Hi there! Once I had rewatched "Doomsday" for the billionth time, I decided it was time to write a fanfiction about how the Doctor feels in it. As you might guess, this was NOT an easy task. It took me about six hours, during which I had at least three panic attacks, but it's finally done. So... I hope you enjoy!
Oh, and if I didn't make you cry after this, this fanfiction was rather poorly executed.
Disclaimer: I don't own ANYTHING of Doctor Who. Unfortunately, Moffat instead of Russell T Davies and BBC owns it.
Jackie was terrified. The Doctor was leaning towards a white wall with Cybermen around him, and he couldn't blame her for it. Truth was, so was he. Well, not exactly terrified, but it intimidated him. Well, the Cybermen intimidated him. The idea that Rose was inside a room with an unknown enemy, that she might be in mortal danger, that scared him.
"What's down there?" Jackie's voice was still quite calm, but there was definitely a shiver in her voice that showed her true emotions.
"Because she was in that room with the sphere. What's happened to Rose?"
"I don't know." The Doctor hated not knowing. He wanted to know whom he was dealing with, so that he could save everyone from this terror.
Jackie gave a small sob at his words and looked as if she was going to have a minor breakdown. Her eyes watered from fear.
He walked towards her, with spring in his step and ferocity in his voice.
"I'll find her. I brought you here, I'll get you both out, you and your daughter. Jackie, look at me. Look at me! " At this she finally looked up.
"I promise you. I give you my word."
This later showed to be a promise he could not keep.
"Open visual link."
Finally, the Doctor thought, would he get some information about who they were dealing with. He knew billions of hostile alien races in the universe, but this technology was fierce. He didn't know many races who could've developed the Void ship. His own race, of course, the Gallifreyans, and also the Daleks. But seeing these two were impossible, his mind tried to calculate all the races in the universe with this knowledge and technology... And it was cut off as a direct visual link turned up on the computer screen.
"Visual contact established."
There were a few agonizing moments until the Cyberman stopped.
And suddenly, there it was. The thing that had haunted his life for as long as he cared to remember. A Dalek. And in a split second he understood how much danger Rose was in. She could be dead.
His skin went as white as a sheet, his body became rigid and it started to shiver a tiny bit with fear.
"IDENTIFY YOURSELF!" The Doctor still looked upon the foul thing with horror. He knew that Jackie was scared of his reaction, but right now he couldn't care less.
"You will identify first."
"STATE YOUR IDENTITY!"
"You will identify first."
"IDENTIFY!" If the Doctor had not been consumed with terror, and if these two races were completely different ones, he would have noticed that this was quite fun to watch.
"Your request is unthinkable and illogical. You will modify."
"DALEKS DO NOT TAKE ORDERS!"
"You have identified as Daleks."
"OUTLINE RESEMBLES THE INFERIOR SPECIES KNOWN AS CYBERMEN!"
"Rose said about the Daleks. She was terrified of them. What have they done to her, Doctor, is she dead?" Jackie whispered into his ear, and her voice broke at the last word.
And suddenly he was furious at her for voicing his fears. If Rose was dead, then -!
"Phone. PHONE!" he whispered back furiously. Jackie looked faint as she handed him the phone. He called Rose's number in a matter of seconds and pushed the phone to his ear.
"She's answered, she is alive." The relief he felt was almost overwhelming. Jackie seemed to feel the same thing, and then another question popped into his head.
"Why haven't they killed her?"
If this had been a normal day, Jackie Tyler would have slapped him for this question, he knew that. Now she settled for a small remark, mostly filled with relief:
"Well don't complain!"
He wasn't listening.
"They must need her for something."
"WE MUST PROTECT THE GENESIS ARK!" he heard faintly through the phone call.
"Genesis Ark?" he wondered aloud, and then he quickly whipped out his 3D-glasses. To anyone else he would look ridiculous, but the glasses showed him what he had expected to see: the Dalek was soaked in Void stuff.
"Our species are similar, though your design is inelegant."
"DALEKS HAVE NO CONCEPT OF ELEGANCE!"
"This is obvious," the Cyberman dryly remarked. "But consider, our technologies are compatible." Wherever this was going, it wasn't going to be good.
