Manisha's mum would've called a Real Gentleman -- would've said it with that adorable accent and looked at the floor, blushing. Something about that accent always made Ace so happy, so full of love for Manisha and her family that she wanted to just laugh out loud; she'd never let herself do that, though.

The Real Gentleman was fetching her another drink. His eyes flicked to her from the bar, checking up. Saw her watching and smiled. White, even teeth. Getting her pissed, that's what he was doing -- in a Real Gentlemanly way, of course.

And he was gorgeous. Tall and blond and noble-looking. He reminded her of someone she'd seen before, in a dream maybe. Or maybe one of the guest art teachers she'd snogged her pillow over before puberty. Strictly Launcelot.

She looked him up and down for the hundredth time, as he made his way back from the bar, enjoying the stripey trousers, the soft-looking pullover -- not too weird, compared to what some of the bar patrons were wearing (or not wearing); to Ace, it looked like pyjamas.

He stumbled into a chunky green trader and almost spilled her drink -- got flustered and danced his long legs back and side, like a skittish pony. When he got back to the table, she took the drink out of his hand, sipped it, and then ruffled the too-long fringe of blond over his eyes. God, he was sweet-looking. And wide eyed, yeah, but those blues weren't so innocent, eh? Like he'd got some secrets, like he'd seen some terrible things and had nobody to comfort him.

Well, maybe they'd comfort each other a bit. She leaned forward, ignoring the cut of the table into her side, and kissed him. He tensed up, snapping his head back, then slumping a little forward, breathing wrong, frozen like a balking horse. She ducked under, braving the table-edge again. Her mouth was close enough to his that when she spoke, their lips bumped together. "Fuck you then, git."

She sat back up, knocked the drink and all her empties away with a quick backhand across the table. Wide stance when she stood, 'cos she wasn't so sure she wasn't going to fall right back down. They eyed her. She eyed them right back. He was still sitting there with his head bowed, like some kind of monk. She probably looked a bit like a goddess, one of those Traveler ones -- blue makeup smeared in stripes across her cheeks and forehead. New place, new face, no question. New place, new face, new Ace.

She wanted a barfight.

One of her empties had rolled up against her boot. She kicked it across the floor. The Real Gentleman's shoulder quivered just slightly at the noise. Shivered.

That drained it back out of her and she dropped into her seat. "Sorry," she called, just loud enough to carry across the bar. "Sorry." Quieter, this time, just for him. She put her hand over his, where it rested on his knee. "Look, I've been better. I'm not always like this. And you've been . . . I dunno, nice."

He raised his head, frowning deeply. "Someone's hurt you, haven't they?"

She sketched a sarcastic check in the air.

His lips twitched in a swallowed smile. "I'm afraid that was a stupid question."

Close up, he was warm and clean and smelled like grass in summer and ripe apples. "Come on." she whispered, pulling him out of his seat. "My place or yours?"

"Yours." His voice came out too high, and then lowered. "I'm rather afraid mine is too big."

She looked at him. Her brain was muzzy enough that what he'd said almost made sense. "That's what they all say," she muttered, and pulled him out of the bar.

========

He'd looked like a lost kid on the mass transport, like the crudeness of the people there hurt him. Ace got a little worried then, that her own hardness, the rough angry parts of herself she was just learning how to use, might cut him up. Leave him frozen and balking.

Then some kids started messing with him, like they could smell he was fresh meat. She came close to ripping them apart, but ended up just throwing them across the car. It felt good to protect him; he couldn't take care of himself. He needed her. She almost took a header out of the tram at that thought. But he put his arms gently around her from behind, and held her. His long body was cool against her back.

By the time they got back to the room she was staying in, she'd kissed him three times. Once in the bar, once in the mass transport, and once just inside the door. He'd tried again to ask her name. She put her mouth on his to shut him up. "No names." She pulled back and stared fiercely up at him. "Haven't you ever had a one night stand before?"

