In those fleeting days that remain

by KendrixTermina

The Doctor muses about all those he had lost his hearts to over the course of his long life. Multiple ships.

8. 08: Bad Wolf

Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who. If I did, I wouldn't be biting off my nails waiting for series 6.

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Notes: As you can probably tell by the title of this chapter, this one is about the Doctor's relationship with Rose Tyler - As I am aware, she is very divisive. Probably, one half of you only clicked on this FF to see if there's a Rose chapter, and the other half will skip this one alltogether, so here will be a few annotations: I'm neither with the rabid haters nor with the butthurt fangirls. This has gotten so long, because frankly, there were lots of material to deal with, she's all over the RTD-Era. That's the only reason - I tend to get carried away...°^^ She is played up as "the One" a bit, but only because that is what the narrative of the actual show seems to suggest (be it a good or a bad thing) not because she's my personal favourite. (Which she isn't.) There's some glorification, but that's only because this is writted mostly from the Doctor's PoV, he always seemed to have put her on some sort of pedestral. That said, while Rose is not my Uber-Mega-One-True-Favourite, I DO like her. I know that's personal taste, but I think she's pretty epic.

Also, this will focus more on Series 1 than on Series 2 because a) everyone else does it the other way around b) I think the former is where most of the important stuff happens and c) I love Nine. Don't worry, there's still plenty of Ten here, and there will be even more in the upcomming few chapters. So, now, go read it. Just give it a try. I hope you will be able to enjoy it regardless of shipping preference.

08: [Bad Wolf]

He didn't do it because he wanted to.

He did it because there was no other option

A few billion Time Lords and at most ten times as many Daleks in exchange for all of creation – pretty simple math, actually.

However, the math was just about the only simple thing about the choice he had been forced to make, a decision that no living being should ever have been burdened with, a power that no one should ever have had, and he had used it for nothing but destruction.

He could not just stand back and watch – He had devoted his life to the wonders, the mysteries and the endlessly diverse lifeforms of the borderless universe.

How could he possibly allow all to be wasted to satisfy the ego of one single egomaniac?

There had never been any sort of alternative; he had to do it, even if it went against anything he stood for, all that he believed in, everything he was.

Someone had to dirty their hands – the demons of war demanded a sacrifice to stuff their mouths, and he would gladly become that sacrifice if it meant the end of that senseless waste of life.

It wasn't as if he hadn't sinned before - This hell was also the result of his own faults and shortcomings, it was only right that he should take responsibility for it.

So he took it upon himself to end it all, the fights, the death, the destruction, the hatred that had changed his people beyond recognition.

He could not even begin to describe what performing that unspeakable deed had felt like – The only thing he could say was that it certainly bore little resemblance to what the Master must have imagined when he asked him about it.

He did not know how long it would take him just to… process these memories to a degree that would allow him to wrap them into words, and even if he should reach that stage one day, he would have to make up an entirely new language to even begin to do them justice, one that was exclusively composed of dreadful screeches and moans of agony.

It was as if that experience had… burned, infected, irradiated or otherwise dealt him a sort of damage that kept spreading even after the action that had caused it joined the realm of the past, as if a hole had been punched into his soul through which his very essence kept running out, drop by drop, rivulet by rivulet.

It did not take him long to realize that what he was experiencing was the feeling of a wound that would not heal.

He tried to live on as he had before, because there were still undiscovered things in the universe, and that had always been enough for him.

Nonetheless, the best he could do was to resemble the man he was – He was all to aware of that when he passed his younger self in the crowd, ready to board the Titanic with Jamie in tow. He had still been relatively new to earth back then, so had been unaware of what had been awaiting him.

When he saw himself, idly chatting to the Scottish warrior, he had a hard time believing that this man had ever existed, no matter how much both his eyes and his mind told him something else. That warmly smiling person in that oversized fur coat, with the thick black hair and the tanned skin of an adventurer that was used to fighting his way through the wilderness and these crystal blue eyes that didn't match the rest of his appearance, giving him a subtle, unearthly touch, that couldn't possibly be him, could it?

The man in the fur coat carried a certain air of wisdom and experience, but he didn't look ancient in the way that a tree, a church or a mountain would – was it that the disparity between his apparent and actual age was less noticeable if he looked like an old man, or was it just that this younger him was yet unburdened by the knowledge of being the only one left, the last remnant of a once great civilization, no different from the ruins of an ancient temple, slowly eroding as time passed by and rampant vines claimed it as their territory?

Either way, it felt like there was an infinitely wide and immeasurably deep precipice between him and his younger self, like the latter was in a place he could never go back to.

He couldn't go back – He had to go on, even if the only way he could do so was by drifting around like a forgotten derelict.

He succeeded in keeping a family from boarding the Titanic, and yes, it granted him some temporary happiness, but he could never shake off the feeling of loneliness that made his usual slightly-mad looking grin feel like a hollow mockery of what it used to be.

The truth was that he was still falling. He was still hurting. He was still fading.

He was drowning, and there was no one to help him to breathe.

He had lost it all, and there was no one to help him to be.

Or so he thought.

So he thought, before he met her.

Now, he knew that he wasn't cut out for the sort of life where you came across your soul mate, immediately fell, no, plunged into burning, unconditional love and stayed together until your last breath and, if you didn't happen to be the first one to die, never remarried – His personality, his lifestyle and last but not least the life expectancy of a Time Lord made it almost impossible.

But if there had ever been something close to "The One" in his life, it had been Rose Tyler.

She was much like these simple, but pure-hearted peasant girls you occasionally found in fairytales – a shop girl living in a council estate who hadn't even graduated from school, with nothing, absolutely nothing about her that might appear special at first glance – well, except for her chocolate brown eyes that could be warm and understanding, and yet, exactly as capable of burning with the fire of determination, nothing but these flawless tresses of hair that was as golden as her heart, nothing but the vaguely canine-looking features of her face that took but a few moments to entrance him and that could exert so much power over him by an act as subtle as forming a smile or a frown.

She might not have had the sort of intelligence one might need to understand complex scientific theorems, however, she used her mind, she actively thought about the things that happened around her, as he couldn't help but note when they first met.

She could have remained nothing but an interesting acquaintance, one of the many intriguing humans he had met over the course of his travels, but the red string of fate – or was it a particularly nasty plastic arm? – drew them together again.

And, confirming his first impression of her, Rose Tyler would not be satisfied without an explanation.

He did not know what it was that compelled him to grab her hand and tell her that there were beings like him who had let go of the ground beneath their feet – perhaps he felt that she deserved to know, maybe he hoped to inspire and use her potential.

Another possibility was that he had already fallen under her influence at this point, being moved by a desire to make her remember him that he was not yet aware of at the time.

Whatever it may have been, fate drew them together once again, and this time, not without intertwining the strings that made up the stories of their lives.

Oh, these old hearts of his! He had believed that the last drop of anything that vaguely resembled the capacity to love had been squeezed out of them by the iron claws of the war, but in truth, the open wounds on his soul left it more desperate for, and therefore more receptive of any sort of love he could get than ever before.

He could not believe how a person of his age could fall this easily, this fast, and this hard.

It felt a bit surreal to just take someone with him as he had done before, just as if nothing had ever happened, but his regret didn't last as long as he expected it would – Perhaps in an attempt to come to grips with his dreadful experiences, he had spent the last days seeking out tragedies, like the explosion of the Krakatoa or the Murder of John F. Kennedy, and next on his list was the Death of the Earth.

Understandably, it took some time for Rose to get used to seeing much more of the Universe from a very new and very different perspective.

Still, it was no sooner than during what she would later come to refer to that he kept being astonished again and again by her purity; Seeing how she even felt pity for a despised being that almost took her life only made him realize how old and bitter he had become.

