A/N: This is my first Doctor Who fic, and I'm still pretty new to the fandom (obsessed though I may be) so please forgive me if anything is incorrect. This is also my first attempt at writing in the 3rd person….so be kind. I'm also (unfortunately) not British, so I may get some wording wrong here and there. Always love to hear concrit! I'm always looking to improve! Of course reviews would be fantastic!
"You wouldn't understand" The Doctor raises his voice to Rose.
"Maybe I would if you just talked to me every once in a while!" She shouts back at him, running her fingers through her blonde hair in frustration.
"You don't know what it's like, Rose. Please. Just….I'm fine" His tone settles but the pure irritation and anger seeps through like venom that he just can't manage hide or cover up with an "I'm always alright".
"Yes, Doctor, you're right. I have no idea what it feels like waking up on an alien planet, so far away from home. Not knowing where I am, or being frightened out of my mind in the midst of battle, or feeling so alone….." she bites her lip to stop herself from saying anything stupid.
He sighs, closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose.
"Okay," He says opening his brown eyes and locking them onto hers. Rose wants to look away, to hide, not to argue with him, but she knows she can't. So she bears it.
"Sometimes….sometimes it's like….regenerating. I feel like a regenerated Doctor…only I kept my old body. You're the same person, per se. You have all the same knowledge and memories and thoughts as the one before. But…you're just not the same person. It's like the person you once were is dead and you just inherited their mind. It's like waking up in a stranger's body, full of their memories that you vaguely recall as your own. It's murky and disorienting and confusing at first. A lot of the memories you don't even want. You hope with all of your being that they would just go away, or fade with time…or…." He sighs again. Obviously frustrated this isn't coming out the way he intended. "But, you get used to it. You adapt and move on in your new form, but at the end of the day…..you're not the same man at all. I'm sure it's hard for you to understand, being you have never regenerated….but, just imagine what it would be like. Imagine waking up in another person's body, stuck in their mind. You….you don't know who you are anymore."
Rose's anger deflates as The Doctor's shoulders slump forward and he just looks so…defeated.
She walks over to him, slips her hand tentatively into his and intertwines their fingers. "So let's find out together." She tells him.
The memory fades like a dream as Rose Tyler is jolted back to reality.
Feet planted firmly to the ground reality.
"Rose" Kendra repeats her name again.
"Yes, Kendra?" Rose asks, hand still pressed to her cheek as she is pulled out of her day dream.
"I was just saying you can go home now if you want. I'll close up the shop today….you obviously aren't all here anyway. There is no one here and we close in an hour anyway. Go. Scoot."
"Really? You'll be okay?"
"Yeah, it's fine. I'd bundle up though if I were you. The weather is bloody rubbish."
"Thanks, Kendra" Rose tells her as she pulls on her coat and wraps her scarf around her neck.
The walk home is borderline torturous. There is a light misting of rain, and it's so bloody cold out Rose is surprised the icy drops of water don't turn into flakes of snow.
She hugs her coat tighter to her form as she walks a little faster and sloshes down the wet sidewalk.
She stops for a fleeting moment, imaging she hears the whoosh of the TARDIS appearing. She knows it's not but her heart clenches in her chest anyway and she stares down an alley way as twilight falls around her, making the bitter rain seem colder by the minute. She's sure she'll be frozen to the bone by the time she gets home. When she finally feels like enough of a daft idiot, standing there staring down an alley way, drenched in freezing drops of rain she moves on. Walking faster as the rain picks up and she feels its icy fingers sliding down her back.
When she finally reaches her small flat she stomps her feet and shakes her hair out at the front door before inserting the key in the lock and entering the warmth within.
She strips her clothes off one by one as she makes her way into the bathroom for a nice hot shower.
She stands under the warm steamy jets of water as her body defrosts. Her hands are a bit purple from the cold and it feels so good letting the water warm her.
Her thoughts drift back to earlier, when she was reminiscing about her new Doctor…not Thee Doctor, but The Doctor none the less. It was so hard at first. Neither one of them knowing what to do or say.
Rose being left on that forsaken beach in Norway not once in her life watching the Doctor disappear forever, but twice.
The Doctor leaving her with what I'm sure he thought was a marvelous door prize. Rose Tyler gets to keep The Doctor, without actually keeping Thee Doctor. She insisted it wasn't him. He reassured her it was. And sure he was just as handsome, and just as charming as The Doctor, but she didn't care. It still wasn't him. He wasn't her Doctor. But in the end, that didn't matter. Her Doctor still disappeared on her again and she didn't even get to say good bye.
"I've only got one life, Rose Tyler. I can spend it with you if you want" The memory echoes in her mind. This new Doctor….the one that wasn't quite her Doctor, was offering her what she had been dreaming of for years, but it's not the same, he isn't her Doctor. But in that moment he looked so vulnerable, like he was burdening her with his mere presence. It hurt her too much to deny him.
And then this new Doctor whispered in her ear that he loved her, and when she kissed him….it was just so lovely that she forgot all about her Doctor just for a moment. Too long of a moment. That moment passed and he was fading from her life. Again. Forever.
She felt like crying like she did all those years ago, when he first left her on this beach, burning up a sun just to say good bye to her. The day she proclaimed her love for him and he disappeared.
But then the new Doctor had grasped her hand in his and it felt comforting. It wasn't her Doctor, but maybe she can learn to love this one. In time.
She thought of all the months and years of hard work to get back to him. To her Doctor.
The emptiness without him.
The hollow pit in her soul that could never be filled.
Then of course when she finally breaks through the parallel worlds, back onto Earth, the real Earth, it has to be right in the middle of a blasted war.
