Title: Translation
Author: karebear
Rating: K+
Characters: The Doctor (10), and Rose
Standard Disclaimer: I don't own these characters or the world they inhabit. The TARDIS opens all the doors to a huge sandbox. I'm just along for the ride.
Summary: "Same old life," he tells her, but he's lying. My take on the Doctor's goodbye scene with Rose from Doomsday.
Notes: "Bad Wolf Bay" still makes me cry. After listening to Don Henley for completely unrelated reasons, I had to rewatch the scene and write this. Even though I'm sure it's been done before.
"He'll grow up to be a fighter, full of anger, full of shame
Like all the other haunted children who wonder why they came
And he'll be in and out of trouble until he stands up or he falls
But there will always be a shadow there, no matter how it goes
Damn it, Rose"
- Don Henley
He can't touch her.
He can't touch her and she can't touch him and it matters. It matters in a way it never ever has before because...
"I'm burning up a sun, just to say goodbye," he tells her.
And he can see on her face that she understands what this means, he will break all of the laws of the universe for her.
He will rip himself away from her to keep her safe.
But it hurts.
It hurts him and it hurts her.
There are tears in her eyes, and he can't wipe them away. He can't take her away, or take away her pain, not anymore. That world of laughter and distraction is lost to them now.
He travels the whole of time and space but he can't change this. He doesn't want to. "Here you are. Living a life, day after day. The one adventure I can never have."
"What are you gonna do?"
"I've got the TARDIS," he reminds her. The TARDIS that never dies, but neither does it cry.
He needs her, but he cannot have her, because he destroys everything he touches. And it makes him old and sad and hollow, but she fills him. "Same old life," he says, and wonders if she can hear it in his voice, the emptiness. "Last of the Time Lords."
It isn't the same.
How could it be the same, when he had her, and now he doesn't?
"You're alone," she insists, and her voice breaks, and she breaks, but he doesn't, because this is what being a Time Lord is.
Never stop. Never slow down. Never break.
"Never be alone," is the rule that Rose had added, repeating it over and over again, in words and actions and painted all across the universe.
"It's translated. Bad Wolf Bay."
Of course it is.
"Really though, Doctor. Tell me. Who are you?"
She asked, when they first met. She cared, and if he'd ever known what that was like, he'd forgotten it.
He couldn't tell her though. He'll never answer that question. The answer he'd given her hadn't satisfied either of them, not even then, at the beginning.
"I'm left traveling on my own, because there's no one left."
"There's me," she'd replied immediately, putting her hand in his, not following, but running at his side, with the smile that made him lighter, made him trust and hope and believe again. Changing who he is, by being there.
There's that bit, that humans do, at weddings: "two shall become one." Is that what they are? Is that what this is?
"I love you," she cries, as the seconds tick by, and he can feel them, beating in his two hearts, because that too is what a Time Lord is.
"I suppose, if it's my last chance to say it..."
There is not enough time. There is not enough time and he knows it more concretely than she will ever be able to understand.
"Rose Tyler -" he says, knowing that those three syllables will fill the only space he has.
He could fill the emptiness with three other syllables, the ones she wants, but he won't do it, because how cruel would that be?
To give her that, and then fade away.
No.
He can disappear, to wander, alone and empty, but she can't, and she shouldn't.
He will not do that to her, never.
So he simply says her name, and hopes that it's enough.
He leaves her crying, and in the shadow of a dying star he cries too, and their grief resonates through time and space, across a hole in the universe that closes even as the hole inside of him rips open.
Tears slide across his cheek and he feels them, warm and wet. They taste like salt when the land on his lips, and on his tongue. When he closes his eyes he can pretend it's her that he's tasting, her touch and her warmth.
He didn't cry until he met her. She gave him this. The Bad Wolf who showed him what it means to be human, and gave him a part of herself.
He takes a deep shuddering breath, and carries on.
Same old life, but different now.
"Never be alone."