Moonlight Serenade
«Her name was Rose.» He pronounced the word, his voice trembling, and entered the TARDIS, closing the doors behind him and leaning heavily against them.
It had been a long day, everything happening in such a rush that he still hadn't had the time to take in what had occurred at Canary Wharf and the beach of Dårlig Ulv-Stranden. They hadn't been still a moment, he and Donna, and for some brief moments it seemed to him that nothing had changed; the same adventures, the same routine, a person by his side who made him feel less lonely. He'd asked Donna to travel with him in a moment of desperation, as if everything could really go back to the way it was before, just by inviting another person in the TARDIS. He wanted to banish the thoughts that consumed him, the pain he felt. He was tired of always ending up alone, of losing all the people he loved.
But she hadn't accepted. It was fair enough, in the end. He couldn't run forever. He sighed.
So he was alone again, he and the TARDIS, like it always had been and would always be. He headed towards the console, caressing its borders and brushing its shiny handles. At that point Rose would have asked excitedly what the next stop would be, giving him that smile that warmed and gratified him so much. He would have smiled back and chosen the most sensational corner of the universe just to see the light that flared in her eyes again. They would have hopped out of the TARDIS towards a new adventure. They would have laughed, run, fought for their lives and they would have come back, hand in hand.
Not anymore.
He held Rose's purple shirt in his hands. He didn't know when he had picked it up, but now he was grasping it like it was an anchor on which his salvation depended. And it was. It was keeping him away from the abyss. If he didn't want to fall, he had to hold tight to every memory he had of her. How did he end up like this, living in fragments of memory?
He loosened his grip on the soft material of the shirt to start the TARDIS engine, picking a random destination. He just wanted to leave Earth and travel between the spirals of the Time Vortex, among every age and place, neither out nor into them. Lonely traveler in his blue box.
The console room lights softened a bit and music filled the air. He closed his eyes, savouring the melody with a sad smile. It was the Moonlight Serenade by Glenn Miller, with whose music they had danced so long ago, when he still was the previous version of himself; when everything was so perfect.
The sun set early at Bergen in that time of the year and the raw landscapes of that part of Norway combined to create a sort of melancholy aura above the city, while the last scarlet trails of light blurred the low clouds.
Rose was in her hotel room, sitting on the bed, watching the sky turning dark through the glass of the window. She fleetingly thought about the events at the beach, letting the sound of the sea cradle her in her memories, the ride back darkened by a heavy and thick silence. They'd decided to stop for the night and continue the journey at sunset, so they'd hired some rooms.
She'd sent away Mickey and Jackie. She only wanted to be left alone. Now that she was, she was wondering if it had really been a good idea; if it would have been better to accept their offer of company. But what was the point? The pain was alive and it wasn't going away so, she may as well face it now.
She took off her sweater, digging in the pockets to find a key hung on a string: the TARDIS key, given to her by the Doctor. She clenched it between her fists until it was almost painful. It was all ended. The next day she would have woken up in that new universe, and the day after again, and the one after that. No more adventures in space, no more aliens. No more him, which was everything that mattered.
In a moment she'd lost him, and it felt like being drowned in a violent sea, slowly and inexorably.
She stood up, striving to keep the memories of that day in an isolated recess of her mind, and she walked towards the large radio, at least twenty years old, whose only purpose seemed to be accumulating dust on a walnut dresser. She turned it on with little hope of its functioning, but after a little series of cracklings, a disturbed but loud sound came out. She turned the handles, searching for a clear frequency, but it seemed there weren't any; she was about to give up when the croaky noise faded to leave a clear and distinguishable signal.
She recognized the song after only a moment, the Moonlight Serenade by Glenn Miller. Unbelievable, she thought. Prompted by the music, the images that she'd kept away till that moment forced their way out, hitting her with a devastating emotional charge. The tears held back were burning behind her eyelids, threatening to run down her cheeks.
He imagined her opposite him, reaching out to him, just like the last time they danced to that song, and he could almost feel her arms resting on his shoulders.
His Rose, stubborn and proud, to the point of leaving her own mother, her whole former life to be with him. She'd scared him to hell. She completely opened up to him, thus forcing him to face his own feelings for her. She was human, she was frail, he knew he could have lost her and in spite of that he couldn't stop himslef from loving her; she slowly took place in his hearts, which beat solely for her.
