I have, in concert with thevoiceoflightcity on AO3, began to rewrite/edit these early chapters. Edited chapters will be marked as such.
"Doctor, look at this."
The being sometimes known as the Doctor, legal name John Smith-now-Tyler, half-human clone of the last Time Lord, comes awake with a start. His Rose is sitting upright in bed, fingering something on a long golden chain, knees curled close to her chest.
Messy blonde hair streaked with silver drapes over bare shoulders as she stares at the thing in her hands; he drags himself half-upright, suddenly concerned. "Yes, love?"
She doesn't look at him, hiding behind a curtain of hair; holds out the thing on the chain instead. "Look."
He blinks at the indistinct object for a moment, and then his gaze slides back to the delicate dusky lines of his wife. It's dark, but his eyes are still mostly Time Lord, and besides he can always see her. "Rose, are you alright?"
She turns toward him, finally; her eyes glint wide in the twilight. "Can't you see it?" There's a waver to her voice. "It's the locket. My locket. I've been wearing it since - as long as I can remember." She makes a funny broken noise. "I don't think I can remember ever taking it off."
"Rose," he says, and then his hands are in hers, signaling telepathic [comfort] through the skin-on-skin contact. (Not as strong as a real Time Lord, but it's enough for him-enough for both of them) "Rose, it's all right. It's just a dream." They both have bad dreams sometimes - sometimes she still wakes up in a panic, reaching desperately for the dimension cannon, convinced that she's still stuck jumping from reality to reality and never being able to rest - looking for him. And he, well, it wasn't really him, but he still has the War. She helps him, and he helps her; they make a good team, that way. "You're safe."
She makes a wordless frustrated noise, thrusts the object at him again. "No, it's not a dream, can't you see it?"
He frowns. "It's just a locket."
"No it's not," she repeats, almost desperate now. "It's got to be - a, a perception filter, or something. Look at it. Really look." And she squeezes his hand, sending back a quiet scared [please] through the telepathic channel he keeps open for her.
He looks.
He -
He blinks, and takes a careful breath, the beating of his single heart suddenly loud in his ears in a way it hasn't been for decades. "Rose…"
"I know," she says, but her voice is unsure.
The thing she's holding in her hand - hard to look at still, but getting better, as if the perception filter's slowly fading - is small and round and made of a heavy golden metal, covered in delicate circular engravings, lines and angles and clockwork-like gears intersecting across the surface. Even to his halfling timesense, it glows with pure artron.
It's a fob watch.
"Is it...?" she asks, her voice shaking just a little, as he takes it out of her hand, handling it carefully.
"Yeah," he says, slowly. "A chameleon arch. You remember I told you about the Family of Blood - with Martha?"
"Of course I do," she responds, hand still holding tight to his. "There's a - a Time Lord in there. All the memories. All the regenerations." She swallows.
"A Time Lady," he corrects softly, and looks up at his Rose, eyes unreadable. "And it's yours."
"I'm a Time Lady," Rose says, after a moment. She giggles, a little deliriously. "Right. Okay." She takes a shaky breath. "And if I open the watch. I'll remember?"
The Doctor nods. "You - you'll be the person you were then again. You'll remember Rose, but you won't be her." Something flickers in his eyes, for a moment. "Not really. If you open the watch."
She looks up suddenly, eyes urgent. "Did you know? When you - the other you - found me? Did you know I was from Gallifrey, too?"
He shakes his head, and then he shakes it again, an edge of joy creeping around the shock. "No," he says, delighted, and then there's a smile on his face. "No - I didn't know - but you survived, Rose, somebody else made it past the Moment - you made it." There's something like relief there, too; the weight of a thousand thousand lives lifted by just a little bit. He pulls her close, radiating [happiness] through their linked hands "Somebody else survived. I'm not alone."
"You never were alone," she whispers, then pauses. "Do I - " she starts, and chokes, and he freezes - pulling back. "Do I do it now?"
He hesitates for a single moment, and then he shakes his head, voice soft. "Not if you don't want to, love."
"But if I'm a Time Lord-Lady-too," she says shakily, the words spilling out fast and jerky. "Shouldn't I - if you - "
"Rose," the Docotr interjects, firmly, grinning that same old idiot's grin. "I'd love you if you were a human or a Time Lady or a - giant squid, alright? If you want to, and not sooner."
"But," she tries, and now there really is fear there. "You said - Professor Yana was good, too - what if I'm one of the bad ones?"
The Doctor laughs, softly, happily. "Oh, no. I can read the inscription, Rose. And you're not." He whispers it, rocking her back and forth. "You are very, very good."
[=|=]
She's not crying.
She's not screaming.
She's not bleeding.
That's the worst part, of course.
Rose Marion Tyler rocks back and forth on the same bed in the same room but alone, and the sheets don't even smell like him. She tried. He always said that Time Lords have no scent, but it wasn't true, or not really; there's that faint hint of sparks, something like electricity and dust and sunset, that peculiar taste that was only him. And it's gone.
