**This is rated K+ for a semi-mature topic and some suggestive content near the end. This one-shot takes place roughly ten years after "Journey's End", with Tentoo and Rose in the middle of making a life for themselves in Pete's world. In this fic, the original Doctor never gave his doppelganger the coral from the TARDIS, so the new couple can never have a time-and-space ship of their own. I would also like to point out that I am but 17, and thus have no personal experience with this degree of aging. I will do my best to convey the right emotions and feelings across, but if any seem out of place, or if you have suggestions, please let me know! My hope is to honor Tentoo and Rose properly. Also, the words in italics are lines from the poem, "We'll Take Fall Together" by Gary Davis. Enjoy!**
Shall we take Fall together,
go sifting through the fallen leaves
and gaze upon the golden hues,
while waiting for the freeze?
She knew something was wrong the moment she heard the first crash.
Rose rushed up the stairs and through her and the Doctor's bedroom, only stopping in the middle to hear where the sound had come from. A pause, and then another crash. It was coming from their en suite.
Rose had been expecting an alien (they'd made so many enemies through their Torchwood work she wouldn't have been surprised), but now she feared it was something far worse. She knocked her knuckles on the door and tried shouting to him. "Doctor? Doctor!"
The sound of something small hitting the tile floor came through the door. And then, in a cracked voice, "Don't look at me!"
Rose flinched, but she'd dealt with her Doctor's occasional "moods" before. Without hesitating she tried the door—and nothing. The knob jiggled uselessly in her hands.
"Doctor!" She shouted again. "Doctor, let me in!" Oh, that stupid, stupid half-alien! They promised—promised—to never again shut the other out, whether it was through diversions or never-ending hallways or locked doors. There'd been too much of that in the early years of Rose's relationship with the Doctor, in all three of his forms. She'd thought they'd moved past it. He'd sworn to never do this again…
But the Doctor only answered with a ragged, "No! Stay away!" Then she heard an enormous thump, like something heavy landing on the floor, and nothing.
Rose snatched the Doctor's newly-made sonic screwdriver from the nightstand (it'd taken him forever to find and "acquire" the necessary parts in Torchwood's alien tech storage facility) and aimed it at the door handle. With the press of a button the device whirred, and the latch clicked.
When she opened the en suite door, she found her half-human, half-Time-Lord curled in on himself. His back was against the pastel wall, directly across from a dripping sink and a broken mirror, his knees at his chin. The room itself looked half blown apart, but the Doctor's blue suit was untouched. His eyes were screwed shut, and he didn't so much as twitch at Rose's entrance.
We walk a little slower now,
our warm days have all but gone,
we will have to bundle up,
now that Fall has come.
"Doctor…" she breathed. At the sound of her voice, the Doctor finally let out a chocked sob. Rose flew to his side, her breath hitching as she kneeled to the Doctor's level and saw that there were tear tracks down his face.
"Don't, please…" he muttered. He tried to look away, but Rose wasn't having it. She gently, but firmly, put her hand on his opposite cheek and turned his face towards her. His eyes were so haggard and morose, and seemed to be filled with a grey mist. But what—
Then a cut on his forehead started to bleed, a cut so straight and fine it could have been mistaken for another strand of hair, and it all made sense. Scissors beside the Doctor's hands, slightly stained on the blade. Tiny strands of brown hair scattered around the bathroom floor.
And she saw what the scissors had missed countless times, due the shaking hands of a man who was slowly falling apart: a single grey hair.
It was not too big to be noticed easily, but had clearly been able to avoid detection until now. Such a small thing, she thought, and perfectly normal to the human species. But even she was disturbed, if not a little appalled, to see such a hair on the temple of such a man.
She reached for the strand tentatively, but the Doctor intercepted her hand with his own. "Don't," he breathed again, but his voice sounded less harsh this time. Exhaustion was creeping into the cracks adrenaline had left behind.
Rose didn't have to ask what was bothering him, or even why the strand was an issue in the first place. That much was easy to guess, if difficult to accept. Instead she sat leaned forward and wrapped her arms around the trembling man. The Doctor hesitated, but then his breath caught again and he was crushing Rose to him, himself to Rose. He buried his face in her neck, unconsciously reverting back to his old fears in his state of panic. If he looked away or blinked, she'd vanish. If he so much as thought about letting go, she'd be gone forever. And if Rose was gone, then the Doctor would be alone again, and he didn't think he could handle this particular issue on his own.
