DW Fic: Wasted Time Part 2/5
Wasted Time
By: Anne (cookie2697)
Rating: R
Characters/Pairing: Ten/Rose
Beta: lorelaisquared
Setting: Through the Waters of Mars.
Author’s Note: I blame this fic on tardismate, who made an off-comment to me in passing that got my brain ticking. And then lorelaisquared took that teensy-tiny ticking and helped me come up with this. Thanks for the inspiration to you both!
“I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.”
~William Shakespeare, Richard II, 5.5.49
Part 1
~*~*~*~*~* Chapter 2 *~*~*~*~*~
Rose cautiously made her way into the console room to see the Doctor sitting on the jump seat, his legs kicked up on the console, as he waited for her. There was a dark expression on his face, and Rose shivered, wondering what was going on in his head that made him act so erratically. The Doctor she remembered wouldn’t have done what this man had done today.
She thought about how desperately he had screamed as she had flown towards the Void on the day that she had lost him, and that after years of running from his past, he had taken the time to burn up a supernova, just to see her one last time. But he still had restraint then. He hadn’t been willing to chance the fate of the universe just to see her again. So what had happened to him since then that had made him so reckless?
The moment she entered the room, the Doctor jumped to his feet, and immediately moved to take the TARDIS into flight. His actions were almost manic as he ran around the console, throwing levers with a violence that Rose wasn't used to seeing in him. The TARDIS seemed to sense the darkness that had taken hold of him, and whined sickly as she slid into motion. There was a violent shaking this time as the TARDIS took flight and exited the Vortex, and Rose fell into the coral pillar beside her, trying to grasp onto it for support as the TARDIS whirled its way through time and space. Soon the Doctor was slamming the hand break into place and turning to look darkly into Rose's direction.
She crossed her arms over her chest, trying to hide the shiver that filled her as she looked into the inky blackness of the Doctor's angry eyes.
"Check outside," he ordered her, gesturing towards the doors.
Rose slowly crossed the console room, and opened the TARDIS door carefully. It swung open, revealing nothing but emptiness and stars.
"We're in space," Rose told him simply.
"WHAT?" The Doctor burst out, as he ran down the ramp to the doorway. "No, no, no, no, no....I set the coordinates for London!"
"Well, we're not in London," Rose told him tightly. "We're nowhere."
The Doctor peered around her, careful not to touch her, and took in the sight. "You're right," he admitted. "Earth has not been returned to its proper place in time and space."
"And that's not all," Rose realized, as she looked outside and realized with horror that the blackness of space was actually getting darker. "The stars are going out, Doctor. You were wrong. It hasn't been taken care of. The universes are still ending."
"OH, I am thick!" The Doctor shouted out. "Completely thick! Of course the universes are still ending. The metacrisis never happened, which is what I wanted, but because it never happened, HE never came into existence! And without him, Donna never figured out what she needed to do, and without Donna, and, well, with me locked down and helpless, Davros's plan moved forward, the reality bomb was set off, and BOOM!"
"The universe ends?"
"Exactly!"
"But can we stop it?" Rose pressed.
"Oh, just watch me!" The Doctor cried maniacally, as he threw the doors shut and ran back up the TARDIS ramp. "First, I just need to check on something. Make sure that things moved forward as I think they did. We need to ensure that the timeline is still as I remember it. Just a quick detour, back in time. Off we go!"
Another lever slammed, and the TARDIS jerked its way back through the Vortex, into the Medusa Cascade, and exactly one second into the future, where a pull of a lever landed the TARDIS back onto earth. Once the Doctor had slammed the hand break into place, Rose carefully pried open the TARDIS door and peeked outside to see where they had landed.
"We're in a church," Rose whispered.
"Yup," the Doctor agreed cheerfully. "Right where I wanted to be. A perfect landing! Let's go!" He stepped out of the TARDIS doors and locked the door shut behind him before turning to Rose. "Quietly and carefully, though. We don't want to be seen."
"Seen?" Rose asked. "Seen by who?"
