Chapter 14: A Time to Mourn
After Martha left the room, Rose took the Doctor's hand and pulled him out of the jump seat. His face was lined with sorrow, and her heart ached for him. Come with me, my love.
The Doctor followed her to their room, but he looked at the bed uncertainly. "I don't know if I'm ready to lie down yet."
"Neither am I." She smiled softly when the Doctor frowned and scratched his cheek as he watched her change into a pair of pyjamas. "I just thought… maybe we could sit somewhere together. Today was…" She fiddled with the hem of her top. "Being separated like that…"
"I know." He walked around the bed and held out a hand. "Let's go sit in the study. Of all the rooms we use, that's the only one the TARDIS won't lead companions to." Rose raised an eyebrow, and his answering smile was almost mischievous. "Why do you think I was so surprised when you walked in? That room is Unplottable, Rose Tyler, and you found it anyway."
She eyed her Doctor, and instead of taking his hand, she unbuttoned his jacket, pushed it off his shoulders, and laid it down on the bed. "The tie too," she said, determined that he be as comfortable as possible.
The Doctor made a face, but did as he was told, going as far as to unbutton the next button on his shirt and roll his sleeves up. "Now will you come with me?" he asked in a fake long-suffering tone.
Before Rose could answer, she felt something strange in her head. She and the Doctor both looked at the wall of their bedroom, unsurprised to see a new door.
What was a surprise, however, was the slight redecoration they discovered when they opened the door. Instead of the two matching chairs flanking the fireplace, there was one wide, brown couch with a few blue throw pillows and a soft blanket folded up on the floor beside it.
"Did you—" Rose and the Doctor started to ask together. They shook their heads in shared disbelief at their ship's insight, then Rose sat down in the corner of the couch and encouraged the Doctor to stretch out with his head in her lap.
"She must have pulled this from our minds," he murmured as he settled in.
"Well, it's the most comfortable couch I've ever sat on, so she's done well," Rose said.
The Doctor hummed his agreement. The sound deepened into a purr when Rose started massaging his head, and she smiled down at him.
The creases left on his brow from the day's adventure were her first target. She stroked lightly up the bridge of his nose, then pressed down harder in between his eyebrows. He sighed and settled deeper into the sofa, and Rose continued to smooth the tension away.
"I was afraid today," he said after a few minutes.
Her hands moved to his sideburns. The shorter hairs here were slightly prickly, and she purposely rubbed the wrong way, just to feel that texture against her fingers.The Doctor's lips parted, and she ran her thumb over his full bottom lip.
"So was I," she admitted. "When we shut the car off and Milo said we only had eight minutes of air left…"
The Doctor's eyes opened, and the wrinkle she'd just massaged away returned. "You didn't tell me that."
Oops. "I knew you were doing everything you could," she told him gently. "Telling you there was an impossible deadline would only have distracted you."
His frown deepened, then he sighed and closed his eyes again. "You're right," he admitted reluctantly.
"And you did it. You saved all those people, and me."
Rose sank her fingers into his hair, loving the silky feel of it. The Doctor's mouth dropped open again, and he pushed his head into her hand.
"I couldn't have done it without the Face of Boe," he said after a minute.
It was the perfect lead-in for what she really wanted to talk about, but looking down at his relaxed face, she almost couldn't bear to bring up something that might be so painful.
"It's all right, Rose."
"What do you think he meant?" she asked finally.
He let out a deep sigh, and some of the tension returned to his body. "I honestly have no idea. The way he said it… calling me Time Lord instead of by my name… The obvious interpretation is that there's another Time Lord still alive." His eyes opened, and he smiled up at Rose. "A Gallifreyan Time Lord, not a human one," he added, reaching up to brush the back of his fingers over her cheek.
Rose nodded; that had been her interpretation as well. She took a breath and mentioned the elephant in the room. "You mean someone else who survived the War."
The muscle in his jaw flexed, then relaxed. "But there can't be," he said, definitively. "I told you, remember? You asked, and I said I'd feel them, in my head."
Rose nodded; she remembered Utah and Van Statten clearly.
"He must have meant something else, but I can't…"
The Doctor's hands twitched, clenching and releasing over and over. Rose reached down and took one of them. It was a slightly awkward hold, but the familiar sensation of her palm against his calmed him.
She bit her lip; there was more she wanted to ask, but it had been such a long day, for both of them…
His eyes opened. "What do you want to know, Rose?"
"Will you tell me more about it, Doctor? About Gallifrey?" she asked. "The room we were bonded in was beautiful."
When he let go of her hand and sat up, Rose cursed herself for pushing too far. Then she realised he was wrapping his arm around her shoulders and resting his cheek against her temple.
"The sky was a burnt orange, with the Citadel enclosed in a mighty glass dome, shining under the twin suns."
Rose closed her eyes and tried to picture what he was describing. With the small glimpse of Gallifrey that she'd been given on their wedding day, it was easy to add details and embellishments as the Doctor spoke.
"Beyond that, the mountains went on forever. There were slopes of deep red grass, capped with snow." The Doctor's voice hitched. "I miss that view the most. The second sun would rise in the south, and the mountains would shine. The leaves on the trees were silver, and when they caught the light every morning, it looked like a forest on fire. When the autumn came, the breeze would blow through the branches like a song."
His breathing was ragged when he stopped talking. "It sounds beautiful, Doctor," Rose whispered.
"It was. Oh, Rose."
