She watched the TARDIS in front of her disappear and closed her eyes momentarily. It was hard to say good bye to him, especially knowing that he was headed for years of heartbreak alone and not to be able to help him now. He would find her eventually and she would help him then. But for now...
Rose took a deep breath. It was finally time. She was getting him back. Her Doctor, the one with the great hair and the gob. It was a comfort to prove to herself that she would love him no matter which face he wore. She was going to miss the posh accent, the light demeanor and even the velvet frock. And his extremely talented hands. She'd have to go about getting him to use those again, as soon as possible. She grinned cheekily to herself at that thought and pulled open the doors of the TARDIS.
Nothing could have prepared her for what she saw inside. Instead of seeing the warm, welcoming natural hues of her familiar TARIDS, she took in broken and blackened wood, dirt, grime and ash; the charred remains of what had once clearly been the beautiful console room she had just left. Books littered the floor and the console was smashed almost beyond recognition.
She gasped and ran inside, trying to feel the TARDIS with her mind. Eventually Rose found a small tendril of golden thought that hummed a pitiful greeting to her, weak and pained. Dropping her pack by the door, she turned around on the spot, tears filling her eyes, taking in the destruction and trying to figure out what to do. Where was she? When was she? And where was he?
The TARDIS hummed weakly at her again, directing her attention to the back of the room.
She cried out loud. Lying amid the rubble of the console room was a familiar figure dressed in familiar clothes although the two didn't mesh very well. Her first Doctor, who she now understood to be the Ninth, was lying, battered, bruised and bleeding in the too-small, tattered remains of his previous incarnation's clothes. He must have just regenerated. She shuddered looking at his injuries. If that's what they looked like now...she couldn't imagine what they had looked like before he regenerated.
She now understood when she was. The Time War had just ended and someone had to help the Doctor pick up the pieces. He had said that he needed her. She wouldn't let him down.
The TARDIS nudged her mind again and showed her a picture of a small room with a bed and medical supplies. It was not an image of the all-too familiar MedBay and Rose sent a query out. The TARDIS apologetically indicated that she couldn't support the entire MedBay or bring it closer in her own injured state. She had managed this small recovery room and pulled it right beside the console room, the door just behind the body of the Doctor.
Carefully climbing over the rubble, Rose picked her way to the Doctor's side and eyed the bed inside the next room. She had to get him there somehow. She didn't think the TARDIS would ask her to move him if it wasn't safe so she assumed that his spine would be all right. She cleared the wood fragments off his body and placed her arms through the loops of his shoulders from behind and pulled.
She half-carried, half-dragged him into the room and somehow managed to get him up onto the bed. Panting with the effort (she had never realized how HEAVY he was in this form - all solid, long limbs), she sunk down on the floor next to the bed. Seeing him so injured, this him, the first one she had loved, was terrifying and overwhelming and she wanted nothing more than to have a good cry.
No. She couldn't do that now. She needed to be strong for him.
After catching her breath, she stood and examined the table next to the bed. The TARDIS had provided her with some antiseptic cleaning tools, bandages, a stack of those horrid energy bars and, to her surprise, a pair of mens tracksuit bottoms and a tshirt.
Well, obviously he couldn't stay in the bloody, torn remnants of his past life but that meant she was going to have to change him. She inclined her head and blushed a bit.
So what if she had seen the last version of him naked on several counts? This version of him wouldn't remember it and he was her first Doctor...all moody and gruff and completely off limits. Theirs had been a surreptitious love, all hidden glances, tentative flirts and words with double meanings or at least it had been for her. She had never seen this him unclothed and, curious as she was (Shireen's theories about blokes with big ears sprang, unbidden, to her mind), it felt like a line she shouldn't cross.
Still, it wouldn't be the first time she had undressed him unconscious. She blushed a bit more at the memory and her confession of a snuck glance at his new bony, lanky body and Howard's jimjams. That's how she had known what kind of pants to buy him.
She was also having a hard time imagining him, any version of him, in something so docile as tracksuit bottoms. It seemed wrong. But beggars couldn't be choosers and jeans and jumpers weren't exactly good clothes for lying in a hospital bed. She sighed. Undressing it was.
She carefully removed his clothing, painfully aware of his injuries and trying not to jar him too much. She also tried very hard not to think of the last time she had removed these same pieces of clothing not too long ago (for her anyway) under much happier circumstances. Ignoring her curiosity and the small surge of her libido, she left his tight, black boxer-briefs on and she felt a pang as she recognized them as a pair she had bought for him. Buying pants for a man...height of domestic, that was. This him would hate it.