"Cybermen and Daleks, together, we could upgrade the universe."
"YOU PROPOSE AN ALLIANCE?"
Oh no, the Doctor thought. Please let this be a bad nightmare. Cybermen and Daleks; together they really would be unstoppable. He swallowed. Now his only hope was that the Dalek's pride would be as it always had been...
"That is correct."
"REQUEST DENIED!" Finally, he thought, a little bit of luck. But suddenly, he was brutally reminded of that Rose was locked in a room with one of the deadliest races in the universe. Lucky?
"Hostile elements will be deleted." The Cybermen started to shoot at the Dalek, but their shots did it no harm. The Dalek fired back immediately, with the standard cry:
"EXTERMINATE!"
"Open visual link!" the Cyberleader demanded.
"Daleks, be warned, you have declared war upon the Cybermen."
Beside the Doctor, Jackie started to shiver with fear.
"THIS IS NOT WAR, THIS IS PEST CONTROL!"
"We have five million Cybermen. How many are you?"
"FOUR."
"You would destroy the Cybermen with FOUR Daleks?" the Cyberleader asked incredulously.
"WE WOULD DESTROY THE CYBERMEN WITH ONE DALEK!" Dalek Sec answered defiantly.
"YOU ARE SUPERIOR IN ONLY ONE RESPECT!"
"What is that?"
"YOU ARE BETTER AT DYING! RAISE COMMUNICATIONS BARRIER!"
"Lost her," the Doctor said sadly. The overwhelming panic was back full-force, and it didn't lessen when the Cyberleader announced that they would start to convert people immediately.
"No, Doctor! YOU PROMISED ME! YOU GAVE ME YOUR WORD!" Jackie screamed at him, and he felt miserable, only being able to offer the consolation: Don't fight it.
The Doctor sat looking out of the window. Rose was probably dead, Jackie was surely converted into a Cyberman, and he now knew he had reached the bottom. He felt almost dead inside.
"You are proof," a Cyberman said.
"Of what?"
"That emotions destroy you."
The Doctor agreed with that statement. Maybe it wasn't true all over the universe, but his emotions were certainly destroying him now.
"Yeah, I am." He suddenly noticed a swishing noise coming from behind the Cyberman.
"Mind you, I quite like hope. Hope's a good emotion!" The noise increased in strength.
"And here it comes!"
The Doctor wanted to figure out how EARTH suddenly had the technology to jump from one universe to another. It was way beyond it's time. He also wanted to figure out what Jake was doing here, and how the Cybermen jumped from this universe to the other. But that didn't matter now.
"I've got to go back. Rose is in danger, and her mother."
That was all that mattered.
The Doctor was listening through the door. It wasn't quite time for his grand entrance, it had to be delayed a little bit longer, to give the Cybermen time to organize their attack. Suddenly he heard Rose's voice, and he felt like the weight of the world was lifted off his shoulders. Rose was alive.
"If you... escaped the Time War, don't you want to know what happened?"
"PLACE YOUR HAND -!" a Dalek furiously said, but Rose interrupted him.
"What happened to the Emperor?"
"THE EMPEROR SURVIVED?"
Oh, that was the Doctor's Rose, any day. The Doctor grinned. She was really going to pull this trick. It was going to be a shock for the Daleks to for the first time fear his companion too.
"'Till he met me. Because if these are going to be my last words, then you're gonna listen. I met the Emperor. And I took the Time Vortex and poured it into his head and turned him into dust." There was a heavy silence.
"Do you get that? The God of all Daleks... And I destroyed him! HA!" Rose mocked.
"YOU WILL BE EXTERMINATED!" Now it was time for his big entrance.
"Oh now, hold on wait a minute!" He walked in. And he got his reward when he saw that A: Rose was unscathed, and B: she was smiling a huge smile at him. He wasn't very surprised when he saw Mickey/Rickey either. Hadn't Pete said something about him coming earlier to protect Rose?
"ALERT ALERT! YOU ARE THE DOCTOR!"
"SENSORS REPORT HE IS UNARMED!"
"That's me, always."
"THEN YOU ARE POWERLESS!"
