"You too, huh?" At the sound of his own voice, The Doctor in brown turned from his spot leaning against the door jamb to face his duplicate.
"What?"
The half-human tucked his hands in his pockets and leaned on the opposite side of the doorway, gesturing with his eyes towards the back of the blonde head that the first Doctor had been staring at for the past ten minutes. Rose stood with Martha and Jack by the TARDIS console, laughing and talking, telling stories of their time exploring the universe.
"That's not funny," the first Doctor said, tense.
"It's a little bit funny," the clone retorted, grinning.
"Everything's...complicated now."
"Not really." The Doctor in blue looked down at his shoes, rocking back on his heels. The humour was gone from his face. "You can't stand me. Can't stand what I've done. I know how this ends. At least leave me somewhere interesting, yeah?"
Their eyes met for a second, each acknowledging the truth, then flitted back to the girl they had both had to live without for far too long.
"She should stay with you. You can give her things I never can," the Time Lord nearly whispered.
"She should be given a choice, Doctor, you know that. And you also know she'll choose you, no contest." The two Doctors both sighed and leaned their heads against their side of the door frame, unknowingly creating a mirror image, perfect except for the difference between blue and brown.
"She shouldn't. This life, with me, it's too fleeting, too dangerous. She's just so - so human," he paused, glancing at the other, "and so are you."
"Why does that bother you so much? You love humans. When I was you, we were always picking them up and carting them all over the universe."
No one spoke for a moment as the first Doctor stared uncomfortably at the people he loved most of all crowding around the console, talking, breathing, living, dying. Just a little bit, every moment. Weeeell, maybe with the exception of Jack...
"Oh I get it," the other Doctor said suddenly. "It's hard enough watching them wither and die, guess now you're watching that happen to yourself."
"I can hear you dying with every beat of your single, silly, useless, human heart."
"I'm not asking to stay," the second Doctor said. "I'm just asking you to take care of her, maybe tell her how you feel once in a while."
"You think that would help? Make this easier or harder?"
"She knows already, she just wants to hear you say it."
"She wants to hear you say it too," the first Doctor pointed out.
"Doubt that. I'm not sure she thinks I'm remotely like you."
"You are me."
The metacrisis looked up sharply at that, looking into the eyes of the man they both used to be. For a moment they just regarded each other until the Doctor in blue shifted a little and dropped his gaze. "I just want her to be happy, even — even if that means she'll be happy with someone else." He lifted his hand a little, gesturing towards the other man.
The Doctor in brown turned and looked at his duplicate again for a long, tense moment. His hands clenched in his pocket, then he followed the clone's gaze, taking in Rose's smile, her hips, her laugh, the way she stood, feet apart, hands in pockets, unconsciously imitating the stance of the man she loved... Finally, he relaxed, as if coming to a decision, sighed, then turned back to the Doctor in blue, a small, humourless smile fixed on his face. "You too, huh?"