AN: This is in response to every post-Journey's end fic I've ever read where the Doctor and Rose immediately pick up where they left off, without discussing what happened in the other world. And the idea that this new Doctor is perfectly content to give up the TARDIS that he existed with for hundreds of years right off the bat for the sake of Rose. I love her, I ship Doctor/Rose hardcore, but I'm pretty sure he would have a hard time with that and would be very preoccupied with that for a while. Not thinking of running off and making babies with Rose.
ONE
The Doctor decides that he will never again visit another beach. Given his now shorter lifespan that decision might actually stick.
The TARDIS is long gone now, her two-man crew with her, but he swears he can still hear the dematerialization sequence. Its echo lingers in between the beats of his now single heart, the last hint of the only home he has ever known.
It's not the first time he's lost the TARDIS, but it's the first time he's aware of her utter absence in his head. Even trapped, marooned in the 1960s or orbiting an impossible planet, he recalls sensing her just out of reach. The ship has been grounding him since…
Well, technically, since his impromptu creation, the Doctor supposes.
This sudden nothing where her song should be is ten times worse than it was after using the Moment.
Now, as he did then, he tries to reach out, hoping to lessen the overwhelming sense of disconnect.
It's futile.
The only other mind out there – minds, he corrects himself – have long since withdrawn from him. By choice, even.
A few precious hours as one of the three Time Lords in the universe, and now he's the last of his kind once more. This time, he doesn't even have the TARDIS to soothe his psyche. Or help him cope with the horrible memories – memories that aren't altogether his – that vie for supremacy in his head.
That's odd in and of itself. His recollections should dominate Donna's minor contribution, yet he notices thoughts that don't belong to him. Thoughts he can't ignore or find the right neural pathways to make stop.
Images flicker in a disjointed reel.
Explosions as the Dalek fleet burned. Sitting on a bus to Strathclyde, terrified and exhilarated because this would show Mum! A hand hovering over the big red button. Cheers in the crowd at a West Ham United match. Susan's face as the TARDIS left her. Dad's funeral, with Mum and Gramps standing close. The freighter carrying Adric crashing into the Earth. Car keys thrown in a rubbish bin. Crying in the barn at the idea of joining the army –
His head feels like a hornets' nest: forget cowboys, there's been an entire stampeding roundup in here.
The associated emotions are surprisingly more powerful than the actual memories, and he can no longer turn those off either.
'He didn't even say goodbye.'
The Doctor is startled out of his current conundrum by a voice nearby. He forgot in the midst of – well, everything – that he isn't completely alone.
Rose Tyler is still here, fingers still clenching around his.
That should mean something, but in the wake of his growing shock, he's having a hard time sussing out what. For a while now he's been distantly conscious of the hand grasping his, but in an indifferent sort of way. The absence of the usual symbolism – the meaning behind her hand in his – is significant; he knows that they both notice.
He suspects that right now they are both grasping on to each other more out of a mutual need for an anchor than any other reason. Humans cling to each other in times of hardship, he knows, but that has never applied to him.
When he finally turns to face Rose, he sees that her face is drawn and pale; slack as only utter disbelief can cause. She stares at the spot where the most magnificent time ship in the multi-verse once rested, her eyes as he has never seen: dull, defeated and vacant. It's as if Rose Tyler has disappeared, whatever was left of her gone the same way as the TARDIS.
She didn't even look so beaten when he told her he couldn't send more than a temporary image as a farewell.
'You made me better,' he other self told Rose before he left them. 'Now you can do the same for him.'
He's overtaken by an abrupt, visceral fury.
His other self – selves, in theory, considering Donna is a part of him now, however temporary – dealt with the inconvenient problem of his existence by marooning him here. Oh, they tried to disguise it as some sort of reward –a fantastic life with the woman who saved him from himself – but that's what it amounts to in the end.
That intention, instead of instilling him with hope, has the opposite effect.
If he's so dangerous, why did his double leave him with the woman he himself claims to love? He knows bringing Rose back here was a pre-emptive move, protecting her and himself from her inevitable loss either from an accident or old age. But he could have come up with a better story than that.
Not that this him was party to the actual plan to leave her, but he knew enough of what was going through the Time Lord's head to understand him. He never thought the twit would do it though.
There's enough of Donna's human expectation for a happy ending to counteract his natural intuition, it would seem.
But the situation still comes back to the question of how Rose is supposed to help him when he's sure he – they – have finally broken her.
The shining, bright girl he remembers feeling was his saviour, right now she just looks like another helpless victim left in his wake.
It's this thought that forces him to abandon his brooding.
For Rose's sake and for everything she's done for him in the past, up until this second, he will grit his teeth and forge ahead. Pretend as if everything is normal, and he hasn't just had his entire universe – literally – upended. Perhaps if he does it enough, the future won't seem quite so bleak.
He hopes.
'This place is a bit rubbish,' he declares, choosing not to respond to Rose's heartbroken words. He isn't ready to discuss them, knowing there's no way he can explain away or excuse his counterparts' actions. Besides, talking is how he's always dealt with uncomfortable situations. 'Looks more like a desert than a beach – far too much sand. Never liked sand. It gets bloody everywhere, and always in the most inconvenient places and you can never get rid of it all! Ten years after visiting a beach, you find your favourite pair of Jimmy Choos and go to put them on and the next thing you know, sand everywhere.' He runs out of breath – looks like his respiratory bypass was affected in the metacrisis – and frowns at the sudden influx of knowledge about Earth's fashion designers.