Thanking her lucky stars that he had taught her about cleaning and bandaging during her time with him, she did her best to tend to the injuries on his legs, pulled the bottoms on him and continued the process on his torso, arms and face. Satisfied with her handiwork, she stepped into the loo the TARDIS had provided and washed his blood from her hands.
She splashed some cold water over her face and stared at herself in the mirror. This was going to be difficult. What could she say to him when he woke up? He wouldn't remember who she was, his Eighth self had told her as much and, in his damaged state, that could be very dangerous for both of them. It was hard to imagine him ever hurting her on purpose but even when she met the later version of this body, he had been moody and unpredictable and now so soon after the war...
Well anyway, she didn't think the TARDIS would allow him to do anything he would regret. She set her shoulders and walked back out to the console room, preparing to take care of his third heart (as she had heard him affectionately refer to the TARDIS) as she had the first two. With a tired murmur of suggestion from the ship, she started to clear away the rubble, making piles of debris and attempting to sort through the mess. Every now and then the TARDIS would hum an instruction at her or place a picture of an object in her mind.
Rose lifted, cleaned and cleared until she could no longer stand from exhaustion. Her hands and back ached. She surveyed the room. It was progress but there was still so much to do. And much of it was a job she could not accomplish alone. She needed the Doctor.
Glancing longingly back to where his familiar-yet-unfamiliar form laid unmoving in the bed, she briefly considered laying down with him, just to feel the comforting double beat of his hearts, the cool touch of his skin, the familiar smell of spice and Time...but if she was nervous about his general reaction to her being in the TARDIS, she couldn't imagine what would happen if he woke up with her in his bed.
A small cot and pink duvet appeared beside her. It wasn't much, but it would do. The TARDIS gave a small yellow whimper of apology and Rose gave the worn console a loving pat of appreciation. Without another thought, she fell back onto the cot and drifted into the dreamless slumber of exhaustion.
She continued this process for the next several days although how much time actually passed she wasn't sure. As he had so often told her, there was no day and night in the TARDIS so her time was passed by clearing the console room, sleeping in the cot, eating the bland bars, and tending to the Doctor. Every now and then she rolled him over, changed his bandages, and washed his wounds. She marvelled at his healing rate, many of the bandages becoming unnecessary after her second "night" of sleep.
Sometimes when she felt too exhausted to clean but not tired enough to sleep, she would sit at his bedside, hold his hand and talk to him as if he could hear her. Slowly the TARDIS began to open up more rooms and Rose did her best to clear those as well.
After what she reckoned was the third day, she was beginning to get scared for him. He hadn't slept this long when he had regeneration sickness before. She even tried giving him some tea, to no avail. The TARDIS indicated that he would be fine without any other medical care, feeding tubes and such, and Rose was relieved that she wouldn't have to do anything complicated like that but she was feeling restless, inadequate, and lonely. Why wouldn't he wake up? Frustrated, she retired to her cot in the console room, preferring to be close to him and to the heart of the TARDIS rather than take one of the beds in a newly-reopened bedroom.
He awoke with a start, sitting straight up in bed. It was an unfamiliar bed, an unfamiliar room, unfamiliar clothes, and an unfamiliar him. Where was he? How had he gotten here? What happened?
Memories came crashing down around him and his battered mind rolled and boiled, trying to fend off the darkness of his immediate past. The fires, the screams, the burning, the smell of death all around...those caused by him and his own. The silence in his mind was maddening, unbearable. He cradled his unknown head in his new hands and futilely curled up into a ball until the torrent of thoughts abated, leaving him drained and gasping.
The newly healed skin over his former wounds was itchy and he ripped at the bandages covering his arms and face. How had they gotten there? Someone had gotten him to this room, tended to his injuries, and changed his clothes. Someone was on his ship. He frantically reached out with his barely cooperating mind and found an unfamiliar, heavily shielded mind docile in the console room.
He lurched out of the bed, new, untried legs struggling to support his weight. They were much longer than he was used to and this body was heavier and more dense although still slim. It was no longer the physique of an elegant gentleman but now that of a hard soldier. This body ached and he suspected it always would...a physical reminder of the mental anguish he was experiencing...and that he had wrought on everyone else. It fit him. The Destroyer. The Oncoming Storm.
