Fic: The Ultimate Betrayal (3/3)
Title: The Ultimate Betrayal
Author: Gillian Taylor
Rating: PG
Characters: Ninth Doctor, Rose Tyler, Romana II
Summary: When the foundations of his ninth life are shattered, what is left?
Spoilers: Dalek, The Long Game, and ‘Someone to Watch Over Me’
Disclaimer: Don't own them. I just like playing with them...a lot.
Archive: Sure, just let me know.
A/N: So, blame wendymr on this one. She wanted a sequel to ‘Someone To Watch Over Me’ and lo and behold, here it is. :) However, as a warning, Romana does not come across as a very nice character in this. Thanks to my lovely betas wendymr and nnwest .
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three:
He vaguely wondered if this was what madness was like.
For one crystalline second, everything seemed so clear. Gallifrey was destroyed, but it wasn't. Romana was dead, but she lived. He had killed them all with a press of a button; however, Death had denied them all. His life, his ninth life, was a lie. The foundations upon which he was built, the horrors of war, the depths of despair, and the memory of a better time were merely falsehoods. He had been manipulated, played like a puppet upon Romana's string and for what?
What was it all for?
"Doctor?"
Rose. Betrayed both by his memories and his people, he clung to the shreds of his sanity by the tiniest thread. He knew now, had always known, that that thread of his existence both began and ended with her. He had been alone in the universe until her. Now, he was surrounded by his people. Their mindless babble echoed painfully in his skull until he wished to scream for silence. He missed being alone in his mind, even though before it had meant Gallifrey was gone. What did that say about him when he wished for the facade to return?
"Rose." He smiled faintly at her, though the expression failed to touch his eyes.
She perched on the edge of the bed that the healers insisted he lay upon while they fussed over him. They both ignored the looks exchanged by the healers, especially since they had both fought against being separated from one another. He did not wish her to wander about his homeworld alone, especially given many of the silly prejudices harboured by many of the Time Lords. She was a human, a silly ape, but she was his silly ape.
"Are you..." Her face echoed her emotions easily. He could read the uncertainty she felt; after all, what did one say to someone who suddenly found out that they hadn't destroyed the world?
Sometimes, truth was what mattered. He did not feel like hiding anymore, not now. Not after this. "Not really. 'S not like I was expectin' to wake up this mornin' and find out that I had been livin' a lie for the past year."
"It wasn't a lie," Rose insisted. "Jus' the part where you thought you were alone in the universe an’ that you killed your people. An' that's not your fault."
"Isn't it, though? Why else would they keep themselves hidden away?" His eyes flashed with barely hidden anger. "They're hypocrites, the lot of them. They asked for my help. I had one choice, an' only one available to me. It was them or the universe, an' I picked the universe. I'd even do it again. So how isn't it my fault?"
"It isn't your fault 'cause I don't think that it was somethin' the majority of the people around here wanted. I 'eard some of the doctors talkin'. You're practically a legend around here."
His smile was laced with bitterness. "A legend. Me? I spent most of my life playin' up being the rebel. Never could tie me down, not even when they made me President. That's not legendary."
"It is to the people you've helped." Rose touched his hand gently.
All it took was a twist of his hand and once again their fingers were entwined. He could barely admit to himself that he needed that contact, especially after the tumultuous existence his life had suddenly become. "Maybe." He preferred not being noticed, fading into the background, and letting history resume its course after some fine tuning of the Doctor-ish kind. He was not legendary. He was just...the Doctor. Nothing more. Nothing less.
A cleared throat caused them both to look toward the door. Ashken straightened his back and nodded at them both, but the Doctor could not fail to notice that the Castellan refused to meet his eyes. "Romana will see you now."
The Doctor's expression grew cold. It was time for answers.
Her hearts thudded dully within her chest as she fought to retain her composure. She knew that facing him again, really facing him, would be difficult. This was what he had reduced her to - the two-bit villain to his white knight. Romana shook her head. No. She was not the villain here. She had her reasons. She need not explain anything. Not to him. Especially not to him. He wasn't even her Doctor anymore. He was something else entirely.
She was the Lord President of Gallifrey. She could do this. He held no power over her. With her regal facade in place, she watched the door open. Romana barely heard Ashken's introductions because her eyes were upon his. In a single second, her self-assurances threatened to crumple at the sight of the naked emotions in his eyes. Betrayal and rage warred for dominance in his blue eyes and she forced herself to not draw in a steadying breath. She could do this.
