Disclaimer: Doctor Who, it's characters and trademarks do not belong to me. I am making absolutely no profit from this venture, and I'm £12,000 in debt anyway, so suing me is just pointless. All I have is a pen, and as it's run out of ink I'm sure you don't really want that.
Rating: I'm gonna say T for a sexual reference, but it's oblique.
Author's Notes: Lara's 'Only the Lonely' and some trepidation about the new David Tennant series were the catalysts for this. It's now very, very AU.
Cyclical
He will lose her. Again.
He remembers this face. Pale in the licking light of the flames. Shocked, he thought, shocked by the stupidity and improbability of crossing your own time-line. About to turn around and march straight back into the TARDIS and away from London, 2016.
He remembers this face, even though, on that night it was another face in the crowd to be discounted.
And he realises now that he wasn't shocked, or he won't be shocked in that time. No. He'll be free falling into pure terror.
Another little loop has been thrown for him to jump through. A moment of time folding back on itself means that he will lose her; he will lose her no matter how hard he planned to win.
He's saved her so often now that he'd begun to believe that perhaps we don't find our destiny. That if he played with time enough, she would never leave him. That if he held her hand more, if he asked her twice, if he raised a sun filter, if he reopened a door, if he died instead of her then it would be alright, that he could cheat destiny and keep her.
But he's the one who's been cheated all along.
He remembers jumping though the window, leather jacket across his face, hauling the petrified humans - one family in particular, always the aim, and any others - out by their arms, their legs, their hair if it meant he could save just enough. The way he called for help, the heat flaming across his arms every time he touched the fire. And the only human who came to help leaping through the flames; glowing in the light just like she did in the Time Vortex, transcending for those moments the bounds of what it is to be mortal and subject to time.
Rose Tyler.
The look in her eyes when he took her away. The way she touched the buildings, walked barefoot on the grass, drank and ate. The way she listened as he compared this place to home. It wasn't the rapture of a new world being revealed. She knew even then, but told him she was making the most of it.
She could have told him. Maybe her eyes did, but he just didn't listen. She knew she couldn't in words, she'd already seen the Reapers and what they did when she altered time and he's proud that she'd learnt, that no matter how horrible the lesson, she'd learnt something from him.
The old him. The one she will leave him for. She learnt from the old him. He, this new face, will never teach her anything that she will want to keep. Why else would she go? All there is left to do is wonder when she will leave him. Will he keep her? Cutting his heart apart just so he won't lose her? Or will he take her back deliberately? In anger? In the painfully realisation that to love her will mean he is unable to refuse her whatever she wants?
His previous life. They way she tangled her hair up in a sweet bun at the nape of her neck, wrapped herself in his seven foot scarf to hide the burns and held his arms while he explained regeneration even though all he wanted to do was kiss her.
But she'd already seen it. So much she didn't tell him. So much he'll never tell her in return. That she'd known him, just as he'd known her in the time before.
The day she fell. The way her skin felt against his lips. Cold and soft and a little bloody. A poor first kiss, but he felt better, and she felt better, and it was enough.
And the time in the kitchen - her birthday - where he pressed himself into her back, hard against her. And how his hands helped her mix, making flour trails across her skin when he'd reached down into the waist of her jeans. How he stroked her and how he smiled and how she groaned, Oh, I'm so glad, I'm so glad I met you.
He was always glad. Even in morgues with the living dead reaching for them, he was glad that he'd saved her just a little bit longer, that he'd kept her with him, and even if they were going to die they were going to die together this time.
They were going to. He was going to. He would save her; he would keep her with him. But he was too late. That day. He was so busy saving this world and that person that he ran out of time. Running and running towards her while she was dying. Time Lord. Too late by seconds.
That day. He took her in his arms, the way he always did, gathering her up to take her away from the danger, but her hand didn't find his the way that it always did.
She was so still.
What use are emotions if you won't save the woman you love?
Remember it all burning, trying to feel some victory, some revenge, anything at all. But he lost Gallifrey, he lost his family, and he lost so much of himself with them.
And when he met her again in a basement with shop dummies shuffling towards her and raising their hands he just took her hand and told her to run. Her fingers were cold and soft and he could taste her in his mouth, the memory of their first kiss. The remembrance of her hands, a little bit bloody with terror and death. He didn't want her near him this time round. Too painful to risk seeing her die again and again.
But to have her near him. To keep her close, no matter what, meant he could keep her alive. He could save her this time.
So he held her hand more, he asked her to come with him twice, he raised a sun filter on Platform One, he reopened a door that he'd shut her behind, he died instead of her and it was alright, he cheated destiny just a little bit longer and kept her.
But in the mirror, this face with the large eyes, the spiky hair and the pointed nose testifies to the way that time will always beat him. That regeneration means he is the only one who can cheat death. That he took her to keep her but in the end he will always lose her.
He will end up with Rose, in the second Great Fire of London, 2016 watching his old self leap into a burning building to save a few human lives.
And she will leave him. She will leap through the same window into her future and his past. Will she turn around to say goodbye before she goes? A bittersweet kiss that means nothing on his lips, because he knows now that she will never believe that this regeneration loves her? Or will she just run? In the end it does not matter how it happens, only that it will.
He will lose her.