All He Loved
Summary: He had always pictured the reunion as something happy, something wonderful. But what happens when your last hope is shattered? TenRose
Prompt: 003 Ends
0-0-0
Everything that I loved has either died or has been shattered to pieces
0-0-0
He had left Martha outside the room. He hadn't had to ask her- she knew him well enough to know what he needed of her. They had made it across the void, only to find that it was 70 years since Canary Wharf. Rose, now in her 90s, was dying. He felt like Peter Pan, at Wendy's deathbed. When had it come to this?
Canary Wharf. Yes, Rose was dying. But she had been dying when he was broken off. When the star died, Rose Tyler had died with it, and so had the Doctor.
Thinking back to what he had said when they had found Sarah- maybe the rest of their lives had been spent together, for what life had been left afterwards? A shell, full of meaningless babble, petty worlds needing to be saved, more companions to shut out. Ironic, how one could be surrounded by people, and yet be so totally alone. Or had Rose had something better? Had she built a new life, with her brother and her mother and her father and her Mickey, who had always been hers. Perhaps that was why he had been so cutting to the 'idiot'- male instinct, competitiveness. But she had been his, hadn't she?
She had said she loved him. She must have.
"Doctor." Breaking out of the nostalgia, he looked down to see Rose looking back at him, a weak smile on her face.
"Rose," he breathed, raising her hand to his face.
"Knew you'd get here in the end," she whispered, fingers trailing slowly down his face. There were no tears, there never had been. Not when Susan left, not when Adric died, not when Tegan left, not even when Gallifrey burned. Oh, he had screamed then. Raged at the universe, even as regeneration took hold. It had brought a kind of cold-heartedness, a dead weight of sorrow, rather than the hurricane of emotions there had been before, and he had not cried. Mourned, yes. Cried, never. Only John Smith had cried, the Doctor had never been able to.
And that had been when his entire species died. What was one human in comparison?
Everything.
And as his first ever tear slipped down his cheek, Rose's smile only grew wider.
"Knew it was there."
"You did." He agreed, remembering the times she had urged him to let out some of the grief at his losses. The only result of that had been a stony face, followed by a stream of babble.
He had hated that.
"Doctor?"
"I'm here, Rose."
"Let me go. Them too. Please." He blinked at her, confused. She gave a small laugh.
"Another first. I make the Doctor confused."
"You always were unique."
"But I meant what I said. Live, Doctor. For me, for all of them. Promise me you'll live." The sentence had grown ever so slightly weaker even as she said it.
"I..." Tears blinded him, and he looked away for a moment, blinking furiously. When he looked back, Rose was still looking at him. But her eyes- so beautiful, with that spark of eternal mischief in them- would never see again.
She was gone.
As despair welled up in him, the Doctor allowed the sobs to come until he wept freely over the body. Rose was gone. Now there was nothing left.
He barely noticed Martha coming in, didn't even see her close Rose's eyes for him, hardly even felt her arms around him. And through the haze that filled his mind, he never remembered how he had clung to her.
And, not being a mind-reader, he never knew what she was thinking, as she watched the man she loved mourning another woman.
Knowing that, when her time came, he would not do the same for her.
0-0-0
And here another part of my tale ends, and another candle goes out.