In the end, no one was there to observe the end of planet Earth, not even him - and she was upset by that, she felt sorry for an abandoned piece of rock, one that had been her home, but simple rock nonetheless.

Her words touched that part of his soul which he had thought to have been replaced by a gaping hole – Much like Earth; Gallifrey had also been destroyed without anyone to witness it.

He had never seen how all the screaming people vanished into the night, or how the burning pieces of his homeworld had broken apart – He had lost consciousness when the explosion of the machine he had fabricated to bring about the end of days had burned his eighth face off his skull, and didn't come to before the planet was reduced to still-glowing rubble – Anyone who had accompanied the dying planet in its final minutes had gone down with it.

He had finally found them, the words to describe the unspeakable, pouring out of the lips of a simple shopgirl like drops of fragrant nectar dripping from a heavenly flower.

The simple smile with which she diverted his thoughts from his dark and lonely fate to a dish composed of fried potato stripes was the icing on the cake that sent him into unhinged free fall. When she changed into that period outfit for their next trip, he was consummately stunned by her beauty; by the time they found themselves enclosed in that tiny room in 10 Downing Street, he had already equalled the value he attributed to her with that of the entire planet earth, the only home he had left.

After that, it didn't take very long until even a Dalek, the sort of being that is the farthest from being able to as much as grasp the concept of love, could tell what he felt and spat it defiantly into his face. And even in the depths of that concrete vault, Rose shone like a star through the shrouds of his personal darkness, drenching everything around her in her radiance from which not even that lone Dalek could escape.

In the Moment she confronted him, when her sharp, questioning voice cut through his facades and defence mechanisms, silencing the rage that had overpowered the better parts of him, leaving his true self exposed to her, the whimpering, helpless, desperate mess he was, the irredeemable sinner that he hated with every fibre of his being.

And in spite of all she had witnessed, she didn't give up on him.

He couldn't deny that her ability to just… forgive others and accept them as they were, even the likes of himself and that Dalek, had thoroughly terrified him at the moment – in hindsight, he came to the conclusion that it had probably been his own insecurities.

He simply couldn't understand what a wonderful person like her, someone who was just that much better than him could possibly want from a monster like him, to the point that he pondered whether this was something that only humans could understand.

He felt unworthy of her – which probably explained the first and only bouts of jealousy he had ever experienced in his long life.

Normally, he was more the type to give up and put the happiness of others before his own rather than to try and grab some of it for himself, and seeing what a wonderful person Rose was, he couldn't really blame Mickey, Jack and Adam for showing interest in her – He didn't really have anything against them (Well, except for the last one, tough this was for other, very good reasons unrelated to Rose) and had forged a strong bond with the former two after they had proven their worth, it was only that Rose was pretty much everything he had left in this life – He just needed her that much, he was merely that afraid to lose her.

There was nothing he could do – he had been truly, madly, deeply in love with her ever since he first grabbed her soft hand and whispered a single word to her.

There were misunderstandings and all but harmonic encounters with her mother, but all in all, it took but a simple glance to notice how quickly they had formed an effective, harmonic team where each of them complimented the other – she made sure to keep his feet on the ground while he took charge of introducing her head to the clouds.

He was starting to feel like himself again – the healing process set in like an incandescent pain wrecking parts of his existence that had believed to have long since lost to the shroud of numbness that surrounded him, a torment that tantalized him to make him realize that he could still feel.

All he knew was that he was different from her, that he was damaged, corrupted and defiled something that she would never be. He was lonely, scared, ashamed and unable to convey it, as much as he needed her to know.

He couldn't believe that she could possibly love him – after all, not even his reflection seemed to hold anything but contempt for him.

And she changed that, she changed him. She mended him, she made him better.

Oh, he had taken so many wonderful people along with him to show them their true potential, but in Rose's case, it had been first and foremost her who had turned him into a better person, no matter how much she claimed the opposite.

Their latter journey into her own past involved their first mayor fallout and almost ended with him dying and her breaking reality, but in the end, it only served to bring them closer together, and left him able to put up with himself a little longer, now that he had managed to do something meaningful for her.

(He couldn't help but notice that Jackie had been a little hypocritical, tough – Not much unlike her daughter, she had fallen for a less-than-reliable man who'd never know what he'd be doing the next day – they even looked alike.)

However, the moment where he realized that he had found the person he wanted to spend eternity with didn't arrive until that blessed, blessed day where nobody died, the instant he spun her around in his arms, both their bodies moving as one to the tune of the music, leaving a slightly disappointed-looking Jack to ponder which of them he envied more.

It was not only that he was entirely happy – it was that, for the first time ever since he ended the war, he felt like he was allowed to smile.

It was then that he knew for sure – if there was still redemption for his blackened, sullied heart, if there was anyone who could save him, it was Rose Marion Tyler.

There may have been a time where he wouldn't even have tried, but he didn't have the strength for that anymore.

Despite being very aware that he wasn't any good with everyday things like these, after having shunned such situations for a long time, he could no longer ignore the small voices in the back of his head that kept asking him if he wasn't tired.

Tired of having no place to return to, tired of witnessing all that waste of life, always under fake names, always on the run… He thought he loved his life.

He had chosen and defended it many times – how could it be that he'd only started questioning everything now, after the option to return to Gallifrey had ceased to exist.

Or maybe it had happened exactly because he had nowhere to return to.

Whatever it may be, he wasn't given the time to ponder why he was suddenly wishing for things he almost feared before, because destiny caught up with him in the form of a transmat beam sent by the self-proclaimed God of all Daleks.

Faced with a ruined world and a fleet of his worst enemies, he saw that his sacrifice had been for naught.

His homeworld. That little manor halfway up the mountains. His parents, his stern, mysterious mother, the father who had taken him with him to watch meteor showers. His elder brother, 214 years his senior, a polite, withdrawn man he had barely known. His children. His grandchildren. Classmates. Friends. Allies. Mentors. Old enemies.

Even his smelly godmother.

All of them, lost for all eternity for absolutely nothing.

They were here. The Daleks. Ready to wreck the Universe.

Ready to, no, already wrecking the earth.

Once again, the universe demanded that very same horrible choice of him.

His homeworld, this time his adopted one, or the rest of the universe.

It was different this time – there were numberless colonies amongst the stars, he was certain that this world could be repopulated – It had withstood worse.

He could not save the earth anyway – his only option was to try and contain the damage.

It was, one again, simple math.

Nonetheless, his fingers slipped off the lever.

He couldn't.

He just couldn't do this again.

Not after seeing the debris of a world that was float through the blackness.

Not after Rose had made him a better person. Jack had told him that he had done that very same thing for him; half-jokingly stating that he was better off as a coward – Well, he himself had probably been better off as a Monster born in the heart of a hellish war.

He had failed.

He had failed them all, all those who had given their lives for his cause… Jack, Lynda…

Accepting the just sentence that was to serve as payment for his sins, he surrendered himself to his inevitable fate, closing his eyes and relishing his last breath.

His only remaining hope was that these Daleks would not kill him right away – he would prefer them to waste his four remaining lives away one after another, lest his death be less slow and painful as he deserved it.

All the same, there was someone who held a very different opinion of what he deserved.

Someone who had not given up her hope.

Yes.

The only person in the universe who could possibly consider him worth saving.

That simple shopgirl from London.

She and the ungodly power she had borrowed from his very likeminded, sentimental old time machine.

When the doors opened, she did not step out of the TARDIS.

She flowed.

Like a gentle breeze carrying drops of liquid gold with it that eventually reconstructed into her shape right before his wide-open eyes and his sixth and seventh senses that showed him the exact magnitude of what she had done.