"Not me, never!" He looked at Rose. She was smiling from ear to ear and she looked as if she wanted to faint with relief. He felt the same way.
"How are you?" he said and locked eyes with Rose. It was only for a brief second, but that stare said everything they could not. He tried to maintain his carefree face to intimidate the Daleks, but it was an effort.
"Oh, same old, you know!" She was doing the same thing as him, keeping on a happy, normal face to scare the Daleks. He couldn't imagine how things had been for her in the last hour.
"Good. And Mickety-Mick-Mickey, nice to see ya!" the Doctor cried, and it really was.
"And you, boss." They did a bro-fist.
"SOCIAL INTERACTION WILL CEASE!" one of the Daleks furiously demanded. Another one, a black Dalek, asked:
"HOW DID YOU SURVIVE THE TIME WAR?" He had expected that question.
"By fighting! On the front line. I was there at the fall of Arcadia. Someday I might even come to terms with that." Had this been a normal day, this was the point where Rose would have held his hand and told him it wasn't his fault. She was the reason he almost forgot about the Time War on a daily basis.
"But you lot, ran away!"
"WE HAD TO SURVIVE!"
"The last four Daleks in existence. So what's so special about you?"
"Doctor, they've got names," Rose said quickly. "I mean, Daleks don't have names, do they, but one of them said they were -"
"I AM DALEK THAY!" a bronze Dalek interrupted.
"DALEK SEC!" the black one said.
"DALEK JAST!"
"DALEK CAAN!"
Aha, at least now he knew whom he was dealing with.
"So that's it! At last, the Cult of Skaro, I thought that you were just a legend!"
"Who are they?" Rose asked.
"A secret order. Above and beyond the Emperor himself. Their job was to imagine. Think as the enemy thinks. All to find new ways of killing."
" But that thing," Mickey said, "they said it was yours. I mean, Time Lords, they built it, what does it do?"
"I don't know, never seen it before."
"But it's... Time Lord," Rose said pointedly.
"Both sides had secrets. What is it, what have you done?" he asked Dalek Sec.
"TIME LORD SCIENCE WILL RESTORE DALEK SUPREMACY!"
What? The Doctor thought. What was this?
"What does that mean? What sort of Time Lord science? What do you mean?"
"They said one touch from a time traveler would wake it up," Rose said.
Aha. Now the Doctor understood.
"Technology using the one thing a Dalek can't do: touch." He leaned toward Dalek Sec.
"Sealed inside your casing. Not feeling anything. Ever. From birth to death, locked inside a cold metal cage. Completely alone. That explains your voice! No wonder you scream." He felt himself go madder by every passing second. He knew he was probably scaring Mickey, but at least Rose knew how he felt. He didn't have to explain himself when he acted like this around her.
"THE DOCTOR WILL OPEN THE ARK!"
He just laughed at that, a small, mad laugh. Did these four Daleks really think that they could control him? He was the Doctor, the person who had single-handedly closed the rift of the Medusa Cascade.
"The Doctor will not!"
"YOU HAVE NO WAY OF RESISTING!"
"Well, you got me there, although -", he grabbed his sonic screwdriver from the jacket's inside pocket, "there's always this!" He showed them the sonic screwdriver.
"A SONIC PROBE!"
"That's screwdriver," he said, slightly scolding.
"IT IS HARMLESS!"
"Oh yes, harmless is just the word, that's why I like it! Doesn't kill, doesn't wound, doesn't maim."
Now he just hoped that the plan was going as it should...
"But I'll tell you what it does do. It is very good at opening doors."
He pressed the button, and suddenly all the doors in the room exploded. Cybermen burst in and started shooting at the Daleks. He tried to get everyone out of the room. Especially Rose.
"Rose, get out!"
He saw the Genesis Ark float in midair. Suddenly, a Dalek came out! And another. And another. And another. Way too many to fit inside that thing. Then he understood, and he was yet again terrified.
"Time Lord science. It's bigger on the inside," he said shivering with fear. He couldn't tear his gaze from the scene, not even when Mickey asked:
"The Time Lords put those Daleks in there? What for?"
"It's a prison ship." Why could his people never be a little responsible? A Dalek prison ship wasn't supposed to be lying around, especially not where someone could find it.