More Donna.
Well, isn't that wizard, he grouses and changes the subject before he thinks too much about that. 'So, when can we leave?'
Rose looks at him finally – a brief, disbelieving glance – and even her mother appears somewhat pitying.
'Five and a half hours,' Jackie says, in that tone that suggests he's doing something unacceptably alien. Or male. He never was very good at figuring out what that particular inflexion was for.
He runs the response over in his head a few times before the penny drops. When it does, it's more like an anvil.
'Right. Of course. Five and a half hours,' he agrees. It was a throwaway comment born out of relief at finding his way back from pre-Revolutionary France, but ostensibly Rose took it as some sort of gospel. Words he spoke, when he was the other him, and which still hold power even though he's standing right there. 'Always wait five and a half hours – said that, didn't I? Quite right, too.'
All three of them wince at that, and it's all he can do to keep from clamping his hands over his mouth and drawing more attention to his blundering. Jackie glares at him, and her hand twitches in a way that makes him swallow nervously. Maybe she's learned restraint in her time here, because she doesn't slap him.
Rassilon, he wants to get off this beach.
He shifts uncomfortably from foot to foot, tempted to point out that the dimensional walls are closed, that the Time Lord isn't coming back, that he's right there –!
But a voice very much like Donna points out that would be very not good.
If you've got to natter on, at least change the subject to something less depressing, you prawn, that voice coaches him. As annoyed as he usually gets when voices in his head try to put their ore in, he listens this time. Tell her how pretty she looks and how much you missed her.
He hazards a glance at Rose, who continues to stare into the distance, awaiting a return that will never happen. It's a vigil of sorts, and he thinks she knows that. Even so, he doesn't think interrupting it with nervous compliments will endear her to him, whatever she feels (or doesn't feel) toward him right now.
Instead, he clear his throat and edges closer to her mother.
'So… Jackie Tyler,' he begins, offering her a wan grin. 'Never said earlier, what with – well, the universe ending and saving bit. You look brilliant! Don't look a day over fort –' Off her glare, he amends with a squeak, '– thirty-five!'
'Oi! Rude! Talkin' about a lady's age! You're definitely him,' she complains, but there's a bit of smugness there and possibly a little affection. He hopes he's managed to ingratiate himself with at least one person.
'Still – not bad looking for the mother of a – you said nursery? That's what, two? Three? A three-year-old?' He's not quite sure where the domestic talk is coming from, but it fills the silence and so he sticks to it. Also, it's a convenient way to as how long it's been since… well, the last time… without coming right out and asking.
'Four, actually,' Jackie replies, certainly sounding smug this time. 'All the girl's've been after me for my secret. I tell them I moisturise, but they reckon it's good genes. I mean, look at Rose…'
Her chatter washes over him and the Doctor experiences a pang of regret. He expected it to be longer on this side of the Void, but knowing she spent more time away from him than actually travelling with him is unaccountably painful. 'Four. Well. Good age. How about that, four years since…? Well, that's not bad, bet you've been busy –'
'It's not been four.'
The Doctor's eyes swivel toward Rose, who still isn't looking at him.
'It's been almost ten. Since Canary Wharf.'
'… What?'
There isn't anything more coherent to say than that.
'The D – he – you never asked how long it had been,' she goes on quietly. 'That day. How long it was before I could hear the message, to come here.'
She's right.
She said Jackie was three months pregnant, and he'd just assumed that was how long it had been on her end.
He breathes, and finally manages a weak, 'How long?'
'Five-and-a-half-years,' she replies, and damn it, there's that number again. As reproachful as the words she scattered across the universe. And the way she says it, with a tone that's fighting hard not to be accusing but coming up short…
Of all the scenarios the Doctor considered, of Rose waiting on him, he'd thought it would be months. A year at the most that first time. This time he'd thought maybe another one. He'd spent one terrible night trying to calculate it before having to give up lest he sink even further into a depressed stupor.
He swallows, cursing the Time Lord even through the flow of parallel universes isn't something he controls.
'You never said…'
'With two minutes left to say goodbye?'
Another barb, and it hits where it's meant to.
'Erm. Right. Yes. Well, good point.' He coughs. 'So. Ten years. Good, solid number, ten. Good omen, if you believe in that sort of thing. The Valdosians do. Won't begin anything important unless it's the tenth day of the tenth month of the tenth year. Come to think of it, they don't actually accomplish too much, but when they do – anyhow.' He moistens his lips. 'Knew this universe ran a bit faster than the rea – er, the other one. Didn't realise it was that fast. Blimey, s'about three times the speed? Suppose it makes sense, given the relative deviation from Normal Space and –'
'Oh, shut up,' Jackie tells him. He rather wishes she'd done so sooner. 'Just explain why we haven't been ageing properly so Torchwood can stop checking for alien cancer or that we haven't been replaced by plastic copies or somewhat.'
'We?' the Doctor repeats dumbly. Honestly, it's looking like he got more human in him than he first reckoned, because he shouldn't be this slow at processing information. He thinks it's information overload, or whatever it is humans complains of. He's not entirely sure, having never been human. If he had to describe it, he would compare it to a neural implosion without the sense of his head caving in.
Somehow this is more unpleasant.
'Mickey is – was like that too,' Jackie continues, oblivious to his inner turmoil. The Doctor reflects on his brief encounter with the young man. Mickey had indeed looked the same as when he first left him in Pete's World. Harder, perhaps, but no older. 'Well?'
