012 - DW: Back To You
Title: Back To You
Fandom: Doctor Who
Pairing/Characters: Ten and Rose centric. Bits of Ten/Rose, Nine and Jack make an appearance.
Rating: PG for some angsting.
Summary: After the events of Doomsday, The Tenth Doctor decides he has to see Rose again. And so he does…
Spoilers/Warnings: Post-Doomsday. A crapload bit of angst.
Author’s Notes: So I wanted to do a time travel fic ever since I first started watching Doctor Who. This is my first Who fic, so I hope I’ve captured the mannerisms, voice and personality of everyone. I’ve also tried to write the way they speak with a bit of their accent on the paper. This fic is set after Doomsday, but travels back to previous times and involves a little of Boom Town from Season One.
The first time he saw her he wanted to weep with joy. She stood on the corner of a London street, twirling a stray strand of hair around her index finger and waiting for the light to change. Her mobile went off when the light changed and she answered it as she crossed the street. He could hear her voice just barely over the horns and engines around him but it was her. He had the urge to run over to her and pull her into a hug just to see the expression on her face. He knew he wouldn’t know who he was - it was still a few days before the plastics would attack London, and back then he had a different face.
---
The second time she was standing on the bridge, hood pulled over her head and hands stuffed into her pockets shivering in the bitter London air.
“Oi!” she yelled down to someone below. From where he stood, he couldn’t make out the other figure but he had a sneaking suspicion he knew who it was. “You almost done there?” she was yelling again. “I’m freezing my ass off ‘er!”
A tall man in a leather jacket finally popped up and gave her a wide grin. He explained that he had fixed the problem and that it should all be ‘fantastic’ now. The Doctor smiled at the memory of that day so long ago. She wanted to kill him after, but instead she linked arms with him as they returned to the TARDIS. The former version of himself patted her head playfully and went into the blue box first. She hugged her jacket tighter and looked about the snowy landscape one last time. She smiled to herself and just before she went inside she noticed him standing close by. He tried not to pay her any attention, but he could still feel her eyes on him. When he finally looked back at her she’d disappeared into her TARDIS and he walked off back to his.
---
The third time he saw her it was springtime on Blasvadara and she was sitting in the purple grass watching the parade go by. Her hair was still long and she’d pulled it up into a messy ponytail. He wanted to reach out and touch her but he knew he couldn’t. So he stood with his hands tucked in his pinstripe trouser pockets and watched her from afar. A few minutes passed and she got up to stretch her legs. She wandered around aimlessly and when she looked up, their eyes met for an instant. And it was enough.
“Do I know you?” she asked curiously and took a step in his direction.
He shook his head. “No. Not like this, I’m afraid. Not for a while longer.”
She gave him a quizzical look and turned away, as if she’d had enough of his crazy talk. But then she stopped and glanced back at him and squinted in the sun. “You sure? You seem familiar some’ow. You sort of stick out, y’know?”
He smiled at her. Oh, Rose. Always the clever one.
She took a step towards him and smiled back. “I’m Rose.” She stuck her hand out for him to shake it and he almost took a step back. He finally took her hand in his and shook it firmly. It was soft and warm, and he had to force himself to let go. She wasn’t his anymore, no matter what he wanted to think.
“’Ello Rose. Beautiful name, by the way.” He gave her a broad grin and cocked his head to the side.
“Thanks,” she said and he could make out the beginnings of a blush creeping up her cheeks. “And you are…?”
He was about to open his mouth when he heard another voice behind him.
“Well hullo there. And who might you be?” The other Doctor asked in a slightly hostile voice.
He smiled at both of them and gave a little nod with his head. “I’m nobody. Just passing through.”
---
The forth time he hadn’t intended on seeing her but just as chance would have it he’d set the clock to the wrong date by mistake. He stepped out of the TARDIS and into Cardiff around the same time as that whole incident with Margaret the Slitheen was happening. Perhaps it was the energy from the open rift or maybe just pure coincidence but when he stepped into the chilly air he knew she had been here. Luckily he’d decided to park the TARDIS in an alleyway and away from the main square. To his right was the other TARDIS, sitting there waiting to be sent off to other far away places and distant times. To his left was the water. It was quite cold out, but he didn’t button up his coat and instead let it billow around him as he walked towards the pier.
He was glad to have missed the chaos because humans really are a whiney bunch when they’ve got the shit scared out of them. The rift was closed and if he remembered correctly, Jack, Rose and himself would soon be off to return Margaret the egg back to her home planet.
