Even Symmetry
by Camilla Sandman
Disclaimer: BBC's characters. I borrow for fun.
Author's Note: Thanks to Gilian and Saz for various advice. Spoilers for the first series.
II
He's decided they're not going to live. Not the Daleks, the life created to kill all others. Not his people, right here and right now the means he needs. Not him, the decision maker, the killer, the changer, the Doctor.
Kill and die. There's symmetry in that, he thinks. Symmetry and irony. Time Lords burned by time itself. Hating weapons and holding the greatest weapon of the Universe in his hands to wield. The rebel of Gallifrey called home to be the savior and becoming the killer. There's symmetry in everything, and he cries.
There is nothing else left to do.
He's decided he's not going to live and the Universe overrules him.
II
He's decided Rose isn't going to die.
A near-death experience in Ten Downing Street with Harriet Jones is what makes him voice it aloud to himself, but he knows he really made the decision a long time ago. He made it the moment he first caught her hand in his, crystallized it when he urged her to flee and let him be killed by the Nestene Consciousness, but it's always been battled by another decision of his - to have her close. He isn't quite sure why he made that decision, he just knows from her first questions, she felt like a companion, and companions he keeps close. It's how he reminds himself what he does is what he should. He's never stayed around for praise or statues, but affirmation he takes as his due. They give him that, and he gives them adventure, and somehow, he feels the trade is even.
Except that is a lie, and Adric marks it as so. There is death too, and nothing he can give will make that even. He can't give Jackie Tyler anything back for taking her daughter, and he knows it so well he can't muster the comforting lies. No promise for Jackie Tyler that Rose will always be safe. He isn't safe. Time isn't safe. Life isn't safe. Nothing is safe, and the Universe only offers illusions of it.
The Universe is good at illusions, that he knows. It gives life and death both, and somehow that is meant to make it even and balanced and he rages against it. Nothing is even for death. Nothing is even for Gallifrey.
And for Rose?
He's starting to think the Universe can't give him anything to get even if Rose dies either, and it drives him to what even he recognises as obsession. She's going to live. She's going to live even if he has to force her heart to beat with his own hands and give his blood for hers.
She does live, even when he kills her to make the Daleks die again. Gallifrey for the Daleks was not even, and Rose for a single Dalek feels even less so. He still makes the decision, the killer that echoes in him still, but somehow, the echo seems to die when he sees Rose still might survive. She lives, and obsession lives, and he's starting to think maybe there's life in him too.
Rose seems to think so, youth to his age, enthusiasm to his brilliance, innocence to his illusions. It feels like symmetry, feels like a relationship even without sex, like love without the words spoken. He knows he could kiss her, push her against a wall and take her in all the ways he'd want and her eyes ever mark her willing, but he doesn't need to.
She's still his, even if Adam is pretty and flirting and tags along for a while. It doesn't last, and somehow, he's a little bit glad. He might know Rose is his, but knowledge is a poor defence against emotion and obsession.
Rose learns the lesson too. She decides her father is going to live, and the world almost dies for it. He tries to be angry, but anger pales against understanding. She knows the pain of a decision that kills, and so does he. He is no better than her, and a dark, whispering part of him even feels glad they are even now. Another part grieves innocence lost, though he isn't quite sure whose.
Even Time Lords have innocence to kill, and he remembers his. It lasted him longer than seems logical, and he can feel it wanting to be reborn even now. Innocence is a spine, and his other bones feel weak and tired, even if he knows they are still. They have to be, burned out of Gallifrey's fire and carrying him through time and even holding Rose when she needs it.
What he needs, he doesn't dare voice, even to himself.
Jack voices it instead. Jack, all charms outside, and it takes him a moment to recognise what is beneath it. Rose sees, and he is torn between jealousy and admiration. Rose sees, and she looks at him too and he's almost afraid of the mirror in her eyes.
Love makes a distortion of even the clearest image. The Doctor, killer and rebel and ashes, in her eyes simply... Him. If she looked at Mickey with even half of that, he's not surprised the guy keeps waiting. Rose looks, and his pattern is changing. Waiting for death becomes days passing becomes life. Rose looks, and he looks, and what he sees doesn't feel so alien anymore.
He decides to live that image. Maybe, maybe, maybe he can be it. Maybe he's always been it, just forgotten. Dancing and dating, only his dates are with danger and detours and déjà vu. Time is much like patterns repeating, he knows, and little changes can be repeated until they are the dominant steps and the dance is new. Sometimes, all it needs is a leader.
The dance with Rose is old, he knows, finding its feet somewhere between desire and friendship, Jack sometimes making it three-way, but the steps are still familiar and the balance is still hard. Two decisions still battling. She is going to live, and he's going to keep her close. Sooner or later, he knows, one of them must win.
And the Daleks come again and make it easy for him. He's not giving her to them. Not them. Daleks and death, the most intimate tango he knows, and he's sick of playing up for them. Enough now.
Enough.
He's decided they're going to die. Jack, to buy him time. Lynda, to buy him determination. The Earth, to buy him a Universe free of the Daleks. Him, to buy him peace at last. It won't be even, but it's the best he can do.
Except he can't. In the end, he can't. He's not the same, fear and life returned to him, the coward again. He sent Rose to live and somehow, he doesn't feel like a killer any more. He can't kill, but he will still die.
There is nothing else left to do.
He's decided he's not going to live and Rose overrules him.
FIN