THE INEVITABLE
The first time The Doctor realized he was in danger of falling in love with Rose Tyler was when he was already too far gone for it to have been prevented. He realized now that nearly every waking moment he spent with her, everything he did was because he loved her. He just hadn't realized it.
On Satellite five, that kiss between them had felt… amazing. But the Doctor had written it off as the sensation of absorbing the vortex. He ignored the fact that it's supposed to be incredibly painful. Then, to him falling in love was beyond impossible for him. It seems everything he deems impossible turns out to happen at one point or another.
Strictly speaking, it isn't advisable for a Time Lord to fall in love, especially wish someone who has such a comparatively smaller life span. But here he was, feeling the incredible, and dreading the inevitable.
The inevitable: Rose would have to leave someday. One year, five, ten, it didn't matter, it would happen. She had promised him forever, but forever to her was until the day she died. Could he really do that to the both of them; watch the women he loved age and die while he remained unchanged?
This is why she could never know. Never know that just the sight of her stops at least one of his hearts, that her laugh sends chills up his spine, and the rare hours he spends sleeping, he dreams of her and the life he wished they could have together.
WHEN IT HAPPENED
"Rose Tyler, you're brilliant!" The Doctor cried, taking her face between her palms and planting a quick kiss on her forehead with out thinking too much about it. He jumped away, hitting random buttons on the control panel of his Tardis.
Rose watched him with that smile she got when she anticipated their next adventure. Not all of their adventures were full of life and death situations, but the majority of them certainly did have something go wrong. It's what made this kind of life exciting, why the Doctor was able to continue on with this kind of life for hundreds of years.
"Where are we going now then?" Rose asked, leaning around the central column to peer at him while he tapped the side of his screen in an attempt to make something appear. The broad smile he had got bigger as he pulled the final lever that sent the Tardis jerking though the time vortex.
When the both of them found themselves on their backs laughing, Rose rolled over to face him. "Are you sure you passed the driving test for this thing?" she asked him, and he rolled his eyes at her. Rose accepted the hand he offered and he pulled her upright.
"Of course not. I stole her." He added simply with a fond yet sad smile at the memory. "Didn't react too well to that, but I like to think she likes me now."
Rose stared at him at a loss for words. "You stole the Tardis?" she asked him, not exactly disbelieving, but she had thought he might have taken at least the laws on his home planet somewhat seriously.
The Doctor nodded and grabbed his long coat to put over his suit. "Ready Miss Tyler?" he asked, offering his arm with that broad silly grin on his face that he saved for only the truly exciting trips. It made Rose's heart thump faster in anticipation as she linked her arm through his and they walked happily though the doors of the Tardis.
The Doctor stopped suddenly, a crease appearing between his eyebrows as he took in the situation. "Well this is weird," he said, letting go of Rose to retrieve his glasses. He put them on and leaned forward to read a sign posted on a fence next to them. "Dramidya?" he said, still sounding confused.
Rose was gazing in wonder at the place around him. The Doctor supposed it looked beautiful to an uninformed eye. The mountain tops in the distance literally sparked, since they were covered in sheer ice and the two suns overhead were particularly bright today. The trees just over the fence were closely related to the palm trees on earth, only these were much taller. A beach to their left was covered in red sand, and the water was a sea foamy green.
"It's the ocean!" Rose cried. "Blimey, its gorgeous. Why's the sand red?" she asked the Doctor, but he was too busy scanning the area.
"Where is everyone?" he asked, more to himself than anything, but Rose had a reply.
She shrugged her shoulders and started to kick off her shoes. "Maybe it's a private beach."
"It's a tourist attraction. For the wealthy." The Doctor said, tucking his glasses back into a pocket, still looking around curiously. It took him a moment to realize that Rose had taken off towards the red sand, her shoes left behind.
He watched her for a couple minutes, smiling a little as she discovered how warm the water was. It was nearly one hundred degrees Fahrenheit all year round on this planet, so the water stayed constantly at eighty. Like taking the universe's biggest bath.
