Current location:	Home, no buffaloes
Current mood:	busy
Current music:	purring kittehs, purr
Entry tags:	baby fic. angst, comfort, knitting, rose, ten ii

The Knitting Together of the Broken: Ten II/Rose
OK, this is one of those head/desk moments. This was originally written on the prompt "knitting" from Hearts-in-Time, a Nine/Rose shippers community. That said, it sort of took parts of a piece I'm already working on and came out this way. Yes, I know it's Ten II. Yeah, I know you can't get farther apart, but I like the piece so here it is. Hearts-in-Time will get their due, kickin' ideas around as we speak, uh write, read, whatever.

This is part of my Opposite of Time verse, where Ten II has taken the name Sean. Yes I will post that story, just not today.

Title: The Knitting Together of the Broken
Author: Qtrhorserider
Pairings: Ten II/Rose, mention of Jackie, and Pete
Ratings: PG
Spoilers: If you've seen "Journey's End" you're cool
Disclaimers: Not mine, not even close, I just channel them.
Summary: It takes both the good and the bad to make a relationship strong

“Have you looked in the mirror? You look like a disgruntled, baby bird, especially with all the shrieking and hopping about."






When Pete and Jackie made a gift of the guest cottage to Sean and Rose, they were taken aback and a little hesitant to accept such a gift. Pete, however, convinced them. Jackie wanted her pregnant daughter close so she could "help" if she needed to. While this made the two of them want to run, the look on Pete's face that said "please, she'll kill me if you don't" was enough to make them take pity and accept.

The first few weeks of their new life, in their new home were idyllic ones. Rose and Sean began to discover what it was not just to be a couple, but to be sharing their life. There are little things that one finds out about the other when sharing a space that they never could have known before.

Rose's first shock was finding out that for the first half hour of his day, Sean was a grouch. Except for Paris, which was a blur, she'd always begun her day with him at breakfast, by which time he was cheerful and full of energy, while she was still craving more sleep and tea. Sean, it turned out, really needed the whole ritual of showering and shaving to wake his body up. This, she suspected, was the Donna part of him.

Her first experience of this was on the morning after they moved in. They'd slept late since they were both exhausted, but eventually the day beckoned. Rose was wrapped in her snuggly pink bathrobe making tea when she heard him bellow.

At first she though he'd hurt himself and ran up the stairs, afraid of what she might find. Instead she found him stark naked in the en suite rifling through boxes. That they were all clearly marked "Sean's Study" hadn't stopped him from hauling them into the bath.

"Rose, I can't find anything. Where did you put the toothpaste?" he demanded. "I can't find it in these boxes. Nor can I find soap, or my shaver, or anything else useful," he went on accusingly.

"Well," she started softly, trying her best to contain her amusement. "that might be because those aren't the boxes for the bath. Those are for your study."

"And I'm supposed to know this how?"

"By reading the labels you so cleverly put on the boxes?"

"Oh." He was a little deflated by that, but regained his ire quickly. "That still doesn't answer where any of the things I need are. If these aren't the right boxes, then where are they?"

"Doesn't matter, we didn't pack them, remember? We went out and bought new."

"Well where are they?" he roared in his most threatening Oncoming Storm Voice. Rose, however, found it hard to be threatened by someone who was only made to look more absurd by the fact that he was naked. Instead she started giggling.

"Laughing at me first thing is not a good way to start out," he said with a hint of warning.

"Have you looked in the mirror? You look like a disgruntled, baby bird, especially with all the shrieking and hopping about."

"No, I haven't bothered to look into a mirror because I'm looking for my stuff!"

"Well, if you had," she continued calmly, stepping over to the sink, "you'd have seen our toothbrushes, which you arranged yourself, and probably would have remembered that you put the toothpaste right here in this drawer where it would be handy. Your comb and hair gel are right here and the soap, my genius, is already in the dish in the shower, so you wouldn't have to look for it. Towels are in the closet, right there. Let me know if you need anything else," she said and kissed him on her way out the door.

"Well, no one as tired as I was last night should be expected to remember anything the next morning," he shouted after her.

"I love you," she shouted back giggling.

"Does that mean your mum won't hear about this?"

"No promises," she called back at him.