"Follow me," The Doctor ordered, as he led her through the pews and out the side door of the old church.
The night was dark and cold, and Rose could see her breath, as they slid their way along the wall on the edge of the church. Rose still had no idea what was going on, but she followed the Doctor's lead, assuming that soon it would all become clear to her. A glimmer of understanding began to form in her mind as the sound of the TARDIS materializing suddenly filled the air.
She watched as a few feet away, near the front of the church, the TARDIS appeared, and the doors opened to reveal the Doctor - her Doctor, the same Doctor standing next to her - stepping out into the cold night air, with Donna Noble following close behind.
Rose looked up at the Doctor in horror, as she realized for the first time that this was not the Doctor she had believed him to be. He was from the future. The future after this very night. The Doctor had crossed his own timeline. By choice.
This moment, the very second that they were living in, was now a weak place in time.
Rose remembered another church, an old church, where she had spent hours barricaded with her father, her mother, and her own baby self, while Reapers clinically disinfected the world outside. The Doctor had nearly died that day, and it was all her fault. Her fault for doing something very similar to what they were doing in this exact moment.
"We shouldn't be here," Rose hissed to the Doctor. "It's not safe."
"Shhhh," he hushed her, and turned to watch.
"Sarah Jane said they were taking the people...but what for?" The Doctor on the street mused. "Think, Donna! When you met Rose in that parallel world, what did she say?"
"Just...the darkness was coming."
"Anything else?"
Donna seemed to think about the question for a moment. "No, nothing else. The darkness was coming, and the stars were going out. She didn't say why. Maybe she didn't know. I think she wanted us to stop it though. She said that it was more than just you, that somehow you and I had to be together to stop it. But why? I'm not important."
"Yes you are," the Doctor standing beside Rose whispered softly. Rose turned to look at him, and was surprised to see sadness in his eyes.
"You lost her," Rose whispered to him, understanding.
"Of course I did. I lost her, just like I lose everybody. But never again. Shhh."
The Doctor hushed her again, and they turned their attention back onto the scene at hand, only to see a Dalek rolling slowly into view.
"IT IS THE DOCTOR...EXTERMINATE!" The Dalek screamed out.
His blaster focused in on the Doctor, but before he could turn to shoot, there was a flash of light and Captain Jack Harkness popped into being, wielding a massive gun in his hand, which he quickly used to take out the lone Dalek.
"Jaaaack!" the Doctor chastised.
"Don't tell me not to shoot a Dalek, Doctor," Jack argued back. "That's all you can do with a Dalek. Kill it or it will kill you."
He only raised an eyebrow at Jack, before turning back to Donna. "Come on you two. It’s not safe out here. Back to the TARDIS, and we'll figure out where we go from here."
The three of them filed quickly into the TARDIS, and Rose began to stand to move on, wondering what the purpose of the trip was, but the Doctor hissed at her to get back down.
"Not yet," he warned her. "Just wait."
They watched silently in the dark as four more Daleks rolled into sight and surrounded the TARDIS.
"TEMPORAL PRISON INITIATED!" one of the Daleks shouted out, and Rose watched in horror as a ring of light surrounded the TARDIS and quickly whipped it up into the sky.
"Wait!" Rose cried out. "No!" But the Doctor covered her mouth with his hand to muffle the cry, the first time they had touched, skin to skin, since they had left his bedroom. It sent an electric surge down her spine.
"Shhhhh!" he insisted. "This is what was meant to happen. I just needed to see, to ensure that things went the same in this timeline as they did in mine. This is a good thing. Now I know what needs to be done in order to save them and stop Davros. So I'm going to pull my hand away, and I need you to be silent until we're back inside the TARDIS. Can you do that?"
Rose nodded, and the Doctor smiled. "Good." He pressed a quick kiss to her forehead and pulled his hand away, noiselessly leading her back into the church and the TARDIS.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
"Are you MAD?" Rose shouted at him the moment the TARDIS had dematerialized. The Doctor tensed and prepared himself for the onslaught of her fury. "You're from the future! You've gone back in time, stolen me from my proper place in the timeline, and all for what? For a quick shag?"
