They realized something was wrong at different times. For her, it happened during one morning shower that should've had nothing out of the ordinary, but the steam had spread throughout their flat like a thick winter fog and he was curled up under the nearly boiling water, holding his head with an iron grip. He refused to reveal when it happened for him, through a heavy silence that only made her firsts clench. They had what could've been their greatest fight yet, if it weren't for him not saying a word back. She stormed out, only to come back before the windows had cleared from the remaining drops to dry her own against his neck. His hug left bruises and she couldn't help but hurt herself with the thought of them lasting longer than him.
The medical exams were nothing but a formality. Rose wouldn't admit she'd held some sort of hope – for him to be wrong, for once –, due to the same reason the Doctor remained quiet, only speaking up to say how he already knew what the prognosis was. It was more for her mum and dad. She realized it when she found them hiding in one of the old service rooms of the mansion, now another closet for them to throw things into, with her mum sobbing and mumbling things that only her dad could understand, as he rubbed her back and whispered comforts, wearing the biggest eyerings she'd ever seen him with. She scolded herself for questioning if they'd be affected at all. She never said she saw them.
Tony was too young to understand what it meant just yet. Either someone was or wasn't – and the Doctor was, so that was all that mattered. He kept asking him to play games, to hear stories, to make him promise he'd take him to conventions and sport matches and food festivals later. He was confused when he heard his mother sniff or his sister leave the room when he asked such things, but didn't think on it further. After all, the Doctor was acting normal. He played videogames and won (except on racing), talked for hours about aliens and mad adventures, and smiled when he caught him looking. That is, until their last Scrabble match, when he suddenly kept going over synonyms of center and then repeated equidistant over and over and over. Rose had to shake him out of it. When he stopped, the Doctor was breathless and his eyes couldn't focus; while Rose brushed his face, waiting for him to come down. Nobody mentioned Rose had dropped her mug to the pristine floor in her rush – not even Tony.
Even after that incident, and despite her kicks and screams, the Doctor refused to be seen by Torchwood's team. Rose spent her nights awake, studying his darkened outline for hours, as if that could enlighten or even explain his apparently-continued deathwish. She wasn't even sure he was asleep, but she suspected he wasn't. She still stared.
Only upon Jackie's and Pete's constant insistence, the Doctor allowed Torchwood to research further to try to create a cure. Rose wasn't sure how to feel about that.
"I feel like a lab rat," he finally blurted out one evening, half-clothed and drained in a room with white walls and barely any light, to counter her thoughts. Rose hugged his pale form with only the buzzing of the MRI machine filling in, wishing for him not to sense the regret that stuck to her throat.
After the second round of tests, they said they could at most try to create a treatment to slow it down, and after the fifth, they finally recognized they were out of their league. It was the Doctor's turn to storm off. However, Rose followed him. The parking lot was dark and barely lit, bringing them down to mere silhouettes. It took him weeks to get to a boiling point, and this was it, with three dented cars, one broken window, a bloody fist and four scrapped knees.
"You haven't said a word either," he said. It was a defensive retort, but it was true. He brushed her hair then and she bit her lip, apologies suddenly too lacking.
They left for Florence the very next morning.
Moskow and fake snow, Lhasa and starry nights, Las Vegas and a certain underground base, where they had more than their fair share of trouble, the Panama Canal and the Strait of Magellan and more aliens and wormholes, Disney World and the Hogwarts Castle and new cameras because their phones were full. They left marks in every place; their footsteps pressed onto windy deserts and abandoned still dust, patches of grass had memorised Rose's back, the Doctor's fingerprints had burned into bedframes, the skin of Rose's shoulders had left tracks on several mirrors, their voices and moans echoing against hundreds of walls. The Doctor enshrined the way Rose's hair felt between his fingers, Rose learnt by heart the count of his freckles and could find his mole with her eyes closed.
They ran, fast and hard, because it was what they did best – but their first difficult conversation happened anyway. On a train to Rome, in-between frontiers, with nothing to look at other than each other. The midday sun hit the Doctor's entire row and made it hard for Rose to see him. But he held her hand with both his own. And slipped a ring on her finger. She kissed him and sat on the blinding sun by his side.
It was weird, to now have to discern between whom it was better to think of. Better for them to marry on their own terms, simple and quick and theirs, but better for everyone else to marry with a ceremony and cake (and edible ball bearings), invitations and speeches and lots of people. Once, choosing was easy; once, they wouldn't have needed to choose.
They stepped out of the train and it took him a minute to come back. Rose waited, holding on to his arm for dear life, as people were forced to move out of the way to pass, like they were as inconsequential as a bump on their paths. Once he did, the veins on his temples were purple and engorged, and his eyes watered.
She already missed him.
