Author's Note: I've been thinking a lot about narrative, lately, and how the best-written plots feel so inevitable when they are really just a series of choices made by the overlords aka the writers/directors/producers/etc.
Take Doomsday, for instance. I've read and brainstormed my fair share of Doomsday fixits over the past eight or nine years (jeezum, I keep bringing up how long I've been obsessing over Doctor Who like it's some impressive fact when in reality it's just making me sound old), and all of them "fix" the episode by changing details around the set circumstances of Rose needing to fix the lever and getting sucked towards the Void.
The fact of the matter is, that set of circumstances only occurred because the writers wanted her to get stuck in a parallel universe. So in reality, "fixing" the circumstances means not having her lever slip in the first place. It means not having the Daleks and Cybermen show up, even. It means not having the tear in the universe occur at all.
Then, of course, you don't have an episode. But it's still just interesting to think about.
Anyway, this story does not fix the root of the issue. It bandaids. So really this whole A.N. is a moot point. WHATEVER lol, I'll let you read now.
The Doctor liked to say that he didn't want to know everything. That the moment he knew everything was the moment he'd stop traveling.
At times, that was a lie. He'd hated not knowing how the Daleks survived. He'd hated not knowing how to get Rose off of the impossible planet. He'd hated not knowing what the ghosts invading Earth were and why he felt like they were so horribly wrong.
In this circumstance, though, the Doctor wished he knew less. He wished he knew nothing; he wished, even, that he was misinformed.
Because knowing what he did about the Void, the sight of Rose flying towards it was perhaps the most horrifying thing he'd ever seen.
He screamed her name, stretching his arm and his hand as far as he could. Rose reached back, her face white as the walls around them. Her fingers grasped, pawing through useless molecules of oxygen. Time slowed to a crawl. He memorized her face, creased with terror. Her hair, whipping around her head, being ripped back from her skull with the force of the pull of the Void.
And then the wall swallowed her whole.
"NO!" the Doctor screamed, and let go of his clamp. He flew towards the rip in the universe, and just as it was about to swallow him, the system died down.
"Offline," a pleasant robotic voice informed him, right before he crashed into the solid white wall.
The Doctor crumpled, landing on his knees in front of the wall. "No!" he yelled, hammering his fists against the wall like a little kid throwing a temper tantrum. "No! NO! Send her back- give her back!"
The universe ignored him, because the universe didn't care. The universe never cared.
His fists were doing nothing but bruising. The Doctor gave the wall one last slam, then sank to the ground again, breath seizing in his chest. He'd known that he couldn't have Rose forever. He'd figured, even, that he would lose her in some catastrophic, painful way.
But not this. Never this. Rose was trapped, forever, in endless nothingness. Hell. Unconsciously conscious hell. A place fit to drive any person mad, if sanity had even existed there.
He refused.
He refused.
Rose had once used a truck to drag open the heart of the TARDIS. She'd taken perhaps the most dangerous substance in the universe into her own mind and body. She'd burned her very atoms from the inside out all to come and save him.
He was the Doctor. He was the bloody Oncoming Storm. He could do at least that much.
He needed to get to the TARDIS.
The Doctor wrenched himself to his feet and broke into a run. He was about to sprint all the way to the basement where the TARDIS had been stored by Torchwood when he saw the yellow dimension-hopper that Rose had been wearing when she'd come back from Pete's world. The Doctor skidded to a stop and grabbed it, mind racing as he stared down at it.
"Rose," he whispered, voice cracking. "Rose. Why didn't you just stay there?"
There was no way to get to through to the other universes now that the breach was closed. But if the Doctor could just modify the device slightly…
He buzzed at it with the sonic screwdriver, aware that his hands were shaking, aware that with every moment he spent here, Rose spent there, deteriorating from nothingness into further nothingness.
A few moments later, the Doctor slipped the circular piece of tech over his neck and smacked it. He immediately materialized in the basement storage space, right outside the TARDIS. The Doctor burst through the doors, ignoring his ship whining and humming telepathically in his head.