He choked back a sob, and before he knew it words were pouring out of his mouth like a faucet. "I saw it," the Doctor mumbled into Rose's collarbone. "I panicked. Knew this was coming but not like this, not now. Maybe tomorrow, or next year, but never now. When I was in my grave and you beside me and it'll be good, you and me, it'll be fantastic." He wasn't sure at what point his words stopped making sense. "Do you want that, Rose? I used to be grey-haired, you know, in my first forms. Guess I liked being the grandfather, huh? How 'bout it, wanna be a grandmother? That might be a few years down the road but…" He took a shaky breath. "What do I do now, Rose?"
She didn't answer for a moment, and just held the Doctor as she traced circles on his back. One shaky breathe after another, in and out, in and out. How does one comfort a man who used to travel through time, and yet had managed to outrun its grasp for more than nine centuries?
Rose felt the first of her own tears fall as she thought about the Doctor's last question. "Well," she began silently, "you do what I do, I guess."
He sniffed and glanced up at her, his eyes so round and pleading he looked like an overgrown toddler. But this was not a toddler who'd forget about his troubles by the appearance of a sweet. "And what's that, then?"
Rose and the Doctor, this new-new-new Doctor, had suffered so many storms. The loneliness, boredom, and cramped feelings that came with the absence of a TARDIS. The time where, due to remnants of the time vortex in her body, she would have remained sterile if not for Torchwood. Pete's declining health as Tony entered the vulnerable years of middle school, and Jackie's ankle, which had gotten twisted in a car accident. And through it all, the Doctor's constant state of flux between being completely at ease with his new life, and mentally breaking apart at the seams because of it. Sometimes Rose wondered how they had managed to find each other in the process, and come together as one.
And yet, despite all they'd gone through, as a team and as a couple, Rose was reluctant to tell the Doctor about the little bottle of hair dye she kept hidden in the back of the cupboard. She only had to use it once a week to hide the white strands that miraculously appeared overnight. The Doctor might be able to handle his own hair greying, but what would his reaction be if she walked in one morning with white roots? Would he apologize to her? Avoid her? Leave her entirely? Rose had to admit to herself that she wasn't the only one who feared to go through middle age without a hand to hold.
But Rose also looked into the eyes of the man she loved and knew she couldn't lie to him, never again. She'd be a hypocrite if she did. With a heavy sigh Rose drew back from their embrace and held the Doctor's hands in hers. She watched the florescent lights play on her and the Doctor's rings as she replied, "Nice 'N' Easy Permanent Hair Colour 101 Natural, for lightest ash blonde."
The Doctor seemed to stop breathing for a few seconds, and then he released it all on an exhale. "I guess there's that," he whispered.
This time their embrace gave comfort to both of them: the only beings on this Earth who came from a different universe. Rose hid her face in the Doctor's shoulder, and he planted kisses on her cheeks and forehead. They remained huddled together on the tile floor for several minutes, holding on like they were each other's anchor as they faced the unrelenting force of Time itself.
Rose's eyes were dry by the time she realized that someone was watching them. She carefully extracted herself from the Doctor and turned her head to find a dark-haired boy and a little blond girl standing at the en suite door, watching them with wide eyes.
"Jack," Rose mumbled, but her voice sounded like gravel. She coughed and said, a little louder, "Jack. Go fix up some breakfast for you and Jenny, okay? We'll be down in a minute."
Any uncertainty that had been in his eyes vanished at his mother's request. The boy, Jack, nodded and gently tugged his sister away from the door.
The Doctor sighed and drew Rose closer to him. She leaned into his warm chest, but she knew she couldn't linger. "I'll need to take them to school soon," she murmured.
"Yeah," he whispered back. He was already reaching for a nearby towel to wipe up the trickle of blood on his forehead.
With a light kiss to his lips and a last glance at the offending strand of hair, Rose stood.
Shall we take Fall together
and talk of Summers past?
Our cold season seems to have begun.
unsaid we know it can't last.
Jack was very much like his father: logical, stubborn, and had a way of taking everything seriously and lightly at the same time. It was Jenny, his sister, who was two years his junior, who really took the time to think things through. She didn't say much, but what she said held a knowledgeable weight that went well beyond her years. Like Rose, she made empathy into an art form.
And there was no one she could discern better than her own parents.
As Rose finished spreading jam on Jack's sandwich (it was blackberry, the Doctor's favorite), Jenny quietly asked, "Why's daddy so sad?"
Jack looked up from the small stack of scrap metal he'd been fiddling with, also curious as to his parents' unusual behavior but uncomfortable with beginning such a conversation.
