The Doctor pushed open the door to the TARDIS and patted his abdomen. Jackson Lake had certainly not been hyperbolizing when he'd described the Christmas feast. It had been a long time since he had been so very stuffed.
He smiled as a memory of the evening drifted to the fore of his mind. Young Frederick imploring him to tell tales of his adventures. For all the boy had been through, he'd certainly come through it shining. It was something the Doctor admired most about these funny little humans. It seemed like they could make it unscathed through anything. After a time, anyway.
He ran a hand over the TARDIS console as the happy glow of the evening's domesticity evaporated.
Jackson Lake had lost his wife and had been so broken that he'd tried to become the Doctor.
The Doctor had lost everyone. Who could he become to escape the pain of his reality?
Jackson still had his son, the glorious little Frederick, to dull his grief.
The Doctor had nothing. No one. His family, dead. His people, dead. His love locked away in another world with another him. His happiness was lost to time.
He started the dematerialization sequence, throwing the TARDIS into the Vortex.
Five minutes. He would allow himself five minutes of watching.
The TARDIS shook and shuddered. He grabbed his mallet and hammered the controls, forcing the controls to obey his command. Forcing them to cross his timeline.
He landed in a dark alleyway. A homeless man looked up at him, startled, as he strode out of the TARDIS. The Doctor nodded to him. "Evening," he greeted casually, as if it were no strange thing to step out of a newly materialized police box in a London alleyway.
"Evenin'," the man rumbled back at him before pulling his coat back over his head and returning to a, if the smell were any indicator, alcohol-induced slumber.
The Doctor stepped out of the alleyway and walked down the road, towards a small café he'd noticed years ago. Glad that, for once, he had a few pound coins in his very deep pockets, he ordered a tea and scone.
He sat at a small table nearest the window. Wouldn't be long now.
He could see the TARDIS parked out in the middle of the courtyard. It was only a moment later that his other self stepped out of it.
The younger Doctor, clad for the very first time in that pinstriped suit, strode confidently towards the block of flats that housed the woman who'd changed his lives.
The Doctor watched as the first gentle flakes of snow – precipitated from the atmosphere by the ash of the Sycorax ship falling toward the Earth – drifted downward, settling on the TARDIS. His mood clouded further at the memory of Harriet Jones' decision to kill fleeing foes.
He drew a book from his pocket and flipped through Hamlet, refreshing now and then his tea with a trip to the counter. Hours passed as he re-read the long-memorized words, allowing the pain etched into history by a grieving Shakespeare to weave through him. He thought back to what was happening in the Tyler flat. Another Christmas feast, with paper crowns and the warmth of a home, a place to belong. Something he had lost so long before. His younger self was experiencing it right now. Domestic. But with Rose there, he could do a bit of domestic.
Before long, he saw himself, followed by Jackie, Mickey, and Rose, approach the TARDIS. He couldn't help his own grin as Rose agreed to travel with his earlier self again. He could see the relief in his younger self's eyes even at a distance.
When she took the extended hand of his counterpart, his own ached in remembrance of the contact. She leaned into the arms of his younger self as they decided where to go. In only minutes, they entered the TARDIS and were gone. The Doctor and Rose Tyler, in the TARDIS, as it should be.
Jackie and Mickey walked back towards their flats, and the darkened streets emptied.
As he walked slowly back towards his own TARDIS, fresh snow crunching under his feet, his thoughts wound back to his final weeks with her.
"How long are you going to stay with me?" he'd asked on the rocky surface of an unnamed alien world where broad, flying creatures sang a wild hymn as the sun rose over the swirling mountains.
"Forever," she'd said, flashing him a wide smile. He had grinned in return, reaching out to take her hand. She stepped closer to him and he raised his arm to welcome her against his side. She curled into him with a sigh.
The sun warmed the bleak, grey stone of the dreary world vibrated. A single note rose into the air from the ground beneath them and the mountains towering over them. Rose's eyes widened and her mouth dropped open in an O of surprise.
"So beautiful," she muttered. She closed her eyes to listen to the stones of the planet itself singing.
"Yes, beautiful," he agreed, his eyes fixed on her serene features.
He bent to kiss the top of her head, an affectionate urge overcoming him, but at the last moment she looked up at him and he met her lips unexpectedly. He jumped back, an apology at the tip of his tongue, but Rose stepped forward and pulled him down to her.
It had been their first proper kiss. Just three weeks before she'd been lost to the other universe.
He kicked himself, now, for not fighting harder to find her. If Rose had been able to push through the walls of the universe after that, surely he could have done the same. Too fixed on Time Lord rules about the nature of existence, he supposed.
It had once been possible, he remembered telling Rose, to pop between worlds easily. The stable Schism which had allowed such travel was long gone. It was his own fault, of course, because the Schism had only ever been stabilized on Gallifrey.
Feeling aimless, he directed the TARDIS to take him to the summit of Ben Nevis. If ever there was a place for a sulk, a foggy mountaintop in Scotland would be the spot for it. He stepped out of the TARDIS and groaned to himself. Of course it would be the one day a month that it was sunny in Scotland. Even the weather wouldn't cooperate with his mood. He grumbled, skulked back into his blue box and fetched a cup of tea from the galley anyway. He sat on a grey stone and looked out at the sweeping hills and mountains before him. Green grass and grey stone stretched as far as the eye could see, reaching up towards the bright blue sky.
He let the cold wind whip around him. His hands were warmed only by the cup of Tetley as the Earth turned beneath him.
His mind reached out, to try to find that faint presence. The thread-like connection to his other self. It was rare he could sense anything through it, but he hoped desperately for some sense, some reassurance that she was alive and happy with his metacrisis in the other world. A gossamer thread of consciousness reached back through the walls of reality to him. As far as he could tell, there was happiness.
The Doctor sipped his tea and listened to the howl of wind as it blew across the rocky ground. For all his losses, if Rose was happy, he could continue on, but, he decided, he would travel alone.
"…I suppose, in the end, they break my heart," he'd told Jackson Lake earlier that day.
Some more than others.
"It is returning. It is returning through the dark. And then, Doctor? Oh, but then he will knock four times."
Carmen's words echoed through his mind as he made his way back to the TARDIS. It had been a thoroughly exciting day, if he did say so himself.
Would have been preferable if it hadn't ended with a pronouncement of his death.
He shook off the darkness that tried to cloud into his mind. Lady Christina had been utterly fantastic and he had enjoyed the day with her, but he was glad to see her go.
She reminded him far too much of Rose.
Not in a superficial way – she was a posh noblewoman with a taste for adrenaline where Rose was sharpened on the whetstone of the estate, although, he supposed, she technically was actually a noblewoman herself – but it was the grit in her personality, the ability to enjoy herself in treacherous situations that cast his mind back to his lost companion. Christina's desire for fairness, and her odd way of showing it and that tendency towards being a little too jeopardy friendly were all familiar traits.
There was absolutely no way Lady Christina would be travelling with him, thanks much. Especially after those looks she'd given him. He'd had enough of that nonsense with Martha, he did not need another companion with a crush on him.
He thought a moment of inviting Malcolm Taylor along for a trip by way of thanks, but disabused himself of that notion as quickly as it had arisen. The man was brilliant, but the Doctor was fairly certain he would be driven utterly mad by the man who seemed to be his biggest fan.
Best not.
Hadn't he, only weeks before, assured himself he'd travel alone from now on?
And if his song were ending soon, a reminder that was being thrown in his face at every turn, well then, he'd keep to himself.
He couldn't stand to see someone else hurt, if they got in the way of whatever it was that was coming for him.