Author's notes: ** Before people start reading this, you really do need to read "The Other Side" first. If you have, then here's a quick recap/reminder... Rose has regenerated and is no longer 'played' by Billy Piper in my stories (I love her to bits, but it didn't fit with doing the whole Trial of a Time Lord thing). She is now 'played' by Lynda Bellingham (who was an incredible actress that unfortunately died recently from cancer). 'Doctor Tyler' refers to the meta-crisis Doctor, as played by David Tennant (although in my story he has aged an apparent 10 years which would make him look remarkably like the actor does in real life now) and 'The Doctor' refers to Peter Capaldi's Doctor. This story takes place about a year after Journey's End from Rose's point of view and immediately after Death in Heaven from The Doctor's point of view. Enjoy! **
Better With Three: Chapter One – We Meet Again
In the courtyard outside of Madam Vastra's house, the TARDIS materialized. Rose and Doctor Tyler stood in front of it with their hands clasped together. When the door didn't open, they approached and entered it using Rose's key.
They both felt the TARDIS welcoming them home and they returned her greeting with waves of affection. They looked around the console room and noticed that it had changed again from the one they had just seen.
The room was tall, dimly lit and had the overall impression of brushed metal. They climbed the stairs towards the console and saw an older, angry looking Doctor leaning both hands on the edge of the console and looking at them with barely restrained angry suspicion. In a thick Scottish accent, he immediately began asking questions, "How did you hijack my TARDIS? And who ... is that? Honestly, first I've got Father Christmas coming through the door asking what I'd like for Christmas and then I've got past versions of myself yanking my TARDIS across time and space. How many more impossible things can happen to me today?" He directed the questions towards the other Doctor and pointed at Rose rudely.
Rose smirked and said, "Oh, come now Doctor, you and I eat impossible for breakfast."
The older looking Doctor glanced at the woman that he didn't recognize confusedly. He hadn't heard that phrase in a very, very long time.
"Father Christmas? Really?" Doctor Tyler asked.
The Doctor waved him off. "Oh, I'll deal with him later. And you still haven't answered my questions. Who is she?"
"I think," Doctor Tyler began, "that we can answer all the questions by linking up."
Doctor Tyler closed his eyes patiently and said, "Contact."
The other Doctor rolled his eyes dramatically, "Oh, do you really want to do it that way? It's such a stupid way of doing it. Although, I suppose it is less painful than how I did it with Craig." He waited a moment for a witty reply, but Doctor Tyler just kept his eyes closed and was obviously waiting, though with fading patience. "Oh, fine. Contact," the Doctor said, heaving a sigh and closed his eyes.
Linking telepathically (as they often did when meeting up with past versions of themselves to quickly catch up on the situation), Doctor Tyler was able to quickly share with the other Doctor all of his memories over the past year since the meta-crisis split. He included the trouble in the other universe, Rose's regeneration, the discovery of his rapid aging, the trial and what he discovered in the Matrix as well as the messages they received from the Bad Wolf program.
While a part of his mind tried to process all that he had just learned in the transfer, the older Doctor took the opportunity to share the events leading to his regeneration from the version that had left them. He also shared the relationships with River, Amy and Rory, the dangerous situation of his faked death and the battles on Trenzalore leading up to his most recent regeneration and the recent events involving Clara, the Mistress (Master) and his failed search for Gallifrey.
When both Doctors opened their eyes, Doctor Tyler gently wrapped his arm around Rose's shoulders in an unconscious desire for support. The other Doctor looked at them in dumbfounded shock. The older looking Doctor fell onto the seat near him and covered his face with his hands. He looked tense and unsure of what to do next, so Rose took that as her cue to sit next to him and put an arm over his shoulders. Rose expected him to lean into her and relax a little, but he actually seemed to tense up more at the contact. She tried not to take the response personally and stayed there.
Through his hands, he finally spoke, but his voice sounded choked with sadness, "It's been one thousand years, Rose... one thousand years and I still can't stand a single day without you being here." At that, he broke and held her tightly as he buried his face into her shoulder. There were no tears, but his shoulders shook in silent agony. "Are you really here? Am I dreaming again?"
Rose hugged him back tightly as she looked up at her husband to acknowledge between them that he did indeed need them as much as she had thought. "I'm here, Doctor. And we're never leaving you again." This meeting with him confirmed that she didn't feel the marriage bond with this version of the Doctor. While it went into her husband's past before the split, it didn't continue on with this Doctor after it. She tried looking for that sense that she was told about, the feeling of another Time Lord mind, but she couldn't seem to find it. They would need to help her with that later. For now, Rose held him closely through his catharsis.
