He lied. That was the first thing she thought when she stood on that beach for a second time. He lied. Again.
Are you surprised? was the second thought. No, of course she wasn't. Lying was his favourite pass-time, after all, closely followed by deception.
Jerk. That was all she could muster up. Cold-hearted, selfish jerk. Part of her only snogged that clone to rub it in his face.
Who did this kind of thing?!
She kicked the sand before her as they walked back from the shoreline to firm land. Her wrath must've been radiating off of her because no one dared come within a short distance of her. Her mum and the clone walked a good while in front of her, being in their own little world as Jackie worried about getting home from blooming Norway .
She could see how the clone kept looking back at her, stealing glances every few seconds like some clingy puppy that needed attention every single moment of the day. In that way, he quite resembled his original.
This was the second worst day in her life. Closely tied to the first one, which happened to rhyme with this one. Stupid beach, stupid sand, and stupid Doctor.
She had no idea what she was going to do now. This wasn't the plan, at all. She was meant to fulfil what he had told her all those years ago, back when an equivalent of a miracle took her to see him.
It was the only hope she'd had these past few, hard years. That they'd be together again, on the TARDIS, doing their thing.
And he had to ruin it all.
For a second, she hated him. All of him. His past self, his other self, the clone, and even the parallel version that was sauntering about somewhere.
Yet she knew that would never last—and it didn't. But she wanted to hold on to the hatred she had because as soon as it stopped with rage, she knew that the sorrow would be overwhelming. She didn't want to break down in the middle of the beach, and certainly not close to her mom or that clone. She didn't want her family to see her so broken, lest she hurt them. And the clone… Frankly, she didn't want to have to do anything with him. She didn't want him to exist. But that's what happened, and that's what she was; a cosmic babysitter. There to clean up after the Doctor after he's had his fun. Stuck in a world that didn't want her and that she didn't want, all because he couldn't take up any responsibility for once in his life.
She knew it wasn't fair to him to think of it like that, but she didn't care. Not now.
For now, she put her anger into walking as aggressively as she could. It must've looked childish, but she didn't care. She thought she deserved to be angry.
She almost bumped into someone. The stupid clone had waited for her. She hated the way he looked at her; cautiously. Like she would explode any second—like she was the problem.
She wanted to maul him.
"Are you hungry?" he asked, tentatively.
Not even wanting to say a single thing knowing she would snap at him and give him the berating of a lifetime, she simply shook her head. That's all that he deserved, anyways.
"Are you su—" he started, but the look on her face must've been enough to get a message across because his eyes widened and he shut up. He held eye contact with her for a few seconds, the shock not coming off his face, before looking away.
That's right. I hate you.
He scratched his sideburn. It was clear he was about to speak up, but she wouldn't humour him. She walked past him, making sure to bump into his shoulder. Hard.
He didn't say a thing. She didn't even know if he was following behind her—she didn't look back once. She didn't care. He could stay here and rot.
She sat down on one of the benches that were seemingly always complimentary to the beach. At some point, she had actually liked the beach—that was years ago, by now. It was already barely manageable before, but now, she knew she could never come back here again. Another thing he ruined—without even trying. He seemed to be so good at that; ruining her life.
Is that what he had done? Ruined her life?
She sat quietly with that thought. Her anger dissipated slightly, and all she could feel was exhaustion. She just wanted her bed. To sleep and not wake up.
Someone sat next to her. She didn't pay it any mind.
This was her life now. Almost working her life away for 3 years to get back to the Doctor, only to be thrown away with the other unwanted one.
That's what she was.
A reject.
In a way, she really wasn't better than the clone, who was holding a small container of chips towards her.
She looked at him with the iciest eyes she could muster.
His Adam's apple bobbed.
She crossed her arms and relaxed in the bench. Well, at least as much as you could in these horrid things.
Despite knowing better, she remained thinking about the Doctor. She should've known. He'd been so darn obvious when she had met the future him, but she chose to trust him. What a joke. He'd even told her how replaceable she was, yet some naïve part of her genuinely believed she meant something to him.
The answer was sitting right next to her. A clone, that's what she had meant. A knock-off. The leftovers.
She moved a few centimetres away from him, just to make sure he understood the message. And he did, in a way she didn't think he would; he put down the chips between them and left.
Suddenly, she didn't like the silence anymore. The only thing that she could hear was the rush of the waves, rhythmically dancing along with the moon.
A pathetic part of her wanted to cry out to him, begging him to come back. She held that feeling captive in a choke-hold.
She didn't need him. If anything, he needed her. He'd be completely lost on his own—no money, no ID, no credentials. Even his wits—although now, limited to only human—couldn't figure that out. Yet she knew her parents would refuse if she asked them not to help him. They actually liked him, for some reason.
Reluctantly, she took the chips, but not because they came from him. She was actually rather hungry, and she wasn't so stupid to pass up on some chips. But she was so stupid to waste a full 6 years of her life for a man who didn't even exist in this universe, so there's that.
