A/N: Nothing you recognize belongs to me! Quotes taken from "The Doctor's Daughter!"
Chapter Thirty-Two: Loss
They sprinted down the hidden tunnel. Over the pounding of her hearts and the rush of her blood through her veins Jenny could hear the heavy thud of boots hitting the floor. It was coming from behind them. The soldiers were gaining. They would shoot on sight. Cobb had embraced the knowledge that had been programmed into the machine. He truly believed that war with the Hath was right and that exterminating every last one of them was the only solution. He wouldn't listen to reason; he wouldn't be persuaded, and that made him incredibly dangerous. The knowledge the machine had given her pointed out that it was likely that the only way they would overcome him would involve his death, but she pushed it to the side. She did not believe that the strange man who was her father would willingly kill anyone.
She rounded a corner and nearly ran into the Doctor and Donna, who were standing in front of crisscrossed lines of red light. Rose, in turn, nearly ran into her. "What's the hold up?" the woman asked. She was breathing a bit more heavily than normal, but not alarmingly so. It was true, then, about the running. Jenny smiled to herself. She could get used to that. Adrenaline sang in her blood and the sheer freedom of physical movement made her want to jump for joy.
"No chance that's mood lighting?" Donna asked hopefully. The Doctor pulled out his windup mouse and tossed it into the lights. It exploded with a flash and a bang. Donna swallowed. "That's a no, then."
"Arming device," the Doctor muttered as he glanced wildly around the passage. His eyes landed on a blue box set into the wall. "Aha!" He ran to it and pulled off the front panel. Buttons were nestled in tangles of wires. Jenny watched him work while Rose kept her eyes on the passage behind them. Donna wandered over to another metal plaque that was fixed to the wall.
"There's more of those numbers," she called. "Always eight numbers, and always counting down the closer we get."
"Here we go!" he exclaimed as power returned to the device.
"You'd better be quick," Rose replied, her gaze still fixed on the corridor behind them. "The general's coming. And I can't beam all of us out."
Shouts echoed down the corridor. Jenny left the Doctor's side and started towards Rose. He grabbed her arm. "Where are you going?"
"I can hold them up," she said, her eyes wide and her face serious. "I can buy you some time."
"No," he said flatly. "We don't need any more dead."
"But it's them or us!" she protested.
"That doesn't mean you have to kill them!" he snapped.
"I'm trying to save your life!" She was staring at him, uncomprehending. He didn't make any sense. Every time she thought she had a handle on him he did something or said something that threw her assessment out the window.
"Not like this." His voice was firm and would allow no argument. "Listen to me, Jenny." A hint of desperation crept in. "After a while the killing infects you, and once it's done you're never rid of it. I don't—I don't want to be saved like that."
She shook her head. "But we don't have a choice."
"There is always a choice."
She looked at him for a moment like she was trying to tell him something with her eyes, and then she pulled out of his grip. "I'm sorry," she said, and ran down the hall.
"Jenny!" he yelled after her.
She didn't look back and she didn't stop. Maybe she couldn't be what he wanted her to be (whatever that was), but she could do this. She could give him enough time to get the lasers down and get to safety. She could help him find his friend and get away.
The Doctor whirled around and stalked back to the arming device. "See?" he asked Rose, his voice harsh as he aimed the sonic at the tangle of wires that spilled from the open panel. "Nothing but a soldier."
"You were a soldier once," she replied. "Is that all you are?" He said nothing. "Doctor, you are one of the most complex people I've ever met. People try over and over again to fit you into a little box and define who you are, but they can't." She crossed her arms and glared at him. "So why are you, a self-avowed genius, making the same mistake that idiots do on a daily basis?"
"She's just trying to help," Donna said softly.
He sighed. "I know." Then the lasers flickered and died. He pocketed the sonic. "Jenny!" he yelled. "Leave it! Come on!" He took Rose's hand, and they ran through the passage. There was a seventeen percent chance that the computer would be smart enough to loop the circuits and start the beams up again, and he really didn't want to have to try and disable it with the soldiers at his back. A gun to his head wasn't exactly the best motivation.
