Return to Memory
Chapter 3: Forest on Fire
Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who…but my birthday is in a couple months…
When the Doctor awoke ten minutes later, his face marked from the floor grating, he was a bit disoriented. Something bad had happened, but he didn't know what. The sight of Rose's jacket on the floor brought it all rushing back. He quickly picked himself up off the floor and ran through the halls, shouting her name.
"Rose!"
He rounded the corner and threw open her room door. Everything was as it should be. Her bed was unkempt, her shoes all over the floor and her closet door was open, all her clothes tumbling out. Her lamp was on and her favorite book was open and upside-down on the nightstand. Pictures of them together covered the wall and crowded any surfaces with frames purchased from alien markets. She wasn't here.
" Rose!"
He continued, going to the library. A fire crackled comfortingly in the fireplace next to the sofa. Books crowded the floor and her favorite blanket was draped over the back of the chair. She wasn't here either, and he felt the panic rising up in him again.
"ROSE!"
He checked his room next. It was empty. The kitchen, bathrooms, pool; all of the rooms she knew about were empty. Some rooms she had never seen, but he checked them anyway.
"You can't be gone! You just can't! Where are you?"
He shouted himself hoarse and ran himself ragged. It didn't help his search when the TARDIS continued to redirect him to the console room. He felt her prodding at his mind that he needed to go outside, but he didn't want to. All he wanted was to find her again; to hold her in his arms and breathe his love into her hair. They had only had one kiss, and he had only told her he loved her once. He had wasted so much time and he refused to believe that time had finally run out on him.
He started pushing buttons and flipping levers, which the TARDIS switched back the second he moved them. He was soon met with electric shocks when he continued to try to make her cooperate. He needed to take her back to the planet Rose had made the wish. He needed to find out what happened to her, so that maybe he could fix it. The TARDIS, however, was certainly making it clear that she was staying here.
"What's wrong with you?" he shouted at the console, pounding it with his fist. "Don't you want Rose back? Where could you have brought us that is so important we can't come back? With Rose?"
The TARDIS chimed sympathetically in his head and he got the feeling that she was trying to help. She wanted him to go outside. Maybe Rose was out there?
He had been an idiot! (the TARDIS agreed with a chime) He should go outside and search for her there. Rose had been the one to enter the coordinates anyway, in those strange few minutes. When he had entered his ship through the stone room (he still had no idea how that had happened), the TARDIS had already been flying to a destination that Rose herself had set. She shouldn't have known how to do that. It didn't matter now, as he finally obeyed his ship.
He stepped out onto the red grass and froze.
"It's not possible." He whispered as he stared at a sight he had known he would never see again. His mind was reeling, but what overwhelmed him was the feeling of being home. He hadn't felt that since he had burned this precious planet. His breath caught in his chest and stayed there, choking him with sorrow and love and happiness and everything in between. It welled up from his heart and blurred his vision.
He fell to his knees and wept.
His mind was flying with a sensation he hadn't felt in years- the telepathic tingling of his people. It was the feeling of family, of not being alone. He was no longer the last Time Lord. Everything smelled the same; the breeze carried the scent of golanka waffles, a celebratory dinner marking the beginning of a new season. The grass was the same red he had always known it to be, soft beneath his fingertips. He looked up through his tears and saw the silver trees swaying in the breeze, each reflecting the orange sunlight.
He remembered describing this sight to Rose. He had said it looked like a forest on fire. It still did, and it was burning him up inside because this was all he had wanted but she wasn't there to see it with him. He bent his head once more and continued to weep. He was overwhelmed by what this could mean.
Rose had given him back his home. And she had died for it. He felt sorrow for that- overwhelming, soul-crushing sorrow- because he loved her more than anything or anyone he had ever known. It felt like a betrayal to be happy about the gift she had given him, when it had meant her death in the end. Now he knew what the TARDIS had wanted him to see. It wasn't Rose. It was Gallifrey.
He stayed there for what seemed like hours, overwhelmed by the happiness of coming home and the horrible sadness from losing Rose. He loved this planet. He loved Rose. He marveled at the gift she had given him and mourned at the cost.
Was it bad that, in this moment, he would destroy his planet again to get her back?
He looked up from his place on the ground and saw the gleaming citadel in the distance. The sprawling city and lower class village called to his heart. His home was waiting before him, though he had left it behind long ago.
He stood from his place on the ground, locked the TARDIS door, and began to walk towards the city. Along the way he passed creatures long extinct and plants he had forgotten to miss. He saw the tree he and his friends had marked when they were young. It had been a sapling then, too. Now it was an old and withered tree and he felt his spirit must look the same.
The glow that lit everything under Gallifrey's golden sun felt more right than any alien sun he had ever felt. He heard the music now, drifting through the trees from what seemed to be the new-summer's festival. How fitting that she would land him in a place of beginning, when it seemed to him that everything had ended.
