Gently setting the tiny clones of himself and Rose into the damp grass of Hyde Park, the Doctor asked, "Now, you two sure you'll be all right? I don't want you turning up as some wild dog's chew toys, you understand."
After an extremely squeaky and indignantly scathing lecture on how he knew how to care for Mini Rose, the Mini Doctor ran off into the bushes, eternally hand-in-hand with his blonde companion. Beside him, the Doctor's own full-sized Rose was smiling as she watched them go.
"Wouldn't be surprised if some kid starts a legend about brownies or something in here," she chuckled, sliding her fingers easily through his as they straightened. The Doctor could get used to this again, all too easily. It would be so simple to just forget he wasn't supposed to be here and…
His hand was cold as he let hers slide away. He wasn't meant to have kept her. He didn't deserve that sort of happiness. The universe had made that point very clear long ago, and trying to keep her would be so painfully futile.
"Doctor?" But oh, the puzzled hurt on her face made him want to drag her back into his arms and kiss it away until she was all he could remember of the world, until she was all the world there was. Someplace duty and responsibility melted away, and he was free to be with his love.
"There's something I need to ask you." She was trying to meet his gaze, even as he fought to avoid it.
"Yes, Rose?" His voice was patient, but his body screamed the need to run, flee from her concern and her love before he accepted it and became trapped here by his own hearts.
"Is it really you in there, John?"
Well. That got his attention.
"Wha-?"
"I was following you. From the police station." She smiled tentatively, worrying the corner of her mouth in anxiety. "Unless that police box holds a lot more people than it looks like….John, is it really you?" Her fingers were soft and hot as they cupped his jaw, stroking its shadowed line as if she could read the answer in his bones. His eyes slipped closed. He was lost.
"No, Rose, I'm the Doctor," he explained, not bothering to move away from her gentle touch or even to look at her, too afraid of his own hearts to trust that they could see her without screaming to keep her. "I've always been the Doctor, John Smith is the disg—"
The explanation was swallowed by her kiss.
Her lips scalded his with human heat, but he drank in the fire, coaxing her mouth open with the stroke of his tongue to give him more. His hands, greedy, tactile things that they were, were smoothing over her back, her hips, dragging her into his body as if he could keep her there for all time. Rose was on tiptoe, teetering dangerously on broken heels with the effort to reach his mouth, but he was her anchor, her stability, her hands in his hair, clutching his shoulders, her lips on his, holding her up and unbalancing her all at once. He could never give her up, he had been a fool to think he ever could. His arm tightened fiercely around her waist at the mere thought, kiss turning fierce as his teeth nipped and caught at the ripe fullness of her lower lip, no, he would find some way to take her with him, make her remember, make her his once more….
"Doctor."
Cracked leather under his back, feet falling asleep and no exquisitely soft, warm human female in his arms; the loss was almost more than he could stand.
"Doctor?" The voice came again, this time with a delicate hand shaking his shoulder, and when he opened his arms he was looking up into Martha's worried eyes.
"You all right?" his newest companion asked concernedly, scooting around the jump seat to stand by his outstretched legs. "You were moaning in your sleep." His ankles were propped up on the edge of the console—ow, that would explain why his legs were tingling like he'd just had a full course of Arcadian acupuncture. A dream. He'd dreamed it all. Resting near his feet, an empty jar of jam perched precariously along the edge of the controls. Right. No more boysenberry. Not ever. He was sure that was where the spandex had come from, although what dark corner of his mind had dredged the Master back to life, he'd never know. Marmalade didn't do this to him.
"Doctor?"Martha repeated for the third time before it finally sunk in that yes, he had been dreaming, and no, he had not yet given Martha an answer.
"Martha!" he echoed, blasting a silly grin in her general direction. Time to forget…time to forget… It was a mantra he'd repeated so many, many times, for far too many griefs. You'd think it would be time he got good at actually doing it. But all he could do was flood the memories with words, hoping they drowned in a deluge of loquaciousness. "Odd dream that, not sure where it all came from but I tell you, I'm never eating boysenberry jam again. Mind you, I'm quite relieved that I didn't actually wear the cape; I was that blue and red bloke, the one from the movies! What's he called? Oh, it'll come to me. Did you know, on several planets—even Earth!—there are theories that dreams aren't really dreams, but portals to another world? Silly. I've been to other dimensions, and they're nowhere near that silly. But really, Martha, there were these tiny little clones of me and Rose, and don't ask me what sick and twisted mind would think of something like that, because I'm sure I don't know, and we fed Mini Me jelly babies and you weren't there but Jack was the copy boy…"
Convinced that her alien friend was all right, not to mention having heard the "go the hell away" signal in the name Rose, Martha sighed, rolling her eyes fondly as she left the Doctor babbling on to himself about his dream, going off to prepare for the day. Honestly, did he even have a bedroom? Probably better that she didn't go down that path of thought, but really. He was going to break his back sleeping like that! Although, granted, this was the first time in the months of knowing him that she'd even seen him sleep, so maybe it was his once-a-decade cat nap.
"Batman!" the Doctor concluded happily as Martha turned the corner into the TARDIS's cavernous halls, "That's who I was. I was Batman!"
Another universe…
In a Hyde Park littered with newspapers stamped "Daily Galaxy," the Lord of Time who'd been raised to think of himself as John Smith found himself quite pleasantly wrapped in his beautiful partner's amorous arms, basically having the hell snogged out of him. He couldn't quite seem to remember how he'd got there, or how he'd ended up with his mouth being joyously molested by a woman with whom he'd secretly been in love since the day they'd met.
But he'd worry about it later.
Fin. A.N.: Thank you to everyone who read and enjoyed this story, with a special thanks going out to the unlogged-in reviewers who I couldn't reply to individually. Every comment made me grin like a loon.