There were sounds of sirens somewhere far off in the distance but he walked about for a while, not quite ready to go back into the TARDIS and go to the correct date. The darkness was welcoming and even though it was bloody freezing outside he felt content to just walk about for a bit. Sometimes solitude wasn’t so bad after all.
But like most things in the universe, you can’t always get what you want. He heard a pair of footsteps behind him and the beginnings of a sob. Perhaps it was some sad woman who’d been separated from her husband when the rift opened and sent everything crashing about.
He turned slightly to her and soon realized it wasn’t just any woman. It was Rose! She was leaning against the railing crying softly. He didn’t remember her crying that night, so why was she crying now?
“You alright?” he asked without thinking. He was supposed to remain unseen, incognito, hidden from her because of that lovely little thing called the time paradox. Oh well. She’d already seen him now and nothing could be done about it.
She sniffed and looked at him with wide eyes. “I... I’ve seen you before. Haven’t I?” She started backing away from him, suddenly fear was bright in her eyes.
He chuckled to himself and nodded. “Yes, Rose. We’ve met before. Many times.”
“How do you know my name?” she demanded of him and held her ground when he took a step forward. Her tears had dried on her cheeks as if she’d completely forgotten about her previous worries.
“You told me on Blasvadara, remember?” he replied giving the simple answer. No use telling her they used to know each other in the future but now she’s dead in the future but really alive in another universe and he’d come back to see her in the past to cheer himself up. No, it didn’t seem like the proper thing to say right now.
She nodded as if it all made sense until she thought about it more and her head snapped up. “Hey, wait a minute. That was nine-hundred years in the future - on a different planet.” She was starting to piece it all together. “Who are you?”
Knowing this could go on forever and she was far too clever to play tricks on he gave up and told her the truth. Apparently he was trying to break all his rules tonight. “I’m the Doctor from the future.”
For a moment it looked like she would believe him but even after all the time travel and experience she had, she was still skeptical. “Prove it.”
“Alright,” he sighed and reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a familiar object - his sonic screwdriver. Her mouth fell open slightly but she looked back into his eyes and he could tell she wasn’t buying it yet. He rolled his eyes and reached into his jacket breast pocket and fished out his slightly-psychic paper. She stepped closer so she could read it.
“Tenth Doctor of the Time Lords. Slightly cocky and slightly mad,” she read out loud and gave him another skeptical look.
“Okay, if I wasn’t the Doctor then how would I know that your mum is Jackie Tyler and she slapped me when I brought you back home after 12 months instead of 12 hours?”
Rose stifled a giggle when she thought back to that day. Her mum had been furious! She looked up at him and squinted slightly, trying to understand how this could be. “So, you’re the future Doctor?”
“Yes.”
“So what about my Doctor?”
“He’s still alive and well. Probably in the TARDIS waiting for you.”
“So why are you here?”
“Just passing through. I set the wrong date and time and ended up here instead,” he said rather sheepishly.
She grinned and ran her tongue across her teeth. “You still doin’ that, then?”
“It was an accident! Could have happened to anyone, really.”
“Uh-huh,” she smiled at him and for the first time in a long time he felt happy again. “So is there a Future Rose hiding out somewhere? I’m not supposed to see her though, right? We’d cancel each other out, yeah?”
His mood suddenly dampened when he thought of the future Rose. “No. She isn’t with me.”
“Why not?” she asked slightly miffed at the idea that he’d left her somewhere in the future. She wasn’t sure if she liked this new Doctor.
“It’s a long story,” he said in a tone that meant that the subject was closed. But being the kind of girl she was, she wasn’t satisfied with that answer.
“No, you tell me right now what happened to me! Did I die?” She seemed scared and frantic all at the same time and he wanted nothing more than to take her hand and tell her it was okay.
“Before I tell you this, I have to do something,” he started and raised his sonic screwdriver up to her head. She jumped back but he gave her a kind smile and asked, “do you trust me?” She seemed undecided for a second but then she took a step forward and nodded her head. He twisted the handle a bit and the familiar blue light beamed out of it. For the briefest moment she felt a bit of pressure on her right temple but then it was gone and he placed the device back into his pocket.
“What was that?” she asked as she rubbed her forehead.
He ignored her question and took a seat on a nearby bench. “Perhaps we should sit down over here,” he offered and she took a seat next to him.