He staggered to the doorway, winded by the effort, and his tortured eyes swept over the battered remains of his third heart. The TARDIS hummed weakly at him, a greeting and a lament combined. His hearts clenched as he saw that she was just as damaged as he. How long had he been out?
The room had been cleared up somewhat, piles of debris sorted neatly off to the side and much of the charred wood had been removed from the walls to reveal the organic, dimly lit coral structure underneath.
He was instantly and illogically furious. The emotion came quickly and easily to this body, surging through him, spurring him to do something, anything, and replacing all other thoughts. How dare someone else touch his ship. His brave, beautiful ship.
The TARDIS insistently prodded her mind and Rose reluctantly sat up on the cot. She didn't know how long she had been asleep but it hadn't been nearly enough. Why did she need to get up now? She turned her head slowly to the side and noticed the unsteady form of the Doctor leaning against the door frame into the console room, his eyes ghosting over the remains of his ship with slow, pained movements. He was awake! She wanted to run to him, to wrap her arms around him and share her joy but the TARDIS immediately sent her a strong negative and gave her a frantic warning. He was not himself. She needed to be careful.
She lowered her feet to the ground and stood up slowly, not wanting to startle him. The slight sound of her feet hitting the floor caused him to snap his head to the side and his blazing eyes nailed her in place. She froze and held her breath, feeling like an animal caught in a trap with a dangerous predator advancing on her.
"Who the hell are you?" he growled out in a harsh, Northern burr. The voice and the brashness of the words surprised him. The voice was rough and raw and again he felt that it fit, even if it was unexpected. He heaved his uncooperating body across the room to advance on the small, human-like female currently regarding him with large, unblinking eyes. The nose on this body seemed especially sensitive and he could smell her adrenaline and the slightly metallic scent of fear.
When he was barely half a meter away he snarled again. "I said, who the hell are you? Answer me," he demanded. She did not back away, simply stood and looked at him despite the smell of her fear.
"I'm a friend," Rose said, finding her voice and somewhere the courage to look him straight in the eye. He was radiating pain and power and he seemed barely in control of himself. She flashed back to Utah...and even then she hadn't been this frightened of him.
"I don't have any friends. They're all dead. Because of me. I killed them," he growled. He wanted to threaten her, to frighten her away. Whoever, whatever she was, she shouldn't be here. He would destroy her. He destroyed everything.
"I know," she said softly. She wanted to reach out and touch him, hold him and ease his pain but she knew she couldn't. Not now. Not for a long time. So she merely stood and watched.
He stared back at her. She couldn't know. Everyone that knew was dead. And she was just a human. A stupid little breakable, transient human where she didn't belong.
His mood swung to exhausted, defeated. "What d'you want?" he asked, suddenly very, very tired.
"I'm here to help," she said, kindness and compassion radiating through her voice. He felt it leaking through the shields of her mind. He pushed it violently away. He couldn't handle any mental contact.
"Why?" he asked, sad and confused. He didn't deserve help. He didn't deserve kindness. He couldn't handle compassion.
"Because you need me," she said simply, as if that answered everything.
"I don't need anyone. Certainly not some stupid ape," he barked, anger rising again instantly, striking out at her verbally. To his surprise, she didn't really react to the harsh name, just regarded him with sad, pitying eyes.
He didn't want her pity. He lashed out again. "Get out. Get the fuck out o' my TARDIS. I don't know who you are, I don't care who you are and I don't need you."
He stepped toward her violently, intending to grab her shoulders and force her out the doors when the grating beneath his foot rose up and tripped him, knocking his already shaky equilibrium and causing his new, unfamiliar body to fall, hard, to the ground.
The impact of hitting the ground jarred him enough for the memories that had been fighting their way past his barriers since he awoke to fully assail him once more and he whimpered and curled up in a ball again, tears streaming down his face.
She was by his side in an instant, sitting on the floor with her back to the console and pulling his head into her lap. He couldn't move, immobilized by his own internal demons and was forced to accept her comfort, her incredible warmth. Her hands were on his head, her fingers massaging what felt like closely-shorn, bristley hair and slowly she began to work her way into his mind, offering her barriers as his, taking his pain as her own, providing a buffer between him and the raging torrent of his anguish. He clung to her, mentally and physically and then he was unconscious.
Rose was fighting desperately at the effort of holding back his memories. The TARDIS had abandoned her repairs to help Rose instead and the two of them worked in tandem like two pieces of the same puzzle patching up his shattered shields, mending one section as another broke, trying to offer him some relief.
