AN: Pretend the series stopped at Journey's End. Pretend nothing canon happened after...Pretend the Doctor left his meta-crisis clone and Rose, and went traveling alone.
Pretend that the clone and the Doctor shared a bit of a telepathic link.
Pretend that Rose was more special than anyone fully realized.
Pretend that some things just are meant to be and that those things will always find a way.
Remember that this is Doctor Who and they specialize in the impossible...
Remember that the the clone is the Doctor and the Doctor is the clone, but Rose is still Rose and there is only one of her.
Remember.
DISCLAIMER: All characters not mine, I'm just an emotional, dramatic female playing with toys not mine...leave me alone and no judging!
All Those Lovely, Scattered Pieces
Part One: I Have Loved the Stars Too Fondly
My Dearest Rose,
There is no easy way to say this, to explain this, all I can say is I'm sorry, so sorry. I'm sorry that I've kept my...illness hidden from you. It wasn't fair certainly, it wasn't right but I know what it is like to lose someone you love, I know it far too well. As it was, the situation we found ourselves in with your timeline and mine, I didn't want to rob the time we had left of the joy and the realness, our time was too short already. I know you so well my dear Rose, and I know you know me better than any human ever has and I know as mad as you are now, as much as you hate me for this, you'll forgive me and you'll understand...someday.
These past 35 years have been greatest of my life. I know I was born in fire, battle, blood and war but my memories of the lives past have been constant company. The man you made, the man you reforged from the ashes of genocide, that man more than any other is grateful, and is happy. More than any other being, you made me who I am.
You, Rose Tyler Egann, made me. You are engrained into the fibers of this failing but loyal heart. You taught me to trust and love again. You are the most exceptional and fantastic woman.
I don't like leaving you, I've left you too many times. I know it wasn't technically me, but I remember, I know. You've known me through a regeneration, yes I know that wasn't really me, but I've still those memories and I've loved you since those very first days...my tenacious shop girl with the hoodies and big smile. I do not know why things happen like they do. If I could change this I certainly would, I've certainly tried.
Please believe that. Believe that I've exhausted ever avenue, every opportunity and possibility. All the great minds that exist on this Earth have tried to change my fate, but some things just are.
I'm sorry too for the conclusion I know just you came to.
Yes, when we realized a long time ago that you weren't aging as a human should, when we found out about your special circumstance I began to research. When I found out I had cancer my research became imperative. My time with you would be shorter than it was supposed to be, you lost your father, your mother, your brother...and even Mickey. I knew I was your last piece here, I didn't want you to be alone.
Don't misunderstand my love, I adore, Eden with everything in me, she has me so wrapped around her little finger. She is, next to you, the love of my everything. She is pure and wonderful and perfect...she's, well she is simply fantastic. I know that is all her mother too.
The one part that she does have from is her Time Lord genes and that melded with your unique biology means she will be with you when I can't. She will be with you and in some small way it means I'll be with you too.
Our daughter was the last thing I could give you, but really our little girl was the greatest gift you ever gave me.
I don't think it really needs saying any more than I've done, you know. You've always known. I love you. And just as you know I love you, I know you love me...and the Doctor. He's always been in our marriage and as strange as it is to be jealous of yourself, there have been times when I have been. I know while I am him, I'm not him, I know you love me with everything in you, with everything you are...I know because he is me and I am him and we need you and for reasons beyond even my Time Lord brain understanding...you love us, me, him.
Give him the other letter, don't read it, well even when you try, (I know you my dear Rose, I know you'll try) it is in Gallifreyan. I know he will come for you. I know he won't leave you alone. The walls of impossible are a bit more...breakable to a Time Lord on a mission. He will break them for you.
When he does, love him. Go with him. Be happy with him. He is me, I am him – remember that, it's always been true. Don't, and I know you will try, but don't hold out on him because of some loyalty to me, I want you to be happy, to live your incredible long life with joy and enthusiasm.
Let him be close to Eden, he will love her as I do, he will show her the stars as I won't be able to. He will teach her about the Time Lords, she is the first, our little Eden and she will change the galaxy.
Mostly, and I can't say this enough my Rose, be happy, be brilliant, live a good life. Do that for me, won't you? Have a fantastic life?