General Cobb stood in between the soldiers and Jenny. Her gun was locked, loaded, and aimed. If she squeezed the trigger now he would be dead in under a second—but he was unarmed. His gun was at his feet and his arms were out. "You're a child of the machine," he reasoned. "You're on my side. Join us!" He inched closer. "Join us in the war against the Hath." She kept the weapon trained on him. Everything in her screamed that he was right, everything she knew told her to swing the gun around and walk to him, to charge against the man who threatened to upset their generations-long campaign. She wavered. Cobb saw. "It's in your blood, girl!" he pressed. "Don't deny it!"
There is always a choice.
She raised her aim and let loose a single round. It sliced through the plastic tubing overhead and green gas cascaded down, obscuring the room. She dropped the gun and ran. Maybe fighting was in her blood, but so was running, and it didn't feel like a betrayal, as her machine-given knowledge suggested. It felt like a victory. She chose. Whatever happened, from this moment on she carved out her own destiny.
Too long, she was taking too long. The Doctor wanted to pace, but Rose was holding his hand and he didn't want to let her go. There was the sound of a single shot, and he thought that maybe his hearts would stop. He was being hard on her, too hard. He was being, as Rose would say, an 'unreasonable git,' but he couldn't stop himself. He wanted to push her away, to keep her at arm's length so that when he inevitably lost her it wouldn't hurt so much, but at the same time he wanted to pull her close, to feel the brush of her mind against his. It was lonely in his head, even with the TARDIS.
"Jenny, come on!" he yelled again. A few moments later she dashed around the corner, and slid to a halt. The lasers were back up.
"No, no, no!" He ran a hand through his already messy hair. "The circuit's looped back!"
"Doctor!" Donna shouted. "Zap it back again!"
The sound of boots hitting the cement floor echoed through the tunnel. "They're coming," Rose reminded him, her eyes on Jenny.
"I know!" he replied tersely. "The control panel's on the other side!" He studied the passage frantically, but no openings presented themselves. The only way to control the lasers was through the arming device—which was on the other side. Jenny didn't have his sonic screwdriver (nor was he confident in his ability to throw it to her without destroying it) and even if she did, she lacked his mechanical knowledge (though perhaps not a bit of his brilliance). "I can't," he began, and pulled at his hair. "I don't—there's nothing I can do," he realized. "I'm sorry, so sorry, but I can't."
Jenny took a deep breath—and then she smiled. "Guess I'll have to make do on my own, then." She raised her arms above her head like a gymnast preparing to begin a routine. "Watch and learn, father." And then she was off. She took a running start and sprang into action. Her body flowed into handstand after handstand; she was a blur of black and green and gold and she moved with a great deal more grace than the Doctor ever did.
Donna gaped as the girl navigated the maze of lasers. "No way," she breathed.
The Doctor's face was priceless, Rose thought. He looked completely and utterly stunned. His forehead wrinkled and his eyebrows jumped up as he followed her progress.
"But, that was impossible!" Donna exclaimed as Jenny executed a perfect landing.
The confusion and—could it be—concern vanished from the Doctor's face, to be replaced by a huge smile. "Not impossible," he disagreed, "just very unlikely." And then he hugged her. "Brilliant!" he crowed. "That was mad and totally brilliant!" Jenny was smiling as he lifted her off the floor and swung her around a bit. There were tears in her eyes, and Rose found that her own were a bit wet. She beamed at the girl, and when the Doctor set Jenny down Rose hugged her as well.
"You would have been a fantastic gymnast," she said.
The Doctor looked gob-smacked. "Rose Tyler, you just saw her dodge lasers and you're thinking about gymnastics?"
"Don't knock gymnastics," she replied playfully. "As I recall, they saved your life once."
He scratched his ear. "Yes, right. Well." And then he turned back to his daughter and another smile lit up his face. "You were brilliant."
