Disclaimer: Doctor Who isn't mine. If it was things would be quite different. The BBC owns all and I bow before them.
A/N: This is a companion piece to Still Us but can be read alone.
Thank you to resile for the beta and a Happy Birthday to Ablissa. I went to write you some fluff but angst came out instead. But it gets there in the end!
It had been three weeks since Bad Wolf Bay and it had finally happened. Seated across the dinner table from the Doctor in their new flat, Rose Tyler found herself in the first fight they'd had. As they neared the end of a mostly stony meal, she couldn't take it any longer and broke the silence.
"They're only papers, Doctor," she insisted. "They won't change who you are. I'll never call you anything but the Doctor. Ever."
"I keep telling you, I don't need them! I've lived nine hundred years without them before." The Doctor snapped, his jaw locked as he speared a vegetable.
Rose felt her own face harden. "You've never been human before, not as yourself! You need a birth certificate so you can get a driver's license, passport, a job, and who knows what else might come up…" She trailed off as she put down her fork. Although a few bites remained she had lost any appetite she had left.
"Damn it, I don't need a job either!" The Doctor's eyes flashed.
"Well, you have to find something to do. You'll go crazy if you don't. We can't always be together if you don't want to work at Torchwood. You said the TARDIS would take a few years to grow. In the meantime you'll have to exist in this world. I'm sorry but that's the way it is."
Rose sighed and reigned in her anger. It hadn't been easy for her to get settled on this planet, a universe away from where she came from, but it was nothing compared to the adjustment the Doctor had to make. "I went through this too, remember."
"It's hardly the same thing." His face was now the expressionless mask she absolutely hated but she wouldn't let herself be drawn back into the argument. One of them had to stay rational.
"No, it's not, but I am trying to understand." She reached out for the Doctor's hand across the table. He didn't clasp it in his own like he normally did, but he didn't pull away either. "Please don't shut me out."
The Doctor shoulders heaved and he just sighed and looked deflated. "I didn't mean to, Rose. My name, well, it's not just a name…" He broke off as his eyes searched her briefly and he squeezed her hand.
"Tell me," Rose urged gently.
The Doctor pushed his plate away. "Okay, but not at the table. I want to be next to you."
Rose nodded, stood up, and led him to the living room. The Doctor seemed unable to meet her eyes again so she flipped on the electric fireplace. Perhaps he'd feel more at ease here. As the flames appeared she turned off the lights, sat down on the settee, and motioned for him to join her.
Once he was seated beside her, Rose rested her head on his shoulder and he began. "My name is who I am, Rose, in every sense. It's a pledge I made to myself long ago, when I left the academy. A promise to never be cruel nor cowardly, never give up, never give in. To be a healer, a man of peace. That was my ideal and I've tried so very hard to live up to it. Then one day I made a choice. I gave up my name."
The Doctor's breath started to come in shudders and he paused as Rose squeezed his leg in comfort. He had shared so much the past few weeks, not only his life while they were apart, but some of his past lives as well. Yet he hadn't returned to the Time War he'd first told her about so many years ago but she knew that was where this was headed. No other topic could bring out that reaction in him.
After a couple deep breaths, The Doctor started again. "There aren't even words to describe what the war was like. Time Lords set themselves above everybody else and in fighting the Daleks they became like them. They were no longer benevolent watchers of the galaxy. Some people couldn't even tell Time Lords and Daleks apart eventually. Both sides almost ripped the universe apart in their war against one another.
The Doctor started to fidget as his agitation got the best of him. "I tried to stay out of it. I was the Doctor and I refused to take part – I was better than that and instead I healed where I could. But the war dragged on and on, throughout time and space. Death was all around and all of reality was threatened. I was given a chance just before I would've died and I made a choice. I abandoned who I was to become a warrior. I stopped being the Doctor and I fought. Finally, on that last terrible day, I ended it all. I wiped the Daleks and Time Lords from existence. I have the blood of billions on my hands, Rose, because I abandoned my name and my promise. I don't want to be that man again. That's what my name means to me, it's the promise of who I want to be."
Rose looked up from the Doctor's shoulder. As the firelight flickered she could see anguish reflected in his eyes and it broke her heart. Without a second thought she moved into his arms. "A birth certificate will not change who are. You'll still be the Doctor."
He tightened his arms around her and rested his head against her own. "But the thought of people calling me by another name, I couldn't bear it. Aliases were one thing. They never lasted long. This would be permanent, forever on this world."
"Doctor, lots of people go by nicknames. Nobody outside my family or Torchwood would have to know that it's anything but a nickname."
The Doctor sighed close to her ear. "I suppose I can live with John Noble then. Smith is too generic." He scrubbed his hands over his face and looked at her, his eyes full of contrition. "I'm so sorry. I really overreacted, didn't I?"
Rose nodded. "Yeah, but I get it. I wasn't there, Doctor. I can't judge you... I won't. But I know you and I know that if you felt there'd been another way you would've taken it."
The Doctor's voice dropped to a whisper. "I was a different man then, Rose. You can't know that."
She shook her head. "I don't care what face you wore, or what name you did or didn't go by, Doctor. I know what kind of man you are. Whatever you did that day, I know you did it to save everybody you could. I saw what your actions cost you from the start, the guilt you lived with every day. Yet, you're the man who laughed out of joy the day that everybody lived. You celebrate life, you protect it. You wouldn't have killed if you could've avoided it."
The Doctor cleared his throat. "I did it again on the Crucible."
Rose took his hand in hers once more and squeezed gently. "You stopped the Daleks. You saved the universe again."
He squeezed her hand in return. "I still killed. Even if it was the only choice, and thinking back I'm not sure it was, I still have to live with it, the knowledge of what I've done."
Rose rubbed soothing circles across his thumb. "Now you have me though. You don't have worry about losing yourself ever again or going it alone. No more of that. I will never leave you. We're better together, right?"
The Doctor reached over to the remote for the fireplace and turned it off before he got up and flipped the lights back on. "How do you always know the right thing to say?"
Rose smiled at him as he held his hand out to help her up. "I told you, Doctor. It's because I know you and I love you. This you as much as any you I've known before. Never doubt that."
He pulled her into embrace and as his arms encircled her, she felt tears upon her hair. "Rose Tyler, I love you. There was one part you were wrong about though."
She arched her eyebrows and waited for him to continue.
"You'll call me by another name one day. Just you. Time Lords have two names. One is their public name which everybody uses. That's the one you know and will use the most. The name that helps remind me who I am and who I want to be."
He titled her face up and gazed into her eyes. "The other name is, well, almost sacred, only shared with a spouse." He brought her hand up to his lips and kissed it gently. "You'll know that name someday."
Rose felt tears pool in her eyes. She remembered when he'd first told her his name and she had scoffed. Now to finally understand that there was another name and he'd only share it with her was a powerful thought. It took her breath away. "Are you proposing?"
The Doctor chuckled and his eyes crinkled. "No, not yet. Don't worry, I will, but not like this. Not after a rough evening. I probably shouldn't have said that yet, but it felt like the right time to tell you."
Rose tried to blink back the tears but was unsuccessful. "Something to look forward to, yeah?"
"Oh, yes." The Doctor wiped away her tears and caressed her cheek as he finally brought his lips to hers.
end