Won't Fade Away

Chapter One

Lament

AN-

This is my very first stab at WhoFic. I've been watching the modern series for years now but I realize talking to role players I write with, that there's so much about the background of this series that I don't know…That said, please, if I make any mistakes, let me know. Flaming just makes us all upset, and as the Doctor was once forced to say (via Cassandra) "No matter how difficult the situation, there is NO need to shout!"

Rose was reminded in a stabbing way that he had been brought to her to prevent this pain. The Doctor, her second one, had brought him because he was part human and he needed to heal from the angry pain that had created him, the way that 9 and 10 had with her. And he had, he had flourished in this world. He had opened a little shop and sold silly little knick knacks, it wasn't a money machine but they loved it. He went by the name John and they married the spring after his arrival, with the whole white dress and gold rings and a few traditions from Gallifrey that brought tears to his beautiful brown eyes.

By the next year Rose was expecting a child, and for a long while, several scary months in fact, he had been afraid that the baby, stronger than her and too innocent to know the pain he inflicted, might really harm her. But she pulled through like a champion, and he was desperately smitten with their child. In his youth, with his first great love, he had had daughters, and having a son had showed him several new joys of parenthood. They called him Michael, a name they both agreed on, Michael Theta Tyler. A year after his birth, they welcomed Johanna Sigma Tyler, and life, for a while, at least, was perfect.

The world they lived in was invaded twice and he gathered the best militaries and alien savvy minds to fight, and for that, was seen as a hero. In the seven short years they spent together, he somehow managed to give her both a normal life and a taste of what had brought them together, and in that time it had never occurred to her that the Doctor he had been born from had never lived on that planet mingling with others for any long period of time. He had never grown immune to illnesses that most humans became immune to and he had never had a human vaccine. Because for those seven years, they had thought he was invincible. Human, aging, but a Time Lord nonetheless. A little sickness made sense, the humanity in him was affected, but one winter he never got better. It started with a cough and some congestion and that turned into pneumonia. He spent weeks in hospital, and when Rose could finally take him home, she thought he had seen the worst of illness that he would.

They took the children to Germany the following spring on holiday. And when they got back, the Doctor felt ill again. Fearing a second bout of pneumonia, Rose hurried him to the emergency room, where they quickly learned that instead he had been afflicted by the measles. He suffered through the spots and the fever and the pain for three days before his airway closed up and the doctors told her they couldn't do anything else for him. When they brought her to him they had already removed the tube they had placed down his throat, and all the wires and sticks were gone too. He looked serene, but paler, sat up in his bed. He had died when they had taken him to the operating room to try and work on his airway, and it had only taken thirteen dreadful seconds for his heart to stop after it began to arrest. Lying in that bed, holding him, brushing fingers through brown, messy locks, she desperately begged for him to regenerate.

But he did not. The funeral home came for him shortly after and they held a viewing three days later. He looked more flush, although, Rose knew it was from the makeup. Jackie held her and they cried and the children stood next to her with sad eyes and silence as they stood testament to this terrible day. Previously, the Doctor had told her that Time Lords preferred to be cremated but when it came down to deciding, she couldn't bear the thought of him being burnt up and bought him a plot near a little duck pond in the closest cemetery. The stone was to come soon, had to be engraved, but Rose had tearfully helped design it, "JOHN SMITH. BELOVED HUSBAND AND FATHER, GONE TOO SOON."

And so, people from all over this world came to mourn him with her on the day of his actual funeral and burial. And men she had scarcely spoken to carried his coffin from her home near Bad Wolf Bay to the little plot she had selected for him. They buried him at dusk, and Johanna sang a song he had taught her in his native tongue, bringing Rose to tears all over again. She had met the Doctor as a girl, only 19 years old and fragile as ever, but now, she was a woman. A widow, a mother. She scooped the children up close once it was all over and they slept in their parents' bed with her that entire week, getting up only when necessary, huddled in his familiar scent with Rose.

A part of her expected that the real Doctor would have joined them immediately. After all, James had been a part of him. A half of him, really. When a week passed and nothing happened, she gave up all hope on the Doctor and Time Lords and space travel and the idea that somewhere, deep down inside of him, she was loved. The children went back to school with trepidation, and several scheduled visits with their guidance counselor, and Rose quietly withdrew from her job, deciding to take some time to herself with the savings they had built, just until she could leave the house without feeling overwhelmed.

The first night after Michael and Johanna returned to school, she tucked them into her bed and went outside, sitting on the back patio that he had paved with his own hands. A cup of tea in her own, she gazed up at the stars and sighed, mournfully. "Reality be damned, Doctor, where are you?"