'Oh – right – erm, side-effect of TARDIS travel. Didn't I tell you ages ago?' he answers with forced good-humour. 'Background radiation. Boosts the immune system and body's ability to heal, to cope with the strain caused by temporal travel. Given the proportional time you each spent onboard, it's completely expected. Nothing to worry about. Should sort itself out over the next decade or so – probably at an inversely proportional rate considering you both look… erm. Yes. If you want me to run the figures, I could, but I've never actually bothered tracking it, so –'
'Well, his gob hasn't changed any,' Jackie remarked to Rose, as if he wasn't there. 'Nice to know there's nothing to worry about though, innit? And you've got the best of it, far as I'm concerned. Always lookin' ten years younger? Wish I could've gotten some of that radiation when I was your age. I'm just lucky it caught me when I was still fit enough to have Tony…'
But the rest of her words float away in a sudden panic, the implications of what might have happened to Rose hitting him then.
Because unlike Jackie and Mickey, Rose has had more than background radiation in her system. She's wielded the powers of life and death, held all the Time Vortex inside of her, and for far longer than he had. She survived where it killed him.
The Doctor ran tests after the Game Station, of course, but what if there was something dormant, something that didn't activate until –
No, that can't have happened. He can still look at her without the sickening sensation of wrongness he got from Jack, even after the metacrisis. She's not like their cursed former companion. He still has enough temporal sense left to see she isn't a fixed point, either. If she were he would have noticed before he split himself in two, Dalek or not.
More immediate proof is that he can see bruises forming on her hands and the side of her face, bruises she's gotten since running into him again. He does a quick calculation, deciding that they appear to be healing at the usual human rate.
Not like Jack then.
He almost breathes a sigh of relief at that before it occurs to him this is another thing they're going to have to discuss. Another unpleasant conversation on an ever growing list of disagreeable topics that have to be addressed.
There's a reason he never sticks around after the adventure, and he bloody hates his double for doing it to him.
He'd like to avoid the Jack discussion as long as possible. Forever, even if that forever is the modified and much shorter version of it that he's (literally) consigned himself to. The lingering part of Donna insists he be up front with Rose. When he tries to argue that now isn't the right time or place he gets shouted down in his own head.
Really, having this extra voice is annoying. Since he usually has ten rattling around in there that's saying something.
Rose, as usual, saves him the moral dilemma by addressing the issue head on.
'How comes Jack didn't die? When the Dalek shot him?' she asks. Before he can answer, she pushes on, obviously deciding that focusing on this topic is easier than whatever she's feeling right now. 'Is that something to do with background radiation too? I mean, obviously he finished rebuilding the Earth. Did he travel on the TARDIS again after I – was he on board longer than me, so he's got a stronger side-effect?'
He finds himself simultaneously marvelling at her brilliance and open mind – already thinking out scenarios and possibilities, Rose Tyler is! – and her ability to keep from referring to him directly. He doesn't think she's mentioned him or his counterpart by name since they got left here.
Though now she's looking at him, and he sort of wishes she wouldn't.
It would be so easy to tell her that's exactly what happened. That her theory is brilliant, and she's brilliant, and he missed that brilliance. It's not like there would be any way to check that he was telling the truth, what with the universal walls now closed.
He forces himself to be honest.
'It's not something to do with background radiation,' he answers seriously. 'It's to do with the Game Station.'
His eyes flit briefly in Jackie's direction. He doubts Rose wants her mother to realise exactly how much danger everyone was in that day. They always downplayed it, and Jackie figured him changing his face was just another mark of his being alien.
From Rose's wide-eyed expression, he's right about that. Her mouth sets in a hard line, obviously getting the message that this is a topic best left to when they're not near her mother.
She changes the subject.
'Think you can top up Mum's phone?' she asks. 'The faster she gets a hold of Dad, the faster we can leave here.'
Unsaid is how bad both of them want to be away from this beach.
'Easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy,' he declares, and then shudders. 'Make sure I never say that again.' He reaches for the phone Jackie holds out to him and begins to fiddle with it. Thankfully there's no need for a sonic, which is something else he's going to have to build if he's to be any use here.
'Ta,' Jackie says when he gives the phone back, and walks away as she dials.
He and Rose stand there for several awkward seconds before she speaks. When she does, it's not what she expected him to say.
'You sound different.'
He tilts his head to one side, puzzled as to her meaning, and the nods when he realises.
'No more translation circuit. I've got to actually speak other languages now, instead of expecting the TARDIS to translate for me.'
'So he – you never spoke in English the whole time we knew each other?'
'Course I did. Love English, even if it is woefully inadequate when it comes to tenses and indicators of time.'
'But he – you never sounded like that. Before.'
A subliminal suggestion that he sounds different, therefore he is different. He hurries to disabuse her of the notion, despite his own misgivings on the subject.
'Sure I did.' He forces cheeriness into his words. 'The translation circuits had a subroutine to eliminate trace accents when speaking foreign languages or adopting the local equivalents. Just a precaution, of course – helps out rather well in xenophobic locations where improper inflexion can mean execution. Remember the Kaybaykwa? If we hadn't had the TARDIS polishing our speech, they'd've dragged us behind a chariot and…' He trails off at the pained expression on her face. 'And… there you have it.'
She nods, takes a minute to level her voice, and then guesses, 'So that accent's… that's yours, then? That's…?'
'Gallifreyan,' he says shortly, not wanting to talk about it but figuring she deserves to know the name after so long. 'Yes.'