She sighed deeply. This was going to be awful.
Hold that thought. He did exist in this universe. That's how she had communicated with future him in the first place.
The parallel Doctor. And he hadn't drastically wronged her several times.
Well, he probably wouldn't want to have anything to do with her. But she could change that. She just had to find him. It would probably take a small miracle, but it had happened before, so it wasn't impossible.
How in the world was she going to find him? Last time was pure luck, and this time, she wanted to take matters into her own hands. She could get her hands on some of the equipment Torchwood had made to track down any temporal anomalies and weed them out until it was from his TARDIS.
She knew it was nearly impossible. He didn't come to modern London often, let alone Earth. In the other universe, he only came that often to bring her back to her mum. He didn't have a parallel version of her, so—
Wait, didn't he? The future him had said that he'd find his 'Rose-equivalent'. Maybe he did find someone from London—just not a parallel her. If that were the case, he'd be popping by often enough for her to track him down properly.
But, if he did have someone else, he wouldn't want her.
It wasn't looking too great. Either he didn't have anyone, and it'd be a mess and a half to track him down, or he did have someone, and he just simply wouldn't want her along.
Maybe. Maybe she could convince him. He'd taken her along once. He just had to see how good she was. And other him had called her the best, so she knew she was qualified.
She wasn't entirely sure if any of it would work out, but she held on to that hope with everything that she had, because now, it was all that she had. There was nothing left for her here. Sure, she loved her parents, but if the last few years were any indication, she could never be happy here.
Ever.
The clone once again popped up in her vision and the urge to break the law resurged. She still didn't understand why he was following her around like a lost puppy, or a child that couldn't let go of its balloon.
Had she not been clear?
"Jackie called your dad," he started, avoiding eye contact like the plague, "but he won't get here until tomorrow morning. So we're staying at a hotel for the night. It's the grey one, next to the smaller yellow building."
She hummed shortly. And just like that, he left. She stayed on the bench. She simply didn't want to face anyone at the moment. Exhausted, she tried to relax, using the rhythmic waves of the sea to calm her down. The wind was biting against her skin, as she wasn't dressed at all for such a Northern country.
Northern. She sighed.
Frankly, she had always missed his last self. She liked them both equally, but things were just easier with him. He was easier to talk to, despite his fits of anger, and he wasn't constantly worried about the future. Everything got complicated after he regenerated. Despite being more open, he was much more distant and avoidant. It had been a literal nightmare any time she wanted to have a serious conversation with him—most of the time, she just gave up.
But now she had another chance. To start again, from scratch. Well, kind of. Actually, not really, but she could forget all that he had done when she would be with his other self. No Bad Wolf Bay, no metacrisis, no stupid mistakes from the past. Just the Doctor and Rose Tyler in the TARDIS, the way it was always meant to be.
She stayed there for what seemed like a few more hours, reminiscing about the past and what she should do better now that she's been given another chance. She also thought about a more concrete plan of tracking down the TARDIS, considering its temporal signature would likely be hidden, if not at all inconspicuous.
It was freezing, but she barely noticed it until a jacket was set over her shoulders. Part of her wanted to take it off and throw it on the ground, but since she was actually quite cold, she gripped it gratefully.
Man, he was thin.
He stood on the other side of the bench, looking out to the sea, just as she was. She was rather thankful he seemed to understand she didn't want to have anything to do with him, since he hadn't sat down. Since she had accepted his jacket, she couldn't really yell at him to go away, so she took that loss for what it was and let him stand around, as much as it irritated her.
The sun was starting to go down. She really had been here for hours. Part of her was saddened by that, because her mum never bothered to show up. Then again, she didn't make the effort either. Her mum was probably just as tired as she was.
"I don't think you should stay here much longer," he said, still refusing to look at her.
She rolled her eyes at him. "Thanks for your expert opinion."
He turned from the sea to look at her, instead. She stared back with all the rage she could manage to show. His face made several expressions, ranging from shock, to anger, to just pure confusion. "What did—" he started, but she got up and passed him, walking quickly to that yellow building further down the road.
She heard his footsteps behind her. When she felt him closer, probably trying to catch up with her, she picked up the pace. Deliberately letting the door fall closed behind her, she hurried inside.
"Rose—"
She didn't even know what room she had, she just wanted to run away. She took the stairs in a split-second decision. As she ran up them, him following behind, he called from further back. "203," he said.
It would probably be on the second floor, then. She refused to thank him for being mindful of it and continued running up. Second floor, room one, room two—
When she got to the door, she realised she couldn't even enter it, as she didn't have a key. She stood there, nervously trying to figure out a way inside before he got there. But she was too late—he had ran up after her, right on her tail.
He silently held out a key her way when he caught up. She snatched it from him and opened the door.