"How many Daleks?" Rose asked, and for the first time since they had come here there was a quiver in her voice.
"Millions." Millions and millions of Daleks, flying over the city of London, killing at random.
He looked out of the window. And he suddenly understood what he had to do. What he had to sacrifice. A feeling that he had never felt before climbed up his body and started to choke him. He tried to push it away. He could still get a few good moments with Rose, as a memory. He didn't look forward to telling her.
"Doctor?" Pete called, after speaking with Jackie. The Doctor plastered a huge fake grin on his face.
"Oh, I'm ready." He ran to one of the computers. "Equipment right here, thank you Torchwood! Slam it down and close off both universes."
"Reboot systems," a computer voice said through the speakers as Rose said:
"But we can't just leave, what about the Daleks? And the Cybermen?" He turned to her.
"They're part of the problem, and THAT makes them part of the solution. Oh yes!"
Rose laughed nervously. Obviously she didn't trust this new enthusiasm.
"Well?" the Doctor demanded. "Isn't anyone going to ask, what is it with the glasses?" he asked and pointed to his 3D-glasses.
"What is it with the glasses?" Rose asked immediately.
"I can SEE! That's what! Because we've got two separate worlds, and in between the two separate worlds, we've got the Void. That's where the Daleks were hiding, and the Cybermen traveled through the Void to get here. And you lot, one world to another, via the Void! Oh, I like that," he mused, "Via the Void! Look!"
He quickly put the 3D-glasses on Rose.
"I've been through it, you see?"
She stretched out her hand to touch something in the air above his head.
"What is it?"
"Void stuff."
"Like, um...", she searched for a word and found it, "Background radiation!"
"That's it. Look at the others." He leaned close to Rose. It didn't matter what he wanted, he couldn't escape the fact that these were going to be his last moments with Rose.
"And the only one who hasn't been through the Void: Your mother. First time she's looked normal in her life!"
"Oi!" Jackie protested.
He ran towards the white wall.
"The Daleks lived inside the Void, they're bristling with it! Cybermen, all of them. I just open the Void, and reverse. The Void stuff gets sucked back inside."
"Pulling 'em all in!" Rose cried and made a 'Yes' sign with her right hand. The Doctor mimicked it.
"Pulling 'em all in!" he agreed.
"Sorry," Mickey interrupted, "What's the Void?"
"The dead space. Some people call it hell."
"So you're sending the Daleks and Cybermen to hell." He turned to Jake. "Man, I told you he was good."
"But it's like you said... We've all got Void stuff. Me too, 'cause we went to that parallel world," Rose said suddenly. Oh no. She had figured it out, like she always did. This was when he would have to tell her she couldn't stay with him.
Rose looked down at her hand, and she clearly saw Void stuff swirling around it. She ripped off the glasses.
"We're all contaminated, we'll get pulled in."
He finally met her eyes.
"That's why you've got to go. Back to Pete's World." It was clear she didn't understand what he was saying. He pointed to Pete.
"Hey, we should call it that, Pete's World!" The fake enthusiasm fell off his face again.
"I'm opening the Void, but only on this side. You'll be safe on that side." They locked eyes. It was clear she couldn't grasp the idea of a world without him. She hadn't even begun to accept this preposterous proposition.
"And then you close it. For good?" Pete asked.
"The bridge itself is soaked in Void stuff, in the end it will close itself. And that's it. Kaput."
He locked eyes with Rose again as she asked, just to make sure that she'd heard right:
"But you'll stay on this side?" It was painful, no, it was not painful, it was agonizing, watching her right now. Because he knew that this truly was the end of everything.
"But you'll get pulled in." That was Mickey. The Doctor physically tore his gaze away from Rose's eyes and ran towards the other wall.
"That's why," he lifted up the giant magnets which he had taken earlier, "I've got these. I'll just have to hold on tight, been doing it all my life."
"I'm supposed to go," Rose stated.
"Yeah." He put the giant magnaclamps down.
"To another world, and then it gets sealed off."
"Yeah." His affirmation was much more quiet this time. He went to the computer and started to encode the program that controlled the leavers.