Before she could do more than open her mouth, the Doctor spoke. His deadened tone spoke far more eloquently of his pain than any shout. "Why?"
"I do not have to answer you, Doctor." She could do this. She could be haughty. She could be above these petty considerations. She was above them.
"Yes, you do. One year, Romana. For one whole year I suffered. I thought I had killed you. I mourned you! An' what do I find? It was all some cosmic joke? Let's laugh at the Doctor, the silly bloke - he thought he had killed us! Bet you had a laugh, you did."
"It wasn't like that." She shook her head in denial.
"No? Then what was it like, Romana? 'Cause what I don't get is why you, who were my friend, decided to do this."
She could not meet his eyes, dodging them and the truth that burned her. Why did she decide to do it? Her eyes were caught by the equally furious gaze of the Doctor's companion. They demanded answers, answers that she had no desire to give. "There were other considerations..." Some defence she was mounting. Some excuse. Where had the Lord President gone? Was this what the Doctor had reduced her to?
"Considerations? You don't even know what I went through, Romana. You don't know what I have done since I watched you burn."
"I know, all right? I know what you did." Romana folded her arms before her in an unconscious defencive posture. "I saw you."
"You what?" The Doctor's tone turned deadly.
"I watched you. I watched you torture that Dalek. I watched you do it! You have the audacity to point at me as a guilty party after what you've done?"
He barked out a laugh. "After what I've done? I didn't make you think that I was dead! I didn't make you think that you were the last! I didn’t betray you!"
"You did!" She shouted, losing control of her emotions. "You did!"
He blinked. "I what?"
Typical. It was so typical of him to not notice. He was oblivious before. Why had she thought he would change now? "You..." She didn't complete the thought, instead she piled every last bit of the frustration she was feeling into a barely stifled scream.
"Me? What? What is that supposed to mean, Romana?"
She stared at the Seal of Rassilon, her eyes tracing its familiar curves as she attempted to calm herself. This was not like her. "I made a decision, Doctor. That is all you need to know."
"No it isn't! You don't get to be evasive. You don't get that luxury. Not after what you put me through!" The Doctor's expression was thunderous.
"Yes, I do! I'm the President of..."
The Doctor cut her off. "Hail to the Chief? It's a title, Romana. Not a shield. What is this? What have you become?"
"It's not what I've become. It's what you've become!" Romana returned, whirling to face him.
"I know what this is," Rose said, striding forward to poke her finger accusingly into Romana's chest. "You love 'im. Or used to. An' 'cause he didn't return it, you did...what? You wanted to punish 'im? Make 'im feel what you felt? Make him feel betrayed?"
"No! Yes! No! That's not it!" How could a young human read her so well? How could a girl cause her fabled composure to falter?
"No?" Rose continued, a self-satisfied smile playing about her lips. "I think it is. Your reaction jus' confirms it."
From behind the girl, Romana could see the Doctor's eyes widen in shock before narrowing again in anger. He’d never realised. She should have known. Even when the answer was before his eyes he was sometimes the most blind of them all. "It's not..."
"Not simple, is it?" Rose asked before returning to the Doctor's side.
Romana watched with a pang of jealousy as they held hands. That he would chose a human over... She blinked. No, it couldn't be. Her actions. Everything that she had done since the end of the War was defined by one event in her life. That event was the moment that the Doctor had told her goodbye. She raised one finely manicured hand to her lips, her eyes widened in horror. "Oh, Ashken, what have I done?" The Doctor's blue eyes pierced her own, the force of his rage almost physical in its effect.
Ashken shook his head sadly. "There are consequences to every action, Madam President."
"Doctor, I'm..." Romana began, but he cut her off.
"No, don't apologise. There is nothing you can say that will let me forgive you for this. I watched you burn. I pushed the button. I grieved for you. And what do I find? It was all a lie. A nice little lie that you created all because of what? Revenge? Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned? What?" He stepped forward, his lanky form towering over her own.
She fought the urge to step back. "You were going to push the button, Doctor! You would've killed us. We had to..."
"You had to what? Hide? Sit in your lofty tower and grin in triumph as you watched me? You watched me regenerate. You watched me meet Rose. You watched me grieve for you. You watched and yet you did nothing."
"I couldn't. I shouldn't. No." Romana shook her head, brushing back her long hair with an impatient gesture.
