New chapter here! This one was really fun to write and I'm pretty proud of it. I hope you will like this one as much as me. Don't hesitate to tell me what you think of it!
A million thanks to my beta, she is the best.
Chapter 24
They walked in silence, their steps resonating in the quietness of the hallway. The Doctor had tried to talk once, but before he even opened his mouth, he had speeded up the pace, adding on the heaviness of the air around them. When they passed the same series of doors for the fourth time, Rose knew that Donna was not the only one frustrated with them. And she really couldn't blame them. She knew the Doctor was hurting, and she added on it by stirring the embers of all his insecurity. She had been far from the mature and poised Rose Tyler she had been proud to become. Even her mom would have been disappointed in her. She who had comforted her so many nights when she had cried over the loss of the Doctor, who had told her again and again that it was not over, not until the ending clap. Jackie Tyler would have screamed at her if she had heard her daughter talk like that.
Rose stopped brutally, making the Doctor almost miss his step under the surprise. "I'm sorry," she blurted out, tired of the heavy silence between them. "I was out of line before…" She crossed his surprised gaze as he turned around to look at her. "I shouldn't have said that and I'm sorry…"
He hesitated for a second to continue, looking around him before finally pressing his back against the wall, scrubbing his eyes as he took off his glasses. "You don't have to apologize. I'm the one who was wildly inappropriate…It's just…" He sighed, staring into the distance. "I'm sorry," he finally said after a few seconds.
But she was not duped, she could still read between the lines, even after all those years. She still knew him. "You are still very important for me, Doctor," she said gently, approaching him like you would a wounded animal. When she was sure he was looking at her, she smiled warmly. "You changed everything, how could it be otherwise?"
But his eyes were still troubled and sad. "Why did you stay with UNIT?"
"I told you. I had no choice," she explained, not really sure where it was going. "What was I supposed to do? Try by myself?" She snorted. "I'm not you, I don't have a Time Machine or anything…" Rose shrugged. "And they're not so bad. Pretty good even."
"You choose them…" The Doctor was not looking at her, but the heartbreak was deeply implied in his voice.
She suddenly realized what he had been trying to say, why he had been so emotionally harsh with her, a distance he was reluctant to close down. She advanced on him, until they were front to front, almost touching. "I couldn't have gone to you," she said, emotions dripping from her voice. "I wanted it so bad but… I didn't even know where to start. And when I found UNIT, you didn't even know me." She took a step back, turning her back to him before sitting on the ground next to his feet, not waiting to see if he would join her there. She was tired. Tired of the tug of war between them. Tired of not getting a hold of her emotions in his presence. Everything. "I mean what I was supposed to do? Go to you and say I was from your future?" She looked up to him. "I could not risk changing our future because I was too broken to wait."
He finally sat down, his eyes only looking straight ahead. "And after? You knew…" He scratched his throat. "You knew when we would be separated…" He was trying to look detached but he was failing miserably.
She had a laugh, almost a sob if you looked closely. "Believe me, I thought about it almost everyday for years. Every time you were in my time period in this regeneration, and even the previous ones, I knew exactly by the second where you were. But I couldn't…" She rubbed her eyes, trying to make the tears disappear but to no avail. "I tried once… after we were separated. I came back to London to find you. I had a tip by a Selenian that a Roglyox heir had been stolen and hidden on Earth, and a traveller was in charge to find him. But when I saw you…" The smile on his face, the joy in his eyes, how he was tumbling around, rambling on and on to an annoyed Martha, everything was burned into her memory. "I couldn't do it. I said to myself that my mission was too great, that maybe afterward the possibility would come. I fantasized we would have found each other, probably in the heat of the battle to come, we would fight back to back once again. And after go one like nothing had changed but…" But the truth was she had been a coward. She had let her chance fly away and now because of that they were two outsiders. So different they could not even discuss normally without the intervention from a Time Machine and a very annoyed redhead.
"You would have stayed away," the Doctor finished for her.
She was so desperately sorry. She had been so afraid of herself, of what she could possibly become to save the multiverse, of what he would think of her. But more importantly she was afraid he had forgotten her. Going to him and seeing coldness where she had once saw fire. She could not have supported it, it would have ended her. But her fear only separated them a little more. Becoming what she was so deeply afraid of. "I thought you had forgotten me. That it was better that way," she admitted in a little voice. Now it was in the open, and it couldn't be taken back.
