(and One Way She Did)
five
She fiddled with the beading on her bodice, searching for the right words. There was so much she wanted to ask him: about Gwyneth and the Gelth, why he'd said what he did in the morgue, whether it was normal that the fear that had choked her had floated away like the gas when he took her hand in his... "Charles Dickens was nice."
Yeah. That wasn't what she'd meant to say.
The Doctor turned his head a little to peer at her over his shoulder. She could see a little bit of that grin floating at the corners of his mouth. "He was, yeah. Great man. Great writer. You read any of his books?"
"Nah. Well, we did one of 'em in school once, but I don't remember it much. Something about an orphan and a mad old lady or something..."
"Ah, Great Expectations!" The Doctor turned to face her, crossing his arms and leaning back against the console. He looked like a teacher getting ready to lecture. "Fantastic book, if a bit slow. You should give it another try; I'm sure there's a copy round here somewhere... Maybe in the library? That's down your corridor, third passage after the bathroom, past the stairs, second door on the left..."
"I really could die before I'm even born?" The words burst out of her like a flock of birds. She watched him flinch as they flew into him, knocking his arms down to hang loosely at his sides.
"Yes." He said just the one word and the grin slid off his face. He stared her down, the blue of his eyes darkened with an emotion she didn't recognize.
She was angry, suddenly, looking at him standing there as if waiting for her to physically knock him down. She was hardly aware of her hands curling into fists at her sides and the little tremors that swept through her.
"An' you didn't even say anything? We could have died down there — like Gwyneth — dead in an instant. Forever dead, that's all, nothing else?"
He raised his hands and held them out before him, sorrow and a hint of his own anger in every line of his body. "I didn't think about it, all right? It never occurred to me—"
"'Never occurred?'" She cut him off with a sharp wave of her hands. "You didn't think to tell me, 'Oh yeah, by the way, you could travel in time and die before you even live'? We could have died fightin' them blue ghosts and that's it, dead, no more of anything ever! It never occurred!"
He took two strides toward her, his own hands clenched now. She stood her ground as he suddenly towered over her and sneered, "You humans and your narrow little minds... No, it didn't occur to me. Unlike you, I won't die like that!"
"Won't... What?" She reeled back from him, hands flying to her head as her anger melted away and left confusion in its wake. "You won't die? But, you said... your people, they're all...?"
His eyes closed and pain etched itself across the planes of his face. "My people… They didn't have a chance: everything — everyone — burned...
"We had — I have — a way of cheating death, so long as my body isn't destroyed."
Rose reached out and took one of his hands in hers. He opened his eyes and gave her a tiny smile that wavered as her own eyes filled with tears. They stood in silence for a moment, hands and eyes linked, before the Doctor straightened his shoulders and spoke again.
"It's called regeneration..."
He sucked in a shuddering breath and exhaled on something close to a sob. She pressed her hands against his shoulder blades, gathering him into her as though she would pull him straight into her chest to curl up in the steady beat of her heart.
He kept his eyes closed, unwilling to look up and past her to where the Dalek had destroyed itself. Instead, he concentrated on the feel of her, solid and warm and alive. She turned her head, tucking herself into the hollow of his throat and rubbing her ear against his chest.
He reluctantly let his arms drop from around her when she tensed.
"Your heart sounds funny," she said, the words muffled by his jacket.
"Hearts," he replied as her hands came around to rest on his chest.
She looked up at him briefly before pressing the other ear against his jumper. "You've got two? How's that work, then?"
He fought the urge to wrap his arms around her again. She never ceased to amaze him, how she could be so easily distracted, how quickly she jumped from overwhelmed to questioning.
"Same as yours, just better. Something happens to one heart, I've another ready to take over." He paused before muttering, "Provided something doesn't stop 'em both at the same time."
Her fingers were tapping out a syncopated rhythm on his chest, mimicking the thrum of his blood just below his skin. "S'that happen often?"
"Just the once," he murmured, ignoring the little niggle at the back of his brain that told him to deflect her from the subject.
She pushed back from his chest and looked up into his eyes, worry creasing her brow. "It didn't kill you, having your hearts stop?"
"I got better," he said, in a terrible imitation of a film he'd seen once.
Her expression lightened as she rolled her eyes and gave a weak chuckle.
"'Sides, the Time Lords had this funny trick, sort of a way of cheating death..."
Rose giggled and leaned in closer to him, throwing a hand on his shoulder when the rocks under her feet shifted.
Crouched down in front of a massive metal door a few feet away, trusty sonic screwdriver working on the latch, the Doctor rolled his eyes. "Oi, flyboy. You want to give us a hand 'ere?"
"Aye, aye, Doctor." Jack snapped a jaunty salute at the Doctor's back and Rose giggled again.
"Get ready. When this latch gives, we'll have to pry the door open. It hasn't been opened in a couple of centuries, so put your back into it."