Always and allons-y,
Yours eternally,
John
Rose couldn't breathe. Her chest constricted and squeezed her heart, her lungs. Tears, she didn't know how she had any left, were pouring down her cheeks in tiny rivers. She actually didn't know how the tears were escaping as her eyes were so swollen and puffy that she could hardly see to finish her husbands letter.
Her body convulsed in tiny quakes as she shivered. He was gone. Her John was gone. Not just gone, dead. He was dead.
She felt a wail pushing against her lips and she fought it back with everything in her. She was already falling apart, falling in pieces all over the sandy bay, but she would not wail like a banshee. At least not yet.
He was right, she did hate him in this moment. She was furious, irate, angry and devastated. So devastated.
Two weeks, she had had two weeks to say goodbye to her husband of 30 years. How had she been so blind? How had she missed his battle? How had he kept it from her? She banged her fists on her thighs as she bit back another scream.
"Damn you John Egann, damn you!" she finally cried through gritted teeth.
The wooden boat that bore the great half human, half Time Lord to his final voyage burned with the funeral pyre in the setting sunlight.
It had been easy actually, to hid the 6 year battle that John Egann had fought, like his Rose he didn't show age. He looked as healthy and as fit as he did 35 years previous when he had be forged. Unlike his Rose though he aged internally just as any human did. He was a nearly 70 year old man that had succumbed to brain cancer. Such a human and yet such inhuman way to die, especially for a Time Lord, even half a one.
"Now cracks a noble heart. Good-night, sweet prince;
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest," Rose managed to quote haltingly around the lumps in her throat, the boulders in her stomach as the breeze whipped at the flames.
In a violent crack of sparks and steam as flames engulfed the wood and hit the water the earthly remains of the meta-crisis clone of the Doctor disappeared from view.
His name was John David Egann.
Beloved husband of Rose Marion Tyler-Egann
Adored father of Eden Victoria Egann.
Across the universes a mad man in a blue box hit his knees as a searing pain ripped through his brain, apart his hearts and left him void and paralyzed.
He felt the carefully constructed barrier in his mind that stood guard between his mind and that of his clone disintegrate into ashes. A mass of pain, so much pain, and fear engulf his hyper sensitive synapses. It sent him into a hyperbolic shock.
Memories. Thoughts. Feelings. 35 years of lost...thingsinvaded the Doctor. In an unending onslaught of memories that weren't his, but were. He saw through his eyes, he felt with his hearts, understood with his mind...but it wasn't him.
The images were too fast to understand, to see, to process, but the feelings. Oh, those were real and they were searing themselves into him with a burning intensity that was lighting him from the inside.
One singular feeling override them all in the end.
Need.
The summation of the barrage that the Doctor had just endured from his clone was that the clone, the man, him, but not him, needed him. Was pleading for him.
His clone was dead.
Rose.
What of Rose...The Doctor tried to claw at the memories that had thrust themselves upon him but could not extract anything that belonged solely to his Rose.
Panic filled the Doctor as the TARDIS began to vibrate and seemed to lose its perch within the vortex. He was still unable to move, he lay on the grating as his ship hurtled to unknown ends. Horror griped him anew, he could not physically move to guide his ship in whatever disturbance it was hurtling through. He could only guess at the damage and harm that would befall them both before he regained his bodily functions.
His superior, oh so clever, Time Lord mind ran the gamut of a thousand scenarios, a million actions and possibilities regarding both his ship and the death of his clone.
He had had taken such careful precautions to dam up all connections between him and his clone. It was far too dangerous to not. Even if the mental link between him and the clone wasn't a physical detriment between them like it was between Donna and himself the emotional ramifications just weren't something he was willing to take on.
The clone was him, he was the clone...but they were so completely different. From the moment Rose kissed his clone he had to sever ties. It changed in that moment. They, he and his clone, were no longer sharing a single mind but his clone was feeling things different, was experiencing different things. He could not endure feeling Rose's kiss second hand...even if his lips had tasted it first.
So he dammed it up. Her with her Doctor in her world...he, forever alone in his blue box, an impenetrable eternal wall between.
Just as his mind happened to fall on the impenetrable eternal wall the TARDIS jerked madly and the Doctor was thrown and another wave of searing pain through him. It was the pain of the TARDIS..and of his Rose. He gasped as his head throbbed and stars burst behind his eyes.
