I just finished watching The God Complex about an hour ago (trying desperately to catch up so I can watch series 7), and this just hit me like a train, so I had to write it. Doctor Who is not mine. Cross posted on AO3. Enjoy!

Keep the Faith

The room was beckoning him. He should have known, really. Room number eleven? Obvious from the start.

Still, his hand inched forward until it rested on the brass doorknob, and he turned it slowly. As the door swung open, the Doctor took a step forward and caught his breath.

He really should have known.

Inside the doorframe was not a generic hotel room, but the TARDIS interior. Six solid columns, like spidery legs, came together to frame a large console, illuminated by blue light. At the controls, a man with long, wavy dark hair was muttering to himself. The TARDIS let out a warning sound, the cloister gong reverberating, and the room shook dramatically. The man – the Doctor in a younger life – turned his head at the sound of the hotel door opening, and when he saw the Doctor (the real Doctor, of course, he was real, everything else was a nightmare), he grinned.

"Are you ready?" he said, and pulled down on a lever. The TARDIS quaked and the sound of screaming filled the air. "I'm putting it in a time lock. They're not just dead – they never existed in the first place." He looks positively gleeful. "And I made it happen! We made it happen, didn't we, Doctor? We're just two merry murderers, you see. Well, eleven merry murders, if you want to be specific." He tilted his head to the side. "I hate this part. It's always so hard to say goodbye."

His body shuddered and without warning, he exploded, the regeneration energy spilling across the whole TARDIS. When his face had finally morphed, his body finished changing, he looked on at the Doctor again, his hair now cropped short, his ears large and unbecoming. "I'm born of war, Doctor," he said, and a Northern accent spilled from his lips. "And so are you. We're broken, we're vengeful, we're wrong. And you –" he chuckles "– you were born of regret. You didn't want to go."

The Doctor bit his lip (the real Doctor, the true Doctor, this is all one very bad dream), and said, "Of course it would be you."

Once the door was closed and the Big Bad was defeated, Amy asked him that question, that horrible question that made him think maybe it would all be okay. "It was after you as well, Doctor, so what do you believe in? Is there a Time Lord god?" He didn't answer, but he thought on it long and hard, and an answer did come to mind, an answer he'd said not so very long ago.

"I've seen fake gods and bad gods and demigods and would-be gods. Out of all that, out of that whole pantheon, if I believe in one thing – just one thing – I believe in her."

That's why people have faith, isn't it? So that when they are confronted with their worst fear, they have something they can always fall back on, something unwavering, something comforting, something they will always trust. And if his worst fear was himself, so what? He's not a monster. He'd been a broken, bitter man who had murdered millions, but Rose Tyler had fixed that. She had cared for him unconditionally, gone with him to see the universe, and she had saved him with her love.

If he believed in one thing, just one thing, it was his Rose. His Rose, who had showed him a better way to live. She wouldn't let him brood, she wouldn't let him beat himself up over the past. She'd restored his faith in life, his love of the word around him. She'd showed him that he would be okay, that his life would be okay with her by his side. It was to Rose that he had entrusted his clone, genocidal and born of war. Like he had been when they first met. She would fix the clone like she had fixed him. She would always save him, in the end.

His ninth incarnation may have been born of war, and the eleventh born of regret, but the tenth was born of love and sacrifice, born to save her. Born for her.

Rose was his faith. And he would keep that faith forever.