"I know!" he yelled, frustration and anguish making his gaze go blurry. "I know! I lost her. I lost her. But I'm going to get her back."
He stalked around the console and yanked the screen towards him, fiddling with the controls. The reports filed back to him much as he expected. There would be no returning to Pete's world or any of the other multiverses, but the Void wasn't a universe. It was somewhere in between, hovering between the crevices of reality. He could reopen the gap. Not for long, not substantially, but enough, and without tearing the universe apart.
The moment he had the necessary facts, the Doctor was racing around the control panel, smashing buttons and pulling levers. He would fly the ship back to the blank white wall, reopen the tear, and-
What?
The question echoed in his mind, everything else going silent. The TARDIS couldn't enter the void. Nothing could enter the Void but that impossible sphere the Daleks, cowards, had been hiding in. Not if it ever hoped to leave again.
"It doesn't matter," the Doctor muttered. "I'll find a way. I'll do something. I'll get her back."
He didn't like to make promises, but that, he swore on the Earth itself.
The TARDIS made a rocky landing back in the Torchwood control room, almost knocking the Doctor off his feet. He shoved out of the doors and woke up one of the computers, fingers flying across the keys. It was easier to reopen access to the Void than it had been to make the connection the first time, and the Doctor had everything set in just a few minutes.
He had to tread carefully, here. It was true that rescuing Rose would likely require him to enter the Void, which the back of his mind was still hollering was IMPOSSIBLE, but he couldn't just be sucked in.
Like she was.
For a moment, any movement was stalled by the image of her pale, terrified face. His pink-and-yellow girl, hand outstretched, desperate for him to save her. He'd let her down.
But he wouldn't now.
The Doctor snapped himself out of it and ran back inside the TARDIS. After a minute rooting through the storage closet, he found a length of heavy-duty cord. Why he hadn't thought of this before opening the Void the first time was beyond him—if they'd only made harnesses, wrapped themselves in a contingency plan, none of this would even happen. Rose would still be alive, they'd be shaking off the whole traumatic experience, she'd be mourning the loss of her mother to Pete's world, and he-
What would he be doing?
Would he be telling her what he'd been dying to since she'd teleported back to their world, a concrete addition to her vow to stay with him forever? What he'd been dying to say, really, since the space station and Bad Wolf?
Probably not. Because he was a coward. A coward and a fool, and he'd lost her.
The Doctor stormed towards the TARDIS doors only to find them shut tight. He gave them a hefty shove. "What are you doing? Let me out! I need to save her!"
The TARDIS whined in his head. Her console churned sickly, and he could feel her distress. She, too, was grieving Rose.
"Then why won't you let me out?" the Doctor pleaded, sinking to the ground in front of the doors and banging a fist against them. It ached from where he'd pounded the wall earlier, and he buried his head in his hands instead.
Comforting strands of telepathy wound around his brain, swirling his thoughts. The TARDIS, of course, saw right through him.
He would be going into the Void, plan or no plan. He would be going into the Void even if there was no chance to get out, even if he were lost forever in the nothingness.
"You don't understand," the Doctor said, even though he knew she did. His eyes burnt and burnt and finally welled over and he dropped his forehead to the grate. "I need her."
It was his worst weakness, his greatest strength. He would risk everyone and everything for Rose Tyler. He would break every rule, forfeit every law, all for the sole purpose of keeping his most-special, most-beloved human safe.
He recalled the Reapers. Being willing to break time itself so it meant her father could survive. He recalled the kiss, pulling the Vortex from Rose at the sacrifice of his own life; the conversation outside of the school, almost baring himself raw to her about how different she was from everyone and everything he'd ever encountered in all of his lives; the space station hurtling towards a black hole, the trust and faith it had taken to risk her life to destroy the Devil, a trust and faith he didn't even realize still existed within him.
"Please," he whispered, a tear dripping through the grate into the belly of the TARDIS.
The doors swung slowly open.