He saw flames.
He smelled smoke.
He tasted tears.
He heard Rose's sobs.
Rose was projecting through the TARDIS, some part of his thought process registered.
How?
He felt himself black out just as he felt the TARDIS break though a wall that was impenetrable, that was eternal.
His last coherent thought before his world went black was that it wasn't possible, later he would swear he heard someone him, but not him whisper "Her loving us is what's impossible, doesn't change the fact that she does though. Love her back."
Rose stood until the bay was completely dark. She stayed watching the spot where her husband had disappeared under the water. Her tears had stopped sometime before, but she didn't remember when. Her body ached and her fingers, toes and face were frozen and chapped from the harsh Norwegian winter. Somewhere a part of her was wishing hypothermia would kick in, she wouldn't die naturally from old age and she had proven to be rather resilient to normal everyday viruses and the like...the only way she'd ever hope to reunite with John would be through a rather wicked death.
She almost wished it.
She was tired of losing. Of constantly being denied forever with her love. Constantly being left. She was so tired of it! She choked down another curse of her dead husband as it was bringing up tears and hot pain again.
Cold was far preferable to the searing heat of pain.
She almost wished to be united with John in death, but not quite.
Not at all really.
There was a sleeping little girl with always wild brown hair, inquiring and inquisitive mind, a penchant for bananas and the color blue and pink fuzzy hoodies. A little girl with her eyes but everything else wonderful about her John...her Doctor.
She would never leave her little girl, no, she knew how it felt to be left and she'd never do that to her daughter. Ever. Besides, she wanted to be with her too much. She wanted to watch her grow up and live her wonderful life. Her beautiful little girl had already lost her father, she would not lose her mum too.
She went to leave, she tried to move her feet but she was frozen in place. Her body icy and hard, to leave would be leave him forever, to leave him... She promised not to leave him. Tears started again, shivers broke over her again dislodging the ice about her heart and turning it again to searing pain.
Alone in her grief she barely registered the distinct sound that was filling the air. It was a sound she hadn't heard in 35 years.
She stumbled in shock, in disbelief. Delirium was setting in.
She was hearing things.
She was seeing things.
She had to be dying. She was dying and the TARDIS was the chariot her mind decided would carry her to whatever was beyond.
The TARDIS with it's low thrawping sound faded into piercing clear reality.
Her jaw dropped. She had to be dying.
She moved to awkwardly hug her thin black trench coat to her body and push her hair from her face.
From the blue box stumbled a man. A man that when she looked upon him in the faint light from atop the TARDIS made her sure that she had found her way across to the other side of life, found her way across to where death dwelt.
It was John...but it wasn't John. She knew that while he looked him, exactly like him, it wasn't. It wasn't her husband. Demon. It had to be some kind of vile, kind of purgatory demon.
"Rose..." the man not John breathed, looked quite as confused as she felt. He sounded like John.
She closed her eyes tightly, willing the apparition away. It wasn't real. She had to get back to Eden.
"Rose Tyler!" the apparition called again to her and advanced toward her.
"You're not real! Go away! Shoo!" she screamed at him for lack of anything better to do. She struggled to get away without turning her back on it. She knew enough from her years at Torchwood...and with the Doctor, her brain slow and lethargic – like her body from the cold, paused to cry out silently at the thought of the Doctor, to know whatever it was it was best not turn her back on it or break line of sight.
"Rose...it's me, the Doctor," the apparition stated firmly.
"No you're not!" she yelled her ire growing, drying her tears, "I know the Doctor, you might look like him...but you're not! He can't come back here, ever! He left me! He can't come back! Now leave me alone! This is..." she fumbled over her thick tongue. What did she want to say? This is where I burned my husband? This is where I said goodbye to the Doctor, the real Doctor not once, but twice? What did she want to say, that it was some kind of consecrated, holy ground? It was to her, but she doubted anyone, especially not demons, as this...thing, surely was would understand that.
"Rose, look at me! Really look at me!" the man advanced quickly on her, too quickly.