It was a Torchwood mission. Predictably. Of course. He threw himself into a conflict with three different alien species, always at the center of everything, somehow holding everybody frozen with sheer force of will - oh, there were other agents, but nobody could ever do that, that magic he does with words and symbols and empty hands. He spins through the room, talking so fast your brain can barely keep up, thinking even faster. He finds a way to save everybody. He walks the line, a tightrope so high and yet he dances so easy, running circles around every other mind in the room. He was immortal - maybe not literally, not anymore, but everyone believed it anyway.
You can't kill a legend; you can't kill a force of nature; you can't kill a trail of artron sparks. You can't kill the Doctor. The Doctor never dies.
And then when all three species stood down, when this universe's Shadow Proclamation had been called, the refugees waiting on their towering miles-long island ships parked in the Pacific, UNIT negotiating. When all three leaders laid their weapons down. When everything was going to be alright, as always.
The Doctor grinned, still standing on that pedestal-like engine tower in the middle of the ship's cargo hold - and then said "In that case, I think I'm going to - "
He never finished the sentence; he blacked out instead, and would have fallen the fifty feet to the cargo floor if she hadn't caught him. And that's when everybody figure out that at some point during the whole adventure he'd been stabbed in the side with a two-inch wide sword, and never bothered to mention it.
"I'm dying," he told her, in the hospital bed. She was still crying then. She could still cry then. But he was smiling, and he looked so exactly the same - he'd aged a little, more than the Time Lord Doctor ever had, a few grey hairs around the edge - that it hurt. They were going to live forever, together, and die in each other's arms.
"No you're not," she tried to say, but couldn't; choking on the words. He knew it anyway.
"I am," he said. That was all he said. "Rose - "
"D - d - " and then she gave up, squeezed his hand tighter instead. [i love you i love you i love you i love you i love you i love]
"Rose," he whispered, still smiling, and then he coughs (the doctors say he's punctured a lung and it's too close to that one heart and even surgery might not help the doctors say his systems are too alien and too unstable, a barely-functional patchwork being made of two races that couldn't be more different no matter how similar they look, the doctors say they'll try but they don't know). [rose, your locket.]
She tried to respond, but all that came out was a tangle of raw emotion; she can't quite manage sentences, even after all these years of practice.
[when i'm gone - he needs you.]
[who?] and [i love you] and [don't go]
[the doctor,] he said, and coughed again. [the…. real one. he needs you. he needs… to know he's not alone]
"You're the real Doctor," she snapped, and it came out harsher than she meant but she doesn't have time to care. "I won't leave you. I won't ever leave you. " She took a desperate breath. "I'll save you there must be some way I will save you - "
He couldn't laugh, not really, but the bubble of simple joyful [amusement] stopped her anyway. [Oh, Rose, my Rose.] He blinked, once, eyes unfocusing. [You already did.] A faint, curve of a smile. [So many times.]
His eyes slipped shut; the last thing she got was one signal so strong it shorted her mind out for a moment - vision gone, grief gone, nothing but an endless timeless space made of pure [love.]
They wheeled him into surgery. He never woke up again.
And now she's sitting here, wondering what being a Time Lord - Lady - is like. Do immortals have to feel? Will she care about the Doctor? Does she want to care about the Doctor?
He's still out there, though, isn't he?
If she's a Time Lady, can she find him?
All she wants is to hear him say 'Run,' again.
He won't replace her Doctor - nothing could ever do that - but if he needs her. If he still wants her. There's nothing for her left here - Mum and Dad are both gone, Tony's married the cute superspy from UNIT, his name's Viktor or something, and they're living on the other side of the world, she doesn't know anybody else from this universe, not well.
She clutches the watch close to her chest, staring at the almost-hypnotic under-the-skin-of-the-universe golden glow of it, wondering what dying feels like.
Rose Marian Tyler screams, and throws the locket at the wall hard.
No. NO. Take a breath; imagine his hands in hers. It's going to be okay. It isn't dying; it's just being someone else, someone who doesn't hurt like this. It's okay to grieve, it's okay to be scared, but the other Doctor needs her, somewhere.
She rocks back and forth for a little longer, and maybe she finally starts to cry.
And then she goes to pick it up.
She writes three notes before she goes. One of them's for the Torchwood operatives, so they know where she's gone, in case the new her doesn't feel like sticking around. One of them's for herself, after she's changed, to make sure that the new her remembers. And one of them's for the Doctor, from the human her, so that even if it is like dying she can say goodbye.
She puts the first note on her bed and shoves it against the wall, making space - she's not sure how this works and she doesn't want to accidentally incinerate anything if this is like the Doctor's regenerations. She considers the second notes for a moment, and then she pins it to the wall in front of her, so it'll be the first thing she sees either way. The third note she puts in the pocket of her Torchwood leather jacket, and hopes for the best.
She stands straight. She holds her head high. She takes one last long slow breath.
The watch clicks open.
And then there is light.