Notes: An alternate take on Ten and Rose's conversation outside the coffee shop in School Reunion. Any recognizable dialogue comes from that episode and the Eighth Doctor Big Finish audio Scherzo.
Memento Mori
Rose stormed out of the coffee shop after the Doctor, heedless of the cold night air outside. "How many of us have been traveling with you?" she demanded.
"Does it matter?" the Doctor replied without looking back at her.
"Yeah, it does, if I'm just the latest in a long line."
The Time Lord stopped in his tracks, forcing Rose to stop too, and turned around to face her. "As opposed to what?"
"I thought you and me were…" Rose began, then hesitated. "I obviously got it wrong. I've been to the year five billion, right, but this? Now this is really seeing the future. You just leave us behind. Is that what you're going to do to me?"
The Doctor said nothing for a long minute. "No," he said at last. "Not to you. Though I thought that by now you would have realized you're not the first person to travel with me in my TARDIS."
Rose ignored that statement in favor of something that had been bugging her since meeting his former companion. "But Sarah Jane? She traveled with you, was that close to you once, and now you never even mention her. Why not?"
Again, the Doctor hesitated before responding. When he finally did, his voice was bitter. "The Time Lords often wondered why I bothered, Rose, traveling with members of the lesser species. After all, we are capable for living thousands of years; you humans can barely reach a hundred. And they came up with a theory. Do you want to know what it is?"
"You… you were all alone. You need friendship, companionship," Rose said. She just stopped herself from asking, Isn't that why you brought me on board?
The Doctor shook his head. Despite himself, a small dark smile played at his mouth. "They thought you were all memento mori."
Rose hadn't been expecting that. "What?"
"Reminders of death. Quite common things, really. On medieval Earth, courtiers would often keep skulls on their mantelpieces. They were very much the 'in' thing. No matter how powerful you were, death was inevitable. You still had to remember your mortality. And Time Lords need to remember all the more. I denied that that was the reason, of course. As you said, friendship, companionship. But over the years, over my many lifetimes, as my friends all left I began to wonder whether they really might have had a point after all. But then I found you, Rose, after the Time War. Well, a time war but it was the last great one."
"And what, Doctor?" she asked.
The Doctor opened his mouth to reply but was cut off by a far-off voice hissing "Time Lord" and a large bat-like creature swooping down. Rose, the Doctor, Sarah Jane, and Mickey all ducked.
Their conversation could always wait until later, he supposed. Right now there were far more important matters to take care of.