There were times when the Tardis literally just took him somewhere. He didn't have any input, or any control once She was moving and usually, it drove him mad. It was as if She was alerted to some event or distress call somewhere, and took off toward it. Later, he would realize in this case, it was because of the bond she had formed with Rose when she had absorbed all of that energy and acted as The Bad Wolf.

He rode out the flight jumping from the computers and the thingy-majigs, yelling out for her to stop, until suddenly, with a blow that nearly wrought him unconscious, She stopped. The Doctor had fallen onto his bum and looked up and around himself inside of her sturdy walls and felt loss deep in his gut that he could not explain. Something terrible had happened. Standing on shaking legs, he slowly crept to the doors and peered out of them. He expected blackness, he expected death and pain and he was shocked to find Bad Wolf Bay staring back at him, but it was not as he had left it in his Tenth form, there was loss hanging so thick in the air he was sure he would have to cut through.

With a gasp, he realized that being there was incredibly dangerous, and he shot from the doors to the computers again to figure out how long he had before the world collapsed on itself, but it kept telling him the same thing. Stable. He didn't understand it, it was completely against all of the rules, but for some reason, he had been brought here for a certain reason. Perhaps James had finished his Tardis, after all, he had no way of figuring out how much time had passed just by the beach. He would have to see their faces to know that.

Popping the Tardis key into his pocket he warned Her not to move, and slowly inched outside until his feet, numb with paranoia, touched the sand. Half expecting to fall through the earth itself, he stood with his knees bent and eyes squeezed shut until he realized that nothing had happened, and if a human were to happen upon him, he would look rather ridiculous. Opening his eyes, he realized all was seemingly well, but frighteningly quiet. The scenery had changed very little, but something small caught his eye, and he approached the shoreline ever so slowly, and dropped to his knees in the rolling tide with reverence he didn't yet understand as he picked up the shriveled, yellowed wreath that was once made of beautiful white roses. Attached, a card, that was written in a language he had nearly forgotten over the millennia.

'Papa, we will miss you ever so much. Jo, Michael and Mummy.'

The Tardis began to pull him back, and he clutched the wreath to him as he made a run for it as she wheezed and started to get on her way. He made it through the doors just in time, as always, and fell back on the floor with the wreath in his arms, gasping for his breath. He didn't know why, but it brought him some strange sort of comfort. Made the loss easier to bear. Even though he had yet to discover what that loss was.

He hoped James wouldn't tell him it was what he was afraid it might be.

She didn't take him from the world this time, just to another country here, to England. And it was even gloomier than the last place he had seen them. There were white ribbons tied all around the trees and telephone poles, and people were trudging about the streets with sad faces and heavy hearts. He wanted to ask someone, but never got around to it. A few blocks from the house that James and Rose undoubtedly lived in, he found a little park, and on a bench, a man reading a newspaper. It was yellowed, and crinkled slightly, but the picture on the front was all too familiar, and the Doctor's knees once again became weak with his grief.

'JAMES SMITH, BELOVED HUSBAND AND FATHER, WHITE KNIGHT OF ENGLAND AND THE WORLD, DIES AT AGE 40.'

He wasn't sure what had kept him going in that moment. Why he hadn't gone back to the Tardis and properly hid his emotion, but he presumed it had something to do with Rose. She was more important, she had lost the most. Father. He was a father, he had children. That meant that he had children that were alone with their Mum in this world now. He ran the entire way and wandered aimlessly until he happened upon a little white house in the middle of a normal little street. The only thing that gave it away was the door, which was painted police box blue.

Suddenly, his adrenaline had run out, and he stood on the street staring at the building, where the yard was covered in bouquets filled with white flowers of all kinds. Little cards, open letters, signs with pictures of James and his children standing and smiling and hugging, pictures cut out of old newspapers after he had saved this world again and again. His eyes, at this point, were round and wet with tears that occasionally leaked onto his face, and they snapped to the left when movement caught his attention.

The front door had opened and a little face was peering at him from the stoop. She was a lovely little thing, five or six years old with medium brown hair and big green eyes. She was dressed in frilly pink pajamas, and her long wavy hair was tied with a pink ribbon. She watched him briefly, and he took the moment to dry his eyes, tilting his head when she spoke to him with a small, but firm, voice. "We appreciate the call, but we're not taking visitors at this time."

"Hello," He managed softly, causing her to tilt her own head. "Could you get your Mummy? And tell her the Doctor is here?"

"What doctor?" The little girl demanded, crossing her arms. "Doctor who!?"