She was careful to stay on the outskirts, not to connect fully with his mind, knowing instinctively that it would overwhelm her. She could see the darkness roaring through him and what she had seen before as a bright, happy cerulean blue presence was instead a dark indigo, almost black. She could feel the TARDIS keeping a thin veil between their minds, protecting her from him just as she was protecting him from himself.
Finally, their patchwork bulwark held and the TARDIS nudged her from his mind, indicating that she could sleep. She closed her eyes immediately and leaned more fully against the console, keeping her fingers laced in the short strands of his dark hair and letting his weight against her leg comfort her.
The Doctor slowly awoke, drifting back into consciousness pulled by the very uncomfortable position of his body. He was awkwardly curled up on the hard metal grating of the console room floor with his head in the lap of the strange human. He could tell from the sound of her slow breathing that she was asleep, could smell her exhaustion and he sat up slowly, carefully shaking her hands from his head.
He stood, rather unsteadily, and regarded the girl in front of him. Asleep against the console she looked so peaceful and innocent. Why was she here? He could only ruin her. She had said she was here to help him. He didn't know her, didn't recognize her even if she felt distantly familiar to him. How had she gotten here? He couldn't remember much about the end of his past life and the beginning of this one but he certainly didn't think he'd popped by 21st century Earth to go companion shopping before collapsing.
And she had been in his head. He could feel the patches in his shields, shining bright and golden in the darkness of his mind. She shouldn't have been able to do that.
There was no one else on the ship, so it must have been her who had cleared up the console room and helped him when he had been unconscious. And changed his clothes. He looked down at the tracksuit bottoms and tshirt. That would never do. He needed something to wear. He couldn't understand or control the girl in the console room so he'd choose his new outfit. That was a decision he could make now, something he could control, something he could own.
Striding purposefully to the wardrobe room, he pushed all thoughts of her to the back of his cluttered, tangled mind. He ran his fingers over the clothes as he walked by, the textures assaulting sensitive, new nerve endings. They glided over velvet, satin, and soft cotton and settled on rough denim. He pulled a pair of dark jeans from the rack. Those would do. His fingers resumed their quest and found the scratchy wool of a black jumper. No elegant waistcoats or unnecessary cravats with this body. Hard and utilitarian, that's what he needed. Under the steps he found a pair of heavy black work boots.
Quickly and silently, without his accustomed preening he pulled the clothes on. He didn't look in the mirror when he was dressed. He couldn't bear to see himself, couldn't bear to look himself in the eye and see what he had become. He still felt incomplete, naked, unprotected and he was frustrated that he couldn't find anything to assuage the feeling in the wardrobe room.
He stormed back out to the console room to find the human awake and sorting through a pile of wires. She lifted her head when he appeared and her eyes widened in surprise, taking in his new appearance. She opened her mouth to speak but then closed it and simply watched him. He didn't know what to say so he simply turned from her and began working on a separate pile of debris, discarding useless bits, and cannibalizing salvageable pieces.
They worked in silence for the next few hours until his unused body began to protest at the exertion. He walked over, cleared off a spot on the pilot's bench to sit down, and studied the back of the blonde human.
Rose felt his eyes on her back and turned to face him. The silence had been deafening to her but she hadn't known how to breach it.
"Who are you?" he asked for the third time, more kindly than he had before, perhaps because he was tired or perhaps because he had accepted her presence.
She considered her answer. Merely telling him she was a friend didn't help the last time. Maybe if she gave him her name it would jog the memory of their time together. "Rose. Rose Tyler." She watched his face for a flicker of recognition, anything that would tell her she could run to him and embrace him as she had wanted to do from the moment she found him. She received none.
"All right then, Rose Tyler. How'd you get here?" He was quite proud of his calm questioning. In this volatile body he wasn't sure which way his emotions were going to swing next and he was relieved for this moment of placidity. The human was studying him very carefully as if she were waiting for something and weighing her words, choosing them with great deliberation.
Rose decided honesty was her best approach. This him had never been one to tolerate lying, even if he had excelled at it himself. She cleared her throat and took a step toward him. "You brought me here," she said.
His head, which had been drifting down to his hands, whipped up. The analytical part of his brain noted that she had moved about a meter closer to him. "Rubbish. I don't even know who you are." For some reason, those words seemed to hurt her. He saw the pain flash in her eyes momentarily before she covered it up and took a breath.
