A/N: I never really intended this to have a chapter two, but when inspiration came a-knocking, who was I to turn it down? I was originally thinking of posting this as a separate story, but it's still so connected to the previous chapter. Depending on the 50th anniversary special, this might turn into a three-parter. Enjoy chapter 2.
Disclaimer: Don't own. I'm not making money off of this. My bank account can vouch for me.
2. Heavy Burdens
It takes the press all of five days to find him after Torchwood has processed the paperwork that identifies him as John Jack Smith (Rose managed to dissuade him from choosing Alonso), an anonymous but respectable inventor from Scotland, currently working for the government (meaning Torchwood). Suddenly, the sound of cameras starts to follow them when they move around the city. Reporters, some shadier than others, attach themselves like shadows. He glares at them whenever they make themselves known, which is far to often. It's not so much because they annoy him, but because he wants to keep Rose safe. She says she has grown accustomed to them, that they don't bother her, really. She jokes that she finally knows what it's like to be Posh and Becks. The Doctor has no idea what or who that is, and he is hesitant to let her comment slide. Rose carries way too much on her shoulders, her nightmares continue while she put up a brave front for her parents and co-workers, which by definition includes him now.
He hesitantly accepted a job as "consultant" at Torchwood when he turned in his fabricated identity. To his intense relief and joy, he has found it mostly means tinkering with bits and pieces of aliens tech that Torchwood has in its possession. Most of it is harmless, but every now and then he just happens to blow something up. Always by mistake, of course. Some things are better left in the dark. Or blown to smithereens.
The point is, he sees her at work, and the Rose who works at Torchwood is a completely different person. It's as if she pushes a button when they part ways at the entrance, and she becomes this Other Rose when she takes the elevator up to tactical, while he takes the stairs down to R&D. They usually meet up for lunch, and he can't help but notice how her smiles become forced and her voice takes on this grating, overly cherful tone that clashes so spectacularly with everything she's bottling up. The first few weeks the Doctor remains quiet, he doesn't comment on her behaviour. He simply watches her as she puts on her show, and during the nights he holds her and kisses her wet cheeks when the nightmares rock her foundations.
Two months later, it happens. They're in the middle of a bad dream-phase, and Rose has been sleeping restlessly even after he has calmed her down. Dark circles have formed under her eyes, and it gets harder to keep up appearances. She has touched on the subject of them moving out of the mansion, and he knows it's because she doesn't want Jackie to see just how quickly she is deteriorating.
He is in the middle of dismantling a Decentian tracking satellite that turned up just outside Manchester, when a woman (he is fairly certain her name is Thea) bursts through the lab doors.
"You need to come," she manages to squeeze out between sharp intakes of breath. "Rose..."
She doesn't need to say anything else. He's zoomed past her before she can even tell him what's wrong, and something is definitely wrong. Skipping the sluggish glass elevators, he heads for the stairs, taking the steps two, three at a he gets out on the seventh floor, Tactical, he runs into Gareth, a burly Irishman who is part of Rose's tactical team.
"Where is she?" he demands, scanning the immediate surroundings for signs of her.
"Thank God you're here, she's in a really bad way. Just went off on a bender, kicking and screaming and destroying equipment..."
"Where?" the Doctor repeats irritatedly, and Gareth points down the hall.
Without a word, he walks down the corridor, peeking through doors and windows into offices and conference rooms. He finds the right one easily. Chairs have been overturned, papers are scattered across the floor, and he spies a rather large dent in one of the walls. This is not good. Taking a steadying breath, he opens the door.
She has curled up in a corner to his left, and she reminds him of a cornered animal. Her face is buried against her knees, her arms hugging them tightly, and he can see her fighting to get her breathing under control. When he approaches her, the Doctor makes sure she can hear him. He avoids saying her name, often it has simply made things worse. He closes the blinds, lending them a bit of privacy, and slowly sits down in front of her. He just sits there for a minute, letting her take in his presence, then resolutely takes hold of her hands. Her breath hitches, and in the otherwise silent room it seemingly bounces off the walls. Again, he does nothing more that holds her hands for a few seconds, before gently guiding them and placing them on his cheeks. It's her latest thing, having to feel him. Her dreams won't allow her to trust what she sees.
The hands on his cheeks are still for a heartbeat. They start wandering, cataloguing his features methodically and eventually settling in his hair. Slowly, she untangles herself and latches onto him like a magnet, and he embraces her gently, not saying a word. He can hear their hearts thumping in sync and he is relieved. It is so much harder to work his way back to reality with her when she has worked herself into a state. The Doctor inclines his head, nuzzling into her hair and letting out a breath through his nose. Rose shudders in his arms, and he knows she will have goosebumps.
"You can tell me," he whispers softly.
