FOR THE MAN WE LOVE
A Doctor-Who Oneshot
DISCLAIMER: Doctor Who, Torchwood and all characters, properties and concepts therin are property of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), and are used her for non-profit-making purposes.
WARNING: Spoilers for 'Turn Left'
SUMMARY: Rose and the TARDIS share a quiet moment during the events of 'Turn Left'
Rose Tyler was not by nature, a selfish person. Well, depending on who you asked. Her mother would (at one time) have renounced her as a self-centred egoist who went running round space and time with no regard for the emotional and physical strain it put on those she'd always leave behind. Nowadays though Jackie was more concerned with raising the next generation of Tylers, after a million-to-one reunion with her dead husband.
Now the Doctor, had you asked him, would have denied any possibility of Rose being anything less than a saint; virtuous, compassionate, self-sacrificing, and all those other traits which people would love to see within themselves, but rarely find. No small praise from a man who'd spent the better part of six-hundred-years putting aside his own wants and desires for the benefit of others, and shouldering the resulting emotional baggage with not a word of complaint. Through pleasure and pain, through war and peace, ever smiling, ever eager to see beyond the next horizon, and ever ready to praise her meager achievements.
'Then again,' Rose mused, 'he always looks to find the best in people; maybe he becomes blinded to faults which to the person in question perceives as clear as an ionic-pulse to the medulla oblongata.'
She paused and laughed for a second at the technical terms that had just flittered across her train of thoughts' tracks. It wasn't exactly happy laughter, but there was still a sense of wonder to it, the fascination with learning new things and new ideas that had rubbed off from him to her. No matter how distant he seemed, the effect he'd had on her life was ever-evident.
The laughter died as a memory of a shrouded stretcher being loaded into an ambulance crossed her mind. It had been difficult talking the Captain into running her back in time to his death again, but at least she'd had a legitimate excuse. Squatting behind a wheelie-bin she'd watched the confused confrontation between Donna and her past self, then once the coast was clear, she'd snuck out and retrieved the object that had fallen un-noticed from his hand to the pavement, a slender wand of chrome and electric-blue.
His screwdriver. She'd kept it in her pocket since then, a small token of comfort, a source of strength. But now there was someone who needed it more than her.
Donna was being wired up by the UNIT staff, and the main hall of the makeshift base was relatively quiet as she slipped into the darkened TARDIS. It pained her to see the wonderous machine like this; even from the outside it (or 'she'), seemed to be ailing, the paintwork faded in places, the windows darkened. But inside it was far, far worse.
The central hub…she though of it as the Coral Room, was shadowed and silent, seemingly as lifeless and dead as a tomb. She gingerly sidestepped the hastily-laid-down wires and computer units that had been crudely integrated into the TARDIS, briefly disgusted at her own role in what was almost a lobotomy. After all, she was the only one with the Key; not even UNIT and it's handful of ex-Torchwood technicians had been able to get past the wooden doors, but a simply turn of a key in a lock had thrown open the secrets of Time And Relative Dimensions In Space, and at the same time left the machine bare and vulnerable.
'But it was the only way,' she knew deep down, 'both of us know it, despite the pain.'
She reached out and stroked the central tower. It lit up in fleeting bursts and the machinery stirred, recognising her. She replied, speaking softly as if to a sick friend.
"Hello, are you OK?"
A gentle thrum, as if to say 'A-Okay', but there was a keening edge to it that belied the lie. The TARDIS was dying, and probably not from UNIT's prying. It was something deeper, something in the soul, something that resounded within Rose's own being.
The pain of a broken heart.
She leaned forward and hugged the pillar, cheek pressed to the cool surface…it used to be so warm.
"There there, shush…he'll be safe soon…" the words of comfort were as much for herself as for the TARDIS. They'd often spent hours like this, usually long after dark, Rose sitting on a camp-bed, nursing a warm drink, sharing memories with a machine which could never speak back, but which could make its' innermost feelings crystal clear.
"Are you ready for this? It's going to take more than we've ever asked of you, to move Donna back to a timeframe I've already visited. It'll kill you."
The mechanism rose with a stronger pulse of power, assertive. She smiled, knowing that everything was going to work. She'd already been back to that crucial morning, seen Donna B step in front of the lorry, and Donna A in a little blue car turn away to the left, and turn towards the future. And she'd knelt beside Donna B, whispered the needed words, and watched the light fade from her eyes.