The Doctor lifted his head, throat thick, the pressure of tears built to a peak in his temples. He stumbled to his feet and out into the horrifying, blank control room. In a haze, he made short work of a makeshift harness, attaching himself to the clamp with a coiling formation that he locked with the sonic. His mind was fuzzy. He tore the rip in the universe, opening a path to the Void once again.
Immediately, the Doctor flew towards the wall. He jerked to a hard stop just shy of the tear, the Void energy pulling at him with all of its strength. For now, though, the cord held.
The Doctor struggled to turn around, limbs floundering while his chest was held static by the cord. The rip shimmered, white plaster turned liquid.
There was a chance here, a slim one. If he could keep just one hand outside of the Void, he could use his sonic to coil the cord wrapped around his chest. He'd be able to reach into the Void, grab Rose, and drag them both out.
It was his only shot.
"I'm coming," the Doctor whispered, and stuck his hand into the Void.
Nothing.
Not cold, not hot, not painful or soothing. Just nothing. If the Doctor was staring at the wavering stump of his wrist, he wouldn't even believe he had a hand. He couldn't move it or wiggle it; his brain wouldn't send any signals to his fingers because he didn't have fingers. He'd never had fingers. His hand did not exist.
Panic seized the Doctor's chest. He ordered his shoulder and elbow to yank his arm back, pulling out of the Void. His hand was whole, perfectly preserved. Feeling returned the instant it crossed the threshold between this universe and nonexistence.
The TARDIS hummed insistently in his mind.
"I know, girl," the Doctor muttered, swallowing. He tucked his sonic into his pocket and put a hand on the harness at his chest. There would be no going in and pulling Rose out. There was nothing to reach, nothing to touch. Rose, in there, was nothing.
Despair flooded him. Dangling by a strap around his chest, centimeters away from nothingness, the Doctor let the dark overtake him completely.
There was only one choice to make. He could disconnect from the Void and leave this place forever, or he could go into the Void and never come out.
The Doctor looked back at his TARDIS, majestic in the blank white room. There were so many places to go, so many lives to save, so many things to see and learn and taste and touch and smell. His what was there, his how was there.
But his why had disappeared the moment Rose was swallowed by the Void.
The Doctor knew what kind of man he was before Rose. Dangerous, dark, ruthless but just. He knew what kind of man he was with Rose. Compassionate, protective, righteous, willing to fight but always seeking the truth.
But the type of man he would be without Rose? That was a man the universe didn't deserve. That was a man who was a danger to the universe.
The Doctor untied the cord tethering him to the universe and let himself fall into the Void.
Except.
No.
He was still conscious. His brain was still functioning, he wasn't nothingness, he was-
My Doctor. I want you safe.
Golden.
The tear in the universe exploded open in a blinding beam of gold light, spitting two figures onto the floor. Lights crackled, computers short-circuited, and the light began to swirl, stitching the rip closed. The air smelt burnt, and the Doctor couldn't seem to even get to his knees.
"Rose-?" he rasped, but it was too bright to open his eyes. Never, in all of his existence, had he felt this much power in one space.
And then, just as abruptly, it settled. The Doctor peeled open his eyelids in time to see all of the swirling power sucked towards the Void, vanishing inside just as the wall became flat and blank once more.
Silence.
The Doctor pushed himself to his knees, atom practically vibrating. A woman stood in front of the wall, back towards him. Her skin shimmered slightly, hair like strands of liquid honey.
But then she turned, and her eyes were a familiar swirling brown, two star enstatite gemstones. She was still pale, breathing heavily, certain traces of that fear in her gaze.
He was on his feet in two tenths of a second, striding towards her and gathering her into his arms.
"Doctor," Rose breathed, gripping him so tightly her fingers pressed bruises into his neck.
"How- how're you-?" Don't question it, he scolded himself, shutting his mouth and pressing his face to the crook of her neck. Just accept it.