Rose nods again, possibly knowing now isn't the time to push it. He knows she's always been curious about his past, but he's not in the right frame of mind to reopen old wounds. As it is, between them they have enough new ones to last a lifetime.
'So, dimension cannon,' he says, changing the subject. 'Device designed explicitly to fire objects over considerable distances? Dimensional distances. Delicate dimensional distances?'
Let it never be said he doesn't enjoy a good bit of alliteration.
'Yeah,' she says wearily.
'Didn't I tell you it was impossible? Warn you that it could be the end of two universes? Potentially more?'
'Yup,' she says, putting emphasis on the last consonant. The way her eyes have narrowed, he realises she's not initiating their much-missed banter but seems to be preparing for criticism.
He's trying to come out and tell her how brilliant she is to have managed all that despite the danger, but clearly she's taking it as an attack.
It hits him then that they don't get to go back. It will never be the way it was before, even if – When, he coaches himself – they get over this most recent setback.
He frowns. 'And so you build a gadget explicitly for that purpose?'
'Well, not until the stars began to go out.'
'What exactly were you going to do after you got through?'
'Hope like hell you had some idea how to fix it,' she replies immediately. 'Why? You saying you can't?'
'No, I can – well, should be, depending on how many satellites this Earth has and how attached you lot are to them – but what if I couldn't?'
She makes a face, like the possibility never occurred to her, and then decides, 'At least I'd have tried. And saved someone's universe.'
'Rose Tyler,' he says, beaming at her.
Instead of getting a smile in return, she tenses and looks away from him. 'What happened to Jack?'
The smile disappears, and he knows now is the moment of truth.
'He's changed,' he tells her, keeping his voice neutral. 'Not because of travelling in the TARDIS. Not exactly.'
'Because of the Game Station,' she finishes, the words a prompt.
The Doctor nods. 'How much do you remember?'
'Not much. Not more than you told me.' She sounds like she's regretting not questioning him more. 'I was in the TARDIS. Mum had that big yellow truck, she helped open the ship, and there was a light… singing…' She shakes her head, like the motion will clear up the memories. 'Then afterward, we never talked about it.'
'You looked into the Heart of the TARDIS,' he tells her carefully. 'You absorbed the Time Vortex itself. If a Time Lord did that, he'd become a god, but you Rose – you're so human – you were concerned with one thing.'
'Getting back to the Doctor.'
He winces, trying not to let it show how painful it is that she's obviously gone back to separating them in her head again.
'Yes. You used that power to bring yourself back to the Game Station. But what came back to me wasn't you. Well. Not just you. You and the TARDIS merged into this… entity –'
'Bad Wolf,' she whispers, face drawn in concentration like she's remembering a long forgotten dream.
'Bad Wolf,' he confirms. 'For a few minutes, you had power over life and death, all of Time and Space running through your head –'
'… and no one's meant to do that,' she finishes, her eyes still focused on something far away. He experiences a moment's worry that she is reliving what he ensured was locked away, but instead she makes a face. 'But what's that got to do with Jack?'
'Jack… Jack was dead before the TARDIS came back,' he explains uncomfortably. 'Bad Wolf brought him back to life. But she couldn't control it, so she brought him back forever. He's a fixed point.'
'Which means?'
'Which means… he can't die.'
'Not… not ever?'
'Jack's come to terms with it,' he tells her hurriedly. 'You saw how happy he was to see you. You live as long as… well, you get used to the not dying.'
'Why didn't I?'
'Hm?'
'Why didn't I die?' she whispers, her voice tight.
'I removed it. The Vortex. Took the power right out of you,' he tells her, deciding to skip over the fact she killed the Daleks. He doesn't want her to experience the guilt of genocide. 'It would've killed you if I didn't. Lucky I have excellent timing. Any longer, you'd be lost and I might've suffered more than a regeneration.'
He tries to make light of it, but can see it's not working as she visibly evaluates their conversation. The Doctor doesn't need telepathy to know what connections she's making, the assumptions filling in the gaps in the story.
Horror and guilt pass over her face, which has turned bone white.
And there it is, exactly what he expected and why he never told her the full story.
'I did that to him,' she realises.
'No, Rose – that's not how it happened. It –'
'I wanted him to be alive and now he is. Forever. Oh God –' her hand flies to her mouth, as if she's going to be sick. 'How many times has he died?' The Doctor clenches his jaw tightly, having no intention of recounting the Year That Never Was. 'I did that – I did that to my friend, and the Doctor didn't –' She cuts herself off, a sob wrenching from the core of her. 'Oh God, the Doctor – I killed him! That's why he regenerated, cos he had to –'
'Regenerated, Rose, not died, you know that.'
'And then he didn't tell me! We kept travelling more than a year, and he didn't think it was important enough to tell me what I'd done,' she whispers, sounding stunned.
'I'm telling you now. You had so much to worry about when you first asked, I didn't want –'
'He should've told me! Or you, or – or whoever!' she cries. 'I had a right to know! Just like I had a bloody right to know that he was going to leave me here, and –'
The rest of it is lost in the beginning of another sob, but she checks herself. He watches her choke it back, and something in her expression shutters, like she's flipping a switch. She gives him a cool stare, and there's no doubt he's now looking at Rose Tyler, Torchwood Operative and Defender of the Earth.
'You're right. You are the Doctor,' she says bitterly, and the words aren't the balm he wanted. 'Not disclosing important information until it's too late? For my own good? That's exactly like him. But I'm not nineteen years old anymore. I've grown up, and I don't let anyone make decisions for me anymore.'