Jack whistled. "Couple of centuries, huh? How can you tell? Judging by the corrosion pattern, it's only–"
The Doctor jumped up as the latch finally gave way and he and Jack struggled to pull the door open, revealing a set of stairs that wound its way through the heart of the mountain.
Rose moved forward to peer into the gloom, the hem of her skirt brushing against the tips of the Doctor's boots.
He tucked her hand in his and brandished the screwdriver in front of him like a torch. "Don't need a corrosion pattern to tell. Sealed that door m'self 'round about 1200-something to give me enough time to leg it back to the TARDIS. Gave a hell of a chase, that Temüjin... Nice guy, mostly, 'til he conquered half the world and changed his name."
"Assembled hordes of Genghis Khan, huh?" Rose grinned up at him.
"The very same," he beamed back at her. "Now. Shall we see what the good people of Tingri have been getting themselves into in my absence?"
"That ion storm outside Kaldor City probably burned out the circuitry."
"But I finally managed to get those music recordings from Axista Four on there! Can't you fix it – give it a bit of jiggery-poke?" She looked hopefully down at the MP3 player in the Doctor's hands.
"Might do. Not a whole lot to work with, these cheap Earth electronics... Probably have to just chuck it."
Jack strolled back into the control room and plucked the music player out of the Doctor's hand. "Or, you might just have to change the battery." He slotted the tiny power cell into the back of the device and switched it on.
Rose squealed and kissed his cheek when the display lit up, then practically skipped from the room.
The Doctor turned his back on his smirking companion and started typing on the keyboard.
"Jiggery-poke, huh?" Jack folded his arms across his chest and hitched one hip up on the console next to the keyboard. "That some kind of enormously complicated super-brain stuff?"
"Shut it."
"It's amazing," Rose whispered as she reached out with a gloved hand to touch the wave that towered over them.
Jack looked up from the little patch of ice he'd cleared to get a better look at the lights flashing in the depths of the frozen sea. "How'd you find this place, Doctor?"
"TARDIS malfunction. Set down here once and refused to leave until I'd completely rewired the console..." The Doctor grinned. "Twice."
Rose smiled and turned back to the wall of ice, tracing patterns into the thick layer of snow that covered it as she drifted away from her two companions.
Shoving his hands into his pockets, Jack got to his feet and walked to stand next to the Doctor. "Congratulations."
"What for?"
"A vast planetary ocean, frozen for eternity as it was in one single, beautiful moment? Beats my offer of a personal tour of the Imperial Gardens of the Talanaxans, hands down."
"Does it?" The Doctor shrugged. "Hadn't really thought about it."
Jack tilted his head to one side and winked. "You're cute when you're lying."
The empty bottle rolled off the table and clattered to the floor as Rose stumbled out of her seat.
"C'n too," she slurred in their general direction. "Watch!"
Both the Doctor and Jack leaned to one side and squinted as she executed a messy cartwheel into the corridor, thumped one leg against the doorway and collapsed into a giggling lump on the floor.
Jack guffawed and lurched so far sideways that he was practically lying in the Doctor's lap. Propping him back up with one arm, the Doctor drawled, "Oh yeah, that's real impressive."
"Like t'see you try't!" Rose cried.
"There isn't enough alcohol or alcohol-related substance in all of existence to get me to do that, Rose Tyler."
She responded by sticking out her tongue as she crawled back into the kitchen. "You're usin' too many words there, Mr Impressive."
Jack raised one hand. "I cont- conc- conquer! How's come you're not 's drunk 's..." He waved the upraised hand around the table and nearly smacked himself in the face.
Rolling onto her side and peering up at the underside of the table, Rose sighed. "Prob'ly got four livers or summat."
"Nope, just the one. Hearts, though, got two o' them."
"Two hearts, huh?" Jack leered, the effect only slightly marred by the fact that only one of his eyes was actually looking at the Doctor. "Anything else you got two of?"
Rose gasped and smacked Jack's leg before she started giggling again.
"Wouldn't you like to know?" The Doctor hid his grin behind his glass as he drained the last of the Mraxysanijan liqueur.
Jack responded by sliding out of the Doctor's sight and onto the floor. Rose shrieked with laughter when he murmured something that sounded like "might have two hearts, but can he do this?"
The Doctor sighed. He drummed his fingers on the table and listened to the sniggering underneath, before throwing his hands in the air and sliding from his chair to sit between his drunken companions.
Their heads wobbled around as they tried to focus on him, their eyes at half-mast. Jack's tongue was twisted into some impossible configuration and sticking out of his mouth.
The Doctor snorted and said, "Nope, can't do that. Superior Gallifreyan biology, me, but it's pretty much good only for foiling drunkenness and death."
"Pity," Rose whispered, and hiccupped.
"What?"
He sounded angry and she wanted to tell him to forget it, to just go back to stripping wires and working out one of his mad, brilliant schemes. "Nothing."
