"Let me pour forth
My tears before thy face, whilst I stay here,
For thy face coins them, and thy stamp they bear,
And by this mintage they are something worth,
For thus they be
Pregnant of thee;
Fruits of much grief they are, emblems of more,
When a tear falls, that thou falls which it bore,
So thou and I are nothing then, when on a diverse shore."
Screaming in his ears. Water cascading down his body. Cold, unforgiving steel walls as red as blood.
And anger. So much anger.
The Doctor was well past the point of flinching when he heard the Racnoss empress and her children scream in pain and fury. Any other day, the Doctor might have been kind to a creature such as her. Her species was born hungry, and they needed to feed; nature in its most basic sense. So he'd given her a choice.
The moment the Racnoss empress refused, the Doctor had felt a white-hot rage boil inside his hearts. That feeling persisted as he let the Thames' water rush in, and strengthened his resolve when the empress started to beg.
He glowered at the hole in the middle of the floor, imagining what it would be like to be down there, drowning, completely alone (it wasn't difficult). He wasn't angry at the Racnoss. How could he be? Gallifrey had seen to put a stop to their reign of terror, but like most species they escaped total annihilation and now wanted revenge.
No. At this point, the Doctor knew he wasn't just angry at them. They were just the catalyst, the wave that finally cracked through the boulder. He looked at the red spider-like creature and saw everything that had gone wrong in his long life, everything that could have been prevented if he'd just been faster, or smarter, or better. Unstoppable monsters, the Master's plots, lost companions, the destruction of his own people…all could have been avoided. Wasn't that right? How could anything he did be considered "good" by any definition? He dragged humans along with him into dangerous situations, for Rassilon's sake, all because he couldn't deal with not having a little company by his side. If it wasn't for him they'd be living a safe, normal life, free from nightmares and what-could-have-beens.
And there, in the forefront of his mind, was a white wall without any cracks or holes. The fading sound of her cries for help. Her sobs echoing across the void. Rose was always there, as distraught as he was because he couldn't seem to think of her in any other way. Unless she was happier without him, a thought that plagued his nightmares more and more with each passing day.
Something hit his feet and the Doctor looked down to find his Converse completely submerged in water. The room below his platform now looked like a lake, the hole to the center in the earth barely visible. He absently wondered if he'd see little bits of dead Racnoss if he looked hard enough. The Racnoss empress was gone; she must have teleported back to her ship without him realizing it.
Somehow, the Doctor couldn't find it in himself to care. She might be escaping, he should leave. For some reason the TARDIS was sending him weak telepathic messages telling him to do just that. But how could he? How was it that so many people had died either by his hand or his inability to act, and the universe allowed him to walk free? The screams of the fallen still rang in his ears and he longed to shout back at them, to beg and plead for absolution. Maybe then he could feel at peace.
Water hit his knees, soaking his shoes and pants until it felt like he was glued to the metal grating, and yet he couldn't bring himself to move. The TARDIS was an empty vessel now, even with him inside. The light and warmth his companions had provided was gone now, and every hollow footstep reminded him of that fact.
Rose was lost. He couldn't even give her a proper good-bye, let alone say three bloody words. What a coward he was, how selfish and disappointing he'd been.
As the water rose higher up his thighs, the Doctor knew what he had to do. What must happen if the universe was to thrive as it was meant to. Wouldn't matter if he lived, anyway. Not like he had anyone depending on him or anything.
He closed his eyes, and sent a mental good-bye to the TARDIS and the one woman he could never have forgotten. Then the Doctor shut down his bodily systems and fell face-down into the Thames.
A light flashed faster than anyone could see, and Rose Tyler stumbled out feet first. She wobbled a bit, then steadied herself and tried to get her bearings. A lot of humans and a breathable atmosphere, so Earth. English language and landmarks she'd known all her life, definitely London. Maybe…a big blue box?
While searching for the one place she could truly call home, Rose realized where she was. In front of her was a large building, almost like a warehouse, and the people crowding the scene nearly made the U.N.I.T. logo on the trucks unreadable. On her right looked like the Thames, but it was hard to tell for sure. She wasn't used to seeing it drained of all water. In the sky bits of material were falling, like something had been shot into oblivion recently.
"Everyone, stay back," a soldier yelled from somewhere ahead of her. "The Thames has been closed. Return to your homes. Keep away from the river, and that's an order."
Closed? If U.N.I.T. was here this must have something to do with aliens. And where there were alien invasions…tense with excitement, Rose dodged the civilians and walked closer as fast as she could. In front of her a red-headed woman was doing the same thing as her. She looked familiar, but Rose wasn't sure why. And…was there something on her back?
She came up to the edge of the perimeter, where an ambulance had been parked next to the building. U.N.I.T. soldiers stood at attention, but none sported a brown suit or Converse. However, unlike most soldiers, these looked upset, as if someone important to them had died.
As Rose approached behind the red-head, the sound of someone talking over a radio drifted to her. "Trap One to Greyhound Fifteen. What is your report? Over."
