Title: Promise
Author: Gillian Taylor
Character/Pairing: Tenth Doctor, Rose, Sarah Jane
Rating: G
Spoilers: School Reunion
Summary: How many times has he touched them again, wearing a different face, seeing their lives after him?
Disclaimer: Don't own them. I just like playing with them...a lot.
A/N: I'm currently trying to jump start my muse. Thanks, as always, to my absolutely fantastic betas WMR, Aibhinn & Larielromaniel for the encouragement (and the prompt).
Promise
by Gillian Taylor
…But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead,
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
William Butler Yates: When You Are Old
He watches from a distance, hidden behind shadowed eyes, cataloguing the changes he sees in her and in him. He knows, now, why he tends to leave them or they him. His life isn't easy, isn't safe, and yet he still brings them along, lets them see the stars and touch time.
Looking into Sarah Jane's eyes, he wonders if he has the right of it. He sees the potential in so many of them. Sees their promise stretch through time in an infinite variety of colours, each one inevitably changed by a momentary glimpse of life with him. He thinks he's helping them, revealing their true natures, letting them grow and mature in his company.
What if he isn't?
What if, in those moments where they cling to him and he to them, he damages them irreparably? Breaks them to any other life? How many times has he looked back, tried to see how their lives played out without him? How many times has he touched them again, wearing a different face, seeing their lives after him?
This is the first time, he realises with shocking clarity, that he's seen what it's like after him. He wonders if he should apologise, try to take it back or any one of a million different possibilities. But how can he?
What's done is done. This is him. This has always been him. That's how his life works, but now he wonders if that needs to change.
He doesn't answer Sarah Jane when she asks why he couldn't return for her, why he didn't come back. He doesn't do that. But now he thinks that should change to he didn't do that. Swallowing back the painful lump in his throat, he distracts them both by prattling on about K-9 and the Krillitanes.
It's only later, when it's just Rose and himself, that he makes his decision firm.
"I thought you and me were... but I obviously got it wrong. I've been to the year five billion, right, but this... now this is really seeing the future. You just leave us behind. Is that what you're going to do to me?" she asks, her expression angry and hurt and other emotions too numerous to name.
He swallows again, feeling that painful lump return to his throat as he tells her the truth. Perhaps it's one of the truest things he's ever told her so far.
"No. Not to you."
END