fresh face
No. No this wasn't happening... it wasn't happening again Rose thought clinging to Jack for reassurance. This was the second time she'd watch the man that meant most to her in life change faces yet again.
Rose, he'd gasped with one of his last breaths reminding her bitter-sweetly of his ghostly words on bad wolf bay.
Tears poured silently down her cheeks as she watched that familiar energy pour from his fingertips and face, it made her whole body tingle and shiver sounding an eerie song in her mind from the distant past.
The energy faded leaving a stranger in its wake, bent forward in pain and anguish.
Rose looked on him with pity and sadness. He was so different... not to mention that great hair was gone forever. Taking shuddering breath she took shaking step towards him.
Hearing her steps he turned towards her and stood a little straighter. Green eyes stared back at her for the first time.
She smiled sadly. "Still not ginger." She murmured.
He smiled back equally softly with sadness in his eyes; little did she know there was a dark shadow where his heart used to be. Little did he know hers had shattered just that little bit more, the shards throbbing through her veins and digging through her flesh with every throb of the husk of a heart that was left.
"He's really gone?"
The stranger gulped and nodded slightly.
Rose sniffed in an undignified way but she didn't care, she was heartbroken once more. She nodded once. "I'll make you some tea." She said turning on her heal and leaving the engine room. She just needed a reason to leave, to escape that new doctor when she'd travelled across the stars to see the old one.
"Is someone going to tell me what the hell just happened?!" wailed a confused Donna, her voice echoing through the halls of the TARDIS.
Just as she was making the tea as the old doctor liked it she burst into tears again. Arms wrapped around her and she was buried in the chest of the stranger.
"You're not him." She murmured sadly.
"No." he replied simply.
She pulled back looking up into unfamiliar eyes that bore familiar pain and slid his tie off slowly, tossing it to the ground before pushing the suit jacket from his broader shoulders. She needed him to look different. It hurt too much to see him like this. Just as it hurt when her old doctor swam in that too large leather jacket. Un-tucking his crisp white shirt she finished with her make over.
"But I'm still the Doctor." He murmured his eyes showing understanding about her actions.
"You'd better be." she said with knowledge of the battle ahead, "But you're not my doctor."
"He loved you." he whispered.
She shivered with anger and fear then turned from him. "Stop it." she warned darkly. Those were the words she wanted to hear but they were from the wrong lips and murmured in a different tone. "Drink up, we've still got a war to win." she said heading for the exit.
"Rose..." he pleaded.
"What?" She said with quiet desperation that his next words wouldn't hurt her more.
"You're fantastically brilliant you know that?" He said with a grin and sipped his tea.
She smiled softly. "Yeah I do, thanks to them."
The Doctor's of her past.