The Doctor physically recoiled at the venom in her voice. "No..." he tried to argue, but she cut him off.
"You can't do that, Doctor! You can't mess with established events! You can’t go back on your own timeline! There are laws about these things! There are consequences! You're the one who taught me that!"
"Well maybe I was wrong!" the Doctor shouted back at her. "The Time Lords are gone, Rose. There's just me! They decided on those laws, but they've never been tested! Maybe just this once I can do something dangerous. Isn't it worth it to break a few dusty old laws if it means that we can be together?"
"It's not worth it if the universe ends."
The Doctor fell silent, as her words began to penetrate. "It won't."
"Not now," Rose agreed. "Because we can stop it. But it would have. The stars were still dying, Doctor. All because you took me away. What did you change?"
"Just...the metacrisis."
"What's a metacrisis?"
The Doctor sighed, and tried to explain. "Before, in the original timeline, I almost died out there on that street. You found me there. Only, because you were there, I didn't see the Dalek until it was too late. Jack wasn't in time to save me, and the Dalek shot me. I should have died."
"But you didn't?"
"I caused the metacrisis instead. You were standing there in the TARDIS crying, begging me not to change." The Doctor hesitated before continuing, worried that he was about to say too much. But it was Rose. He wanted her to understand, and he was sick of being a slave to time, so he pressed on. "I wanted to take you into my arms, comfort you. I just wanted to hold you one more time in these arms. I missed you so much. So I used the regeneration energy to heal myself, and dispensed of it before it could change me fully."
"You only regenerated halfway?” The Doctor nodded. “For me?"
"I wanted to be with you," the Doctor admitted to her. "I was looking at you, standing there, and I didn't want to die. I still don't, for that matter. I was lucky though, because that time I happened to have some spare bits lying around.”
“What?” Rose gaped, not understanding what he meant.
“Remember my hand? Got cut off by the Sycorax on Christmas Day? Jack found it, and eventually returned it to me. That hand got me into a spot of trouble a while back. But because it was on the TARDIS, I was able to release my regeneration energy into the hand. Without that hand, I would have regenerated. But because of what I did, Donna was able to inadvertently use the regeneration energy to create a whole new me. A second Doctor, half-human, because I came from her. They were the ones that saved the universe."
"So because I wasn't there on that street, the meta-thingy never happened, and the second you was never born, so Davros still won?"
"Exactly. But we can stop it."
"What are you going to do?"
The Doctor's head spun as he replayed the events of that day through his mind and tried to formulate a plan.
"First, we have to save the TARDIS. Without the metacrisis, Donna won't be in the TARDIS and it will be destroyed. And if this TARDIS, the future TARDIS, disappears around us, well...then we've got a whole new problem."
"So we have to get onto the Dalek ship?" Rose asked.
"Eventually, yes. But first I'm going to do something clever!" He wiggled his eyebrows at her and turned back to the TARDIS console and began flipping switches. "It's going to be a bit dangerous, hope you don't mind." He looked up at her and grinned. "But I'll make sure you're safe. I promise. Just need to lower the shields, and time this just right!"
The TARDIS hummed with worry as the Doctor cut the power to the shields. His own heart pounded a bit as he realized that he was about to materialize the TARDIS into the middle of the Dalek army without any protection, but he pushed his fear away and focused on the task at hand.
His scanners tracked the TARDIS to its place on the deck of the Dalek Crucible. He watched, and waited, his fingers at the ready, until it started to move, quickly dropping through the levels of the Dalek Crucible towards its core. The moment it landed, buried in the Z-Neutrino energy core, the Doctor's fingers began to fly, locking his own TARDIS on the coordinates of the past TARDIS, and slamming the TARDIS into motion.
"Hold on!" he shouted to Rose, as the TARDIS began to shake violently. The temperature rose almost instantly, and a grate popped up on the far side of the TARDIS as flames began to pour into the ship. There was a disorienting blurriness to the ship, as his TARDIS slipped into being alongside the past TARDIS, and they reformed around each other, together, sliding into one ship, one shared point in time and space.