Only, maybe Real Gentlemen didn't have one night stands.

Stupid. Most likely in the morning he'd turn out to not be half as gorgeous, or gentle, as her hormones kept telling her. Hell with it -- Mr. Right was powdered mushroom; Mr. Right Now was just going to have to do.

He seemed even more lost once he stepped into her room. He opened his mouth as if to start a conversation, then closed it again.

She looked at his body in the ivory suit he wore. Too tall for her -- but who wasn't? Not thin exactly, slender maybe. God, what a gorgeous neck; she craned her neck to brush her lips over it.

He danced back again with that awkward, coltish grace. "You're not what I expected at all," he breathed. "You're very strong."

Ace gave him a nasty look.

He sighed. "No, no . . . just -- thinking out loud." A sudden, very beautiful smile lit his face; it was like sunlight and she felt herself relax with it.

There were times when you just reached for what you could find. He looked nothing like Jan. Jan had been a boy, when it all came down; a muscled, dark-sided kid. Like she'd been, maybe. This was a man -- shy as bloody hell, but the difference was huge. She moved a few steps back to hit the dimmer.

He started in the new shadow, and she distinctly saw him swallow. She stood right in front of him, staring boldly into those bright blue eyes, memorizing short blond lashes, creamy skin, a little freckle or mole near his jaw.

He half looked like he'd bolt, just gallop on out. Then he took her shoulders in his hands and he was staring back down into her, with an intensity and depth she hadn't felt since . . . for a long time. Bright and clear -- like a spotlight down to the hurting parts. She got the feeling all the nasty bits, all the things she was running from and all the things she was learning to live with, were skittering off like roaches, away from that bright look. She wanted suddenly to cry, and gripped his arms hard through the pullover.

He pulled her to him with a quick, rough strength that she could tell instinctively he didn't like to use. As soon as she was too close for that locked gaze, the brightness was gone. Just the alcohol, yeah, drunk enough to see all kinds of things.

He was kissing her cheeks, and her forehead, her hair. "I'm sorry. There must have been another way. There should have been some other way. You shouldn't have had to hurt for it."

Maybe the Real Gentleman *had* gotten himself politely pissed before coming over to her at the bar. Or maybe he was just nuts. Or really really sympathetic . . . emphatic . . . empathetic -- whatever.

"You're in luck, gorgeous," she sighed up at him. "I decided if I stopped sleeping with men crazier than me, I'd eliminate pretty much everybody I'll ever meet."

She started pulling at the hem of his pullover, but he gently captured her fingers, and went on with his exploration, kissing her face again, then the side of her neck. Concentrating on the curve of her throat, he stroked up and down with his soft, cool lips. On and on and on. Cool dry lips over every tendon and plane. At last, she felt his tongue, a little warmer, rough, very slightly damp; felt it so precisely she could have mapped out every tastebud from memory.

"Do you usually wear your hair like this?" he whispered, not pulling away from her, forming the words against her skin as he moved endlessly over her.

"Always." If he just sucked at the flesh behind her ear, or scraped his teeth down to where her neck met her shoulder, she would come at once. Even if he only traced down her neck on that perfect path from the left ear to the right collarbone with this same faint touch of lips. She was trembling against him. Jesus, so sweet.

He pulled back at last; let go of her hands and ran his slender fingers in teasing little patterns along her jaw. "Take it down."

She stared at him. Her hands floating up to her ponytail like they were on strings. New place, new face, new Ace. Why not? She broke the elastic with a quick twist and let her hair free.

Shaky, his fingers slid into her hair, guiding her head to rest against the middle of his chest -- again, the smell of apples. He had to bend, to put his face against her hair. A faint, content sound from him, "Mmm," like a kid with a cookie, made her feel weak-kneed and warm.