She had expected anger, shock or even dismissal. But to her surprise he started to laugh, a deep wracking laugh, one of those who wouldn't stop. She was starting to feel a little offended at his hilarity, especially when he showed no sign of stopping. Until she saw the sadness in the exhilaration. "Doctor…" Rose said as much a question, that it was an affirmation.
"Forgotten you?" He was a little out of breath, an anguished smile still on his lips. "I chased stars for weeks in the faint hope to see you one last time. How could I forget you?" The pain in his words made her heart squeeze painfully in her chest for a quick second. But the foodgate had been opened now and couldn't be stopped. He looked more angry by the second. "I fought every day to not go back and see you. Every day I had to remind myself that you were happy in that parallel universe, that you were having the greatest life." He stood up, pacing back and forth in front of a startled Rose, his whole body vibrating under all the emotions he was trying to contain. "The only thing keeping me to do something really bad was the fact I knew you would do great in that other universe, that you would be happy without me and manage to be an every better version of yourself. And now you tell me you were here for decades? I mourned you Rose! I mourned like you were dead because I thought I would never see you again." He was not screaming but it was all the same for Rose. Every word was like a stab directly in the heart. Seeing him in so much pain was destroying her.
"I'm sorry…" she mumbled in a weak voice, her eyes full of tears. She could not face him anymore.
He suddenly kneeled in front of her, raising her chin with two fingers, making sure she was looking at him. "He died out of love. I'm merely born on the ashes of that fire. Needing you is as part of me than breathing or walking," he whispered, a painful smile on his face. "Even if I lived for another thousand years, you will always be a part of me..." A few tears rolled on her cheek at the mere evocation, the idea that he had no choice on the matter made her want to scream. She moved, trying her best to disentangle from him but he only rested his forehead gently against her, making her close her eyes at the sensation. She will always be weak against him. "You made me better. I choose to feel that way because I am whole again thanks to you. Rose Tyler, the light who illuminated the sky when nothing remained before." They stayed in silence for a few seconds, enjoying the closeness even if they knew it was temporary. Too much was between them to stay peaceful for long. "Losing you felt like losing one of my hearts," the Doctor finally admitted. "And knowing that you were just...here…" After a second he moved away, his feelings becoming too much again. She felt a chill as he took his distance, already lamenting the lack of touch between them. But he didn't move far, sitting in front of her, their feet touching in the small hallway.
"I still love you," Rose admitted after finding her voice again. If he could lay bare in front of her, she could at least do the same. She knew they still had a long way to go before they could be in a point where they could think about doing something about that. Feelings had never been an issue between them, acting on it in a healthy way on other hands...He had not been the only one to run away from them, she had been as guilty as him on that point. "I don't think I ever stopped loving you. I tried moving on, having boyfriends, building a life...But…" She laughed dryly, tears pooling again. "You were always in the back of my mind. Especially when I discovered the parting gift of Bad Wolf. Suddenly I had hope again that maybe I could see you at least once before it was too late." Rose looked at the ceiling, not really sure how to explain her life without him. She had been happy, no doubt to that, content even. But the void in her had never disappeared, not completely. "I met you once you know. You had a very long scarf and wild hair. I was only a lieutenant at the time, one among so many others. I don't even think you paid attention to me at that time.. It took everything in me to not beg you to take me to you…"
He looked suddenly distressed at what she said. "I should have seen you," the Doctor said in a low voice. "I should have realized you were not from this time."
She snorted. "How? I think the only thing I did to you was salute you. We were in the middle of an Zygon invasion, you had other things in mind."
Before he could respond, Donna appeared at the end of the hallway, looking visibly crossed with someone, or something. "Oh there you are! I searched all over this damn ship to find you! Where were you?"
The Doctor was the first to get up, offering a hand to Rose who took it gladly. "Well, we walked for a few minutes, but when we crossed the same door for the fourth time I thought it was better to stay put until the TARDIS decided to stop playing with us," said Rose smoothly. "Glad to see you by the way."