It was one of the most beautiful, most horrifying things he had seen in his life.

She appeared to be made of loosely connected golden dust struggling to keep its form despite the pressure of the holy light trying to break free from within, shining through at the edges and outlines of her being.

Her voice lost its accent, if calling it "voice" still did her communication justice – Her lips still moved and sounds came out, but this echo, that reverberation came from within him, his mind resonating with hers, transcribing the pure thoughts into words, words that anyone would understand to the fullest, phrases that anyone would hear in their mother tongue, speaking directly into their hearts.

The radiance penetrated both her skin and her clothes at the edges of her small form, and her eyes were the least of a barrier to the effulgent, aureate luminescence, especially if you dared to stare directly into them.

The coruscating light bloomed beneath her skin, dancing like the hydrogen in the layers of a sun, sometimes damning, sometimes blessing, rising above both good and evil, neither of which could escape her corona of molten metal.

Her actions were judgement, like that which dripped, rippled and poured from the hands and mouth of a god.

With nothing but a thought, she returned the stuff of his nightmares to nothing.

She also brought Jack back, even if she wasn't aware of that at the time – She also spread the words that lead her here, words that he would come to see again much later, making him wonder what else she had done in these instants where she was not limited by times and places.

Her sheer absurd level of power made his blood run cold.

Sometimes he wondered if she had seen how their story would end.

That said, her descriptions of what she was seeing painfully reminded him of his own encounter with the untempered schism – But this was significantly worse.

Not just because she was a human – She was not just seeing all this; it was running through her head, the deep, bronze, bell-like voices of the planets, the melodies of space and time themselves struggling to leave the confines of a being that was unable to process them.

While her will was no longer bound by anything, and her mind extended into infinity, the human brain that was meant to contain it had stayed exactly where it was – simple, hydrocarbon-based living tissue that would soon collapse into its components under the strain of eternity ringing through her skull, all of this to save the life of a powerless old man.

Multiple rivulets of tears sparkled beneath her eyes as she cried out in pain.

He did this to her.

To his beautiful, brave, pure-hearted, beloved Rose.

It was all his fault.

Oh why, why did he always destroy everything he touched, when all he ever did was trying to help?

He didn't pause to think, not even for a second.

His decision was taken, his mind made up.

He didn't think he'd be able to provide a reasonably clean transfer, not on such short notice, with these amounts of energy. He was fairly sure that he would be able to save her, but he was equally sure of what this would entail. If he'd concentrate on cleanly removing that energy from her and sealing this event away from her mind, there would be nothing to keep his own body from being fried like an overheated conduit.

The luckiest outcome he could expect was a moderately successful regeneration.

But that was allright with him.

She had ended up in her current state because she had come for him, because she had been certain that he would have done the same thing for her – and he would not allow himself to fail to prove himself to be worthy of her trust.

Without a moment's hesitation, he sealed both his fate and her lips with his own, giving up several centuries of his life in exchange for the few decades of hers in this eternally frozen moment where she was everywhere and everywhen at once, yet most of all in his arms, as he desecrated the smooth, warm surface of her skin with his old, spent, badly-cared for lips, tenderly, carefully, gently, as if the slightest ghost of touch could make her return to dust right between his hands which seemed to large, too clumsy to be allowed to handle her small, delicate frame.

As she collapsed into his arms, the only thing about her that retained its golden shine was her hair, and he, having pulled his death from her eyes, gave his faithful starship back what was hers, before bending down to pick up Rose.

It was weird, not feeling any pain, tough he knew very well that his body likely to be damaged beyond repair.

It left an empty space, a little timespan that wanted to be filled with false hope, wandering thoughts and a surreal feeling of lightness.

She had tasted of honey, caramel and lemon, rich, warm, yet refreshing, more like something that would give him life rather than take it. It seemed so inherently wrong that something this beautiful could be deadly.

It was, in a way, the end of a lifetime for him, and well-aware that he was falling apart, he no longer cared about the consequences that whichever version of him would be around tomorrow would have to deal with, and allowed himself to caress her cheeks lovingly, affectionately capturing the feel of her soft, golden hair.

Lifting her from this cold, destroyed place unbecoming of the sheer aura of life that had always surrounded her, he held her close to his chest as he carried her into the TARDIS, feeling the warmth of her body into the coolness of his own.

He knew that it would not be enough to combat the cold of death was beginning to grip him. The pain had decided to stop keeping him waiting for its arrival.

It was over – and there they came, the first signs of regeneration, that subtle, golden glow stroking his skin.

To his utmost shock, he felt sad.

He would not have been surprised to feel rage rising out of the depths of his hearts, disappointment at having to live on, but he would have never expected any sort of lament that this life, this incarnation of his was coming to an end, that he would wished to have lasted longer, with her at his side.

What he did, however, not feel, was any regret about having saved her.

It was a pity that it had to happen this soon, tough… he had not yet found the time to tell her about regeneration. There were only instants left for him to bid her farewell, for these deep blue eyes of his to look their last.

It was the most bittersweet of feelings – In a way, he would never see her again, in another, she was safe and would remain at his side.

Clumsily, he tried to sum up the plethora of emotions that ranged from deep depression to unconditional bliss with a sad smile, revelling one last time in the feeling of warmth that her company brought him.

"…Before I go, I just wanted to say that you were fantastic, absolutely fantastic…" he spoke with utmost admiration. "And you know what? So was I."

To his surprise, his smile was honest.

All in all, he was not ashamed of what he had done in his ninth life.

For the first time in what felt an eternity, he was glad to have survived the Time War.

He was glad to have lived, glad to have met her, glad to have been the man he was, the person she had fallen in love with.

If she could love him, maybe there was still hope for him.

If she could love him, maybe he would be able to stop hating himself one day.

There were so many, many things he wanted to say, including those blasted three words, but the time was up.

But that was all right. He trusted his smile to say more than enough in the seconds before he left this world to become light and heat and fire in the advent of his violent death and rebirth.

He had never had much control over what he would turn into, but concentrating on his wish to make her happy was worth a try.

He succeeded.

Within the pillar of golden light he had exploded into, cells divided and flowed, structures reshaped, hair grew and flesh reformed itself for her and her alone, for the person that had granted him this new life in the first place, the woman he loved, the one that had saved him in so many ways.

He longed to be more like her, to understand her better, so be more sensitive towards her and her fellow humans. He wanted to be pure like she was, cleansed of his hatred and his rage, so he would never do anything that would make her glare at him like she had done in Van Statten's museum, so she would never think of his as callous ever again.

He wanted to be confident enough to give her all the things she deserved, to get along to those around her, to stay for the "domestic" stuff, for the "cleaning up and partying" part of adventure that he had always shunned until now, to better show her his love, so that he might be able to confess his feelings to her, on some faraway day somewhere in the outskirts of the universe.

He wanted to make her laugh and to feel free enough to laugh with her – and, if it wasn't too much to ask, he wanted his looks to please her, as well. It wouldn't be bad if he'd look a little closer to her age, and a bit more hair wouldn't be bad either – or good looks in general.

More often than not, his reaction to his new face would be some variation of "Oh no!" tough his various visages had grown on him over time. He tended to have that sort of beauty that had to be realized at second glance – Still feeling a little insecure; he only hoped to get something that would look attractive at first glance for a change.

And how about some red hair? That was the only hair colour he had yet to try out…

The last one was probably a bit too much to ask, but as far as the rest was concerned, it worked… more or less.

A bit skinny perhaps, he still looked somewhat geek-ish…

Not that he'd want it any other way.

As a man in his mid-life-crisis, he certainly didn't mind the youthful appearance, but this went beyond "a little younger" – He'd probably better search the TARDIS for his old fake glasses if he still wanted to be taken seriously now and then – Or get himself new ones that would go better with this darker eye colour.