This time, he didn't stop her when she pulled the jumper off over his head. Anyone else with hair tousled like that would have looked younger; but he looked just . . . *more* somehow. Not exactly older, but . . . knowing . . . rumpled like a lovers' bed. And when he unbuttoned his shirt, she thought of James Bond -- or Indiana Jones; he took it off like it was a bullet-proof vest he'd wanted to risk going without for years now.

His chest was smooth and pale, and when she kissed him again, standing on tiptoe, she could feel him shiver. She kissed his jaw, flicking her tongue on the skin -- no stubble. His head dropped back with a little sigh.

He was too tall for this. She sucked at the tenderest part of his neck, pressing her whole body to his. Her left hand glided up the long shape of his thigh like Bowie doing a guitar slide on Space Oddity. He jerked and stared at her as if he had only just realized that this was for real. She couldn't fool herself that he looked naive anymore, though. He'd been wandering around in hell for a while -- funny it'd taken them this long to meet up, really.

Ace trailed her lips on down his chest, licked one pale nipple. When she looked up, she saw gorgeous perspective of his jaw, clenched. She rested her hand flat on the delicately defined pectoral, feeling the one nipple, chilled and tight with evaporation, as she nibbled gently at the other. He groaned and she let her hand skid down over his skin, slowing, slowing, doing a Zeno's Paradox on the way to his navel. Every moment she was covering half the distance, but never getting there.

Making a sweet sound, he pulled her up again. Hesitantly, he untucked her shirt and pulled it up over her head. Her hair tickled her back.

His eyes as he considered her bra reminded her of someone else . . . Ange trying to do word problems, maybe. Ange who moved in that magic world where you didn't have to translate between numbers and words -- the numbers were already there, under everything, arranged in the patterns of Ace's chemicals and Shreela's wailing octave changes. Was the Real Gentleman seeing the numbers under her bra, or some other secret code?

He turned her ninety degrees with his hands at her shoulders, and did something with one finger at the catch. The bra popped open and he turned her back around. Ace snapped the bra across the room. "So what's the code then?"

He smiled almost as if he knew what she was talking about, and kissed her. Just lips and tender movement. "You're so warm," he hispered into her mouth. The way her breasts were pressed up against his cool skin was making little electric charges in her body. She pushed forward until he had to take steps backward. One step, two, three, and he spilled onto the wide low bed.

He looked up at her with something of a lost animal in his eyes. She followed him down and kissed his shoulder, sucking on the bump of the collarbone, and then trailing off to a feathery touch as she moved out to the arm. With his free hand he stroked her back, her hair. Suddenly he reached up, pulling her upward on his body, and then rolled so they were side by side on the bed. He kissed her breast too gently, as if afraid he'd hurt her.

The feathery touches tickled and she pulled his head harder down to her. When he finally pressed her nipple between his lips, she gasped and went rigid, then lay back, shaking. He looked up at her, as if still unsure. "Yeah, like that. Like that," she whispered. He did it again, cupping her breasts together between his cool palms. Delicately, nervously, he suckled. Ace bucked on the bed and moaned; the sense of impendingness that had ebbed since he left her neck surged up again. She writhed, caught up in the delight of it, as he moved back and forth, pulling more and more bravely at her flesh with his warm sweet mouth. Again he was making that low, satisfied sound. "Mmm."

When he finally moved back, Ace decided to sit up while she was still able.

It took way too long to unlace her boots. By the time she was through with the first one, the pause had already been too long. Then there was a touch of lips on her spine, a sweet, definite press. It was hard to concentrate with those sweet touches there, but she managed to get the other boot off, then her jeans.

In the shadows she stood by the side of the bed, wholly naked. In some other life she'd been self-conscious -- too short, thighs and hips out of proportion. But she'd been good enough for Jan, and so how could she doubt her body with anyone else?

Closing his eyes, he stroked down the whole length of her body, from forehead to toes, with his palms flat and trembling. Then for a long time he sat there, eyes closed, looking almost serene. Finally nodded to himself and slid his trousers off. He wore old-fashioned underwear. She didn't.

