Disclaimer: Doctor Who is not mine. Nor is "The Beach" which I quoted (almost) immediately below
Note: Written for challenge 45 at then_theres_us on livejournal. This was a destination challenge so basically a postcard of love to the Ten, Rose, and Thailand.
"... Mine is a generation that circles the globe and searches for something we haven't tried before. Just keep your mind open and suck in the experience. And if it hurts, you know what? It's probably worth it."
-The Beach, 2000
The Idea of the Ocean
At 9 o'clock in the morning, Rose Tyler is rubbing sleep out of her eyes.
By 9:30 she's been soaked through for the fourth time.
"You are so lovely!" Cries a small girl and Rose swears she hears just a little bit of a taunt in the child's voice as she darts from the sidewalk. Rose leans over obligingly to receive two smeared handprints of chalk-and-water paste on her cheeks.
"You are so lovely," Rose returns and dabs some of the paste off her own face to make a show at returning the favor. The little girl ducks and runs away, giggling. Rose calls out the New Year's greeting after her.
She'd learned rather quickly that pausing on her slow bike ride through the erupting city for a dousing and pasting was preferable to having water and chalk flung about her unprotected eyes as she rode by the large pockets of celebrating children and adults. Still, when the Doctor said 'Thailand' and when he said 'water festival' Rose heard 'beach.' And the packed streets of Chiang Mai are certainly not that. She's not complaining exactly. But she is very wet.
She's stopped behind a taxi when it happens.
She's seen the trucks with flatbeds full of revelers pull up next to each other and engage in full on water wars. She was even invited up into one by a young Thai man who spoke English with a surprising Australian accent. But she'd carefully altered her progress to miss the truck bed battles.
"Sawasdee bee mai!" Shout several voices in unison above her.
And then the deluge.
Blinking back the gallons of water that seemed to come from all directions, Rose catches her breath and whips her head around to catch sight of a familiar face. "Happy New Year?" The Doctor says, grinning down at her from the truck bed, looking entirely too pleased with himself.
Rose blows a raspberry of air and water at him.
He offers her a hand up to the truck bed that's already packed with several soaking wet celebrants.
"A mo'." She says, depositing her bike against a curb and surreptitiously dipping her hand into a bowl a young woman is holding at the ready.
The Doctor calls for her to hurry and the truck begins moving slowly through the mostly pedestrian traffic. With a few quick steps she propels herself onto the truck. The Doctor's grip on her wrist gives her extra leverage so she crashes rather forcefully into his chest.
He says, "Ooof!" And is still recovering his footing when she plants a fistful of chalk paste right in his face.
"You are so lovely!" Rose declares in sing-song.
The Doctor sputters.
The truck seeks out its next battle.
()
"... keep moving everyone. Once the tide's up the only way out is by helicop-"
Benz's words stick like his throat is closing, like he's allergic to the sight in front of him. Most of it's familiar: the sheer walls of the karst, closed in a cylinder around his little fleet of kayaks; the tangled clutch of half-drown mangroves; the inevitably rising tide waters.
But there, planted impossibly on a rockfall of limestone, is a blue phone box.
His tourists are focused on the shrinking cave that they have to navigate in order to leave the lagoon for the open sea. There are only two boats left and even now the mother-daughter pair is leaning back and aiming their kayak's nose at the cave's mouth.
Benz's the only one who looked back.
The door to the box opens. A blond woman hops onto the tiny, gravel beach.
The last kayakers lean back.
The woman waves. A man climbs out of the box.
Benz rolls up his jaw with a click of his teeth. He turns away from the cave.
There's always the helicopter.
()
"This is a bit … intense, Doctor," Rose says, craning her neck to take in the bleeding color and lights of a hundred signs then dropping her eyes to avoid stumbling on the day market's debris in the street or bumping too hard into the other members of the seething crowd.