She tripped over her own feet and start to fall backwards, he seized her by the shoulders, "Rose Tyler look at me! Look into my eyes...Its me...the night I met you I rescued you from the Auton...we were in the elevator...you thought the whole thing was a ruse done by students. Do you remember? The night we met? Rose, it's me...it's me. I'm here..."
It sounded so like John, her John...she couldn't take it any more. The Doctor...John...so she gave up. She went from sobbing as she struggled against a hold that was familiar in so many ways. John..the Doctor. Too overwhelming. She gave in then. Gave into the blackness, for just a bit, just a while. Just for a few minutes of blissful forgetting ...blackness.
Her eyes fell closed and Rose Marion Tyler-Egann passed out in the arms of the Doctor she thought was impossible.
When Rose came to again she was in her old room in the TARDIS and it looked like it hadn't been touched. For a brief moment she might have been...all those years ago, readying for an adventure with her Doctor, being giddy for a werewolf, or dressing for seeing Elvis perform. But that was so long ago, another lifetime really.
Quite literally another life time, or at least timeline.
She had died since then.
Married.
Had a child...
"Eden!" she cried sitting bolt straight and throwing the blanket as she clamored from the bed.
She momentarily was distracted by the fact that gone was her black skirt suit and matching trench and in its place were familiar sweats and pink hoodie. He kept them? After all these years? She wasn't sure why she was surprised considering the expansive wardrobe, but somehow she she was. For a brief second she wished he hadn't, she wished she had meant more than that, that he hadn't been able to look at them because he missed her so much, instead of just adding them to the pile. She gathered her clothes which he had left sitting on a chair, he wouldn't be adding these to his horde.
Of course it was dawning on her in these fleeting seconds of her scattered thoughts that perhaps she should be more concerned with how he was even here! It was him, she had accepted it now, she didn't know how it was, how he...well was, but it didn't change the facts. John had also said in his letter that the Doctor would come...
"He needs you, that is very me".
The words fluttered back into her conscious as she stumbled the familiar path to the console room.
She found the Doctor in the jump seat head in his hands. She approached gently, though not silently, she didn't want to sneak up on him.
"Doctor," she forced the name out, she surprised herself by keeping her voice steady.
The Doctor flinched, whipping his body around to look at her.
He stared at her, face blank, and just stared. "Rose...when...when is it?" his eyes stayed trained on her.
So he truly didn't know, she had always wondered, been curious if had suspected or maybe guessed at it. She fought an internal battle on whether to wait until she was back with Eden before explaining the story, but as much as she wanted back with her daughter, the fact she had a daughter that looked exactly like John..thereby the Doctor was going to be another story in and of itself. Eden was safe with Sarah and there was much, so much that needed to explained here.
So many impossible things.
"It is four days after my husband died...it's 35 years since you left him and me here on Bad Wolf Bay..." she answered softly.
He blinked and looked her up and down and blinked again, "How is that possible?"
"You never were one for idle smalltalk..." she bit more unkindly then she meant, but she had still lost her husband and he hadn't even said he was sorry.
The Doctor caught his misstep, "I'm being rude again aren't I?" he muttered, "Sorry, I'm still rather rubbish at this part...the being sensitive part."
She wanted to tell him she knew that quite well, that John...that John up until the end still needed her to remind him of his manners and keep him balanced. She held her tongue.
"We discovered a few years after you...you left that I was looking...particularly good for my age. We went to a few normal doctors for our yearly physicals and what not, as we should. Everything came back perfect, no problems... It soon was rather obvious however that I was different. That it wasn't that I was just aging slowly or had great genes, I wasn't aging at all.
"I was still working at Torchwood...John, that's..." she fumbled for a word, to call him a clone, especially out loud was just cruel, it seemed to diminish all that he was. He was a man, he lived, he loved...and he died as a man, not as a clone.
The Doctor quickly picked up on her struggle, perhaps even saw the tears in her eyes as she said his name, "John is...was" a tear slid down her cheek, "a Doctor, he taught university here and lead research teams at Torchwood...he, physically looked like he wasn't aging either, but his physicals were showing that he was aging just as a man of his age should...internally. Image wise, his features I'd guess you'd say, it turned out aged as well, but at a greatly decreased rate."
"But me? Well...I don't. I haven't aged passed 20... not a day past 20 years, 3 months and 6 days to be exact..." her eyes fell.
