A/N: Written for the prompt: tentoo x rose and something really angsty. Well, this piece is as angsty as it gets. Very dark, even for me. For the best reading experience, listen to the Whiskey Lullaby while reading. Just for future reference - this is what happens when you specifically ask for angst from me.
"Doctor? Doctor?! What's happening?!" her voice was getting louder and louder, and soon she was shrieking. Screaming until she couldn't stop.
No one was there with her, no one else was in the house, and she had to fight the urge to cry.
So many long days, such a big struggle, so many sleepless nights, and then that last goodbye. When they didn't have time. When she didn't understand. When he just walked away and left her on that beach. For the second time. Was it the last one?
She took him home after, the new him, in the blue suit, and they hadn't talked for three days. Her mum and dad left them alone, although Rose was mostly at Torchwood, working overtime. There were no urgent cases. She didn't need one. She just needed the distraction.
She was disappointed and it wasn't fair to him. To the blue Doctor. She grimaced and shook her head. Better come up with something better than that, she couldn't just call him Blue. Especially since that only served to remind her of her first Doctor, the one with the storm in his eyes.
She gulped, sitting at her desk at Headquarters, fidgeting with a spare pen. She was tired. If she was honest with herself she was exhausted and beyond any ability to 'fix' this new Doctor. The meeting with her Doctor didn't go as she planned. She worked for it so long, wanted it so much, and when the time came, it was all for nothing. Tears burned her eyes but she stood up and went for a walk instead of crying.
She was still hurt. Still couldn't understand. Still didn't know why he left her behind. But he did and there was nothing to do about it now. The dimension cannon still worked, there were repairs to be done on it, but she was confident she could find her way back once again to him. Only now she wasn't sure he wanted her to.
All throughout the years, the months, the long weeks she spent jumping from one place to another, from one universe to the next, mixing up times, falling into trouble, trying to make it on her own… she hoped. Blind, brilliant hope was in her heart that her Doctor still wanted her. Wanted her to get back to him. Her hopes seemed to be confirmed when they met once more, when she finally appeared in the right time, at the right place... But now she was stuck in Pete's World once again. With no Doctor.
She threw a spare part at the wall and cherished the ear-splitting bang that shook her to her core as it met the metal walls. She was angry. She was selfish. She was so damn hurt. And so, so tired. She didn't need this. She didn't ask for this! He wasn't even the same man! She slid down against the far wall of the room and cried herself to sleep.
They didn't talk. With the blue suit one. Not for days, not for long weeks. Not about anything significant. They said good morning. She felt his eyes on her back as she made breakfast. She talked about her routine. Her work a little bit. That seemed to interest him - she could tell he would have gone with him if she asked. She didn't.
They never talked about how he never thought twice about committing genocide. They never talked about how every time she looked at him she saw a ghost of someone else. They never talked about how his eyes got sadder with each day. They never talked about her eyes being empty all the time now.
He was quieter than the Doctor in the brown suit. Almost as quiet as the one with the leather jacket. Not quite though and Rose always stopped her thoughts from going there. She never had time to mourn the first one. She didn't understand how she came to lose the second one. She didn't know whether she even wanted a third one.
Jackie suggested they should move out, start their own life together. He looked up at her, hope shining in his brown eyes and she swallowed hard, nodding before she could stop herself. Maybe it would be for the best. In the end Pete and Jackie decided to move away instead. Move back to London.
So they stayed. Her and the Doctor. The house suddenly seemed colder, choking, wide and full of ghosts she wasn't ready to face. They decided to rent out half of it. She didn't tell Jackie. Pete found out four months later when he came to visit. The Doctor still had his own room. They still didn't talk.
She would wake up nearly every night screaming. She didn't know if he could hear her or not, but he never came to her. Not once. It was irrational, she knew, but she hated him for it. She didn't ask though. Not anymore. Not after travelling through the Void time and again. She dreamt about the vast blackness swallowing her up. She dreamt about banana cupcakes and picnics on the grass with a brown coat underneath them. And sometimes, when she was really deep into the dream-world, she'd see two blue eyes and a flashing grin and hear the northern accent and she'd wake up sobbing so much she could barely breathe.
She'd sit at breakfast, pale as a ghost and stare into thin air. He'd come and sit down opposite her, resting his hand on the table top, palm turned upwards - an invitation. It took her six months to be able to take it.
His eyes were still sad.
Her heart was still broken.
She thought more and more about going back in time. Going back longer than she did before. Meeting the Doctor before the Autons. Meeting him sooner so they could spend more time together. Thought about going to the TARDIS before they returned to the Game Station.
About knocking her past self unconscious and telling the Doctor to stay in Kyoto longer. To avoid the Game Station. To go to Marbella in 1989. To go to Barcelona - the planet Barcelona, not the city Barcelona - instead of going to London to visit Jackie a year later. To never go into Torchwood. To tell the Doctor she didn't care about two universes, she just wanted to stay with him.
But then again, she did tell him. And he still left. And she was still broken.
When she looked up from her food, she usually found herself staring into those sad brown eyes, and she had to look out of the window instead. His eyes were too sad and her heart too broken. She didn't know why the other Doctor thought this would ever work. Maybe it would. If she could just try. But she couldn't. Her life was not a fairy-tale.
He started drinking. She didn't even notice until one evening he came home and swayed so much she had to catch him.
"It's not good for your liver," she said and put him to bed. He whimpered and asked her to stay. She squeezed her eyes shut and ran out of the room. She was human. He was human.
