a/n: This started as me playing around with different ways of writing Bad Wolf!Rose, and ended in angst and character death. Which, tbqh, is rather par for the course.
bookend
Everything must come to dust. All things.
Everything dies.
Propped against the wall of the bigger-on-the-outside TARDIS, the Doctor goes about the process of bleeding to death.
He twirls his broken sonic screwdriver in one trembling hand, the other busy being clamped rather uselessly over the hole in his side, and stares at it pensively. He'd known that something like this would happen when he stepped onto the Fields of Trenzalore, and he'd made his peace. He'd even written a will (of sorts – a couple of lines scrawled on a napkin with a lime-green crayon, bestowing everything to Jenny with the exception of his hat collection, which was to be buried with him at the earliest possible convenience). But knowing you're going to die and actually dying are two very different things and now that he's going about the whole business he can't help but be afraid. There are no more regenerations. In a matter of minutes he will be well and properly dead and he won't be coming back.
"We had a good run, eh old girl?" The question sounds loud in the silence of the console room. There is no hum from the engines, and the lights that remain are dim and flickering. The TARDIS is dying with him, a fact he finds more upsetting than his own death. He can feel her mourning him, a faint humming tinged with grief at the edge of his hearing.
"Everything has an end," he reminds her (and himself), but the sadness does not abate. "You're not making me feel any better, you know. You could at least try to put on a strong face."
The humming switches to something that sounds suspiciously like Chopin's Funeral March.
"Now you're just being dramatic."
His complaints go unheard – he can tell the TARDIS is no longer listening, or at least no longer listening to him. Something else has caught her attention, and before he can berate her for ignoring him on his deathbed a very familiar noise breaks the silence and makes even him forget his impending demise.
The noise sounds remarkably like a TARDIS landing. Like his TARDIS, to be precise, but that's impossible. It even looks like his did before it started leaking space, fading in and out of view as it materializes on the far side of the console, the illuminated POLICE PUBLIC CALL BOX letters stark in the dim light. With one final grinding clunk it lands, and he knows without a doubt. The sonic screwdriver slips from his hand, the clang it makes as it hits the grating below going unnoticed. That's his TARDIS. His own current and dying TARDIS is humming in recognition and this is impossible – surely even he wouldn't do something so stupid as visit his dying self –
The doors swing open and in a terrible and wonderful blaze of light he understands.
Golden tendrils of unfettered vortex energy curl from the doors of the TARDIS like heralds announcing the coming of a queen. He squints against the light, unwilling to close his eyes completely less this all be a hallucination. His hearts pound in his chest, quickening his death, but he can't spare the emotion to care.
She emerges from the light as if born from it. At first she is nothing more than a silhouette, all features lost to the blazing vortex of the TARDIS behind her. As she steps forward, details emerge – black pants, red top, bottle-blonde hair that looks almost white where it's haloed by the light. But it's her eyes that stand out. They bleed gold, alight with the time vortex and all the knowledge of the universe.
It shouldn't hurt as much as it does, he thinks. It shouldn't be such a wonder to see her again, after all this time. Her name, unspoken for centuries, falls from his lips without any conscious decision on his part.
"Rose."
Rose steps around the console, away from the light still spilling from the TARDIS doors so he no longer has to squint to make her out. Some of the gold fades from her eyes, leaving them a hazy amber.
"Doctor," she says with a weak attempt at a smile. Her greeting is devoid of the exuberant affection he so clearly recalls from their time together, and if there is any warmth in her tone it is lost in the eerie modulation of her vortex-altered voice. This body of his is a stranger to her, and though she does not look at him with the accusing grief he remembers from the first time she saw him regenerate her face is still guarded. She studies him like they've never really met, like he's a distant relative she's seen photos of but has never considered to be proper family.
There is so much he wants to say, to ask. He opens his mouth.
"I'm dying."
Not what he was going for, but he supposes it's the most relevant. Rose glances down to where the blood oozes through his fingers and frowns in thought, as if she's struggling to remember the concept of mortality.
"Yes." Something flickers, and she looks for a moment very much like the nineteen year old she is, eyes darting away from the blood and back to his face as her face pales. "I know," she says, voice cracking. He feels the absurd need to apologize, but before he can say anything her eyes burn gold again, dreadful and knowing.
"I can save you." The unnatural harmonies in her voice grow more apparent. "I can give you life."