She bit her lip. "If you could undo it…"
"Never," he said firmly. "The Time Lords were an impossibly arrogant lot to start with, and the Time War completely corrupted them—at least the ones in charge, and the rest were easily swayed." He swallowed hard. "I couldn't bring back the Time Lords, but… they were only one thousand of the lives lost. All the other Gallifreyans…"
She felt his guilt welling up, and wondered what had driven her to ask this right now. "I'm sorry," she whispered, stroking his chest. "I shouldn't have—"
The Doctor rested his head against the back of the couch and stared at the ceiling, memories washing over him. "Do you know what the worst part is?"
He felt Rose shift in his arms so she could look at him. "What?"
"It's been almost four years now. I've gone over it hundreds of times in my head—the last few months of the War, and the days leading up to the final moment. And no matter how I look at it, I still can't see what I could have done differently."
Rose's soft hand cupped his jaw, and he looked down at her. "Shouldn't that make it better?" she asked. "Knowing that even as terrible as it was, it really was the only thing you could do?"
The Doctor grimaced; a headache was building behind his eyes. "Maybe. But I can't stop analysing it. I've always believed that violence doesn't solve anything, and yet I committed double genocide with the push of a button."
"And would you feel better if you discovered there was something else you could have done?" Rose shook her head. "Doctor, why are you punishing yourself like that?"
He ground his teeth, and pain exploded behind his right eye, through the temple area, and down into the jaw. "Because I deserve to be punished! I destroyed two races, Rose, on top of the dozens of civilisations the War had already damaged irreparably. Nothing can undo that."
Rose was quiet for a several minutes. The Doctor could tell she was deep in thought, but his own mind was too frazzled for him to be able to pick up on her train of thought
When she finally spoke, she said the last thing he'd expected her to say. "You're right."
"What?" Rose wasn't supposed to agree with his self-condemnation. She was the one who always tried to get him to see the good in himself.
"You're right," she repeated. "Nothing can undo it. Your planet is gone, and your people with it."
The Doctor flinched away from her, curling himself into the corner of the couch. Hearing the harsh truth from her lips prodded at the ache lodged in his chest that he'd been trying to ignore since he'd ended the War. "Rose, please…" he whispered.
But she was relentless. "I can't imagine what it must have felt like, to look at the destruction both sides were causing and know it was a choice between the end of the War, or the end of the universe."
The memory of that moment was still crystal clear in the Doctor's mind, however. He'd felt the timelines converging for months—years even—until there had been only two possible endings to the War.
He'd tried so hard to find another way. His eighth incarnation had fought on the front lines, becoming a warrior instead of the Doctor he'd claimed to be. But when the Daleks broke through the sky trenches and Arcadia fell, he'd known there was no other way. Breaking into the archives was easy. Using the Moment… was not.
His eyes grew hot, and the Doctor felt a tear streak down his face. He wiped it away impatiently, but another followed, and another, until sobs shook his body.
Rose reached for him then, and despite his hurt confusion, he let her guide him until they were both lying down on the couch. She offered the comfort then that she'd withheld earlier, and he sank into the solace their bond provided, leaning on her strength.
His tears slowed gradually, and as they did, he realised Rose was whispering words of comfort and apology as she rubbed his back. He pulled back enough to look at her face, noticing the damp spot his tears had left on her shirt as he did so.
Rose was biting her lip and there were tears in her own eyes. "I'm sorry," she said, answering his unspoken question. "But I just thought… had you ever let yourself grieve, Doctor?"
A sharp retort sprung to his lips—of course he'd grieved. But his scratchy eyes and sore throat gave him pause. Had he ever allowed himself the release of tears?
She nodded. "That's what I thought. An' it's not good to just hold all that in for so long. It was time to let it go, Doctor."
Then he understood why she'd pushed the painful topic. Her wisdom amazed him, and her selflessness humbled him. Because he could feel her uncertainty loud and clear over the bond—she hadn't known how he would react, still wasn't totally positive, but she'd loved him enough to risk his anger regardless.
The Doctor opened his mouth to thank her, but a huge yawn swallowed the words. "I think I might be ready to sleep now," he told her.
"Then let's get into bed."
Rose didn't bother to hide the concern on her face as she watched the Doctor change into his pyjamas and crawl under the covers. The weariness written in every line of his body worried her—he desperately needed a solid night of sleep, but with the memories of the War stirred up, how could he possibly avoid nightmares tonight?
Unless… She bit her lip as the memory of the night after she'd said goodbye to her mum came back to her. The Doctor had kept the nightmares at bay, and he'd told her the next morning that the bond would make it possible for her to do the same for him.
She washed her face hurriedly, but by the time she'd changed into a nightgown, he was already asleep. Her heart broke looking down at him. Usually he seemed younger and less careworn in sleep, but tonight, the simulated moonlight streaming in through the artificial window highlighted the deep furrows between his eyebrows. No matter how hard she'd tried to massage them away, they stubbornly remained.
Her own tiredness tempted her to stretch out beside him, but there was no way she would be able to stay awake if she lay down. Instead, she arranged her pillows into a pile and reclined against them. The novel she'd been reading suddenly appeared on the bedside table, and Rose patted the wall in silent thanks as she picked it up and started to read.
oOoOoOoOo
When the Doctor woke up, he knew immediately that he'd slept for five hours, without interruption and without nightmares. He was as confused as he was relieved… until he opened his eyes and saw Rose sitting up with her back against the headboard, still awake.
"Hey," she said. "Feeling better?"
"You shielded me from nightmares," he said, answering her question and asking one of his own with the same words.
Rose smiled and ran her hand through his hair. "I didn't know what I was doing, exactly, but I tried my best."
The Doctor took in the lines around her eyes and remembered that she'd been kidnapped and held hostage for hours. He tugged on her hand until she was stretched out beside him.
"Thank you," he whispered into her hair. "I think it's your turn to sleep now, though."
A sigh escaped Rose as she relaxed against his side. "Love you," she mumbled as she drifted off to sleep.