The Doctor's brows scrunched together, he was going back through her timeline she was sure, he would find it and connect it much fast then she did, then the whole of Torchwood and extended research facilitates did. Just like her John did, but did say for quite a long time.
"The day you looked into the TARDIS..."
"Yeah...that's the magic date...As best as we were able to figure out with genetic testing and DNA mapping and using John's biology as comparison, my DNA was somehow altered when I absorbed the TARDIS energy. Not by Time Lord DNA, it's something different, something akin, but very different. It altered the aging properties and my immune system. I rarely, if ever get colds, never had the flu...I'm healthy as a horse, as an apparently immortal, un-aging horse," she felt the tears of frustration wash over her. Frustration and the pure impossible absurdness of it all. She, the human...the one with the short little lifespan was not only living her second timeline but was apparently also something very akin to an immortal.
"John, found out he had stage 2 brain cancer 6 years ago, he kept it from me. My half human, half Time Lord husband gets stricken with brain cancer...of all the things!" she gestured wildly as tears were silently running down her cheeks, "He kept it from me, damn him. He kept it from me...he researched all possible avenues. Everything from gene therapy using artificially grown Time Lord genes, to modified cells from me, since I have this screwy DNA...nothing worked. There was no cure, no treatment."
"So, my already shortened forever with him...since I will apparently live forever and all... But he ...he aged just like you said he would, like an ordinary man. I never could really fathom what it might be like...to know you had forever while one you love just a flicker of that... Once 80 years seemed like...well forever, it seemed so large and big and vast...it's nothing but a blip, a little tiny spec and I was robbed not just of my forever with you," she slapped a hand over her mouth, horrified that she had let that slip, she hadn't meant to...she rushed on, hoping to cover it, "I was robbed of so many years with John..."
The Doctor, in what could have been his longest stretch of silence stared her, still quiet, unmoving.
"Now, you answer questions! How are you here? Why are you here?" she demanded.
The Doctor swallowed, "I don't know...I have no idea, I just am...but Rose," he stood closing distance between them.
Rose thought she knew what he was going to do, she wanted to bolt, she wanted to run. This wasn't her John, he was different...so much the same, but different... but to look at him, he was the same and she wanted to bolt because she knew what he was going to do.
"Rose I'm sorry, so sorry..." and the Doctor hugged her.
Her Doctor, her John. They were same, they were different. Oh, but how they were the same. She stiffened as he hugged her, he just hugged her tighter.
He hugged her until her walls melted and she, sobbing into his shoulder, hugged him back.
He smelled like her Doctor, the silly thought flitted around somewhere in her brain. He didn't smell like John, he smelled like her Doctor. That was reassuring and right in someway. Even if you took away everything that she and Doctor meant to each other...and that was a rather impossible task, he had always been her dearest friend and confidant. Her life with him...well that was the stuff of legends and wonder. So even if it was agony of another color, parts of her soul that had been dormant couldn't help but rejoice at being hugged by him again.
"Please Doctor...there is more...so much more, but I...there is one piece of all this I don't think I can tell you...I think you have to see it." Rose pulled away from the Doctor, "But...I can't have you traipsing around here either...not when..." Why really didn't need to be said.
Rose was completely at a loss, "I just...I just can't believe...and you...?" she hoped that he was still as good at reading between her flustered nonsensical sentences as he had always been.
He was. "All I know is I was in orbit around Alpha Centurion 4, when a pain like I've seldom come close to feeling before hit me...as best as I can guess it was roughly 4 Earth days ago...I believe I was feeling...John," the Doctor hesitated over the name, the name he took when it was necessary he have one other than Doctor, "I believe I was feeling John pass. It paralyzed me...something that I don't think you probably knew, I don't think even...John, knew...we, he and I, had a link. A telepathic link. It wasn't something we used, nor was it, or at least I didn't think it was, all that strong as of late...I didn't realize it was there until...well until you kissed him for the first time. I felt it as strongly as if you had kissed me. I shut the link down, I thought permanently, but there were times, brief and very far between where I would loose focus and an extreme emotion would break through. They were all good emotions...I didn't know what caused them or why, I could identify them but the mental feel...The feel of memories not mine...but with my genetic signature and...mark. Memories and emotions of being loved and happy that were so clearly not mine would break through now and again."