"That's why I crossed my bedroom something like five times searching for you?" Donna didn't look impressed by the revelation.
The Doctor looked at the ceiling with a thoughtful gaze, his hands scratching his neck by reflex. "Let's say that she is not really happy at the moment." He grimaced. "If we have cold water for a few days, we will know why."
The redhead opened one of the doors, checking inside with curiosity. She smiled happily when she realized it was exactly where she wanted them to go. "You two, inside," she commanded while opening the door wide. "The tea is probably already cold but that's what happens when you roam around a Time Machine who likes to change the layout at a whim."
Rose chuckled. "Be happy she didn't try to throw us out somewhere. You would have searched for hours."
"She wouldn't dare!" The Doctor looked offended at the mere thought. But he didn't look so sure when the light dimmed out dangerously, making Rose and Donna crack up.
"If she is as fed up as me, you bet your arse she will do that," Donna said dangerously. "Now you two… sit down."
They obeyed automatically, vaguely afraid of what the redhead could do with an irate TARDIS on her side. They both took a cup of tea that had been prepared for them, not daring to look at each other. The weight of their previous discussion still heavy on their mind. But when they were content to look at everything but each other for a few minutes, plunging the space with awkward silence, Donna had to take everything in her to not throw up her hands. Seriously those two were a lost cause.
'When you need something done, no one is better than yourself,' grumbled Donna to herself. "When you said you were immortal, did you mean 'until the end of time' kind of thing, or you were taking the piss to shock the Doctor?" she finally asked, sure to have the Doctor show some interest with that.
Rose looked around uncomfortably. "Well I'm not really aging like normal, that is pretty sure. Immortal may be a little forward but that's mostly how I describe it." She shrugged. "I do tests every few years to see if we can see some changes, but so far nothing really concluding. Well it did show some minor decay on cellular level, and some discrepancy on my ADN, but Earth is not advanced enough to draw a definitive conclusion…"
"I don't think you're immortal," said the Doctor absently as he was trying to warm up his cup with his sonic. "What?" He asked after a few seconds, when he realized they were staring at him.
"How can you know that?" Rose asked, still disturbed by his offhand comment.
"Well for once you are not immortal in the strictest sense of the word. You can definitely die. If it was not the case, I would have sensed it... believe me. That kind of thing is really grating for my time sense." He grimaced at the memory of Jack. He really loved that man, he even had trusted him with Rose's life, but his wrongness still rubbed him badly. "It can still mean you are immortal but you can still die. I can scan you with the sonic to be sure if you want," he added with a hopeful smile.
Rose didn't look reassured at all. "Sure," she said, knowing she had no logical reason to refuse, not without a good reason. She just hoped her secret could stay safe with her.
He scanned her in silence for a minute, making Rose more and more reckless by the second. The Wolf had never appeared in any test before, but the Doctor had instruments much more advanced than Earth could ever dream about.
He frowned. "That's weird." He shook his sonic with a bewildered look, inspecting it more closely, visibly trying to find a fault in it before scanning her again.
"What?" Rose asked while trying her best to not panic and bolt out of the TARDIS.
He looked up, surprise written all over his face. "It shows that nothing is wrong with you. Well mostly nothing."
"What do you mean?" Rose asked cautiously. The Wolf had been asleep for a decade before they had manifested themself to her, but even before that fateful day she knew something was different within her, even before realizing she was not aging. So the Doctor's affirmation was not really making any sense.
"I only see minor alterations to your DNA, but nothing that could affect your cellular degeneration on that level. Your Atron energy is a little high but nothing concerning. The fact that your body decided to dramatically slow your cellular decay, and by proxy your aging make no sense at all." He took out his specs out of his pocket. "How old were you when you crossed over?"
She exchanged a look with Donna. "Hum, almost 28 I think."
"Well the sonic shows that you are now 28 years, 7 month, 3 weeks and 4 days. You are still aging but very, very, very slowly." He was smiling but no joy was showing.
"Ok so how is that possible? You said that her DNA was human right?"
"It is!" he exclaimed, outraged at the implication he didn't know what he was doing. "Hold a second, I need to grab something." the Doctor said suddenly before bolting out the door, leaving the two woman gobsmacked in his trail.