She grinned back at him. "I didn't kill him, General Cobb. I could have, but I didn't." The words came out in a rush. "I chose," she said, her voice filled with wonder.
"Spread out!" Cobb's voice cut through the moment. Donna pulled Jenny around the corner, and Rose followed, but the Doctor stood where he was. The joy and mischief drained out of him and he stood just a bit taller. He cut an imposing figure in his long coat, with his eyes hard and his face set in lines that could have been carved from stone.
"I warned you, Cobb." His voice was cold and hard. "If the Source is a weapon, I will stop you. I will make sure you never use it."
"One of us is going to die today," the man responded, "and it won't be me!" Then he raised his gun and fired.
The Doctor dodged around the corner after the girls, but something made him pause. Just for a moment he felt the timelines shudder and shift. Something was coming. He'd felt it before, standing in the street with Rose after he lit the Olympic Torch in 2012.
They keep tryin' to split us up, but they never ever will.
Never say never ever.
A storm is coming.
His jaw clenched. No. Not this time. He would defy the Vortex itself. She had come back to him, traversed universes and searched for years to find him again. He would not lose her.
The Doctor and Donna were leading the way down the winding passage. Rose hung back and walked with Jenny. She had tried to talk to the Doctor, but he was distracted, and he was useless when his mind was elsewhere.
"So," the girl began. "You travel with my dad, and you're together."
"That's right," Rose replied with a smile.
"Does that," she paused, embarrassed. There was a hesitancy about her that reminded Rose of the Doctor when he attempted to discuss anything remotely personal. He was confident, bordering on egotistical in most situations, but not when it came to the people he cared about. "Does that make you my mum?" she asked.
Rose didn't answer immediately. "Do you want it to?" she asked after a moment of silence.
Jenny blinked. "I—I just thought that was how it worked."
"I meant what I told the Doctor, about me an' Pete," Rose replied. "Because they say that you can't choose your family, but that's rubbish. You can't choose who is biologically related to you but that doesn't make them family." She paused. "If you want to think of me as your mum, I'd be honored, but it has to be something that you want.
Jenny was silent for a minute, clearly thinking. "I—I would like that," she said shyly.
Rose smiled. "I would too."
"Mum," Jenny said tentatively, rolling the word around in her mouth, tasting it, trying it out. She found she liked the way it sounded, liked how Rose's face lit up when she heard it. "Are you a Time Lord too?"
The woman laughed. "Oh no, not me. I'm human, well, mostly."
"How do you mean?" She was confused, now. "Was one of your parents an alien?"
Rose shook her head. "No. Of course, some people had doubts about my mum, but that's not it. There was—an accident. Not really an accident, because I did it on purpose, but there were side effects." She shrugged. "It's a long story. I'll tell you once we get back to the TARDIS, if you're still interested."
Jenny nodded. "I want to hear about everything. There's so much he won't say."
"Don't be too hard on him, Jenny," Rose replied softly. "He's not trying to be a git, really. But—he had a family, before the Time War. He had children, and they died, and it's hard for him." She exhaled loudly, trying to vent some of her own frustration. "He internalizes everything, just pushes it aside until it builds and builds and he can't deal with it."
Donna and the Doctor were having their own conversation. He was staring at the floor in front of them like it held the answer to the secrets of life, the universe, and everything. His forehead was crinkled and his eyebrows were drawn down into a frown of concentration.
"I know that look," Donna commented. He glanced at her, puzzled. "See it a lot 'round our way—blokes with pushchairs and frowns." She smiled. "You've got dad-shock."
He blinked. "Dad-shock? That's not even a word, let alone a medical condition."
Her smile widened. "Dad-shock: sudden, unexpected fatherhood. Takes a bit of getting used to." Her voice softened, turning from teasing to sincere. "I think Rose will be a wonderful Mum."