If Cassandra was to be believed, he had at least succeeded in making his new form suit her tastes – nevertheless, that was way beside the point:

Most humans weren't used to men changing their faces right in front of them.

He hadn't wanted to confront her with that this soon. If he'd had any choice, he would've given her some… prior warning and a long, diligent explanation – Perhaps he shouldn't have expected her to accept something like this without further ado just because she had witnessed killer pepper pots, trampoline women and the like.

It was an undeniable truth that her reaction was an understandable outcome of him failing to prepare her for this earlier. On the other hand, another such truth was that he was about as confused and afraid of having lost the person he wanted to have at his side forever so very soon after finding them as she was – He could not blame her for feeling literally alienated from him after seeing such obvious proof that he was not of her kind.

She had known that since the beginning, but he supposed that it was fairly easy to forget as he looked almost human.

She was probably just afraid… that she might've lost the man she was willing to give her life for mere minutes ago.

Still, this situation wasn't easy for him, either – and by that, he did not mean the severe aftereffects that had rendered him bedridden for the first hours after the regeneration – which was, unfortunately, when some pesky Roboforms and a tribe of Sycorax decided to conquer the earth – he'd lived through worse.

But still, he had not exactly wished for all of this to happen, nor had he chosen the state he ended up in… What really affected him was that Rose had almost lost faith in him – so quickly after all he'd done to save her life.

The feelings that had prompted him to do so still burned within his chest, their intensity unchanged by the regeneration, and the thought of her not wanting him anymore, after all they went through, was no confortable one – He would let her go if that was what he wanted, but he couldn't help but look crestfallen when she asked him to change back.

He had thought to have found someone who'd accept him as he was, and now, he found himself doubting that.

However, his doubts, much like hers, didn't last long, for the badly-timed invasion swiftly offered him a chance to prove himself and assure Rose that he would never, ever leave her alone – When she let him take her hand as he had done so many times before, both were certain that they had not lost each other, and he set out to see brand new worlds with his new eyes, alongside his new girlfriend and… his new hand as well, he guessed.

…Girlfriend?

Yes. If she hadn't occupied the place in his life that was implied by that title before, she had definitely earned it by the bad wolf incident, or shortly afterwards.

The bond between them had definitely reached a new level – If nothing else, the fact that he actually stuck around for the Christmas party should be proof of that – A blind leap out of his comfort zone, into the… domestic areas of life, something she had asked for before, a large deviation from his usual course of action - before he really noticed, that little apartment in the Powell Estates had become a place he could return to, an answer to all these new question that the war had made him ponder.

In the end, it had brought them closer, all these crazy events.

How could they not be connected forever, after seeing each other that ready to give their lives for them?

After all, she had fallen for him all over again, despite his different face, different looks and quirks and everything… It meant that she truly loved the soul of him, didn't it?

That she wanted him for being simply himself, for being that eccentric old scientist, the simple, flawed if brilliant, strong yet vulnerable man at the innermost of his being.

It had to be about him, right? If it was the Time Travel and the futuristic technology stuff, she would have chosen Jack, if it was about the brains, she'd have gone with Adam, and if any of the things he would never be able to giver her were essential to her, she'd have returned to Ricky… er, Mickey.

Yes, maybe he had found the one that was meant for him, the one he had been born to meet all these centuries ago, the reason why destiny had decided that it was not his time yet back when his homeworld fell.

Perhaps he had finally found her, centuries younger than him, born millennia before him, not even from the same world as him, and he had still found her...

Yes, maybe he had found the one.

Either that or he was just too lovesick to consider that she might've fallen for one set of decorations after another. Too lovesick or too afraid.

Anyhow, what followed were some of the happiest days of his life, those blessed months of harmony in which he had never been short of hands to hold, smiled to return and divine beauty to embrace, where one thrilling adventure had chased the next one and he felt like he was at the top of the world.

She would be able to read a thousand words out him simply by locking eyes with him and her arms around him made him feel loved and wanted in a way that a vagabond like him never hoped to experience each and every time their shadows melted into one as they shared the warmth of their bodies and listened to the sounds of each other's heartbeats, with no need for words.

There were also kisses, small pecks exchanged in moments of intense emotions, whenever their relief at seeing each other alive made him forget his limitations, spontaneous lip collisions that were never spoken of again.

Whenever his personal darkness came for him in the heart of the night, he'd walk to her room to place himself next to her in a position where their foreheads touched – and this was the closest he would come to her.

If she snuggled up to him in her sleep or threw her limbs around him, he would let her and appreciate it, unable to decide whether it made him feel uneasy or as close to heaven as a sinner like him was allowed to be, but not once did he actively seek out the salvation that dwelt in her arms, and even if he'd eventually find both their bodies tangled up in the morning, he'd carefully remove himself before Rose would notice anything – It helped that she was anything but a morning person.

To go any further would require the exchange of a sentence he had been struggling to spit out for a long time now, with most of his attempts remaining futile.

He had assured her that she was special to him, that he would never leave him, as painful as it may be to see a beloved person return to dust – except for the beloved part.

He had been close to say it before letting himself fall into a bottomless pit, closer than he'd been earlier when he told her that he'd more or less survive settling down if it was with her.

Nonetheless he had stopped himself, trying to convince himself that she understood that she would not need those words.

He believed in her, of that, he was sure, but the very same words that he proudly spat at his enemies stuck to his tongue when he tried to tell them to her face, be it in the lowest of all whispers.

Some part of him kept telling him that he could tell her any time he wanted, that the right moment would just come along someday within the swirl of restless adventure that their life had become.

He knew should not have allowed himself to hold on to these illusions – after all, he was very aware that their days were numbered from the start, that she'd age at least ten times faster than him, and that she wasn't going to regenerate. Her mother had shot him odd looks for looking much older than her, but she'd probably still live to see that situation reversed, if he should be granted to keep Rose at his side for this long, that is.

Still, the thought of that was simply too painful for him to bear, the burden of the implications that he might spent millennia mourning her too heavy for him to carry, so he chose to do what he always did when something went beyond of what he could handle – run away. He shunned these thoughts, even after the Beast told them that their journey together came to an end, he forbade himself to think of it, and tried his best to just live it out until the end – there was no way he could avert the unavoidable, was there?

It felt hard to believe that anything could separate them as long as she kept smiling at him like she did, allowing him to glisten in her orbit.

He had come close to losing her several times, there had even been two instances where he had been sure to have lost her, and he found himself regretting is failure to say that one sentence each and every time.

He should have learned from that and told her how he felt while he still had a chance.

But he did not, and when they walked out of the TARDIS that one, fateful day the Cybermen attacked, he had no reason to expect that she would be ripped from him at the end of the day. It had started like an average, normal day – by their standards, at least.

Putting her life in danger to pull that lever, probably saving two universes in the process, she lost her grip and fell – it was not that she slipped out of his hands, oh no.

She had never been within his reach in first place, both literally and figuratively.

One again, his old sins from the Time War had caught up to him, sending him Daleks to deny him the happiness he had long since lost all rights to.

The pounding of his hearts told him that he was still alive, but he felt like he died.

There was nothing but a white, solid wall before him, nothing to jump into, nothing to stroke, nothing to reach out to, nothing to pull or to beat, absolutely nothing to direct his emotions at.

Nothing but white, artless nothingness.

No ash to take into his fingers, no billionaire no curse at, just… nothing.

Nothing he could do nothing he could change, nothing he could fix.

Vast, void emptiness, blank vacancy, just a nondescript spot on a white, featureless wall.

No sound, no sight, no taste, no feelings.

Stark white before him, and stark whiteness inside of him.