A few days later, Sean returned home after spending a very long day and a half handling a crisis at Torchwood. It being a scientific one that didn't require participation by a field agent, Rose had been told to go home and rest. "Besides," her father reminded her, "pregnancy and field work are not a good mix."

Sean walked past the chair his wife was curled up in, dropped a kiss, to her head, and headed for the kitchen. He stopped in the doorway and turned to look at her. "What are you doing?"

"What does it look like?"

"I'd say you were knitting, but you've never seemed like the sort to knit."

"Well, what sort is that?" she asked crossly.

"I don't know. Domestic. Someone who has a lot of time to spare on artsy craftsy sorts of things. Someone's Gran."

"Well, my Gran did teach me."

He blinked. "So you've always known how to do this?"

"Since I was about nine or ten I suppose. Never really did much with it. Picked it up again when I first was stuck here, before I came up with the idea of the dimensional cannon. When I wasn't at Torchwood, I needed something to take my mind off of how lonely I was for you. Nearly everything reminded me of you, but this was something I hadn't done in years, no connection to you, really."

"Are you good at it?"

She looked at him like he'd dribbled on his shirt. "Know that afghan throw that you're so fond of? The one that you're always on about how it reminds you of a hand made something or other from the market on Deneb that we never got to?"

"Noooo."

"Yep" she popped the 'p.'" "Thought the dimensional cannon up while I was working on that one."

Over the next few weeks, while her work took shape, Sean made it a game to spy on her while she was knitting. He wasn't sure why the sight of her curled up in a chair, with needles and balls of multicolored yarn surrounding her made him happy, but it did. It became a sort of ritual. They'd come home from Torchwood, get cleaned up, have a little dinner, and Rose would sink into her chair with a happy sigh. He would then find a place to sit and watch her. Rose was amused that he went about like she hadn't noticed what he was doing.

Finally one evening, he plopped down at her feet and rested his chin on her knees. She looked down to find him quietly running the completed fabric through his fingers. It was white, speckled with an assortment of tiny, pastel dots. The fine, soft, yarn had been worked into a pattern that looked like the weave of a basket.

A slow grin spread across his face. "Rose Tyler, Defender of the Earth, Crosser of Parallel Worlds. She Who Must Be Obeyed. You're knitting a baby blanket."

"Of course I am. What did you think it was?"

He only smiled in response. Then he rested his chin on her knees again and she picked up her work. They spent the rest of the evening so situated and were very content.

************

A few days after being allowed to return home following the miscarriage, Rose packed all of the needles, yarn, and the unfinished blanket into her knitting bag and put it into the room that was to be the nursery. Then she shut the door, took a deep breath and set about getting on with her life.

Sean noticed the absence of the knitting but said nothing, feeling it was best to let her deal with things in her own way. Now their evenings were spent on opposite sides of the couch, reading or watching telly without saying much to one another at all.

Their loss festered like an open wound until one day their grief and anger burst forth in a barrage of tears and accusations. Reeling from the loss of both her child and what she felt was the love of its father, Rose moved from the cottage. Sean, bereft, was left standing in the wake wondering what had just happened.

But if parallel worlds couldn't keep them apart, neither would this. It took time and patience for them to heal. At times, crossing the rift had seemed easier than crossing the distance between their offices, or the lawn between the Tyler mansion and the cottage, but they managed it. Rose came home, Sean left Torchwood, they acquired three adorable spaniels quite by accident, and life settled back into a routine.

******************************************

Rose watched Sean playing with the dog and her pups. He was good with them, patient and kind but firm when needed. He really would be a good father. It gave her an uneasy feeling that she couldn't put her finger on.

Then she realized that she was jealous of the dogs. Jealous that they held a spot that should have been occupied by their child. If the baby hadn't died, she and Sean would have been bringing him or her home right about now and starting their life as a family. In fact, today had been her due date.

She should have been laying around fat and expectant, feeling their child turning and kicking inside her. Instead, she was curled up in this chair, finishing a blanket that would never warm a baby's body. She was trying to find some closure in the act of its completion. Instead sitting there and fingering the soft pattern, while watching Sean raising puppies instead of their child, only left her feeling empty and hurt. She was jealous, and angry, and disappointed, and before she knew it she was in tears.