Rose was about to move on, when a nearby soldier lifted their walkie-talkie to their mouth and said, "From the evidence, I'd say he managed to stop the creature. Some sort of red spider. Blew up the base underneath the barrier, flooded the whole thing. Over."
He? It had to be the Doctor! Rose grinned at the image of her Doctor stopping an alien threat, and then accidently draining the Thames. Her mind wandered and she wondered if he'd managed to find someone new to travel with.
"And where is he now? Over," the voice asked. She stepped closer, ears trained for his answer.
The soldier paused for a moment, as if gathering his resolve, and answered. "We found a body, sir. Over."
Rose's blood ran cold, and she could swear her lungs and heart had stopped working. No. Not that, anything but that. Please let this be some alternative universe…
At that moment, a soldier exited the building, pushing a stretcher in front of him. There was something under that white sheet. Someone.
"Is it him? Over."
"I think so." The soldier breathed out a puff of air. Rose hardly heard him over the rushing sound in her ears. "He just didn't make it out in time. The Doctor is dead. Must have happened too fast for him to regenerate."
"Hey, are you okay?" Someone said nearby. Rose flicked her head towards the voice and realized that in her dazed state she'd bumped into the ginger woman. The woman looked at her expression and asked, "I'm sorry, did you know him?"
Rose blinked back the sudden onslaught of tears that always accompanied those kinds of questions. The red-head's eyes grew sympathetic. "I mean, they didn't say his name. Could be any doctor. It, it could be anyone."
No, Rose thought, it wasn't. She turned away from the woman, just in time to see her nightmares become her reality. The stretcher was halfway to the ambulance when an arm—a pinstriped arm—slipped loose of the white sheet and dropped a silver object to the ground.
As if in a horror movie the world moved in slow motion, and Rose dashed forward in an attempt to catch the silver object and its owner, to stop time and perhaps reverse it because he couldn't be dead he just couldn't. Not in this universe or any other. The nearby soldier, halfway through telling his commanding officer that they'd take the "body" away in the ambulance, shouted after her. She thought she heard the ginger woman call her, too.
Before any of the soldiers could reach her, Rose saw her hands reach out and force the stretcher to stop, her thoughts jumbled and unfocused as she let her body simply do what it needed to do. From the corner of her eye she saw the soldier who'd been pushing it step forward, and she braced herself for a blow, a shove, anything. None came, perhaps due to a voice behind her which was telling the man to, oddly enough, stand back.
Rose didn't listen. It was as if her systems had stopped working. All that mattered was the covered body in front of her (not his, it couldn't be his) and the trembling hand (her hand, she realized) reaching up to pull away the white sheet.
She spent weeks, months even, working to get back to him. And now she had. But she was too late; his slack features proved it.
Tears pricked her eyes and she buried her head in her Doctor's soaked chest, too proud to let the very human soldiers see her cry. Behind her she heard one of the men ordering the others to not harm her; that she was one of his "companions", as evidenced by the hundreds of pictures of them they had on record. It must have worked, because no one dared go near her.
No one, it seemed, except for the red-head.
A nudge at her shoulder made Rose look up, and there was the ginger woman, sympathy and uncertainty flickering in her eyes. She held out something, and Rose had to blink for a minute before she realized it was the Doctor's sonic screwdriver. The woman must have picked it up.
Rose sniffed and nodded her thanks, not trusting herself to speak. As she took it from the woman's hand, Rose knew, somehow, that in the proper timeline this red-head became one of the Doctor's companions.
Because she knew this wasn't the universe she belonged to. The Doctor's death, the drained Thames, this ginger woman with something on her back…none of this was right. It was all wrong, as wrong as the stars going out in Pete's World. And she was would never stop searching until she found her universe, and her Doctor.
With that certainty in mind, Rose found the strength to plant a lingering kiss on this Doctor's cheek (I'll find you again, she vowed) and stand up. The U.N.I.T. soldiers stood in a wide circle around her; cautious, yet respectful.
Rose inhaled and exhaled deeply, before turning to the red-head on her right. "What's your name?"
The woman blinked in surprise at the question. "Donna. And you?"
Donna. Why did that name sound so familiar? Ignoring what Donna had actually asked, Rose blithely replied, "Oh, I was just passing by. I shouldn't even be here. This is wrong. It's wrong. This is so wrong…" As she spoke a movement over Donna's shoulder caught her eye and she leaned to the side to see it better. "Sorry, what was it? Donna what?"
Instead of replying the woman's stance turned defensive. "Why do you keep looking at my back?"
Rose quickly met Donna's eyes again. "I'm not."
"Yes, you are. You keep looking behind me. You're doing it now." At Rose's inability to look away from whatever was behind her, Donna grew restless. "What is it? What's there? Did someone put something on my back?"
As the ginger woman turned to look at her back, Rose gave the Doctor one last look, and jumped back into the network of multiverses. Her mission wasn't over yet.