When she didn’t say anything he decided to begin his long story. He told her about the return of the Daleks and the time vortex and how he regenerated into his current form and how they’d had hundreds of amazing adventures until the war broke out with the Cybermen and Daleks.
“Everything went a bit mad at the end. We would have saved the world, you and I,” he was saying with a far off look in his eyes. “But something was off. One of the switches was hit by a Dalek as it flew into the void - Rose’s switch, and she just had to let go and turn it back on. It all happened so fast. She lost her grip and in the last second, Pete came back through the void, grabbed her and went back to his universe.”
When he finished there were tears in Rose’s eyes and she looked just as distressed the day she’d seen her at the beach along Bad Wolf Bay. “So you just left me there, in that other universe? Didn’t you try to get back to me?”
He looked down at her and reached up to brush the newly fallen tears off her cheek. “I did try. But it’s impossible to go back without ripping another hole in the void. Both universes would collapse.”
“And that’s the last time I see you? I’m screaming for my life and that’s just it?” She seemed bitter and her voice was filled with the pain of knowing how it ends.
“Not exactly. I found a tiny crack that was just about to close up. Somehow you got my message and drove there with your family. We got to have a proper goodbye, I suppose. Though sometimes I wonder if I should have done it. You were just so sad and upset. It only lasted a few minutes and it closed up.”
Rose was full out crying now and she couldn’t stop. This strange Doctor that sat before her was telling her about the future and that she couldn’t change it. How could she go on living if she knew that it would end one day, not in a burst of light with laughter and hope, but instead with a broken sob and lingering tears?
He seemed to have read her thoughts and looked at her sympathetically. “I suppose the good news in all this is that tomorrow when you wake up, you won’t remember a thing I’ve just told you. That’s what I did with the sonic screwdriver just then.”
“But I want to remember!” she yelled at him. “I want to do things differently now. I want to do more, and see more. It can’t end like this!”
He shook his head and took her hand in his. It was just like he remembered - soft and warm and always giving him strength no matter what. “If you changed anything, even the slightest bit, you’d changed the events in the future.” He looked into her eyes, pleading her to understand. “Maybe even muck it up more than it already is,” he added under his breath.
She was quiet for a while and they sat there, still hand-in-hand in the cold staring out into the black water crashing against the barrier. When she finally spoke again her tears were gone and she sounded more held-together.
“So why did you come back then? If you knew you couldn’t change the future.”
“I dunno, actually. I guess I missed you. Thought that if I just popped into see you every now and that it would make the hurt go away.”
“And has it?”
“No,” he breathed. “It’s only made it worse.”
“Are you going to get a new companion, then?” She was worried what the answer would be, but she knew that eventually everyone moves on.
“Oh, probably. Not for a while, though, anyway. I never really go out looking for them, they just sort of fall into my lap, so to speak. The universe will send me one when it feels like it.”
“It really is you, isn’t it?” she asked and leaned into him studying his eyes and different features.
“‘Fraid so. You actually asked me to change back when I regenerated. It was quite a blow to my ego, I’ll have you know!”
She laughed at this and he smiled at her, unconsciously stroking her wrist with his thumb. It was a beautiful thing, really. His Rose laughing again. He never thought he’d see her laugh again. The sound was music to his ears. After all her tears, he was thankful for her laughter. And in that moment he knew this was his final goodbye.
He stood and pulled her up with him, she stumbled slightly and steadied herself by placing her free hand on his chest. She let go his hand and placed it on his chest too, feeling his two heartbeats thumping below her fingertips. She looked at him curiously, but said nothing.
“You best be going, then. If I remember correctly, my former self can get a wee bit impatient and he might be out looking for you.”
She nodded and even she knew this was it. She slowly wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him down for a hug. “Goodbye, Doctor.”
His arms encircled her waist and he remembered the dozens of other times he’d done this with her before. And this was the last. “Goodbye, Rose Tyler.”
He was about to add on something witty to make her laugh again, but he was silenced when she pressed her lips to his and buried a hand in his thick hair. It was a slow kiss, as if she were trying to memorize everything about him for the first and last time. Her lips were soft and her tongue pushed forward into his mouth, dueling with his and finally letting him take over when he cupped her head in his hands and ran his teeth along her bottom lip. His cheeks felt wet and at first he thought it was her crying again but when they finally pulled apart, he realized they both were. His vision was blurred for a second as he tried to stop the tears and took out a hanky to dry his eyes. He offered it to her but she shook her head and let the tears fall freely.