"When John died, as best as I can figure, that gaping wound ripped the dam in my mind so completely that everything flooded in. Emotions...colors without form, pictures without images...the emotions are written pathways in my mind and hearts but they've no connection to how John lived...I don't know how, I only know the resulting emotions..." the Doctor was pacing.
"I believe days passed as John's soul reached where ever it is that souls go...I have no connection with him any more...nothing even hinting in my mind. During this the TARDIS was shaken, again I don't know by what or how, I only know it was shaken from orbit and it hissed and screamed in a violent manner while being banged and rolled through time and space, I truthfully thought she was going to be ripped apart in the vortex."
"It was during that time that I...I saw your pain. I saw images projected through the TARDIS. The link that the TARDIS and I share. That link I have with the TARDIS is symbiotic...we feed into and out of each other. She doesn't use words and it isn't as advanced but she uses the senses and images to convey what she needs when she's in great need, when she's hurt... She felt you Rose. She felt you on this beach. She smelled the smoke from...a pyre? You gave him a Viking burial didn't you?"
Rose's face was ashen and she quivered like any moment she was going to keel over, the Doctor went to her and guided her to the jump seat.
"Yes...I did."
"The TARDIS knew. She grieved with you...I don't know for sure...but I believe it was the combined pain of John and you...it broke down the wall inside of my mind and it literally tore a whole in time and space to bring you...well me, it's the only thing that the TARDIS could probably think to do..." the Doctor's voice was part amazed awe and part regret, "I'm sorry that we can't bring John back. If I could, know I would give him back to you... If I could..."
Rose hadn't lost her ability to guess the Doctor's words either and she lifted her hand to cover his mouth, "Don't you dare say it..." She kept her hand there until he nodded in submission.
"I think...I think John called the TARDIS and I here..." the Doctor added quietly.
Rose's tears started again and she squeezed her eyes shut, "Yeah...that's very..." she meant to say John, but it was also the Doctor. They both looked out for her, always. Always putting her first and worrying about her, looking after her...trying to sacrifice themselves for her, hell even Eden at 3 worried more over her mum than any toddler should. Stupid, stupid Time Lord DNA made them all bloody daft!
The Doctor pulled Rose to him and hugged her again, cradling her against his chest.
"Where is Jackie and Pete? Are they going to be looking for you?" The Doctor rubbed her back.
Rose sniffled into his pinstripe jacket, "No...Jackie and Pete were...they were killed in a yachting accident in France ten years ago. My brother, Noah, ...he was with them."
The Doctor held Rose away, "Bloody hell, Rose Tyler...you've lost...everyone..." Horrified didn't even began to cover his expression and tone.
Rose wiped at her eyes and her red nose, "...that is kind of the rest of the story..." she took a deep breath, "Do you have a tissue?" she asked, so stuffed up, her lips swollen and eyes stinging.
The Doctor dug around his pockets, which she knew to be, like his TARDIS, much larger on the inside. He came up with a packet of tissues.
"You've lost...everyone, oh Rose...I am sorry, so very sorry..." he kept rubbing her arm.
"Not everyone, that's what I've been trying to get around to telling you..." she took a steadying breath, "Well, you better I guess come along...you can read this on the way," Rose finally finding some kind of bearings stood and brushed the Doctor away. There would be plenty of falling apart and tears she knew coming, but right now she had to get to her daughter and get this part with the Doctor over.
"What's this?" the Doctor quirked an eyebrow at the envelope she handed him, "that's my hand writing..."
"No, that's John's hand writing...I thought he had gone 'round the bend when he gave me that...said I would know when to give it to you. I don't rightly know that I'm giving it to you at the right time, but they say there's no time like the present..." she was moving very quickly to the door, then paused and swung back around, "I think he knew...about the link, maybe not...but after what you said, I think he did. He said you'd come for me...I didn't believe, I thought he was nutters, but you did. You came...I think he knew." Then like a flash she was moving out the door again, the Doctor at her heels.
Her car was parked just off the verge along the seldom used access road, it wasn't far. She had parked it there as it seemed...well it seemed a violation of some sort to drive across the bay now, since it had born witness to so much. The Doctor didn't remark as she beeped the alarm off and waved for him to enter the passenger side.