After a few moments of silence, they were only slightly surprised when another hologram of Rose (as she used to look) appeared in the room with them.
"This is the final portion of the Bad Wolf program. All parts of the plan are now ready for completion. Rose and the TARDIS together as the Bad Wolf planned everything. In that moment, they saw all that ever could be. And so they caused the separation, reuniting, the meta-crisis, Rose's regeneration and transformation, and their journey back to you, Doctor. At this precise moment in time, when you would need them the most." There was a brief pause in the recitation, but the hologram had none of the charm and personality that they were so used to seeing from that face. "There have been difficult times for you while they were gone, but you had friends to help you through. Now, when everyone else has gone and the weight of the universe feels like it will suffocate you, the two people who understand that the most are here."
The hologram looked briefly towards Rose and Doctor Tyler before continuing in the same monotonous cadence, "You have been questioning whether you are a good man. Remember all the times that you saved the entire universe, remember all the people you have saved throughout time and space, and remember that you said Rose made you better. She can do it again. You can complete the process that was learned of in the Matrix. It was planned for and it is necessary. But be aware, it will create a bond between the three of you. Only on the surface from the process, but it can be deepened and that is what the Bad Wolf intended. Do not push them away, Doctor, they are here to help. And I know what your Christmas wish was. End of message." The hologram, which had up to this point behaved in a cold and computer-like manner, suddenly relaxed its posture and gave them all a patented Rose Tyler grin with her tongue sticking out of the corner of her mouth and waved before disappearing in a golden flash.
"You just refuse to let me be miserable don't you, Rose Tyler?" the Doctor said as he shook his head in wonder.
Rose laughed at that and asked hopefully, "Better with three?"
"Well," the Doctor said as he wrung his hands a little worriedly. "I think, before we go about creating any bonds between us (despite the fact that we don't have much choice in order to save everyone from dying) it might be best if the two of you got to know this me a bit first, eh? You never know, you might decide that dying is better than centuries with me." The Doctor left Rose's side to fiddle with some controls on the console ineffectually in an effort to hide his insecurity.
Rose tsked and frowned at him, "Doctor..."
Doctor Tyler knew that the other Doctor wouldn't handle chastisement well at this point and interjected, "There has usually been a bit of, umm... tension whenever I meet myself. But then, if there were going to be two of any Time Lord, it should definitely be me. Let's go somewhere to get reacquainted, shall we?" Doctor Tyler grinned and asked his wife, "Where would you like to go, Dame Rose?"
"I know just the place," Rose answered and sent her husband the memory of a pink sunset and giant flying manta rays with a promise of forever. "And you're going to show me how to fly us there!"
The Doctor frowned at their commandeering of his vehicle and looked over the other Doctor's shoulder as the coordinates were set. He smiled at Rose when he realized where they were going. She knew that slight acknowledgement of her choice was significant for this closed off Doctor. Both Doctors guided her around the controls as she piloted their first trip together. They landed with the usual thud, but no one was thrown to the floor in the process.
"She's been flying much more smoothly, lately in general," the Doctor told them. "So long as there aren't any of Clara's sticky-fingered, pudding brains following her in here."
Rose elbowed him in the ribs. "Rude, Doctor."
"Yes, and still not ginger," he replied with a smirk.
They left the TARDIS with Rose in the middle and a Doctor holding each of her hands. The sky was pink again; it was exactly as she remembered it. They walked together and enjoyed the beautiful landscape until they found a place to sit and talk on some fairly flat rocks.
"I love the accent, though it might take some getting used to," Rose said to the Doctor.
"Yours will as well, Rose. I'm used to regenerating myself, but it's been so long since I've spent any time with other Time Lords, I'm not used to other people changing like that. You are, of course, just as lovely as ever," he told her as he took some time to look at all the changes since he saw her last.
It had been such a long time for him that he could have forgotten so many of the details about her, but he hadn't. Every day for the past thousand years, he'd spent at least a few minutes remembering her. He had wanted to make sure that the love who had seared herself upon his hearts was never forgotten in any way.
"Do you remember all of our past meetings now? Have all the memories come back?" Rose asked as she leaned back to look at the giant creatures gliding through the sky.
"Yes, I think so. It's all so long ago now, that even with them accessible, not everything is as clear as it could be. Some of it, of course, is from what you shared with me, Doctor... are we going to keep calling each other, Doctor? This could get confusing over the centuries." He smirked at the thought of being with them for so long. Neither of them had said it, but if this process to share her regenerations with Doctor Tyler worked, it would indeed form a bond between all three of them, he would essentially be married to them as well. They hadn't seemed to object to the idea, in fact, it seemed that Rose herself had arranged it all this way when she was the Bad Wolf.