Sean found her like that when he came in a while later. Though she was making no sound, he couldn't miss her wet face and reddened eyes. "Hey, hey, what's wrong?" he asked gently, his eyes immediately going to the finished blanket. He sat on the arm of the chair gazing at her with concern.

"I want our baby back," she hiccupped. He said nothing, just stroked her hair when she laid her cheek against his leg. "It was supposed to be born today and it’s like it never existed. We don't even have a grave to visit."

"Yeah, I know," he said, continuing to touch her hair comfortingly. "I've been thinking the same thing for a few days now. We've been so wrapped up in the mess our lives became that we never got a chance to properly mourn for our Sheh' hah Shenah."

"Sorry?" She lifted her eyes to look at him.

"Sheh' hah Shenah. It's Gallifreyan for one who is lost. It's usually applied to someone who has gone into the Vortex and for some reason, not come out. To name someone Sheh' hah Shenah, is to say they've slipped through your fingers, but you'll wait for them always. Our first born was real to us, even if no one else knew her."

"Her?"

"I knew it'd be a girl, I could feel her mind."

Rose turned to stare at him. "Why didn't you tell me any of this? I didn't even know it was a girl. I was carrying her, but you knew her in a way I didn't. Now I understand why you were so angry."

Rose felt her own anger rising. "All this time I thought you couldn't possibly, know what I was feeling. I was carrying her and I thought I was the only one she was real to yet you knew her in a way that I never could. Why did you keep this to yourself? Why didn't you share some of this when she was with us?"

He sighed. "I should have. I was afraid that you'd be hurt that I could sense her in a way that you couldn't and I didn't want us to start like that. Then, when she was gone, I just didn't know how to talk about it at all.

"The thing is, we've never really talked about her or what losing her meant to us as a couple, or a family" he continued. "We need to."

She laced her fingers into his. "Yes, we do. I mean, you named her. You had a name for her in your heart and you didn't tell me until now."

"Would you have felt better if I had told you?"

She thought for a moment. "Maybe not at first, but it would have made her a shared memory. Maybe we could have mourned her together instead of the way we did. It's such a beautiful name and such a beautiful image. I think I would have found some comfort in that.

"I never really understood that you were anything but angry," she continued. "All this time I thought you were angry with me and worried at the same time. You never let me see your sorrow and I needed to. I needed to know that we were in this together, and that you saw me as your partner, and your mate, not something that needed wrapping up in cotton wool to be protected from the big, bad, world."

Sean nodded in understanding, making a silent promise to try not to keep things so much to himself anymore. It had finally occurred to him that she might just get as much comfort from comforting him as she did from being left alone. He also saw that the same could be said of him.

Hand in hand they moved to the couch and sat together in silence while they watched the sunset. There was a degree of peace to be had simply in the other's presence and knowing that they, too, shared in the sadness. "I have an idea," Sean said quietly.

"Hmm?"

"Let's plant a tree in the stable garden by the pond. It can be her tree and then we'll have someplace we can visit her. She can be with her family when we're there having fun. That way, we can think of her with some joy, instead of the sadness. "

"I like that," Rose said. She was stroking his arms, smoothing down the fine, dark hair that adorned them. "We can go and pick it out together." He pulled her closer to him.

"We should have done something like this before. This is the first time we've taken the time to mourn together. I think we've needed it."

"Yeah," she agreed. "I love you."

"I love you too."

*******************

Later Sean and Rose picked out a cherry tree. In the spring, it would blossom with pale pink flowers that would fall like tinted snow. They found a suitable place along the pond, next to the bridge, so they could lean out and touch it as they crossed into the stable yard. In the years to come, it would be their touchstone, a reminder that their greatest strength was in their union, and not in suffering alone.

As soon as the stone was finished, they would place it close to the trunk, but with enough room for their tree to grow. It was to read "Sheh' hah Shenah, we will always wait, we will always have hope."

The little blanket was folded neatly and placed in a box decorated with pictures of pink ribbons and teddy bears. Along with the blanket Sean and Rose each picked a toy, Sean a rattle that he thought looked a bit like particle stream scanner, and Rose, a little bear, that she thought the baby would have cuddled with. They packed these things carefully and sealed the box, marking it with her name. Then they opened the bigger on the inside trunk and placed it in there, the first of many keepsake boxes for each of the children that would come.