Slowly the Doctor made his way down the beach towards her, his mind still on the mystery of the missing tourists, and those few natives who regulated the planet and its visitors. But maybe Rose was right, maybe it was a private—
"Doctor?" rose asked, turning to face him, holding her pants up so that the two inch deep water she was currently standing in didn't soak them. "Does the Tardis have bathing suits? Its been so long since I swam."
The Doctor gave the beach one last sweep, then looked at Rose. "Yeah, somewhere in there. You'll have to look for a while. I'm going to look for someone. Do not leave this beach." He stressed, thinking that maybe just this once she would listen to him.
Rose nodded and took off towards the Tardis excitedly. He was happy she was enjoying herself at least.
The doctor took off down the closest path and traveled for at least ten minutes before he found someone. It was weird for him to come across such an odd occurrence such as a deserted tourist planet, and not find any serious problems there, but here was this woman, working on something mechanical beneath a vehicle.
"Hello," the Doctor said cheerfully to her, and she hit her head in surprise.
A young female slid out from underneath wearing an expression of incredulity. She closely resembled the help staff from his first trip ever with Rose, and was more than likely the same species; a working class, living to serve, but also had to obey. So he added, "Permission to speak."
"How did you get on here?" she asked him, still looking baffled beyond reason. Honestly, it was a tourist planet.
"Well it wasn't that hard," The Doctor said simply, putting his hands deep into his pockets and shrugging. "You see, I landed my ship on the beach and—"
"But this planet's under maintenance" She stressed, standing and wiping her hands on her dark blue mechanics suit. "The whole place is on lockdown, we do it once every ten years or so. Takes nearly nine months." On this planet, time as a whole was measured shorter than it was on earth. That converted to once every two years, and two weeks for maintenance.
The Doctor smiled. This was probably the easiest mystery he had solved yet. No one had tired to kill them, or sell them, or enslave them. "Really?" he said. "Well, my companions been enjoying your wonderful beaches. Mind if we stay for an hour or two, then we'll be off?" he pointed a thumb over his shoulder to indicate the general area rose currently was.
The woman shrugged. "That's not my decision sir. But as long as you stay out of the staff's way, you should be fine."
"Fantastic," the Doctor said, thinking briefly that he hadn't used that word since his ninth regeneration. "Good day," He started to walk away.
The woman bowed to him and went back to work, but she suddenly looked over at him and cried, "But be careful!" The Doctor didn't hear her.
The Doctor was wondering why the Tardis had ignored the coordinates he had set and brought them here. Usually when the Tardis interfered it was when something in time needed his intervention. But there were no problems here.
His thoughts were interrupted at the sight of Rose exiting the Tardis in an emerald green string bikini. Over a year of constantly running for her life with the Doctor had toned her nicely, and he couldn't help but let his eyes wander over her. She looked a little nervous when she saw him though, and crossed her arms to hide her amazing stomach. He groaned a little internally.
Then he mentally slapped himself. What was he thinking? Rose was his friend, his trusted companion, and here he was eating her up with his eyes in an extremely inappropriate way.
She shouldn't hide her stomach.
The Doctor nearly made a noise of annoyance at himself, but he stopped it as Rose approached him. He forced himself to look into her eyes, no where else. To his surprise, that didn't help much either. He started dwelling on the color of her eyes and the emotion behind them. This was no new development, but coupled with his recent bout of inappropriateness, he was starting to become concerned.
"So, should I change?" she asked him with a smile, still hiding her stomach.
The Doctors eyes flicked down to her hands, then back at her. "Why?" he asked, seriously confused.
"Well I can't chase after any ugly aliens in this now can I?" she said, and eyebrow peaking at him as if to say 'why else?'
The doctor shook his head, understanding her words now. "Nope. The planet's just closed down for maintenance, but you can still—hey, ugly aliens?" he asked, pretending to be insulted. Rose laughed at him, her tongue poking between her teeth like usual when she was teasing him. And like usual, it made him smile.
Then she took off down the beach at a sprint.
"Don't you run away from me Rose Tyler!" The Doctor cried, chasing after her, but finding himself slowing incredibly once he reached the sand. His trainers were not equipped for sand running, and he made a mental note to go barefoot should they find themselves in peril on a sandy planet.