He's not expecting a reply. He has learned not to. Sometimes she wants to talk. Other times it takes a while for her to open up, and until that time comes, she just needs to feel him close. Still, he wants her to always know he is there for her.
Just when he's about to resign himself to spending the rest of the day in the conference room (which he really doesn't mind, to be honest), Rose takes a shuddering breath.
"They want to dismantle it."
He keeps breathing, a steady flow of inhale and exhale while his hand rubs familiar calming circles on her lower back. There is more, he knows it, and he gives her time to collect her thoughts, to muster up the courage to put her fear in words.
"The... the cannon," she finally whispers, and he has a feeling this will lead down a path he'd rather not visit.
"They want it decommissioned. Dismantled." Rose's voice turns hard and gruff: "Outlived its usefulness. Waste of company resources and manpower." She draws a shaky breath. "They don't understand. Wh-what if... what if it happens again?" I need to be able to save..."
She bites her lower lip to stifle a sob that threatens to escape her. The Doctor shuts his eyes tightly and opens them again. It's time.
"You want the chance to go back for me," he says solemnly, voicing the desperate wish she has been unable to utter. They both know which Doctor she is referring to.
After two long seconds, Rose nods against the curve of his neck.
"Rose... You'd go back for the man on the other side. The Time Lord Doctor with the brown suit. But..."
He racks his brain, trying to come up with a way to tell her what needs to be told without breaking her. His mind is eerily quiet. There's nothing to do but trust his instincts.
"You wouldn't find him there."
There, he said it. Her reaction is immediate. She sits up straighter, piercing him with her hazel eyes.
"What do you mean?"
"He regenerated." Her expression is blank, like she doesn't quite comprehend what he's saying. "Happened about four months ago."
"How do you..? How can you..?" Rose almost stutters as the realization of what he says sinks in.
"I don't know why," he replies honestly. "I... felt it. Like a stab in my heart, like... a bolt of regeneration energy shot through my veins." It's hard, trying to explain and make sense of something that never really has made sense. "I heard the song again."
When she looks at him questioningly, he remembers he never told her about that particular part of the adventure on the Ood sphere.
"After Donna and I left the Ood, I started hearing a song. Nothing loud, just a... a sort of wondrous melody floating through my mind. It scared me. Before we left, one of the Ood told me my song was ending. I tried to ignore it, but whenever I heard it, it would make my hair stand on end."
"What... what does it sound like?"
Curiosity seeps into her voice, and he can't help but smile. Amidst all this confusion she is still so unbelievably... Rose. He considers her question.
"Like... sadness and fear and stardust and time. Hard to explain. I didn't expect to hear it again after I stayed with you here." He makes a point of saying stayed instead of was left, because for him it was a choice, and he chose to stay. "For a while, I didn't. Then, four months ago, I heard it again. I went livid, because I knew what that song implied. It played louder than before, I could almost feel it on my skin. Suddenly, it just ended. It died out, and I felt that surge of energy run through me. And I just knew. He had regenerated."
"But he's still you. He's still the Doctor," Rose persists, trying to cling onto dreams and hopes.
His smile turns sad, and he slowly shakes his head. He can see the fear and doubt clear on her face.
"Rose, you need to understand, regeneration, it's like... a reset. Yes, he's still the Doctor, but he's no longer me, just like I was no longer Northern with wonky ears after I regenerated. There's a brand new Doctor going about saving the universe. I don't know him. I know the ones who came before, their knowledge and their tricks and how much I cared for my granddaughter in my first incarnation and how much my fourth grieved after losing Adric. I know how it feels to hold your hand from two different bodies. I know nothing of the eleventh. Brand new Doctor," he tells her wistfully, and swallows back the lump that has formed in his throat. Dear, sweet Susan... He smiles again at Rose, determined to not let this break her. "He might be ginger and not rude. He might be a she."
She returns his smile, but it doesn't quite reach her eyes.
"He's the Doctor, but he's not you?"
He nods, affirming her statement. She blinks away stray tears.
"The man you'd be willing to cross dimensions for doesn't exist anymore. Not as you imagine him and not in that universe. No doubt this new Doctor will need saving, but let someone else save him, like you saved me. This universe needs you, Rose Tyler. I..." He cups her face, kissing away stray tears and leaning in so that their foreheads and noses touch. "I need you, Rose."
It's as if something breaks in him with those four words. They have never really fully discussed the metacrisis and what it really means. He has never brought it up for fear it would drive her away, and she has not prodded him with questions. She calls him Doctor now, but somehow he has always suspected part of her heart would always belong to the Time Lord Doctor in the other universe. But he is no different from him. Well, apart from the half-human aspect. Well... No. He is not different, not in the ways that matter. He loves her, with every bit as much passion and tenderness as his twin. What he says next is hard, but he does not want to see her, the love of his existence, waste away like this.