Where had they gone, these hearts of him?

All he could feel was numbness, his usually so soulful eyes devoid of any light as well as any twinkle they might have previously contained, as if the soul that once shone behind them had just been ripped out.

She left a bleeding, gaping hole as wide as the one she had filled, such complete destruction that he was not even able to feel pain.

He just stopped, following some deep, primal impulse to hold onto something tangible, pressing his face and palms to the very wall she was probably punching right now, literal worlds apart.

She was alive, but that was nothing he deserved credit for.

It had been a parallel version of her father, not the same Pete Tyler he had met during the early days of their travels, and yet as capable of saving her when he could not.

Every sensation felt like the vague echo of a faded dream, even the wall beneath his palm felt unreal.

He had never told her.

She would never know.

He could not accept that.

There was nothing in this universe that could equal the value of her touch.

No matter what price he paid, be it a still-burning, dying sun, it could never amount to one final sip of sweet, welcoming, much yearned-for death from the goblet of her soft lips.

Bad Wolf Bay – Why did the name of this place have to remind him of each and every moment they had shared, of all she had done for him, all that she was to him.

Oh why did it have to remind him of the site of their first kiss which had turned a torn battlefield into paradise, and death into a purifying sacrament, now that he was barred of as much as taking in a last impression of her fragrance to commit it to memory?

This could hardly be called a proper farewell, no matter how far she had travelled, or how much energy he was used.

It was not to be.

He could understand why he would deserve such punishment, but why her?

Why did she have to make do with this tasteless, loveless parody of a farewell?

She did not know what to say, urgent not to waste a second of their last moments, and nonetheless at a complete loss.

"I love you!" she said, whimpering, her face red and covered in tears, her hands not knowing where to go, her hair whipped by her wind, all her beauty distorted by her sadness, unable to conceal her absolute helplessness.

This was a radical break, the drawing of the last line, the point at which the bridge just stopped, unfinished, in the middle of the ocean, the end of all hope.

As a scientist, he had made the experience that many seemed to think of reason and feelings as two antitheses that should not mix and to see love as something that could never be expressed in numbers – but in this very instant, he felt that nothing could describe the sheer bleakness of his disheartening situation better than mathematical terms:

This was the maximum in the graph of his life, the point from which everything couldn't go anywhere but downwards, the point after which he would no longer have any hope to find his one true love, because all that had already happened, it was past.

What a cruel word that was… past.

In the end, Rose and he had been like a function and its asymptote, always moving closer and closer towards each other, but never quite touching. They were like parallel, no, skew lines, never meant to come together.

They were like a graph and its tangent, only allowed to touch the reason for their existence once before disappearing back into the ceaseless infinity they had come from.

This was all they would ever have, all there would ever be – and his lips still kept sticking to each other, struggling to form words even when there was nothing left to lose.

There was so much he wanted to tell her, long, intricately-written novels and weighty tomes of songs and odes and dedications, telling her of the countless ways she had saved her, of how beautiful she was and how she made him fell within.

As far as he knew, there was only one sentence capable of conveying all this.

Now, he had endured the most horrible and creative forms of torture and withstood the most mind-numbing of ordeals, but he had yet to be subjected to anything that could match the effort it took him to get his mouth to move.

"Quite so... Well, I guess this is my last chance to say it…. Rose Tyler-"

A single tear trickled down his face.

He was… really going to say it.

And she would never know.

Ironically, he only started to refer to her as his girlfriend their relationship as them having been "together" following the parting of their ways, as if to make up for his failure to hurry up and say the words she deserved to hear.

He knew that she was gone and would never return to his arms again, but at the same time, her presence still lingered above him like a pressure that was threatening to crush him and didn't allow him to breathe.

She left without packing, with all her things still scattered across the TARDIS, filling the air with her scent and never ceasing to lead his thoughts back to the hole she had left in his life – The deep-fried chips he'd kept in storage lacked a person that was infatuated with that simple dish enough to "destroy" the sheer quantity of them before their expiration date, the heart-shaped pillow she'd left on his couch had no one whose elbow they could have supported and her blue jacket left in the console room was devoid of anyone to fill it out.

He did not know what he would have done if Donna hadn't showed up in this very instant.

(Oh good old Donna! There were only three people amongst the endless zillions that resided in this universe he'd ever called his best friend, and she was amongst them. (The others being the Master and Sarah Jane – oh how he longed to go back to that faraway happiness.) She always knew exactly how to make him smile, how to cheer him up and how to show him the right way.)

Busy with fruitless attempts to escort the redhead who had apparently randomly appeared in his TARDIS back to her wedding, he could escape the reality of what had just happened until the next quiet moment – the unending torrent of complaints springing from her mouth made brooding, or thinking in general, very hard.

However, this just intensified his pain as the reality of his loss had to catch up with him at the party that had one been meant for Donna's wedding – at a party of all places!

What lonelier place, what sorrier state was there than to be surrounded by dancing, happy people, when you had no one to dance with?

Everyone here seemed to have someone – Donna, that friend of her she had been bickering with… only he was standing at the side, feeling like a relic one again, well aware that he did not belong here, not to this happy crowd, not to this place nor this time.

There was nowhere he could go – once, there had been that small apartment in the Powell Estate, where he'd always be welcome, like he had been on that Christmas eve – now, he'd landed on Christmas once again, and the only thing waiting for him as a field of debris that had ironically spread in the shape of an infinity symbol around a pair of binary stars – and even there he'd always felt out of place, even when that rubble was still a planet.

If Rose had been here, he would have been busy finding out whether his dancing skills that always appeared to be in a Schrödinger-ish state of quantum superposition felt like existing today, laughing, talking and having fun. Now, he was starting to notice how tiring the flashing lights and colours could be, how hot the warmth from all these dancing humans made this room, and how the lyrics of the song playing in the background spoke of a recently lost love and the wish for a safe, comfortable place to return to, despite what its fast, bombastic tunes might suggest.

It seemed like this particular song had been written only for the sole purpose of wearing him out – and a similar thing could be said about that man who was spinning his attractive girlfriend across the dance floor – as her dancing partner pulled her in, her golden tresses fell in a way that made the picture before his eyes melt into a very different one, where it was him standing there with a blond girl in his arms, only that it was a different girl, with simpler clothes and somewhat shorter hair which, in spite of the difference in length, fell exactly like the strands he was actually seeing when she fell into his arms in that shining white corridor on New Earth.

Before he knew it, his eyes were following the movement of the joyous dancers, mesmerized my their harmonic, synchronized steps as his mind drifted further back, separating itself from the sad and empty man that was observing what he could not have to place itself somewhere next to a much younger Jack who was torn between feeling somewhat left out and staring at the assets of the two lovers dancing around the central console, parts of which were lighting up in tune with the music, as if the ship itself were celebrating with them, only for those visions of better days to dissolve, leaving him in a world where he was the one who had no one to dance with and where each and every second that flowed past him appeared to be hell-bent of convincing him that he would never be happy again.

Not just a party, but a wedding, too.

Now he was imagining Rose in that long, white pocketless dress.

With her being the hopeless romantic she was, she'd probably…

No, he should stop that.

There was no use thinking of things that were impossible now, if they ever were possible in the first place, that is.

It was just not fair.

Or maybe it was perfectly fair – After all, none of the Time Lords he wiped out of the sky ever got to see their loved ones again, did they?

Maybe all this was just exactly what he deserved.

Perhaps love was simply something he was never meant to receive.

It was only just for him to feel the guilt for what he had done in each of every moment of his existence, with no smiles to distract him.