"I see that some things never change," bemused Rose.
Donna chuckled, her best friend was completely barmy, that's for sure. "How are you?" she finally asked after a few seconds. Rose was giving a good facade, but she could see the sadness and exhaustion behind it. The Doctor was a good man, but holding back was not something he was known for and Rose was visibly paying the price of all that resentment.
She slumped against the couch, feeling all her energy leaving her. Dealing with the Doctor and her emotions at the same time was exhausting. Even more with opening old wounds again and again. "It's so hard you know...When you are alone for years like that...I had my life, don't get me wrong. But when you cannot share anything of importance with anyone you learn to rely on yourself. And I made peace with the fact I will probably never see the Doctor or my family again and now…" She sighed. "It's so hard. I want to be with him but at the same time everything in me is telling me to run away as far as possible. Because the fact is...I'm not his Rose Tyler anymore."
And that was the heart of the problem. She could feel him trying to find pieces of the old Rose in her, but she was not even sure herself that person existed anymore. And she dreaded the day he realized that fact. He had somewhat confessed his love to her, but he was in love with a ghost, an echo of something long gone. And even if he told her that nothing could change that fact, she knew better. Martha had told her she had not been able to compete against the memory of Rose. And she was not sure she could do it herself.
"That's false you know," the Doctor said while suddenly appearing in the doorway, making them jump in surprise, his relaxed demeanor in total contradiction with the sadness on his look they exchanged during those long seconds was telling enough for Donna. She hadn't finished tending to his broken heart. She realized it was a discussion they needed to have to themselves so she took the tea tray and left the room, pretty sure they didn't even realize that she was gone.
"How can you be so sure?" Rose finally asked, too jaded to care anymore. She was tired of all those back and forth moments, an anger that didn't end and more especially to fight against a past long dead. She just wanted peace.
He smiled, a smile full of grief and melancholy. "The Doctor and Rose Tyler, the stuff of legend." He said that like it was the response to everything. "In every universe, every reality, nothing could change that fact."
"No one talks about a happily ever after you know, legends only finish in tragedy." Rose wanted above all else to believe in happiness but the universe was not kind, it never was. And she knew that it would only end in tears, most probably her own.
To her surprise he turned his back to her, careful to be as close as he possibly could while still being out of reach. "If you don't want to stay you just have to say you know." He finally spat, his whole body screaming annoyance and resentfulness. "I'm not keeping you against your will, you still have a choice."
Rose was not sure how to react to that. "What?" she finally asked, not really where he wanted to go with it.
He turned to face her suddenly, his eyes full of anger and grief. She could feel his fury from a few meters away. "You talk about love and acceptance, how we need to trust and talk to each other, but it's just words isn't it? You so desperately want to prove to yourself that you are so beyond me that you just keep throwing everything back at my face!" He hesitated for a second before sitting down, his body collapsing as he was looking more tired than furious. "Having the ability to simply understand each other is not part of our relationship anymore. If it was ever there in the first place…"
His words were like a punch in the face for her. She had wanted to be cautious but all she had accomplished was hurting him again and again. She knew he always had difficulty opening up to anyone. It took him almost three years to somewhat admit out loud he was in love with her when she was still travelling with him, and now that she was back she had rebuffed him at every step. Not because she didn't believe him, but because she didn't trust herself. She was clearly not his Rose anymore, not because she had changed too much, but because she was visibly a moron.
"I'm sorry…" she finally said, deeply ashamed of herself. "I didn't realize…"
He looked at her, his eyes ancient and worm out. "Do you want me to take you back to UNIT?"
"No!" she exclaimed in sudden alarm. "Absolutely not. I made a promise to you Doctor. I know I'm not the best at expressing myself at the moment, but I assure you I don't want to be anywhere else."
"Why not? I mean you obviously don't want to be here. The Rose Tyler I knew was not afraid to speak her mind, so go on and tell me, I can take it."
"That's the heart of the issue isn't it?" Rose got up with an annoyed growl. "You keep making reference to things long gone, and just expect me to roll with it. I'm no angel, I'm perfectly aware of that fact, but you keep pitting me against an impossible version of me! You want the truth?" She was deeply furious again, and frankly she was getting tired of it. It was a rollercoaster of emotions with him, going from pouring your heart out to tearing each other apart in five seconds flat. It was getting old. "The Rose Tyler you kept imagining in your head is dead, Doctor. She had been buried long ago! This person will not come back, it's only me! Deal with it!"