'Rose –' he makes a motion to step forward, to take her hand, but she pulls away.
'No,' she tells him, her mask wavering just a little. Enough to give him hope. 'I just need… just need a time. And if you… right now… I just can't.'
And she turns and walks up the beach without looking back.
Fantastic suddenly seems farther away than ever before.
∙ΘΣ∙
The zeppelin flight back to London is awkward.
There's an unspoken expectation hovering over everyone. That Rose and the Doctor will shift back into the camaraderie they shared before Canary Wharf as if no time has passed.
With the weight of everything that's happened today alone, Rose isn't surprised neither of them tries for it.
Even after leaving the beach, she strains to hear the TARDIS. Her imagination runs wild with scenarios of the ship returning, of her Doctor throwing himself through the doors at her. She imagines him declaring how wrong he was, insisting he is "so, so sorry". That he travelled back between the closing dimensional walls in spite of everything and that they will make it work after all –
Rose feels like an idiot.
Worse than an idiot because she can't stop staring at the Doctor's – twin? Clone? Doppelgänger? Meta-whatsit – without a glimmer of resentment.
He just sits there, too tall and gangly for his seat, staring out the passenger compartment window. No mile-a-minute babble, no excited explanations on the mechanics of zeppelins or stories about the Hindenburg –
Silence.
To be honest, Rose relieved he isn't speaking; whether it's to her or to respond to Jackie's oblivious chatter. She's not sure she can to take the familiar, excited rambling again without losing her hard-won composure. It's the same as she remembers, but for the way his words sound now. She detects a hint of something else behind each syllable now, an inflexion that's almost melodic in places but rougher in others.
Not rough the way her first Doctor spoke, though, because this man's different.
But the same.
Rose shouldn't be have so much trouble processing this, she knows. She watched him turn into a completely different man right in front of her eyes once. But he was still one person then, and now he's two. One of them is here, the other… he…
Her mind skips over that for now, continuing on with its disjointed thoughts.
Because even though both he and the – other – Doctor insisted they were the same man, she is at more of a loss now than when he first changed his face. The possibility that he was dead and replaced had been agonising at the time, but it still made sense. Right now, knowing that he's still alive and out in the proper universe without her by choice –
Rose clenches her eyes shut and forces herself to take several deep, calming breaths.
No, she orders herself. No point in pretending it didn't happen. It's not going away. Just accept what's happened and move on.
What's happened is that she's found the Doctor, and lost him again, even if she didn't.
She found the TARDIS again and lost her again, for good this time.
She found Jack again because he's alive and will always be alive because of her –
Rose can't even fathom how to react to that right now. Under normal circumstances, she might be able to articulate why it's all so upsetting and horrible. But she's so tired, and confused, because for the first time in her life since she met the Doctor, interacting with him is forced.
It's not like when they reunited after the Dalek shot him. Being with him for five minutes was like no time had passed. Laughing and joking and saving the world as if the past ten years didn't happen.
Not like now. Something is off about him and she can't figure out what.
Maybe he still has a remnant of telepathic ability because he glances up at her with a frown on his face that could by sympathy or resignation. Rose is not sure which.
'I know this isn't exactly how you wanted things to turn out,' he begins, contrite.
'It's not about what I wanted, it's about what I needed,' she deflects, defaulting to the distant, business-like tone she's perfected for conferences and interviews. 'I needed to find a way to save reality, and I did. That was my job, and it's done.'
'Right,' he trails off, blinking in surprise. 'Suppose that's one way of looking at it.'
'Better than the alternative.'
He winces at that.
'If it helps, think of it as a sort of sideways regenerations. Instead of same man different face, it's same man same face,' he suggests softly, and she won't say pleading, but he's not quite casual about it either. 'With a few extra personality traits. And possibly a fondness for fascinators and cats if I'm exceedingly unlucky.'
'… Right.'
Rose doesn't have the energy to point out that it's still different.
Even though she was completely confused after the first regeneration she witnessed, things weren't this uncomfortable. That Christmas with the Sycorax, as soon as she realised it was him, she knew. Along with that certainty was the comforting knowledge that he still cared for her.
Or, at least, she thought he had.
Because now she really knows. For the first time since 'Run!' she's finally come to the right conclusion, and it's the one people have been trying to tell her for almost ten years. It's stared her in the face since she found him again. The truth being that the man who she loves beyond anything in any universe has rejected her. She spent years – years – trying to get back to him.
And yes, she was trying to save all of reality as well. But she's not going to lie to herself and pretend that the Doctor and the TARDIS weren't her end goal.
After all that, everything she went through. She risked universes and her life hopping through dimensions, dodging paradoxes, saving different versions of him in countless realities and watching him almost die in front of her –
Here she is.
Left behind again, on a beach in Norway, with a man who isn't the Doctor but is, in a universe where the air itself tastes wrong.
And he didn't even say goodbye.
It feels like there's a knife working its way up her oesophagus as she tries to hold back the instinctive sob. She's been struggling against it since she realised what he was about to do, and now that he's properly gone she's losing the fight. She only hopes she can hold off until she has some privacy – away from her mother's optimistic chatter and his kicked puppy looks and –
Rose gets up from her seat and crosses the compartment, heading for the windows opposite. She needs a moment to get herself under control again.
As she sets her shoulders, she senses a presence by her side. Her mother is looking out the window with her, arms crossed.
'You're sulking,' Jackie points out. 'Stop it.'