She remembers the joy of seeing his silhouette, of the way he looked at her, like he couldn't believe his eyes, of the way they had run toward each other in desperation, like there was no war going on at all and all was at peace in the entire universe; in every galaxy, in every star, on every planet. Peace.
In their moment of lapse in better judgment, The Doctor gets shot by a Dalek.
Just like that. After all those years of blood, sweat, and tears, of searching and hoping and losing and loving, she finally finds him only to have him slip through her fingers.
The memory of being pulled off of him so he can regenerate into someone new. Another new Doctor, another new face, another new personality, another new Doctor that may not even love her at all.
But then he didn't change and she got to keep her Doctor, to hug him and feel both his hearts beating, and to touch him, the real him. She didn't lose him after all. She still had a chance.
That chance slowly faded as the day progressed; she just didn't realize it at the time.
Rose sits on the floor of the tub as the steam fogs up the small bathroom.
More painful memories started to flood her mind of that day.
The pain of clasping onto the The Doctor's hand as they watched the TARDIS die in the core of the Dalek base ship. He looked as if he was in pain and there was nothing she could do about it.
Captain Jack getting shot and being forced to leave him.
Being locked in her force field of a prison cell, forced to watch on helplessly as The Doctor's soul was tortured and twisted and broken.
Watching the hope die from his eyes.
Then this phantom second Doctor comes roaring out of the TARDIS, and after the confusion passes, there is hope again. Rose, Martha, Donna, Mickey, Captain Jack, Sarah-Jane, Rose's mum, Jackie and both The Doctor's all together. They were going to escape. All of them. Rose and her Doctor.
Then the Dalek's started exploding.
And her Doctor…. He was so mad. His "Meta-Crisis", this other Doctor, had committed Genocide and destroyed an entire race. The one thing her Doctor cannot forgive.
Next thing Rose knows she is being left by him, her Doctor. Again. On the same beach as before.
….and then the real tears come. She has seen too much in her short life. How does The Doctor bear it? In his 900 years he has seen and done so many things.
It was so hard with this new Doctor at first. He wasn't her Doctor. What were Rose and this new Doctor ? Strangers? Mates? Lovers?
Neither one of them knew and oh the awkwardness they went through. The uncertainty, the confusion and miscommunications, the frustration, and the arguments. But they clung to each other regardless. Like lost children with no one but each other to help guide them.
They became each other's beacon, each others foundation. She slowly came around to him.
Rose let the tears come, escaping and mixing in with the running water, until she pulls herself together enough to finish her shower.
She dries herself off, and picks up her trail of clothes as she makes her way into her bedroom. She dresses in warm fuzzy pink socks, grey sweatpants and a purple jumper.
Grabs a think duvet off her bed, and tosses it on the sofa.
She makes herself a nice warm cuppa and settles on the couch with a photo album.
She takes a sip of her tea and sets it on the end table before flipping open the book.
The first picture makes her laugh out loud. It feels so good to laugh.
The Doctor, the new human Doctor, was smiling brightly with his hair very poorly dyed ginger. He had a white towel stained red around his shoulders and streaks of red dye running down his temples and jaw line. She remembered that day, coming home from work to find him leaning over the kitchen sink with a squirt bottle in hand. Such a mess that was. But the Doctor was finally ginger. Of course he announced he hated it not 20 minutes later and it took months for his Chestnut hair to grow back.
The next one was blurry, but that didn't matter, she remembered that day perfectly clear. In her photo The Doctor is barely even in the frame, he's half running through the flat with a small spider clenched in his hand. Of course The Doctor had to go set it free. Rose remembered seeing the spider in her room. She debated on squishing it; after all it was only a spider. She has seen worse. Instead she let out a high pitched shriek and yelled for the Doctor to come "save her from the big hairy spider". He came running in proclaiming he was going to rescue her from the deadly Racnoss. While he was trying to catch it, Rose ran to grab her camera. The look on his face was so priceless.
Page after page of memories.
The Doctor with Tony, Rose's baby brother, at his 2nd birthday party.
Rose and The Doctor at her dad's house, at some work function or another of his.
Rose in a yellow dress picking flowers with Tony in the garden.
The Doctor pink faced, flushed with excitement, as he is forced onto a rollercoaster for the first time.
Rose smearing frosting all over The Doctor's face at his 906th birthday, though for the neighbor's sake he was turning 35.
The Doctor and Tony at the fair on the merry-go-round….on a lovely purple unicorn none the less.
Then the memories come to her that don't require a picture to be etched in her mind forever. Much better memories. Not of death and sadness and loneliness. Not loving and losing and being only half a person.
But, memories of building and living and loving.
Their first argument. "I guess it's true what they say" He had said. "Every Rose has its thorns". This just ended up making her laugh.
Every time he shouts "Oi" in frustration and it reminds Rose a bit of Donna every single time.
The first time they slept together and he nearly went into cardiac arrest. "Sorry, one heart, still getting used to it" He had said. His face beet red from blushing so deeply, but it only made him gravitate closer to Rose's heart. They took things extremely slow that night.
How he behaved when he caught his first cold. He was succcccch a baby. Rose was driven half mad by his whining. "How do you humans cope?" He repeated again and again. Rose only rolled her eyes at him.
The day he combed his untamable hair and asked Rose Tyler to marry him. He was nearly sick with nerves.
Rose Tyler never thought she would be able to love again. Not like she loved The Doctor. But she learned to love him, the new Doctor. The little quirks that Rose has grown to love that were solely his. Not The Doctor, and not Donna, but his. The way he mumbles in his sleep, the way that he can't pull off a lie to save his life, the way he bites the inside of his cheek when he's nervous. This is her Doctor. Her human, kind, funny, handsome, bloody brilliant, wonderful Doctor.
And when she hears a key in the door she knew it's him. Her Doctor. Her Doctor was home.