Lying in her bed long after her scent had faded from this room, he wondered why he could not simply walk away and move on like he had done it so many times before – it was not the first time he lost someone. He had been sleeping alone all his life, why did it suddenly come to bother him now? Because he didn't know the alternative before? Because he had gotten used to having her at his side? Because she had been the love of his life? Because of what she had said when they both had come across Sarah Jane, about how she did not want him to simply forget her and never tell anyone about her? To make up for his inability to fulfil her wishes?

Or was it that sleeping alone simply reminded him of how empty his life had become?

Yes, he had lost important people before, including his entire race – but he'd pulled through that particular loss because of her. It was her who had given him the strength to go on, so how could he as much as try to carry on without her?

His pain was caused by the loss of the only thing that could have alleviated it, as he had built his strategies to deal with these dark thoughts after the war around her.

In all these Situations he had come to rely on her, he was now feeling completely lost, always wondering what she would do if she were hear, what she would say, what she'd tell him to do – He no longer trusted his own judgement after what he did in the war, but as long as he had her, he could be sure that she'd tell him if he was doing something wrong.

In a way, she had been his only compass on these rough voyages, and now, he was drifting aimlessly once again, and the hole she had left wouldn't close, as if her presence were still lingering around him, if only as a pale shadow within his own mind that kept haunting even in those months he spent living as a human and thought her to be nothing but a dream – He spent hours working on an elaborate dawning of her, underlining the word "gone" in the messy writing that surrounded the picture after he was done with it, not quite understanding why a dream could make him feel that melancholic.

He needed her – it was as if he had a book before him, opened on the last page – there were no more words to read in the book, just like there would be no new memories of Rose, but he was not yet able to close that book that could give him nothing more, much like he hadn't been able to finish that one sentence.

Still, while it may be impossible to live without bad things happening to one sooner or later, the same could be said about good things.

At first, it was harsh and he'd feel reminded of Rose's absence by the littlest of things, but even if it took him years, eventually, to his own surprise, he found himself mentioning her name almost casually, without a cloud of gloom filling the room immediately.

He probably had to thank Donna and Martha for that, he didn't think he'd have been able to at least sort of find his way again without their patience and understanding. Yeah, he still missed her a lot and he doubted he'd ever stop to miss her – she'd taken a piece of him that she'd always keep – but after all, he was still alive, and so was she. And she'd probably be inconsolable if she'd known that the thought of her caused him nothing but sadness.

She was always as protective of him as he was of her and wouldn't have wanted him to be depressed, much less because of her.

So he decided that her name would not be the one that would bring him to tears, but the one that would keep him fighting and living on, because that's what she had done: Saved his life. Even the sadness he'd felt was only proof of the good she had done him and how important she'd been to him.

He'd be OK, or at least he'd… keep functioning. He was not done for, just a little damaged.

And then, she returned.

After he'd spent years trying to tell himself that she was gone, having just about adjusted to a world without her, all these feelings were stirred up once again, as he saw her standing in this empty, disaster-wrecked street, next to that church that was probably as old as him, in this cold and dark night.

Funny how her mere presence could turn the most desolate places into paradise.

This place was as good as any fairytale meadow because his eyes only rested on her alone – his surroundings might as well just have ceased to exist in the instant he saw the impossible.

Her, just standing there with a huge, improvised weapons, but an outfit that did not look significantly more expensive than what she used to wear back in the old days, the small frame of a golden-haired, smiling girl that could easily have been overlooked, and yet, was the keeper of the light that turned this night into a day and held the eyes that promised salvation.

He could not recall when he started running towards her, but run he did, as fast as he could, not away from something, no, for once in his life, he was running back – Back into her arms, following the thread of his memories, back to the source of warmth, comfort and hope, to the person that kept turning up in his life like the refrain of a song.

He almost flew over the ground, his eyes unwaveringly fixated on her and only her, not paying the least attention to the abandoned cars, bicycles and pushchairs, the planets in the sky, or – and this was the crucial part – the rapidly approaching Dalek.

After all of these years, one of these blobs in polycarbide amour had finally managed to aim properly, and it had to be now of all times.

As his feet betrayed him and she rushed to his side, kneeling down beside him, he could not help but notice how the laser beam had not been enough to remove the broad smile from his face.

As long as she was there… as long as she was fine… everything was all right, as close to all right as it got.

He could have just died there, with her next to him, her golden hair hanging downwards as she bent forwards to touch the edges of his face, finally reunited with his love, and judging by the numbness spreading through his body, he would die, at least this version of him, the one that had been made for her, the skinny individual with the tendency to say "Alons-y".

Initially, he was fine with that – he knew that everything had its price, and even if he had the right to do so, he could not have thought of anything more.

His euphoria at seeing her again paralyzed him more than the injury from the Dalek Laser did, this emotion with no discernable features, as if it was… just light. An unearthly bliss that made him unable to move because whatever his mind might say, his hearts would not find any motivation to do so, for he felt like he already had everything he wanted or needed, and thus, nothing could have made him any happier than he was.

He could just have closed his eyes and waited for the light to devour him, but there was one single sensation that stopped his consciousness from just drifting away – the warmth of a couple of teardrops that had sprung from the anguished, pleading face of the inconsolable girl holding him as she begged him to not to leave her after she came all this way for him.

Her words and gestures alone would have been enough to cause him to regenerate, piercing him like a sword, as she once again asked him for something he couldn't give her.

It was not like he could just will himself not to die… He did not want to – if he had that choice, he would spent the rest of his lifetime in the form that she had loved and die like this, preferably just a few seconds after her – after her, so she would not have to go through the pain of losing a loved one ever again – Oh, he could simply not bear to see her in pain!

Somehow seeing her shed tears was much more excruciating than what this Dalek laser was doing to him.

This was simply not fair… he wanted to stay with her, she wanted to stay with him, why couldn't they? Why wouldn't the very fate that had brought them together let them?

It seemed as if happiness really was something he was not meant to have, only being allowed short glimpses of it so it could be torn from him to torture him.

But why Rose? Why was she being punished along with him, what had she done?

Why was he forced to leave her all alone and crying again?

No, that wasn't quite the right question.

There was no use in blaming anything on "Destiny" – It was his own fault.

It was him who could not stop the flow of her tears; he was, despite all his skills and all his knowledge, the one who always made her sad.

Thus, in one single moment of weakness, the simple wish to please her got the better of him. Or no, it didn't – there was no use in denying that it had been nothing quite so innocent, but merely the selfish desire of a flawed man to end his own feelings of helplessness, mixed with the good old fear of being alone.

Anyhow, the point was that they caused him to do something he shouldn't have just to extend his own life, a sin he had ever so often reprimanded in others – He should have known better than to expect this not to have any consequences, having acted as the agent of punishment for many who had done potentially dangerous things without really thinking about the consequences just to stay breathing for a little longer. He had seen what had happened to Lazarus, Lumic and the like, and while he wasn't quite at that level, he should really have known better than to outstay his welcome on this world – He should have been aware of the price range of such deeds – and that it was not always the sinner himself who had to pay for them.

Part of him still tried to justify himself by redirecting his self-hatred at the Daleks, exactly how he had done it before Rose stepped into his life, disgracing the efforts she put into the lost cause that was him, trying to convince himself that he could not possibly have foreseen that Donna would end up touching the container with his severed hand, but inside, he knew that this was just a denial that had become necessary to keep himself from ending his pitiful existence with his own hands.

For Donna to save all of creation, only to be forced to go back to the obnoxious, cold, bitterly unhappy person she had been before, after having blossomed into a kindhearted heroine who had, in a way, been much wiser than him, always guiding him when he strayed from the right path or simply missed the obvious, having to kill his best friend (And killing was just the friendliest way to say it – when he saw Donna returned to her old self, as if all their time together, all her downright legendary deeds had never ever happened, after he had once again made her into a faceless nobody completely unable to notice her own greatness, after he had reduced the most important woman in all creation to the self-hating mess she had no reason to be, he honestly felt like he had just raped her.)with his very own hands was the cruellest punishment he could possibly have received, and once again, he was pulling innocents down with him – for what?