"Johanna?" Rose's soft voice was unmistakable and made his hearts pound oddly. Then he realized who he had been talking to all along, Johanna. Jo. We miss you ever so much, Jo. Before he had a moment to dart away, she appeared in the door behind her daughter and settled lovely pale hands onto his little shoulders. "What's this, then?"

"Mummy, some sort of doctor wants to see you…"

Rose's head snapped up to look at the visitor, eyes suddenly filled with pain and longing. At first, she thought it was her Doctor, but she didn't recognize him. Perhaps he was a psychiatrist then, they had had their fair share of calls asking if so and so could help. But the pain in his eyes and the goofy smile that curved his mouth confirmed it. She released Johanna and asked her to go inside before she approached, careful not to step on any flowers on her way over, her feet bare and unprotected by possible thorns. When she was only a few feet away, she smiled up at him. "I had hoped you would be here sooner," She said softly. "We buried him two weeks ago."

His smile was heartbreakingly different. "Rose, I am so, so sorry." He drew her in for a hug without any resistance and she sighed with some relief. "What…?"

"The measles," She laughed at that sadly, shaking her head. "All that work making me a clone of yourself and neither one of us stopped to consider getting him vaccinated."

He grimaced at that, shaking his head slowly. "I had not considered that he…I had not been exposed to human disease." He rubbed the back of his neck, floppy hair wriggling around, distracting her briefly. "At least not anything they make vaccines for, here."

"Come in, Doctor. You must be exhausted from breaking into this universe."

He wanted to tell her that it was pretty easy, but decided not to. Instead, he followed her inside solemnly. Johanna and her brother were sitting in front of the telly, but it was not turned on. Instead, they had coloring books spread out in front of them. Neither paid them any mind as they walked past, and when Rose asked what they were doing, Michael told her, "Making a picture for Papa."

The sound of his voice made The Doctor's stomach twist oddly and it took him a moment to process it before he walked into the kitchen with her. She immediately moved to the kettle at the stove, taking it to fill with water. "Fancy a cuppa?"

"No, thank you." He replied politely, his fingers throbbing strangely with a sensation he could not name, so he rubbed them together. He had no idea what to say, beyond, 'I'm sorry'. He could try to comfort her, try to get her to talk, in the end it was still a painful and awkward situation. He found he could not stop staring out the door after the little souls who were in the living area. Rose noticed, and watched him for a while after lighting the stove and setting the kettle on a burner. Crossing her arms, she leaned back against the kitchen counter, studying his new appearance.

"You really changed again. You look…"

"It's never a slight change," He said softly, smiling very gently at her. "They take after you."

She smiled warmly at that, the ache of grief stinging in her throat and eyes, preventing her from speaking for a moment. They did take a lot after her, but there were things, little things about them that reminded her of James. Jo's dark hair. Michael's brown eyes. The way they both looked at her like they had lived somewhere for an eternity without her. She let out a shaky sigh and swallowed past her pain. "They remind me a lot of him."

The Doctor's head snapped up at the frailty in her voice, and he was shook by the memory of her standing on the beach, asking if she would ever see him again. He had given that to her, and now, it was gone again. She was alone, only she wasn't. And after so many years, in a way, technically, he had family again. He nodded back out the way they had come in. "Do you know what I think you and your kids need? A ride in a Tardis. And wouldn't you know, I've got one parked right outside!?"

Rose hesitated and glanced back to the children, her brow furrowing. "I don't know, Doctor, they have a life here. They've never traveled before and…" She sighed, moving to the window. "I'm afraid I'm just too old for that sort of thing."

At that, he crossed his arms, his head tilting downward ever so slightly so he could level a stern glare on her, and when she looked back over at him, she couldn't hide a smirk at his expression. She shook her head, moving to turn the teapot back off. "Blast," She muttered. "Who am I kidding?" Wiping her hands on a towel, she strolled into the living room. "Jo? Mike? Let's get dressed, darlings. Mummy's friend is going to take us on a trip."

No sooner had she sent them to change, than she came back over, her face suddenly concerned. "But the reality it might not…Mum and Dad are next door. Mickey's just had his firstborn. I can't risk it."

Rolling the sonic screwdriver between his hands, contemplating how he would explain to River why he had brought home a Tardis fool of dead people, and never been born people, he smiled gently at Rose. "Then we shant. Get your family, get Mickey's. Get everyone packed. I think it's about time we blew this popsicle stand, wouldn't you say?"

Rose seemed more optimistic, but still, she looked at him with slight uncertainty. "We might not make it out…"

"We might not," He admitted, scratching the back of his neck. "But we'll all be together."