fic: doctor who
a sore heart and a hand to hold, ten II/rose, r, 2,790 words
He'd done it before. Wiggled his fingers at her and tried to make her see that everything was the way it had been before, that he was the same nine hundred and some odd year Time Lord who'd taken her to places beyond her imagination and who'd grasped her hand for dear life all through it. And now, having gone through it before, this time she wasn't so easily convinced.
She kept remembering the first time she'd lost him, so many Christmases ago.
It had felt so very similar to the way she felt now. Crying on her mum's and Mickey's shoulder while they secretly nodded at each other. ”Thank God he brought her back.” Not really caring what happened to the man she so dearly loved. Just thankful that their Rose was safe and sound, like he'd always promised.
She kept remembering how his older, tired face had haunted her. Even after he woke up and rescued them, wielding his sword like some knight in shining amour and saving the day once again, she still couldn't shake off the feeling of the ghost of the man who she'd ran away with. The more weathered, sterner man who had really been a big softie and who'd let her go back in time and save her daddy, made the dreams of little ten year old Rose come true.
It felt exactly like this time. Standing next to this man who was the same, but wasn't. Hearing him speak as he recalled memories of their past together and only managing a polite smile when he'd throw her a wide one and ask her if she remembered. Of course she did, it was him who shouldn't be remembering.
He'd done it before. Wiggled his fingers at her and tried to make her see that everything was the way it had been before, that he was the same nine hundred and some odd year Time Lord who'd taken her to places beyond her imagination and who'd grasped her hand for dear life all through it. And now, having gone through it before, this time she wasn't so easily convinced.
...
But then, it was different from the second time she'd lost him. He hadn't been there when she'd had to watch everything she'd ever want fade away into nothing.
Losing him the first time, she thought she'd never be able to let go. But eventually she did, rather she had to, because there was this man pulling her along into the future and the past and even the present and she had no time for back then. No time to wonder why he'd died for her, what else he'd do for her. Or if he still would, was he that type of man, or was that man gone for good now.
Losing him the second time, she never wanted to let go. She'd fallen in love with him again, and just when she'd told him forever like some daft teenager, it had all been pulled away from her in one big vacuum of the void.
That day, the worst day of her life, dragged on and on. She'd made it drag on, she wouldn't leave that beach even after his image (just an image) had left her and her mother had finally dropped her arms from around Rose's body, scared that her daughter would never let go. They'd all tried to talk to her, Pete and Mickey and her mum, but she'd just sat there in the cold, wet sand while the waves crashed towards her. Finally they sat in the car, having given up, and waited.
Her eyes were tuned to the horizon and all she could hear, even above the curling ocean in front of her, was his voice. ”Rose Tyler, I...” It wouldn't leave her, even hours later, it echoed around her like a song she couldn't get out of her head.
She sat there even after the sun started to sink and fall into the water because if she stood up and got into the car and let Pete drive them home, it was really over. She'd fall asleep against her will and wake up bleary eyed and disoriented, sheets sticking to her body and still half in a dream. Once she realized where she was and what she'd lost she'd cry. The day would be over, the day that he said goodbye would pass, and she would have to move on.
It was after midnight when she finally stumbled up on shaky legs and made her way back to the Jeep.
...
Why was she here.
That's all she could ever think about these days. Why had he left her here? And why back in Pete's World, as she found herself calling this place, involuntarily but that's what always came out of her mouth when referring to their new universe. Why wouldn't he at least take her back to the planet she'd been born on, why make it so goddamn final?
She took it out on him sometimes, the new him. Or, the newer him. She'd sit and stare at him when he wasn't looking. When he was fixing something or eating his afternoon tea biscuits, (the man could eat even more now which she'd never thought was possible), she'd stare daggers at him until he'd look up with a mixture of hurt and hopelessness in his eyes. He'd clear his throat and look away, knowingly giving her an excuse to erase her face and pretend she hadn't been thinking of how much she hated him, him, the proper him, and give him a fake smile that didn't reach her eyes.
But once she hadn't even tried to pretend she wasn't angry. Furious. Frustrated and just so very, very, alone.
“You don't need to be healed.” She said once, her voice full of nothing but bitterness and pulling his attention away from fixing them dinner. He was sweet that way, always had been but never had the time when he was, well, who he'd been before. Still couldn't even boil water the right way, though.
He looked up from the pot he'd been stirring, the stream clouding around his face and causing his forehead to glisten. “No?” His voice was rather teasing, which angered her even more.
“No.” She'd answered sternly, and got up from the table to stalk off to her room. She had her good days and her bad days.