He stiffened. "That's not it." He didn't want to think about Rose and children—it was just one more thing he couldn't give her. Time Lords were sterile, had been since Pythia cursed the lot of them. It was why they moved to loom-based reproduction, well, that and it helped subsume all those petty emotions that being in a relationship brought out. Marriages on Gallifrey were political in nature, not love-based at all. His relationship with Rose would have been scandalous for its emotional and physical intimacy, let alone its composition. She was right, when she asked him if any other Time Lords would even consider doing what he had: they wouldn't. They would probably have left her to burn, never mind stooping to mate with her.
Donna would not be put off. "What is it, then? The thought of having Jenny in the TARDIS? Like you've got a sports car and she'll turn it into a people carrier?" She snorted. "I know that your lifestyle isn't exactly child friendly, but she's not a child. She can handle herself."
"I've been a father before," he said abruptly.
She gaped at him. "What?" she finally asked.
He continued to stare at the corridor ahead of them. "I had children before the War, a granddaughter, even. Then I didn't." A muscle in his jaw twitched. "I lost all of that a long time ago, along with everything else."
"I'm sorry," she said softly. "I didn't know."
"Yeah," he replied.
"You never said." There was no accusation in her voice, only confusion and concern. "Why didn't you tell me?" He didn't answer. "You talk all the time, but you never say anything."
He sighed. "I didn't tell you because it hurts, Donna. Rose traveled with me for over two years before I told her. It was just before—" his throat closed and he swallowed. "Just before I lost her."
"And she's back now," Donna pointed out.
He closed his eyes. "Yes. But when I look at Jenny I see them. The hole that they left—and the pain that filled it." When he opened his eyes again they were unreadable. The walls were up. "I don't know if I can face that every day."
"It won't stay like that." She glanced back to Rose and Jenny, who were deep in conversation. "She'll help you and Rose will help you, and it will get better."
He shook his head. "When they died, that part of me died with them." His voice was harsh and raw. "It'll never come back, not now."
"Never say never, Doctor." She unwittingly echoed his words from so long ago.
"Even if I wanted to give Rose children," he replied in that same anguished voice, "I couldn't. Time Lords haven't reproduced sexually in centuries—it's one more thing I can't give her. And Jenny…" He shook his head. "No. It's not happening."
Donna stared at him, and then she took a deep breath. "I'm going to tell you something that I've never told you before, Doctor." She grabbed his arm and made him look at her. "I think you're wrong."
Gunshots echoed off the cement walls. Rose and Jenny jogged forward. "They've blasted through the beams," the girl noted cheerfully. "Time to run again." She grinned. "I love the running."
The serious expression melted off of his face and he returned her grin. "Me too." Then he grabbed Rose's hand and they took off down the corridor.
The tunnel turned into a dead-end. "We're trapped!" Donna panted.
The Doctor searched the walls. "Can't be," he called over his shoulder, "this must be the temple." One of the walls, he realized, looked strange—different from the others. He moved closer. "This is a door!" He set to work, using the sonic to bypass the security measures on the keypad next to the metal plate.
Donna stared at another metal plaque that was fastened to the wall just below the ceiling. "And again," she mused, "we're down to 1-2 now."
"I've got it!" the Doctor exclaimed.
"I can hear them," Jenny noted from her position as guard.
"Nearly there!" the Doctor replied. The gunshots were getting closer, and they could hear shouting from the direction they'd come.
"These can't be a cataloguing system," Donna continued, oblivious. "They're too similar, too familiar."
"They're nearly here," Jenny reminded them.
"Then get back here!" the Doctor ordered. She didn't move. "Rose! Get her back here!"
"Jenny, Donna," the woman barked, "come on!"
"Not yet," the girl protested.
"Now!" the Doctor snapped. "Got it!" The door slid open and they darted inside just as Cobb and his soldiers came into view.
"Close the door!" Donna yelled. The Doctor waved the sonic at the keypad set into the wall and it slid shut. He locked it for good measure. He wanted to figure out what was going on without interruption, thank you very much.
"That was close," Rose noted.
The Doctor grinned. "No fun otherwise."