"How can I even do that? You keep pushing me again and again!" He advanced on her, making them go almost face to face, wrath enclosing them like a blanket. "I want us to have a chance but you are dwelling in the past!"
She had a humorless laugh. "I'm dwelling in the past? You are the one who is living with a ghost!"
Before he could respond, or before they could murder each other, depending on the point of view, a screeching voice resonated in the library, startling them enough to stop them on their track. "Are you two freaking serious? I can't leave you alone for five minutes!" Saying that Donna was furious was putting it mildly.
"But…" started the Doctor but Donna was clearly not finished.
"Don't even start Spaceman!" she growled. "You two are acting like flipping toddlers so I am going to treat you as such! You two sit down!" She pointed at one of the sofas. Rose glanced at the Doctor, who was unsure about what to do. When they had still not moved after a fews seconds, Donna seized them both by the arms and pushed them down. "Sit. Your. Arse. down." The face Donna was making could probably scare away an Ice Warrior.
She crossed her arms, her foot tapping the ground with impatience. "So can I know what happened? Was I not clear before?"
The Doctor looked at Rose then at the ceiling, everything but Donna "Well to be fair…"
"It's both our fault," interrupted Rose. She placed a hand on his arms to show she was taking over for now. "Too much time has passed and well…" She sended an apologetic smile to the Doctor. "at the same time not enough., it's hard to reconcile the two…"
"She's right…" And it pained him to think that, but she had a point when she said he was living with a ghost. When she had disappeared, she had taken a part of him with her, forcing him to cope how he could with her absence. Going from place to place, thinking what Rose would have done or said there, making the absence less painful on his hearts. The ghost, or the echo, had been his constant companion when no one else could. Even Martha had lost interest in the end. And now that she was back, he was constantly searching for a trace of the Rose he had left behind, hoping she was still somehow the girl who had saved him from himself again and again. But so much time has passed for her. She had made her peace, while he had lingered in the past, stuck with a figment of his imagination. How sad it was? "Maybe it's a sign." A sign that love is sometimes not enough, even if you were with everything in your being.
Rose could only nod weakly, tears pooling in her eyes. She tried to open her mouth but nothing would come out of it.
"It's a sign yeah," Donna fumed, "a sign that you are both nitwits." They both looked up, surprise all over their face. "Yes you both heard what I said. You are too busy being sorry for yourselves that you don't see what's in front of you!" She turned to Rose, who shuffled at the attention. "You! You travelled across dimensions, defied laws of nature and even climbed all the way up the military to come back to him. You waited decades so you could be sure to be reunited for crying out loud! You became a flipping deity for a second just to save his sorry arse! And now are running the other way? Are you freaking kidding me?" She saw in the corner of her eyes the Doctor throw a triumphant look to Rose and saw red. "And don't you try and look all high and mighty, Mister!" He moved back in surprise and smacked his head on the wall on his hast to dodge her fury, making Rose smile ever so lightly.
"Do I have to remind you how broken you were?" Donna zeroed in on the Doctor next. "How without me you were ready to plunge into the freaking Thames? Martha had to leave that damned Time Machine because all you could see was Rose! And now she is here you are trying your damnedest to make her leave! Just because she is not the same as before? You shouldn't even care if she was a flipping alien or the pope, you have a second chance! Half the universe would sell their soul to have that chance. You have it for free, so be happy for the love of god!" When she finally stopped talking, she was met with a deafening silence. Rose and the Doctor were not even moving, their eyes intensely focused on their own hands. After a few seconds she realized that even the TARDIS had stopped making sound. It was like the time machine herself was holding her breath.
After a minute of Donna despairing for a reaction, any kind, it was the Doctor who finally moved. "She's right…" he conceded, weariness written all over his face. "I was so busy searching for things that didn't exist anymore, I didn't see what was just in front of me..."
Rose looked up tentatively, crossing his gaze shyly. "And what is that?"
He took her hand his his and smiled. "A miracle."
