Author's Note: the inspiration for this came from a picture on Tumblr. I wrote it in one sitting, so please forgive any spelling errors. I've checked it over a few times, but I always seem to miss one or two - sorry 'bout that. Anyway, I really love this one so any reviews would be greatly appreciated!
Spoilers: None, but takes place after Doomsday (otherwise known as the episode that still makes me cry).
Disclaimer: Not mine. Damn!
He's found it by accident.
Leaving Rose on that beach has done something irreparable to him, severed a string that wrapped so tightly around his heart that he feels as though he is bleeding freely from its loss. He imagines he can see it, sometimes, that ephemeral string billowing in a non-existent breeze as it stretches away from him, reaching out for the other half of itself that is trapped in a parallel universe.
He takes the TARDIS out into the stars, losing himself amongst faraway galaxies, but he can't escape the pain; he carries it with him like a tattoo, an invisible brand on his hearts. The song that is the voice of the TARDIS hums inside his mind, a lament where once there was a lullaby. He wonders if she is singing for his pain, or for the loss of Rose; he doesn't think it matters, because they are the same thing.
(How long are you gonna stay with me?)
The TARDIS stalls one day, not long after the disaster in Norway, and he can't make her move no matter how he coaxes, demands or curses. The old girl has stopped, and nothing he does will make her respond to him. Irritated, dejected, he stomps to the door and throws it open, dropping onto his butt and dangling one long leg over the edge into space.
When he looks up, his throat constricts and he's torn between laughter and tears. Okay, maybe he hasn't found it by accident.
The Doctor is staring out at a mass of stars, relatively young ones at that, and the shape they have formed seems both beautiful and cruel: a rose. The space around them is not really red, as it appears to his eyes, but a result of ultraviolet light from the hot cluster stars around them. He cares nothing for the science of it, though, because he sees a rose and nothing else.
He wishes, with a forcefulness that could destroy suns (and has), that he could call out over his shoulder and tell her to join him; he wishes that she were here to answer.
(Forever.)
He tries to distract himself with new planets and problems, new truces to negotiate and species to be saved, but he only has one heart. The other is lying on a beach in Norway – in Bad Wolf Bay, of all things – and refuses all of his calls to quit mucking about and carry on.
The Doctor finds himself returning to the Rosette Nebula more often than he cares to admit. Rosette, he thinks, so close to the right name. He goes back to remember; he sits on the ledge of the TARDIS and remembers aloud, as if to tell all of time and space that she was there once, even if she can't be now. He tells the galaxies of her laughter, her determination, her adorable jealousy; he traces the remembered lines of her body with one finger, pretending that he doesn't ache with the pain of wishing it was her skin beneath his hand and not the empty air.
He is frightened to admit the things he would do, the lengths he would go to, if he could bring her back; those are truths better left unsaid, and yet his silence doesn't make them any less true.
(If you talk to Rose, tell her …)
He has no idea what's brought him here, but he has a hunch that his ship has something to do with it.
The Doctor is standing in Rose's room for the first time since he lost her, and it tears him apart the second he's inside because it still smells like her. Her possessions are still as she left them: pink jacket hanging over the back of a chair, a single boot peeking toe-out from beneath the bed, even a towel thrown carelessly over the edge of the bed.
He doesn't want to be here, but he can't make himself leave.
Everything in this room looks like it's just waiting for her to return; it looks like he feels, as if it's in a perpetual state of limbo. He can feel grief building within him that masks itself as rage and wants to upend everything in sight, but he can't bring himself to touch it.
He closes his eyes and for just a second she is there, accusing him of bad driving with that evil glint in her eye that he loves so much. When he opens them again, a slip of black - so incongruous within the sea of color - catches his eye. He is drawn to it, the way one is drawn to something that seems familiar for reasons long forgotten.
His hand touches leather and when he pulls on it, a large jacket falls into his arms from a half open closet door. The sight of it drives him to the floor: he remembers her horror at his regeneration, her loyalty to that incarnation of him with big ears and a northern accent. He had known then that she loved him, even in the early days. He can still clearly hear her protestations that he is not her Doctor; he can still feel the ghost of her exclamations like vibrations on his skin when he'd proved it to her a few nights later, again and again and again until her doubts were erased and she had no more breath to speak.