"Well," Doctor Tyler said as he rubbed his neck. "We've been introducing me as Doctor Tyler recently, to avoid having people confuse me with you on our travels. Except that one time when we met up with River." He chuckled at the memory and Rose began to laugh as well.
The Doctor looked at them questioningly and Doctor Tyler held up the wrist with the vortex manipulator attached. The Doctor groaned, "Oh, that's why she kept arguing with me about having stolen her vortex manipulator during our trip to Darillium! It was all your fault."
"She was the one that interrupted our picnic," Rose said once her laughter was under control.
"I suppose we can continue to call you Doctor Tyler. It's better than Sand Shoes or Pinstripes or something." The Doctor smirked when his counterpart frowned at those suggestions. "But it means you're both Tylers and I don't get to be a Tyler too," he pulled Rose against his side and thought about the fact that he was not a hugger this time around. He had been adamantly against hugging ever since he regenerated. But for Rose, he would throw all of those rules out the bloody window. Well, as he had told Clara, hugging usually meant hiding your face from the other person. There were ways around that, of course.
Rose hugged him around the waist, happy that he seemed to be accepting and even welcoming of them being back on the TARDIS. She had been so worried that he would push them away. This only showed how lonely and damaged he must be. How much he really did need them.
"We could call me Mrs. Doctor and we could all three be Doctors that way," Rose laughed at the absurd notion.
"I'm sure we'll figure something out," Doctor Tyler said as he joined the other Doctor in wrapping one arm around Rose's waist, crossing over the other Doctor's arm and not displacing him. They could make this work. If anyone could, it would be this new trio, the New Stuff of Legends.
The Doctor had shared some of his memories with Doctor Tyler, but he didn't have that connection with Rose yet, so when they found a spot where they could all sit together and watch the creatures flying overhead in the pink sky, he took some time to tell her about the life that she'd missed with him.
"After I left the two of you, I lost Donna as well. The meta-crisis was burning her mind and the only way that I could save her was to suppress all the memories of me and what we did together." Rose and her husband both took his hands in support and the three of them mourned the loss of the amazing changes in Donna while she travelled the universe and learned her true value. She would never remember the hero she had become and the emotional growth she went through; would never again be that wonderful person. She was alive and safe and presumably happy, but she would never remember how she had been the most important woman in the whole of creation.
"I went a bit mad to be honest. I was alone, which is always a bad idea. Tried to change the outcome of a fixed point at Bowie Base One." Doctor Tyler gasped at that and the Doctor continued, "I tried to save Adelaide Brooke, but her death is what inspired her granddaughter to lead the human race out into the universe. She could see that it was wrong of me to try to change things and killed herself to fix my mistake. Rose, you know how bad it is to mess around with fixed points, I thought I was in charge and I could make my own rules. To hell with reapers because I was the Time Lord Victorious." Rose took his hand and squeezed it as she realized just how broken he had been after losing both her and Donna.
"Then the Ood called me with a warning about the Master returning. Rassilon was the Lord President of Gallifrey and he had planted a drum beat in the Master's head that he had heard throughout his life. It drove him mad and they used it as a link to try and pull Gallifrey out of the time lock. I broke the link and stopped them, but when it was all over, I had to regenerate. Rose, do you remember New Year's Eve of 2005?"
Rose tried to think back to her life before the Doctor. "Maybe... Oh my god! That was you!"
"Your face was the first one that version of me ever saw and I wanted it to be the last as well. My next life was so different. Of course, you two were following me a bit during that, so you have some clues about it," the Doctor continued in his story.
Rose had been curious about one thing. She wasn't upset about it, but needed to understand why he had chosen to change the rules that he had stuck to so adamantly while she was with him as soon as she was gone. "Can you tell me about River? I mean, Vastra told us that she was Amy and Rory's daughter and that she was kidnapped before she was born, raised with conditioning to kill you. I get all that, and please don't think that I'm objecting, I just want to understand... Why was she your wife?" Rose asked with genuine curiosity.
The Doctor sighed as he thought about the answer to that. He wanted to give her honesty now, it was important to embark on this new journey together without deceit. "Other than the fact that it seemed to be set in stone from the time I first met her that she would know my name, I guess I felt that I owed it to her. She was conceived on the TARDIS, raised with her whole life centred around me, forced to be raised with her parents but not by them, then she had to spend almost the entire rest of her life in prison to maintain the illusion that she had really killed me and as a result, she thought she loved me. I know I didn't have to make her my wife just because of that, but you were gone and I thought maybe it would help to let River, Amy and Rory in." He stood up and started pacing slowly.