"I-" Rose's voice was rough and cracked. She cleared it, inhaling shakily. "I think that…"
The words came to his mind: maybe from her, maybe from his own logic, maybe even from the TARDIS. "Bad Wolf," he whispered. "You still have part of the Time Vortex inside of you."
And this was why he told himself not to question it. Because, immediately, he knew how bad this could be, how dangerous and deadly—for the universe and for Rose.
The whimper Rose let out when he pulled back from their embrace was almost enough to make him abandon his pursuits, but he needed all the facts so he could react accordingly. He raised his hands, hovering them by her temples. "I need to go inside. I need to see if- if you'll be all right."
Rose swallowed and nodded and he pressed his fingertips to her temples.
Rose's mind engulfed his senses. He'd only been inside of it once before, to take Bad Wolf out the first time, but it was somehow still so familiar. Everything seemed normal, if a bit golden, but he pushed deeper, beyond the surface. He felt her warmth, her kindness and compassion and hope, but there was a haze surrounding everything. She'd been terrified, more afraid than she'd ever been before, but… not for herself.
The Doctor was so startled he almost lost his connection.
As she'd flown toward the Void, she'd feared only for what her loss would do to him.
You were going to go into the Void. Her voice, accusatory, echoed in both their heads, once again startling the Doctor almost to the point of breaking the telepathy. You were- you were going to kill yourself. Doctor-
I can't be without you, the Doctor projected into her head. He was in so deep he could hardly feel her temple underneath his fingertips anymore. You don't understand, Rose.
Then show me.
On any other day, this would have been the moment he ran and hid behind walls thicker than the Earth's crust. But he felt fragile. Someone could cut him apart with a letter opener. And it would be so easy just to let down his defenses and share everything with her, without even a word.
So he did.
He opened himself up to her, letting her feel all of his anguish and terror. He tried to convey what would lead him to such a dark place that he had almost lost himself to the Void. But really, there was only one explanation that would suffice.
Rose Tyler. He ghosted over her mind with his, closer than an embrace could ever be. Her name. And then a phrase in Gallifreyan, one that he never would have been able to say aloud and one that she never would have been able to understand without the context of his entire mind intertwined in her consciousness.
Rose sucked in a breath, the words flowering gold over her synapsis. Slowly, almost regretfully, the Doctor eased out of her mind. When the physical world came back into view, he took in Rose's flushed cheeks and parted lips. He understood, finally, the old Earth cliché of someone having stars in their eyes.
She grabbed the hem of his jacket and pulled her into him, pressing their lips together. Super novas birthed and died underneath the Doctor's skin. Every nerve hummed as Rose opened her mouth and slipped her hands into his hair. Her fingertips brushed his temples, right at the most sensitive spot, and he felt her buzz gold inside his mind for just an instant again.
Rose pulled back, gasping. "I love you, too," she panted, giving him the answer he'd been unconsciously waiting for. "That's what you said, wasn't it?"
He nodded, breathless—not because of the length kiss, his respiratory bypass system had taken care of that; he could have kissed her forever—but because of the raw emotion that was charging through him with each micro-expression on Rose's face.
Slowly, awareness of their surroundings filtered back to them. The slightly cool, recycled air. The buzz of the fried electrical circuits in the walls and computers. The TARDIS. The Doctor could feel her eagerness, her readiness to welcome Rose home.
"Are you ready?" he murmured, taking her hands.
"I never want to come back here," Rose replied, her voice rough. She turned her gaze to the wall and tears briefly filled her eyes. "Mum…"
Guilt sank his stomach. The Doctor put his arm around her shoulders, pulling her into him. "I'm so sorry, Rose. You deserve-"
She spun around the stuck a finger in his face. "Don't you go tellin' me what I do or don't deserve," she told him firmly. "Only I decide that."
He swallowed and her harsh expression gentled slightly. "You tried gettin' me to leave and it didn't work, Doctor. I chose to be here with you. I fought to be here with you. I knew the consequences. 'N I'm… I'm gonna be sad, okay? But it doesn't mean I regret it, even for a second."