The Doctor shakes his head at yet another offer of a ping pong show in the red light district. Rose thinks his smile's beginning to look strained. "Khao Sarn Road," he says with a shrug. "Backpacker district. You don't really come here unless you're on your way somewhere else."
He holds her hand a little too tightly.
()
They stay a night in a guesthouse whose walls are decorated with bits of mirror and swirling script. In the morning there's porridge with bananas and coconut milk. Outside there's a miniature house high on a platform, surrounded by offerings of rice and red Fanta. "Every building has one," the Doctor explains. "For the displaced spirits." Rose nods and thinks of the TARDIS.
()
On a crowded city bus he closes his hands around her waist when a bump in the road nearly jostles her into a saffron-frocked monk. "I don't know why he's standing," Rose says defensively and points at the sign that clearly marks the seats reserved for monks and pregnant women.
()
Early in the morning he reminds her, "Wat Arun," and they watch the sun rise over the Temple of the Dawn, glinting with broken bits of stolen pottery.
()
"Jump!" He says, arms extended as she lingers too long on a pier for a water taxi that barely stops. "What happened to 'run'?" She asks, laughing as the boat opens throttle and speeds down the canal. "Try 'duck'!" He says, pointing out the attendants who wear bicycle helmets as insurance against rapidly approaching, low-lying bridges.
()
"This one," she says, twirling the smooth wood and paper of a bright pink umbrella, hand-painted with delicate flowers. "Finally," he replies, "Thought you were trying to hold out for monsoon season."
()
In the midst of a cracked sidewalk, between a tumble down shop and a guesthouse, she steps around the roots of an ancient tree wrapped in bright streamers. She takes his hand, feeling a bit holy.
()
By the shore of a lake they hold the edges of a rice paper lantern. The match goes out and the Doctor cheats, using his screwdriver to light the wick at the lantern's center. A few moments of heat and the lantern is bucking against their hold. Meeting underneath, eyes wide with glee, they release the lantern together.
Rose steps into the Doctor's arms against a chill that's not there as they watch the lantern drift up and up amongst a sea of its fellows. The army of lanterns hangs like a new galaxy, bobbing on columns of air.
They're too busy too busy wishing the same wish to see if their lantern floats away or catches fire.
()
"You know, I think I always liked the idea of the ocean more than the ocean."
"The idea of it?" The Doctor's looking down at a fish that's nibbling at his toes. "How do you mean the idea of it?"
"Well, Mum and I went on holiday to the coast a few times and then I went with my schools mates but it was all tanning oil and paperback novels. Never really got in the water past the ankles."
The Doctor's quite certain that his expression asks, "Then what's the point?" but he says it aloud anyway.
Rose shrugs, twirling about chin deep in the water so her golden hair fans out then clings to her shoulders with left over inertia. "Mum hated the water back home. It's all dark and the sand's so gray. She was always worrying about fish biting her feet or something."
The Doctor very sagely does not mention his own aquatic friend.
"But here," Rose continued, "I can see my shadow on the ocean floor."
He watches her turn a barrel roll in the calm water before rising up to float on her back. There's a smile playing across her lips as her eyes close against the sunlight. No waves disturb the water here and she floats peacefully in the ocean warm enough to be bath water. "This is just gorgeous," she says. With her ears underwater he wonders if she knows it sounds half a moan.
"It is," he agrees, not thinking about water.
He trails his toes through the white sand and just watches her float. The Thai islands boast some of the most beautiful places in the universe but he came here to see something else infinitely more rare.
A few minutes later, the afternoon light shifts slightly. "Rose," the Doctor says, letting his fingers drift down her forearm.
She startles but finds her feet quickly. "What?"
He points, wondering if she'll register what she's seeing before it's gone.
Out across the sea, the sun has dipped to just such an angle, and the water is just such a blue that the horizon line vanishes for a moment and the sea melts into the sky. Rose's breath hitches. "It just goes on and on, I .… Doctor, it's like looking into forever."
"It is," he agrees, not looking at the horizon at all.