Parting Is Such Sweet Sorrow –

Part Three: Stay But A Little; I Will Come Again

A/N: Thanks so much for the wonderful reviews! I'm intending on updating every day so that this can be finished before Army of Ghosts airs. Still own nothing, and this is part three of five.

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The Doctor dashed about from section to section of the TARDIS medical room, concentrating fully on the vials of chemicals before him and not even daring to blink. Chemical after chemical went into vial after vial, Gallifreyan symbols whirring uselessly across the blue screen a metre away telling him nothing could be done. Distilling the liquid, separating the various chemicals off, throwing it frustratedly at the walls…none of it helped. Even the TARDIS couldn't identify the concoction of poisons.

At first he'd thought it was smoke inhalation, trauma from excessive amounts of chloroform. That was all, he told himself, convinced that he'd be able to save her and in no time they'd be off again, lying on applegrass together and kissing in the corridors of New Earth hospitals. But he'd swiftly realised the full extent of the damage; swiftly been hit by the enormity of the situation and it left him reeling similarly to a man just hit by a truck.

He crashed a vial full of purple liquid to the surface rather too harshly; it smashed and scattered, glass flying everywhere and sparks forming as a few drops of the purple mixed with a violent orange and began to fizz. The symbols on the screen stopped moving and came to a halt, statue-still almost like a death sentence. 'No', they seemed to cry, 'give up. There's nothing you can do.' And, like a whispered hint, tiny little pictures floated across the bottom of the screen, twirling and fitting into one another to form a single meaning: 'Go to her.'

"Damn it!" he exclaimed violently, his elbows crashing to the desk and his head falling into his hands. Frenzied fingers ripped at his hair and scalp as vials fell steadily to the floor, crashing, hissing and spilling through the holes in the floor.

Maybe it was a reaction to the noise. Whatever caused it, the sharp intake of breath, like a gasp of life ripped from the lungs of a suffocating man, from behind him made the Doctor spin round at top speed, kicking broken shards of glass away impatiently as he rushed towards the large, white bed in the centre of the room.

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As the noise of breaking glass echoed through the TARDIS, Rose Tyler's eyes snapped open. Although she was completely oblivious as to what had woken her up, she noted that the air entering her lungs felt decidedly cleaner, even if it did feel as though someone was stabbing her between the ribs everytime her chest cavity expanded.

She heard someone breathe out heavily to her left and turned her head to the noise just as an explosion of brown hair swam into view.

Unable to help grinning even through the throbbing pain in her head, she looked up at him with wide eyes. "Doctor!" It was only now that she registered where she was: the medical section of the TARDIS, a place she'd only ever been in once before. Expansive white walls practically drowned and smothered the two tiny figures that were her and the Doctor. Under what felt like three sheets, her nails scraped at what had, moments before to her mind at least, been cold steel. All she found was soft mattress and she allowed her fingers to sink into it as she basked in relief.

"Hello Rose," he said quietly, the smile curving his lips avoiding his eyes like the plague.

"Got us both out then?" she said, smiling. "Knew you would." She reached out to take his hand and he actually almost flinched. A frown crossed her forehead and she hastily retracted her arm, placing it back under the covers. "What's up?"

He was still silent.

"C'mon…you worked your magic on me, I'll be fine! It was just a bit of gas. Don't look like that…"

She was about to speak again when a coughing spasm overwhelmed her, ripping through her throat and making her whole body sear with pain. Pressing her head into the pillow she'd only just realised was under her head and curling her shoulders upwards, she tried to ignore the tearing feeling in her stomach. A hand pressed lightly on her back and she found herself sitting up before spitting blood everywhere.

"Oh my God…" she stared down at the cover and her own hands, holding them up to her face in horror as she realised they were covered in her own blood. "What – Doctor!"

Even if he'd known what to say, he couldn't have spoken. He pressed his back teeth together and looked down.

"That – that's not good, is it? Doctor?"

Still he couldn't answer. Instead, he methodically got up to fetch a cloth and began to wipe the blood from her shaking hands. Usually he had an explanation for everything. Rose stared, nonplussed and worried, as he methodically moved up and down each of her fingers.

"Doctor!" she pressed urgently while he replaced one of the covers on her bed. "Please, I'm scared!"