The Doctor watched with pride as the two consoles slid together into one, and he tried not to worry as coral panels burst from the heat, instead focusing on his fingers flying across the joint console controls as he negotiated the TARDIS out of the crucible core, and safely back into the Medusa Cascade.
"What the hell did you just do?" Rose cried out, once the TARDIS was steady again.
"Oh, I just lowered the shields of our TARDIS and bumped us right into the other TARDIS. Both of them, well, being the same TARDIS, actually joined with one another. Merged, so that right here, right now, the two of them will act as one. It would have been an easier process, but the past TARDIS was in the middle of being destroyed by the Daleks, burned alive in a core of Z-Neutrino energy. So, basically, we just saved her life, didn't we old girl?"
He stroked the TARDIS happily, pleased that his theory had gone as planned and the TARDIS was safe, alive, and, well, so were he and Rose.
He turned to Rose, who was watching him nervously, and he couldn't resist it for another moment. Rose was there. In the TARDIS. The metacrisis hadn't happened and Donna would be safe. The TARDIS was saved from its destruction. Everything was going according to plan, and he just needed to express his excitement.
So he kissed her. Again. Rose was slower in responding this time, more hesitant. A voice in the back of his mind chided him, reminded him that he was acting unlike himself and probably scaring her half to death. But he loved Rose. He wanted to show her how much he loved her again and again.
He pulled back from the kiss and cupped her face in his hand, looking her closely in the eye. "I made a mistake, Rose, and I'm sorry. You were right to be angry with me. You were right about everything, just like you always are. But we are going to fix this. I promise you. We will fix this and everything will be okay."
Rose nodded. "Okay."
"The hard part is over now. We're lucky going forward because we're stepping into roles that are unfilled in this timeline. In my timeline, Donna and the other Doctor appeared to save the world while you and I were trapped by Davros. Now, they're trapped and we get to save the day. And since I've already experienced it once, I know exactly what we need to do."
By: Anne (cookie2697)
Rating: R
Characters/Pairing: Ten/Rose
Beta: lorelaisquared
Setting: Through the Waters of Mars.
Author’s Note: I blame this fic on tardismate, who made an off-comment to me in passing that got my brain ticking. And then lorelaisquared took that teensy-tiny ticking and helped me come up with this. Thanks for the inspiration to you both!
“I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.”
~William Shakespeare, Richard II, 5.5.49
Part 1
~*~*~*~*~* Chapter 2 *~*~*~*~*~
Rose cautiously made her way into the console room to see the Doctor sitting on the jump seat, his legs kicked up on the console, as he waited for her. There was a dark expression on his face, and Rose shivered, wondering what was going on in his head that made him act so erratically. The Doctor she remembered wouldn’t have done what this man had done today.
She thought about how desperately he had screamed as she had flown towards the Void on the day that she had lost him, and that after years of running from his past, he had taken the time to burn up a supernova, just to see her one last time. But he still had restraint then. He hadn’t been willing to chance the fate of the universe just to see her again. So what had happened to him since then that had made him so reckless?
The moment she entered the room, the Doctor jumped to his feet, and immediately moved to take the TARDIS into flight. His actions were almost manic as he ran around the console, throwing levers with a violence that Rose wasn't used to seeing in him. The TARDIS seemed to sense the darkness that had taken hold of him, and whined sickly as she slid into motion. There was a violent shaking this time as the TARDIS took flight and exited the Vortex, and Rose fell into the coral pillar beside her, trying to grasp onto it for support as the TARDIS whirled its way through time and space. Soon the Doctor was slamming the hand break into place and turning to look darkly into Rose's direction.
She crossed her arms over her chest, trying to hide the shiver that filled her as she looked into the inky blackness of the Doctor's angry eyes.
"Check outside," he ordered her, gesturing towards the doors.
Rose slowly crossed the console room, and opened the TARDIS door carefully. It swung open, revealing nothing but emptiness and stars.
