Title: Of Heartbeats and Rooftops
Spoilers/Setting: All of Season 4. Taken directly from that scene in Journey's End.
Rating: G
Pairing: Rose/Human!Doctor
Summary: It was the small things, at first. Tiny moments that reminded her so much of her Doctor, sometimes she forgot that he wasn't.
Disclaimer: Sadly, my beloved Doctor and his Rose don't belong to me. I make nothing from this fic, except a tiny bit of gratification at seeing my guys together... even if it is obscure.
A/n: With thanks, always, to Natushka, for the beta and the read through and for bouncing idea's. And mostly for putting up with my insane fandom rants, considering you don't watch it and all.
This fic's for Saau, even though she thinks the Rose and the Doctor are 'just friends' (as if!) she's so very accommodating of me. (and also puts up with my insane fandom rants)
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He was gone.
Once again, Rose stood in the wind, her shoes sinking into the soft sand by slow degree's, tears drying on her cheeks, feeling hollow and empty and unfulfilled. He'd left her behind. Again.
A hand slipped over her's, warm and familiar. She looked up into the eyes of a stranger, so much like her Doctor and yet... so different. There was something about this new Doctor... This other, that filled her with an unnamed sense of dread.
Like the solution had become so perfect, there must be a catch.
She slipped her hand free of this copy of her Doctor, stepping away from the last place she'd ever see him again, when his voice caused her to stop.
"Rose."
"Please." She couldn't look at him, her name on his lips a sound she'd been longing to hear for years now, "I can't do this right now."
She didn't wait for his answer, picking her way determinedly through the soggy sand, towards her mother, not knowing much of anything, but for the moment, all she wanted was home, to be left alone with the realisation he was never coming back for her.
That after all of her work, all the risks she'd taken, she was still left on their beach, without him.
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He missed her.
The moments in his life without the TARDIS were few and far between, and The Doctor missed her subtle touch against his mind. If he tried, he could sense her, a whisper across the Void, like an old memory that was fading with time.
And he knew that's all it was, really, a memory; something his brain had conjured up to compensate for the absolute feeling of emptiness he felt inside.
Hollow, like his insides had been ripped out and all that was left behind was one heart and an overwhelming sense of abandonment.
His own self had left him behind. He understood, of course, the reason behind it. The paradoxes that would have come about with the both of them occupying the same space for any extended period of time wasn't worth thinking about.
But it didn't mean he had to like it.
He missed the stars. The light pollution from London left little of the Earth sky intact, and he soon tired of seeing the same ones night after night.
He missed travelling; he missed the excitement of his day to day life aboard the TARDIS.
There were so many emotions inside of him now... alien emotions, human emotions. So often in the past he'd been the master of ignoring them, stashing them away in his subconscious, but now they were threatening to drown him. Having Rose, but somehow not having her... being stuck on Earth, being human... and the guilt of what he'd done. The complete and utter destruction of the Dalek race was churning in side of him, their screams haunting him. When he slept, his dreams were often filled with fire and light, chasing him across the stars.
There had been no other way, he knew that... but he found the consequences harder and harder to ignore
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It was the small things, at first. Tiny moments that reminded her so much of her Doctor, sometimes she forgot that he wasn't.
And then sometimes she would catch him, usually up on the rooftop balcony of Pete's mansion at night, staring out over the lawns at the London skyline in the distance, so still, so quiet, so unDoctor, that she started to realise she wasn't the only one suffering from being so unceremoniously yanked into the parallel dimension.
They had shared so few words since returning. She'd found countless reasons to avoid him, but his presence was getting too hard to resist. She had spent two years searching for him, and her curiosity about this other man was starting to scratch away at everything else. If nothing else, she wanted to confirm that he really wasn't the same man.
She found him in his usual spot, on the roof, lying on the cold bricks, staring into the heavens late at night. His human self hardly slept anymore then his Time Lord self had, and while she'd been trying so hard to avoid him, she'd become acutely aware of his habits.
She stood for awhile in the doorway behind his head, unsure if he knew she was there, unwilling really to break the silence, procrastinating for a little bit longer, because she still didn't know what she wanted to say to him. She wanted it to be better, magically... she wanted him to be hers.
"What are you doing?" After she said it, her voice hardly a whisper, she realised she could have come up with a friendlier greeting.
However, as he replied, the Doctor didn't seem to mind, "Listening to my heart beat." He reached his arms up behind his head, cushioning it behind his hands, and his head tilted back just enough so he could see her upside down, "I've never had just one heart... well... there was that one time, but I didn't strictly have one heart beating so much as both my hearts were working on an alternating rhythm to make it seem like I only had one heart..."