He nodded, unable to find even a single word in all of the languages he knew. Relief, gratitude, grief on her behalf and his own. Fear that she'd change her mind. Hope that she was telling the truth.
"Let's go home," Rose said, exhaustion suddenly apparent in every line and muscle of her body.
He shepherded her into the TARDIS, leaving everything behind, clamp and coding and cord and all. The moment Rose passed the threshold, the TARDIS center console glowed with a uniquely golden color. Rose shut her eyes, and the telepathic buzz the ship sent her was so strong that the Doctor could feel it just from his physical contact with her.
"She was almost as scared to lose you as I was," the Doctor murmured, arm still around Rose's waist. He rubbed her hipbone with his thumb. "Almost."
Rose ran her hands down the closest coral. "She saved me," she realized. "Bad Wolf saved me, and she gave me Bad Wolf."
The words reminded the Doctor that he'd ended up fully distracted in his sweep of Rose's mind. There was a sense of something more that he'd gotten on first glance. Rose's brain was no longer fully human, but he hadn't felt out any danger. He had seen her mind when it was consumed by Bad Wolf beyond her control. Her synapsis and neurons had been on fire, turning to golden dust. Rose's brain now was humming and active in a way a human's wasn't designed to be. It was rewired. But it wasn't disintegrating.
They walked in silence down the TARDIS hallway, hand in hand. Rose's body was shaking and the Doctor tried to figure out if it was grief or exhaustion or mental strain or a mix of all three.
"Rose," he said when they paused at her door. "I need to ask. What happened while you were in the Void?"
Rose shook her head helplessly. "I wish I could say, really. I was pulled in, and things didn't even go black, exactly, they just… stopped. And the next thing I knew I could feel all of the universes surrounding me, tugging me in different directions, but one of them tugged the hardest and I could feel that that was mine. Then when you reopened the tear it was like… it was like water going through a sieve, yeah? I just let the current carry me. And then I felt you."
The Doctor wondered how long he'd been in the Void. It was possible he'd ceased to exist for hours, days, years (though, he supposed more logically, the control room would not have been as they'd left it if that were the case).
"I don't really know how else to explain it," Rose said, rubbing her hands over her arms. "I just… picked you up in the current, I guess."
"Well, thank you." The Doctor risked a slightly cheeky grin. "Ta, for that."
Rose smiled back, her tongue making the briefest of appearances. "Well, you know. Just trying to earn my keep."
He shook his head. Only the knowledge that she was teasing kept him from protesting that she earned her keep simply by breathing.
Rose hesitated with her hand on the doorknob. "Do you- are we-" She stopped, staring up at him.
Leaving her now would have been borderline impossible for the Doctor. If she'd wished to sleep alone he would have respected the decision, but he probably would have spent all of her resting hours pacing the hallway outside her door, anticipating her slightest need while unable to satisfy his own.
But it seemed that parting ways after the day of doom they'd had was out of the question for Rose, as well.
He reached around her and opened the door, putting a hand at the small of her back so they could walk into her room together.
"I just need to get ready for bed," Rose said when they found themselves standing in the middle of her room, silently facing each other. She waited until the last possible second to break eye contact, grabbing a pair of pajamas and disappearing into her bathroom.
The Doctor took the moment of absence to get comfortable himself, taking off his shoes and jacket and shirt until he was just in his undershirt, socks and trousers. He ran his fingers through his hair, puffed Rose's pillow, folded his clothes and put them on a chair, paced back and forth. How long had it been since she'd gone into the loo? He knew where she was, he knew she was safe, but every heartbeat without her was sending him closer and closer to his panic from before.
"Rose?" he called finally, wincing at the desperation in his voice.
She opened the bathroom door, face white with a skin cleanser. "Yeah?"
He let out the oxygen that had been trapped in his lungs, tension easing out of his shoulders. She was wearing a pink camisole and matching PJ pants, hair pulled back in a loose bun at the top of her head.
"Nothing," he said, sitting down on her bed. "Sorry."