Rose tried to cover her momentary pang of sadness at his admission. She knew that had been a long shot but it had been worth trying to get out of this conversation. Life with him was so complicated.
"Not this you specifically," she said, rubbing her temples and edging still closer to him. Tired as well, she wanted to sit down and wondered if he would let her sit next to him on the bench. There was plenty of room...she wouldn't even be touching him, no matter how much she wanted to.
"You're from my future, then?" he asked, wearily putting the pieces together, his eyes drifting to the unfamiliar red pack by the cot and noting again that she had moved closer.
Past and future, Rose thought. However, she didn't correct him. If her relationship with him in the future was complicated, her new one with his past was even more complicated. Telling him that he forgot her might harm his fragile ego and forcing him to remember, if she could even do that, might hurt his mind.
The Doctor knew he should look at her Timeline and confirm her story but using his Time sense was too painful. He could look in her memories but seeing that much of his future, if that's where she came from, was dangerous and he wasn't sure he could manage any sort of telepathic connection right now anyway. Being in her mind would be dangerous for her and dangerous for him.
And at the moment, he didn't want to accept that he had a future, that he would ever be more than the hollow shell of a man he felt like right now.
"How can I possibly have a future?" he asked, with his head in his hands, sounding so battered, so hopeless that she swayed on the spot, wanting to reach out to him.
"It gets better. I promise," she said softly, wishing so badly to touch him, to hold him, but merely settling for cocking her head to the side a bit. He looked up to see her studying him carefully and it felt as though she were seeing directly into his soul. It wasn't fair, her seeing him like that when he literally had no idea who she was.
The Doctor rocketed to his feet, angry again in an instant. Surprised at his unexpected movement, Rose scurried back from him. "Better?" he spat. "How can it possibly get better? I've lost everything!"
"Not everything," she said in an even voice.
"I have nothing!" he shouted. "No planet, no family, no future!"
"You have me," she said, quietly. She was standing there by the console staring up at him with eyes so deep, so honest that he wanted desperately to believe her.
He looked at her as if he was seeing her for the first time and something ancient and unfamiliar flared in his mind. He had just had everything taken away from him and suddenly he was filled with the primal urge to possess, to claim, to bind, and immediately what he wanted was her. He should be appalled at the thoughts coursing through his mind and at the way his biology was reacting, but this body was mercurial and now fixated.
"You're mine?" he growled at her, his voice taking on a low, husky quality she thought she recognized and taking a step forward.
Rose watched him carefully. Just a second ago he had been shouting at her and now he was randy? She was fairly certain that he had just growled at her. And there was no mistaking the intent of his eyes; they were dark black pools of desire with only a glimpse of blue around the edge.
She felt a flash of longing, remembering the last time he looked at her like that. She saw him sniff the air and remembered what he had told her about the pheromones she gave off when she wanted him. There was something new in his icy blue eyes, however. A hint of predator, a tinge of madness, perhaps. He took another step toward her and she automatically retreated from him, hitting her back against the exposed coral wall.
"Answer me," he commanded, advancing until he was right in front of her, bending so his face was inches from hers. Rose told herself that she should absolutely not be turned on by his aggressive, demanding behavior but she flushed again as her eyes moved down from his dark pupils to his lips, her tongue flicking out to wet her own before she looked back up at him. His nostrils flared again as he breathed in deep and he closed his eyes. She wasn't sure what had gotten into her, whether it was seeing him, this him, actually wanting her or if it was the remnants of the connection she had shared with his past or something deeper, something new, but she wanted him. She was almost quivering with need for him and he hadn't even touched her yet.
"Yes," she whispered to him, letting the word hang in the scant few inches that separated their bodies. He was much taller than his predecessor, no longer at the perfect kissing height and so when he surged forward suddenly, unexpectedly pinning her against the wall, his need pressed insistently against her stomach instead of her thigh.
"Didn't quite hear you, going to have to repeat it," he murmured gravelly in her ear, letting his tongue dart in and grinding against her, causing her to jerk against him. Her body was so hot even through the fabric of her clothes, it was warming him, as the gorgeous, overwhelming scent of her surrounded him, clouding his senses further. He pushed his knee between her legs.
"Yes!" she cried, louder this time, her voice filled with filthy promise, grinding against his leg. She reached up and grabbed his large-feeling ears, pulling his mouth to her own. He met her with bruising force, taking complete control, plundering her blazing mouth with his, using his cool tongue to forcefully explore every inch of her available to him. There was no thought here. He was running on instinct, instinct he shouldn't have, instinct that had been buried away in centuries of Time Lord restraint.
