AUTUMN
The Doctor sat at his desk grading the first exams of the semester. He clutched his red felt pen with one hand, and a handful of his own hair with the other. He was leaning over a page containing a terrible, horrible incorrect answer to an essay question and resisting the urge to write "Are you completely daft?" on it. It was easy enough to quell; his mind wasn't focused enough on the task to muster enough care to be that rude. All he could think about was Rose. He'd bollocksed things up with her. Badly.
He turned the events at Bad Wolf Bay over and over again in his mind. He was bitter that he'd been left behind by his Other Self, never again to travel the stars, written off and cast aside. Considered 'too dangerous' just because he'd wiped out the Daleks—as if there was any other choice—as if he'd never killed thousands of Daleks before. Rose's words to the Other Him echoed in his memory, "But he's not you," she'd said, fighting back tears. That was when he'd told her, at Donna's urging, that he only had one heart; that he would grow old and die, and he could spend his one and only life with her, if she'd have him. He saw her eyes falter at that, and she'd placed a hand on his chest. She turned her gaze back to his Other Self. The gap between the universes was closing and the Other had to leave, but still she had one more thing to say; one question. "Both of you answer me this; when I last stood on this beach on the worst day of my life, what was the last thing you said to me?" She urged on. His Other Self began, "I said, 'Rose Tyler,'…"
"Yeah, and how was that sentence gonna end?" She'd asked.
"Does it really need saying?" his Other Self had said. Rose then turned to him, the metacrisis.
"And you, Doctor?" He could see the want, the need in her eyes, "What was the end of that sentence?"
His single human heart was pounding. He was so incredibly in love with her, and had been for so long. What was left for him but the truth? He touched her arm, leaned in, and whispered into her ear, "I love you." They looked at each other for a moment before she grabbed the lapels of his blue blazer and kissed him like he was the only Doctor there was. It was a shining moment in his 900-plus years of memories, and even now he clung to those few moments and pretended that every moment they'd shared had been like that. But in the dark corners of his mind, he knew that if his Other Self (the one with many lives still ahead of him, the one with the TARDIS) said those three words to her, she wouldn't have spared him—the Human/Time Lord meta crisis—a second look. She'd have jumped right back into the TARDIS with that Other Doctor and left his single heart to break on that beach. And that Other Doctor knew that; it had been written all over his face. So he left that 'I love you,' and all the future ones, to the man with a Time Lord mind and a human lifespan.
The truth of it was so terrible, so heartbreaking. It ached in his chest, so he did what he'd always done. He tucked that truth in the back of his mind next to the memories of his planet burning, just to the left of the day he watched the Master die in his arms. He built himself a new life, a new story. One in which the Other Doctor knew he could never make Rose Tyler happy—not really—and so he gave up the woman he loved to the only other being in existence that he knew would love her and care for her the way he did: himself. In his story, Rose loved him best from the moment he'd whispered those three words in her ear. Rose never thought of the Other Doctor when they kissed—when they made love—and neither of them longed for the adventures of time and space. In his story, they were together and happy, and the power of their love was stronger than their longing for the stars, for that blue box, for that life of danger and adventure.
The Doctor jerked awake. He'd fallen asleep on his desk again. He looked at the clock; 11:30. Had he really been out for four hours? He looked down at the paper he'd been resting on, thankful he hadn't dribbled on it. He scribbled a "3/10" next to the sloppily-written answer and shoved the whole stack aside. He rubbed his temples and reached under his glasses to pinch the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. He found that he needed the glasses now; a fact which irritated him to no end, but was glad that they still made him look clever. He remembered when he'd first had prescription lenses put in the frames, and how Rose had told him that he was just as gorgeous as ever. She'd mussed his hair and kissed him, and they'd made love on the couch. The memory stung his mind like lemon juice in a cut. He pushed it away. He hadn't seen Rose in three months, when she picked up the last of her things from the flat they'd shared. Yet everywhere he went, everywhere his mind turned, she was there.
The salt in the wounds came in the form of calls from Pete, trying to get him to join on as a consultant, or inventor, or some such job. He could name his price, be his own boss at Pete's Torchwood. But the Doctor wasn't interested. So he taught World History and Physics at the university with a set of beautifully-foraged credentials, and lived under the name John Smith. He sat at his desk every night grading papers, longing for the days when he could read a page at a glance—then cursing himself because those days had never been his days.
He opened the bottom drawer of his desk and pulled out a bottle of scotch. He had a few clear plastic cups stashed in there, too, and pulled one out. He filled it halfway then took a big swig. He just wanted to forget. He wanted to forget the pain in his chest. He wanted to forget the feeling of emptiness where his second heart should have been. So he swallowed up the rest of the scotch and poured himself another.
After several helpings of scotch, he recapped the bottle and stuffed it back into his desk. He tucked himself into a cab and let his ride home blur by. He overpaid the cabbie by ten pounds, and gouged a few lines into the paint job on his front door with his car key (then his house key), before finally making it inside. He weaved his way up the stairs, stumbled around the corner, and landed in his bed. He laid there for a minute to get his bearings. Sometimes he forgot how weak the human tolerance for alcohol was—or rather, how strong his own tolerance used to be— in the remembered life that this body had never lived. So he lay on the bed completely still and felt the room wobble around him. He looked down at the nightstand drawer. He knew what was in that drawer, who he kept in that drawer, tucked away in a photo album; so much, hidden away in something so small.
