This is set during Ten's Time Lord Victorious stage, and is Rose/Doctor; it's also my first Doctor Who fanfiction, and written for Chloe.
He's noticed that he's changed over the past few years, the most recent months in particular—and deep within his heart, he knows that the changes aren't for the better. Being forged in love has meant that every loss he faces breaks yet another chunk away from his hearts, leaves the door to the memories containing that companion not quite locked so that they're able to seep out and surround him as he sleeps. Sleep is when he's freed from whatever his conscious personality has turned him into: someone who won't take no for an answer; someone who can do anything and save anything and destroy anything that won't follow him on the course he thinks is right; someone who does anything and everything he can to forget that his song is ending.
Sleep revives the memory of Donna's frantic begs as he takes away her memories of him, wipes her mind clear of everything that's made her the noblest of all humans he's had the privilege to meet. It also reminds him of how Martha made him realise how toxic he was—is—to the safety and happiness of those who dedicate their life to him. But most of all, it makes startlingly clear the tears on her face as she told him she loved him, just as he burnt up a sun to say goodbye to the one person who shaped him. It brings to the forefront of his mind the way that she kissed him—but it wasn't him, not really, it was the other him, the one who could offer Rose Tyler what he can never offer her: forever.
And it's the memory of watching her kiss his human version with as much fervour as she had kissed him with, all those years ago (because time doesn't work the same for him as everyone else, time has a funny habit of passing by in the blink of an eye to reach the stage that he's lived a human lifetime before he visits U.N.I.T's headquarters for tea) that he has when he wakes up. And the Time Lord Victorious doesn't want to accept that he's now the second best option out of his human clone and himself; the Time Lord Victorious can't accept that he's alone and spiralling into madness and power whilst the weaker version of the Doctor has the only person this incarnation wants. Past loves and family doesn't matter—they all burned on Gallifrey, anyway, when he destroyed them, but that's guilt enough for another lifetime—because he has memories galore of them, all locked away in places where they can't hurt him.
He just doesn't have Rose Tyler, the only woman for his tenth incarnation (and, hell, his ninth considering how this version of him was born: in fire and flame, true, but born of love and a desire to heal rather than to burn and destroy.)
The Time Lord Victorious: he doesn't have limits ordinary people have—or have ever had. He doesn't have to follow orders and do things in certain ways to ensure he doesn't lose his TARDIS because there's noone left! There's noone but him to police the universe from beginning to end, from one constellation to another. To be wrong is to not be the Time Lord Victorious and that's what he's become; love and pain have given way to someone who has supreme power—after all, he is the one who said "the laws of time are mine, and they will obey me," not anyone else—and that includes the ability (and the right) to destroy anything to get what he wants.
And so he awakens, his only aim to get what he wants; for too long, he's done everything in his power to make other people happy, to save constellations and populations who only cause him to lose those he loves. No more. No longer will he sacrifice something he's wanted for, oh it must be decades now, ever since he lost her for the first time. He spent so long alone before he found Martha, but time doesn't matter to a Time Lord—especially not one who wants to forget, one who regrets everything that he's ever done and ever will.
The TARDIS isn't happy with him as he starts to push buttons and pull levers like the madman he once was and probably will become again; she tries to fight him, to stop him doing something which could destroy the entire fabric of the universe, but he's invincible. He isn't going to stop just because his oldest friend thinks he should; he answers to nobody, he controls everything. And so despite her unhappiness, the TARDIS works with him, taking him to the very edge of the universe—wherever that is—at the approximate location where he could—CAN—fly through and get his Rose back. He'll be hers again, and the part of him that wants nothing more than to return to the old days of healing and working together rather than controlling the universe wants her too. She made him good again, made him realise that happiness means more than anything, and that's a lesson the Doctor fears he's forgotten over the years.
For a moment, he hesitates because even as Time Lord Victorious, can he risk the entire universe, the entire history and future of anything and everything that has ever existed, just for one girl—just for his happiness?
And that's when the TARDIS strikes.