The Doctor reached for his companion's hand, squeezing it tightly as he smiled bitterly. "I thought Gallifrey was gone. But y'know what? It almost was better that way. Because then my image of this place was better. My memories of you were better. You've ruined that for me, Romana. An' now, this is the end. I was considered a rogue before, but this time I'm doin' it for real. I give up my citizenship of Gallifrey. I am no longer one of you, because to me, you don't exist."
"Doctor, you can't..." Ashken tried and stepped back as the Doctor turned his cold gaze to him.
"I can do whatever I want, Ashken. Goodbye, Romana. And don't expect me to come runnin' to your rescue. C'mon, Rose, it's time to go home."
She stood in stunned silence as the leather clad Doctor turned his back upon her and his past. There were so many things that she should say. There were so many things that must be said. However, she knew that none of them would have any effect. Ashken had been right. By keeping their existence from him for so long, he had changed in ways that even she could not predict. He was not the Doctor she knew. He was something entirely different. She had created him. And now he was gone.
"I'm sorry," she whispered as the familiar grinding howl of the TARDIS' dematerialisation echoed through the halls of the Panopticon.
He would never know. He would never know of her sorrow. He would never know of her regret. The mask of the Lady President of Gallifrey crumpled to reveal the aching woman beneath. She had done him wrong, and in so doing she had lost her planet's greatest champion. "What have I done?" she asked again, but no one answered. Even Ashken had gone, returning to his work as Castellan and leaving her with her memories.
So this, she realised, was what the Doctor must have felt. Despite her presence on a planet teeming with life or the low murmur of her people's voices within her mind, Romana had never felt more alone.
Epilogue:
'You can never go home again.'
The words played over in his mind as he dangled his legs off the edge of the cliff, his eyes trained upon a distant point though unseeing of the vista before him. The vast Yllsian ocean spread out before him, its amber hued waters crashing against the rocks hundreds of metres below. The roar of the ocean, the strange triple-toned cry of the sea birds, and the brush of a playful zephyr against his cheeks all combined into a cacophony of sound that all but pounded in his ears. However, his thoughts were not upon the sea. Instead they were trained inward to a time when 'home' meant more than a police public call box.
Home had meant family. Even though he was estranged from the Cousins at Lungbarrow it had still been his home. He had had roots, a place to go when he was ready to hang up his metaphorical hat from his life of adventure and excitement. Home had meant a planet, orbiting a distant sun, covered in purple hued grasses and bursts of meteors dancing across the sky at night. Home had meant a granddaughter, laughing her way through life - a bright spark in his existence that was tragically quenched when his life had been shattered. He could never go home again...because the home he remembered was not the home of fact.
Romana had destroyed the illusion with harsh reality. In his tortured mind, he had elevated his memories of Gallifrey upon a pedestal. The people and his one-time friends were fond recollections that could either be a soothing balm or a piercing blade to his tortured psyche. Now, the pedestal was shattered and he was left with nothing but the fractured pieces. The Doctor heaved a sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose with one of his hands while the other lay haphazardly across his lap.
He could never go home again, because the illusion wasn't real.
The scrape of a shoe against gravel brought a sudden smile to his face, dismissing his melancholic thoughts with surprising ease. "Cosmic thoughts?" Rose's voice sounded hesitant, as if she were afraid of how he might answer her as she all but collapsed next to him. Their knees barely brushed each other, but he noticed her every movement.
"Hardly," he replied. "Actually, I was thinkin' about what happened."
She drew in a startled breath and he tilted his head so he could see her expression. "I'm sorry 'bout that, Doctor. I wish there was somethin' I could do. Or can do."
He grasped her hand in his own and gave it a slight squeeze. "You already are."
"I am?"
"Yeah, you're here." The Doctor smiled brilliantly at her. "'Sides, the Time Lords always were the stuffiest stuffed shirts in the cosmos. Don't need 'em. Not really. It's jus' nice knowing that I'm not the last."
"And Romana?"
A shadow of pain crossed his face. "She's the stuffiest one of the lot."
Rose sighed, staring at their entwined fingers. "I'm sorry."
"Not your fault she's a git." He shrugged.
She smiled faintly. "True. So what now?"
"Hmmm?"
"'Nother adventure? 'Nother holiday? What's next?"
"I'd say..." He paused, considering the options, before he grinned. "Let's be surprised."
"Sounds good to me. Let's go home, Doctor."
He smiled at her as he shook his head. "I'm already home, Rose."
She looked faintly confused as she looked into his eyes.
"I'm with you."