"I thought that if I let River and Amy and Rory into my hearts that it wouldn't hurt so much. It helped at the time, but it was all doomed from the start. There were only so many days in River's timeline that I could fill before she went to The Library, and Amy could never be around forever. By letting them in so deeply, it only hurt that much more when they were gone.
"It was exactly what I was afraid of with you, Rose. Only with you I fell deeply in love before I even knew it and it hurt so much when you were gone. With them, I should have known better. It was a conscious decision to let them all in, even though I knew it would never last. Maybe because it should have been my last regeneration, I thought I could stretch it out until the end. I don't even remember anymore." He stopped pacing for a moment and crossed his arms in frustration.
He started pacing again as he continued, "When I met Clara, I thought it would be just like it was with Donna and Amy. You know, best friends larking about the universe. Then it started getting more flirty. She wanted me to pretend to be her boyfriend in front of her family! I didn't want to pretend to be in a relationship with anyone again. I didn't want to pretend that my hearts weren't already trapped in another universe with no way of coming back to me. Love is a promise and I'd already made a promise of forever with you, Rose, even if I never did manage to get the words out properly at the time. When I regenerated again, I decided that I wanted a form that would push things back to the way they used to be. An old man like me and a young friend, nothing more. I had no desire for more. And then you, Rose... You had to come marching back through the TARDIS doors."
Rose and her husband both stood up to stand by him and stop his pacing. They both hugged him around the waist and he stood awkwardly for a moment with his arms comically up in the air before he hugged them back. Yes, he could get used to the hugging as long as it was only with them.
Rose looked up into his face and told him assuredly, "You never have to be alone again, Doctor. We will always be here, from now on. The Stuff of Legends, remember?"
He smiled down at her and kissed her forehead.
Doctor Tyler thought they should make sure Rose was comfortable with the impending changes in their relationship (even if she was the one who constructed the whole situation), "So, are we ok, then? The three of us being together? It certainly isn't an unheard of kind of relationship, but not generally accepted in the society you were raised in, Rose."
"You're both the Doctor," she said as she smiled at both of them. "You both love me and I love the Doctor. Besides, what woman wouldn't want two men adoring her? I'm not sure what kind of reaction we'll get from Jack when we see him again though." She laughed and they both hugged her from each side.
"Well," said Doctor Tyler, "I have a feeling that this sharing of regeneration energy might be rather taxing on all of us. Since we're all liable to need a nap afterwards, I would suggest that we find somewhere comfortable to get that out of the way and then we can all rest for a good long time."
In agreement, they walked back to the TARDIS together and the Doctor led them to his bedroom. It would certainly be the most comfortable place to rest. When they got there, they found that the TARDIS had made some changes for them. The bed was huge. Of course, if it was meant for three, it would have to be. The bedding was soft, but not slippery and the colours of the room were soft blues and greys. There were now three closet doors, one for each of them and the TARDIS had already moved the contents of the bags they had been carrying around into their closets.
They all thanked the TARDIS for the changes as they removed their various coats and shoes to be more comfortable. It occurred to Rose that her large dress and corset weren't terribly comfortable, but she had promised her husband that he would be the one to take it off of her and now didn't seem like the time, so she just removed her shoes and let her hair down for the time being. The TARDIS hummed happily and dimmed the lighting a little in response.
The three of them sat in a little circle on the bed and held hands. Following the information that Doctor Tyler had found in the Matrix, the Doctor connected his mind with theirs to act as an anchor. This would be similar to what River had done for him once, only she couldn't control it and had given him all of her remaining regenerative energy. It was his job to help control the transfer and make sure that the energy was equal between them. He contemplated adding in some of his own to make it even between the three of them, but he thought it was likely that he would be protecting the two of them to keep them from regenerating quite as often as him and they could always do something like this again if they found there was a large imbalance in the future.
As their minds came together, the Doctor's felt icy cool and harder than Doctor Tyler's refreshing water-like sensation and both Doctors basked in the golden warmth of Rose's mind. The Doctor held them steady as the energy moved from Rose into Doctor Tyler and the meta-crisis was wiped away as his physiology was transformed back into that of a full Time Lord. Golden light flowed around all of them and in the end, the three of them were indeed all bound together telepathically. The bond was still slightly uneven as the Doctor wasn't as deeply bonded with either of them as they were with each other, but they could deepen the bond as time went on and they grew closer. They had just enough energy left to crawl under the covers and the Doctors made a Rose sandwich as they snuggled on either side of her before they all fell asleep.