"Forever." He didn't answer this time. 'Forever' was a word he connected with happiness. It had been a confirmation that Rose Tyler really would stay with the Doctor forever. It was a confirmation here, too, but now it was a harsh and bitter one. Forever, that was now as long as they would be without each other.
Rose gave a small, humourless, disbelieving laugh.
"That's not going to happen."
A great boom shook the building. This shook Pete up.
"We haven't got time to argue, the plan works, we're going. You too, all of us!" he said and pointed to Rose and Jackie.
"No, I'm not leaving 'im!" Rose said angrily.
"I'm not going without her."
"Oh my god, we're going!" Pete cried to Jackie.
"I've had twenty years without you, so button it. I'm not leaving her!"
"You've got to!" said Rose.
"Well that's tough!"
Rose grabbed her mother's hand. The female computer voice once again said: Reboot in one minute.
"Mum, I've had a life with you for nineteen years. But then I met the Doctor."
Pete glanced at the Doctor, who stood up.
"And, all the things I've seen him do for me, for you, for all of us." Pete once again glanced at the Doctor.
"For this whole, stupid planet, and every planet out there, he does it alone, mum," Rose continued to talk, oblivious to the silent conversation that was taking place behind her back. Pete picked up a Dimension Cannon from an inside pocket in his jacket, and so did the Doctor.
"But not anymore." Rose was on the verge of tears. "'Cause now he's got me," she finished. And at the same time the Doctor hung the Dimension Cannon around her neck with a hollow expression on his face.
Rose turned around.
"What are you...?" She didn't get to finish the question because Pete had just teleported them out of there.
The Doctor hadn't been like this for years. He was a wreck, he could feel it. An emotional Katrina. Never again, never again would he hear Rose's laugh, or see her eyes twinkle...
He pushed down these thoughts as he went to reset the coordinates. Later, he could become suicidal later. Now there was work to be done. He only allowed himself a tiny sniffle.
Suddenly the swishing noise was back again. He looked up, and there stood Rose, saying:
"I think this is the on-switch."
He quickly grabbed her, hard.
"Once the breach collapses, that's it! You will never be able to see her again, your own mother!" He tried to intimidate her to return to safety, but she simply looked him straight in the eye and said:
"I made my choice a long time ago, and I'm never gonna leave you."
He was shocked. She continued:
"So what can I do to help?"
He let her go. The female computer voice said: Systems rebooted. Open access.
The Doctor pointed to a computer.
"Those coordinates there, set them all at six. And HURRY UP!"
He internally winced. He hadn't meant to sound so harsh. But a part of him was still marvelling at the fact that she really was back, back with him... And not just that, her loyalty to him was amazing.
Rose's voice interrupted his thoughts.
"We've got Cybermen on the way up."
He rushed to her computer.
"How many floors down?"
"Just one."
Together they watched as Yvonne Hartman, formerly the leader for Torchwood London, now fully converted Cyberman, single-handedly stopped the Cybermen. And they did not miss the oil tear running down her metal cheek.
Leavers operational.
The female voice was once again heard as the Doctor grinned, and Rose smiled at this.
"That's more like it, bit of a smile! The old team!"
"Hope and glory, Mutt and Jeff, Shiver and Shake!"
"Which one's Shiver?"
"Oh, I'm Shake."
They hooked the magnaclamps to the wall.
"When it starts, just hold on tight, shouldn't be too bad for us, but the Daleks and Cybermen are steeped in Void stuff. You ready?" he asked.
They started to push the leavers up, as Rose said:
"So are they."
The Doctor had seen the Daleks flying towards them too.
"Let's do it!" he yelled. They pushed the leavers upwards and ran to the magnaclamps.
Online, the computer voice said.
They felt the strong pull of the Void, and the small troop of Daleks that had come for them were sucked inside immediately.
"The bridge is open! Into the Void! HA!" the Doctor cried to Rose over the wind.
They smiled an adrenaline filled smile at each other as hundreds of Daleks came whooshing past their faces and into the Void. More Cybermen now started to go straight in to the Void.
Suddenly, sparks flew from one of the leavers, and as it slowly started to go back into its original position, the female computer voice said:
Offline.
The Daleks and the Cybermen flew past slowly now. Too slow. Rose tried to reach for the leaver as the Doctor cried:
"HOLD ON!"