The ceremony was beautiful. The Doctor absolutely refused to wear a black tux, so they both wore white. It was a sunny day – which made it entirely too complicated for the photographer to get them right. Even to Rose, when she tried to take a couple of selfies for her phone: it was all so white that the Doctor couldn't be seen properly. The cake was gorgeous and they almost threw it to the ground when they cut the first piece. Somehow, that surprised no one. The first dance was something they both tried to get out of, but knew very well there was no saying no to Jackie Tyler. On a knowingly public and exposed instance, they started with the slow-paced traditional dance of the planet Krontoc, which had nothing of a ballad and lots of stomping and hollering. Just for them. Needless to say, they got the laugh they wanted. And, somehow, that only surprised a couple few. But they did get to the human ballad in the end, holding each other's warm hands, hearts beating to their rhythm against their chests.
Rose and the Doctor left in quite a hurry. Only Jackie protested against it.
It wasn't a full moon, it wasn't as starry as he hoped it'd be – there were clouds in the sky, painted red with the bounce of the city lights. But he still covered her eyes with his tie, led her up a hill, and joined their hands with a soft knot. They kissed freely and held on in a long, tight hug. They both tried very hard not to cry. The same happened on their bed later that night, marking the first night since where they stayed up together.
Not two weeks later, in Germany, as they disarmed a stray Sontaran spaceship before it blew up, the Doctor touched a circuit and shut off the lights. Rose called for him from the control room's entrance while on the lookout, but he didn't answer. Dread wrung at her chest and she tried to find him in the dark, calling his name again and again, tripping and bumping and out of breath. She found the sonic first, growing colder, then his hand, fingers hot, and trailed up to his face. When he awoke in the ambulance, he couldn't remember what had happened – only the smell of burnt flesh coming from somewhere on him. All she could see was the trolley under him.
When she retched that night in the hospital bathroom, they found out it wasn't out of nerves.
Another fight followed where both defended the same idea, but about one another; they were both too afraid of the risk in the line of fire, but neither of them wanted to accept that. It was an odd fight, for neither dared to actually put a name to each of their situations – or their subsequent ends. They couldn't stop running, from and towards; they were masters at it. But they refused to run away from their life, or the remains of it. It was what kept them as them, the Doctor and Rose Tyler, the stuff of legend.
But how much of a legend were they now that they could barely look each other in the eye without guilt seeping through?
They went back to London to tell the good news of the "happy accident" to their family. Jackie celebrated with shouts and phonecalls and effusive hugs, Tony was just happy to have them around again, and Pete bought everything that had a baby tag on it the very first day. But the more sensitive her body became, the harder it was for him to recall the specifics. Words, dates, what he had for breakfast, where he left his socks. He denied that every chance he got, just like Rose refused to go back to the flat. At least in the mansion they could pretend to talk to other people.
It was only when her mum's friend Nancy noticed that her belly started showing, that Rose stopped. She'd missed it, hadn't even noticed, hadn't looked for it at all. She got up and left the room, because, suddenly and too slowly, it dawned on her that, in her attempt to shield her heart from a pain she could not possibly bear, she'd avoided everything as if she'd already lost it – and time had not taken pity on her. On any of them. Thirteen weeks gone, slipped from her now swollen fingers.
She could not afford any more running.
"Three months!" she started, barging into the shed the Doctor had built for himself. Once an alien, always an alien, in every way. The door slam made him jump and freeze, hands mid-way on what seemed like a complicated weld, sitting on the floor in complete darkness. The only light that revealed him came from behind Rose. "Three months, I've—It's been thirteen weeks…!"
The Doctor, apparently, couldn't follow her train of thought, so he continued to stare at her with his mouth shut. Funny enough, that was her tipping point. She groaned until her throat trembled and stomped her way to his spot, trapping him with her hands on his cheeks.
"I'm scared too," Rose said and chased his eyes as soon as he tried to shy them away, "but this is ridiculous."
"I beg your pardon?" he frowned, then said.
"Doctor…"
Her legs and back grew tired from being bent over, so she let go of his face and sat down. He instinctively helped her, guiding and supporting her arms. They didn't want to let go, so they didn't. The Doctor took shelter in their grip and Rose allowed him to. She wasn't having the easiest of times trying to think of how to start, herself. It was a good two minutes before she spoke again.
"We can't keep doing this. Closing off. I won't let us," she said. The Doctor breathed in to contribute, but she kept on. "We can't change it, any of it, and it just—it's not fair… But it's not the end, not yet."
"Rose–"
"I've been so stupid. This thing, it's not—I can't fight it, and it's taking you away, and all I've done–" she started crying; her hormones weren't helping. "I've let it take you away… I've lost three months of you… Three bloody months! And you're here, and I'm in there, listening to my mum and some woman gossip and having tea and doing nothing–"
"You're not stupid," he interrupted. "But I think we both are pretty thick…"
They chuckled. Even if just a bit. The Doctor squeezed his hold and it was Rose's turn to look away.