He met her eyes and she saw, to her horror, that he was just as terrified.

"I'm sorry."

"Don't say that to me! I wanna know what's wrong with me, not hear what you say to everyone we meet who you can't – " save. Her eyes widened and she coughed again, less violently this time but still bringing up blood. Again, he said nothing and simply wiped it away. "Please," she pleaded. "Tell me what's going on."

"Calm down, you'll make yourself worse," he signed resignedly, bowing his head and looking more lost and vulnerable than she'd ever seen him. Finally, he took a deep breath, swallowed and began.

"This is my fault."

"What's your fault? What the hell is goin' on?"

He couldn't look at her. "I tried everything, Rose." Voice breaking, he continued. "Don't think I didn't try."

She took his hand urgently, willing him to look at her. "You have to tell me what's wrong! Why am I –?" Gesturing uselessly at the bloodstained bed, she was unable to complete her sentence, repulsed and terrified at the thought of what was happening. He took the cover away swiftly and shoved it out of sight, leaving just the undersheet over her tired and bruised body.

"Poison." One word was all he could manage. Luckily, one word was enough.

"Poison? But I thought that gas just knocked you out!"

Gently, he pulled the covers of the bed back and took out her arm, rolling up the sleeve to past her elbow. "Yvonne must have injected you with something after she knocked you out," he said bitterly, fingers resting lightly around a large bruise and tear in her skin.

She winced. "OK…then just antidote it or whatever, yeah? There's gotta be somethin'."

"I don't know what it is," he said urgently, willing her to understand, looking her in the eye as his fingers moved down her arm and gripped at her wrist. "She must have made it herself, Rose, the TARDIS can't even identify it…"

"B-but…people survive being poisoned all the time! I'm not – "

"I'm so, so sorry." His voice took on a desperate note, eyes wild and staring. "I've tried everything! Antibiotics and enzymes and analysing the poison, even flipping penicillin but there's nothing…" his eyes shut, lashes contrasting darkly against his pale skin. "I don't know what to do."

Rose shook her head, confusion completely overwhelming her. "But you're…you're you! You always know what to do! There's always some…some miracle cure or some way out. There has to be!"

Ragged through her fear, her breathing became harsher as the poison's hold over her increased. She was suddenly acutely aware of every single pain in her body, from the stabbing feeling in her left lung to her throbbing head and the feeling of something unnatural, something burning, creeping through her veins…

"What's it gonna do to me?" she whispered, pleading in her eyes, needing to be told that everything would be OK. Surely he could do something? There was always something…

He looked right through her, shaking his head slowly.

"Say it! If I'm about to…the least you can do is tell me!"

Voice completely flat and monotone, he confirmed what she'd feared. "It's going to kill you, Rose."

Face screwed up in incredulity, she shook her own head as violently as she could manage. "We've…I've seen…"

"I know," he said softly, fingers now prising her balled fist open and absently beginning to trace the lines across her palm. "When you've faced everything we have in the past two years, you begin to feel invincible."

She closed her eyes for a long while and the Doctor began to worry until he saw the lids scrunch together and tears squeeze out, flooding through her eyelashes. The full, inescapable extent of what was happening had finally hit her.

Blindly, her fingers found a loose thread in the undersheet and she wrapped it tightly around her middle finger, cutting off the circulation slightly. She closed her hand tight around it, as though trying to hold onto something, anything, she could. She brought her fist to her mouth, pressing it to the base of her thumb in an attempt to stop her verbalised tears escaping. Watching her like this was near enough ripping him apart. Unable to maintain the recent lack of contact, he took her hand and unwound it, opening it flat and pressing his own hand directly to it in the way children do when trying to see who has the longest fingers. The thread dropped. Shifting his hand very slightly to the left, he used his fingers to push through hers and folded them over the back of her hand.

This simple gesture made a sob rack through her body and her eyelids squeezed tighter as she pulled her own fingers down to mirror his in a painful, desperate grip. When she opened her eyes, the tears swimming in them weren't enough to mask her utterly lost, helpless expression.

She brought their joined hands to her lips and pressed them together. It wasn't a kiss, as such, more that she needed to feel their mingled pulses – intensified by her tight grip making his veins throb – reverberate through her, an affirmation of life.

"You don't have to put on a brave face for me," he said gently. "I won't think badly of you for being afraid."

