The Lame Shall Enter First
A/N: This is a birthday fic for the lovely Kelsey (perfectlyrose) over on Tumblr!
The Doctor stared blankly at the place where Rose disappeared, her panicked eyes and frantic cries forever burned into his memory. The pull from the Void finally ceased as the gaping white portal in the wall closed, and he fell limply to the floor. His body felt numb; Rose Tyler was gone.
His legs took him to the far side of the room, where she'd just blinked out of his existence forever. His brain was still trying to process through the last several minutes. One minute, everything was completely fine; she'd cheered him up, her presence relaxing him, as it always did, as they prepared to set his plan into action. The next minute, he looked over to see her lever going offline. And of course she would try and fix it, that was just who she was. He watched helplessly as she managed to fix her lever but was left vulnerably hanging from it, and prayed to every deity he could think of that she'd be able to hold on long enough.
But then she fell.
He pressed his hand to the wall, as though he could just slip right through and bring her home. But the wall was unyielding and cold. As he rested his forehead against it, he swore he heard her voice, an echo of her cries, but he knew it was just his memory, replaying her screams as she fell closer and closer to the Void, until she was thankfully, miraculously, caught by Pete Tyler.
On unsteady legs, he turned away from the wall and began his slow descent from the top of Torchwood Tower to the bottom, where his TARDIS awaited. The thought of being alone in his ship made him feel nauseated. He hadn't been alone since the War, since he took the hand of an ordinary human girl in the basement of a little inconsequential shop in London and told her to run.
And run they did, all over time and space, laughing and learning and healing. Oh, how she'd healed him. She'd saved him so many times, in so many ways, and she probably didn't realize it half the time. All those times when she'd sat in silence with him as he fiddled with the inner workings of the TARDIS, he was so grateful, and he'd never told her.
Now he never could.
He hoped she knew how deeply she'd insinuated herself into his life; how deeply she'd seared herself onto his hearts. She had to know. With every hug, every slide of his palm against hers, every smile, every glance… Oh, how he hoped to the gods that she knew.
The Doctor finally found the TARDIS, right where Torchwood had left it, and he let himself in.
The hauntingly sorrowful melody that greeted him was almost his undoing. He staggered to the controls, acting on autopilot as he numbly sent them into the Vortex. His body felt extremely heavy, like all his limbs were made of lead; yet he felt as though he wasn't even occupying it at all, as though he would float away at any moment. It was the most disorienting sensation, and the last time he'd felt it was when he unexpectedly woke up in his TARDIS after the War, alone and with nothing but his thoughts echoing in his mind.
He scrubbed the heels of his hands over his face as he tried to comprehend his new situation, a situation in which Rose was not by his side.
All of a sudden, the wonders of time and space didn't seem so wonderful. She'd opened his eyes anew and through her eyes, he was able to relearn the beauty of the universe. She had a way of seeing the lightness and goodness in everything, especially in him, and her positivity was infectious. She was exactly what he needed when he himself didn't realize what he'd been lacking.
His vision blurred and his eyes stung as his legs finally gave out. He collapsed onto the jump seat, where one of her jackets was piled haphazardly in a lump where she'd thrown it the other day. He picked it up.
It was a black one with fur lining. He loved this jacket of hers; it reminded him of Christmas and Rose and new beginnings. He threaded it through his fingers, softly stroking it, as he remembered how, exactly, it had come to be strewn across the seat.
It was the first anniversary of his latest body. It had been a year since Bad Wolf and the Daleks and the regeneration and her agreeing to keep traveling with him and the crippling relief that she still wanted him. It was one of the best years of his existence, along with those months she'd travelled with his previous incarnation.
He wasn't usually sentimental, but he so very rarely told Rose how grateful he was for her mere presence in his life, and her companionship. But he made an effort that day.
They'd spent most of the day exploring an alien marketplace. Rose always enjoyed interacting with the people she met on their travels, and where better than an asteroid bazaar? It was the middle of the asteroid's summer, yet it felt like a late autumn day in London, necessitating a jacket for Rose. He explained that the climate, though chilly, was rather steady and temperate due to the asteroid's direct angle towards its sun. She smiled indulgently, as she always did when he sprouted off knowledge of local cultures and alien planets.
He walked with her, hand-in-hand through the various stalls tables, explaining local customs and the various trinkets that amused her. He didn't even protest when she bought a weather divinator for her mother.