They moved further into the complex and Donna voiced what they'd all been thinking. "It's not what I'd call a 'temple,'" she noted. "More like a—"
"Fusion-drive transport?" the Doctor suggested.
She huffed. "I was going to say, space ship, but yeah."
"That's because it is," he replied.
"The one that brought the original settlers?" Rose asked, frowning.
He shook his head. "Can't be. The fuel cells would have run out and the whole thing would have powered down ages ago."
A quick dash and a staircase later the Doctor was staring at a computer screen with his brainy specs perched on the bridge of his nose. Jenny shot Rose a confused look, but the woman only rolled her eyes. The Doctor and his props. She wanted to tell him that he didn't need to look any more clever than he already did, but she had to admit that he was damned sexy in spectacles.
"This is the original spaceship," he muttered. "First wave of human/Hath co-colonization of Messaline."
"Does it mention the War?" Donna asked from her position behind him.
"Final entry," he read. "Mission commander dead. Still no agreement on who should assume leadership. Hath and humans have divided into factions!" He pulled the specs off and stuffed them in his pocket.
"And if they were using those machines," Rose began.
"Exactly!" the Doctor interrupted. "They suddenly had two armies fighting a war that couldn't be won!"
"A power vacuum," she murmured. Jenny watched them, her eyes wide with excitement. She'd joked about their constant thinking earlier, but she was beginning to realize that solving a puzzle was almost as much fun as running.
Donna had stopped listening to the tale unraveling around the computer terminal. Her attention was fixed on a digital screen hovering above the door. It was another eight digit code, but this one ended in 2-4. "Look at that," she said, and pointed at the screen.
Rose blinked. "It's like the numbers in the tunnels."
"No, no no no, but—listen." Donna grinned. Everything was sliding into place in her head. "I was a temp in Hounslow library for six months, and I mastered the Dewey Decimal System in two days flat." Pride crept into her voice, but pride tempered with the knowledge that she was right. "I'm good with numbers. It's staring us in the face!"
"What is?" Jenny was confused.
Donna turned to face the rest of them. "It's the date," she replied with a smile. "Assume that the first two numbers are some big space date, and then you've got year, month, and day. It's switched around, like it is in America!"
"It's the New Byzantine Calendar!" the Doctor exclaimed. "Donna Noble, you are brilliant!"
"Supertemp," she agreed. "The codes are completion dates for each section! They finish something and then slap the date on it." She paused. "But there's more! The numbers aren't counting down—they're going out from here. The first date I saw back there was 60120717, and today's date is 60120724."
"That's seven days," Rose said after a quick mental check.
"What about seven days?" Jenny asked, still lost.
"The war has been going on for seven days." The Doctor's eyes were wide.
Jenny blinked. "But that—that's impossible! They said years."
The Doctor shook his head. "No, they said generations, and if they're all like you, then they could have had twenty generations in a single day."
"How many people have died in the past seven days?" Rose's voice was soft and sad. It was so pointless, the killing.
The Doctor's face fell. "Hundreds. Maybe thousands." What a waste.
"But all the buildings, the encampments," she protested. "They're in ruins!"
"Not ruined," Donna disagreed. "Empty, waiting to be populated."
"They've mythologized their entire history," the Doctor said slowly. "The source must be part of that too. Come on!" He bolted for the stairwell, and they followed.
They followed their noses, which was how they ended up in the middle of a garden hidden away on the ship. They met Martha on the way, who was filthy from her journey over the surface. She assured them that she was alright but her smile didn't quite reach her eyes and her voice didn't ring true. The Doctor was about the question her more thoroughly, but the Hath arrived from one direction and the humans from another, and he found himself standing between the two warring factions. The Source that they were each so desperate to possess wasn't mystical at all—it was a third generation terraforming device.
"Stop!" he yelled, and thrust his hands out. "Hold your fire!"
"Is this a trap?" Cobb demanded, his gun aimed at the Hath, who kept their weapons out and ready.
"You said you wanted this war over," the Doctor reminded him.
