Just after Series 5's "Amy's Choice"
The Doctor closed the door to his bedroom behind him, and took a moment to simply stand within the darkened space.
What was he doing to himself? Or, rather, what had himself almost just done to them?
Amelia was safe with her Rory, off getting changed for Rio de Jeneiro. "Someplace not cold," had been her single and immediate stipulation.
Dreamworld or not, almost freezing to death had taken a toll.
The lights came up as the Doctor stepped further into the room. He had meant what he'd told them, the pair of them, about choosing his friends. With the tricks his mind could play on them all, that was exactly what he needed.
Good friends.
Good friends, who had each other.
The Doctor sat heavily at the chair by a familiar bureau. Throughout all of the changes to the TARDIS with his regeneration, there were a few favorites that the Old Girl had managed to hold onto. He absently pushed a pencil up the slant top, just to watch it roll to the bottom. He toed one of the lower side drawers open and then closed.
And suddenly, he remembered.
He hadn't sat at this desk since that day. Not since he had come back from losing Donna, Rose -
He had found the note, there in the top, right-hand drawer.
The Doctor jerked his arm away from the desktop near said drawer, and stared at the handle for a good thirteen and seven-ninths seconds, before pulling it open.
There, addressed in his own handwriting (or what had been his own in his Tenth incarnation), was an envelope bearing the single word, "Eleven".
He'd had his suspicions back when he had first found it. While the possibility existed that he had written the letter, himself, and somehow erased or suppressed the memory; the fact remained that it hadn't been there only a week prior to him finding it, the last time he had opened the drawer.
Also, since that time, there had been a certain human biological metacrisis wandering about the TARDIS, very likely with handwriting matching his own.
He certainly had the matching hand.
Ah, the metacrisis.
Designed by Bad Wolf, herself, whether Rose had yet realized it or not.
Her solution to being in love with a Time Lord.
The Doctor flexed his own hand in frustration, but not anger. How could he fault her for it?
Hadn't he just seen the same scenario play out, here, with Amy and Rory?
For as much as he was fascinated by humans, inspired by humans, good or even best friends with humans, and (on at least one occasion) completely in love and besotted with a human; the wonders of Time and Space - and his accompanying baggage, of course - wouldn't ever compare to that fellow-human touch, would it?
The Doctor hadn't had even the barest hint of curiosity as to what the letter contained when he'd first discovered it. If it was, indeed, a note from the man that now had Rose... His only impulse before simply slamming the drawer shut had been to incinerate the thing.
But here it was.
Somehow - perhaps the TARDIS had helped - but somehow the letter had survived into, indeed, his Eleventh form.
Fingers twitching nervously, the Doctor finally snatched up the letter, making quick work of the envelope, and unfolded the single page within:
Doctor,
The last thing I remember from before I was you, I didn't want to go. I'd said my last goodbye in the snow outside Bucknell House, the Ood were singing, and I regenerated. If another part of me has survived, if the TARDIS survived, then you probably regenerated without even realizing what happened to me.
Rose didn't make a human-ish copy of you to play house with her in Pete's World. She took me, you, our consciousness from that moment of our regeneration; 500,000 rads from a nuclear bolt; a bio-matched receptacle infused with half a regeneration's worth of energy; and our best friend; and combined them all in a human biological metacrisis.
Ta-da!
Hello.
All that about being a dangerous, war-born, genocidal maniac? Yeah... no. The Doctor that is living with Rose is the real deal: you, soon to be me, with all you've been through up to this last regeneration. The Master and Rassilon. Adelaide Brooke. Good Queen Bess - still a little fuzzy on that one... but you get the picture.
Leave it to Bad Wolf to find a solution to us being in love with a human.
And about all that companion-shunning we did, do I really have to tell you there's no point, and you'd better find yourself a good egg and soon?
For all I actually know, maybe that regeneration really was my final end as a full Time Lord, and this letter is just wishful thinking.
Professor Song seemed to think differently.
And knowing how ready I am to take this gift Rose has given us, I wanted to let you know its full extent - just in case you're alive to appreciate it.
I've got to go. The old me is saying his goodbyes on earth, before we head back to Bad Wolf Bay. Some of my memories are still in a bit of flux, what with the metacrisis and being in close proximity to myself; but I, for one, am never cursing the name of that beach ever again.
Good luck.
- The Doctor
The Doctor's mind reeled.
Rose was with him.
Not just an inconveniently-created copy that could keep her company as she aged.
You made me, he had said.
Not just everything he had been, but everything he would be.
Him-him.
The him that had berated the metacrisis-him for destroying a Dalek Empire straight out of the Time War, only to turn around and himself recklessly declare mastery over the Laws of Time.
(Who was the dangerous one, again?)
The him that had taken arms in desperation, but somehow remembered to think beyond the battle lines and be true to his chosen self - ultimately sealing the Time Lords' fate just as thoroughly as his metacrisis counterpart had done - would do? - to the Daleks.
The him that had tried to go it alone, because if he never again said hello, he'd never have to say goodbye.
The him that had still chosen Rose to be the very last person his eyes saw in that regeneration, just as she had been the first.
He had created himself for her, regenerating after saving her from the Time Vortex.
And she -
She had given up life with him in the TARDIS in order to give him her forever... but on the slow path.
The Doctor smiled. "Rose Tyler," he breathed, shaking his head as he refolded the page.
The one adventure he could never have... but Rose had found a way.
A way for him to have her and learn to let her go at the same time.
The end.
No, I didn't put this spin on my older Pete's World story, "04 13a The Journey Continues". It's a new idea that's come to me more recently. I may write up a Metacrisis-perspective account of "Journey's End", though...