"We're in space," Rose told him simply.
"WHAT?" The Doctor burst out, as he ran down the ramp to the doorway. "No, no, no, no, no....I set the coordinates for London!"
"Well, we're not in London," Rose told him tightly. "We're nowhere."
The Doctor peered around her, careful not to touch her, and took in the sight. "You're right," he admitted. "Earth has not been returned to its proper place in time and space."
"And that's not all," Rose realized, as she looked outside and realized with horror that the blackness of space was actually getting darker. "The stars are going out, Doctor. You were wrong. It hasn't been taken care of. The universes are still ending."
"OH, I am thick!" The Doctor shouted out. "Completely thick! Of course the universes are still ending. The metacrisis never happened, which is what I wanted, but because it never happened, HE never came into existence! And without him, Donna never figured out what she needed to do, and without Donna, and, well, with me locked down and helpless, Davros's plan moved forward, the reality bomb was set off, and BOOM!"
"The universe ends?"
"Exactly!"
"But can we stop it?" Rose pressed.
"Oh, just watch me!" The Doctor cried maniacally, as he threw the doors shut and ran back up the TARDIS ramp. "First, I just need to check on something. Make sure that things moved forward as I think they did. We need to ensure that the timeline is still as I remember it. Just a quick detour, back in time. Off we go!"
Another lever slammed, and the TARDIS jerked its way back through the Vortex, into the Medusa Cascade, and exactly one second into the future, where a pull of a lever landed the TARDIS back onto earth. Once the Doctor had slammed the hand break into place, Rose carefully pried open the TARDIS door and peeked outside to see where they had landed.
"We're in a church," Rose whispered.
"Yup," the Doctor agreed cheerfully. "Right where I wanted to be. A perfect landing! Let's go!" He stepped out of the TARDIS doors and locked the door shut behind him before turning to Rose. "Quietly and carefully, though. We don't want to be seen."
"Seen?" Rose asked. "Seen by who?"
"Follow me," The Doctor ordered, as he led her through the pews and out the side door of the old church.
The night was dark and cold, and Rose could see her breath, as they slid their way along the wall on the edge of the church. Rose still had no idea what was going on, but she followed the Doctor's lead, assuming that soon it would all become clear to her. A glimmer of understanding began to form in her mind as the sound of the TARDIS materializing suddenly filled the air.
She watched as a few feet away, near the front of the church, the TARDIS appeared, and the doors opened to reveal the Doctor - her Doctor, the same Doctor standing next to her - stepping out into the cold night air, with Donna Noble following close behind.
Rose looked up at the Doctor in horror, as she realized for the first time that this was not the Doctor she had believed him to be. He was from the future. The future after this very night. The Doctor had crossed his own timeline. By choice.
This moment, the very second that they were living in, was now a weak place in time.
Rose remembered another church, an old church, where she had spent hours barricaded with her father, her mother, and her own baby self, while Reapers clinically disinfected the world outside. The Doctor had nearly died that day, and it was all her fault. Her fault for doing something very similar to what they were doing in this exact moment.
"We shouldn't be here," Rose hissed to the Doctor. "It's not safe."
"Shhhh," he hushed her, and turned to watch.
"Sarah Jane said they were taking the people...but what for?" The Doctor on the street mused. "Think, Donna! When you met Rose in that parallel world, what did she say?"
"Just...the darkness was coming."
"Anything else?"
Donna seemed to think about the question for a moment. "No, nothing else. The darkness was coming, and the stars were going out. She didn't say why. Maybe she didn't know. I think she wanted us to stop it though. She said that it was more than just you, that somehow you and I had to be together to stop it. But why? I'm not important."
"Yes you are," the Doctor standing beside Rose whispered softly. Rose turned to look at him, and was surprised to see sadness in his eyes.
"You lost her," Rose whispered to him, understanding.
"Of course I did. I lost her, just like I lose everybody. But never again. Shhh."
The Doctor hushed her again, and they turned their attention back onto the scene at hand, only to see a Dalek rolling slowly into view.
