Passes the Storm
by Camilla Sandman
Disclaimer: BBC owns the characters. The words are mine, and they're just for fun.
Author's Note: For 50lyricsfanfic. Spoilers for "The Parting of the Ways". Set sometime in an AU future.
II
He's dying.
It takes a while for the sensation to register amongst the pain, and he keeps trying to push it away and remember to breathe instead.
Dying.
Exhale, inhale, pain. Dying? Yes, dying. How odd. He's died before, but this is different, his brain screams at him. This is last. This is... Blood and pain and burn. Last?
Last body. Oh. Last Time Lord. He is dying, truly dying, then. Not a bad body to die in, he briefly considers. At least he's ginger. All the bodies he's had and only the last one was ginger. There's irony in that and it hurts. Everything hurts. Everything dies. Everything... is nothing.
Faintly, he hears the engines of the TARDIS, sounding pained and old and dying. He's merely managed to keep it together these last years, spending more time repairing it than flying it. His beautiful ship.
It crashed.
He remembers, and he wishes he didn't. That is why he is dying, why he's lying on the floor and smelling the iron of his own blood. He is dying, and he's alone. Rebel turned survivor turned dying. But always the Doctor, and he closes his eyes, listening to the silence after Gallifrey. He's going to join it at last, the storm passing and calm approaching.
"Doctor?"
Rose, he thinks. Rose. He remembers her voice, and for a moment, he wonders what she'd think of this body. Rose Tyler... Rose?
"My Doctor," she says and he opens his eyes to blinding light. Blinding light and her standing over him, as she did long ago, and he died then too, but she lived then.
"Is this a memory?" he asks, and his throat burns with every word. He hardly feels it.
"A memory?" She considers, he can see thoughts run with time behind the brightness in her eyes. "All of time is a memory. Yes. Do you remember?"
"Yes."
Stupid question. He's never forgotten. He's faded the memories and buried them under ever running on, but he never forgets. Rose Tyler. He took her hand and saved her from the Autons and she took his hand and saved him from his abyss. There were companions before and companions after, but she was Rose and she burns in his memories too.
"You kissed me," she says, and she is fire and time and Rose and he hasn't forgotten, not one thing, not one touch.
"Rose," he says, and to his surprise his voice sounds almost northern. "Oh, Rose."
"Rose," she says thoughtfully. "Yes. You loved Rose. You took all of time for her."
"Yes," he whispers. "And still she wasn't forever."
"Nothing is. Not even you, Time Lord."
"No," he agrees, and he can feel his body dying, his last body. He wants to cling on and he wants to let go. "I'm... tired."
"I know," she says, and puts a hand on her chest. "I've felt in my heart. Tired and hurting. You died for Rose. Now you're dying for yourself."
She kneels by him, and her hands reach out and cups his cheeks. Even this different body seems to remember the feel of it, a bittersweet familiarity. Her touch is gentle, and hurts all the more for it. There is love in her touch and he hasn't forgotten and it's so much pain and pleasure all at once that he can't even tell which is which.
"You're not... Rose," he says brokenly. "Rose is gone."
"Rose is here," she says and she smiles and it's her smile and he still can't help but return it. "Time is not merely days passed, Time Lord. I hold it in my heart, and Rose held it in her head and we were one, we are one, we are here. I am the Bad Wolf."
"Saving me again, Rose Tyler?"
She shakes her head, and tears streak her cheek. He wishes he had the strength to wipe them away, erase them from time itself. He never could spare her from hurt. "Everything dies."
"I die," he says, and strangely, there is calm in those two words.
"Are you afraid?" she whispers, and there's fear in her eyes, even as she tries to shield it. She always did.
"Yes," he replies, running his thumb over her lips. She parts them a little, and he can feel the heat of her breath, a heat slowly fading.
"So am I," she breathes, and leans in. "Together?"
"Always."
She kisses him - and it's Rose and time and the TARDIS and love, so much love it hurts. There is him - everything he's been and seen and held and Gallifrey, Gallifrey breathing with him, Romana smiling at him, Susan laughing at him and millions of voices, all the voices that live because of him, all the voices that died because of him and they're all there and he thinks he may drown until he feels a hand catch his.
At the end, there's her.
"Sleep, Time Lord," Rose Tyler says, and her hand is stillness. And slowly, the engines of the TARDIS dies too and there is just silence and silence and... Yes.
Rest.
FIN