First Doctor Who Fic. Set at the end of the final season with Rose in it. Please enjoy
My eyes were misted up with tears as I raised my head to look over the TARDIS controls for the final time at the young blonde girl sat opposite me on the worn leather chairs that I had taken (without permission) from a car that one of my former affiliates used to drive. Her face was pale, only a slight flush in her cheeks as she looked over to me, as if checking I was still there in the same room as her. On my left, my clone, my twin, my doppelganger, whatever you wanted to call him; was standing beside me, his hands, identical to mine, running over the flux space monitor as I watched the dial for years click slowly down to where we wanted to be.
I turned my face away from Rose's burning eyes and looked back down at the blinking lights on the console that were merging together to form one burning sun of light. The gentle whirring and clicking brought me back into the present, well, my present and my clone's hands on mine as they removed them from the console and pressed the button that caused us to rematerialise. The whirring sound that announced our rematerialisation snapped me back to my thoughts, the slight juddering as we touched down on the sandy expanse of Dalig Ulv Stranden making all of us stumble slightly. Rose looked up at me with her wide brown eyes and I felt the same sense of loss that was clearly written in the lines of her face.
In my mind I was running through all the moments we had shared together since I had met her. The feelings about her had started just after I changed bodies, after her mother and her saved me when I had regenerated. I felt tears prick again at my eyes and turned briskly away, running a hand through my hair, desperately trying to seek solace with myself that it was the best thing to do. My clone stood beside me, he seemed unsure of what to do with his hands and kept moving them from his pockets to folded across his chest. In that moment I hated him. All of him. Every single fibre of his being, identical to mine in every way, was repulsive to me. He could have Rose and I couldn't. He could spend every day with her whilst I could spend no time with her ever again, I could never see her again after these precious moments. I wanted her. But she could no more leave her family for me, grow old whilst I stayed the same, and give up her life for the lonely traveller I am than I could stop saving the world and settle down with her here.
I opened the TARDIS door and waited for him and Rose to walk past me, her hand brushing mine as tears rose unbidden in me eyes. I stepped onto the muddy sand rippled with salty water from the growling sea in front of us. Jackie and Donna filed out sombrely behind us and I felt part of my hearts breaking, I could live with one, and Rose could take the other. She was already a part of me. She fitted in so well with me and my life that I couldn't imagine a time without her. I would miss her; forever a part of me would mourn, until I forgot. I don't want to forget her, I never do, but I know that in my mind, in my time walking among the galaxies alone, things will slip and vanish. But I do not want to forget the woman I love, I never want to forget my one and only love throughout the galaxy. I slammed the door of the TARDIS and dragged my feet towards the small huddle of people on the desolate landscape, desperately wanting nothing more than to grab Rose and jump into the space-time continuum.
A chill wind blew over the beach and ruffled Rose's hair as she stood apart from the others, staring over at me where I stood, a little over ten feet away. Our eyes met in the briefest of seconds and I had to tear my gaze away from hers or my self-control would have absconded and I would have run to her, begging her to come with me. The sad part is that I know she would have said yes within moments, in a heartbeat she would have jumped into my arms and said yes. I walked up to her and the group, my eyes desperately seeking out hers and my hand straying of its own accord to try to take hers. I snapped back into focus and moved my roving eyes back on track, moving over Jackie's white face and then onto Donna's fiery red hair. I felt myself glaring over at my clone, his dark eyes the same as mine flicking over my face and we both shared a connection. I felt his searing gaze penetrate mine and realized that I wasn't the only victim; he was suffering from the remorse of genocide. And I was losing the woman I loved forever.
The pain is incomparable when you have two hearts to break, and the period of getting over twice as hard. Two hearts to mend. I looked from Rose to him, from Rose to me. Only he wasn't me. I was me. And he… he was someone else that was identical to me; but not me. He did not have the feelings I did, nor did he have the resolute tugging of Rose on my hearts. His fingers were twined together in front of him and I stared at them. It was something I would do, so resolutely me in all my actions but at the same time, not me. My heartbeat thudded in my ears and I stared at him, stared at me. I felt my hearts skipping beats over and over as Rose's eyes followed my every movement from the slight intake of breath to shifting my weight from foot to foot as I waited for the silence to end.
Here I was. Standing on a deserted beach in Norway with my children of time. And The Doctor, the man with the answers, had run out of answers.
Co-written by Becky and Me. Please review if you got this far ^^ To Be Continued...