He didn't even glance up from what he was doing. "You said 'suppose'."
"Nah, I was just thinking..." She shrugged. In for a penny... "And I mean, obviously you can't, but— You got a time machine. Why can't you just go back to last week and warn 'em?"
"Soon as the TARDIS lands, in that second, I become part of events. Stuck in the timeline." He fitted another bit of something onto a length of wire, still not looking at her.
She wanted to scream, to throw the knife in her hand, cry... Anything to get him to stop what he was doing, to see her. To reassure her with a look that they'd build the wave and everything would be all right again. "Yeah, thought it'd be something like that."
She bit her lip as she pulled off another section of insulation. When he spoke again, she startled.
"There's another thing the TARDIS could do: it could take us away. We could leave; let history take its course..."
She felt a tiny smile work its way across her mouth and her hands started shaking.
"We go to Marbella in 1989."
"Yeah, but you'd never do that," she said with a quick glance up at him.
He put down the wires he was holding and held her gaze.
She'd known, almost from the first time they met, that he was from another planet, another time, but it wasn't until this moment that she'd seen the truth of it in his eyes. She had to look away when he spoke again, suddenly ashamed of letting him see the fear that sent tiny tremors through her body.
"No, but you could ask." His voice was soft, low. It brushed across her skin like his hand on her face, a blessing that had her suddenly choking back a sob. "Never even occurred to you, did it?"
"Well, 'm just too good!" She dared to look back up at him again and the gentle smile on his face nearly broke her.
"Yes. You are."
Her hands shook harder, the knife slicing off bits of cable that fell to the floor. His voice was so rich, so full of emotion that she could hardly give name to it.
The knife clattered to the floor when he covered her hands with his own, his thumbs caressing her palms.
She didn't try to hide the tears that rolled down her cheeks when she met his eyes.
"I've been the death of you a dozen times, Rose Tyler," he said, with an sadness that she'd never heard before, not even when he admitted that he'd sacrifice the world for her. "By some quirk of fate, you've survived it all. I can't take the chance that you won't this time. And you won't; the Daleks won't let that happen. They'll kill you, as sure as we're sat here. They'll make it last, and they'll make it hurt."
"Doctor?" What was he saying?
"I want you to leave, Rose. I want you to get in the TARDIS–"
"No!"
"—I want you to get in the TARDIS and leave here. I want you to be safe. I need you to be safe."
"No, I won't leave you!" She pulled her hands from his and clutched at his jacket, openly crying now. "You can't make me leave. Please, don't make me leave."
He wrapped her in his arms, his breath hot against her neck. "It's the only way, Rose. I won't let them kill you."
She whispered into his chest, "But they'll kill you. I can't leave you here to die, Doctor, you can't ask me to do that!"
"It's your only chance. It's our only chance." He pulled back and pushed the hair out of her face, his blue eyes blazing. "There's something I never told you. I didn't think... I thought we'd have more time. Funny how that works, sometimes.
"There's a trick I can do, a way to cheat death. Once I know you're away, that you're safe... I can trip the delta wave and regenerate. I'll change – my whole body will change – but I won't die. And I can't do it if you're here."
"No, no, no no no no!" She shook her head and tried to scoot away from him but he framed her face in his hands and held her still.
"Now, Rose, just listen! I can't let the Daleks get their hands on the TARDIS and I won't be the death of you again. The TARDIS will take you away and I'll stay here to do what needs done." His hands tightened around her face and his thumbs slipped over her cheeks, wiping away the tears that ran unchecked.
"And when it's over, I'll come for you," he whispered, his voice breaking on the last words.
An eternity later, she smiled and opened her eyes, searching out his gaze. He looked down at her, love and joy shining from his brown—
She recoiled and yelped, "Who the f—"
The lazy smile dropped from his face as he spun his head to look in the mirror on the back of the bedroom door. "Oh, shit."
She was smiling at him and he tried to make the words work. Was he even making any sense? He never should have left it this late; he should have explained it to her long ago so she would be ready when the time – this time – came.
Ran out of time, wasn't that a laugh?
She looked so scared, so he talked faster. Nonsense about dogs and noses and faces and none of it made sense to her and he didn't know how to make her understand.
And, God, was it always this fast? There was so much he wanted to say, to explain, so much that he felt and she looked so scared and worried and oh God it was almost time and he wasn't ready to leave this shell just yet and he wanted to tell her that he would do it again in a heartsbeat but there wasn't enough time and he couldn't make the words right so he tried his best but he could see that she didn't understand and the confusion and worry in her eyes was killing him faster than the vortex would and he couldn't just leave her like this oh she looked so scared...
"...you were fantastic. An' you know what? So was I!" He smiled through the pain pulling him apart and his hearts leapt to see her smile back at him through the golden haze that was clouding his vision.
And he let go.