~*FIN*~
xposted everywhere: dark_aegis, time_and_chips, dwfiction
Author: Gillian Taylor
Rating: PG
Characters: Ninth Doctor, Rose Tyler, Romana II
Summary: When the foundations of his ninth life are shattered, what is left?
Spoilers: Dalek, The Long Game, and ‘Someone to Watch Over Me’
Disclaimer: Don't own them. I just like playing with them...a lot.
Archive: Sure, just let me know.
A/N: So, blame wendymr on this one. She wanted a sequel to ‘Someone To Watch Over Me’ and lo and behold, here it is. :) However, as a warning, Romana does not come across as a very nice character in this. Thanks to my lovely betas wendymr and nnwest .
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three:
He vaguely wondered if this was what madness was like.
For one crystalline second, everything seemed so clear. Gallifrey was destroyed, but it wasn't. Romana was dead, but she lived. He had killed them all with a press of a button; however, Death had denied them all. His life, his ninth life, was a lie. The foundations upon which he was built, the horrors of war, the depths of despair, and the memory of a better time were merely falsehoods. He had been manipulated, played like a puppet upon Romana's string and for what?
What was it all for?
"Doctor?"
Rose. Betrayed both by his memories and his people, he clung to the shreds of his sanity by the tiniest thread. He knew now, had always known, that that thread of his existence both began and ended with her. He had been alone in the universe until her. Now, he was surrounded by his people. Their mindless babble echoed painfully in his skull until he wished to scream for silence. He missed being alone in his mind, even though before it had meant Gallifrey was gone. What did that say about him when he wished for the facade to return?
"Rose." He smiled faintly at her, though the expression failed to touch his eyes.
She perched on the edge of the bed that the healers insisted he lay upon while they fussed over him. They both ignored the looks exchanged by the healers, especially since they had both fought against being separated from one another. He did not wish her to wander about his homeworld alone, especially given many of the silly prejudices harboured by many of the Time Lords. She was a human, a silly ape, but she was his silly ape.
"Are you..." Her face echoed her emotions easily. He could read the uncertainty she felt; after all, what did one say to someone who suddenly found out that they hadn't destroyed the world?
Sometimes, truth was what mattered. He did not feel like hiding anymore, not now. Not after this. "Not really. 'S not like I was expectin' to wake up this mornin' and find out that I had been livin' a lie for the past year."
"It wasn't a lie," Rose insisted. "Jus' the part where you thought you were alone in the universe an’ that you killed your people. An' that's not your fault."
"Isn't it, though? Why else would they keep themselves hidden away?" His eyes flashed with barely hidden anger. "They're hypocrites, the lot of them. They asked for my help. I had one choice, an' only one available to me. It was them or the universe, an' I picked the universe. I'd even do it again. So how isn't it my fault?"
"It isn't your fault 'cause I don't think that it was somethin' the majority of the people around here wanted. I 'eard some of the doctors talkin'. You're practically a legend around here."
His smile was laced with bitterness. "A legend. Me? I spent most of my life playin' up being the rebel. Never could tie me down, not even when they made me President. That's not legendary."
"It is to the people you've helped." Rose touched his hand gently.
All it took was a twist of his hand and once again their fingers were entwined. He could barely admit to himself that he needed that contact, especially after the tumultuous existence his life had suddenly become. "Maybe." He preferred not being noticed, fading into the background, and letting history resume its course after some fine tuning of the Doctor-ish kind. He was not legendary. He was just...the Doctor. Nothing more. Nothing less.
A cleared throat caused them both to look toward the door. Ashken straightened his back and nodded at them both, but the Doctor could not fail to notice that the Castellan refused to meet his eyes. "Romana will see you now."
The Doctor's expression grew cold. It was time for answers.
Her hearts thudded dully within her chest as she fought to retain her composure. She knew that facing him again, really facing him, would be difficult. This was what he had reduced her to - the two-bit villain to his white knight. Romana shook her head. No. She was not the villain here. She had her reasons. She need not explain anything. Not to him. Especially not to him. He wasn't even her Doctor anymore. He was something else entirely.
She was the Lord President of Gallifrey. She could do this. He held no power over her. With her regal facade in place, she watched the door open. Romana barely heard Ashken's introductions because her eyes were upon his. In a single second, her self-assurances threatened to crumple at the sight of the naked emotions in his eyes. Betrayal and rage warred for dominance in his blue eyes and she forced herself to not draw in a steadying breath. She could do this.
