Summary: The immediate thoughts of the "other" Doctor left behind on the alternate universe's Dårlig Ulv-Stranden with Rose. Pairings/Main Characters:
Disclaimer: All recognizable characters and fictional places do not belong to me; I am merely borrowing them for playtime before (respectfully) putting them back.
Warnings: This story is rated K+, and it has no serious warnings other than that the other doctor is angry and British-Swears a little.
Thank You: To Allee, who kept pestering me to watch Dr Who, ThornedHuntress who finally got me to watch Dr Who, then proceeded to alpha this story, and Nathaniel Cardeu, who betad. Takk!
NOT BROKEN
By: TycheSong
'You can fix him,' he told her. Like I'm broken. Like I'm a bloody defective Cyberman who isn't right simply because I'm not him. I knew I had to convince her that I am him so that she would let me stay—wouldn't want to be a loose end or third wheel mucking up the real Doctor's life and making things awkward, after all, would we? Besides, this is Rose.
I can remember loving Rose more clearly than I can remember almost anything else. She is a bright beacon to the Doctor—a bit of finite magic, laughter and pragmatism that is impossible to resist—and he's given me to her. He's made it clear that that is what this is—he's not giving her to me. He's giving me to her. A part of me is ecstatic, but another part is equally angry and afraid.
The truth is that I'm not him. I was made in his image with his memories and his thought patterns, but I am, fundamentally, not him. I am not a Time Lord, and that is something so intrinsic to who he is, that I cannot help but fail to be what he is.
I can remember telling Rose on the first day we met—the first day they met—that I could feel the earth spinning beneath my feet, hurtling through space around the sun. I can even remember feeling that. I cannot feel that now. I cannot feel the shift of space and time in my head like a beautiful siren song, and I am without my longtime friend and companion, my beautiful TARDIS.
He says I am broken because I was made in a time of war, and that she can fix me as she fixed him before. But can she, really? Can she fix a Doctor who isn't really a Doctor? I am sealed inside time, with a finite number of years; a Doctor without a TARDIS. Can I even really call myself Doctor? What if I can't—is it really so wrong to not be exactly him? A part of me itches to scream that it's not. I might be created, and I might have an expiration date, but I am whole, and I am me. I work, and how does that make me defective?
And then…and then there is Rose. Rose, who I would sacrifice anything for, would try to be anything for. Perhaps it is she that makes me defective, the fatal flaw that will always make me the copy. It's her expectation that keeps me from being wholly me, keeps me trying to be him. If I don't live up to her memory, she might not wish to keep me. That thought is intolerable. So I whisper in her ear, and pour all the emotion I possess—that he possesses—into five small words. I love you, Rose Tyler.
Her mouth is warm and soft even as her kiss is desperate. It's like coming home to a home I've never had, and for a moment all I can do is greedily accept and bask in the warmth of being thought of as a real person.
She'll find out, of course. A lost and angry mortal man does not behave in the same way as an immortal Time Lord with a TARDIS, no matter how perfectly they might match each other. The very reasons we are allowed to keep each other will probably drive us apart, eventually. It's only logical.
Still. It's what I have—it's what we have. I will fight for it, even if my nature to fight is wrong. She first met the Doctor when he was as 'broken' and angry as I am; who is to say she won't love the broken version more?
A/N: Thanks for reading. :-) My first completed fic outside the Harry Potter verse. Interested to know your thoughts. :-)