A few months more for him to spend in this body. The most horrible months he had endured, ever since the Time War, if not the worst ever, cheaply bought, no, stolen life that barely deserved to be called a life at all, months spent in sin, bereft of company, guidance or as much as a will to live, wishing he would just drop dead already during every single second and yet, at the same time, fearing the approaching death that had been prophesized to him, further poisoning these restless days – he had known that living at a cost like this made life meaningless, and yet, he had pulled donna into the abyss with him – he almost did the same thing to Rose when she looked into the time vortex, he did this to everyone he touched, just like Davros had said it! …Joan said it, too – and so did Donna.

He had turned Martha into a soldier, and not just her – Her, Jack, Sarah Jane, all of them were on these screens, ready to sacrifice themselves for someone as undeserving as him – He only wanted to help, but all he did was bring Death with him, and Death to those around him… He had wanted all these people to live their life to the fullest, to realize what they could do with it – not to throw it away.

And the worst was, Rose casually complimented the threats made by her fellow companions. He looked at her, carrying that large, black gun with her, and couldn't help but realize that he had corrupted her, too.

He could still feel traces of the vortex' energy on her, it had been enough for even that werewolf to notice it, she showed neither fear nor defiance to her surroundings, having become a confident warrior defending this planet, perhaps a little too confident - if Donna's descriptions of her actions in her parallel timeline were to be trusted, she even had something unearthly about her, as if she had a deeper understanding of this world and its mechanics as you'd expect it from a slayer of both gods and demons.

He had already damned her once and he was close to doing it again, to… manipulate her into cheerfully walking to her doom like Martha, Jack and Sarah Jane were doing it now…

"How many more?" the robotic rasp of the creator of the Daleks asked – He did not know if the blind man's optical implant allowed him to see subtle things like his slightly trembling facial muscles struggling to keep his expression under control, but if he did see them, they were probably enough of an answer to him – Just naming the most recent victims of his irresponsible actions amounted to quite a long list – Jabe, Gwyneth, Lynda-with-an-y (Apparently, just flirting with him was the equivalent of sealing one's death warrant), the controller of satellite 5, Angela Prince of the Preachers, Robert McLeish, this entire LINDA-Group, the Face of Boe, the many that were killed when he hid from the family of blood, Chantho, the passengers of the Titanic, Astrid, this Rattigan Boy… He didn't even know the Name of the woman that had sacrificed herself on Midnight! – And Jenny, too. He was not even capable of sparing his own Daughter! Just after he'd gotten to know her – he'd only had her for a few hours and spent most of those treating her like air! Oh, and these were only the most recent ones, there had been so many, so many before… Katarina, Sara Kingdom, Adric… Countless of them in the past, and another sizeable amount still waiting for their cruel fates in the future – He would not even improve, he had seen it… in the Library, he had made this archaeologist, River Song, do the same thing.

And as of that moment, he'd still been unaware of what he'd do to Adelaide, or how the Master had already doomed himself when he approached the kid that was meant to destroy the planet they lived on.

No more.

No more of this, never again.

When he made this decision, Donna had yet to meet her fate, but he'd already known that it was awaiting her. He decided that he'd never ever take any human with him, not ever again.

Originally, he'd started picking up young girls because he missed his Granddaughter – whom he had never returned to her parents after dragging her through a life of danger and isolation. It was his stubbornness that had prevented her from going to school in a time and place she had loved – It was her who had opted to go with him when he left Gallifrey, but he'd never once asked himself whether he had the right to subject that brilliant, but sensitive, timid young girl to the horrors of the universe just so he would not be alone – And he had failed to ask himself that question in all the years that had followed, with all those different companions at his side – The Valeyard had accused him of putting these people in danger, but he had neither taken him seriously, nor had he stopped to pick up people for the sole purpose of putting them in danger.

Now, the answer to that question he had not even considered relevant over the course of all those years, seemed all too obvious:

He did not.

He did not have the right to just… acquire these people.

Solitude was good enough for him.

Seeing his ship filled to the brim with his friends as they towed the earth itself back to its proper place, all he could think of was how much he wanted to put as many kilometres as possible between himself and everyone in this room.

Away with them!

He wanted them to stay away from him, so he could never harm them again, so none of them would ever have to suffer because of him.

Because that's what he did, what he had always done, contrary to his ideals, all he fought for, all he wanted to do – He brought death, decay, destruction and corruption with him and he could not help but do so because he was corrupt himself, rotten to his core.

So he separated himself from them, because he wanted the best for them.

For their own good.

He put them as far away from him as he could – Including Rose.

Especially Rose.

He would part from her, because he loved her – It would not be the first time he did so, but this time, he would ensure that not even absorbing the Time Vortex could lead her back to him, he would put her far, far away from him, where he could never reach her, no matter how tempted he might feel or what despair might befall him – She was simply so much more honest, so much purer and so much better than him, he would not dare to put his own happiness before hers ever again – and so, he gave her exactly what she wanted.

He knew she would not allow him to leave her "for her own safety" ever again, so he needed to tell her something else – so he said that his half-human duplicate needed to be "neutralized" because of what he had done to the Dakeks.

That was a lie, as much as he wished it wasn't – With the knowledge of what he would soon have to do to Donna in the back of his mind, he could not bring himself to care about what had happened to these wretched killermachines, no matter how much he tried – when he next encountered them, he hit one with a wrench and felt utterly defeated when he failed to wipe them out for good.

Too many had died because of his mercy, because he let them live – He had long since run out of patience. The true reason why he was leaving Rose with the duplicate was something he could not tell her, lest she refuse to let him go.

She had always been very protective of him, after all, always dedicated to mend his aching hearts… now it was time that he did something for her, and saved her from the ancient, inhuman abomination that was him, more a disease than a person, not quite different from the Daleks he'd once likened to an unstoppable virus.

He could never give her, what she deserved – someone who could spend of his life with her, who could offer her exactly what she was offering him.

He couldn't – but this duplicate could. He would age, just like her, and he'd never upset her or… creep her out with anything like regeneration or regrown hands, while still giving her the feeling of being needed – Ironically, the clone had picked up one of his old Jumpers to wear it beneath the blue suit. And the duplicate also came from Donna, possessing some of her personality traits, which logically meant that he might be lacking some of his own traits – and there were good chances that some of his clumsiness at expressing his emotions had been replaced with Donna's straightforwardness, so he could give Rose all the sweet words and intimate gestures she deserved.

This was the least he could do for her after all the trouble he had put her through.

When she asked him how that one unfinished sentence would have ended, he was overwhelmed by the irony – had he been a different kind of man, and had this not been happening to him, he might have started laughing madly.

He had failed to tell her on what he thought was his last chance, and would have gladly given his life for a chance two more seconds to say those three words, and now that he had gotten a chance to say him, he realized that he must not.

Speaking those words now would only be selfish and cowardly, not to mention unfair, to both the clone whose feelings were probably not to different from his own and wanted Rose to accept him, and to her, whom he would leave here without any hope of their paths ever knowing again – that sentence would only serve to confuse her and cause her more anxieties that he already had.

So, all he could give her was a sad smile.

"…Does it need saying?"

After he's paved the way for him, his duplicate was the one to complete the sentence, receiving a deep, open-mouthed kiss in return as she wrapped her arms around him, appearing to feel the relief of a traveller who had finally reached the save heaven at the end of his journey – a feeling he was never meant to know again.