Before she could do more than open her mouth, the Doctor spoke. His deadened tone spoke far more eloquently of his pain than any shout. "Why?"
"I do not have to answer you, Doctor." She could do this. She could be haughty. She could be above these petty considerations. She was above them.
"Yes, you do. One year, Romana. For one whole year I suffered. I thought I had killed you. I mourned you! An' what do I find? It was all some cosmic joke? Let's laugh at the Doctor, the silly bloke - he thought he had killed us! Bet you had a laugh, you did."
"It wasn't like that." She shook her head in denial.
"No? Then what was it like, Romana? 'Cause what I don't get is why you, who were my friend, decided to do this."
She could not meet his eyes, dodging them and the truth that burned her. Why did she decide to do it? Her eyes were caught by the equally furious gaze of the Doctor's companion. They demanded answers, answers that she had no desire to give. "There were other considerations..." Some defence she was mounting. Some excuse. Where had the Lord President gone? Was this what the Doctor had reduced her to?
"Considerations? You don't even know what I went through, Romana. You don't know what I have done since I watched you burn."
"I know, all right? I know what you did." Romana folded her arms before her in an unconscious defencive posture. "I saw you."
"You what?" The Doctor's tone turned deadly.
"I watched you. I watched you torture that Dalek. I watched you do it! You have the audacity to point at me as a guilty party after what you've done?"
He barked out a laugh. "After what I've done? I didn't make you think that I was dead! I didn't make you think that you were the last! I didn’t betray you!"
"You did!" She shouted, losing control of her emotions. "You did!"
He blinked. "I what?"
Typical. It was so typical of him to not notice. He was oblivious before. Why had she thought he would change now? "You..." She didn't complete the thought, instead she piled every last bit of the frustration she was feeling into a barely stifled scream.
"Me? What? What is that supposed to mean, Romana?"
She stared at the Seal of Rassilon, her eyes tracing its familiar curves as she attempted to calm herself. This was not like her. "I made a decision, Doctor. That is all you need to know."
"No it isn't! You don't get to be evasive. You don't get that luxury. Not after what you put me through!" The Doctor's expression was thunderous.
"Yes, I do! I'm the President of..."
The Doctor cut her off. "Hail to the Chief? It's a title, Romana. Not a shield. What is this? What have you become?"
"It's not what I've become. It's what you've become!" Romana returned, whirling to face him.
"I know what this is," Rose said, striding forward to poke her finger accusingly into Romana's chest. "You love 'im. Or used to. An' 'cause he didn't return it, you did...what? You wanted to punish 'im? Make 'im feel what you felt? Make him feel betrayed?"
"No! Yes! No! That's not it!" How could a young human read her so well? How could a girl cause her fabled composure to falter?
"No?" Rose continued, a self-satisfied smile playing about her lips. "I think it is. Your reaction jus' confirms it."
From behind the girl, Romana could see the Doctor's eyes widen in shock before narrowing again in anger. He’d never realised. She should have known. Even when the answer was before his eyes he was sometimes the most blind of them all. "It's not..."
"Not simple, is it?" Rose asked before returning to the Doctor's side.
Romana watched with a pang of jealousy as they held hands. That he would chose a human over... She blinked. No, it couldn't be. Her actions. Everything that she had done since the end of the War was defined by one event in her life. That event was the moment that the Doctor had told her goodbye. She raised one finely manicured hand to her lips, her eyes widened in horror. "Oh, Ashken, what have I done?" The Doctor's blue eyes pierced her own, the force of his rage almost physical in its effect.
Ashken shook his head sadly. "There are consequences to every action, Madam President."
"Doctor, I'm..." Romana began, but he cut her off.
"No, don't apologise. There is nothing you can say that will let me forgive you for this. I watched you burn. I pushed the button. I grieved for you. And what do I find? It was all a lie. A nice little lie that you created all because of what? Revenge? Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned? What?" He stepped forward, his lanky form towering over her own.
She fought the urge to step back. "You were going to push the button, Doctor! You would've killed us. We had to..."
"You had to what? Hide? Sit in your lofty tower and grin in triumph as you watched me? You watched me regenerate. You watched me meet Rose. You watched me grieve for you. You watched and yet you did nothing."
"I couldn't. I shouldn't. No." Romana shook her head, brushing back her long hair with an impatient gesture.