Eventually he reached Rose. She was sitting back on her arms in the middle of the water, her entire body covered except from the next up. "Oh, there you are Doctor." She said teasingly. "Aren't you going to join me?"
The Doctor took his coat off, but went no further. "Nah," he said, putting his hands in his pockets again. "Cant swim."
"Sorry, what?" Rose asked him.
"I cant swim. Gallifrey never had any water, so we never learned."
"In your nine hundred years, you never learned how to swim?" she asked, and he shook his head. He didn't mention that all physical activities came natural to Time Lords, so he could probably swim if he wanted to. If it was important.
She gave him an odd look. "What?" he asked.
"What if you needed to swim because you were in danger?" she asked him.
The Doctor shrugged and smiled at her. "Considering the fact that I do remarkable well on foot, I don't see how it matters."
Rose laughed at him. "Do you want swimming lessons?" Rose asked him, standing up and walking closer towards him. Again he was distracted by all that skin. And how the sun reflected in her hair, and the way here eyes were looking at him, like—
"Why would I need swimming lessons?" he asked her, interrupting his own thoughts before they went too far. This was getting absolutely ridiculous.
"What if you needed to save someone who was drowning?"
The Doctor knew she was thinking of herself, and the very thought made him cringe in pain. If he let rose drown, he would never ever forgive himself. But like he thought previously, he would probably turn out to be a very excellent swimmer, and he reflected on the fact that he had never, in just over nine centuries, ever felt the need to go swimming. So he shrugged at her. "Guess they'll have to drown," he said teasingly, knowing that she knew he would never let that happen to anyone.
Rose pouted slightly, then her tongue peeked through her teeth again, and he got the feeling that that gesture and accompanying smile did not bode well for him. She closed the distance between them some more, and looked him right in the eyes.
"What if I was drowning?" she said, then she took off into the water, taking the look in his eyes as her answer.
He watched her for a couple more minutes with a smile on his face. A light breeze was tousling his already messy hair, and it felt good in the sweltering heat. He was about to sit down on his coat when he heard Rose shriek.
He scanned the water but saw no sign of her. For a split second he wasn't going to do anything, assuming she was trying to get a reaction out of him to make him swim. Then he saw a giant purple and black tentacle rise out of the water, and he felt something heavy drop in the pit of his stomach. It was the same feeling he got whenever Rose was in danger, and he cursed himself for not acting immediately.
The Doctor quickly kicked off his shoes, but bothered with no other article of clothing besides his suit jacket. Then he ran in the water until he couldn't touch the bottom anymore, and dove in.
To his surprise, his eyes were well adapted for seeing under the water, and he quickly caught sight of Rose, sinking deeper into the water in the grasp of something like a giant fish with four arms. There was apparently a shelf some thirty feet from the shore line, and it dropped who knew how far down.
Thanking any higher power that might exist that he had a complex respiratory system, he swam powerfully after her, catching up quickly. He tried not to dwell on the fact that she looked unconscious just yet, and attempted to free her from the aquatic animal's grasp. He managed to find his sonic screwdriver and pointed it at the area where the tentacle attached to the body of the fish. It shrieked in a very high frequency that made the doctor put his hands over his ears. Thankfully it released Rose and continued its dissention.
The Doctor desperately swam for the shore with Rose in tow.
He laid her out on the red sand that contrasted oddly with her bathing suit. It made her look even more beautiful, which only made the situation that much worse in his eyes.
"Rose!?" he called, checking her eyes and pulse and breathing. To his horror, she wasn't breathing. At all.
Immediately he started CPR, hoping he was doing it right. Apparently today was the day to point out all the flaws he had going in his little system of constantly tangoing with death.
Finally, after what felt like years, Rose started to cough and spewed out a fountain of water. She started to turn over and try to get it all out. The Doctor assisted her, watching her with worry. Weakly she flopped back onto her back and smiled tiredly at him. "You can swim."
