Wow! I am so overwhelmed by the great response to the last chapter! Thank you so much to everyone for reading, reviewing, favouriting and following; it means so much to me as I'm still so new to writing in this fandom. However, whatever fandom I'm writing in, one thing is always true... I like to prolong the agony for as long as possible. ;)
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In most reaches of most universes, the linear progression of time was an age old, thoroughly accepted concept. Each culture, planet, solar system and galaxy had their own standard variation of the same pattern – seconds became minutes, which in turn became hours, which then became days, and so on. There were very few exceptions to this rule – a time lock, for example, could sever events from the time vortex to make them unreachable. Similarly (although not really, but think of it as similar if it helps you), a stasis cube could suspend whole worlds in one moment to ensure their safety or containment. The Time Lords as a species – an arrogant, unforgiving species, one had to admit – could surpass all expectations with regards to life expectancy, and had ultimate control over the vast majority of time itself for ten million years.
Even after almost a thousand years of life, the sort-of-Doctor decided that another exception could be added to this list of disruptions – kissing Rose Tyler. As he pulled her roughly to him and crushed her unforgivingly to his chest, her hands snaked up and fisted in his hair, her anger burning him to the core. She responded to his every movement, pushing him backwards until his back hit the wall painfully hard, but she didn't seem to hear his grunt of pain. They seemed to have developed a time of their own – everything outside of their kiss no longer existed. Their entire world was anger and love and frustration and the yielding lips and body of the other. The sort-of-Doctor's heart pounded heavily; he wondered dully if he might have a heart attack with the intensity of the whole situation.
Rose scraped her nails slowly down the back of his neck, pondering whether or not she would draw blood. She half hoped she would – but then a thought struggled to the surface of her clouded brain. It was irrational, she knew; a little scratch wouldn't kill him. But the bigger picture, if anything dangerous should happen – if he bled now, he couldn't really heal. Not in the way he could as a Time Lord. If he lost too much blood… He would die. She would lose him, properly, with no way at all to get back to him.
The next thing the sort-of-Doctor was consciously aware of was something slightly salty trickling into his open mouth. He pulled his head back with difficulty, the rage he had felt minutes before starting to ebb away. Looking down at Rose, he saw, much to his horror, she was crying. Rose hardly ever cried! He racked his brains, trying to distract her.
"Prolactin, leucine-enkephalin…" he muttered, reciting the chemical composition of her tears as it registered on his tongue. She stared up at him, frowning.
"What?"
"The biology of emotional tears. There are hormones in this kind of tears that actually reduces pain."
"Why're you telling me that now?" Her tone was clipped as she stepped away from him, wiping the offending tears irritably from her eyes. The sort-of-Doctor quirked his eyebrow and stuck his tongue out, waggling it at her suggestively.
"Still got superior taste buds," he smirked. "And hearing – I can still hear when your heartbeat picks up when you're near me. And smell, while we're at. I always could smell-"
She pressed a finger to his lips then, desperate to silence him before he said something embarrassing. He had that familiar swagger about him now, preening at the knowledge of the effect he had always had on her. Another tear slipped unbidden down her cheek and the sort-of-Doctor immediately stepped forward, taking her face in his large hands far more gently than before. He stroked the treacherous tear away with the pad of his thumb and gazed at her with unveiled adoration – his mood had always been able to switch on a sixpence.
"I think I understand what he meant now," she mumbled, covering his hand with hers and meeting his eyes tentatively. Not understanding, he quirked his head. "When he left us on the beach. I said you weren't him… He didn't deny that, but said that he was you. Does that make sense?"
"Of course it makes sense to me, I said it! I'm not him… I'm half human. But he is me. Well," he paused, rubbing the back of his neck as he searched for the words. "We are the same actual person, aside from a few tiny little things. I'm him if he was half human, half Time Lord. What he meant was I'm not him because he's a full Time Lord. There's also another me who can be completely human, but he's very boring… And a little bit wimpy. Cried a bit when he found out he was an alien, if my memory serves me right."