"IT IS THE DOCTOR...EXTERMINATE!" The Dalek screamed out.
His blaster focused in on the Doctor, but before he could turn to shoot, there was a flash of light and Captain Jack Harkness popped into being, wielding a massive gun in his hand, which he quickly used to take out the lone Dalek.
"Jaaaack!" the Doctor chastised.
"Don't tell me not to shoot a Dalek, Doctor," Jack argued back. "That's all you can do with a Dalek. Kill it or it will kill you."
He only raised an eyebrow at Jack, before turning back to Donna. "Come on you two. It’s not safe out here. Back to the TARDIS, and we'll figure out where we go from here."
The three of them filed quickly into the TARDIS, and Rose began to stand to move on, wondering what the purpose of the trip was, but the Doctor hissed at her to get back down.
"Not yet," he warned her. "Just wait."
They watched silently in the dark as four more Daleks rolled into sight and surrounded the TARDIS.
"TEMPORAL PRISON INITIATED!" one of the Daleks shouted out, and Rose watched in horror as a ring of light surrounded the TARDIS and quickly whipped it up into the sky.
"Wait!" Rose cried out. "No!" But the Doctor covered her mouth with his hand to muffle the cry, the first time they had touched, skin to skin, since they had left his bedroom. It sent an electric surge down her spine.
"Shhhhh!" he insisted. "This is what was meant to happen. I just needed to see, to ensure that things went the same in this timeline as they did in mine. This is a good thing. Now I know what needs to be done in order to save them and stop Davros. So I'm going to pull my hand away, and I need you to be silent until we're back inside the TARDIS. Can you do that?"
Rose nodded, and the Doctor smiled. "Good." He pressed a quick kiss to her forehead and pulled his hand away, noiselessly leading her back into the church and the TARDIS.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
"Are you MAD?" Rose shouted at him the moment the TARDIS had dematerialized. The Doctor tensed and prepared himself for the onslaught of her fury. "You're from the future! You've gone back in time, stolen me from my proper place in the timeline, and all for what? For a quick shag?"
The Doctor physically recoiled at the venom in her voice. "No..." he tried to argue, but she cut him off.
"You can't do that, Doctor! You can't mess with established events! You can’t go back on your own timeline! There are laws about these things! There are consequences! You're the one who taught me that!"
"Well maybe I was wrong!" the Doctor shouted back at her. "The Time Lords are gone, Rose. There's just me! They decided on those laws, but they've never been tested! Maybe just this once I can do something dangerous. Isn't it worth it to break a few dusty old laws if it means that we can be together?"
"It's not worth it if the universe ends."
The Doctor fell silent, as her words began to penetrate. "It won't."
"Not now," Rose agreed. "Because we can stop it. But it would have. The stars were still dying, Doctor. All because you took me away. What did you change?"
"Just...the metacrisis."
"What's a metacrisis?"
The Doctor sighed, and tried to explain. "Before, in the original timeline, I almost died out there on that street. You found me there. Only, because you were there, I didn't see the Dalek until it was too late. Jack wasn't in time to save me, and the Dalek shot me. I should have died."
"But you didn't?"
"I caused the metacrisis instead. You were standing there in the TARDIS crying, begging me not to change." The Doctor hesitated before continuing, worried that he was about to say too much. But it was Rose. He wanted her to understand, and he was sick of being a slave to time, so he pressed on. "I wanted to take you into my arms, comfort you. I just wanted to hold you one more time in these arms. I missed you so much. So I used the regeneration energy to heal myself, and dispensed of it before it could change me fully."
"You only regenerated halfway?” The Doctor nodded. “For me?"
"I wanted to be with you," the Doctor admitted to her. "I was looking at you, standing there, and I didn't want to die. I still don't, for that matter. I was lucky though, because that time I happened to have some spare bits lying around.”
“What?” Rose gaped, not understanding what he meant.