“I know you’ll only remember this for a few more hours, but I want you to know…” He paused and opened his mouth to finish. She looked up at him expectantly and he finally had the courage to say it. “I love you, Rose,” he whispered and it seemed harder to say than before and even then he hadn’t been able to finish before the gap closed.
She nodded and whispered it back to him. “I love you too.” For her, it was the first time she was saying it, and he could tell it was hard for her too.
“I have to go,” she said and took a step back. This was really it, wasn’t it? “We’re off to Raxicoricofallapatorious.”
He laughed at how proud she looked when she said the long word. “Off you go then, Rose. Have those adventures.”
She smiled through her tears and set off back to the TARDIS. She was almost at the door when she turned back to see if he was still here, smiling at her. He wasn’t. In the distance she could hear his TARDIS engine and it faded away on the wind by the time she opened the door to this TARDIS.
The Doctor, the old one, her Doctor looked up at her as she entered. He could probably see her tear-streaked face but she didn’t care. He probably wouldn’t ask her about it anyway.
“We’re all powered up, we can leave now that the rift filled us up with energy. We can go,” the Doctor was saying and he added in a softer tone, “if that’s alright.”
“Yeah. Fine.” Her voice sounded so distant to her ears.
“How’s Micky?”
“He’s okay, he’s gone,” she heard herself explain and wondered who she was talking about - Mickey or the future Doctor.
The Doctor seemed to understand and tossed Jack a sideways glance. “You wanna go and find him? We’ll wait.”
She shook her head, thinking of everything and nothing. “No need. He deserves betta’”
There was a pause before he spoke again. “Off we go then. Always moving on.”
“Next stop: Raxicoricofallapatorious,” Jack said lightly. “Now you don’t often get to say that.”
The TARDIS was humming again and she could feel it move beneath her feet. She felt tired and empty, and the thought that tomorrow she wouldn’t remember a thing from her encounter with the future Doctor made her feel relieved and saddened all at the same time.
“We’ll just stop by and pop her in the hatchery. Margaret the Slitheen can live her life again. A second chance.” The Doctor always knew what to say.
And she was wishing she could have a second chance too. “That’d be nice.”
The TARDIS was speeding though time now and soon a new adventure would begin. In a way she was glad for it, there was always something new to discover and for a little while longer, her Doctor would be by her side.
“Rose?” That was Jack. He put a hand on her shoulder and brushed the bangs from her eyes. “You should get some sleep, you look worn out.”
No. No sleep yet. “I’m alright, really.”
“Micky will be alright. I’m sure when we get back he’ll forget all about this.”
“Yeah. I guess…”
He smiled at her and gave her shoulder a supportive squeeze before returning to the console to help the Doctor. She watched them laugh and tell each other jokes, all the while pushing buttons and turning knobs.
Rose wandered around the TARDIS, feeling lost and hopeless. She somehow found her way to her room and lay in her bed staring up at the dark ceiling. She thought about what the future Doctor told her. She could see his eyes now, willing her to understand. She thought about her future self, in some other alternate universe dealing with a new life without the Doctor and her heart broke for her.
It was odd knowing the future and for the first time she finally understood why the Doctor was the way he was. She could finally understand why he always had that mixture of thrill and sorrow in his eyes. He knew the consequences to every action and he had to live with them.
She licked her lips and she could almost taste him again. She could almost feel his lips on hers with those soft hands cupping her face. Almost. She was startled out of her daydream when she heard a knock on her door.
The Doctor came in and sat at the edge of her bed. “Are you alright, Rose?” His voice was soft and concerned.
“Yeah, I will be,” she replied and gave him a weak smile.
“What did Mickey say to you to get you this upset?”
“He told me the truth and gave me a glimpse into the future.” She watched as he gave her a confused look but said nothing. She was talking about the future Doctor again, and she tried to think back to Mickey instead. “Mickey knows I’ll always be running back to you, and never back to him. I didn’t want to break his heart, but I did. I’ve changed and he hasn’t and I can’t blame him for waiting for me.”
The Doctor shifted uncomfortably. He never liked to get into the domestics of anything. She continued anyway.
“See, the things that’s been buggin’ me is that one day I’ll be like Mickey. You’ll have left me somewhere and I’ll just be stuck there, waiting. You’ll be running towards another adventure and you’ll never be back, will ya?”
