Part Human
The half-doctor was awake. John Smith, as he was here, lying naked alongside his sleeping Rose. She had her back to him, but he could tell her sleep was troubled. She flinched occasionally and her breathing was erratic, and he knew why.
It had been months since Bad Wolf Bay. He'd had to do domestic: give himself a name, have a house and a mortgage, play uncle to little Tony. He'd had to settle. Half human or not, it was hard. He felt trapped. Unable to leave Earth, unable even to leave today and make a quick trip to tomorrow. The slow path.
He remembered Reinette. How he'd been so close to taking the slow path with her, yet knowing all along that he couldn't. Wouldn't.
Except that wasn't him. Reinette had met the other man. So had Rose.
He went back to studying her sleeping form. Oh, but she was beautiful! Pale skin, so soft to the touch, and how he had wanted to touch it! He wrapped his arm around her and pulled himself closer, softly kissing her neck. They had made love just hours before, and she still smelled faintly of him. It had been slow, passionate, luxurious…. But her heart hadn't been in it. She was there, she had kissed him, touched him, given herself to him. But not to him. Never to him.
He could never give her what she had fallen in love with. He could give her a normal life. But he couldn't give her the TARDIS, or the stars, or that run-for-your-life life she'd left a normal life for.
He was the wrong him.
* * *
Sense of Betrayal
Rose was asleep. She had drifted off with the Doctor – John Smith – in her arms. The thing she had craved for years, spent an age trying to get back to… But she didn't want it. Yes he was the same man to look at, to speak to: hell, as far as she knew he was the same to sleep with.
Yet she knew he was unhappy, stuck here. Might as well be 100% human if you can't get off this rock. What was the good of all the Time Lord in him if he was stranded?
She'd fallen in love with the Doctor. With the man who didn't do domestic. The man who didn't dance. The man who had saved the universe, repeatedly. Not with John Smith, the man forced to do domestic, to pick a name and live a normal life.
Her subconscious filtered through the events of the previous months, her dreams a montage of daleks, lonely beaches, sex and longing. She replayed Bad Wolf Bay over and over in her head, wishing she'd demanded the Doctor – the real, 100% Time Lord Doctor – tell her himself how he felt. It was his face and his voice that leaned in towards her and whispered 'I love you too', but it was a clone. A body double. A stand-in. She felt cheated, seen that lump in his throat when he asked her if it needed saying. Why couldn't he?
Suddenly in her dreams, she was facing a blank wall. Just a white-washed wall to anyone else, but she knew exactly where she was. Back the other side of that damned wall, screaming at it to let her back, pressing her ear to it, straining to drown out her own heartbeat and hear two just the other side.
She rolled over in the bed, woken briefly by the weight of his arm around her. She gazed at his sleeping face, the ruffled hair, the slight frown furrowing his brow, the slight stubble creeping in. She draped her arm over him, lazily playing her fingertips over the curve of his arse, and started to drift back to sleep.
She was starting to love this Mr Smith, but it would be a long time before she could feel she wasn't betraying the Doctor.
* * *
Alone
The Doctor loosened his tie and stared at himself in the mirror. He was looking old. An extra line around the eye here, and was that…? He was looking good for nearly a thousand years, but a grey hair? That's just unfair!
He pulled faces at himself, examining every angle of his features. There was no denying it. This last couple of months had done some damage. He stepped back from the mirror and frowned at himself. Again an image of Rose flashed across his mind's eye. He'd been an idiot.
He wandered through to the control room, idly running his fingers over the various gears and gizmos and keys. Planting himself in the only chair, he kicked his feet up on the panel and stared at the monitor. Whirling circles told him where and when he was, but they hadn't changed in months. He was at Bad Wolf Bay, only his, not hers. He could never go back to hers, never see her again, never undo what he'd done. He was alone again, for the fifth time in just a couple of years. He had tried to appear unconcerned at first: after all, he'd been alone longer than this before, had to go through regeneration more alone than he'd thought possible. But this was different. He'd lost everyone, all of them had someone. Everyone but him.
He was torturing himself. He kept going over his last goodbyes in his head. To Sarah Jane, who just ran from him, not reluctant like the time before. To Jack, merrily leaving with Martha, laughing all the way. Hell, he even missed Mickey! Dear Donna, who was so special, yet would never know, could never know, quite literally on pain of death. He suspected the grey hair was a result of wiping her memory, that always did take something out of him.
And Rose. He let out an involuntary sigh and rubbed his face with his hands, willing the images away. She had her Doctor, she had her answer, surely he had done the right thing? But no, his body still ached for her and still envied the man he had given her to. The hardest memory of all had been watching him with his lips to hers. Such a simple thing. If all he could ever do was kiss Rose, just once, he would be happy. Instead he hadn't even told her that he loved her. He'd left it to his substitute, knowing it would be easier for her to love him if she heard it from him. He'd had to watch another man kissing his Rose. Yes, it was him, but that had only made it worse. It had taken all his willpower to turn and walk away, not even saying goodbye but leaving her to her moment of bliss, knowing that he was about to lose Donna too.
He got up and walked out of the TARDIS into the harsh Norwegian sunlight. He closed the door behind him and leant back against the frame, closing his eyes to the sudden brightness and biting sea-wind. He opened them again quickly when the scene started to replay once more. He needed to go somewhere. Find a planet and right some wrongs or get into peril or … Risk meeting someone new? Too soon. Too soon after so many losses, after such great heartache. He'd had enough.
'Let's stay lonely' he said to the empty beach as he went back inside and shut the door.