He saw her swallow as she moved their hands away from her mouth a little. Her breath, jagged and uneven as it was, tickled across his skin. "I'm not." Pupils wide and glaring and she couldn't look him in the eye.

"Rose…"

"Alright, I'm terrified, OK?" she snapped unintentionally, everything getting to her and fear blocking the passageway to her lungs with more ferocity than any poison could ever manage.

"Sorry…" she sighed. "I didn't mean to…snap or anything', it's jus' that…"

"You're scared. I know." There was a look in his eyes she only ever remembered seeing once before. They had been stuck on Kroptor, the planet orbiting the black hole – her body temperature dropped momentarily, still shivering to think about it – and he'd told her that he'd trapped her there before pulling her in for a hug. 'Hug' didn't do it justice: never before had she been held so close or even seen such emotion in his eyes. As though someone had pulled shields down from behind his lashes, she had been able to see – and could see now – fear, regret, resignation and something warm and comforting fighting its way up from where it had long ago been buried.

"I feel like I wanna say stuff but I don't know what…it's hard to sort it out in my head. You've done this…how many times did you say?" she laughed lightly, holding her breath briefly to prevent it turning into another cough. "Maybe you could gimme a hand here. I dunno what to say." Though most of the speech was in jest, the last line had a sort of torn, pleading air to it, knowing as she did that she was running out of time and not being able to tell what mattered and what needed to be said.

"What are you scared of?"

"What is this, psychotherapy?" she smiled again but it faded quickly and something clouded over her bloodshot eyes. "You really wanna know?"

A slight inclination of his head acted as an answer. He kept it bowed.

"That…after all this, and everything we've done and everythin' we've saved…that there's nothin' there. There was no point to it. I almost…Toby. The Beast that possessed him…" she whispered, unable to continue. The valiant child who will die in battle, so very soon…it rang constantly through her brain like a bell tolling for death.

Raising his eyes to meet hers, he looked directly at her encouragingly. Watching him, she took a breath and ploughed on.

"I almost wished it was the devil, 'cause then that means there's a God…" she whispered, rushing over her words, colour bruising her cheeks while she simultaneously turned her head away and flicked her eyes to the ceiling, abashed. "That's silly, I know."

Silence filled the air and Rose waited for a reaction, feeling anticipation build in her stomach. It was funny, she thought, how she could be worried about little things like this (such as what the Doctor thought of her) when she was about to be faced with the ultimate unknown. However, a warming smile passed across his face, showing her silently that he didn't think it was silly at all. Though he knew wiping away her tears was a completely fruitless gesture, it made him feel better and he did it all the same, leaning lightly on the bed.

"An'…what about my mum? What if she can't cope with losin' all of us? She even started to like you, Doctor." But this time there was no jest behind her words. "Mickey, an' my dad, and me, and you…what's she gonna do?" Another tear leaked out, floodgates opening one by one with her words. "Will – will you tell her for me?"

A silent nod of consent, although he knew he'd never be able to face Jackie and tell her he'd let her only child die.

"I'm scared that you're gonna blame yourself for this."

Although he was a little shocked, he said nothing; Rose needed to get all of this out. Besides, what else was there to say? He always would blame himself, no matter what she said.

"This doesn't hurt as much as I thought it would…" Her voice had a faraway quality to it and there was a drifting look in her eyes. Scared he was losing her, he intensified his grip on her hand.

"No?"

"Nah. I guess…I sorta thought it'd be like being ripped apart or something…soul out of your body and all that."

"You're not quite there," he reassured her quietly, the 'yet' hanging ominously in the air between them. "And…well, wonders of modern medicine. You have a lot to thank old Freddie Serturner for."

Brushing past the history-of-medical-science reference with a light smile, she continued. "You know what else?"

He shook his head, slightly bemused, trying to ignore the way her skin had gone so pale he could see every single vein running through her face.

"I'm absolutely terrified that I'm never gonna see you again." And, after a slight pause:"Can ya tell me that I will?"

Silence. She'd known it was a stupid question the moment she said it: even he didn't know what came after this, but she'd needed reassurance.

"If there is anythin', Doctor, if I can...I'll wait for you there."

His only response was to mutely place his other hand over their joined ones. He'd never been any good at goodbyes.