"I love you," he said, enunciating like he was reciting some fragment of a poem.

Ace wanted to laugh; she hadn't heard it said like that since the too-young doorway fumblings of some other place, some other Ace. Some self-conscious Ace. She kissed him, lying back on the bed and bringing him over her. He was a cool sweet pressure everywhere. Skin on hers, cool but not cold, and so deeply sweet she had to wrap her arms and legs around him.

"Say it," he whispered, pulling back just enough that they could see each other. There was a simple intensity in his stare.

"What?"

Then she got stuck looking into those eyes again, shadowy this time, instead of bright. She moaned with the sweet soft drowning as they darkened; she was being pulled down, down into that new stormy blue. The face around the eyes wavered, went fuzzy. She gasped, holding tight to his slender chest and trying not to fall. The part of her in charge of understanding things too big to think about gasped out his answer. Then she was crying, tears sliding down through the blue makeup on her cheekbones and into her hair. The tears fuzzed her vision and she let go of him, feeling strange, a little dizzy. She hadn't cried since Heaven, and not much there. She rubbed at her eyes. "Sorry."

"Don't be." He shifted over, taking his weight off her. She noticed a smear of her blue warpaint on his shoulder, and somehow that made her need to cry even more.

Comfort each other, isn't that what she'd thought? She looked up for the magic of those eyes, but he had closed them, and when he opened them again, they were clear and pale and simply kind, like he'd pushed the darkness away. She thought suddenly of the TARDIS, such a bright blue in the brightly lit hall of IceWorld, and such a dark blue shadow, a smudge in the distance the day she'd left Heaven.

It started coming up then, the shivering pull of sorrow. It started with little gasps that moved the hair at his neck when she pulled him back over her like a heavy, perfect blanket. She sobbed, smearing makeup onto his skin, sniffling out names she wouldn't want to remember later.

He watched her gently, and then, holding himself up on one elbow, brushed away a single tear from her face with his fingertip. "Were you in love?"

She swallowed. "Yeah."

"I'm sorry."

She could close her eyes now and think Jan instead of him, even feel Jan instead of him, if she wanted to. But what kind of stone bitch would that make her? Did she care?

"I've loved people too, you see."

Hell. She moved gently, upwards against him, then pulled his head down to her breast.

Misunderstanding, he started to kiss the soft skin. She stroked his face and then met his eyes for a bare second "I'm sorry too. For . . . whatever it was." No magic, but he gasped just once, deeply, and tears stood out in his eyes.

Her arms tightened around him, fingers stroking coarse blond hair. "It's okay, it's okay," she whispered; comforting him like she'd comforted almost everyone she'd ever cared about. How many times had she kept an arm around Shreela, held Midge, stroked Manisha's head on her shoulder? She'd held Raphael in his grief, and Robert Yeadon too, and Jan, come to think of it. The Doctor was the only one who had never come to her with his pain; that had always hurt her a little. Not that it mattered now.

And so this man had come to her too, come to let out some of his pain. He'd seen a lot, beautiful and terrible things; she knew the look of a traveler too damn well. He was letting out grief now, not quite crying. "I'd undo it, if I could."

For a moment she thought he was talking about her and Jan and the whole mess, but of course, he meant whatever it was he'd done. Whatever was weighing on him. "It's all right, really," she promised desperately. "Everything's going to be okay."

After a little time, he was relaxed in her arms. They lay still, and then kissed, at first gently, then better, harder. His surprise showed on his face.

Not huge, not small. A very nice size. He trembled when she pulled that old-fashioned underwear down his long legs and touched it. She explored the blunt, smooth shape of it (alien! How's this for points on the Purity Test, Midge?). By the time she was done, he was breathing in quick short gasps. Mouth urgent but still gentle, he sucked first at one side of her neck then the other. He found that perfect path at last and she bucked under him, a miniature orgasm trembling over her skin.

