Every July on Tumblr, I host Doomsday Month, in honour of the original airing of Army of Ghosts/Doomsday on 7/1/2006 and 7/8/2006. (Why I do this to everyone, I don't know.) One of my friends did a stunning series of gifsets that inspired a series of ficlets from me. I've been posting them on Tumblr (chocolatequeennk) and on AO3 (same username), and I thought I'd start bringing them over here, too.
The first half of this was based on a gifset of all the times the Doctor looks sad about losing Rose during Doomsday. (There are a lot of those shots.) The second half was inspired by a different set, but since it follows so nicely after the first, I'm linking them into one fic here.
Once upon a time, he'd believed in her. Believed that Rose Tyler could do anything she put her mind to, believed that nothing, not even the devil, could defeat her.
Believed she would stay with him forever.
Then he'd felt the storm coming, and there was something else he believed in. He believed he would lose her one day, that something would tear her out of his arms, no matter how hard he tried to hold onto her.
When he stepped into the stark, white chamber in Torchwood that sat so close to a breach in the walls between the worlds, he wanted to throw up. This was it. This was where he would lose Rose. The timelines were clear, even if he couldn't quite see how it happened.
He sent her to Pete's World so he would know she was safe, even if they weren't together. But she came back, because she was Rose Tyler and the one thing she believed was that she was never going to leave him.
The Doctor stared at her, at the determined love in her eyes, and for a moment, he allowed her belief to bolster his hope. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe he wouldn't lose her, maybe they could be together forever.
The timelines still tugged at him, and desperate to ignore what he instinctively knew was still coming, he ran around with manic energy, directing Rose to help him and cracking jokes like they weren't hovering on the edge of doomsday. Rose was staying with him. She'd promised, more than once.
And then her lever clicked off line, and he felt the timelines tighten around her. He watched with his hearts in his throat when she let go of her clamp to push it back up into the online position, and then was forced to wrap her small hands around the lever in a desperate bid to hang on.
When Pete appeared just in time to catch her, the Doctor was grateful he wouldn't see his love swallowed by the void, but that was the only consolation. She was still lost to him, still separated from him forever.
Pressed up against the wall, he could feel her mind reaching out for him as the walls between the worlds continued to stitch themselves back together. For just a moment, he held the essence of who she was to him, giving her all the love and tenderness he could before the walls became too solid for even telepathic contact.
Back in the TARDIS, he tried to find some way to bring her home, like she'd pleaded with him in those final moments. He worked day and night, scouring the secrets of the universe, but in the end, all he found was a way to say goodbye.
And so, when Rose asked him if she'd ever see him again, he had to give her the answer neither of them wanted to believe: you can't.
oOoOoOoOo
"You can't."
Those words haunted Rose on their return to London, but somewhere in between Dover and home, they got under her skin–just like it always had when people had told her she couldn't do something. New energy returned to her as her obstinate nature set in.
"There you are."
Rose turned away from the view of the Downs and looked at Mickey "What?"
Her best friend grinned at her. "I knew you wouldn't let the Doctor tell you that you couldn't do something." He snorted. "I'd have thought he knew you better than that, after two years of living together."
It was closer to three, but Rose wasn't going to point that out, not where her mum could hear. "He thinks it's impossible," she said instead, explaining the Doctor's apparent misjudgement of her character.
Mickey shook his head. "The only thing that's impossible is keeping you someplace you don't want to be."
"We've still got all the information on the hoppers." Pete met her gaze in the rear-view mirror. "You'll have to work with scientists and do studies to make sure you won't destroy the multi-verse in the process, but if you want to go back, we'll make it happen."
"Well I reckon you're all mad," her mum said. "But even I know better than to tell you that you can't do something, sweetheart."
Only hours before, the last of Rose's hope had disappeared with the Doctor's bleak pronouncement. But now those same words filled her with determination and set her gaze on the future, rather than what she'd lost.
She would see him again. Someday.