Throughout the day, they'd sampled the local cuisine and delicacies from the asteroid at the various food stalls in the market.
As the sun crept closer to the horizon, the Doctor ushered Rose back towards the direction of the TARDIS, where he'd parked on the outskirts of the asteroid. The landscape was craggy and barren, with several flying manta-ray looking creatures dotting the pink and orange sky.
They stood together, side by side, and watched the sun set. It was just them, standing together in a rare moment of calm and quiet, and the Doctor felt a rush of tranquility and contentment wash over him.
But beneath that, there was still that lingering fear and doubt.'A storm's approaching,'he'd told her back at the Olympic Games. And that stirring of anxiety caused him to turn to her and ask her how long she planned to stay with him. She'd already been travelling with him for almost two years – he was already planning out that anniversary trip – but maybe she was growing restless, growing tired of the aimless wandering they did.
"Forever."
She said it with such conviction, there was no way he could doubt her. He smiled at her, and they continued to watch the sun's slow descent over the horizon, and the appearance of stars and galaxies in the darkening skies overhead.
Rose seemed to realize that today had meant something to the Doctor, but didn't ask until they were back in the TARDIS.
"Today was lovely," she murmured, coming to stand next to him. "But what brought it about?"
The Doctor then told her the date, and she was surprised that she'd been with him, this him, for an entire year.
"What, feel like longer?" he teased.
"Feels like just yesterday you were exploding right in front of me," she murmured, looking at him with a furrowed brow.
The Doctor swallowed. The time had passed quickly for him too, and he was scared that his time with Rose was rapidly coming to an end. But he didn't want it to; he wasn't ready to be without her.
Rose seemed to sense his distress, and she led him to the jump seat. They sat down together, his arm around her shoulders, and she was pressed into his side.
"Forever," she said. "I meant it. I'm not gonna leave you."
Then she kissed him.
They'd kissed before; the night after she'd lost her face to the Wire was the night he'd crossed that first boundary. He had come into her room that night, under the guise of making sure she slept peacefully, but Rose knew he was shaken by the incident. She'd invited him into her bed; he'd crawled onto her bed, atop the covers. Rose had just been about to drift to sleep when she felt him shift, and felt his fingers softly tracing her face.
She'd opened her eyes and saw the Doctor's face right next to hers. His breath puffed onto her cheek, and his eyes looked so worried and pained that she impulsively leaned over and kissed his cheeks. Once the initial shock had worn off, the Doctor rolled over and kissed Rose fully on the lips. They didn't progress past kissing that night, though.
The night they'd returned to the TARDIS after Krop Tor had been the first night they'd made love. It was a night filled with mutual reassurances, that the Beast had been wrong and that neither Rose nor the Doctor were leaving the other any time soon. It was a night filled with the Doctor convincing himself that he would never let Rose die in battle, he would never let Rose go into battle. He held her close that night as he worshiped every inch of her body, convincing himself that there was no way for the Beast to truly know the future; nobody ever knows the future.
That night had been a step beyond any and all boundaries the Doctor had in place. Since then, he frequently found himself in Rose's bedroom, stealing kisses, worshiping her body, and simply lying with her as she slept.
Presently, the Doctor melted into her kiss and applied more pressure until her mouth fell open against his. His tongue probed her mouth, asking for permission which she readily gave. But the angle was awkward, and his neck was beginning to cramp.
The Doctor placed his hands on her hips and urged her across his thighs so she was straddling him. Rose hummed into his mouth as she settled onto his lap.
He kept his hands on her hips, urging her to rock against him. Heat and pleasure and happiness was coursing through the Doctor at an alarming rate, and he needed more. He wanted to touch her, he wanted to see her.
He wrenched his mouth from hers, breaking away with a wet pop. Her chest was heaving as she caught her breath. Her cheeks were flushed and her lips were red, swollen, and glistening. Her eyes were dark with desire as the Doctor moved his fingers to the zip of her jacket. The garment pooled onto the seat next to them as the Doctor continued his very thorough exploration of Rose's body…
That had been about week ago. They'd made love on the very jump seat he was seated on, with her riding atop him. She was so beautiful as she trembled around him, and that memory was forever burned into his memory.
The Doctor buried his face into her jacket; her scent still lingered faintly.
No. Rose could not be gone. He still needed her.
He was a bloody Time Lord. The laws of the universe obeyed him, the universe owed him, and this time, he would not sit idly by while everything he loved was taken from him.