It almost looked as if she could reach it, the Doctor thought. Just a few more centimetres, just a few more...
But it wasn't possible. The only thing you could do to set the leaver right again was to let go of the magnaclamp...
NO. She wouldn't. She wouldn't do that!
Completely ignoring the Doctor's unheard pleas, Rose did let go. In the last minute she grabbed the leaver.
"I'VE GOT TO GET IT UPRIGHT!" she yelled. The Doctor clung harder to his magnet as Rose looked at him. It was clear she was very scared. She pushed the leaver upwards slowly, slowly until...
Online and locked.
The Daleks flew past with increased speed, and Rose herself desperately tried to hold on to the leaver.
"ROSE! HOLD ON!" the Doctor screamed, and his voice broke. She had to hold on, she HAD to.
But the pull was too strong. Her legs flew up in the air, and finally the only thing holding her in this universe was a pair of sweaty hands, and a slippery leaver.
"HOLD ON!" He tried to reach for her, to stretch his arm so far that he would be able to grab her hand, but it didn't work. She slipped...
"ROOOOSE!"
"AAAAAH!"
"NOOOOOOOO!"
Out of nowhere came Pete Tyler with a Dimension Cannon. He caught Rose before she fell into the Void, and, surprised, both the Doctor and Rose stopped screaming. Rose looked him in the eye. As quickly as he'd come, Pete Tyler teleported back to the other universe.
For the first few seconds, the Doctor was in shock. He felt the wind slow down, and he watched as the breach to the Void crumpled into nothingness, and all that was left was a white wall.
He moved his legs towards it. Right now, all that was in his mind was that Rose was on the other side of that wall.
Systems closed.
Closed. Closed. Closed. Every time the word was repeated he felt a piece of both his sanity and self slip away. Slowly, he pressed his cheek against the white wall. He could feel Rose behind it. He really could. He knew that she, too, had her face pressed towards that wall. For a few seconds, all that existed was the Doctor and Rose. On their own side of a wall. But after every second the nothingness in him increased. No, there wasn't any nothingness in him. There was just pain.
He pressed his face harder towards the wall. He would rip it down with his bare hands to get to her again. And then he remembered. Another universe. Not room.
Pain, the Doctor thought, was a small word. Too small for what he was feeling right now. Too small for what she was feeling right now. The Gallifreyan word for pain almost didn't fit in in any book. It included years and lifetimes of suffering, of endless agony.
He felt like a black hole, except that this one was made of exactly that word. He couldn't bear it.
He lifted his face from the wall, and walked away.
Months later, he found what he was looking for. A tiny hole in the walls of the universes. He could see her again.
Joy, or at least the weak imitation of joy, rushed through him. Now all that was left was to call for her...
Rose Tyler woke up at midnight. It was the Doctor's voice. It was calling, whispering her name. Just her name. Just a soft whisper: Rose.
She told her parents, and Mickey. And they believed her. They'd seen what the Doctor could do. So off they went. They drove and drove, until they finally came to the place where the call was heard the strongest.
It had to work.
And suddenly, there she was. On a great grey beach. After all these months, he could actually see her. She was dressed completely in black.
Suddenly, she saw him. She turned to him and asked:
"Where are you?"
"Inside the TARDIS. There's one tiny little gap in the universe left, just about to close. And it's taking a lot of power to send this projection, I'm in orbit around a supernova. I'm burning up a sun just to say goodbye." He tried to laugh at the end, but it came out as a smile and a humourless cough.
"You look like a ghost," Rose stated miserably.
"Hold on." He switched the right setting on the sonic screwdriver and pointed it at the TARDIS's control panel.
Now when she appeared before him, it looked as if he was on that beach with her. Rose stepped forward, and stretched out a hand towards his face.
"Can I t-?"
"I'm still just an image. No touch," he said regretfully with a shake of his head.
"Can't you come through properly?" she asked.
"The whole thing would fracture. Two universes would collapse."
"So?"
They both smiled a little at that. The Doctor knew that that was the one thing he wouldn't do. Anything else, he would've done to be there for real, but not that. He felt so old. Suddenly a question sprung to his mind.