"It's my job to take all the blame, Rose. I'm also the one hiding in here, when I could be doing nothing with you. Anything other than sitting here in the dark. But there's no way I'm staying in there while your mother clucks away."
Rose smiled a little more. Now the Doctor took a moment to think of what to say.
"I've been taking pills to counter it," he confessed in a very quiet voice. "Half the time, it doesn't work, and it's an entirely different decaying, and self-medicating isn't what a doctor would recommend, but extreme cases…"
"What kind?" Rose asked. It was nothing new he kept secrets in his silence, just like a child did to hide something they new better than to show.
"Mostly cholinesterase inhibitors and NMDA antagonists. They don't reverse it, only help manage the symptoms, or some of them, but it's kept me going for longer than I'd anticipated."
He said it with such nonchalance that Rose felt her stomach churn.
"How are you getting them? You've never set foot on a pharmacy. Or held real money."
"Oh, I have my ways," he smirked. Rose's stare told him she was having none of it, and he shook his head. "Doctor Jones."
"Martha?"
"Yeah. She's—I didn't want to get her involved. But she's very curious on her own. And the only other doctor I'd trust me with. Turns out I was nearly poisoning myself at first, so she's guiding me through it—such a complex thing, the human brain…"
He was smiling too, Rose saw. How he'd loved her – and every companion he had before and after herself. It surprised her, even to this day, how much the two broken hearts she knew at first could hold so much affection, even through time, space, and dimensions.
But she couldn't ask for Donna, even though she could already see those shadows blacking out his eyes. It was, after all, one same chain of thoughts, from one end to the other. She brushed his hand with her thumb and he slowly dropped his shoulders back down. The smile was gone.
They stayed deep in thought and quiet, together. After a long time of constant noise, their heads were finally quieting down as well. The Doctor's thumb circled around Rose's ring, his own already chipped and discolored, but still very much there.
"What do we do?"
There was hope in her voice. After their time apart, the Doctor doubted he could read her as well as during their life in the TARDIS. But her core was still the same woman, just like she'd seen with him. No matter the years, no matter the fights, he would be able to pick apart her emotions. Understand them, perhaps not, but recognize them, always. He slowly parted his hand from hers and let it rest upon Rose's softly bloated belly.
"What do you wanna name him?"
"Him?" Rose's heart skipped one long beat. The Doctor just smiled and brushed little circles over her jumper. Rose's eyes filled with tears once more and she sank into his embrace, marveling at how much she'd missed the smell of tea, oil and stars from his neck. He clung to her in a similar way from the hug that had started their need to keep the other safe, but there were no bruises this time. Only half-repressed sobs and small sighs of relief.
Martha Jones was brilliant, in this universe and any other. There would be no cure, but her studies had found there was another way to produce acetylcholine in the Doctor's brain artificially, which allowed him to live on extra borrowed time. Her research would help Alzheimer's patients all over the world. She was going places. They never met this Donna, never stepped foot on Chiswick, but once crossed paths with this Wilfred. The Doctor failed to recognise him.
Once he forgot Pete's name, they moved back to the flat. Jamie was ten months old. He started asking for Susan almost daily. He ate pears and made no flourish about it. He stopped bringing up planets and stopped asking where they were. Some words didn't come out of his mouth in English. He rarely finished eating and didn't realise when the sun came or went. But he never let go of Rose's hand – or Jamie's.
No one from the outside noticed anything out of the ordinary. Rose could barely see his frame anymore.
Jamie was two years old when the Doctor sat by the window during a hot, foggy morning and nodded. They drove, both boys sitting on the back seat, Jackie only a phone call away. She could only see their son through the rear-view mirror. Jamie brought along his bathing suit, but the Doctor left his sonic at home. There were no clouds on the beach.
It had to be a beach. It always was.
They stayed until sunset. Jamie called his mum every now and then to show her something he'd found, and asked his dad to put more sunscreen on him. When he decided he wanted to splash around with the waves, Rose and the Doctor stood up to watch him close. The waves were getting closer to their feet with every sway and Jamie giggled as he tried to follow them.
The Doctor sighed contently. Rose heard him and smiled along.
When she looked to her side, he'd faded away. One third, last time.
Rose bit her lip, almost making herself bleed. She couldn't swallow, but she couldn't cry in front of their son. Yet she couldn't move away. Whatever anchor she'd prepared for this moment, the only thing keeping her standing and in one piece was her pain.
Jamie turned around to show them a star with a missing leg. Or arm, he questioned. He waved it in front of his dad and went back to the ocean. It was good, Rose thought as she brushed away a single tear she couldn't force back in, that only she couldn't see him anymore, that only she saw it happen.
Rose squeezed her husband's hand. He wasn't there. But he had been, up until the end.