With renewed purpose and a fire in his belly, the Doctor dropped Rose's jacket back onto the jump seat and stalked to his console unit. He punched in a series of commands, setting up scans and search parameters.
The walls of the universe weren't closed completely, not yet. It was like dropping a pebble into the water; there were still ripples. Both universes had just had their walls weakened exponentially, and it would take quite a bit of time for them to fully heal. He just needed to find a weak point, a chink in the armor, for him to slip through.
Or so he thought.
For days, he worked tirelessly. The underbelly of the TARDIS had been gutted, wired and rewired half a dozen times, in hopes that different circuitry routings would yield better results. He'd reprogrammed the library so that it opened up to the console room; he didn't want to have to walk further than needed for reference material.
And reference material, he had: volumes, tomes, manuals, and guidebooks of all shapes and sizes littered the console room.
Rose would have chided him for the mess he was leaving in his wake.
But as the weeks passed without any results, the Doctor grew more and more frustrated and panicked, because as the time passed, the fabric between realities was strengthening and healing. He was scanning everywhere on and off Earth; he just needed to slip through, then he could hop over to parallel Earth easily enough and find Rose.
He just needed a bloody opening!
The TARDIS didn't even need to fit through. As the universe began to heal itself, and the walls began to become sturdier again, the Doctor narrowed his searches to find an opening big enough for just himself to slip though.
But his searching was coming up heartbreakingly empty.
It took weeks of constant scanning until even the slightest blip came across his radar.
The Doctor was slumped over on the jump seat, Rose's jacket acting as a pillow as he dozed for the first time since Rose had been lost. He was jolted awake by the beeping noises emanating from the little screen on the console.
Jumping to his feet, he wrenched the screen towards him, and read out the results, a delighted grin plastered to his face. The old girl had done it! She'd found a weak spot between this universe and Rose's! Now, he just needed enough power to send himself through. The TARDIS couldn't do it all on her own, but if he could just program her to hold open the gap while he slipped though, it just might work!
The Doctor sent himself into orbit around a star that was nearing the end of its life cycle, and sped up its decay, sending it into supernova. That should provide enough power to the TARDIS to hold open the gap.
On the screen, he saw the vibrant blues and pinks and yellows as the sun burned, powering the TARDIS to send him on the dimensional jump he was about to make. His initial thought was that Rose would've loved to see this.
As the star continued to burn, the Doctor probed at the gap in the universe, but his heart plummeted as he examined it further. The tear was rapidly shrinking in size, knitting itself back together, faster than he'd anticipated; he'd never make it. He couldn't even make a one-way trip.
"No, no, no!" he yelled, frantically pressing buttons and pulling levers, trying to stabilize the gap, hoping that he could slip through before the gap closed forever.
The TARDIS resonated angrily in his mind. She was furious that he had been tempted to simply leave her behind like that.
It was a rash decision, he knew, but Rose was on that side. If he was stuck there, at least it'd be with her. And who knows, perhaps one day (one century?) there would be another multi-dimensional catastrophe and he'd be able to slip back to the TARDIS.
But the TARDIS resolutely remained in orbit around the supernova he'd created, no matter how much he cursed, pleaded, and begged. He fiddled with the TARDIS's circuitry, hoping to trick her into flying through, or into sending him through, but sparks flew out of the console and the interior he'd been rewiring, singeing his hands, and the ship flashed her lights angrily.
The Doctor powerlessly watched the scanner as the gap closed resolutely, too small for him to jump through. His final hope of reaching Rose was gone. The Doctor slumped against the console unit as he faced the truth: Rose was forever lost to him.
Scrubbing his hands over his face, the Doctor tried sending a telepathic link through the Void. If he couldn't bring Rose home, the least he could do was say goodbye, tell her how hard he'd tried to get her back, tell her how much he missed her and how much she meant to him.
He closed his eyes and, with the TARDIS's help, sent a mental projection through the Void, calling out to Rose. But he hit a wall. His eyes popped open in frantic desperation.
No, no, no!
The walls couldn't be completely closed yet. There should still be some elasticity to them. He closed his eyes and tried again, slamming his telepathic presence against the impenetrable wall he found. Again and again and again he tried, until the TARDIS pulled him out and stopped his mental assault. It was exhausting for him to send a message through the Void, but it had been his last chance to see her again, to talk to her again.
And it hadn't worked.