The Doctor reached for his companion's hand, squeezing it tightly as he smiled bitterly. "I thought Gallifrey was gone. But y'know what? It almost was better that way. Because then my image of this place was better. My memories of you were better. You've ruined that for me, Romana. An' now, this is the end. I was considered a rogue before, but this time I'm doin' it for real. I give up my citizenship of Gallifrey. I am no longer one of you, because to me, you don't exist."
"Doctor, you can't..." Ashken tried and stepped back as the Doctor turned his cold gaze to him.
"I can do whatever I want, Ashken. Goodbye, Romana. And don't expect me to come runnin' to your rescue. C'mon, Rose, it's time to go home."
She stood in stunned silence as the leather clad Doctor turned his back upon her and his past. There were so many things that she should say. There were so many things that must be said. However, she knew that none of them would have any effect. Ashken had been right. By keeping their existence from him for so long, he had changed in ways that even she could not predict. He was not the Doctor she knew. He was something entirely different. She had created him. And now he was gone.
"I'm sorry," she whispered as the familiar grinding howl of the TARDIS' dematerialisation echoed through the halls of the Panopticon.
He would never know. He would never know of her sorrow. He would never know of her regret. The mask of the Lady President of Gallifrey crumpled to reveal the aching woman beneath. She had done him wrong, and in so doing she had lost her planet's greatest champion. "What have I done?" she asked again, but no one answered. Even Ashken had gone, returning to his work as Castellan and leaving her with her memories.
So this, she realised, was what the Doctor must have felt. Despite her presence on a planet teeming with life or the low murmur of her people's voices within her mind, Romana had never felt more alone.
Epilogue:
'You can never go home again.'
The words played over in his mind as he dangled his legs off the edge of the cliff, his eyes trained upon a distant point though unseeing of the vista before him. The vast Yllsian ocean spread out before him, its amber hued waters crashing against the rocks hundreds of metres below. The roar of the ocean, the strange triple-toned cry of the sea birds, and the brush of a playful zephyr against his cheeks all combined into a cacophony of sound that all but pounded in his ears. However, his thoughts were not upon the sea. Instead they were trained inward to a time when 'home' meant more than a police public call box.
Home had meant family. Even though he was estranged from the Cousins at Lungbarrow it had still been his home. He had had roots, a place to go when he was ready to hang up his metaphorical hat from his life of adventure and excitement. Home had meant a planet, orbiting a distant sun, covered in purple hued grasses and bursts of meteors dancing across the sky at night. Home had meant a granddaughter, laughing her way through life - a bright spark in his existence that was tragically quenched when his life had been shattered. He could never go home again...because the home he remembered was not the home of fact.
Romana had destroyed the illusion with harsh reality. In his tortured mind, he had elevated his memories of Gallifrey upon a pedestal. The people and his one-time friends were fond recollections that could either be a soothing balm or a piercing blade to his tortured psyche. Now, the pedestal was shattered and he was left with nothing but the fractured pieces. The Doctor heaved a sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose with one of his hands while the other lay haphazardly across his lap.
He could never go home again, because the illusion wasn't real.
The scrape of a shoe against gravel brought a sudden smile to his face, dismissing his melancholic thoughts with surprising ease. "Cosmic thoughts?" Rose's voice sounded hesitant, as if she were afraid of how he might answer her as she all but collapsed next to him. Their knees barely brushed each other, but he noticed her every movement.
"Hardly," he replied. "Actually, I was thinkin' about what happened."
She drew in a startled breath and he tilted his head so he could see her expression. "I'm sorry 'bout that, Doctor. I wish there was somethin' I could do. Or can do."
He grasped her hand in his own and gave it a slight squeeze. "You already are."
"I am?"
"Yeah, you're here." The Doctor smiled brilliantly at her. "'Sides, the Time Lords always were the stuffiest stuffed shirts in the cosmos. Don't need 'em. Not really. It's jus' nice knowing that I'm not the last."
"And Romana?"
A shadow of pain crossed his face. "She's the stuffiest one of the lot."
Rose sighed, staring at their entwined fingers. "I'm sorry."
"Not your fault she's a git." He shrugged.
She smiled faintly. "True. So what now?"
"Hmmm?"
"'Nother adventure? 'Nother holiday? What's next?"
"I'd say..." He paused, considering the options, before he grinned. "Let's be surprised."
"Sounds good to me. Let's go home, Doctor."
He smiled at her as he shook his head. "I'm already home, Rose."
She looked faintly confused as she looked into his eyes.
"I'm with you."
~*FIN*~
xposted everywhere: dark_aegis, time_and_chips, dwfiction