He shook his head and his expression had turned very serious. “You knew the moment you stepped foot in the TARDIS what you were signing up for. I don’t look back, I’m always looking forward. I thought you understood this.”
“I did. And I do,” she said, sitting up to be eyelevel with him. “I just don’t want you to forget about me.”
“I won’t.”
“I want you to promise me that whenever we get separated-” she began and he tried to stop her from finishing the sentence. She held a hand up to his mouth to silence him and she took a deep breath. “Whenever that day comes, I want you to promise not to forget me.”
She was crying now, and he reached out to wipe her cheeks with his thumb. His fingers were rougher than the future Doctor’s but somehow still the same.
“I want you to promise me. Because I won’t ever forget you…Please promise,” she pleaded with him and he leaned forward, wrapping her in his arms. She cried into his shoulder and his voice reverberated in his chest as he spoke.
“I won’t forget you, Rose Tyler. I promise,” he whispered softly, and in that moment he vowed never to break that promise, even though he knew deep down that he could never forget her, even if he tried.
---
The Doctor and Jack stood in the doorway of the TARDIS and watched the three suns rise over the Raxicoricofallapatorious mountain range. They had just finished putting Margaret into the hatchery and they hoped that she’d live her second life in a less violent way.
“What’s goin’ on?” Rose mumbled sleepily behind them.
“Morning, sleepy-head!” Jack greeted her with a smile and draped an arm over her shoulder. “You sure slept in. We’ve been up since 4am sneaking into the hatchery. We almost got caught by the incubating nurse on our way out.”
“So I’ve missed all the fun, then?” She asked slightly miffed that they didn’t have the decency to wake her.
The Doctor turned towards her, his arms crossed over his chest and raised an eyebrow. “You were snoring, I didn’t wanna wake you.”
“I do not snore!”
“Yes you do,” he quipped with a grin. “And besides, you had a rough night last night. I thought it best if you sleep it off. Feelin’ better?”
She rubbed her temple absentmindedly and nodded, “Yeah, I guess.”
Last night seemed like a blur to her. She remembered having a fight with Mickey and then running off when the rift opened. She vaguely remembered going back for him, but not finding him and then going back to the TARDIS and crashing. She had a nagging feeling in the back of her mind like she was missing something. Did something else happen? Why did she feel like something else happened last night?
“Earth to Rose,” Jack called out to her and she looked up at him in a daze.
“Sorry, what?”
“I saying we should have breakfast in New York, 1996. Whadda you say?”
“Sure, whatever.”
Jack continued, mouth practically salivating as he spoke. “I know a place close to Central Park where they have the best eggs and sausages for only $2.50! You are going to love it!”
She smiled at them as Jack told the Doctor a story of how he discovered the diner after an all-night rave party. The Doctor nodded at him but obviously had no interest in the story, whatsoever. Rose held in a giggle as she watched him feign interest while Jack spoke animatedly. He looked over at her at one point and smiled at her. His blue eyes sparkled in the morning suns and she had a fleeting memory of a pair of brown eyes looking down at her. She blinked and it was gone.
---
Galaxies away in the Karelpien System, the future Doctor took his coat off and tossed it over the console. He stuffed his hands into his pockets and paced around the TARDIS. It was done. Over. Finito.
His heart felt lighter but he knew it would be a long time before he recovered from losing Rose. He opened the door to the room that used to be her room and looked at her bed. It still had the duvet cover she insisted on bringing along because apparently the sheets he’d offered her were scratchy. He looked around at all her things and was sorry he had no way of returning them to her.
There were little trinkets spread about the room that she’d picked up in her travels like the vintage glow gun she bought in Toppee-Shank. Perhaps it was best that she didn’t have that gun, it could alter the progress of science in her world. And that would be very, very bad.
A few pictures were lined up on her dresser that she always took ages in front of to get ready. A sweet picture of Jackie, Mickey and Rose was off to one side and he smiled sadly, thinking how he’d never get smacked by Jackie again.
One picture stood out among them all and he laughed as he picked it up to get a better look. It was a photo taken when he’d taken her to Coney Island. They’d posed behind those cardboard bodies with the heads cut out for your head. Her body was a busty woman in a little red bikini while he was a muscular man in black trunks. They both smiled like dorks for the picture with their grins as big as Cheshire cats. He popped open the frame, pulled out the photo and slipped it into his breast pocket.