She did her guitar trick on his thigh again, and his head dropped with a tiny gasp, burying his face in her shoulder. "I . . . want this," he whispered, keeping his face hidden from her. In the long slender muscles down his flanks, she could feel the tightness. He was tensed up like he expected her to hit him . . . or lightning to strike him down.

She pulled his face up and looked at the aquiline nose, the strange sweetness of his features. She kissed him hard this time, stroking his shoulders and then running her nails down over the planes of his back and the wonderful pale curve of his buttocks.

Groaning into her mouth, he let her push him up on his knees, helped her to settle, straddling his thighs. His long fingers moved gently over her body again. Way too gentle, really. But bloody hell, it was working. When he kissed her neck again she felt a hot jolt, and her back arched. Then his mouth was moving insistently on her breasts, suckling. She shuddered and pressed herself closer to him.

His cool hands sliding up her sides shivered her. She'd had enough lovers to know good from bad, but this she didn't know how to judge. One moment, he was twitchy as she'd been her first time, and the next he seemed to have some weird knowledge of her body, every curve and nerve; and she heard herself moaning at the things he was doing with his fingers.

And then his hands lifted her a little and there was a sweet, hot thrust. She was ready for movement, but he held very still. He was just enough taller than she that in this position their faces were on level.

Their eyes locked as she pressed herself the rest of the way down his length. Slowly, she drew back. His eyes had gone that deep dark blue, and she knew she could drown in them again, so sweetly. The half-smile he wore belonged on another face. The blue flame in those eyes swallowed her and she moaned wordlessly as he thrust up again, not harshly, but with a dark tenderness.

She tried to pull back, but he held her to him, breathing with her. Then he started rocking his hips slowly. Her mouth opened wide and she didn't know what sounds she was making. Nonsense, or maybe calling on a god she had long since told to bog off, if he wasn't going to be helpful, or perhaps she was calling out names. Only once did she whisper, "I love you," as her head fell bonelessly forward onto his shoulder and she pressed so tightly against him that she felt they must melt into each other.

She came close to the edge, and his movement slowed, letting her slide back into soft sensation. She whimpered and gasped at the tiny movements he made. They settled into a rhythm and she hummed tunelessly to it as he pushed her slowly back up towards the precipice. His hands stroked her face.

She wanted this to go both ways, wanted to make love to him as well as he was making love to her. She rocked her own hips and moved secret muscles. He moaned deeply and shuddered against her. She did it again and heard him cry out her name desperately, crushing her against him.

Her name . . .

But she had lost herself again in those darkened eyes. He pounded up into her in a rhythm so natural it was as if they had been lovers for years. His rhythm . . . why should she know so perfectly how to fit into his rhythm? His eyes were dark with a joy it overwhelmed her to know she had put there. She jerked helplessly forward again and again and again to meet his thrusting, and her orgasm was like homecoming as his arms wrapped tight around her. She thought this time that they really had melted into each other, because she could feel his pleasure, shuddering and huge and strange. It slammed over hers, unstoppable, and she had to struggle, fight.

New place, new face, same Ace. Fight for whatever it is that's inside, whether you scribble the codes for it in numbers or chords, or some secret cipher of bra-clasps and novas and Turing Machines. Because you know what happens when you let somebody else have the control . . .

She pulled slowly back, watching the wide, shell-shocked eyes until the joy ebbed out of them and surprise registered. She hovered agonizingly just a little bit away, holding onto the next wave of ache for as long as she could. "Look at me, you bastard. Look at me."

His hands clenched and unclenched on either side of her, trying to resist pulling her back. She edged forward the tiniest bit, then a centimeter more.

"Look at me."

He gasped explosively. A little more. And more. His head fell back as he sighed in pleasure. When he lifted it, his eyes caught hers again. "I am looking, Ace. I'm always looking at you."

But the mystery of the Real Gentleman knowing her name was a little thing at the moment. Locked. I look into you, Gentleman, but you look right back into me too. Right?

