Left Behind
A/N high everyone so I'm really nervous about letting you all see this but also really excited because I hope you like it this is my first Doctor Who story as I only recently started watching the show but I love it so much and I'm so inspired also I've only gotten to watch to the end of season 4 so if anything seems really off please let me know and I'll be more than happy to fix it.
I should mention that Doctor who obviously doesn't belong to me *cries* and also that this idea originally came to me because of a picture of the Tardis sitting against a tree in the forest looking in quite a state of disrepair that was/is going around Tumblr.
Alright Allons-y!
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
The first time she noticed the blue box leaning against the tree she was eight years old. She'd heard screeching fill the forest behind the house and had run out the open back door while her mother was busy in the living room. It had simply been sitting there seeming so innocent. Just minding its own business leaning up against the side of a tree where it certainly hadn't been before.
It had been so shiny, so new, then. She'd just stared at it in wonder as the sun reflected off it and the blue paint sparkled. She'd reached out for the door wanting to feel it her fingers only inches away from the wood.
"Rose?"
Her mother had called out to her and she's snatched her hand back. This was hers, she'd found it and she didn't want to share not with anyone. She hesitated a moment drinking it in with child like wonder not ever wanting to leave.
'Rose.' She jumped. Something had spoken her name but not out loud in the back of her mind and it rung there like she'd been shouted at. She glared at the structure suspiciously. Police boxes couldn't talk could they? They couldn't shout your name they were just wood. That was impossible.
This was, of course, before she discovered this particular blue police box could do a great many impossible things.
"Rose!" Her mother had called again and she'd forced herself to turn away. She didn't forget, though, and when her mother asked if she wanted a bedtime story she asked if she knew any about blue police boxes that could talk. Poor Jackie Tyler looked at her daughter like she'd lost her mind.
She went back the next day half expecting the blue box wouldn't be there any longer. That while she was forced to brush her teeth and put on her pajamas and somehow sleep it would have wandered off back to wherever it had come from.
But it was still there, just the same as it had been the day before. And it was still there the next day and the next day and the day after that. She spent hours most afternoons all on her own investigating and imagining. She had such ideas and that police box held such promise it could be anything, she could go anywhere. She liked to pretend it was her spaceship, taking her on adventures in far off, impossible worlds. When she started with that it felt so real that she'd lose track of time and Jackie would have to come and forcefully drag her inside the house for dinner.
It never spoke to her again, and try as she might the doors stayed shut.
Time passed, as it always does, and the box stayed where it was but not how it was. Eventually the paint started to peel and the rain and wind rotted a few of the smaller boards. Moss and ivy and dirt worked to make it impossible to know the precise shade of blue it might once have been and eventually even the little girl forgot.
After a while she wasn't little any longer or a girl. She grew and made her way through school and made friends and got a job and thought she fell in love but in truth hadn't the faintest idea what the word actually meant. She kept visiting but not nearly as often, and not for nearly as long. Most nights by then the little blue police box was all on its own. No longer privy to the company of a lonely girl and all of her deepest secrets, all her fears. But it didn't mind. Was it possible for a police box to mind? No, even when Rose Tyler stopped visiting all together it kept on, strong and unyielding in its continued existence. The police box didn't need anything or anyone. It would endure, alone.
A little while after Rose turned nineteen she went back. She wasn't sure what made her but she found herself sitting on the old log next to it like she hadn't done in a long, long while.
"Hey." She felt silly talking to it but somehow it also felt right. She crossed her legs, uncrossed them, got up and ran a hand along the degraded, peeling paint in that familiar way she had done so often. A presence hummed in the back of her mind in a way that hadn't happened since the very first day she'd found it and she wrenched her hand back.
It stopped.
She placed her hand back on the door and felt it return. 'Try again Rose Tyler. Discover the truth.' The voice was weak, soft and so quiet in the back of her mind it was like being caressed by an angel that could leave you at any moment.
On instinct she placed her hands on the lock and the door swung open.