Suddenly a wave of memories flooded over him - memories that were happening to him in a previous time. It was Rose from the past changing something. He sat down on the bed and closed his eyes. He could see her face as if she were sitting right in front of him now. She was crying and begging him not to forget her. He could feel his former self pull her towards him. It wasn’t the first time he’d experienced memories in the future that he hadn’t experienced the first time around but this time it felt different. It was like he was actually there with her, not just remembering it. He could hear her tears echoing in his ears and could smell the scent of her hair as she pressed her face into his chest.
“Oh, Rose,” he whispered into the empty room. “I won’t ever forget you,” he promised again. He rose from the bed, smoothed out the duvet and went back to the door.
“Goodbye, Rose,” he breathed and closed her door for the last time. He pulled out the sonic screwdriver and locked it so no one would ever trouble her things. He walked slowly to the console room and pressed in a course for the 45th century. There was bound to be some trouble brewing in the future and he couldn’t wait to see it.
---
(1/1, Complete)
Fandom: Doctor Who
Pairing/Characters: Ten and Rose centric. Bits of Ten/Rose, Nine and Jack make an appearance.
Rating: PG for some angsting.
Summary: After the events of Doomsday, The Tenth Doctor decides he has to see Rose again. And so he does…
Spoilers/Warnings: Post-Doomsday. A crapload bit of angst.
Author’s Notes: So I wanted to do a time travel fic ever since I first started watching Doctor Who. This is my first Who fic, so I hope I’ve captured the mannerisms, voice and personality of everyone. I’ve also tried to write the way they speak with a bit of their accent on the paper. This fic is set after Doomsday, but travels back to previous times and involves a little of Boom Town from Season One.
The first time he saw her he wanted to weep with joy. She stood on the corner of a London street, twirling a stray strand of hair around her index finger and waiting for the light to change. Her mobile went off when the light changed and she answered it as she crossed the street. He could hear her voice just barely over the horns and engines around him but it was her. He had the urge to run over to her and pull her into a hug just to see the expression on her face. He knew he wouldn’t know who he was - it was still a few days before the plastics would attack London, and back then he had a different face.
---
The second time she was standing on the bridge, hood pulled over her head and hands stuffed into her pockets shivering in the bitter London air.
“Oi!” she yelled down to someone below. From where he stood, he couldn’t make out the other figure but he had a sneaking suspicion he knew who it was. “You almost done there?” she was yelling again. “I’m freezing my ass off ‘er!”
A tall man in a leather jacket finally popped up and gave her a wide grin. He explained that he had fixed the problem and that it should all be ‘fantastic’ now. The Doctor smiled at the memory of that day so long ago. She wanted to kill him after, but instead she linked arms with him as they returned to the TARDIS. The former version of himself patted her head playfully and went into the blue box first. She hugged her jacket tighter and looked about the snowy landscape one last time. She smiled to herself and just before she went inside she noticed him standing close by. He tried not to pay her any attention, but he could still feel her eyes on him. When he finally looked back at her she’d disappeared into her TARDIS and he walked off back to his.
---
The third time he saw her it was springtime on Blasvadara and she was sitting in the purple grass watching the parade go by. Her hair was still long and she’d pulled it up into a messy ponytail. He wanted to reach out and touch her but he knew he couldn’t. So he stood with his hands tucked in his pinstripe trouser pockets and watched her from afar. A few minutes passed and she got up to stretch her legs. She wandered around aimlessly and when she looked up, their eyes met for an instant. And it was enough.
“Do I know you?” she asked curiously and took a step in his direction.
He shook his head. “No. Not like this, I’m afraid. Not for a while longer.”
She gave him a quizzical look and turned away, as if she’d had enough of his crazy talk. But then she stopped and glanced back at him and squinted in the sun. “You sure? You seem familiar some’ow. You sort of stick out, y’know?”
He smiled at her. Oh, Rose. Always the clever one.
She took a step towards him and smiled back. “I’m Rose.” She stuck her hand out for him to shake it and he almost took a step back. He finally took her hand in his and shook it firmly. It was soft and warm, and he had to force himself to let go. She wasn’t his anymore, no matter what he wanted to think.
“’Ello Rose. Beautiful name, by the way.” He gave her a broad grin and cocked his head to the side.
“Thanks,” she said and he could make out the beginnings of a blush creeping up her cheeks. “And you are…?”