She forces the Doctor into the seat in which he never sits anymore—the seat from Rose's mum's flat which they nicked when she lamented not having a comfortable seat in her new home—and then opens a projection of what seems like a normal family in the park. But it isn't. It isn't because it's Rose and him—but the fake him, the one who managed to escape before the ego took over and made him what he is now: Time Lord Victorious.
And there are children.
He can almost hear what the TARDIS is saying: do you really want to destroy the family they've created—the family that's half you, half her? Remember that day: you could have taken her with you and left him—you—somewhere to die, and she wouldn't have cared because she had you again. Yet you didn't, because the better part of you knows that she needs someone who is hers and hers alone. And you could never offer her that, could you, my Doctor? Because you have me and I have you, and together, we have to save the universe—with or without the person who defines you.
For the first time in God knows how long, the waking Doctor feels guilt: guilt that all he wants right now is to destroy the first proper happiness Rose has ever had with him (even if it isn't with the real him) just because he needs her more than she's ever needed him. But guilt isn't enough to make him stop, because all of him wants Rose Tyler, the Time Lord Victorious and the Doctor underneath, and that's more than enough determination to break through the walls of the universe and into another.
It's not enough and she knows it, so before the Doctor can say a word, the TARDIS is making things flash and go boom in a way that he's never experienced before—sometimes he wishes he'd read the manual to work her and this is one of those times—but all that fades when a hologram appears in the centre of the control room, mere metres from him.
Rose.
She smiles as their eyes meet and in that moment, all thoughts of Time Lord Victorious, of victory and heroics, disappear as he becomes lost in her eyes, in her face. She's here, sort of, and she can see him; it's the real Rose Tyler, she just isn't physically here.
"I…" he tries to start by saying the words he could never manage to get out, but he can't do it, he can't bring himself to say them when she's looking at him like that.
"You're hurting, aren't you?" she whispers in that intuitive way she's always had, taking steps so that she's standing a stride away from him. "That's why you're sat there…and that's why you're willing to destroy the universe to make yourself happy again."
He's never understood how she's always managed to see what he's thinking without him having to say a word, and as images flash behind his eyes of their history, of Rose Tyler and Bad Wolf, he realises that he never will.
"I'm always hurting," he admits, finally standing up so that they're face to face—or as much as he can be face to face with a projection. "I think things are getting better as I help someone remember that they're special and that they're worth so much more than they think they are, but then they leave. They have their own lives or I do something stupid so that they have to leave—just like I did with you, Rose." He knows his sadness is clear on his face, because he's not only sad because he's finally speaking with her after all this time—but because his song is ending, and this might be the only way he can find to stop that happening.
She reaches out for him, pressing a hand against his cheek, and when he closes his eyes it's as if he can really feel the touch of her skin against his; it comforts him, even if he knows it's really only a phantom feeling. "You had the chance to take me with you again, and yet you knew that you'd survive without me, but that he—you—wouldn't. He needed me to make him remember how a little compassion can make you so much stronger, so much—"
"I need fixing," he interrupts her, opening his eyes and forcing himself to see a hologram. This might be Rose, but it isn't his Rose; she was never his property, but the Rose of the past wouldn't have…he doesn't know what she wouldn't have done, but he's certain she would have acted differently. (Or so he tries to make himself think.) "All I want is to bend the rules, no, all I want is to completely destroy all the rules. I want to live forever, to decide who lives and who dies, to let history run its course at the same time as changing anything I don't want to happen. I could kill Hitler before he even becomes Führer, Rose, and…and I'm scared because I never used to be like this when I had you."
A humming noise distracts the Doctor's attention and when his attention returns to Rose he realises that she's corporeal; it can't be the real Rose, the TARDIS would never allow him such wicked temptation, but it's close enough—and it means that he can really feel her arms around him.
"I've missed you so much and it's all because I had to be noble and ask you to help the version of me who remembered you, who knew you completely, yet had never met you—because if you didn't, he had no hope. Just like I had no hope before I met you in that department store."
He breathes in the smell that's so typically Rose and waits for her reply, wondering just how much longer he can stand with her like this, as though everything at Torchwood hadn't happened and she'd simply gone home to Jackie for a little bit.