He wasn't sure what had gotten into him. Time Lords didn't growl, didn't grind, didn't lust and certainly didn't know exactly how to make random humans aroused. But he seemed to know precisely what to do with his tongue to elicit gorgeous noises from her and very shortly she was using her hands to do the same to him. He was missing something important here but he couldn't bring himself to care. He was too far gone.
Enough games. He reached between them to undo the closure on his jeans, releasing his straining erection, glad that he hadn't bothered finding any pants as she toed off her trainers and then he reached out to fiercely repeat the action on her, dragging off her own jeans and knickers.
Moving his hands around to her bum, he lifted her off the floor and she obligingly wrapped her legs around his waist. Without preamble or warning, the Doctor grunted something in Gallifreyan the TARDIS didn't translate and thrust into her forcefully, as though he were burying his anger, his pain, his loneliness between her thighs, rippling automatically.
Rose cried out in pained surprise at the sudden aggressiveness of his entrance, trying to adjust to his size. "You, you're bigger," she panted to him. They both cried out again as he rippled, spurred by her words. How could she...unless they'd already...he tried to think, to work his way through her sentence but the feel of her around him, slick and smooth and the overwhelming smell of her arousal were replacing all his coherent efforts.
It wasn't enough. He needed more. He growled in frustration. And then she raised her hips against his and did something completely unfamiliar to him, making him grunt into her hot mouth, a distant memory pulling at him. "More," she whispered. He buried his head in her hair and breathed in deep, the smell of her driving him mad.
The primal urge he had felt before took control again and suddenly he was pounding into her, ancient instinct overtaking him, shouting the same word again and again, working desperately toward release, in and out, in and out, rippling more powerfully than he had thought possible. He didn't know what she needed and he hoped he wasn't hurting her, because some utterly terrifying part of him didn't think he could stop even if he was. With a raging possessiveness, he was claiming her, branding her, making her irrevocably his . He had nothing left in this universe but she would be his and only his.
He was close, so close. Before he could stop himself, the Doctor worked his way into her mind, past her defenses and burned the Gallifreyan word in her mind, accompanying the action with a feral bite to the junction of her shoulder and neck and clinging to her, fiercely nipping and sucking to accompany the powerful hurricane of his release marking her for all to see.
His bite sent her over the edge and Rose cried out at the sensations all around her, of him exploding in her mind and in her body, her world shattering into a thousand brilliant pieces as she followed him. They stood there, panting, as the world struggled to right itself, locked together at the waist, chests heaving.
Some unknown part of her had clicked together with whatever he had just done and she knew something important had just happened but she didn't know what and couldn't ask him yet, couldn't seem to manage any words.
The mood shifted suddenly and the Doctor retreated from her, both mind and body, as though he had been burned. She slid down the wall unexpectedly and he righted his trousers, staring down at her with something akin to shock. That was not the look she was hoping to see. Not at all.
He staggered back from her. What had he just done? Here he was, last of the Time Lords, having just done something that no Time Lord in his right mind ever would have considered. Some way to uphold the legacy of his people, throwing all their beliefs out the window in the face of tiny little human, letting his base desires control his actions. Of course, he had never cared about their traditions, their customs before...why should he start caring now?
He knew why. Knew with a certainty that burned in his mind, slowly eroding the narrow foothold he was keeping on his sanity.
Because they were gone. All gone.
Because of him.
Maybe he wasn't in his right mind.
And even more than that, whoever this girl from his future was, he had taken her trust in him and just...claimed her, permanently branded her. Without even asking. She had wanted him, that much was clear, but she wouldn't understand the significance of what they had just done. In fact, he wasn't sure he understood it himself.
He hated the universe for doing this to him. But more than that, he hated himself.
And so, he turned on his heel and stormed from the room, slamming the door to the small MedBay shut behind him and collapsing on the bed. He crammed one of the energy bars in his mouth without really tasting it. This new stomach was unsettled and in as much turmoil as his mind but he needed to eat something, superior biology or not. He hadn't eaten in days.
He was exhausted, physically, mentally and emotionally, and he wanted nothing more then to fall asleep and never wake up again. Why did he need so much sleep? He'd never slept this much before. Of course, if he slept now and didn't wake up, then he wouldn't have to face the human. Or the TARDIS. Or the Time Lord-less universe. That seemed like a good idea. He fell back on the bed and let the nightmares consume him.