He gives her a small, sad smile. "We can both see the timelines that would result. Immortality and my ego don't mix."
"The future is always changing."
"Rose."
The Wolf stares at him, unblinking; he stares back until at last with a shudder the gold fades almost entirely and Rose sucks in a tremulous breath. She looks away from him, and he's not sure if it's in shame, grief, or the realization that she can save his life but is choosing to let him die.
"Sorry," she murmurs, playing with shaking hands. "I'm sorry, Doctor. I couldn't interfere too much, your timeline – it was just too complicated and there were so many possibilities and I only had so much time – "
"Rose," he tries to interrupt, but she shakes her head and carries on.
"I looked after them, though – all those people you've traveled with. Looked after them as best I could so that they could look after you. So that they could – they could make you happy."
He watches her, his chest tight with too much affection. The depth of her caring will never cease to amaze him. "I was happy, Rose. I was blessed to love so many people."
"But you've lost so much."
He pauses for a moment, remembers. "Yes," he admits. "And that isn't your fault."
"I just," she finally looks at him again, "I hoped I could maybe bend things so you ended up goin' in your sleep in a hut on a beach somewhere with three moons and surrounded by grandkids, yeah?"
He can't help it; his eyebrows shoot up. "A beach hut? In my sleep? Really?"
She shrugs, looking defensive, but his lips start twitching and she has to bite down on hers and then they both break down and laugh at the absurdity of it all. For one glorious moment it feels just like old times – the Doctor and Rose, in the TARDIS – but his laughter quickly degenerates into a hacking cough. Rassilon, dying hurts. Rose flinches at the blood he can feel flecking his lips, wide eyes flickering gold before she visibly steels herself and represses the time vortex once more. With shaking steps she crosses the console room until she stands next to him. Leaning back against the wall, she slides down to sit beside him; now that she is so close he can see the tears that trace lazy arcs down her face, the drops catching the light that still spills from the TARDIS. He wonders if they're for him or for the time vortex that's splitting open her skull. Probably both, not that it matters – he's always hated seeing her cry.
"You don't have to stay." It comes out as a whisper, his voice leaking away with the blood that drips through the grating to pool on the console floor beneath. She looks at him, eyes part-terrified and part-determined.
"Shut up. 'Course I do." He thinks of I'm never gonna leave you and smiles softly. She offers a quivering smile in return, one he struggles to keep in focus.
"So where will the Bad Wolf go from here?" he asks to distract himself from the blackness that's beginning to seep into the edges of his vision.
"Satellite Five. Don't think my head will survive another stop." She laughs, though it's more of a sniffle. "I can remake the entire universe in my image, but I still have an expiry date. Bit rubbish, that."
He attempts a shrug, but all he can manage is a weak twitch of one shoulder. "Everything ends."
"Or does it?" she asks lightly, and there's just a smidge of gold in her eyes as she grins at him, tongue between her teeth. I know things you don't know you don't know, that grin says, and the Doctor feels just a hint of doubt in his finite model of time.
"Oh, that's not fair," he whines.
"What?"
"That – that teasing thing – "
He can't seem to finish his sentence, or even remember where he was going with it. He takes a shuddering gasp of air, breathing suddenly requiring conscious effort. The pain in his side has faded to almost nothing and his vision is fading with it. He lifts a shaking hand, and Rose takes it. He can sense the vortex energy in her, swirling and raging and howling to be let out, but her eyes are an achingly familiar deep brown, full of compassion and grief and so very human.
"Time for a new adventure, I think," he whispers. He squeezes her hand with all the strength he has left, and she squeezes back. He struggles with what to say, here at the end. He wants to tell her about the time he was ginger. He wants to finish that sentence from so long ago but that is a love from another time and another him and it isn't his to declare. He wants to change his mind, to beg her to save him the way she'll save Jack. He digs down, summons what remains of his courage and drapes it around himself like a worn leather jacket, pushing the thought away.
"Rose Tyler," he says, and if he had the strength he would smile because he's always loved saying her name, "I'm so glad I met you."
She makes a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob, and shifts their hands so that she can interlace her fingers with his. He manages a brief moment of marvel that no matter what body he wears their hands always seem to fit. "Me too," she says. "Me too, Doctor." She leans in close – he can't see her, any more, can't see anything at all, but he can feel her press a kiss to his forehead, feel her hair brush his cheek as she tilts her head to whisper in his ear –
"Run."