In all of his life, the only thing close to a real home he'd ever had was the heart of this beautiful young woman before him who was currently in the arms of another man.

And this was only what he wanted.

Still, even if he had arranged things to bring about this outcome, as much as he had planned for this, somehow he had never truly believed that she'd actually chose someone else over him, an "easier" lover, without all the… alien weirdness and some of the less than pleasant aspects of his personality, someone who'd whisper in her ear.

He thought she loved him, not in spite of who he was, but because of it.

She probably did, but she was only human… she was probably tired after all these years she had yearned to be with him again, how could he possibly blame her for wanting a sense of normalcy, and reliability…?

Still… He had been ready to take her as she was, to have her stay at his side as long as she could, even if it meant enduring the torture of watching her wither and die before his eyes.

Maybe he had meant as much to her as she did to him at the beginning, in this instant where she had seen the world exactly like him, when they had kissed for the first time, but now, he was beginning to doubt whether he would ever love again.

His hearts, which were, at this point, mainly held together by atrocious quantities of Duct Tape, finally burst apart, shattering into many sparkling, falling little shards that viciously cut through his very being as they fell through his body, finally embedding themselves in the inner side of his feet.

He had seen enough to know that he didn't belong here anymore – Now, there was not a single place in this world where he belonged.

The entire event with Donna only strengthened his conviction – No more companions. Never again. He could not bear anymore losses.

Also, no more relationships with humans.

Rose had neither been the first, nor the last citizen of earth he'd fallen for, but she was the only one so far who'd come close to being his long-term girlfriend so far – and after all was said and done, their relationship had left him in despair.

He did not think that he would as much as survive it if something like that were ever to happen to him again. He just couldn't bear that either.

No companions and no more falling in love with humans.

No more.

He just didn't have this strength anymore.

Oh, what a pitiful, woeful existence he had become, tired of living, and yet afraid of dying, crawling through this world to evade a fate that would eventually seek him out anyway.

He'd brought this hopeless solitude on himself – technically, he had no right to complain.

But he still did it, shouting at the world and its unfairness, doing more than one thing he shouldn't have, horrible deeds he'd never be able to make up for.

He was then quickly "rewarded" by getting to see another of his closest friend again – dirty, dishevelled, and gnawing at human bones, torturing him by alternating between bouts of madness and moment of almost shocking lucidity – the Master struck him down only to catch him, just to let him fall to the ground again.

Here and there, the boy he'd known from his academy days or the brilliant, worthy opponent from the days before the war would shine through, only to give way to more mad ramblings or helpless pleas as the throbbing in his head would interrupt any coherent thoughts he might've had. For all he had done, not even he deserved to just… dissolve like that, it was just too horrible a sight to witness – The sentence that had cut the deepest was his clearly clearly reproachful "I had estates." – Not only did it show that he was thinking about how his life could have turned out if he'd chosen a different path, it also proved that not even someone like The Master could remain fully unaffected by the destruction of his homeworld – And the anger that these words were laced with couldn't possibly be addressed at anyone but the man who had destroyed that world…

It was clear that the Master was too far gone to be saved, but he was horrifyingly aware of his sorry state, and frightened of what he had become – He'd be appalled.

If not even his friend from his academy days, but the refined, cultured, vain man he'd had the occasional swordfight with could see himself like that, he probably wouldn't hesitate to put his future self out of his misery.

It was ironic, how this incarnation – He was not sure whether this was technically the fourteenth or fifteenth – had soft, round features reminiscent of those he'd displayed in his first one, but the amber eyes identical to those from the unit days. His failed resurrection seemed to have drenched both his hair and his skin in bleach, but hadn't hindered the growth of his ever-so-rubbish-looking facial hair, tough it did not quite resemble the neatly-trimmed bond-villain-beard he'd worn the last time they had debated about seeing or owning the universe – that time, it had been the Master who had asked him to join him, offering him half the universe, so to speak – this time, it was the other way around, and equally fruitless.

In the end, it was the Master who ended up saving his life, tough, going down with the Lord President and his followers in his stead.

That, however, did not mean that he'd escape just like that – Oh no, not by far.

…Another of these things that reminded him of the old days at unit, or more precisely, what had ended them. Several Sieverts blown into his face as so-called reward for his efforts to preserve the continued existence of this world.

His time had come, and in his desperation, he just wished to see all of them one more time, to take their faces in and capture the way they had looked when seen through this particular set of eyes, showing himself to them like a distant, ghostly apparition in a way that only a doomed man was capable of.

He saved Rose for last, in the last of those fruitless attempts to prove to her that she was not just one of many to him (Not that he'd regarded any of those who'd come before her that way, it was just that she'd been the one to doubt it)in ways she'd never found out about.

It was only fitting that the very first person he had seen with these chocolate brown eyes should also become the very last, on what was to become both their first and their last meeting – He had no way of going where she was now, and even visiting her past self felt was no different from regarding someone on the faraway side of a precipice, far beyond his reach – The result of this last meeting was but a foregone conclusion: He knew that she'd never draw any connections between some random allegedly drunk man who'd addressed a few nonsensical lines at her and the eccentric extraterrestrial she was to meet a few months after this. He was not allowed to do anything… relevant here, and neither would he risk it –having been reminded of the disastrous outcome of messing with established historical events by a recent tragedy, he was painfully aware that she was unreachable to him, no matter how close and how tangible she appeared to be – and he had to make sure it stayed that way, deliberately hiding in the shadows, lest any of the wonderful times their had spent with each other be rewritten.

Finding himself in that situation, he suddenly understood how River Song must've felt – It really was like looking at an old picture – this wasn't the determined defender of earth he'd left on Bad Wolf Bay, this was still the innocent, simple shop girl he'd once fallen in love with, living a not-really-bad-but-less-than-happy, monotonous life as a dropout thrown away by society. Seeing her like this made him suddenly aware of how she had aged, or rather, mainly matured in the last few years – how old was she now? Already nineteen, or still eighteen? She was but a child, and yet, already beamed with that radiance of hers, capable of turning even this council estate in a brighter place.

He could not help but admire her kindness and compassionate nature as he always did when their paths crossed when he saw her comforting her somewhat lonely mother.

(She was right in that respect – Jackie would find someone, to him, she already had.)

Of course, someone like Rose would not simply walk past a man who was obviously barely able to stand, even if she wasn't meant to meet that someone yet – Talking to her had not been part of his plan, he should have been able to tell that she'd not just walk a man who was obviously alone and in pain – that's why he'd fallen for her, after all.

If only one of his wishes could be granted, he would chose to lie down next to her and rest at her side until darkness claimed him; He would weakly shower her hand with kisses and refuse to let go on it before he'd drawn his last breath, inhaling her scent one last time.

If he had a choice, he'd tell her how beautiful she was, how honoured he felt to have been allowed into her life, and how she made him feel within.

Alas, that would be no use – She hadn't even met him yet, nothing he could say without threatening his past and her future would have any meaning to her, nothing he could say would be more than the rambling of a complete stranger.

There was so much he wanted to say, so much he wanted to do, but she wouldn't understand any of it. This had been his last chance, and yet, hardly a chance at all.

He would die without telling her those three words.

He would go and die now so a person that Rose would never recognize could take his place, and one day, the existence that called itself "The Doctor" would come to an end altogether, without having ever finished that sentence… but that was fine with him.

Just getting to see her smile once more as she wished him a happy new year had been worth coming here.

He was content to return her smile and leave her a small hint of the glorious days to come.

In these fleeting moments that remained, there was simply nothing more he could have done with these so blessed, so damned, so unwavering feelings of love.

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So, that's it! Now, stay tuned for the next chapter, starring the wonderful Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson a.k.a Madame de Pompadour, 09: [The Open Door]