She went to slam the door behind her, but it had one of those built-in door stops, so she tugged at it pathetically for a few seconds before realising it wouldn't work at all, looked up at him (as she felt him staring at her), and then went inside anyways. The door took a few seconds to close silently.
Her face was now hot from anger and embarrassment. Absolutely humiliated herself in front of the one person she wanted to appear strong to. It didn't matter. She wouldn't see him for much longer, anyways. Just get to London, then he could go do his own thing, away from her.
As she leaned against the wall, burrowing her head in her hands, the jacket slipped from her shoulders unto the ground.
A blue suit. She thought it was odd, considering she'd only ever seen him wearing brown. Then suddenly he showed up in a blue one, and no one else batted an eye at it. It wasn't necessarily a huge change in wardrobe, but it was enough to unease her. She picked it up and threw it over a chair.
Right. Today had been a long and exhausting day. She both wanted it to end and not at all—she still had so much to think about. She found that same fact when she tried to sleep. She simply had too much to think about.
What if she never found the parallel Doctor? Finding him the first time was extremely lucky, and the Doctor had said himself that people finding him twice was basically impossible. Not that that man knew what the word impossible meant, but if she had to do the same thing she had to do to get back to her original universe to get to him…
She would do it. She would spend years on this—her whole life. Because she had nothing else left anymore. Not the Doctor, and certainly not that metacrisis.
At the thought of the metacrisis, she felt her stomach knotting. What a ridiculous thing. Chopped off his hand and made another person. Except that this was different from regeneration, he didn't change—it was genuinely a whole other person. It simply wasn't the Doctor. They had disagreed on so many things in those few minutes only, they just aren't the same. The Doctor didn't want to kill all the Daleks, and the clone had committed genocide in a heartbeat.
"You made me better." And now you want me to do all of that, again, with a different man? She wasn't some fix-it no guarantee machine. She'd only done that passively, because she had cared about him, and loved him. That's not just something you could start over—or reproduce.
Did he genuinely expect this to work out? She knew he wasn't always a genius when it came to anything social, but blimey. This was a whole new level of stupid. And selfish. He'd always been so selfish.
"He needs you. That's very me." And that's all that she was to him, huh? A necessity, an object? An object to be passed off to another once it had successfully done its job?
She got up from her bed and decided to go take a breather. As she passed by to go to the hallway, she once again saw the jacket lying on the chair. She knew it would be cold, but just out of spite, she left it behind. She wouldn't give him that satisfaction.
She hugged herself as she got out to the balcony, the wind barely staying out due to her leather jacket. Her entire life had been consumed by the Doctor. Even her clothing reflected it, and she hated it. As her hand touched her chest, she felt the key underneath the layers of clothing. Right. She took it off her neck and pocketed it. She'd still need the key, maybe, if she wanted to find the parallel Doctor, but for now, she wouldn't let him be close to her heart anymore.
She could see the beach. That dreaded beach. Bad Wolf Bay. So much for the Bad Wolf, who didn't do a single thing about any of this. She could've prevented this all those years ago, and she hadn't. Another person to be angry about.
The light pollution was minimal, so she could see quite a few stars. She wondered if the stars were the same in this universe. Not too long, and she'd be there to find it out herself.
As she stared at the stars, another voice popped up in her head, the same voice, but somehow not at all the same man.
"I love you," he whispered in her ear, intimately, and only for her to ever hear.
…Is that so? Why would one say it, and not the other? It didn't make any sense to her.
It did need saying. Why hadn't he said it? She had given him the perfect opening, and he had still refused to. Yet the clone said it.
Why didn't he say it?
Did he not want to lie?
Had it been too long since?
Had he cared about her at all while she was gone?
It would've been good for him had he moved on quickly, but the thought of her being so unimportant hurt.
"Don't worry—he'll find someone else. Your equivalent ."
She was replaceable—always had been. And this whole ordeal was the proof. Despite lying out of his bum for that entire conversation, at least he hadn't lied then. He had told her, right then and there, that she was just another person, like all those other companions before, who he never mentioned, who he never talked about, and probably never thought about either.
Another face in the crowd. And now he got what he wanted—he'd gotten rid of her by putting her in a different flipping universe.
But he didn't know about the parallel Doctor. She did. She still had another shot at it. And if she could just sleep, it'd be tomorrow, and she could get to work on it. But for now, she was stuck in limbo.
She sighed. She should try to go back to bed. Tomorrow would consist of a whole lot of nothing except travelling, which was somehow incredibly exhausting on its own. When she turned around, the clone was staring at her from inside the hallway.
She froze for a second, simply not expecting a human face to be staring back at her. What the heck was he— Oh, what, did he also not have to sleep unlike us pitiful lot?
"Creep," she whispered loudly as she passed him.
"Rose, wait—"
She didn't. Hurried footsteps followed her, and before she could pick up the pace herself, she felt a hand on her arm. She turned back and shoved him away. She barely saw how he braced himself against the wall before she ran away. She got back to her room without being bothered again.