'I'm not –'
'Don't give me that, I can tell a Rose Tyler sulk when I see one. Hasn't change one bit from when you were littler. And you are sulking, cos you didn't get everything you wanted. Well, let me tell you, from where I'm standin' you got more than anyone could rightfully dream of, and you should be grateful!' Her tone gentles. 'You're not bein' fair to him, sweetheart, and you know it.'
'What d'you want me to do, Mum, throw myself at his feet and cry and start plannin' a wedding?' Rose hisses back. 'It's not the Doctor!'
'It is him,' Jackie replies firmly.
'No, it's not. The Doctor left me –'
'The Doctor – both of him – did the right thing in the end,' her mother insists in a firm voice. 'He's always tried to do what's best when it comes to you, from that first muck up when he brought you home a year late. He's been tryin' to keep that promise he made to me to look out for you. Sending you back to me when he could, sending you to this universe to save you –'
'None of that was my choice!'
'Life's full of things that won't be your choice, haven't you learned that by now, luv?' Jackie cajoles. 'The Doctor finally did the right thing and as well as he could considerin' everything.'
'That's how you see it.'
'I'm not gonna apologise about being glad I won't lose my daughter all over again!' Jackie snaps. 'Spent the last ten years not sleepin', didn't I? Waiting for a phone call in the middle of the night, someone telling me you've got yourself killed on one of your bloody Torchwood missions, or those horrible jumps, or finally just tried to…' She trails off with visible effort and shakes her head. 'No, Rose Tyler. You've grown up a lot, but sometimes you're still so young…the same silly girl who ran off with a musician. And then an alien with a box. Still a little bit selfish.
'What?' Rose demands, astonished because if anyone knows what she's sacrificed, it's her mother.
'You think you're the only one hurting today?' her mother goes on. 'You weren't the only one left on that bloody beach again. Least you have something to go back to. Don't think I need to remind you what it feels like to have to start from scratch, do I?'
Jackie leaves her with one last reproachful look and then announces, 'Need to see when we're gonna arrive. These bloody zepplins still make my stomach flip.'
Rose instantly feels guilty, rightfully so.
Even if she's not ready to accept everything, her mother has a point.
She looks back over to – The new Doctor, she forces herself to think – and sees him look away quickly, obviously trying to pretend he didn't just hear everything. His eyes flit around, anywhere but her, as if he's trying to assess escape options before realising there's no point and slowly meeting her gaze again. In it, she sees his own grief and against her will, she feels a pang of empathy.
He has been left here too, after all.
Their time apart might have hardened her, but she can't just sit by and let someone – especially someone who looks so much like him – be miserable. She needs to at least make an effort until they figure out what they're going to do.
Steeling herself, Rose heads to the seat across from him and gingerly sits down. The distance is as much for him as her; she doesn't want to crowd him. She's halfway through initial threat assessment procedure, however, before she has to check herself again.
He's not a hostile or scared species Torchwood has sent her to deal with, this is the Doctor.
Sort of.
'Nice to see Jackie's decibel level hasn't changed much,' he remarks mildly. 'Might be a bit louder, though.'
'Yeah, well, she spends her days running after Tony. He's more of a troublemaker than I was at that age.'
'More trouble than you? The most jeopardy-friendly person I've ever met? I can't wait to meet him.'
They exchange fleeting smiles for a second, and then it's back to the awkward silence. It stretches, and Rose knows it's her turn to speak now.
'How are you holding up?' she tries. 'I mean with…the growing out of a hand thing and…everything…'
This shouldn't be so hard.
'Oh, you know, coping,' he says with a shrug, like it's a throwaway topic. 'Honestly I'm more upset about the fact I missed out on another chance to be ginger than the rubbish vascular system.'
'Right…so…what've you been up to the past...how long…?'
'Three years on my end,' he supplies. 'Three years, three months, one week, four days, seven hours, forty-five minutes and twenty-six seconds.'
She bites her lip, trying not to think too much on the fact he – the Doctor – knows down to the second how long it's been since he said goodbye to her. Or that he's spent less time missing her than she did missing him. Thoughts like that will put her back on a dangerous path.
'Do anything interesting in three years?'
'Same old life,' he shrugs. 'Time, Space…not half as interesting as taking the slow path, eh? Defender of Earth, was it? What've you been up to all this time?'
It's more than just a deflection from talking about himself. Rose can see there's a genuine curiosity in him, as well as hope. He's expecting her to tell him all the amazing, brilliant, fantastic things she's done on her own. And it's all there – she unquestionably did great things without him.
She helped avoid two uprisings by the remaining Cybermen with Mickey and Jake, put down a Chelbil invasion and acted as an ambassador to ensure Earth was kept out of a looming war between the Sevakrill and the Charnal Horde. She was pulled in on the peace negotiations with the Silurians right up until the dimension cannon became operational.
But that was all after. She went through so much before she was able to do those things, and she wants to tell him. She just can't find the words.
How can she explain the way she felt the day she said her final goodbye to him? How full of hope and joy and certainty she had been that he had a way to bring her home. She had dutifully stood on the beach named for the words which were supposed to lead her back to him and waited. Even without knowing the truth behind Bad Wolf and the Game Station until today, she had felt an instinctive pull towards the words. She had known they meant everything would be alright.
Then his projection had shattered that knowledge. Her heart had turned to ice as quickly as the Doctor burned up a sun to say goodbye.