"Bit confusing," Rose breathed, screwing up her face as she tried to understand a word of what he'd just said. She tried to form her thoughts coherently. "So, basically… He's you, but you're not exactly him, but you are him if he was half human?"
"Basically. If you want to put it in toddlers terms, yes."
"And if you met the totally human version of yourself, would you leave him behind?"
"Oh, he's not dangerous! Harmless stick insect – could leave him without worrying. Me, though… I shouldn't exist, and I committed genocide. Again."
"But why couldn't he just have taken us both with him? You being half human and all, surely that wouldn't have created a paradox, would it?"
The sort-of-Doctor knitted his eyebrows together and pressed his lips into a hard line. His next sentence was short and simple.
"Time Lord pride."
"Say again?"
"Time. Lord. Pride. I'm a version of him that he'd rather not remember – the one that made an impossible choice – he didn't want to be reminded of that every day. He hates himself enough without a living reminder to look at for another however many years. Time Lord pride was also why I never told you how I felt – I couldn't. I was physically unable to, because Gallifreyan psychology views humans as a less developed race. No matter how much I love Earth, or the human race, or you… I couldn't say it. Much as I wanted to."
Rose's mind was reeling, and she shook her head to try and clear it. The way the man before her had to easily slipped into saying 'I' made her heart ache – moment by moment her Doctor seemed to be taking shape before her eyes. But it was too much, too fast! It had been a little under than two weeks since they parted on Bad Wolf Bay. The wounds of abandonment were still too fresh, and stung even more deeply to hear her race spoken about as lesser creatures. One thing irked her more, though. If he still had a Time Lord brain, how could he now express his feelings so easily? When she asked as much, a conspiratorial smirk stole onto his face. His answer was one single, shining word.
"Donna."
Rose cocked her head, needing further explanation. The sort-of-Doctor sighed deeply and continued in his best patronising tone, "Donna, human. Me, Time Lord," he said, using his hands to illustrate his point. "Her human curiosity wins out in the face of death and she touches my spare hand. I'm created. I've got the mind of a Time Lord, but some of Donna's traits were transferred to me – the human body, for one. The attitude, the slight outbursts of a London accent, the occasional hip wiggle – and her passion. Her willingness to love and express love without restraint."
His eyes were soft as butter as he said this, and Rose felt a surge of affection for the loud mouthed, ginger, best-temp-in-Chiswick Ms Noble.
So, he was partly Donna; not 'basically' her Doctor at all. She momentarily rejected him again, seeing him as a poor copy of the man she'd loved. After this second, possibly even more intense kiss, however… Everything he said, brain melting though it was, made sense.
"I want to try," she said. "I want to try and be your friend again and… And maybe more. But we take it slow, yeah?"
"Whatever you want."
"And… When I'm ready. When I know. How will I let you know?"
"What do you mean?" he quizzed, running an absentminded hand through his hair.
"Like, when I'm ready to admit to myself that you're essentially the same man. How will you know?" It shamed her to even have to admit that she still wasn't sure, but she was sure that spending some time with him would help her. As well as that, she was still fuming with her Doctor, and knew that would take some time to work through (a part of her mind purred something about more kissing, but she silenced it before it could form further dirty thoughts than she already had). The sort-of-Doctor's mouth quirked into a lopsided little smile, the corners of his eyes crinkling up as he looked at her fondly.
"I'll know," he breathed, "when you hold my hand, and call me Doctor."
On reflection, Rose really had to marvel at her own self-control. If it hadn't been for the melodramatic thoughts about him dying, she was pretty sure that after a few more minutes she might well have been forced to shag the sort-of-Doctor senseless. Under normal circumstances she might have blushed at the thought, but she knew now that he wanted her just as much as she wanted him, and now there was potential to act on it. Angry sex wouldn't have solved anything though – or would it? It may well have proved the answer to all their problems. With a gulp and a deep breath Rose struggled to control her mind as it began to wander down a distinctly less than innocent path – the very thought of teeth and groans and hands made her heart stutter and her temperature rise, something which she knew the sort-of-Doctor would notice.
