Tell Them I Was Happy
Category: angst
Pairing: Ten/Rose
Summary: The Doctor remembers something as he's regenerating. Missing scene for the Christmas Invasion, including Day of the Doctor Spoilers.
Warnings: Contains Spoilers
Disclaimer: Own Nadda
Authors Notes: Just a drabble that got stuck in my head after watching Day of the Doctor. I miss tenant so much!
His body is burning alive, regeneration flowing through his body like fire as he adjusts to the transition. It's painful this time, worse than it's ever been and he hitches watching the tiny burp of energy spiral up towards the ceiling. It's nearly more than he can stand and he closes his eyes, gritting his teeth -his new teeth- against the sensation.
A familiar voice floats throughout the old English house and despite the situation he smiles. His Rose, so unsure and full of doubt, so human and so fantastic! They'll figure it out, they always do and when she comes around they're going to be brilliant together.
Pain shoots through his body and he winces abandoning the happy thought as an image flashes through his mind.
Still his Rose... no, different... ethereal almost.
It feels like a memory, something he should be able to recall but he can't and as the scene pulls to a blurry picture, guilt tightens in his chest. No, it isn't possible. It's no more than a haze but he can see her standing there, weaving into his dream the moment he knows Galifrey is going to burn.
It isn't real, can't be... and yet somehow he knows it is. Somehow she's right there by his side watching, waiting as his hand hovers over the ominous boxed device.
But that's not how it happened.
He was alone, completely and utterly alone when he pulled the kill switch. When he slaughtered hundreds and thousands of innocent people.
His stomach instinctively knots at the sickly reminder but the plague of emotion is suddenly unhinged, somehow wrong. The guilt he's so familiar with, the burden he's carried for over nine hundred years feels out of sync, like an irregular beat of a third heart.
A side effect of the regeneration that's all it is, all it can be but her eyes... he can see them inches from his, glowing with fire as they burn in his memory.
Are you afraid of the big bad wolf Doctor?
Her words, not his.
Why can't he remember?
Exhaustion pulls at his conscious and he fights the encroaching darkness but the rest is no more than a whisper, a ripple through time calling out to him.
She told me exactly the future I needed to see.
Bad Wolf girl.
Rose.
The meaning is lost to him, the dream slipping from his already weak grasp. This is how it's supposed to be. It's a memory he's not meant to have, one he'll never know that's set to burn out with the regeneration. But it doesn't die completely. As the darkness descends an iridescent spark latches on, clinging to the furthest reach of his soul to light it with hope.
Somehow she's guiding him, her golden gaze reaching out through time and space to lure him home.
His Rose.
His brilliant Rose.
No matter how implausible it seems, he believes it.. because he believes in her.
Even more than those things that should be impossible