She'd apologize later.
...
Things began to get easier.
Or at least, they wanted to. There were days where she didn't look up into the sky or out her flat window and drift off into a lost world of what if. Where, when, who. She wished she could know. Days that he didn't catch her thinking about him, the other him, unknowingly hurting him in a way only she could. No one else would ever look at him and deny his very existence, only she had that power.
But there were days like that. She'd actually forget everything for a minute and laugh watching him play cars with Tony, getting lost in the motor sounds they made with their mouths.
The day the TARDIS started to grow, she almost felt like nothing had changed at all.
“This is absolutely mad.” She said, examining the larger chunk of coral closely.
He chuckled and stroked her wrist without thinking. “After all we've done, this is mad?”
Her head snapped up and she pulled her hand away. She ignored the hurt in his eyes because all she could think about was how much he sounded like himself just then. All we've done, but you weren't there.
Maybe she was wrong.
...
What finally did her in was hearing the stories of his life without her, or rather, after her. “A.R”, they eventually called it, “After. Rose.”
“Ya know, A.R, I was stuck in 1969 for who can remember how long...”
“I'll tell you something Rose, once, A.R., I got into this fist fight, ya. Don't laugh...”
But it was his voice when he spoke of the times without her that finally made her crawl into his lap and kiss him. His voice that made her realize this was him, the man who'd lived on after her, (After. Rose.), who'd had to go on because that's what he did and he had to do it alone. And she knew exactly how he'd felt, and in that moment she realized he was there with her, always had been, since they'd stood silently on that beach hand in hand, her mum prodding them along to come and hurry before dark. After she'd made what she thought was the biggest mistake of her life at the time. ”I love you.” After so damn long the words had finally been said. The end of the sentence that haunted her dreams had been finished four years too late and she couldn't help but pretend she'd been sent back in time to when she'd first waited with baited breath to hear him say it.
She'd closed her eyes and had pictured the words coming from his mouth back then, manipulating a memory and in that moment it was real and all she could do was kiss him. She was snapped out of her fantasy when she heard the whirring of the TARDIS and felt her stomach drop. It doesn't, it really doesn't....
But hearing his voice, the same voice who'd started speaking so long ago, ”Rose Tyler, I...” and the same voice that had finally spoken what she'd so longed to hear talk about the time he'd spent without her had finally snapped her awake. The man she'd been dreaming of and crying out for in her sleep was right on her bloody couch and all she wanted to do was kiss him and make him better.
So she had. He'd squeaked in response, surprised, his last words still hung on the edge of his lips. She was crying and all she wanted to do was get as close to him as possible because at that moment she realized how hard it had been for him, because it had been just that hard for her. Both times. The first time, getting used to losing the old him and having to accept the updated version, and the second time, walking through the void without a hand to hold just to see his face again.
The pain in her heart was so damn suffocating that all she could do was crush her lips to his over and over, drinking in his breath, feeling it against her skin as proof that he was there and it was him and he was alive. She straddled his lap, gripping his hair in two tight handfuls that pulled and pushed, begging for more, always more because it would never be enough. And she needed this, how she needed it but she hadn't realized it until now.
The first time they had sex that night they fucked, hard and deep and fast until the only two hearts in the room sped up to alarmingly high rates. Her nails scratched his back, his skin, and his fingers dug deep into her arse as he pounded into her over and over, both of them just desperate to feel, feel each other, feel their pain and feel themselves finally break. And heal.
Later, she looked up at his face from her place on the couch, snug between the backrest and his sweaty body, her head on his chest and his arm slung over her. His eyes were closed but there was one tear underneath his left eyelid that betrayed him and told her he'd been staring at her. She reached up and swept her thumb across his lashes, taking the tear with her and licking the salty drop of liquid off her skin as his eyes fluttered open. He smiled at her. She laid her head back down and listened to his one heart, his one chance at life, pumping away beyond flesh and bone, still calming itself. Her lips pressed against his ribs, and she loved him, him, and his heart beat for her.
Then it started all over again, only this time, it was slow. Hands caressing instead of grabbing, tongues licking instead of probing, and thrusts of the hips measured and calculating rather than sloppy and desperate. They learned each other, learned their bodies and their gasps and how he'd moan when she'd kiss his neck and how she'd curl her toes when he'd lick at the warm muscle where her thigh met her center.
When it was over, and he held her from behind in the bed, their bed as it would hence force be known, his arms wrapped tight as a vice around her, they each knew the other's bodies like well worn maps.
