Century
Notes: The Doctor visits an old friend. For my great nanna, 100 this year. Merry Christmas! I love you, and yes, I've got a scholarship.
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"Merry Christmas."
There was a stranger in her room, her private ward. He was casting a shadow over her hospital sheets. Rose looked up to see who had spoken. Her eyesight was not what it had been, but she would recognise that face anywhere.
"I wondered if you'd come," she said slowly, sighing. "Sit down Doctor, and tell me why you're here."
"I wanted to congratulate you," he said, sitting by the bed. "One hundred years. That's fantastic for a human. And I hear you're a great grandmother now."
The corners of her eyes crinkled even more as she smiled at him, pushing her grey, almost white hair, out of eyes that shined like they always had. "She's beautiful Doctor. Really special," she said proudly. She coughed suddenly, a violent hack that shook her frail body. "But I won't see her grow up now I spose."
"I could," he said. "I can trace your family backwards and forwards through time, each shining relative. Your great granddaughter will be great, I promise you."
"Fantastic," she said, smiling. "Oh, everything was fantastic then wasn't it? And now look at me. I've seen a World War now, y'know."
"I heard," he said dryly.
"Stupid apes," they both muttered, laughing at each other.
She allowed her eyes to close for a few seconds. "You're still beautiful, for a human," she heard him say. She opened them and cackled.
"You liar," she said. "This face is even more wrinkled than yours." He grinned. "I've seen one hundred Christmases."
"And you look wonderful for it," he promised.
She smiled. "I missed you Doctor. Every day I spent without you, I missed you. I'm glad you're here."
"Wouldn't miss it," he said, taking her fragile hand, her knuckles looking swollen next to her slim fingers. "You got married then," he noted. A gold wedding ring was sat on her bedside table.
"Peter," she said, a little wistfully. "He was a wonderful man." She sighed. "But I think he always knew there was someone else. Oh, we were happy, but I never felt the same way about him."
She didn't need to say 'as I felt about you' because he already knew. He always had.
"Who travels with you now?" she asked, looking bright. "Is she pretty? Or he," she added thoughtfully.
He laughed. "With you. Rose, a younger one, is back in the TARDIS. She's asleep. I won't tell her I visited you."
"Then why did you come?" she asked.
"Because I wanted to make sure you survived," he said gently. "This is how things should turn out, and I'll promise now that they will."
"You know as well as I do that history can be changed Doctor," she said.
"But now I have something to aim for!" he said happily. "You! A century old! Telegram from the King and surrounded by two generations of family. I know it's possible now."
"No one should live this long Doctor," she said sagely. "Anyone past eighty is useless, yourself excluded of course."
"Not true," he said firmly. "Your family need you."
She sighed again, trying to remember what it felt like to be 19, young, in love. Tearing around the universe, chasing adventures, running from Daleks…
"I'm old Doctor," she said finally. "I'm tired. Too tired to talk. Jut sit with me. You do the talking. Tell me about myself, our adventures. It's too long since I heard them."
"You're fantastic," he began. "Full of life. Beautiful too. You run circles around me sometimes y'know. We've been to so many places, do you remember Rose? Nothing can stop us, nothing. We're unbeatable."
She sighed happily. "I hope so."
He got a little piece of scrap metal out of his pocket and started playing with it, rubbing his fingers over the rough edges in silence until she asked for more. He put it on her bedside table, where it was instantly forgotten.
"Remember the Slitheen?"
"Oh don't talk about them."
"Fine then, that pretty place…Angelitia-Freem. D'you remember that planet? Beautiful, just beautiful. Flowers, streams, d'you remember we found that little cave behind a waterfall? It was like the set from a shampoo advert, surrounded by tropical flowers and a crystal clear lake. We swam in that for ages, it was the only time you got me into a swim suit and you mocked me like crazy afterwards. It was the only time we visited somewhere and weren't chased away. Paradise. So peaceful."
He smiled as he realised she'd fallen asleep, looking peaceful herself.
When Rose woke, he was gone.
"Where did he go?"
"Where did who go Mrs Tyler?" asked the nurse merrily, looking forward to going home to her family. She wrapped a pad around the elderly woman's arm to test her blood pressure.
"There was a man here, tall and dark, wearing a leather jacket," Rose said easily. That was a description she'd never forget. The nurse shrugged, trying to take her temperature. Rose pushed the thermometer away impatiently. "Sticky out ears?"
"Sorry Mrs Tyler," said the nurse. "No one like that has been in or out of this ward all day, and I've been here since the beginning of visiting time."
Rose slumped into her pillows, feeling discouraged. Was her mind playing tricks on her? Perfectly likely, she thought, as the nurse left.
She was so tired, so very tired. Maybe the Doctor had been a mixture of the pills they were feeding her and exhaustion.
Or maybe an angel, come to her at her deathbed?
Rose laughed and turned over, slipping into a deep, dreamless sleep.
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When her family came, she was already gone. Slipped away in her sleep. Peaceful.
And although the nurses had said the Doctor had never been there, know they hadn't seen him, when they found a little scrap of metal on old Mrs Tyler's bedside table they did begin to wonder.
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I'm not sure where this came from…but after visiting my great nanna in hospital, I just got to thinking…
Merry Christmas everyone.