Disclaimer: Doctor Who and all his lovely companions belong to BBC. No profit being made here.
A/N: This takes place immediately following the dual episode Human Nature/ The Family of Blood from series 3. Hands down my favorite episodes that I have seen to date. This is a reflective piece from the 10th Doctor.
That Which Goes Unsaid
"You are not alone."
The last words of the Face of Boe echoed in empty ears. The Doctor swallowed convulsively as he struck across the field towards the TARDIS, looking as small and lonely as he felt under Earth's clean, blue and – for the moment – safe sky.
The hills and fields flowed into the village, at peace for the day. Given the century, that illusion would be shattered…too many times. But for now, under their narrow roofs, behind their white-washed walls, there would be peals of laughter, moments of solemn joy and those of deepest pain – of aging, of heartbreak, of loss. Of living. He could travel between stars and times. Watch the suns rise over distant worlds and swim with seventeen-finned whales in warm, fresh-water oceans. But he could not live as they lived. "The one adventure I'll never have," he'd told Rose Tyler on the beach of a parallel Earth.
He was alone. But with the flip of a switch, it could have been – for two glorious months, it had been – otherwise. He did not have to be alone.
"Where is he? John Smith?"
"In here, somewhere."
"Like a story. Could you change back?"
"Yes."
"Will you?"
How he had wanted to say yes! To be a human in 1913 with one-point-six billion brothers and sisters. To hear but one beating heart, with a brief, mortal lifespan, flaring like a star for its short length, fighting through all its attendant joys and pains. To seize the future they'd shared through the watch – the beauty of their wedding, the joy of their first born, the grandchildren he'd played with, loving and loved for the infinite and infinitesimal life of a human being.
"Did you see?" He raised incredulous eyes to her, wanting, needing, the forward-memories to be shared, something they'd had together. A touch of the life they might have if he could find a way to stop the Family and stay.
Her smile was gentle, but the pain was still there. She already knew what he could not admit. "The Time Lord has such adventures. But he could never have a life like that."
"And yet I could."
John Smith could have everything the Doctor wanted. He was not alone. Like so many of his kind, he had a purpose, a way to march forward, loved ones at his side to march with. But the price of continuing the fairytale was the world, perhaps the whole universe. The watch had told a lie. The Family would have hunted until they found what they sought and Joan Redfern, Martha Jones, John Smith and all the rest would have died in a conflagration that would have made humanity's First World War seem like children playing with matches. For nothing.
He couldn't give in.
"No."
"I see. Well, then. He was braver than you…that ordinary man. You chose to change. He chose to die."
Joan Redfern had been right, and wrong. But then, she was in love with a fantasy, a man who only partially existed. A man he could not have remained without enormous cost. Hers was an uncomplicated world where the simplicity of John Smith fit in – but the reality of the Doctor did not. She could not – and did not wish to – understand the full scope of his responsibility, the life of a Time Lord.
"Come with me."
"I'm sorry?"
"Travel with me."
"As what?"
"My companion."
"But that's not fair. What must I look like to you, Doctor? I must seem so very small."
"No…We could start again. I'd like that. We could try, at least." Objection and denial in her eyes. He tried to override it. "Because everything that John Smith was, I'm capable of that, too."
What an offer. Spurred by admiration, yes, but also by loneliness, by the bitter words he had spoken himself not a handful of hours before, the almost frantic need to re-capture what John Smith had built so easily, what he had found it impossible to hold on to as a Time Lord. She had been smarter than he in her refusal – despite his begging.
"I can't."
"Please come with me. Come!"
"I can't. John Smith is dead. And you look like him."
"But he's here. Inside. If you look in my eyes."
"Answer me this, just one question, that's all…if the Doctor had never visited us, never chosen this place…on a whim…" And here she met his gaze and he knew what the next words out of her mouth would be: "Would anybody here have died?"
The shock and faint disgust on her face when he did not answer. "You can go."
He could not bring himself to be surprised as he had turned to leave. Humanity had the luxury of expressing their morals in ways sometimes denied him. He guarded a whole universe. The last of his kind. It was…expected…that the whole of the Doctor would be too much for a woman like Joan to accept unreservedly.
Far from wanting the lost prince of the Time Lord, his human self had been exactly enough for her. "He won't love you!" "If he's not you, then I don't want him to."
"I've seen him," Timothy Latimer had said. "He was like fire and ice and rage and the night and the storm…and the heart of the sun."
"Stop it."
"He's ancient and forever. He burns at the center of time and he can see the turn of the universe."
"Stop it! I said stop it."
"And he's wonderful."
Was he? There were those who thought so. And those who would disagree. It was hard to feel wonderful here, walking away from the house where Joan clutched the journal of a man who'd never been born. Hard to feel wonderful when two hearts were weighed down with the heavy, dull-metal loneliness that he had learned to ignore.
Wonderful or terrible, he had a job to do that belonged to him alone. A duty he could neither escape nor pass off to another.
"We should have thought of it before! I can give them this!" The watch – his own essence – in his hand, a chip John Smith would have bartered away in a second. A smile quirked unbidden at the corner of the Doctor's mouth. Humans. They always tried to find their way out. Always. It was one of his favorite qualities in them, one that alternately saved and damned them. And he had been no different.