How does she tell him about standing on the beach for five and a half hours, grief stricken and desperate, until Mickey and Pete physically carried her back to the truck? Or how she spent the next week in her room refusing to go to work, or speak to anyone, her mind deconstructing everything he had said in their too short conversation, trying to dissect it all on the off chance…
He said impossible, after all. Her time with him had proven that anything he suggested was impossible wasn't. Why would Bad Wolf lead her wrong this time, when it had helped her return to him the last time they were separated? Obviously they had missed something, there was still a way.
And so she had gotten up and tried to find that way, and pursued it relentlessly until she really thought about it. The Doctor's final act haunted her dreams, burning up an entire sun for a simple farewell message. If that was the price the Doctor paid to say goodbye to her, what would be the price of her getting back home?
Would she have to destroy a planet, or a galaxy or this universe to do it?
The Doctor had been strong enough not to pay it, which meant she had to be that strong as well.
So Rose had given in.
Instead of pursuing the matter, she decided to live a fantastic life. Like he had always wanted for her.
Not that it worked out as well as she wanted.
She had gotten her father back (sort of) and later the little brother she had always wanted, but she had trouble fitting into the standard family pattern her mother so easily accepted. Family dinners and redecorating the house and putting out the garbage was so far removed from the life she led with the Doctor, she couldn't adjust.
Pete was a good man and a great dad – he treated her like she had grown up as his own, insisted she come along on Sunday picnics in the country and supported her in everything she did. But she could never really look at him without flashing back to the day she felt her father die in her arms. It made her feel like somehow, she didn't really belong in the little family that the Doctor had managed to bring together.
Even the bloody dog fit in better than she did.
Jackie tried to convince her to make new friends, acting like this was nothing more than a move from one home to the next.
'You have to put yourself out there and make friends, sweetheart,' she would insist.
The Doctor would have scoffed at that, even if he agreed; no doubt he'd make a remark on how she managed to pick of strays wherever they travelled.
Except he wasn't there, and the only new people she had much exposure to outside of Torchwoods were the daughters and sons of Pete's business contacts. Most of them were hard-partying trust-fund kids she had nothing in common with, and this universe's versions of her childhood friends looked on anyone with money with distrust – or the hope of a handout.
Mickey was off with Jake most of the time, still dealing with the fallout from the Cybermen, and only really came back to check on his grandmother. Rita Ann had moved into the mansion with them not long after Rose and her mother arrived.
Mickey hadn't said anything before the Doctor's message came through, but in the months that followed it, he'd suggested they get back together.
'We've both grown,' he'd pointed out. 'We're not the same as we were. I'm more than just the Tin Dog these days and you're not just a shop girl. Isn't that what you always wanted? To do something more? Why can't we do more together?'
She'd wanted to scream at him. Because he wasn't the Doctor. Because his hand didn't fit hers the same way the Doctor – both her Doctors – had fit. Because he deserved more than someone who would never love him with a whole, undamaged heart. In the end, she'd given him a tired line about loving him like a brother, which he'd seen through with ease.
After that, their relationship disintegrated into politeness, and it didn't really surprise her now that he'd chosen to stay in their original universe.
She hadn't wanted to hurt him, but at the time she'd been toxic. Every relationship she attempted after that failed within weeks. She couldn't get past feeling there was a hugely important piece of her missing. They always accused her of just going through the motions, and she couldn't even argue that point.
Eventually she just stopped trying to date and filled her time with other things.
She had school, of course. When she'd first come through, after the initial months of depression, she'd wanted something to pass the time when she wasn't at Torchwood. She'd decided to get her A-Levels, and with the help of several very determined tutors managed to finish them – Physics, Electronics, Computers and History – in time to enrol in university the following term. Pete made a few calls at Oxford to hurry up the process – she'd have gotten in on her own merits, but wouldn't have been able to apply until the following year, and she had too much to do to be kept waiting by red tape.
She fought her way through a B.A. in Physics and Astronomy, with a minor in Engineering– as clever as the Doctor had always told her she was, none of it really came naturally to her. When that was done, she pursued her Masters in Theoretical Physics.
None of her teachers were like the Doctor. There was no joy in the learning process, no encouragement to go out and change the world. And in the field she had chosen, few of her colleagues took her theories seriously. Even if they did, her position as the newest spokesperson for Vitex kept expectations low.
She didn't care – it was exactly why she'd agreed to it when Pete first suggested it. People rarely looked beyond what they saw, and if they saw a bottle blond on the pages of a magazine peddling an energy drink, they weren't going to be looking for her as an operative in a secret government agency.
Which was what all that education had been to help her with anyhow.
Working with Torchwood was as close to the excitement and adventure of life with the Doctor as she could get. Though more than a bit diminished. Instead of a hand to hold she now had a gun, and instead of falling asleep to the hum of the TARDIS she listened to the constant traffic outside her flat near Canary Wharf. She was rich enough to afford living anywhere she wanted, but it wasn't the dream life she had imagined when she was sixteen. The paparazzi followed her every move and if she wasn't on a mission for work, she couldn't walk down the street without even a one-person security detail.
For years, that was her life.
And then Torchwood discovered that the stars were going out.
Rose had known there was only one man in all of reality who had a chance of helping.
So she'd helped design and build the dimension cannon. It wasn't all on her own – she only had the rough idea, and training or not, she didn't have the same natural flare for building devices as the Doctor did. If it hadn't been for Toshiko Sato, who had a savant's touch when it came to technology, the cannon would never have worked.