He was slowly moving around the console, dancing certainly better than the last time they'd danced together, he thought with irony. He could see her blond hair being ruffled in the breeze and her cheerful gaze, only for him. A sun? he would have burnt a whole galaxy to admire that serene face again.
She smiled imagining the Doctor's dark eyes before her while she moved her feet in time with the music. His hands would have been on her sides, in a firm but delicate grip, that would have made her feel safe and protected, as they always had.
He'd tried to keep her safe till the very end, sending her to the parallel universe against her will. She wasn't angry. In that moment she'd understood how much he cared for her; he would have preferred having her distant and unreachable but safe, rather than with him and in danger.
She thought again about his expression on the beach, the sadness she'd seen burning in his eyes, a reflection of the grief in hers. She couldn't even touch him, not even a small caress. She raised a hand in mid air, placing it on a cheek that wasn't there.
He felt the pain piercing him like needles in response to the light touch of an imaginary hand, denied that day on the beach. Dårlig Ulv-Stranden, he sadly remembered. Dalek? He'd said. He'd had enough dealing with Daleks during that day, after they'd crumpled his existence again like wastepaper.
What was left of all the time together? About two minutes. Two minutes to say goodbye, to see each other for the last time. He grazed with his lips that hand not really present, feeling a shiver run down his spine, while the music kept guiding his mind along that steep and painful path.
She didn't know what to say. There was nothing to say, really. It would have been fine for him to just simply look into her eyes during that brief time, in a dialogue without words, and yet one which they could understand perfectly.
She thought of the face he made when she'd told him that there were five, the trembling in his look at the thought. No, stupid. Obviously not. There could never be someone else, not after you. She'd smiled. For a moment she wondered how it could have been having a family with him. The thought made her shiver, not for itself, but for the awareness of all the ifs and maybes drifting away like smoke in the wind, of a future that abruptly changed direction, overwhelming her.
She'd told him she would have stayed with him forever. He'd smiled at her. She believed it, with all her heart. Forever. That word echoed in her head while she explained him she would have worked for the Torchwood Institute. Defender of the Earth, he'd told her proudly.
She never felt important or special in her life, until she received for the first time that proud look; then she felt she was worth something, that her life was headed in the right direction. And it was all thanks to him, to that first time they met in the basement of the shop.
All thanks to him. She bowed her head, pretending it was resting on his chest. Even so, she knew that she would never embrace him again.
A solitary tear slid down his cheek, a fellow of all the other ones he hadn't shed on that day while he was telling her she wouldn't see him again.
But she was alive. It was a sincere relief that he felt hearing the sound of his own words. Back home she was on the official list of the dead, but she was alive, ready to take each day as it came; the adventure he could never have but had desired so much in those rare moments of weakness, in which he pretended not to be the last of the Time Lords but just the Doctor with Rose Tyler; the rare occasions during which he surrendered to the double-edged claws of dreams.
He breathed in deeply, trying to recall her hair's scent, and he imagined to hold her tightly like the time he thought he'd trapped her in an impossible planet in orbit around a black hole. The first time he seriously dreaded to lose her.
«I love you.» She whispered with a broken and almost inaudible voice. She'd said the same words on the beach. She had to tell him, for herself. She'd been selfish. She caused him more pain than he already felt, but she had needed to let him hear it.
She loved him. He could say he already knew it, but hearing it from her own lips had a heady effect on him. He couldn't even hug her.
He remembered the struggle raging inside him, while he was unhelpfully looking for what to say, what to do. Then he'd realized he just wanted one thing in that moment and he decided that for one time, just once, he would have acted on instinct, egotistically, because he needed to let her hear that words too, to open up to her totally and unconditionally.
«Rose Tyler…» he repeated in a whisper, as he did on the beach a moment before the connection cut off, leaving him in pieces facing the TARDIS console, with the words dead in his throat and his breath taken away.
His hand was in mid air, cupping in the empty space a face that wasn't there anymore. «I love you.»
Raising on her tiptoes she placed a desperate kiss on those lips made of air and memories.
The music stopped.
The music stopped.
A special thanks to a href=".net/u/1383700/"The Golden Phoenix Song/a, beta reader of this fanfiction.
:)