He looked around helplessly, hoping for another option. Hoping that the TARDIS would somehow, miraculously, fly herself through the non-existent gap he'd just watched seal up, and land herself in Pete's World. Hoping that he was just dreaming and that Rose would wake him up with her soft voice and gentle smile. Hoping that Rose would miraculously appear inside the TARDIS. Hoping, hoping, hoping…
But they remained in orbit around the now pointless supernova.
The Doctor switched off the scanner, not wanting to see that the universe was safe, secure, and intact again. The results should make him pleased; he'd saved the universe again. The Daleks were sent back to hell where they belonged. Everyone was safe, Rose was safe. That was what he'd wanted, after all, when he'd sent her to that parallel world in the first place. Safe and sound and with her family.
But he was left feeling hollow and empty as he looked around his empty TARDIS.
Rose's jacket was still balled up on the jump seat; multiple books and tomes were strewn around the console room, useless references he'd used as he tried to breach the void; rogue bits and bobs and wires were lying around.
And he hated it. He hated this bloody console room and everything about this bloody TARDIS and everything about his miserable bloody existence. He was always helping people and saving their arses, and still he always lost everything he ever cared about. He was just so tired.
The Doctor slammed his hands down against the console unit as hot, angry bitterness welled up in his gut. The TARDIS hummed soothingly at him, but he was angry with her too. Why wouldn't she help him? Why would she have given him hope only to rip it away again?
He grabbed the nearest thing – a mallet – and threw it as hard as he could against the wall. The loud thunk it made was surprisingly satisfying, despite the twinge of irritation the TARDIS sent him.
The Doctor raked his fingers angrily through his hair and began pacing, his body simmering with frustration and despair. He kicked at all of the debris on the floor, sending it flying around the room.
He knew he was being childish, but he'd gotten his hopes up. He'd really thought he'd be able to slip through and bring her home.
The Doctor took a deep breath through his nose, and shoved his hands into his pockets on the exhale.
His fingers brushed against something cool and metallic. He pulled it out, and stared at one of the round dimension hoppers from Pete's World. As if the universe wasn't done mocking him.
His barely-contained rage flared up again, and his fists shook as he flung it away from him. It cracked satisfyingly against the wall, settling to the floor in a dozen pieces.
The TARDIS sent a wave of calm in his direction, which angered him further. He didn't want to be bloody calm, he wanted Rose back!
She sent him the equivalent of an eye roll before giving him a mental nudge to keep looking.
"Don't you understand?" he yelled at the ceiling. "She's lost! Stuck over there, while we're over here. Done. Finite. Nothing to be done! I've failed!"
The TARDIS hummed exasperatedly and showed him the color yellow.
"Yellow, what the bloody hell does that mean?" he asked her scathingly, agitatedly pacing the length of the console room, fingers raking through his hair, when something yellow caught his eye.
The Doctor turned his head to look at the broken dimension jumper lying in pieces on the grating. He walked over and sat down next to the pile of metal and wires, placing his glasses on his nose. He gingerly picked up the pieces, poking around the wires and inspecting the device.
He had to admit, this was a rather ingenious device. Its basic design was to travel from one set of coordinates on one universe to the exact duplicate set of coordinates on the other universe. So beautifully, brilliantly simple.
Of course, now that the Void was closed to all travelers, this device was completely useless.
Frustrated, the Doctor dropped it back to the floor – another spring popped loose – and took his glasses off, massaging his tired eyes. He had to hand it to humans; when they weren't busy blundering about, causing chaos, they were really rather clever. The device was, essentially, a teleport.
A teleport…
Oh, the Doctor's very good at teleports…
The Doctor sprung to his feet, cradling the broken pieces of the dimension hopper to his chest as the TARDIS hummed excitedly in his mind.
A fledgling plan was just beginning to form, and he squashed down the thread of hope before it could begin to grow. He couldn't take another round of disappointment.
The Doctor wrenched open the floor grating and dropped into the underbelly of the TARDIS, rummaging around for the toolkit he knew he'd left there. With a shout of excitement and discovery, he tossed it up and plopped himself on the floor, the jumper in his lap. He began dismantling the jumper, dissecting it, rewiring it, and reprograming it, as he pulled up the CCTV footage from Torchwood Tower.
That seed of hope was beginning to blossom against his will as he saw his window of opportunity. It would be a long shot, but it was, indeed, a shot, which was more than he had right now. Together with his magnificent brain, his magnificent ship, and the help of Pete Tyler, this just might work.
He was going to bring back Rose Tyler.