His single heart ached for the sound of the TARDIS, the feel of the controls in his hands, Rose's smile, and the days when he was him instead of this genetic mess, and they were traveling together—happy—in the TARDIS. Instead, there was only the silence of his empty flat, and the vast chill of an empty bed. He longed to smell her hair, to see her smile…he was slipping into old memories now, those first few months of their new life together. Those were brilliant months. He shut his eyes and let his mind drift.
They were watching a documentary series about the universe. Rose pressed pause halfway through and asked if the scientific theories were true. "Just between us, yeah?" She said, giving him a wide grin, tongue between her teeth, "You know I'm not going to tell anyone." She touched his hand.
"You know I can't tell anyone, not even you," He raised an eyebrow and smiled.
"But I love when you talk tem-poral phys-ics," she said, drawing the words out seductively and pulling him close. She planted a kiss on his mouth, and his legs turned to jelly. Human physiology wasn't all bad. He kissed her neck and then whispered into her ear; one fact human physicists wouldn't discover for an entire human lifetime. Then in a low voice, his breath on her neck, he explained how the universe works, and what makes the timey-wimey stuff so wibbly-wobbly. She kissed him, and undid three buttons on his Oxford. She slid her fingertips under the fabric and stroked his chest.
The Doctor still lay in his lonely bed, eyes shut, savoring the memory. He slowly undressed himself, tracing his fingertips along the avenues of his body that Rose had mapped so long ago. His shirt hung open and he hugged himself a bit, squeezing his fingertips into one side. He bit his lip. To beat back the lump in his throat and the sting of tears at the backs of his eyes, he turned again to the memory.
"I love you," Rose whispered in his ear at the end of a trail of kisses.
"And I love you," he replied. He ran his hand along her curves to her hip. He squeezed and then pulled her against him. His fingers crept up the hem of her shirt and he flushed with pleasure at the feel of her soft, warm skin. Rose slid a hand between them and cupped him over his trousers.
The Doctor rolled over onto his back, the scotch still swimming through his brain. He thumbed the button of his trousers and drew down the zipper. Eyes still closed, he reached hesitantly for himself in the darkness. He imagined it was Rose undressing him, curling her fingers around him, stroking him. "I love you," he whispered to the empty room.
"I love you too, my Doctor. Forever," his Imaginary Rose replied. His hand kept its rhythmic pace while his mind replayed the long-passed evening.
They'd undressed each other then, and were naked in each other's arms, kissing, nipping; the documentary was still paused; the screen frozen on a still of the Milky Way. He moved closer to Rose. Closer. Closer. The anticipation was so great that he thought he might burst. Her thighs were on either side of his hips, and her hands on his waist encouraged him closer. He looked into her eyes, whispered, "I love you, I love you, I love you, Rose Tyler," and using one hand to brace himself on the armrest above her head, he pushed into her. She moaned softly and clutched at his waist as he moved.
He closed his eyes tighter and held on to the image of her beneath him, cheeks flushed and pink, breath ragged, sweat forming on her brow.
She bit her lip and a moan escaped into the air between them. "My…Doctor," Rose sighed raggedly as he thrust into her again and again. The hand that wasn't gripping the armrest wound its fingers into her hair and he stroked her cheek with his thumb.
"My Rose," he said, nuzzling her neck and dragging his lips softly down her neck, kissing her clavicle, tracing his tongue along it before trailing to the round of her shoulder. Her skin contracted and broke out in goose pimples, and she moaned again. He could feel it in her body and see it in her eyes as he gazed into them again; she was close to the edge, so he began to move faster.
The Doctor felt the tension within his own body building to a nearly unbearable level. He quickened his rhythm to match the memory.
They were entangled in each other, sweaty and breathing heavily and Rose was clutching weakly at his hips, whimpering, calling his name, and he was looking down at her, biting his lip to hold back his noises, failing as moans fell from between his lips; professions of love spilling off his tongue…
It was then that The Doctor felt his release wash over him. He wasn't thinking about his empty bed or the ache in his chest just then, only of Rose's warmth and the waves of heat and pleasure that washed over him.
He reluctantly opened his eyes again and saw only the flat, white ceiling. He'd made a mess of himself, so he plucked some tissues from the box on the bedside table. After cleaning up, he deposited them in the wastebasket. He tucked himself back into his pants and turned over. He looked at the crumpled, spent tissues at the bottom of the wastebasket and suddenly felt more alone than ever before. He was ashamed of his lack of control—this need would never have gotten the better of him in the past. The Doctor placed his left hand over the right side of his chest and felt the nothingness there, and longed for the days when he had better self-control; when he had any kind of control.
So here he lay, sad and broken, with lifetimes of memories that this body never experienced, his mind knowing the power and joy of shaping history. He'd once deposed a powerful world leader with just six words—six words—and now he couldn't even stop his mind from using his memories of Rose as fodder for his own sexual desires. It felt undignified, but he knew deep down that it was part of being human; the stress, the nagging feeling of emptiness. He turned onto his side and wept into his pillow.