“Remember my hand? Got cut off by the Sycorax on Christmas Day? Jack found it, and eventually returned it to me. That hand got me into a spot of trouble a while back. But because it was on the TARDIS, I was able to release my regeneration energy into the hand. Without that hand, I would have regenerated. But because of what I did, Donna was able to inadvertently use the regeneration energy to create a whole new me. A second Doctor, half-human, because I came from her. They were the ones that saved the universe."
"So because I wasn't there on that street, the meta-thingy never happened, and the second you was never born, so Davros still won?"
"Exactly. But we can stop it."
"What are you going to do?"
The Doctor's head spun as he replayed the events of that day through his mind and tried to formulate a plan.
"First, we have to save the TARDIS. Without the metacrisis, Donna won't be in the TARDIS and it will be destroyed. And if this TARDIS, the future TARDIS, disappears around us, well...then we've got a whole new problem."
"So we have to get onto the Dalek ship?" Rose asked.
"Eventually, yes. But first I'm going to do something clever!" He wiggled his eyebrows at her and turned back to the TARDIS console and began flipping switches. "It's going to be a bit dangerous, hope you don't mind." He looked up at her and grinned. "But I'll make sure you're safe. I promise. Just need to lower the shields, and time this just right!"
The TARDIS hummed with worry as the Doctor cut the power to the shields. His own heart pounded a bit as he realized that he was about to materialize the TARDIS into the middle of the Dalek army without any protection, but he pushed his fear away and focused on the task at hand.
His scanners tracked the TARDIS to its place on the deck of the Dalek Crucible. He watched, and waited, his fingers at the ready, until it started to move, quickly dropping through the levels of the Dalek Crucible towards its core. The moment it landed, buried in the Z-Neutrino energy core, the Doctor's fingers began to fly, locking his own TARDIS on the coordinates of the past TARDIS, and slamming the TARDIS into motion.
"Hold on!" he shouted to Rose, as the TARDIS began to shake violently. The temperature rose almost instantly, and a grate popped up on the far side of the TARDIS as flames began to pour into the ship. There was a disorienting blurriness to the ship, as his TARDIS slipped into being alongside the past TARDIS, and they reformed around each other, together, sliding into one ship, one shared point in time and space.
The Doctor watched with pride as the two consoles slid together into one, and he tried not to worry as coral panels burst from the heat, instead focusing on his fingers flying across the joint console controls as he negotiated the TARDIS out of the crucible core, and safely back into the Medusa Cascade.
"What the hell did you just do?" Rose cried out, once the TARDIS was steady again.
"Oh, I just lowered the shields of our TARDIS and bumped us right into the other TARDIS. Both of them, well, being the same TARDIS, actually joined with one another. Merged, so that right here, right now, the two of them will act as one. It would have been an easier process, but the past TARDIS was in the middle of being destroyed by the Daleks, burned alive in a core of Z-Neutrino energy. So, basically, we just saved her life, didn't we old girl?"
He stroked the TARDIS happily, pleased that his theory had gone as planned and the TARDIS was safe, alive, and, well, so were he and Rose.
He turned to Rose, who was watching him nervously, and he couldn't resist it for another moment. Rose was there. In the TARDIS. The metacrisis hadn't happened and Donna would be safe. The TARDIS was saved from its destruction. Everything was going according to plan, and he just needed to express his excitement.
So he kissed her. Again. Rose was slower in responding this time, more hesitant. A voice in the back of his mind chided him, reminded him that he was acting unlike himself and probably scaring her half to death. But he loved Rose. He wanted to show her how much he loved her again and again.
He pulled back from the kiss and cupped her face in his hand, looking her closely in the eye. "I made a mistake, Rose, and I'm sorry. You were right to be angry with me. You were right about everything, just like you always are. But we are going to fix this. I promise you. We will fix this and everything will be okay."
Rose nodded. "Okay."
"The hard part is over now. We're lucky going forward because we're stepping into roles that are unfilled in this timeline. In my timeline, Donna and the other Doctor appeared to save the world while you and I were trapped by Davros. Now, they're trapped and we get to save the day. And since I've already experienced it once, I know exactly what we need to do."