He laugh at her and kissed her forehead before sitting her up so he could hug her tightly. He never wanted to let her go, in fear of something else happening to her. They always hugged like this after something particularly nasty happened to them, but this was different. Something in the Doctor had changed, and he couldn't exactly pinpoint what it was.
Later that night, as the Tardis floated in the vortex and he opened the door to Rose's room to check on her and make sure she was doing okay, he started to become overwhelmed with many unnamed emotions.
It wasn't the first time he had felt like this when he looked at someone. But what really truly scared him was the the last time had been centuries ago, when he had been courting his first wife within his first century, first regeneration.
The Doctor stood rooted to the spot as the realization washed over him.
He was in love with Rose Tyler.
BARELY HOLDING BACK
Since that night the Doctor had sworn to himself that he would never act on those feelings, or try to think about them. Mostly he did a good job of being just friends with Rose, but little moments began to creep up on his where he was just overwhelmed by her. Hidden emotions that came out to play once in a while and threatened to expose him.
Once she had decided to wear a halter top, and had tied it too tightly in an attempt to make sure it would stay up should they have to run (which they had; an all too distracting display while running for safety). But later that night she became frustrated and stomped out of her room, requesting that the Doctor untie it for her since she didn't want to have to attack it with scissors.
Thinking nothing of it, he consented. But when she bared the back of her neck for him, it truly took all the self control he had not to linger too long on her skin, or kiss it, or….
Well, the who occurrence had left him severely shaken, and unwanted imagined scenarios had played into his mind until he was becoming aroused.
The Doctor had gazed down in shock. It was a sight rarely seen by him, but it had to be hidden none the less. It was most certainly unwanted by the both of them, so he quickly finished and turned and began fiddling with buttons and knobs on the console that didn't need to be played with.
Rose came into his view, holding her top up with one hand. He nearly groaned out loud and had to look away, thanking god that everything from the waist down was hidden from her sight.
He had wondered what he must look like to her, what emotions were played out on his face, for she looked like she wanted to say something, but one look stopped her mid-sentence.
"Thanks." She merely said, and walked out of the room, leaving the Doctor to, for the first time in his life, hate the power of emotions.
CURSE OF THE TIME LORDS
Who would've guessed that this seemingly silly little quest Mickey had put them onto would reunite him with Sarah Jane. It wasn't like he hadn't wanted to see her again, in fact when he had realized it was her, he became extremely excited. Then there was the guilt.
Everything Sarah had accused him of had been true. He had left her behind one day, but at the same time he had done it for her own good. Never could he have predicted what had happened between her and Rose.
For any other guy it would be an Ego boost. Two women he cared for very much, fighting over him. But Rose's reaction was one he hadn't anticipated. She read into this exactly how he hoped she wouldn't, but she saw the truth. She saw herself in the future in Sarah Jane, and didn't want that to happen to her.
How could he explain to her that she was different from Sarah without admitting too much in the process?
Even now, as he walked out of that diner after fixing K-9, she pressed the issue, and he saw no way out. Did she see all the unspoken words in his eyes?
"How many of us have there been, traveling with you?" she asked as they both walked at a brisk pace.
"Does it matter?" The Doctor shot back. He was feeling very fed up at the moment with all the hostility and competition between Sarah Jane and Rose.
"Yeah it does." She said, "If I'm just the latest in a long line."
"As opposed to what?" he asked, turning to face her. Did she honestly believe she was the first? He was nine hundred years old!
He looked at her, trying to figure out what exactly was running through her mind. She seemed to be searching for the right words. "I thought you and me were…." She trailed off, and he knew he didn't want her to finish that sentence. "Well I obviously got it wrong." If only she knew. "I've been to the year five billion, right, but this? Now this is really seeing the future. You just leave us behind." Her words hurt him, and he couldn't stand to look her in the eyes, because she was right. "Is that what your going to do to me?"
"No." He answered, nearly cutting off her words before they were even finished. How could she think that? She was so much different from the others. "Not to you."
"But Sarah Jane, you were that close to her once, and now… you never even mention her." Was she thinking that once Rose was gone he would eraser her from his memories, never to speak or think of her again? There was a reason he kept his older companions closer to his heart, but she was just… so much more. He would never forget her. "Why not?"
