Merge
A/N: A sweet little one-shot set after the 4th season special and before the 5th. I hope you enjoy. Ten/Rose
"But I don't want to go."
His own plea rang through his ears as he felt the radiation coursing through his body. With a gasp of air, he felt relief rush over him and his eyes, which he did even realize were closed, opened.
This was not how regeneration works. He had regenerated many times before, he knew. Regeneration was being pushed aside, put on the backburner, becoming an old memory, becoming an inner child and your life becoming a hazy childhood. It was not being awake, it was being an echo.
The Doctor blinked rapidly. He looked at his hand and was shocked and relieved to see that it was familiar, but he was wearing a ring, which he had not been wearing before. Odd. The Doctor patted his hair, still the spikey mess he had grown accustomed and fond of. After evaluating himself, he began looking about at his surroundings. He was in an unfamiliar bed in an unfamiliar bedroom. It had quite a bit of splashes of pink and purple, if it were not for the king sized bed and the male touches here and there, he would have assumed it was the bedroom of a colorful teenage girl. The room made him think of nineteen-year-old Rose's bedroom and that hurt more than he expected it to. Then he looked at the door.
…And the door was painted blue. Not just any blue, TARDIS blue, with windows similar to the Police Call Box.
With a certain clumsy grace he flung himself out of bed and towards the door, banging it open. It was an ordinary hallway, with an ordinary staircase, in an ordinary townhouse, by the look of it. He sniffed and, as if that would give him a clue, and luckily it did, before he took to licking the walls and hugging the hardwood floor.
Eggs. Eggs and biscuits, with cheese if he was not mistaken.
He carefully walked down the staircase and followed his nose. When he walked into the kitchen the first thing that caught his eye was the little dining table. Well, not the little dining table, but the baby-ish humanoid with huge brown eyes and brass colored hair that was apparently having quite a blast trying to figure out this whole how to eat things thing.
Hands and mouth covered in scrambled eggs, eyes glowing while making happy noises, there was no mistaking who this child belonged to.
Something was caught in his throat, something like joy and sorrow.
He knew, he suddenly knew, what was going on.
So the Doctor turned slowly, to face Rose.
"Doctor, could you clean up Hope? For being partially Time Lord, she seems to take a bit after my duffer headedness."
"Rose," the Doctor breathed out, her name sounding like a prayer, like the whole of the universe and everything bright and beautiful.
Rose was wearing her jam-jams, grey sweatpants and a huge pink and purple tie-dye shirt. She went still, as though she somehow understood the significance of his tone.
She turned around slowly, tears in her eyes, "Doctor?"
The Doctor took her in, she was beautiful, still painfully young, and was in the family way. She looked about to pop.
"You are beautiful," the Doctor said, "and as big as a boat."
"Doctor!"
"You know me, rude and not ginger," he smiled at her, joy just bubbling in his hearts, and he added, "You know me."
"How-"
"I died, and instead of regenerating I woke up here, with you."
Rose rushed forward, quite quick for a pregnant lady, and he wrapped his arms around her.
After what seemed like only a second and somehow eternity, she pulled back, "Where is the other you?" she demanded.
The Doctor blinked and Rose pushed him away.
"You left me! You left me and he stayed, so if you-"
"He is here," the Doctor said, tapping his temple, "the process is just beginning, but for him it is sort of like he just regenerated. He is in the back of my mind, and his memories, emotions, his life, are all starting to merge with mine. Which is confusing, even for me, because he is me, and I am now him, and-"
"I love you," were the words that burst out of Rose, like a dam giving way, "I love all of you, I love the whole of you, I love you."
Then, he finally got to speak the words he was not able to say at Bad Wolf Bay, "Rose Tyler, I love you."
When he sleeps he dreams of bouncing around space and time in a dorky tweed suit and a bow tie. But the Doctor wakes up looking at Rose, and knows that this is right. Let the other him have the universe, he'll have Rose.