When it came time to test it, Pete (with Jackie's and Mickey protesting) had allowed her to be the one to go through. In her mind, she was the obvious choice – she was the one who knew the Doctor. She had seen pictures of his other selves, would know when she was in the right place
The danger didn't even factor into it. Not that there weren't near scrapes.
And some universes that even today she couldn't think about without feeling sick.
But she had thrown herself across the dimensions, intent on the Doctor, each jump more disheartening than the last.
Until she finally found him.
Helped him save all of reality.
And for that, was returned to Bad Wolf Bay without even a backward look and is now staring at a man who will remind him of the Doctor the rest of her life.
Rose swallows and meets his expectant look; he is still waiting for an answer.
Every jump she made, she hoped it would bring her to him so that she could tell him everything that happened since that day in Norway and his unfinished words. She'd had it all organised, what she would say first and what she wanted to tell him.
It all deserts her now.
'Oh, not much,' she tells him with forced levity. 'Just tryin' to find my way back.'
She sees his face fall a bit. 'Oh.'
She suspects his disappointment stems from the idea that she didn't try for that fantastic life; that she wasted all of it trying to get back to him. Maybe he's understanding now how much he, or the other him, completely invalidated all her hard work by dropping her off back where she started.
With a copy.
A clone.
Even if his return were possible at this point, she'll never forget that he made his choice and she wasn't it.
And I made mine, she thinks dully. Didn't I?
She hasn't forgotten that desperate kiss she shared with the human Doctor. It was a reaction she hadn't been able to completely rein in when this version looked at her with the same brown eyes she had come to adore, and whispered the words she's been aching to hear for a solid decade in the voice that haunted her dreams since she arrived in this universe.
He smelled the same, tasted the way she always thought he would and had mirrored her own desperation back to her in a way the real Doctor never would have.
She realises then that she's angry with the Doctor – really, properly angry – for the first time in her life.
Because before, she never doubted. At the Game Station, she knew he was terrified and scared and didn't want to see her die or watch her dying. At Canary Wharf, he wanted to keep her safe. She was hurt then, annoyed, and she thought angry, but it pales in comparison to now.
She knew if he could have gotten to her, he would have. The only reason he hadn't then was because he didn't want the entire universe to suffer for their happiness. And that was alright.
Now, she knows better. Now she knows the Doctor doesn't love her. Maybe he did once, if what his clone said to her on the beach is true, but he doesn't anymore. Otherwise he wouldn't have left her here.
There is no universe-ending reason to leave her in this world. There would be no paradox or similar horrible result of her staying with him on the TARDIS. This second abandonment is purposeful, a way of letting her down gently. The fact he did it without asking her opinion is the final slap in the face.
Damn him anyhow, she thinks, trying to focus on her anger instead of how much it hurts. He wants me to live out a fantastic life he thinks I should have, well too bad.
If she wants a fantastic life, it'll be because she's fantastic, and not because it's the sodding one adventure he could never have. It's long past the time that she got over the Doctor.
It's too bad that it took her all this time to finally get the clue.
Of course, there's still the matter of the Metacrisis Doctor, and the constant reminder he offers of the man – alien – that left her. Whenever he opens his mouth, he sounds like his Time Lord counterpart, and until she's healed, she'll have to remind herself he didn't ask to be created.
She isn't the only one who is suddenly mourning something lost, or who has just lost the most important person in her life. It must be hard for him in a different way because he remembers being the Doctor.
Rose makes a decision then that she's going to help him get through all of this, because he was abandoned as well. Unlike when she was trapped here, he's going to have someone who knows what he's going through to help him get over it. She doesn't think she'll be able to fall in love with him as he – the Time Lord – obviously hoped.
Not after everything.
'Listen, this whole thing is really…weird,' she says finally. 'Can we…pretend that I haven't been a complete cow to you?'
His eyes widen in something like surprise and he opens his mouth, but before he can say anything heartbreakingly daft or well-meaning, she cuts him off.
'I've honestly got no idea how this is gonna work. We both just lost…' She trails off, scowls at the mess she's making of this and amends, 'Can we just pretend like it hasn't been years? Like we only just said goodbye on the beach and…and there was a way through after all, and everything that's happened in between doesn't exist? Just for a few hours? After everything today, I don't think either of us is ready to exchange war stories.'
He grimaces at her choice of words, but they're as accurate as she can think of to describe what they've both been through, so she doesn't regret them.
'If that's what you want,' he says slowly.
'Yes,' she says immediately, trying to sound sure. 'That's what I want.'
There's another second where she's faced with a very searching look, and then he straightens in his seat and forces a smile.
'Barcelona,' he says, and Rose blinks at the non sequitur.
'What?'
'Barcelona!' he says, louder this time. 'Promised myself after Canary Wharf if I managed to find you again, I'd finally take you. Never ended up going, remember? It was first on the to-do list.'
'Barcelona,' Rose repeats. 'Dogs with no noses?'
'Yup!' he over-enunciates the 'p'. 'Can still go, if you want. It's not too far from Earth – one of the first colony worlds actually, so still within reasonable interstellar distance with the right ship. Hop, skip and a jump away with a decently constructed ship – relatively speaking of course.'
'Of course,' she echoes, closing her eyes and leaning back in her seat. For a moment, she can pretend that they aren't two damaged people marooned in a universe that doesn't belong to either of them.
For a moment, she can pretend that it's the Doctor and Rose Tyler, in the TARDIS, as it should be.
'Where else was on your list?' she asks tentatively, and this time the smile he gives her isn't quite so forced.
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