"I don't age." He answered, trying to answer her question as best he could without saying too much. "I regenerate. But humans decay. You wither and you die. Imagine watching that happen to someone you l—"He stopped. He had almost said it; the word that meant passing the point of no return.
"What Doctor?" she asked, looking like she knew what he was going to say but wanted to hear him say it anyway.
His hearts were pounding away, and he took deep breaths, knowing that he needed to say this, that he needed her to know why they couldn't be together, even if that wasn't precisely what this conversation was about, it was in every conversation. Everything he ever said to her, it was there, an underlying message he wanted her to hear, but she couldn't hear the right frequency.
"You can spend the rest of your life with me," he told her, taking another deep breath, "But I cant spend the rest of mine with you" Did she hear the sadness in his voice the kind of emotion that only comes with centuries of experience, yet so recently reborn in him? "I have to live on. Alone." The last word he had to add, just so she knew. There was no hope. It would never happen between them, it couldn't because it defied the laws of the universe.
Since when have you cared about laws? He thought bitterly to himself.
"That's the curse of the Time Lords."
FAILED DESTRACTIONS
The Doctor stared sadly at the floor as Rose and Mickey left him alone with his thoughts. Reinette had died, but that was not what was bothering him the most. It had been until he saw the look on her face when she and Mickey left him alone. She looked hurt, like she wanted him to open up to her.
Or maybe it was because of what he had done back on that ship that bothered her so much. Now he was not preoccupied with the thought of Reinette's death, but more so over his decision to leave Rose stranded on a spaceship three hundred years into her future, all for the life of a woman he had known for not even a day.
Admittedly, the whole affair was because of Rose in the first place.
Having Mickey along for the ride only frustrated the Doctor even more, because what little intimacies he had allowed himself with Rose had been taken away since he had arrived. He felt even more trapped then he had before, and the longer this continued, the less of his chance of escape.
He knew the logical course was to send Rose home, to make her live a normal life with a normal love so she could have a normal family. But instead, he chose to selfishly keep her close, and jumped on the first distraction he could find. Who better then the Mistress to a French King?
It was foolish, and not only had it failed, but he had broken two hearts, instead of just letting his own two suffer in silence. Reinette had waited her whole life, the last six years of it, for him to come back to her. He had in the end, but it had been too late.
Rose had been left without him, and the look on her face had said it all. He didn't want to believe it, didn't want to believe that they were both too far gone, but it had been staring him in the face for far too long, and he couldn't believe how easily he had ignored it.
Rose was in love with him.
The doctor sank slowly into the seat behind him, hoping for all the world that he was merely flattering himself.
CHOKING
"Tell her…" The Doctor trailed off, looking up to the light that was only just visible miles above his head, where Ida stood, waiting for him to continue his sentence.
But could he? Could he leave those words with her as a parting give. To throw it in her face and say 'here's what could've happened between us, sorry I jumped down a hole for the sake of being risky. Sorry we never got to try.' Wouldn't it be better just to leave her thinking that nothing could or would happen between them, easier for her to move on?
"Tell her…." He wanted to do it, wanted to say the words that had been plaguing him for months now. The words he couldn't say just because he was too scared to commit them to a life like that. For a few years it would be wonderful, but then….
Then something would happen, and it would all be over. One or both of them would be left in heart break.
The Doctor continued to look at the light, as if Rose were there, smiling at him like she normally did. Oh, how he wished he could have that life they had talked about just hours before. About getting a house and a job and settle down (although he could live without the mortgage), and better yet, they could share the house, like Rose had suggested. He probably would have taken it up with her too. Couldn't be more different then sharing the Tardis with her right?
But here he was, dangling on a wire, choking on his words because of a life he couldn't have with her.
No, he couldn't condemn her to the pain receiving those words would give, especially when they don't come directly from him.
So he took a breath, and readying himself to unclip the last clip he said, "Oh, she knows."
The last thing he remembered hearing as he fell farther and farther away from the light, strait to the pits of hell, was her voice calling her name. He was probably just imagining it though.