He trailed off as she let off a giggle, and he turned so he was lying flat on his stomach, his hands now under his chin, still staring at her, "It's like listening to a percussionist inside of your chest, who's suddenly playing the wrong song... have you ever had a percussionist inside your chest? I mean, it used to be alright when there were two of them...but now? No wonder the human race are sleep deprived."
He grinned at her - his grin - and she felt a flush of warmth directed at him. God she'd missed him so much.
She moved to sit next to him, crossing her legs comfortably by his shoulder. "What's it like?"
He was quiet a moment before answering, rolling on to his back again, his eyes darting through the stars, "It's like Christmas dinner with all your family and friends, with a warm fire and too much eggnog... and then it's like being torn away from it all and thrown naked alone into the snow, with only your memories to remind you of what it was like."
His voice was so soft, so hard and full of emotion Rose was left speechless, her heart thudding loudly in her chest. She swallowed hard, realising how much she must have contributed to the feeling.
"It's like standing behind a wall, knowing the one you love is just behind it, and not being able to reach them."
She realised she was shaking, her fingernails driving themselves into the palm of her hand as she felt exactly what he did. She felt like she was being drawn back to that moment, so many years ago, lost and alone and without him.
She was starting to drown with just the memory of that feeling, and she reached out, quite unconsciously, for his hand.
His fingers automatically in twined with hers, his grip hard and almost possessive, if ever a hand hold could feel that way.
Just the physical contact was enough to bring Rose back to the present, to find the Doctor staring at her quite seriously, his warm eyes full of concern and something else.
Something that tugged at the corner of her heart. If she didn't know better, she'd say it was longing.
"I didn't know." Her voice had gone hoarse, the words barely making it past her lips, but he seemed to understand. He rolled onto his side, changing the hand holding hers, never loosing contact.
"You needed space." His quiet acceptance of her blatant avoidance of him almost irritated her. She wished he wasn't so understanding.
"Yeah but..." she tried to find the words, and then realised they'd already been given to her, "You needed me."
The hand holding her's tightened, "I've always needed you. The other me... he probably still needs you as well."
Rose bit her bottom lip, tracing a thumbnail across the dried mortar in-between the bricks, not quite meeting his gaze, "If you weren't here... I mean, if there weren't two of you... would you have sent me back?"
"Of course not." She looked up sharply to see the amusement in his eyes, "The only reason I could have let you go was knowing you had me..." The sentence, somehow, didn't end up being as confusing as it sounded.
She stretched out her legs, staring once again at their fingers, tightly clutched together, "You're really him?"
"Oh yes. Well, almost... The bits that count. Up until that moment on the beach, aside from the genocide and the rather peculiar craving for cheese Donna left in me, he and I are the same man." The Doctor's words were flowing from him in his usual mile-a-minute way, but Rose found him still easy to follow, "Only now, I've got forever to show you just how much in love with you we are... well... maybe not forever forever... but the rest of our days forever... which, for me, isn't such a long time anymore."
Rose blinked, a smile struggling to escape from her mouth, "Can you say that last bit again?"
The Doctor grinned then, goofy and full of the warmth she remembered so well from him, "What? Donna's yen for cheese? I don't know when that started, actually..."
She hit him then, lightly, on the shoulder not propped up against the floor. He grabbed her other wrist, getting up on his knees to face her properly, both of her arms now locked in his grip, "Rose Tyler." He started, and she felt a tingling sensation run down her spine as he grinned down at her, "There is no one, in this universe or any other, that I'd rather spend forever with. I know I'm not what you wanted, but I think I can make up for that by giving you something the other me never could." He slipped his hand from around her wrist, taking her hands, his thumb gently stroking her skin, "I love you. Have done for years." He reached up then, to wipe the tear that had fallen from her eye.
With her suddenly freed hand, she reached up to touch his face, her fingers brushing the stubble that seemed to grow as he shaved. Her Doctor. Absolutely the same man.
"I love you." She whispered through her tears, and this time the words didn't feel like a goodbye. He grabbed her hand again, pulling her towards him, and suddenly he was kissing her.
For a moment, nothing existed for Rose except the feel of the Doctor's arms around her, holding her, her name bubbling from his lips as for the first time in her life she found him loosing his control to lust. She felt a tiny thrill of excitement, her body humming.
The Doctor pulled away a fraction, licked lips suddenly red and swollen, and grinned at her, "You saved the world, Rose Tyler. And your consolation prize is me."
fin