"I said I wanted this war won!" the general snapped back.
The Doctor shook his head. "You can't win; no one can." He glanced behind him at the Hath. "Do you even know why you're here? Your whole history," he turned so that he could address all of them, "is just a long game of telephone! The more time passes the more distorted the truth gets!" He gestured to the terraforming device. "This is the Source!" It was beautiful, a swirling ball of color surrounded by glass and a thin metal cage. "This is what you're fighting over, a device to rejuvenate a planet's ecosystem. It's from a laboratory, not some creator. It's science, not magic. It's a bubble of gasses, a cocktail of stuff for accelerated evolution." He dropped his hands and moved around the device, speaking alternatively to the humans and the Hath. "Methane, hydrogen, ammonia, amino acids, proteins, and nucleic acids—it's all in there." He nodded at the ball. "It's used to make barren planets habitable." He smiled then. "Look around you." His eyes traveled over the forest that surrounded them. His voice changed, lost the detached tone that reminded Rose of a professor lecturing and took on the gentle tones of a friend. "It's not for killing. It's for bringing life. And if you let it, it can lift you out of these dark tunnels and into the bright, bright sunlight."
This, Jenny decided, was what she wanted to be. He stood between two armies without a weapon and he was unafraid. He spoke and they listened. He was giving them a choice, letting them see the possibility for peace, the beautiful gift that they had at their fingertips. He was showing them a way out of war. It was the only thing they'd known, but it didn't have to be that way. They could build instead of tear down, they could work together as the original colonists had intended before everything went wrong. They could transform this planet.
"No more fighting," he continued, "and no more killing." He grabbed the Source and lifted it above his head. "I'm the Doctor," he said, loudly enough so that everyone could hear him, "and I declare this war over!" He threw the ball to the ground. The glass shattered and the gasses trapped inside floated out and into the air. They were a myriad of colors—green and purple and brilliant gold. They climbed through the air, up and up and up until they wreathed against the ceiling. Something in the ship shifted and creaked and a patch of the dark sky was revealed. The gasses hung suspended for a moment, and then were sucked outside.
Weapons dropped to the ground on both sides. Hath and human alike stared at the spectacle, entranced. It was unlike anything they'd ever seen before. Jenny ran to the Doctor and hugged him. He smiled at her, fine lines around his eyes crinkling the way they did when he was really, truly happy. His eyes met Rose's and he was surprised to see that there were tears filling her eyes, but she smiled at him like she was unbelievably proud.
"What's happening?" his daughter asked. And she was his daughter. He'd tried to deny it, much like he'd originally tried to deny his feelings for Rose, but it was wrong to do so. The place in his hearts where memories of his children and Susan resided still ached, but he had been given a second chance. It would be criminal to waste it. The things he wanted to show her, the planets and peoples. Barcelona, and the Eye of Orion, and the statue of Rose that sat in the national museum in London. Woman Wept and the view of Earth from space. Maybe they could even make it to the moon this time.
"The gasses will escape," he answered, "and trigger the terraforming process."
She looked at him expectantly. "What does that mean?"
He smiled again softly. "A whole new world."
General Cobb stood still as stone while the soldiers around him watched the Source in awe. Everything that he stood for, everything that he'd worked for and devoted his life to had been stripped away by this, this Doctor.
One of us is going to die today.
He raised his gun and held it aimed straight at the Doctor.
Rose saw him. Her hand went for her own gun strapped to her hip, but there wasn't time. Cobb's was out and cocked he would fire before she had a chance. The movement to her side caught Jenny's attention and her eyes widened. "No!" she cried, and moved in front of the Doctor, shielding him with her body. The shot was like thunder in the sudden silence and she jerked as the bullet impacted.
The Doctor caught her as she slumped back. The soldiers around Cobb restrained him and brought him to his knees, but the Doctor's attention was focused on his daughter. Her face twisted in pain and blood welled up beneath her fingers. Martha was at his side in an instant as he eased the girl down to the floor, still cradling her. Rose crossed to stand slightly behind him. She smoothed Jenny's hair back from her forehead and tried to smile.