Inside was its very own world. The police box was somehow, impossibly, bigger on the inside then it was on the outside. Much bigger. Her mouth fell open and for a moment she stayed frozen in shock. Then, before she could talk herself out of it, she stepped over the threshold and doing that felt so natural, so right, she had to grin. Wasn't this what she had always wanted? Hadn't she always wanted to see what was inside?
She left the door open for the light and started to explore. In the middle of the room was some kind of futuristic technology. It looked like some kind of control panel with a clear cylinder coming out of it that attached to the ceiling. Oh my goodness this was all so impossible. She came closer, ran her finger along one of the many levers she could see. Everything was covered in dust and for a reason she couldn't understand that made her heart ache. It wasn't meant to be this way, it wasn't right.
The Doctor would never let this happen.
She doubled over in pain and hit the floor as the visions overwhelmed her. A man with close cropped dark hair and hard eyes grabbing her hand and telling her to run. Living plastic the earth exploding, burning up before her eyes. Something called a Dalek. Fear, such fear, because the Doctor had sent her away looking into the time vortex bad wolf her lips on his everything changing the Doctor morphing completely different and yet the same and a word for it. Regeneration. Deadly spinning Christmas trees tea the Doctor losing a hand, growing it back, cybermen and a parallel world oh god no that parallel world trapped there so far from the Doctor this couldn't be happening no no no finding her way back to him and being left there, again, with the Doctor who was not the Doctor so many things so much pain so many goodbyes and also so much love. More visions but later the Doctor having regenerated, again, that unruly mop of hair always in his eyes almost like a child but still her Doctor, always her Doctor. Desperation, determination, always so lonely pushing her away always the danger so much danger so much weight on his shoulders. I'm come back for you. It's only temporary but I've got to do this I have to save them. Screaming at him afraid of the lies and his definition of temporary and then the heat, heat and searing pain and her mind and her memories and the Doctor oh god no Doctor please don't not like Donna anything but that and then everything fading to black as time ran itself backwards and the Doctor faced it all alone, as he always did, even though she swore he would never have to again.
She came back to herself in a start sprawled on the floor of the police box.
The TARDIS.
She pushed herself to her knees with shaking arms and stopped there for a moment breathing heavily fists clenched eyes closed. She couldn't open them, couldn't do that because it meant accepting everything.
Accepting that the Doctor had left her behind again.
Around her the TARDIS sputtered and groaned to life no doubt reacting to the part of her that it had connected with and would always be connected to. It beeped. Once, twice, three times then several times more in quick succession and she forced herself to open her eyes and find her feet.
A video message was flashed on the screen in front of her and with a kind of numbness she reached forward and hit play. An image of the Doctor sputtered to life, started moving.
"Rose. Rose alright I haven't got much time but listen." She squeezed her eyes shut again at the wave of pain that voice brought. "What I'm about to do is crazy. It breaks all the rules, it's insane and it might get me killed but none of that matters." He paused. "What I really care about is that it's going to take you away from me." There was that look in his eyes she'd grown to know so well. The look that said he was in more pain then he could ever show and knew more was coming. He seemed to be looking right at her. "I'm not sure how much you'll remember when you get this message, and I'm sorry it couldn't be earlier. I couldn't risk you seeing it before the day we would have met otherwise you have no idea the holes we would have ripped in time and space. Rose you need to know that I did everything I could to try and find you, to get back to you, but if you're getting this message-if it's been that long-" He stopped and whirled around as someone banged on the door of the TARDIS. "Then things aren't looking good for me and I need you to promise one thing just one." The banging came again, louder and more insistent. She heard something crack and the fear in his eyes was like a punch to the stomach. "I said it before. Rose please don't wait for me. Don't come looking for me, don't even think about me not for a moment. Just have a great life, have it for me." There was a crash and the video faded to static.
She stayed frozen where she was, her whole body shaking as the tears she promised herself she wouldn't shed fell down her cheeks.
"Oh Doctor, where are you?"
A/N so what did you think? Should I continue or leave it as a one shot? Did you like it or hate it? Let me know! Thanks for reading!