Rose set the finished sandwich on the counter and looked at her two children. They seemed so small, but their eyes were wide and curious, intelligence emerging from a brain that was, quite frankly, void of knowledge and experience. And yet, like the unbelievable, quarter-Time-Lord children they were, the pair questioned everything. Jack mirrored the Doctor in every way, from attempting to "improve" the computers at their primary school, to calling NASA to tell them that one of their articles was wrong ("My dad said so!"). Jenny excelled in gymnastics, and once Rose saw her daughter comforting her teacher, Mrs. Donaley, because the woman's husband had just passed away from cancer.
Perhaps they weren't yet old enough to learn about the Doctor and Rose's true origins, but Rose looked into their eyes and decided that maybe they were ready for this. "Well," she began, "people get older every day."
Jack and Jenny nodded as if this was the most common fact in the world, which, in their case, it was.
"But sometimes, getting older can be hard. And adults might not want to grow old."
"Like Peter Pan?" Jenny asked.
"Yes, like Peter Pan." Rose felt a small smile cross her face. "And your daddy and I…we've reached the point in our lives where getting older is the hardest thing we have to go through."
Jack scrunched his nose. "But lots of people are old, and they're happy. Why's dad upset about it?"
Rose worried her lip and finished packing their lunches. "Your dad's just not used to aging, is all."
That got their attention. "What d'ya mean?" Jack asked quickly. "Course he ages. He's an adult, so he's had to at some point."
"Didn't he used to be a kid like us?" Jenny echoed.
"He hasn't been a kid in a long, long time," Rose told them.
"We'll tell you when you're older." The Doctor had appeared in the kitchen doorway, leaning on its frame with his hands in his pockets and his customary mask settled on his face. Personally, he hated that line, a line that effectively crippled a child's natural curiosity, but as a parent he found it worked remarkably well.
Rose turned away from him and busied herself with washing the dishes that now crowded the sink. She wasn't sure why she hid, but Rose was suddenly filled with guilt over something she had no control over.
"Hey dad, look what I made!" She heard Jack shout, and she could imagine him showing his father the new device he'd created, the same maniacal smile on his face. Jenny was silent, but Rose had no doubt that her daughter's thoughts were anything but.
"That's brilliant, that is!" The Doctor cooed, once again earning himself the "dad of the year" award. "What's it do?"
There was a hesitant pause, and Rose could bet he was biting his youthful lip, a habit he'd picked up from his mother. "I don't know yet," Jack answered.
"I'll bet it'll be something fantastic," the Doctor encouraged, probably ruffling the boy's hair in the process. "Go grab your lunches and your coats, okay? Mum will be out in a minute."
"'Kay!" Jack said. Then, like the older sibling he was, Rose heard him snatch Jenny's lunch away from her and the pair chased each other out to the garage.
Rose heard him coming up behind her, but she didn't acknowledge the Doctor until his arms encircled her from behind and he put his head on her left shoulder.
"Can't make them late for school," she muttered to him, correctly guessing what her husband had in mind.
"Well, we can't have that," The Doctor replied huskily. His voice had dropped an octave, and his magic hands were massaging her sides. "Can you come home afterwards?"
His hands dipped lower than she'd anticipated and she let out a slight gasp. "Torchwood?"
"Taken care of." The Doctor had found his favorite dip along her neck and was tracing its curve with his teeth and tongue. "Told Pete we had to deal with a family crisis."
Rose would have loved for him to continue right then and there, but the chance of Jack and Jenny barging in on them was too high. She carefully turned herself around in the Doctor's arms and kissed him soundly. It was a seal of affirmation, and a promise for more.
Because Rose had a pretty good idea of what was going through the Doctor's head right then. Having children had consumed so much of their time and energy that they hadn't had the chance to make love in weeks, maybe even months. And now age was being added to the mix, and Rose had to wonder: how many more moments of breathless passion would they be allowed to have? How long until the odd gray hair became a daily occurrence, and muscle pain and health problems followed in its wake? In the Doctor's eyes Rose could see him asking for permission, not just now, but in everything that was to come. Would she still love him, even when his wrinkles dominated his face and he was no longer able to "perform"? And she asked him, would he continue to love her, even when her body began to sag and her beauty started wearing away? Would they be able to even look at each other in the future, when they're the only ones in their house and the old light of youth has flickered and died?
The answer to these questions was, as always, a profound, "yes".
She kissed him again and said, "I'll come home."
Less than an hour later, just before Rose and the Doctor fell on their bed and made love like an all-consuming fire, they had the sense to set their alarm so they wouldn't be late picking Jack and Jenny up from school.
When we go back I'll make a fire
against this evening chill.
I'll watch the light dance on your skin
recalling the passions of back when...
and marvel at how you stir me still.