"Where are we? Where did the gap come out?"
"We're in Norway."
"Norway, right." His old friend, Slartibartfast, had always claimed that he designed it, but the Doctor wasn't so sure. Still, the Doctor had always liked Norway... until now.
"About fifty miles out of Bergen. It's called: Daalig Ulv Stranden."
"Dalek?" Surely the beach wasn't called Dalek.
"Daalig. It's Norwegian for bad." It appeared as if she was waiting for him to figure something out. He didn't.
"This translates as Bad Wolf Bay!" They both laughed at that, but the laugh wasn't real. The Doctor felt the wrinkles around his eyes, and he heard the words pounding in his head: Never again, never again, never again.
"How long have we got?" Rose asked, and her voice broke.
It pained him to give her the answer.
"About two minutes."
She laughed her sad little laugh again.
"I can't think of what to say!"
He laughed his sad laugh too. Desperately wanting to change the subject, he nodded his head in her family's direction, and said:
"You've still got Mr. Mickey, then?"
"There's five of us now. Mum, Dad, Mickey... and the baby."
What?
"You're not?"
She shook her head, smiling.
"No. It's mum."
He huffed incredulously.
"Three months gone, more Tylers on the way."
"And what about you, are you...?" He wanted to know how she was doing. Seeing as she was dressed in black, and had tear tracks on her face, she couldn't be doing that well.
"Yeah, I'm back working in the shop."
"Oh, good for you." He knew that it had sounded completely fake, but there wasn't anything he could do about that now. She'd heard it.
"Shut up. Nah, I'm not. There's a Torchwood on this planet, it's open for business. Think I know a thing or two about aliens."
He felt the wrinkles around his eyes again as he said proudly and grinned:
"Rose Tyler. Defender of the Earth!"
She started to say something, but he didn't want to hear it, so he said:
"You're dead, officially, back home. So many people died that day and you've gone missing. You're on the list of the dead. And here you are! Living a life day after day. The one adventure I can never have," he finished sadly. He knew it was true. He could never have a life with Rose. Never.
Rose finally started to cry, letting the tears which she had held inside her for so long pour down her cheeks. He hated it.
"Am I ever going to see you again?"
He hated his answer, he hated everything about this place except Rose.
"You can't." She cried harder.
"What are you gonna do?"
"Oh, I've got the TARDIS. Same old life, last of the Time Lords!"
Rose hesitated.
"On your own?"
He nodded. Never again would he be able to have a companion. Not after this. Agony coursed through him.
Rose weeped again, but she seemed to make some sort of decision.
"I-," she said and stopped to catch her breath. The Doctor stiffened. He thought he knew which words she was going to say, and he hated that they had to be said here and now, on their last meeting. Why couldn't they've been said earlier?
"I love you!" She cried again. The words pounded in his head. They made him happy, but also a lot more sad.
"Quite right too!" he joked. She seemed to smile half-heartedly in the middle of all her tears.
"And I suppose... if it's my last chance to say it..." New words pounded in his head:
Tell her, tell her, tell her.
Rose took a deep breath.
So did he.
They were running out of time.
He had to say the words quickly.
"Rose Tyler-", he began, and then he cruelly faded away. He left Rose crying tears that never seemed to make a stop, and he -
He was left alone in the TARDIS. He knew the words, what if he could just say them out loud?
He mouthed 'I', and then he couldn't get any further. How could he possibly say them when she wasn't there, when she never would be there?
The Doctor once again felt like the Gallifreyan word for pain, as he thought that. One tear rolled down each cheek as he thought of another nine hundred years without her. He was drowning in grief on the inside, and it clawed at him. He walked around the console, pressing buttons. Then he dried his tears, and took a deep breath.
AN: So, what do you think? How was it? Did I make you cry? I hope I did. I really do. Oh, and this is a prequel to my other story, "Her Name was Rose". Please read it after this one.
Please, please, PLEASE review this. I desperately want some feedback, it doesn't matter if it's "You suck" or "Hi there! This was bad!", just give it to me! PLEASE! (Otherwise I'll get into your brains and alter you electronic signals to make you review. MWUHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA!) Anyway, Thank You for reading this.
/MsBooknerd1