(The feel of a wedding ring on her hand makes him realise that no matter how much he wants to dream of them running off together to make him remember why he needs to keep the rules he's always lived by—no matter how much the Time Lord Victorious wants to rip apart the universe to make it happen—it won't become a reality.)
"You're my Doctor—but he is too," Rose murmurs against his chest. "I love him because he is you and you are him. I can grow old with you whilst knowing that you're saving the universe at the same time, but I can't cross through to be with you again. I've got my life now, and you've got the TARDIS, not to mention Jack and everyone else you've met over the years. You might think that you've forgotten what it means to be humble and that sacrifices are sometimes required to make sure that the universe doesn't disintegrate because of daleks or, or, monsters which eat people, or Satan, but you haven't. You wouldn't be asking me to remind you if you didn't realise that you'd become something you don't want to be. The Time Lord Victorious is how you're trying to pretend that loss doesn't hurt you any longer, but it isn't really you; you're still my Doctor, after all."
What she says last puzzles him. "What do you mean, Time Lord Victorious?"
She takes a step back, breaking their tight hold on one another, and he can see tears in her eyes—he knows it's the last time he'll ever see her face, at least in this body. "You keep muttering I am the Time Lord Victorious, I can save her," she tells him, taking his hand in hers. "But really, Doctor, the Time Lord Victorious is just someone who comes out when times get tough and you're alone. Don't be alone, and even the most difficult of things you face won't be so bad."
He can't stop himself; he reaches out and presses his lips to hers, and for the briefest moment, they're kissing and it's as if nothing happened to break them apart because they just click. Next he looks, though, and they're no longer touching; the TARDIS has made Rose a hologram again, and it looks as though she's fading—they're running out of time, and he's still not convinced he can let her stay here and not come with him.
"Being with someone won't help me when I die—because I will die, Rose, and soon." This is the Time Lord Victorious's last card to play: death, because if there's one thing Rose Tyler knows about the Doctor, it's death. He hates himself for telling her that he's going to die, but if it makes her come with him…is it worth it?
(Anything to bring her back would be worth it, he reminds himself—though now, it's mainly the Time Lord Victorious who says that. The Doctor wants Rose to be happy, and if that means she stays with his human clone…then that's what he'll ensure.)
A sad expression crosses her face, but Rose nods anyway, her phantom hand still wrapped around his. "Company in the moments leading up to the end will help you more than you think, Doctor, truly. Company will make you remember why you fight to save civilisations, why you make difficult decisions to save billions of others. But most of all, Doctor, it will make you remember why you continue to live when you could so easily sacrifice yourself, end this continual survival. You will see someone and you will take strength from their courage—and it will shape your next life, make sure that everything brilliant you have done over the last however many years is recognised as you go into the next stage of being a Time Lord."
He understands every word she's said, but he doesn't know how to act on them; he doesn't want to stop being the person he's become—he doesn't want to accept that he's going to die, after all, which is perhaps the most arrogant thing he's ever done—but he wants to do everything he can to make Rose Tyler proud of him, despite everything.
"Thank you, Rose," he says, barely audibly, the corners of his mouth twitching up into as much of a smile as he can manage. "And I lov—"
"You don't need to say it; I've always known." She cuts him off, a smile on her lips. "You're not meant to say it, I think, not when we're saying goodbye. And this is goodbye, my Doctor."
And with that, she disappears, leaving nothing but air where she stood, and the Doctor decides to hell with whatever goodbye conventions they've managed to accrue; he's going to say goodbye, regardless of whether or not she can hear him or not.
"Goodbye, Rose Tyler, and I love you."
(The TARDIS flies him away to somewhere he's needed, and the Doctor's happy he doesn't have to take control of something for once. The Time Lord Victorious still lives, but now—finally—the Doctor knows how to revive the part of him he thought lost with Donna Noble's memories. He still fears death, just as he still fears what the future will bring, but he can no longer fear the final goodbye with Rose; he's hers, through and through, and that's the only thing that stops him falling into hysterics as the knocking grows closer.)
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