Rose got behind the wheel and gripped it tight. In here it smelled like John. She willed herself to keep it together.
"When we discovered our little...aging problem John and I moved here, to Norway. It seemed right. Our place is about twenty minutes from here. People leave us alone, they don't ask questions...we live, we lived," she amended bitterly, "quite undisturbed. We traveled a lot, for lectures and research and all that. We helped build a Torchwood extension in Oslo for research..." Rose found herself rambling, talking to ignore her pain, her emotions, to perhaps forget, just for a moment.
The Doctor showing more restraint than she could ever remember was silent, holding his letter.
"Right, well you better go on and read that...I've a feeling John might explain a few things better than me..." she nodded at him.
The Doctor nodded and slid his finger under the flap and opened the letter that bore his name, his Gallifreyan name.
Dear...Me,
I found there is no suitable way to address this, the problem I'm sure you'll no doubt find as amusing as I do, since we are the same.
Our Rose never fully grasped that you know, not fully. I know when she looks at me she sees you, but she also thinks she sees me, she thinks she sees two different people. But we are the same you and I, what an interesting conundrum that is.
I also know that you and I shared a telepathic link (I'm, you remember, just as bloody clever as you). I know that you dammed it up because feelings of me with Rose were too uncomfortable you, I don't blame you for that.
I do however, somewhat blame you for Rose now being alone. I think we knew, when we left her and me here on the bay that she was different, that she was more...and you were giving her a clone so I could give her what you, the real Doctor, couldn't. Or what you thought you couldn't give her. I think you knew that while I would certainly age just like a human that she would not. I think you, we...knew, we just refused to see it.
I think you refused to see it because it scared you, scared you that she might actually get to have forever, that you might actually get to keep her, keep someone with you for all time and that you wouldn't have to be alone any more.
I think you, we, were scared that she might resent us for it.
I also think you left her here with me because you were afraid you'd hurt her in the end...and because what else could you do with me but leave me? We couldn't have a clone running about space, especially not one that had committed genocide on an entire people, but I am still you and you couldn't face the idea of exile, again, alone.
You gave me Rose. You gave me the one most precious to you, to us. You gave me her instead of fighting to keep her, we could have found a way to keep her in her proper timeline, that is what we do...we solve the impossible. But instead, you gave me Rose to keep me for my years.
Maybe it's the human in me, I'm not sure but I find myself very confused over that. I know I gave Rose the greatest life that she could have had away from you, away from the adventure and the stars that she so loves. I know I, we, gave her the domestic slow path that no other human could have possibly, that you couldn't, but I have lived every single day knowing that if she could have, if you had fought for her, she would have chosen you.
You are the real Doctor, I am the clone.
She loves me, you, us. She loves me with all that she is, I know this, just as you do, but our Rose was always supposed to be with you.
I'm giving her back.
I'm giving her back to you, to us. I thank you for giving her to me, she did make me better. I did need her and our years together were...they were everything we dream about but Rose made her choice all those years ago. She chose you, she chose that forever, she chose the stars when she broke into our TARDIS to save us. She belongs with the TARDIS, and you...in the stars. She chose that, she didn't chose me, not really. She never would have chosen to be away from you, to be separated from you.
I'm dead obviously, if you're reading this and you've figured out too that I and Rose called you back. She's probably told you about what we know about her anti-aging and you've sussed out, in that big Time Lord brain of ours, that she is tied to the TARDIS. That Rose's DNA melded with the essence of the TARDIS and that you and the TARDIS tore through the impossible, eternal wall between the parallel words because Rose's soul called to the TARDIS'. Rose and the TARDIS broke the wall in space and I tore down the wall between us. You needed to feel the pain, you needed to know.
You needed to come get her, finally.
There is one more piece to this puzzle and if I know my wife as well as I think I do she hasn't mentioned it to you yet...she's going to show you instead. A few things before she does, you'll know why I did it, you'll understand because...well, you are me and I am you.
A few things that you might not understand...
The Doctor looked up from the letter as the car came to a stop in front of a small house just as the sun was reaching the high point in the sky. The house was grey stone, covered in climbing roses and ivy.