"Rose, darling, the Doctor in the brown suit is no more. He is part of a consciousness in a new body with a new personality." Tears form again at the corners of her eyes, and his heart breaks that he has to be this harsh with her. His voice cracks as he continues: "That man you're longing to save? I am him. I am the only him there is now. I need you, okay? I need you for all the reasons the other me mentioned in Norway and I need you for a thousand more reasons. It breaks my heart to see you like this, and I want to make you feel better, but..."
He realizes she's staring at him, and only too late does it hit him that he's crying. It's the desperate pleas of a desperate man, and the painful memories of his fobbed self stir in his soul. Maybe he is a selfish man, but all he wants is for Rose to see him, to accept him as being the Doctor she loves. He wants them to be Rose and the Doctor, not only in name, but in life. Now it's his turn to draw a shaky breath.
"Please," he whispers, fearing his voice will falter if he tries to speak up. "I need you. I love you."
He doesn't even try to wipe away the tears, what is there to hide? This is how he feels, how he feels about her. He loves her so much that even talking about what he is and what he is not scares him because it might make her love him less (if at all). So he lets her see him, the half-Doctor who came into this world shattered enough to commit genocide in the name of saving her and humanity, the man who has tried to save her night after night. The Time Lord Doctor still casts his shadow from a different dimension and he hopes, prays, that this revelation will let him step out of it.
The Doctor observes Rose's face, and her surprised expression slowly turns soft, her eyes still retaining some of their sadness. She carsesses his cheek, following the streaks painted on it, searching his face for who knows what.
"So he's gone..." she mumbles quietly, dropping her gaze.
"He is."
"It hurts."
"I know, Rose."
"I think... I think I need my Doctor."
She looks up at him, and a small smile tugs at the corner of her mouth and she looks at him as if wondering if he remembers. Of course he does. Daleks turned to dust and a vortex raged through her head. Come here. I think you need a Doctor...
She leans in and kisses him, and it is full of love and need and acceptance. He reciprocates the kiss, bringing his fingers up to her temple. Her surprised gasps tells him she's seeing it; the memories and impressions and emotions that have driven him since he materialized in the TARDIS, the exact nature of his bond to the Time Lord Doctor, that they are one and the same with a dash of Donna Noble thrown into the mix. When she opens her eyes, he can swear he sees a faint golden swirl in her irises before they focus on his face.
"I thought I'd lost you," she whispers.
"Never," he replies firmly.
"I guess I had problems letting go..."
"You don't have to..."
"Yes, I do. 'S funny, really. All those adventures, and I still had trouble accepting what you, both of you, told me in Norway. As if that really was the weirdest thing I've experienced with you." She nudges his shoulder playfully before turning serious again. "I still think of that other world as home. Everything here is still, I dunno, a bit foreign. It's still Pete's World, not home. You were still there, in that other universe, you were home, and I... I never realized. I had you and I had lost you, yeah? So all these months, I've been afraid of losing you, and at the same time afraid of forgetting you. It's been... what's that expression you always use?"
"Wibbly wobbly," the Doctor supplies her, and she smiles and nods.
"Yeah, that's the one."
"We've both been scared, then. I didn't want to bring up the metacrisis, because I didn't want to push you away, and you... Your nightmares, they— You need to address that, Rose. It breaks my heart everytime you wake up in a panic, thinking I am not real."
"Who would I talk to?" Rose sighs, shaking her head. "Who would even believe me? I got sucked in from another dimension and was separated from the love of my life, and it broke me, and a few months ago I was reunited with him and now I suffer from nightmares because I'm afriad of losing him? They'd take me away!"
He is unsure if it is just a slip of her tongue, but he feels his heart swell when she refers to him indirectly as the love of his life. He's not a clone, not "the other him". Somewhere in her mind she has made the connection.
"Then talk to me. I should know. I was separated from you, too. It was as if one of my hearts had been ripped from my body. And then Donna turned up, and she was livid, of course, and when she found your jacket and went on raving about me kidnapping women, I... It felt like getting kicked. I could hardly say your name for a long time. I wanted you back so badly, I returned to New New York with Martha."
"You went back to New New York?"
"Yup. Martha was a bit ticked off that I took her to a place I had visited with you. Then she got kidnapped."
"Good to know some things never change with you," Rose tells him pointedly, and he raises an eyebrow. "You're good at it. Saving people, I mean."
"As are you, Rose Tyler."
"So, maybe we could save each other?"
He leans in and captures her lips in a soft kiss, basking in the elation when he feels her kissing him back. He knows this won't last forever. They will fall. He back into uncertainty and Rose back into her nightmares. But, he reasons, at least they know. There was a moment of clarity and logic and baring their fears and souls. Deep down they know were they stand.
Rose and the Doctor, together.
A/N: Reviews are not really better than Rose and the Doctor together, but I'd appreciate them all the same! :)