"Just the watch! And then they can leave Earth and I can stay as I am!"
"You can't do that!"
"If they want the Doctor, they can have him."
"They'll never let you do it!" He'd skated over Martha's outraged objections, his eyes locked on Joan. If she'd said yes, that was all it would have taken for Smith to hand the Doctor over.
"And if they get what they want, then…then…"
"Then it all ends in destruction." What a woman. The smile twitched again, but this time there was liquid in his eyes. Joan had teased that he had an eye for the pretty girls when studying the drawings of Rose and Madame de Pompadour. But the truth was that his heart settled on the strong. The ones who never gave up. The ones who could see a truth – whether ecstatic or terrible or heart-rendingly painful – and stare it down. Or acknowledge it could not be stared down and bend to the needs of the many. "I never read to the end, but…those creatures would live forever. To breed and conquer – a war across the stars. Forever, John."
"If I could do this for you…I would." To spare him the pain. To save his life. As Rose had swallowed the TARDIS for him.
Martha was at his back as he blindly re-set the controls on the TARDIS to take them to the other side of the universe. His fingers flew across the controls, preparing them for flight. The bitter agony of heartbreak would ease if he could leave England of 1913 behind him.
His companion vibrated with tension and concern, wondering if she might be able to soothe his hurts with a word or a touch, wishing she could. But that was a place he hadn't – couldn't – grant her. Only one had been allowed to penetrate so deeply, and the agony of her loss had been nearly beyond bearing. Was still so great that it eclipsed the pain bleeding from two hearts even now. For where Joan had rejected his true face, she had understood it, gloried in it, delighted in it, rising unreservedly to meet the challenges it offered. Loved it and him – in spite of the dangers, in spite of the storm, the ice and the fire.
She'd walked in his thoughts all day, since he'd come back to himself, the bitterness of his heartache over the loss of Joan and his humanity doubling back to the only other time since the end of the Time War he'd felt like a kite with a broken tether, that shattering day when he realized he'd lost her. Irrevocably.
"Here you are, living a life day after day. The one adventure I can never have." One that she had not wanted. One that he had not thought to want while she was with him. The TARDIS had been home enough, life bouncing between worlds and times a marvelous adventure that couldn't grow old, not for the two of them.
"Am I ever going to see you again?"
"You can't."
"Then what are you going to do?"
"Ah…I've got the TARDIS. Same old life, last of the Time Lords."
Gods, he was sick of that. "Same old life…" Even the universe and all her vast marvels grew stale, given enough time. And he had too much of that – and too little company.
"On your own?" He could only nod. How could ever want anyone else in those places she'd been? Where she'd sat, where she'd helped him repair a ship beyond her comprehension, where she'd locked eyes with him across the main console, eyes sparkling as she teased him, or serious as she asked yet one more question. How could he give that place to another?
Her sobs twisted his hearts as she pushed out the words they'd left unstated for so long. "I…I love you."
"Quite right to. And I suppose, if it's my last chance to say it… Rose Tyler…"
She'd never heard the words. The super nova's surge collapsed, and he was standing in the TARDIS as the rip closed, his Rose a universe away and completely out of reach.
I love you. He wasn't even sure if he'd managed to speak them at all, or if they'd simply beaten their impotent fists against the walls of his mind.
He should stop taking them on. Should never have tried to find another after Rose Tyler. It was brutally unfair – to everyone. Martha. Himself. Joan had been wise beyond her understanding in saying no. He felt the hollowness of missing what she'd shared with John – but John had been right. As the Doctor, he couldn't do better than want to love her. That scar on his hearts was still too fresh, that wound too deep. In a lifetime of hundreds of years, he had never met Rose's equal. Had never met a woman who could and would match him. She had streamed the energy of the TARDIS – a solution he wouldn't have entertained to keep the universe from collapsing – to save his life and the future of her race. Even for her remarkable species, she was extraordinary.
To seek another…to feel the presence of someone in the TARDIS and look up into a stranger's face, when by rights it should have been hers…her smile, her eyes, her brand of humor and sharp teasing…her frustration when he talked over her head and her furious indignation when she outright challenged him…
It was not Martha Jones he thought of when entering his ship. He had yet to stop expecting her. To cease searching a crowd – any crowd, on any world – for her. To re-configure his ears to a voice that wasn't hers.
He pulled the lever, and heard the familiar whum whum of his ship as she began to move.
He had known of Martha's attraction from the beginning, had seen how she hated it when he mentioned Rose, had noted her fascination taking stronger, deeper, root. Had seen the pain that even John's falling in love with Joan had caused. She was beautiful and brave and accomplished and educated, and deserved to have a man who would respond to her whole-heartedly, with all the irresistible enthusiasm the human race had to offer.
But she was not Rose Tyler. And he was not that man. The words that she so desperately wanted to hear could not come from him. He had not managed to get them out when he meant them with everything in two hearts.
Even John Smith had never told Joan Redfern outright that he loved her. Something of the Doctor in the teacher, after all, in the things they left unsaid
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A/N: Please let me know what you think!