Title: Stand
Author: Shen
Character/Relationships: Ten/Rose, TenII
Rating: PG
Summary/Notes: Written from the prompt "We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell," an Oscar Wilde quote. Post-JE angst - What do you do when your world's been turned on its head? For round one, challenge three of Whover Last Author Standing, on LiveJournal.
The Doctors lies on his back.
He's limped as far as the console room's jump seat, but like a sedan that burns the last of its petrol an exit short of the station, he sputtered and stalled before reaching the double doors.
Here he lies, or he reclines, but does not laze. "Laze" belies a limpness, a lack of tension. His jaw muscle twitches with the stuff, as a tired mind trudges eternally over an event in his memory.
He left her. In a fit of self-pity and fear, consumed by thoughts of her mortality, he dropped her and ran. He thought it would be okay, at the time - better than okay. He had lost her once before and almost learned to cope. And since his clone, an inconvenient reminder of humanness and Donna-ness, was deposited with her, she would be better off than ever. Certainly better than after the last separation.
But his great brain could only ignore the details for so long. Being separated by circumstance hurts like hell; he knew that. Now he's learned that being the knowing instrument of that separation is a larger pain, making one feel the distance much more keenly. But for Rose, being tricked onto a beach and abandoned, protesting, by someone she loved and trusted and worked for years to find is another animal entirely. Even if she learns to love his duplicate more deeply than the original, that betrayal will leave an indelible wound. So, partnered to the Doctor's crushing loneliness, his guilt waltzes a wide circle through his mind.
Outside is probably something new, maybe something exciting, and definitely a mystery to him as of yet. He's usually eager to unwrap whatever gift - or curse - the TARDIS' randomizer gives him, but not right now. Right now, the Doctor lies on his back. He's not sure when he'll get to that portal. Because in a life measured in centuries, what's twenty more minutes of brooding? What's that small self-indulgence, measured against all his wrongs?
Rose sits.
Her very seat's presence is a sentence, it seems. Gaol, or purgatory, served up for her crimes. It's this desk, in Torchwood, in a foreign dimension turned familiar. This is it, for her. A foray into the field, a fancy holiday, or a physical affliction might take her away, but she'll always return to this desk, or one like it, until she's too old or dead to do it anymore.
Was hers a crime of passion? Vanity? What had possessed her, in that moment, to presume that her preferences mattered? As the Doctor lay before her, in pain, she should have been praising his genetics for allowing regeneration. Praising whatever chance of physics had let him receive only a glancing blow instead of a full extermination blast.
Instead of telling him it would be okay, she whimpered over losing cherished hands and hair, losing facial features long-memorized in sun and rain and the dim light of a TARDIS bedroom. So he perverted the process for her, and their combined foolishness created what would become a whole new man, fresh to the world and needing a place in it.
It was the Doctor's hand and his and Donna's energy, but her selfishness started it all. She'd essentially given him a reason to leave her again... or maybe an excuse. And so far, she hasn't even done a good job of cleaning up her own mess. The sight of him but not him, his mannerisms with her idiosyncrasies of speech, throws Rose so badly, she hasn't yet grown close to the man. Her guidance has been shamefully poor as he settles in, and she can't thank her mother enough for stepping up. It's not his fault, after all.
So, as the clock ticks down the day, here, in a building exactly as large as it looks on the outside, on what's probably the only planet she'll ever see again, Rose sits, until she can drive home and eventually go to her bed - alone.
Doctor Smith stands.
Sun streams onto the grounds of the Tyler mansion as he looks out the window, passing the time until bed. Now that a prodigious amount of paperwork and database edits has been completed, he'll start work tomorrow. Work, a career, a day-to-day drudgery he spent centuries specifically avoiding. But perhaps it will be all right. And if not, perhaps he deserves it, for the part he played in getting here.
His behavior, however justified, had frightened the other Doctor. Whether the man had been scared of Doctor Smith or scared of what his acts suggested about the savagery ensconced in his own heart, Smith will never know. But he was aware that he would be cast aside. The look in the Doctor's eye bespoke as much, post-slaughter. He wouldn't want to look at his clone any more, and there wasn't much Smith could have done to change that.
But... Smith didn't have to be party to what the other one did to Rose. With Smith's assistance, they were both thrown aside.
His former self told Rose that he was broken, that she would need to help him, but now he sees that's not quite right. He's been engineered for stability, a melange of human and Time Lord perspectives and advantages, whereas her human heart's been broken one too many times, he thinks. And they're both spirits of wanderlust trapped in a situation that is wrong. So he stands, ready to walk into this world and make himself his own man. He and Rose will each cope, no matter what - he has that much faith in her - but he hopes maybe they can help each other. That they can stand together, one way or another.