He began to notice something strange as he walked through the familiar forest. He had memories of this forest that he was sure he had never experienced. According to the story coming through his head, the planet had never been destroyed. He focused on this alternate memory, trying to pinpoint what had changed. This was certainly Rose's doing. Only she could change history without changing all of reality.
He remembered that crucial moment, where he had chosen to end the war. And it was different.
A golden cloaked woman, seemingly a ghost, had appeared before him. She looked like a being born of the vortex, just wisps of light and a voice that burned his hearts. She lifted her hands and turned the Daleks to dust.
His throat tightened as he saw her face. Bad Wolf had not died with his ninth form. It had lived and ended the Time War- in the beginning and the end. The ghost had kissed his cheek, a light tingle that he swore he could still feel, and disappeared. He had returned to his planet and was hailed a hero.
The irony twisted his gut. He was a hero, possibly the most famous man on Gallifrey, when he had been the one to destroy them all.
His memories were the same and different. He knew what they were like before, remembered the pain of losing his people to his own hand, but he also remembered saving them. Rose had not just created an alternate reality; she had changed the past and removed his greatest regret and burden without changing the rest of the universe. The planets they had saved still remained, and some of the scars of the Time War marred the vortex, but the entire civilization of Gallifrey was restored. He couldn't thank her enough.
He was entering the city now, passing the stalls selling food and the people milling about in the shops. The new memories were pouring in faster now. Last week he had been with Rose, eating chips at a shop down the street from her mum's. Last week he had also been helping prepare this festival. The people around him recognized him as he walked, waving to him and smiling. Some of them greeted him "Hello, Doctor! Would you like some galakar?" He shook his head to refuse the sweet drink, and continued down the road to where his house was. He lived alone at the top of a hill, at the end of a winding path through silver trees.
It seemed like the sort of place he would live, if Gallifrey had survived. It seemed that after the war, he had stayed here most of the time. He was a highly important member of the council, though they only met once a month. He worked at the university as a professor of transdimensional physics. He had a life that he had not built here, but it suited him. This life that Rose had built for him wasn't exactly what he would have chosen for himself, had Gallifrey survived. He wouldn't be so grateful for the place to call home. He wouldn't have craved domestic like he did now. He would have been a traveler forever, taking his home for granted. She had fashioned this life for him now, after going through all he had suffered in the years since the war, and she included all the things she knew he missed or wanted.
She just forgot to include herself.
The Doctor sighed, stopping at the fountain in the middle of the square. The citadel loomed above him, something he once abhorred because it was a testament to the pompous tyranny of the Time Lords. Now, he had to fight back the tears once again because it was something he believed he would never see.
He had imagined for years what it would be like to go back once again and see his planet. He had imagined happiness and laughter and joy. He did feel all of those things, but it was bittersweet. He hadn't asked for this to happen, though he was more than grateful for it. But everything he saw left his hearts feeling just a little bit empty, and his hand very cold. As he walked, he would turn to tell her a story or make a joke, but she wasn't there. He longed to hear her laughter again. All his thoughts from the fountain to his house were flying with ideas on finding Rose. He wouldn't give her up so easily. He held on to one last hope that he would find her at his house; that she had created his life with her in it and he just didn't know it yet.
He rounded the final corner and stood in awe of his home. He knew what it looked like from his created memories, but he couldn't have estimated the beauty of it without seeing it with his own eyes. It was three stories tall, with a sloping roof covered with black tile. The house itself was made of the amber brick that all Gallifreyan buildings were made of. It was covered with silver ivy that shimmered in the dying sunlight. There were large windows on the outside, and he knew from memory that they were in every room of the house. He pulled his key out of his pocket- a key that shouldn't have been there- and opened the dark wooden door.
The inside was decorated like any earth home would have been. He suspected that was because he loved earth so much. He walked through the entryway into the living room. The walls were a deep orange and the room was furnished with a large plush sofa and a brick fireplace.
After a moment of standing in the unfamiliar room that was far too comfortable, the Doctor went up the stairs, bypassing the second floor in favor of the top floor, which was his room. He climbed the last few steps into the brightly lit room. Two sides of the room were glass, with beautiful curtains to cover them at night. He walked to the window on his right, where he could see the sun setting over the silver forest.
It was at that moment, looking out from his window in the direction he had walked, that he noticed where Rose had sent him in her final moments. He had been directly north of the citadel, between civilization and the Mountains of Contentment.
She had landed him in the Valley of Redemption. She forgave him for the universe and saved him along with them. He grabbed his coat off the chair and sped out the door, running for the TARDIS. He would return to that planet, whether the TARDIS wanted to or not, and he would find a way to bring Rose back. He didn't deserve to be exalted a hero, when the one that had saved them all from eternal death at his own hands had disappeared into the air.
The Bad Wolf waved her hand one more time, unseen and unknown to the universe.
A/N: So, how was it? I changed it around a bit. I'm not used to writing angst, I prefer Rose/Doctor fluff.
Reviews make me happy : )
With Love,
doctorrosetyler