And he was there, finally, he was there, and so was she. She fell asleep with the Doctor, her Doctor, really truly forever and always, wrapped around her, and she slept with a smile on her lips.
...
Maybe she had assumed the wrong wound had to be healed. Maybe he really wasn't a pseudo version of her first Doctor, dark and brooding and genocidal. She'd heard him talk of his time without her, had heard the pain in his voice, and listened to the things he'd done without her there to hold him back.
Maybe it was the wound she'd left on his heart, the heart he carried now inside his chest, that she'd been meant to heal.
They both wore scars of loss, but maybe, in this one life they shared, they could wear them together. ”Imagine watching that happen to someone who you--”
But they didn't have to. And for that, she forgave him. For that, she loved him. Every him that could ever be.
...
Their first trip in their new home, the newly grown TARDIS, and all she could do was touch the console. He laughed at her, asked her if she needed some time alone with their new girl, and she stuck out her tongue like old times, gasping and giggling as he caught her lips and sucked her tongue into his mouth.
They ended up christening the console in their own way a few minutes later which is why he ended up apologizing to their new host, zipping his fly and stroking the levers soothingly at the same time.
“Now you need some time alone, I reckon.” She teased. And they continued on like that, taking jabs at each other until he set the coordinates and she took off, rendering them both silent dunces with nothing but wonder on their faces and that old tensing of excitement in their stomachs.
He didn't tell her where they were going. Once they landed, he threw her that look, the look he always threw her, the one that made her hold her breath in anticipation and the one that told her that it was really him in there. The man who'd swept her away and stolen her heart not once, not even twice, but three times. The man who loved her enough to die for her and who loved her enough to let her go, just so she could have the life she'd so craved back again. So he could have that life, even if he didn't get to live it.
He reached for her hand and wiggled those four fingers, not the same fingers he'd wiggled at her before, but still his hand was the symbol for what could be, what was, and what always would be.
The Doctor took Rose's hand and led her outside the TARDIS doors, pulling her along as they both laughed like lunatics in love and stepped into the unknown.
She kept her eyes closed for a minute, and squeezed his hand. Squeezed the hand of the man that she'd lost over and over in one lifetime, but who now stood proudly next to her on some alien planet that they'd no doubt get into terribly fun danger on. He squeezed her hand back and she knew their life would be everything it could be. ”Fantastic."
Rose Tyler took a deep breath and opened her eyes.
He'd done it before. Wiggled his fingers at her and tried to make her see that everything was the way it had been before, that he was the same nine hundred and some odd year Time Lord who'd taken her to places beyond her imagination and who'd grasped her hand for dear life all through it. And now, having gone through it before, this time she wasn't so easily convinced.
She kept remembering the first time she'd lost him, so many Christmases ago.
It had felt so very similar to the way she felt now. Crying on her mum's and Mickey's shoulder while they secretly nodded at each other. ”Thank God he brought her back.” Not really caring what happened to the man she so dearly loved. Just thankful that their Rose was safe and sound, like he'd always promised.
She kept remembering how his older, tired face had haunted her. Even after he woke up and rescued them, wielding his sword like some knight in shining amour and saving the day once again, she still couldn't shake off the feeling of the ghost of the man who she'd ran away with. The more weathered, sterner man who had really been a big softie and who'd let her go back in time and save her daddy, made the dreams of little ten year old Rose come true.
It felt exactly like this time. Standing next to this man who was the same, but wasn't. Hearing him speak as he recalled memories of their past together and only managing a polite smile when he'd throw her a wide one and ask her if she remembered. Of course she did, it was him who shouldn't be remembering.
He'd done it before. Wiggled his fingers at her and tried to make her see that everything was the way it had been before, that he was the same nine hundred and some odd year Time Lord who'd taken her to places beyond her imagination and who'd grasped her hand for dear life all through it. And now, having gone through it before, this time she wasn't so easily convinced.
...
But then, it was different from the second time she'd lost him. He hadn't been there when she'd had to watch everything she'd ever want fade away into nothing.
Losing him the first time, she thought she'd never be able to let go. But eventually she did, rather she had to, because there was this man pulling her along into the future and the past and even the present and she had no time for back then. No time to wonder why he'd died for her, what else he'd do for her. Or if he still would, was he that type of man, or was that man gone for good now.
Losing him the second time, she never wanted to let go. She'd fallen in love with him again, and just when she'd told him forever like some daft teenager, it had all been pulled away from her in one big vacuum of the void.
