Author's Note: I don't own rights. This takes place in that small period in between The Doctor's last words to rose and Donna's appearance.
Just To Be The Doctor
Rose, any of the wild or cultivated, usually prickly-stemmed, pinnate-leaved, showy-flowered shrubs of the genus Rosa. A flower that doesn't only bloom on Earth, as the one named after it would guess; there are billions of different roses in billions of different planets; they come in all sorts, shapes, sizes, scents, colors, properties. But now and maybe never again, I will never be able to see the beauty of any rose on any planet. Strange, how this works. I found one rose on one planet which was still crawling its way through time, ages away from being The First Great and Bountiful Human Empire. One little rose, different and bigger than Earth roses, but all the more beautiful. Roses, for humans mainly mean love; they sell those little plastic replicas on their Valentine's Day for high prices, shame of the entire planet, really; to sell love. Funny beings, humans.
I found a rose on a planet, and her name was Rose. Strange, innit? So different, still the same.
Ah, but look at me, blabbering on like a forlorn lover on a separation period, no different than their Romeo, blubbering shamelessly on my TARDIS after potentially destroying a power source for many systems, all to say goodbye to Rose. Foolish, that was. Unnecessary, uncalled for, cruel, sad, pathetic with maybe even a dash of stupid, except I am not stupid. I know exactly why I still can taste that first word, that run that started us hopping through time and space; ohh, all that hopping, never the time to stop. You would think that me, the Lord of Time would have time, but I don't, because I have all the time in the world, and my time with her just ran out.
I'm not one to cling to the past. Sure, I may have kept and may still be keeping 500 year diaries somewhere aboard TARDIS, but that's beside the point; to me, it has always been about the present, nay, more about the future than anything else. I may return to the creation of the universe, when time barely crawled out of its shell and started to tick, only time doesn't tick, it rustles, a thick and faint little sound beneath all the noise of existence. I can go to the end of the Milky Way, watch it collapse and watch time and the noise become silence from the comfort of my little police box. But whatever I do, I don't revisit my past.
If anything, I would have nothing to do with the past if only I hadn't experienced and learned so much from my previous incarnations; ten times, blimey, does time fly! Actually, it doesn't, it moves in waves. The point still stands that I don't live in my past. As Sarah Jane said, I leave my companions behind. As she asked Rose and Rose answered quite correctly, I don't talk about my past companions to my current companions; why should I? I have bigger things occupying my mind, like the possibility of the Daleks still being out there somewhere, because no matter what I do, I never win the Time War. Which is why I don't revisit the past. Well, that, and the fact that I can't intervene; once the TARDIS lands in a timeline, I become part of the events, the records of which are stored in my trusted ship. Contrary to what you might think, I don't, under any circumstance, intervene. If Carrionates insert their plan into Shakespeare's lost play, I stop them and then, if the play is still there, destroy it, because it has never been written. If the Slitheen Family attempt to take over the world by using the political system, I bring down Downing Street as a whole, but keep them out. If the Gelth attempt to invade, I stop them, and it doesn't matter if Charles Dickens is there. I don't alter. I don't change events. I participate in them and change things about the events, the details, the margins, but the events themselves still flow. Since that is so, I can't change what happened.
Not that I wouldn't want to. The Time War took everything from me, it made me the last of the Time Lords. I watched the fall of Arcadia, and never in my life have I felt as helpless, as vain and useless as I felt then. The Daleks claimed another victory, and all I could do, was to sit, and let Arcadia be destroyed. They purged everything in their path, leaving nothing untouched, and most importantly, they burned my homeland – my Gallifrey – to nothing. I escaped. As I said, coward, any day. But it wasn't because of my cowardice.
What does that have to do with anything? Blimey, I'm growing old! I am not about the past, I keep telling myself, and look, all I want to do is to talk about the past! They should check me into a nursing home, and with my luck, I will end up Cardiff, too! Only this time, there won't be Susan to call me "grandfather"; imagine me in a nursing home! Eating mashed potatoes and playing chess with old fellows, me, the Last of the Time Lords, stuck in old age!
