Stolen

by Genesis R

Rose remembers the last time she saw that face. Her Doctor, the old Doctor - something had been wrong with him, he was in pain and trying not to show it. He was smiling and laughing and talking too loud. He said he was going to change. Said he had to, to save his life. The way he was talking, mentioning all the places he wished he'd taken her, all the things he wished he'd done, it was like he was dying. Rose hadn't known what was going on, but it was pulling her apart, hearing him talk like that.

And then it happened. A bright golden light enveloped him, blazing so fiercely she had to turn away and cower behind one of the coral supports, and when she could look again, he was gone. There was someone new standing there, wearing the Doctor's leather jacket and looking around the Doctor's TARDIS as if for the first time.

He looked at her, and Rose thought she saw something in those deep brown eyes, something she recognized. She shook her head, not wanting to see anything familiar in this stranger's face. That couldn't be the Doctor. No, her Doctor was still around, something must have happened to him, a transmat or body swap or something, because she refused to believe that it was her Doctor behind those eyes. Because if that really was him, then the old him, the one she knew and cared about, he was gone and...dead.

This new man had killed the Doctor.

But the way he looked at her, smiled at her, reassured her that it was still him - she couldn't see him as a murderer. The old Doctor was still around, according to his new self, still alive in his memories. Rose consoled herself with the thought that if this new man had the memories of their time together, then the Doctor she knew couldn't be completely gone. He was just trapped. Buried. So if all this regeneration stuff was true, the new Doctor (she winced to think of him with that name; it just seemed wrong, like disrespecting the dead, although she kept telling herself he wasn't dead)...the new Doctor was no murderer. She accepted that and it made her feel a little better, but she still needed something to think of him as, because he certainly wasn't the Doctor. Not yet.

Then he set the controls on route to Barcelona, "not the city but the planet Barcelona", and she realized what he was. He danced around the console, flipping switches and hitting buttons, and he looked up at her. For an instant she thought it was him again, but then he grinned at her, as if that expression was supposed to let her know that everything was all right (everything was definitely not all right), and with a flourish reset the controls, announcing that he'd changed his mind and that he was taking her back to Earth, home for Christmas. Her Doctor never took her anywhere without telling her first. She'd always said yes, never told him that she didn't want to go, but this new man didn't stop to ask, he just did, caught up in a giddy whirl of motion and energy and laughter that she didn't quite trust.

She knew now what he was. A thief. He had stolen the old Doctor's body, his ship, his life, and now he'd kidnapped his companion and was dragging her all over the universe without giving her a chance to speak. Not that she trusted herself to speak, but it would have been nice if he'd showed the least concern for her. Herself, she was none too sure of her current state of mental health, but she wasn't about to admit that to him. What she wanted now was nothing more than for her old Doctor, the real Doctor, to hold her hand and tell her in his thick deep voice that everything was going to be all right, but instead all that happened was this new man, too skinny, his old clothes ill-fitting, darted around the console, becoming reacquainted with everything he'd become heir to. Like a thief sorting through his spoils.

Rose never worked up the courage to tell him that to his face - at first she was too afraid of him and what his reaction might be, then later she was too afraid that it would hurt him. She never forgot the first Doctor, big and blunt and unpredictable, just as likely to shout as to laugh, but always so considerate of her. She remembered him like she would remember an old friend who was gone but whom she never really believed she wouldn't see again. He wasn't dead, she knew (or so she wanted to know), he was just...gone. Replaced. Stolen away.

But she loves this new Doctor. She'll never forget the old one, but right now she cherishes every moment she has with the new one - because she never knows when someone else might come along and steal this life. She loves being with him, every time he holds her hand, every time he smiles at her (she no longer doubts the sincerity of that expression), every time he promises her he will never leave her behind.

But in the end, just as the Doctor with the Northern accent and the leather jacket and the tortured soul was forced without a choice to leave, the same happens to this man. He has no choice - the walls of the universes are closing, and it would be so selfish of her to ask him to stay on this side (although she has no doubt that if she asked him to, he would). And she can't get back onto his side, to be by his side, any more.

Standing on that beach, she realizes that the name she gave him was fitting - he really was a thief. Her heart was just one of the many things he took without asking. And now she truly has nothing, as he fades away for good, taking away her old life and all her dreams. There is no golden light this time, no flash of energy and a new Doctor standing by her side. Just fading like a lost memory into the cold wind and the salt spray and the past. And Rose cries for her thief.

A/N: To celebrate my one-year anniversary of being an author here, I decided to start branching out into new fandoms... I'd love to hear feedback from y'all as to how I did on my first Doctor Who story!