Hello again and welcome to Musing number six: Doctor POV from the beginning of ROTC when the TARDIS dies. (Okay, so I skipped a few episodes, but I wanted to do something a bit different from all the School Reunion and GitF stuff that's popped up lately—although let's face it, they were both very fluffy episodes and I don't blame you one bit.) And yes, I realise these are getting progressively longer—give me a shout if it's a problem. Chapter five now includes a Rose point of view of THE KISS ™, for those who requested it. It's underneath the Doctor one, just keep scrolling, you'll find it.

I'm currently supposed to be studying for exams so you probably won't see me for a couple of weeks, not that that's anything new. Wish me luck all the same.


Who was the idiot now?

He'd just got so wrapped up in showing off and now look what he'd done. Stupid Mickey, tagging along like that, as if he'd ever been any use.
Well, apart from that one time at the school, that was helpful.
And when he'd hacked into the defence force network and blown up 10 Downing Street, that was helpful too.
And what about the time…

Well, it didn't matter now anyway. He was the idiot.
There he'd been, swaggering around being an alpha male, showing the newcomer who was boss, all the wonderful exciting places he'd been with someone else's girlfriend and completely forgetting the one thing that made it all possible. He might as well have swapped places, because he didn't feel worthy of it all anymore. Couldn't feel the presence in his head like he'd always done, because she was gone. He could see that; all the golden light, the glow of home, had vanished.
And he'd killed her.

The fact that the feeling was so familiar made it all the harder to bear. And the fact that this time all it was, was a stupid mistake. He'd had a choice; it hadn't been for anyone's good at all. The last TARDIS ever in the universe, gone because he was too busy chatting and showing off to notice a great big threatening button on his own console. Small comfort to find they weren't even nowhere, they were somewhere far worse: a London that wasn't. A London that unfortunately happened to include Rose's dad. Of all the people who could possibly be on a talking bus-stop ad selling health drinks in a parallel universe, it justhad to be him, didn't it?

She ran off and he sat morosely in the extinct TARDIS, filling Mickey in on random details to pass the time although he didn't even know what he was waiting for. Nothing really to wait for, now, was there? It wasn't as if he could phone home. What was it about Mickey, almost everything they'd done with him on board they'd gotten trapped somehow but it was never really his fault (so why was he blaming Mickey for it in the first place?) He did seem to be getting the hang of it now, anyway; he understood the situation they were in. that was something, at least.

And then something nudged at the corner of his mind (look over there, can't you see me, I'm still here. I'm always here.) The tiny green glow caught his eye, and he was the Doctor again, all manic grin and ego and lust for life that wasn't really all his, he knew, he'd always need her there as a part of him. But they weren't stuck and he wasn't that stupid after all—reckless maybe, he'd just lost ten years he hadn't lived yet, but it was all worth it, and that was what they all liked about him anyway, wasn't it? He was himself again and he hadn't lost, and there was a world somewhere that needed him to save it after all. That was all that mattered, really.

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