No. This is not true. I care about the past. Anyway, where was I? I deviated again, didn't I? Oh, I'm sorry; my mind is so full with thoughts these last few days. But the thing is, I did survive the Time War, and not as the sole survivor, as luck would have it. And now, I only have my TARDIS, my little piece of home; all that is left of all I knew before I took this beauty to get out of that inferno. I have no family left. No friends. No fellow Time Lords; and certainly nobody like Lady Romana. But, this is life, what can you do?
That's why I can't let go of Rose. I was first slapped by someone's mother; by her mother. I first got domestic. But the thing is, I loved it. Last Christmas, no, before last, ahh I don't know which one, you know which one, so bear with me and don't make me say which one; last Christmas, Jackie, Mickey and Rose took care of me as I regenerated. And Jackie hates me. Mickey the Idiot, I think he just resents me because he feels left out by Rose, but neither had to do anything when they did everything for a man who had caused them nothing but pain and misery.
Then, that Christmas dinner. For the first time in many, many long and cold centuries I felt warm, I felt at home with friends; I had genuine, honest-to-goodness, fun. I felt safe, away from my famously paranoid thoughts. Daleks could have been next door and I wouldn't have noticed, believe me. Well, maybe not. But I had fun. I had finally found a family. I did say that I didn't want Jackie's name on my history, but I would actually be flattered to be known as to be a traveler traveling with her mother, ahh, my undisputable reputation, it is a pain in the arse sometimes.
I found in Rose everything that I wanted for a long, long time. I chose my companions of females, yes, because a family always starts with one male and one female. I never had any children, well, that's not true, but that's not relevant and that is not what I am deliberating at this moment. I wanted a family all along, and there they were; reluctant, sure, hating me, of course, despising me for taking Rose away to the farthest reaches of the galaxy and time only to put her to danger, why not, but they, even gradually, accepted me. For the first time, I didn't need to feel like an outcast, an outsider, an observer, a stranger, an ally, a benefactor, a supporter of their cause. For once, once in 900 years, give or take a bunch, all I could be and all I had to be was The Doctor; and let's not use the term loosely, shall we, I have ten regenerations and ten different sets of personalities in me.
But nonetheless, I only had to be The Doctor to belong.
I thought about it. In my maddest moments, and there is no shortage of them, I considered going back to Canary Wharf and saving her. But that would only lengthen my torture and give me mere hours before The Reapers consume that planet; it would only delay her loss, her absolute and total loss, not and never ever prevent it. I considered using her TARDIS key to get us out of that timeline, but then, nothing will withstand the collapse of time, because then I will have issued the ultimate paradox. The final fact is that, it has ended. Rose is gone. And I will never mention her to anyone, ever again. I have her jacket, still here, still fresh with her scent, and I will keep it in the TARDIS wardrobe until it carries my scent, the scent of old and weary. I will move on, keep on hopping, no time to stop!
I will move on… because I have to. The universe needs The Doctor. But the universe can do without The Doctor for a while, because I have to finish my recalibrations first; the hardest thing I have done in my life, to accept that I am returning to the same old life, to move on. It has always been hard, but now, I'm so old. I can't continue much like this, I can feel it inside of me; one day, I will simply give up my search… I already should. In some shape or form, the Daleks will survive, which is just about the only thing keeping me alive; I want them to exist for a reason, if they absolutely must.
I am moving on. Heh… I never did answer her question, now that I think about it; I never answered the question so many asked me on so many different situations. But alas, I have to move on, and I am moving on, watch me, moving on, this is me, moving on.
I will not betray her memory by thinking I have to be all those things. No. I just have to be The Doctor. That's all I am and that has to be enough. If not, it has to do.
I am The Doctor. And I can almost hear her say, "Doctor Who?"