kalleah | Voyages of Discovery (Chapter Twenty-Six)

Rose and Jacob spend some contemplative time while waiting for the Doctor. Jacob's quotations are, respectively, from Psalms 18:32-36 and Hebrews 11:1.

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"Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear."
Mark Twain

In a haze, Rose walked down the hill to the stone table, and found Jacob waiting for her with two pairs of shears. Wordlessly, he handed her one and she followed him out into the garden. They worked in silence for several minutes. Rose brought all her attention to the plants before her, trimming each branch precisely.

That one is a little too long. Snip. A little too angled. Snip. A little too thick. Snip.

What is taking him so long?

She shook her head as if to toss the idle thought out of her head, and Jacob turned to regard her.

"You're not worried," she said, and tried not to feel resentful at him.

"Of course I am," he soothed. "I'm a man of faith, but I'm not made of iron. I have emotions and I care deeply for you and the Doctor. I believe that he will come back, but that is not foolproof certainty."

"That's a fat lot of comfort," said Rose. "You're not even sure."

"I'm not," he agreed. "I can't know it for certain until I've seen the results before me. That is faith, Rose. Not believing in something only when the odds are good, but putting your trust in a higher power and believing that there is no chance, no random pattern to the universe. God is watching."

"What if he's just watching?"

"Then we have to help ourselves, don't we? Faith isn't about sitting back and being passive, either. 'It is God who arms me with strength and makes my way perfect. He makes my feet like the feet of a deer; he enables me to stand on the heights,' and so forth." He put his free hand in the middle of his back and stretched stiffly.

Rose bent her head and studied her feet, giving herself a moment to clear her eyes and refocus her thoughts. "It's a time machine. Why isn't he back by now?" she said impatiently, straightening up. "I can't just sit here helpless and not know what's happening to him!"

"He's never been that good at landing precisely when and where he intended," Jacob reminded her gently. "He'll be back as soon as he can." He took the shears away from her and beckoned her to follow. She did, obediently, head lowered.

He didn't pause to put the shears away but led her directly down the path to the main clearing. He gestured at the little church. "I am going to go inside and pray," he told her. "If you want to come with me, please feel welcome." He placed the two pairs of shears on the bench outside the church and went inside. The heavy door closed with a soft sigh of aged hinges behind him.

Rose stood, feeling impatient and quite bereft, staring at the door. Even Jacob had left her. No, she thought, that's not fair. The Doctor's only gone because I wanted to say goodbye to Mum. With a frustrated sigh, she opened the door and stepped inside.

Jacob, somewhat to her surprise, was seated in the section she had thought of before as for "guests." The pews where the monks normally sat ran perpendicular to these first rows. He sat, head bowed in submission, hands folded together, in the front row of the pews. Rose walked forward and sat down beside him. She thought he was aware of her, but he did not react to her arrival.

After a moment of careful study of the monk, she bowed her head as well and closed her eyes. She self-consciously picked at the bed of one thumbnail for want of something to do with her hands. She fidgeted and then froze guiltily when the pew squeaked in wooden protest.

"I don't know what to say," she breathed into the stillness.

"You don't need to say anything," responded the monk, unmoving. "Listen."

She listened with all her might to the almost-silence, trying not to force the sound she wanted most to hear into the world with her. The church was quiet, but in a warm, welcoming way. Rose could hear the faint echoes of her own breathing against the wood of the pews and the stone of the walls. Beside her, Jacob inhaled and exhaled steadily as he prayed. The wind outside gusted up the steeply slanted roof and poured down the other side. There could have been no one else in the world but the two of them at that moment.

She sought, inside herself, the quiet strength that Jacob summoned so easily, which she knew she did in fact possess. When she'd been plummeting toward the black hole, certain of her own death, she had felt a strange, commanding peace upon her. She had closed her eyes and turned within, seeking acceptance of her own impending mortality, and found – not exactly pride, but something less selfish, a knowledge that she had done what needed to be done and wouldn't have changed her actions.

Is it the same now? she wondered. The Doctor had sent her away from him twice, and both times, she had flailed and despaired and flown right back to be by his side. This time, he had asked her permission to leave her, asked for her to stay safe while he risked his life. She sighed. He had acknowledged her, not precisely as his equal, but on her own terms next to him. He had recognized what he meant to her, and asked her to set it aside for the sake of his own feelings about her.

She folded and unfolded her hands in her lap, unable to stop the nervous movement. In all her time with him, this was the most selfish thing she had ever asked him to do. No worlds were at risk; no lives were at stake. She had asked him to risk his life simply because she wanted to reassure her mum.

"Jacob?" she inquired in a voice just above a whisper. She felt his attention shift toward her, a barely perceptible changing of posture and inclination of his head. "If he doesn't come back, I'll never forgive myself."

"If you hadn't tried some way to get a message to your mother," he replied, head still bent and eyes closed, "you would never have forgiven yourself for that, either. You had a choice to make."

She nodded, acknowledging the truth of his words. The choice now, as the choice in the doorway, was about making a decision and determining if she could live with the consequences.

"I couldn't have let Mum go on not knowing," she said into the utter stillness of the church. "I left her once, for a whole year, without her having any idea what had happened to me. The Doctor got his coordinates wrong." She tried to laugh, and the sound was hollow when it flung itself back at her. "She always knew I would choose him if I ever had the choice. I just don't want her to wonder if I did make it back or if I was – killed or snatched up by something else or whatever."

"So," Jacob said, his voice low and rumbling, "the Doctor went back to deliver that message, and he asked you to stay behind. You said yes. Do you regret that choice?"

"Yes. No. I mean – I wanted to go with him as much as anything, but he asked. He never asks." A brief, pained smile flitted across her face. "It was the right thing to do," she said resolutely. "I had to tell Mum something."

"And staying behind?" he prodded gently.

"Had to," she mumbled. "He asked."

"Then stand behind that choice," Jacob told her. He lifted his head and his blue gaze pinned her in place. "You could have taken the coward's choice, Rose. You could have chosen to keep the Doctor safe, leave your mother wondering, or even to go with him despite his wishes. If you'd put up a fuss, he would have backed down. You chose to send a message – yes, I say, an unselfish act – and to stay here although we both know you would rather be doing anything than sitting here passively, waiting on someone else."

"Even though that someone else is the Doctor?" she said, a little wistfully.

"For you? Especially since that someone else is the Doctor." He stood up, and Rose stood as well. He placed both hands on her shoulders. "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen," he said reverently. "Have faith."

Rose hugged the monk impulsively, wondering if it were proper to do so in a church. He hugged back, so she felt somewhat better about it.

Current Mood: melancholy
Current Music: Rush, "Distant Early Warning"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

sideways.livejournal.com

Oh, Jacob. He's love. I don't know if you've ever read East of Eden by John Steinbeck, but the character in that book, Lee, is like, exactly like him. I just had to read that book for my English class, and I just realized how similar they are. If you don't know what I'm talking about... um, I liked this chapter. :] Hee.

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writings and ramblings from the fictional kallerine leah

Voyages of Discovery (Chapter Twenty-Six)

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