That day, the worst day of her life, dragged on and on. She'd made it drag on, she wouldn't leave that beach even after his image (just an image) had left her and her mother had finally dropped her arms from around Rose's body, scared that her daughter would never let go. They'd all tried to talk to her, Pete and Mickey and her mum, but she'd just sat there in the cold, wet sand while the waves crashed towards her. Finally they sat in the car, having given up, and waited.
Her eyes were tuned to the horizon and all she could hear, even above the curling ocean in front of her, was his voice. ”Rose Tyler, I...” It wouldn't leave her, even hours later, it echoed around her like a song she couldn't get out of her head.
She sat there even after the sun started to sink and fall into the water because if she stood up and got into the car and let Pete drive them home, it was really over. She'd fall asleep against her will and wake up bleary eyed and disoriented, sheets sticking to her body and still half in a dream. Once she realized where she was and what she'd lost she'd cry. The day would be over, the day that he said goodbye would pass, and she would have to move on.
It was after midnight when she finally stumbled up on shaky legs and made her way back to the Jeep.
...
Why was she here.
That's all she could ever think about these days. Why had he left her here? And why back in Pete's World, as she found herself calling this place, involuntarily but that's what always came out of her mouth when referring to their new universe. Why wouldn't he at least take her back to the planet she'd been born on, why make it so goddamn final?
She took it out on him sometimes, the new him. Or, the newer him. She'd sit and stare at him when he wasn't looking. When he was fixing something or eating his afternoon tea biscuits, (the man could eat even more now which she'd never thought was possible), she'd stare daggers at him until he'd look up with a mixture of hurt and hopelessness in his eyes. He'd clear his throat and look away, knowingly giving her an excuse to erase her face and pretend she hadn't been thinking of how much she hated him, him, the proper him, and give him a fake smile that didn't reach her eyes.
But once she hadn't even tried to pretend she wasn't angry. Furious. Frustrated and just so very, very, alone.
“You don't need to be healed.” She said once, her voice full of nothing but bitterness and pulling his attention away from fixing them dinner. He was sweet that way, always had been but never had the time when he was, well, who he'd been before. Still couldn't even boil water the right way, though.
He looked up from the pot he'd been stirring, the stream clouding around his face and causing his forehead to glisten. “No?” His voice was rather teasing, which angered her even more.
“No.” She'd answered sternly, and got up from the table to stalk off to her room. She had her good days and her bad days.
She'd apologize later.
...
Things began to get easier.
Or at least, they wanted to. There were days where she didn't look up into the sky or out her flat window and drift off into a lost world of what if. Where, when, who. She wished she could know. Days that he didn't catch her thinking about him, the other him, unknowingly hurting him in a way only she could. No one else would ever look at him and deny his very existence, only she had that power.
But there were days like that. She'd actually forget everything for a minute and laugh watching him play cars with Tony, getting lost in the motor sounds they made with their mouths.
The day the TARDIS started to grow, she almost felt like nothing had changed at all.
“This is absolutely mad.” She said, examining the larger chunk of coral closely.
He chuckled and stroked her wrist without thinking. “After all we've done, this is mad?”
Her head snapped up and she pulled her hand away. She ignored the hurt in his eyes because all she could think about was how much he sounded like himself just then. All we've done, but you weren't there.
Maybe she was wrong.
...
What finally did her in was hearing the stories of his life without her, or rather, after her. “A.R”, they eventually called it, “After. Rose.”
“Ya know, A.R, I was stuck in 1969 for who can remember how long...”
“I'll tell you something Rose, once, A.R., I got into this fist fight, ya. Don't laugh...”
But it was his voice when he spoke of the times without her that finally made her crawl into his lap and kiss him. His voice that made her realize this was him, the man who'd lived on after her, (After. Rose.), who'd had to go on because that's what he did and he had to do it alone. And she knew exactly how he'd felt, and in that moment she realized he was there with her, always had been, since they'd stood silently on that beach hand in hand, her mum prodding them along to come and hurry before dark. After she'd made what she thought was the biggest mistake of her life at the time. ”I love you.” After so damn long the words had finally been said. The end of the sentence that haunted her dreams had been finished four years too late and she couldn't help but pretend she'd been sent back in time to when she'd first waited with baited breath to hear him say it.
She'd closed her eyes and had pictured the words coming from his mouth back then, manipulating a memory and in that moment it was real and all she could do was kiss him. She was snapped out of her fantasy when she heard the whirring of the TARDIS and felt her stomach drop. It doesn't, it really doesn't....
But hearing his voice, the same voice who'd started speaking so long ago, ”Rose Tyler, I...” and the same voice that had finally spoken what she'd so longed to hear talk about the time he'd spent without her had finally snapped her awake. The man she'd been dreaming of and crying out for in her sleep was right on her bloody couch and all she wanted to do was kiss him and make him better.