This should have worked.
It wasn't working.
She grew angrier with each day at the brown suited Doctor for leaving her. For leaving the human Doctor in her care. Didn't he see she was barely holding it together?
Of course he didn't. She was happy - deliriously happy when she saw him again. Didn't last long.
She started drinking too.
"I thought it was bad for your liver," was all he said when he saw her stumbling into the living room with a nearly-empty bottle.
They made love two weeks later, both of them so drunk they wouldn't have remembered if they weren't still naked in bed the next morning. She didn't cry after. He did. For days. She turned the music up loud in her room until it drowned out his sobs. And she drank.
Jackie and Pete visited on Tony's third birthday. Her breath smelled of whiskey. He didn't show at all. She wasn't even sure he was still in the house. Could have left weeks ago and she wouldn't have noticed. His ghost was there and that was enough to push her towards another bottle of scotch. Or vodka. Or rum. She couldn't tell the difference anymore.
The visit ended in a shouting match with Jackie telling her to pull it together and that she couldn't mope forever over that stupid man in the brown coat. Rose threw a vase at her.
"You should look at what's in front of you, Rose! Look at him! The new one! The one who's human! You could be happy if you just tried!"
"Get out! Get out! GET OUT!" she yelled at them and pushed everyone towards the door. They left faster than she could say sorry. She wouldn't have apologized anyway. Not before her head was clear. But she didn't let her head clear these days. Reaching for another bottle with shaking hands she held back the tears. She always held back the tears. Maybe that's why she drank so much. But she couldn't cry. She was sure she'd choke to death if she did.
She found him a week later, when the stink got too much and she could smell it all the way down to the kitchen. He hanged himself from the ceiling with a brown silk tie. His left hand was closed tightly over a piece of paper. It was covered in blood and tears.
She took his body down gently and laid it on the bed. She was too drunk to tell the difference. She thought it was a newly regenerated Doctor, and she cried for her mum to help her.
"It's Christmas, mum! I know it is. I'm sorry for coming now, but you see, he's sick. He needs time to…" a hiccup interrupted her crying and she went to look for another bottle. The only thing she had was tequila. She didn't even like tequila. She opened the bottle anyway. Staggered up the stairs and collapsed beside his body.
She woke up the next morning and retched. The stink was awful. She didn't go near the room for five days and only went to bury it when the tenants complained about the smell. She dug the grave herself, with an old shovel she found in the garage. She buried him below the old willow tree beside the pond. She cried a little, and jumped when a teardrop touched her hand, raising her hands to her face in disbelief. That's when she remembered the note and took it out, hiccupping slightly. On the blood-stained paper were written the words: "I'll love her 'til the day I die. I don't think she knows I exist." Her whole body shook as she teared the note into shreds.
That night she dreamt of three ghosts. One was crouching on the end of her bed, eyes red and glassy, in a torn blue suit, with a brown silk tie too tight around his neck. He didn't talk. He only stared sadly at her, with eyes that spoke of a thousand things. She couldn't understand any of them.
The second was thin and lean, wearing a brown coat and messing with his hair a lot. He rambled on, never stopped talking for one minute, but she wasn't sure he could see her or if he even cared. She shouted his name and he replied, "Not now, Rose, I'm thinking. I left a girl on a beach and I think she's very sad, but there's nothing to do about it now". She backed away slowly until she was out of the bed, and still she kept going. What finally stopped her was her back hitting something solid. She spun around and found herself staring into a pair of blue eyes, clearer than a crystal, deeper than the ocean. His grip on her hand was painfully hard and he couldn't quite muster a smile, although she saw he tried very hard.
There was a big spot of blood on his chest - he was wearing a white jumper, one Rose never actually saw him in - so it was very easy to see the spot expanding. It almost looked like a bullet hole, the blood seeping into the fabric in tight circles, expanding, tainting the white to crimson.
"It wasn't your fault," he whispered, his voice hoarse and she jumped. Hearing it after such a long time startled her more than the other two figures did. "Remember that, Rose. It wasn't your fault. And you know what? I wouldn't have missed it for the world."
The words sounded strangely familiar, but she couldn't think clearly. She was getting very dizzy and he was holding her hand too tight - she started to struggle, but stopped when she saw the pain in his eyes that her actions caused. She looked down instead, and there it was, in her hand. The cold, black metal of a gun. It was still smoking slightly.
"Doctor? Doctor?! What's happening?!" she screamed and backed away, entangling herself with the limp body of the blue suited Doctor, while the brown one just went on babbling in a strange language she couldn't understand. The one in the leather jacket smiled at her softly and fell to the floor with a thud, dead.
Rose couldn't stop screaming. She knew she should - the sound annoyed her more than anything -, she wished she could stop, but the shrieking went on and on, even as she willed herself to shut her mouth.
It was unbearable, really. She just wanted it to stop.
She raised the gun and put it into her mouth, pulling the trigger without thinking. There was a loud sound she couldn't place, but the shrieking stopped. A slow bubbling of blood and her eyes rolled back in her head. She knew no more.
The screaming stopped.
Her body was found three weeks later by Jackie who came to check on her. They buried him next to the blue suited Doctor, beneath the willow tree. Tony never knew he had a sister. Pete and Jackie blamed themselves. The Doctor went on, travelling in the Tardis, in another universe, secure in the knowledge that Rose Tyler was living her happily ever after. He visited her in 2005, before they ever met, when the time for his regeneration came. It was going to be a good year.
A/N: Feel free to shout at me.