'Who's afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?'
It was at that point that Rose Tyler had decided she was the most selfish woman on all the planets of all the multi-verses. She'd sent an innocent woman to her death. Yes she'd be alive again once the timeline reset, and yes the course of future history would be straightened out, and yes only Donna had the power to reset her own time-loop, but she still felt dirty inside, thinking back to hearing those last fleeting breaths. Donna Noble had died, effectively by Roses' hand, and now she was asking the TARDIS to do the same.
There was another sound within the machine, some strange blend of hydraulics pressurising, capacitors charging and a host of mechanical clicks, whirs and a million billion trillion processes and systems too advanced for Rose, despite all she had learnt, to even scratch the surface of understanding. But all the sounds came together into one single vocal harmony.
A song.
It was something she'd seen the TARDIS do many times over the few months she'd spent helping to strip her down. It was a beautiful and slightly haunting melody that carried the faint trace of something…of him. Something wondrous; something Gallifreyan. The voice of a lost culture. She'd wondered if there had once been words set to it, and what ceremonies or events it had been played at, but she knew instinctively the context. It was a lament, a loving, sighing lament to something absent. A place now gone. A lost love.
The TARDIS sang on, comforting Rose as best it could. Old beyond memory, powerful beyond imagination, and wise beyond contemplation, and yet Rose had always felt more than a touch of a soul within it, something that reached out to embrace those trusted to its care. She felt it whenever she found herself speaking fluently in all the languages of the cosmos, knowing that it was the unseen hands of the TARDIS playing in her neural pathways giving her the gift of the gab, and she'd felt it in the long watches of the night that she and the time-machine had spent together in both conversation and silence. Sometimes they even manifested in her mind as images, some fleeting, others detailed. Places, people, adventures, and always him – whatever face he wore, whatever voice he spoke with, he came first and foremost in the 'mind' of the Tardis, and in Roses' own heart.
"Mam' – Ms. Noble is ready for the temporal transfer."
It was one of the UNIT soldiers…Ross. The young man had always been exceptionally polite and respectful to the two of them, and even now when he'd been ordered to retrieve her he stood outside with his eyes averted, rapping on the door to gain attention, considerate of their privacy. And that trusting, loyal face of his struck into her heart like a knife – she'd seen enough of the future to know that Ross had actually survived longer in this timeline than he would have otherwise, no thanks to the Sontarans. And yet she knew it was beyond her power to save him, even after this was all fixed. She'd learnt the hard way about the dangers of paradoxes. So she'd forced on a straight face and never let it slip – even if she was betraying his trust, she'd respect him (and the sacrifice he would make), enough to not break down and weep over him.
"Coming Ross, thankyou."
The TARDIS stirred again as Rose let go, stepping back to regard the interior of the Coral Room, knowing that even when all was right again and this beautiful space was flooded with light, the memory of this cold and darkeness would linger in her mind forever, and she suspected the TARDIS herself would remember these slow and painful months, in her own way.
"We will save him, I promise."
Slipping out the sonic screwdriver she held it up to the dimly glowing console, fiddling lightly with the dials until she found the right setting. Whenever the TARDIS was feeling a bit 'under the weather' or even just plain cantankerous, the Doctor had calmed it by playing the screwdriver over the central pillar, and if it would ease the machine's coming pain in any way, Rose had no hesitation in impinging on his turf.
That done, she set down the screwdriver on the main console, the glowing tip extended, and adjusted it so it sat squarely. Not looking back and fighting down tears, she strode down the companionway to the door, pausing for one last moment.
"Thankyou so much, and I'm sorry, I'm so sorry."
That said, Rose Tyler pulled the door lightly shut and crossed the hall towards a nervous Donna, striding with fake confidence towards a hopeful future and a possible reunion, at the expense of Ross, of Donna, of even the TARDIS. Some would live, some would die, some would be reborn. But she always seemed to be walking the easier path, and she hated herself for it, knowing there was no way out, and that what she did now, she had to do, for all mankind, and for one special man in particular.
'Yeah, I really am the most selfish person in existence…but I reckon both of us would do the same, for the man we love.'
END
NB: Thanks fo reading, and I hope you enjoyed - this was all kinda spur-of-the-moment. Oh and I imagine the TARDIS'es 'song' to be the Doctor's Theme from the show.