The Doctor in the pinstripe suit presses his face into the worn leather jacket; there is no one to see him weep.
(Oh, she knows.)
He finally manages to make his way back to Earth, to London, even, and then he steps out of the TARDIS to find that she has landed him right in front of the Powell Estates. He takes a deep breath, welcoming the pain like a favorite sweater, but the air carries the scent of chips and he is sweeping back into his beloved police box amidst a cloud of obscenities, his strength and tranquility fleeing.
Around and around the console he spins, hollering that his ship is being cruel on purpose, that she is torturing him and please won't she just stop because he is broken and doesn't know how to carry on; the lights pulse steadily in a silent show of comfort but he needs to blame someone, and the TARDIS is all he has.
When he finally gets a hold of himself he apologizes to the stillness, but he does not venture outside again. His feet carry him to the kitchen and he starts to make tea from muscle memory. The rage and the grief have died down just enough to let him hear her voice, a whisper pulled from his memory that wraps around him: you can never have enough tea.
He knows that he cannot allow the torment to rule him for much longer: there are peoples and worlds out there that still need to be met and explored, probably even saved. He is a being of action, a creature of movement and adventure and experience, and that hasn't changed just because he is devastated. Besides, she is out there somewhere, his beautiful Defender Of The Earth, and what would she think of him if he retreated into despair?
The day is coming when he will pull himself up by the lapels (the same lapels she used to use to pull him against her lips) and throw himself back into life, but today is not that day.
Not yet.
(I could save the world, but lose you.)
This is his last visit to the Rosette Nebula.
He plots the course in the TARDIS navigation system and then makes his way to her room; he will lock it up after this and tell the TARDIS to hide it, because as long as he can find it he will never stop coming. He spends the trip surrounded by the physical reminders of her and only emerges when his ships pings to let him know they've arrived.
The key burns his hand as he locks the door one last time.
He takes up his familiar perch on the door ledge and takes out the wallet she gave him so long ago. They have filled it with pocket -sized pictures, all tucked neatly into plastic sleeves, and he spends a long time flipping through them in silence. He'd once insisted that he didn't see the need for pictures, and he's never been more grateful for Rose's insistence that he trust her and do as she said.
When he's done flipping through the pictures he stands and takes a last look at the nebula; then he goes back to the console and types in a new course.
He's spent a long time looking for the right galaxy, the perfect cluster of stars with just the right coloring for his purposes. When he arrives, he knows exactly what to do and how to do it.
The Time Lords could do more than destroy; his people had possessed the skill and knowledge to create as well, to cultivate new life forms and worlds.
This is what he's going to do for her, now: create something beautiful in her memory, so that she will be imprinted in the stars just as surely as she is upon his soul.
He flies the TARDIS as he's never flown her before, weaving through space until the stars and the planets find themselves trapped in her wake; he pulls and teases them into new patterns, a frenzied artist sweeping his ethereal brush across a timeless canvas. A little coaxing here, a firm shove there and he's done before he's realized it.
He takes the TARDIS high above his masterpiece and opens the door to take it in: the cosmos have been rearranged into the perfect likeness of a pale yellow rose, and he smiles at the sight.
She had promised him forever, and there was nothing in this life that he wants more, even now.
She had come back to him in that building on Canary Wharf, even though it meant giving up her family and friends.
He had burned up a sun just to say goodbye, and even then she'd never gotten to hear him tell her how much he loved her.
Rose Tyler had run into the TARDIS and kept going until she was lodged firmly in his hearts, and he doesn't blame one of them if it stays forever broken on that beach. There was never anyone else, he'd heard Jackie say once; there will never be anyone for him like Rose, and he thinks he's finally ready to accept that and move on – as best he can.
He has molded the stars for her - the truest show of love that he can offer her now - in honor of the forever that they will never get to share.
He calls them the Rose Galaxies, and the only thing he loves more is the woman they were created for.
(I made my choice a long time ago, an' I'm never gonna leave you.)
Secondary AN: the Rosette Nebula and the Rose Galaxies are real; I encourage you to google them both, because they are beautiful!