So she had. He'd squeaked in response, surprised, his last words still hung on the edge of his lips. She was crying and all she wanted to do was get as close to him as possible because at that moment she realized how hard it had been for him, because it had been just that hard for her. Both times. The first time, getting used to losing the old him and having to accept the updated version, and the second time, walking through the void without a hand to hold just to see his face again.
The pain in her heart was so damn suffocating that all she could do was crush her lips to his over and over, drinking in his breath, feeling it against her skin as proof that he was there and it was him and he was alive. She straddled his lap, gripping his hair in two tight handfuls that pulled and pushed, begging for more, always more because it would never be enough. And she needed this, how she needed it but she hadn't realized it until now.
The first time they had sex that night they fucked, hard and deep and fast until the only two hearts in the room sped up to alarmingly high rates. Her nails scratched his back, his skin, and his fingers dug deep into her arse as he pounded into her over and over, both of them just desperate to feel, feel each other, feel their pain and feel themselves finally break. And heal.
Later, she looked up at his face from her place on the couch, snug between the backrest and his sweaty body, her head on his chest and his arm slung over her. His eyes were closed but there was one tear underneath his left eyelid that betrayed him and told her he'd been staring at her. She reached up and swept her thumb across his lashes, taking the tear with her and licking the salty drop of liquid off her skin as his eyes fluttered open. He smiled at her. She laid her head back down and listened to his one heart, his one chance at life, pumping away beyond flesh and bone, still calming itself. Her lips pressed against his ribs, and she loved him, him, and his heart beat for her.
Then it started all over again, only this time, it was slow. Hands caressing instead of grabbing, tongues licking instead of probing, and thrusts of the hips measured and calculating rather than sloppy and desperate. They learned each other, learned their bodies and their gasps and how he'd moan when she'd kiss his neck and how she'd curl her toes when he'd lick at the warm muscle where her thigh met her center.
When it was over, and he held her from behind in the bed, their bed as it would hence force be known, his arms wrapped tight as a vice around her, they each knew the other's bodies like well worn maps.
And he was there, finally, he was there, and so was she. She fell asleep with the Doctor, her Doctor, really truly forever and always, wrapped around her, and she slept with a smile on her lips.
...
Maybe she had assumed the wrong wound had to be healed. Maybe he really wasn't a pseudo version of her first Doctor, dark and brooding and genocidal. She'd heard him talk of his time without her, had heard the pain in his voice, and listened to the things he'd done without her there to hold him back.
Maybe it was the wound she'd left on his heart, the heart he carried now inside his chest, that she'd been meant to heal.
They both wore scars of loss, but maybe, in this one life they shared, they could wear them together. ”Imagine watching that happen to someone who you--”
But they didn't have to. And for that, she forgave him. For that, she loved him. Every him that could ever be.
...
Their first trip in their new home, the newly grown TARDIS, and all she could do was touch the console. He laughed at her, asked her if she needed some time alone with their new girl, and she stuck out her tongue like old times, gasping and giggling as he caught her lips and sucked her tongue into his mouth.
They ended up christening the console in their own way a few minutes later which is why he ended up apologizing to their new host, zipping his fly and stroking the levers soothingly at the same time.
“Now you need some time alone, I reckon.” She teased. And they continued on like that, taking jabs at each other until he set the coordinates and she took off, rendering them both silent dunces with nothing but wonder on their faces and that old tensing of excitement in their stomachs.
He didn't tell her where they were going. Once they landed, he threw her that look, the look he always threw her, the one that made her hold her breath in anticipation and the one that told her that it was really him in there. The man who'd swept her away and stolen her heart not once, not even twice, but three times. The man who loved her enough to die for her and who loved her enough to let her go, just so she could have the life she'd so craved back again. So he could have that life, even if he didn't get to live it.
He reached for her hand and wiggled those four fingers, not the same fingers he'd wiggled at her before, but still his hand was the symbol for what could be, what was, and what always would be.
The Doctor took Rose's hand and led her outside the TARDIS doors, pulling her along as they both laughed like lunatics in love and stepped into the unknown.
She kept her eyes closed for a minute, and squeezed his hand. Squeezed the hand of the man that she'd lost over and over in one lifetime, but who now stood proudly next to her on some alien planet that they'd no doubt get into terribly fun danger on. He squeezed her hand back and she knew their life would be everything it could be. ”Fantastic."
Rose Tyler took a deep breath and opened her eyes.