He was smirking arrogantly now, as it happened, and she half wondered if he could perhaps read her thoughts. Or maybe he was having very similar thoughts of his own. She bit her lip and stared at the floor as they walked in silence towards her car; she never minded driving in the city centre, and had offered him a lift back to the Tyler mansion and some chips. He had agreed and settled into an amicable, friendly conversation wholly reminiscent of the many they had shared over the years. Rose found herself glancing at his lips as he spoke, wondering if he would kiss her again or if it would be unacceptable to totally discard her anger and – no. She couldn't. They had much to discuss and much air to clear; that she was all too aware of.
Soon, they were settled in a little car park on a hill near the mansion. It had a spectacular view of London – on a clear summer's day (which, being November, this was not) the imposing dome of St. Pauls Cathedral was just visible on the horizon. They sat in companionable silence with their feet on the dashboard and chips in their lap, still half wrapped in brown paper. Rose knew her car would stink of vinegar for days, but was too nervous about the situation to care. She chewed contemplatively on a chip as she formed her next sentence.
"What you said before, about me only loving the travelling. It's not true," she said, straining her eyes as she fought to see the Shard through the growing gloom. The sort-of-Doctor nodded, although she didn't see.
"I know. I'm so sorry about that, I was just –"
"Angry? Yeah, think I got that," she sniggered cheekily, giving him her hundred watt smile.
"Still am, of course. It's even confusing for a Time Lord when you try to compute being angry at yourself but not yourself."
Rose laughed lightly. "I can imagine!"
"It's good that I've got you, for however long you want me. We can be angry together. We can scream and shout at each other and not take it personally…" he paused to pop a chip into his mouth. "At least I hope we can. Is that okay?" His eyes were guarded as he awaited her reply.
"I think that's the best idea you've had all day," she said smilingly, before adding in an undertone, "Apart from the sexy angry snogging."
The sort-of-Doctor choked on his chip at that, and turned to her with a disbelieving smile on his face that made her tummy squirm.
"Excuse me Miss Tyler but what did you just say?!" he laughed, clearing his throat with a hacking cough. She patted his back until he regained breath, slightly amused – she had forgotten he would be able to hear her.
"Not a thing, Doc-"
He quickly shook his head and pressed a greasy hand to her mouth, his brown eyes wide and slightly afraid.
"Don't call me that. Not yet. Remember what we said."
Rose was surprised at this vehement exclamation and her own natural slip, but nodded slowly, resisting the urge to shake his hand off – the smell of chips this close to her nose was making her feel sick. He removed it on his own with an apologetic grimace, handing her a napkin from the plastic bag by his feet.
"What should I call you then? I've been calling you the sort-of-Doctor inside my head. Or him. Or that bast-"
"Charming!"
"Well I'm still pissed at you, Time Lord or human. What am I gonna call you, though?" She sniggered as a thought hit her, remembering his origins. "How about… Handy?"
The sort-of-Doctor waggled his head at her, feigning amusement. "Just try it, Tyler."
"Well what then? Nurse?"
"You're enjoying this, you little sod!" he moaned, tossing a chip at her in a fit of annoyance. She raised her eyebrow, grinning again.
"The sort-of-Doctor… Sod?"
"How about John Smith? That's my human name."
"How boring!"
"Oh yes! Boring, but brilliant. Just like me. Except the boring bit. Just brilliant. And a little bit foxy," he grinned his wide grin and leaned back against the seat, his mind filled with images of an all boys' school and a matron named Joan. Rose gnawed at the inside of her cheek for a moment as she considered the proposition. It wasn't ideal, but until she could bear to call him by his name again (if that ever happened), maybe John would do.
She took a deep breath through her nose and nodded, crumpling up her empty paper and shoving it into the back seat.
"All right then," she grimaced. "John Smith it is."