"Give me a minute, yeah? My friend Sarah is here...and while she's more understanding of the impossible than most...having John walk through the door might be just a bit more impossible than she can take right now..." Rose didn't wait for an answer as she slipped from the car.
What I did, I did for Rose first and foremost. What ended up being...well it was more than I had ever anticipated, ever dreamed or could have ever fathomed. What I did for Rose ended up being possibly more for me than it ever was for her...
Again the Doctor paused as he heard the front door of the house open. Rose came out holding the hand of a child.
The Doctor was out of the car before he realized what he was doing and crossing the distance between in great, long legged strides. The letter forgotten on the car seat.
Her name is Eden. She is human with Time Lord DNA. Her biology is less engineered than you would think. As you know we are not biologically compatible with humans, our reproductive system is rather inactive. Given my hybrid status, given that the most human thing about me, aside from my more emotional brain, is the lack of a second heart my DNA is almost completely Time Lord. Our Rose is completely human but with modified helixes.
It took years of research, years of planning...but we, Rose, me and you, for you are me, and I am you, conceived a child.
She is human, she is Time Lord. She ages, but slowly...if my theories are correct, and they very usually are, she'll age to approximately 20 years, 3 months, 6 days. Reproducing results in the lab showed that Rose's cells had been imprinted with the biological information when they were changed... When our Time Lord DNA was introduced to the artificial representation of Rose's egg the...nature rather took over. And what a bloody beautiful thing nature can be.
I don't know the extent of her Time Lord abilities yet, she is only 3, but she already is trying to establish a telepathic link with her mother and I. She would rather show you what she wants than speak it...so much like her mother she is. I don't know if she'll regenerate, if she can. I do know, and I am very sure of this, that she will live forever. She will live as Rose lives, as you, Time Lord, will live. I couldn't know for sure that you'd come for Rose, and I needed to be sure Rose wouldn't be alone.
We know what it is to be alone, don't we? We couldn't do that to Rose...you couldn't do that to me.
Take care of my, our, daughter. She, as you will find, is the most precious thing in all of the worlds. She is everything. She makes us better, she makes us more...she helps us believe that there is compassion and forgiveness in the world. She is hope and is love.
Take care of our daughter, she is the first of her kind, the love our entire existence, I'm giving her to you, even though she is already yours.
Take care of our Rose, without her we are nothing. She is everything and we need her so very, very much. I love her, I love her more than I think you know, more than you will ever possibly know. But try, try and know her again, love her again...I know you never stopped but she's changed, she's grown. She's still Rose, our Rose, but she's more. I gave her a new last name, a home, a domestic life and we were happy, so very happy but now I'm giving her back, I'm giving back what was never truly, rightfully, mine.
Show them the stars, give them adventures. Love them, above all else, love them. I am giving them to you, take care of them.
- John David Egann, the Doctor.
AN: Sooooo there is very likely going to be more, but not yet. I love this concept and I can't wait to truly reunite the Doctor and Rose...and introduce him to their little girl. I have rated this as T because if I do continue this it will elevate in rating and elevate probably into a high M...so wanted to prep y'all for that...
I know that in this story they don't 'sound' very Doctor and Rose...I took liberties, especially with John, but I hopefully threw in enough ties to the character that you were still attached to them...
I hope you enjoyed this, I know it was rather sad...but I kind of thought there was some joy in there to, and some reconciliations of a sort. I can't hate 10.5, though I find myself very...resentful of him some times, if it wasn't for him I think Rose would have been able to go with her Doctor. I think the Doctor would have fought for her... But anyway, I'm going off on a tangent, I hope you enjoyed and please if you did, or even if you didn't please drop a review? They mean so much!
Oh, and yeah, yeah, plug...but I actually like when an author alerts me to their other stories along the same vein... My other Doctor Who story is called I Am, it's a multi-chaptered story of one shots in what I can only call my I Am universe. In my universe the TARDIS is sentient, very, and connected to Rose and her Doctor, in my universe Rose and the Doctor are reunited on Bad Wolf Bay very shortly after they are first separated. The TARDIS is a very strong voice in that story... That story, so far, has been pretty drama free but pulls on very familiar topics as this one... Same type of story, different timeline.
Much love, RA