So see this.

An explosion in the darkness. She actually saw it, a tiny blood vessel bursting into red in his left eye. That bright blue she had seen before pierced out of the darker, like a searchlight at thirty fathoms. She wrapped her arms around him, driving down onto his length with short, sharp thrusts. "It's going to be okay," she promised him gently, stroking his hair. And then she looked into the dark and the light and impaled herself on him.

He screamed and bucked up to meet her. She felt him twitch and jerk inside her and then convulse. They fell sideways with his cries rhythmic and incoherent against her neck.

Her head only began to clear later, and a deep knowledge was lost in that hazy time before. Those hazy five or seven minutes when she was holding him, pulling gently at his limbs so they could lay side by side until his body calmed, until the muscles stopped twitching. When she rolled to her back and let him wrap himself gently around her body as she pulled the blankets over them both. When he began to tremble and she traced out the complicated codes of chemicals and reactions on the slender planes of his back with a fingertip, and told him, just before she forgot what it meant, "There wasn't any other way, you know. It's okay."

She looked at him one last time before sleeping, when her mind was already growing misty, and could only think that with his hair rumpled like this, tangled, sweaty, his cheeks flushed, smeared with her warpaint, he could never possibly look completely innocent again.

==

The Doctor woke up to hard, angry blue eyes, staring down at him. "Get out of that bed," growled the man he would one day become.

The younger Doctor disengaged himself slowly from Ace's sleeping form and started dressing.

"You had no right," the other Doctor growled.

"You told me to be with her."

"That isn't what I meant." His eyes were full of fire.

The blond Doctor looked away. "She wanted this." He swallowed. "Me."

The older Doctor sat on the edge of the bed and tucked the blanket up under Ace's sleeping chin. "She's only a child."

The younger Doctor had a nobler face. It hardened now. "You know better. She's a woman." He took two steps away; dressed now (but later Tegan would, in the middle of demanding where he had been, notice his rumpled hair, a smudge of blue at his collar, and feel a hot, unexplainable twinge). "You were in my mind -- your presence, or what will become you. I could feel you." He looked at the older man with the eyes of a worried child. "What makes you like that?"

"How should I know? Because of things like this, probably," the dark-haired Doctor growled, shaping knots, broken strands in the air with his hands. "Because my past is twisted and unraveled and re-knotted by things like *this*." He paced, hands nervous in the air. "I'll remember, when I have to, I suppose. And the rest of the time, the universe can sort out the muddle."

"You didn't tell me she was --"

"She's what I've needed her to be." Then the anger returned to him. "You had no right. She's not yours."

"She isn't anybody's now." In a flash of hurtfulness, he leaned down to kiss Ace's parted lips.

The other Doctor glared. "Never touch her again," he rasped.

==========

Ace woke alone. The blond man had left her sometime during the night. That was best, probably, 'cos he'd done her a lot of good; or maybe that had been the alcohol, or maybe just her head finally getting around it all. She felt ready to go on living now, she'd go join the army, maybe, do something with her life. She was grateful to him, and she didn't want that to be messed up if he was nothing special in the daylight. The secret of his eyes had dissolved sometime during the night, and she didn't remember it at all.

Time is fabric, or string or loop, knotted and tangled beyond understanding. He didn't remember all of this at first, not consciously. But that darker, angrier part of his mind took the utmost punishment out on his most innocent self when it had the chance. Seething with guilty jealousy, it crucified him. It screamed in wordless rage when Ace herself came to cut down the prisoner, hated and hated and hated when she held the injured man in her arms while he healed.

Some things never happen. He never talked to Ace herself about it, not in all the time they had together. He himself only really remembered it on a few occasions. If he had asked her, she would have laughed the gentle laugh she found deep within herself when she had grown past certain pains. She would have wrapped her arms tight about him and rested her head on his shoulder. "You're the one I'm with, right?" she would have said. And if this had happened, things might have been very different.

END