She smiled, understanding without words, and pulled the door closed again. This time, he noticed, she left it unlatched.
The Doctor flopped onto her bed and crossed his ankles, jiggling his feet. Through the crack in the door, he could see Rose rinsing off her face and drying it with a TARDIS-blue washcloth. He could see her clutter of makeup products and hair supplies scattered across the bathroom countertop. What would have happened to those belongings had he been unable to save her?
Before he could sink too deeply into those ruminations, Rose emerged from the bathroom. She smiled hesitantly, hovering at the edge of the mattress, and the Doctor realized he was sprawled out like he owned the place.
"Right, sorry," he muttered, hopping to his feet and allowing her to get settled as she liked.
Rose pulled back the covers and slid underneath, leaving ample space for him to join her. The Doctor complied, and they rearranged themselves until she was tucked firmly into his chest and he could wrap himself around her completely, make her the most protected possible.
She was silent for a while, but the Doctor didn't feel her slipping into sleep. He could always tell when humans fell asleep: the rhythms of their breathing deepened, their brain functions changed. Rose was awake. Something was keeping her up.
"What is it?" the Doctor asked, hooking his chin over her shoulder. "What's on your mind?"
"I just…" Rose huffed a strained laugh. "I just can't believe that this mornin' we were makin' jokes about Ghostbusters."
She let out a barely restrained sob, and he waited for her to break down completely, but she just took a deep, shaky breath and wrapped her arms around his more closely.
He didn't really know how to respond to that, because it was true. Time worked like that, sometimes: you never knew when something catastrophic or groundbreaking was just around the corner. Sometimes you barely knew when it was actively happening.
"I can't believe I almost lost you," he said, voice barely audible. "Forever. In the most awful way imaginable."
"I can't believe I almost lost you," Rose countered. Her back stiffened. "I can't believe you tried to send me to Pete's World for good."
The Doctor winced. Some trust, clearly, would need to be regained on that front. But he knew that ultimately she understood why he'd done what he'd done, even if it had been, in its way, a cowardly move. "I'm sorry, Rose. Never again."
"I'm never gonna leave you," Rose murmured, echoing her words from earlier in that hellish day.
The Doctor nodded, chin pressing more firmly into her shoulder. That last sentence had been fuzzy, heavy with sleep. Rose needed rest, if nothing else to adapt to the way her brain had been rewired that afternoon.
"Don't leave me," Rose mumbled, the muscles in her body starting to go lax. "While 'm sleepin'."
"I won't," the Doctor assured her. "I love you, Rose Tyler."
Her breathing evened out, her body heavy against his. The Doctor shut his eyes. After a day like the one they'd had, he had thought nightmares were a sure certainty.
But none came.
Instead, his dreams were golden.
Author's Note: Well, this grew legs and won gold in the 400 meter race. (sorry lol I was watching the Olympics while I wrote most of this) But that was fun! A Doomsday fixit was the only Doctor Who fanfiction I finished when I first watched Series 2, so it's kind of fitting returning to that trope so many years later.
Gosh, I watched the Runaway Bride episode after taking a lowkey mental health break from th 10Rose brings me, and that moment where Donna finds Rose's shirt hanging over the banister is just like… WOW. Possibilities for pain that I hadn't even considered before. Just imagine all of Rose's stuff is still in the TARDIS. She didn't have a chance move out. Her room is still there, clothes and makeup and toiletries and things. Her favorite biscuits are still in the kitchen. A book she never finished is in the library. And the Doctor is just left to wander the TARDIS alone, finding these tangible pieces of her personhood everywhere.
LIKE WHAT THE HECKKKKK *sobs*
Anyway, wow, sorry to leave you on that note. Let's circle back to my corny easter egg line "But it seemed that parting ways after the day of doom they'd had was out of the question for Rose, as well." Anyone pick up on that bit? XD
OH AND ALSO the brief comments about Rose's brain being wired differently were an implication that she's now immortal. In case anyone was wondering.