"Jenny?" the Doctor asked. "Jenny, talk to me, Jenny!"
Martha gently lifted the girl's hand. She paled, set it back down, an sat on her heels.
"Is she going to be alright?" Donna asked quietly. Martha bit her lip and shook her head. Silently they stood and moved back from the other three. Rose shifted so that she was kneeling opposite the Doctor. Her face was calm, but there were tears gathering in her eyes.
"A new world," Jenny whispered as she watched the gasses of the Source spiral up through the air and out into the atmosphere above them. "It's beautiful."
"Wait until you see it in a few years," the Doctor said, his voice choked. "We'll get you back to the TARDIS, fix you up, and jump ahead." She gasped. He held her tighter. "Jenny, be strong now. You have to hold on. You need to regenerate, do you hear me?" She was silent except for a few gasping breaths as tears dripped down her cheeks. "We've got things to do, you and me," he continued. "We can go anywhere, anywhen. Your choice."
She sobbed. "That sounds good."
He glanced at Rose and the look on his face almost broke her heart. His eyes were tortured, but then he looked back down at his daughter and she watched his face soften the way it did sometimes when he looked at her—when all the love she knew he felt bubbled to the surface. He cupped Jenny's face with one hand and stroked her cheek with his thumb. "You're my daughter," he told her, his voice rough. "And we've only just got started. You're going to be great," he said, the conviction in his voice allowing no argument. "You're going to be more than great—you're going to be amazing. D'you hear me, Jenny?"
She didn't have a chance to respond. Her breathing hitched, and then died off in a gurgling sigh. He felt for a pulse but there was nothing. She was gone. The Doctor clutched her to him. He pressed his lips against her forehead and stared over the top of her head, his eyes wide and wet, his breathing ragged. He gulped in air like he was drowning as he rocked her gently. Rose moved forward and wrapped her arms around both of them. She pressed her face into his hair and he pressed his into the curve of her neck. She could feel dampness gathering, the warm wetness of his tears. A single sob escaped his lips and his whole body shuddered. She held him tighter, trying to stave off her own sorrow. He would need her now. It wasn't fair, oh god it wasn't fair! For once couldn't the universe give something back to him without taking something else away?
Then he pulled away. "Two hearts," he murmured as he locked eyes with Rose. "Two hearts. She's like me." There was hope growing in his eyes, a hope that she knew would die and desperately wished could stay. "If we wait—if we just wait…"
"There's no sign of regeneration," Martha said from her position behind them. Her face was sad, empathy for his suffering writ large. "She's like you, but maybe not enough."
His face fell. "No," he said softly. "No, too much. She's too much like me." He kissed her on the forehead, laid her gently on the ground, and stood. Anger had replaced sorrow and Donna and Martha paled when they saw his face. The Oncoming Storm had arrived. He whirled around to face Cobb, who knelt on the ground, his arms held behind his back by the soldiers he had led. His gun lay in front of him. The Doctor was beside him in three long strides. The gun felt surprisingly good in his hands. The cold metal and weight comforted him. It would take so little to end this man's life—just a squeeze of the trigger. Like pushing a button. If he stepped back he wouldn't even get any blood on his clothes.
The Doctor clicked the safety off and held the gun centimeters from Cobb's head. The soldier closed his eyes, but the shot never came. Instead, the Doctor uncocked the weapon and dropped it at his feet. He knelt so that he could meet the man's eyes. Cobb flinched away from the fury that he saw swirling there. This was no ordinary man. For just a moment the Doctor let the truth of himself shine through. The force of his stare scorched the other man.
"I never would," he said, his voice dreadfully quiet. "Have you got that? I. Never. Would." He stood and turned so that he could see human and Hath. "When you start this new world, when you build this new society," he charged them. "Build it on that—on a man who never would. Remember that!" His eyes fell on Jenny's body. "Remember her."