He was about to open his mouth when he heard another voice behind him.
“Well hullo there. And who might you be?” The other Doctor asked in a slightly hostile voice.
He smiled at both of them and gave a little nod with his head. “I’m nobody. Just passing through.”
---
The forth time he hadn’t intended on seeing her but just as chance would have it he’d set the clock to the wrong date by mistake. He stepped out of the TARDIS and into Cardiff around the same time as that whole incident with Margaret the Slitheen was happening. Perhaps it was the energy from the open rift or maybe just pure coincidence but when he stepped into the chilly air he knew she had been here. Luckily he’d decided to park the TARDIS in an alleyway and away from the main square. To his right was the other TARDIS, sitting there waiting to be sent off to other far away places and distant times. To his left was the water. It was quite cold out, but he didn’t button up his coat and instead let it billow around him as he walked towards the pier.
He was glad to have missed the chaos because humans really are a whiney bunch when they’ve got the shit scared out of them. The rift was closed and if he remembered correctly, Jack, Rose and himself would soon be off to return Margaret the egg back to her home planet.
There were sounds of sirens somewhere far off in the distance but he walked about for a while, not quite ready to go back into the TARDIS and go to the correct date. The darkness was welcoming and even though it was bloody freezing outside he felt content to just walk about for a bit. Sometimes solitude wasn’t so bad after all.
But like most things in the universe, you can’t always get what you want. He heard a pair of footsteps behind him and the beginnings of a sob. Perhaps it was some sad woman who’d been separated from her husband when the rift opened and sent everything crashing about.
He turned slightly to her and soon realized it wasn’t just any woman. It was Rose! She was leaning against the railing crying softly. He didn’t remember her crying that night, so why was she crying now?
“You alright?” he asked without thinking. He was supposed to remain unseen, incognito, hidden from her because of that lovely little thing called the time paradox. Oh well. She’d already seen him now and nothing could be done about it.
She sniffed and looked at him with wide eyes. “I... I’ve seen you before. Haven’t I?” She started backing away from him, suddenly fear was bright in her eyes.
He chuckled to himself and nodded. “Yes, Rose. We’ve met before. Many times.”
“How do you know my name?” she demanded of him and held her ground when he took a step forward. Her tears had dried on her cheeks as if she’d completely forgotten about her previous worries.
“You told me on Blasvadara, remember?” he replied giving the simple answer. No use telling her they used to know each other in the future but now she’s dead in the future but really alive in another universe and he’d come back to see her in the past to cheer himself up. No, it didn’t seem like the proper thing to say right now.
She nodded as if it all made sense until she thought about it more and her head snapped up. “Hey, wait a minute. That was nine-hundred years in the future - on a different planet.” She was starting to piece it all together. “Who are you?”
Knowing this could go on forever and she was far too clever to play tricks on he gave up and told her the truth. Apparently he was trying to break all his rules tonight. “I’m the Doctor from the future.”
For a moment it looked like she would believe him but even after all the time travel and experience she had, she was still skeptical. “Prove it.”
“Alright,” he sighed and reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a familiar object - his sonic screwdriver. Her mouth fell open slightly but she looked back into his eyes and he could tell she wasn’t buying it yet. He rolled his eyes and reached into his jacket breast pocket and fished out his slightly-psychic paper. She stepped closer so she could read it.
“Tenth Doctor of the Time Lords. Slightly cocky and slightly mad,” she read out loud and gave him another skeptical look.
“Okay, if I wasn’t the Doctor then how would I know that your mum is Jackie Tyler and she slapped me when I brought you back home after 12 months instead of 12 hours?”
Rose stifled a giggle when she thought back to that day. Her mum had been furious! She looked up at him and squinted slightly, trying to understand how this could be. “So, you’re the future Doctor?”
“Yes.”
“So what about my Doctor?”
“He’s still alive and well. Probably in the TARDIS waiting for you.”
“So why are you here?”
“Just passing through. I set the wrong date and time and ended up here instead,” he said rather sheepishly.
She grinned and ran her tongue across her teeth. “You still doin’ that, then?”
“It was an accident! Could have happened to anyone, really.”
“Uh-huh,” she smiled at him and for the first time in a long time he felt happy again. “So is there a Future Rose hiding out somewhere? I’m not supposed to see her though, right? We’d cancel each other out, yeah?”
His mood suddenly dampened when he thought of the future Rose. “No. She isn’t with me.”
“Why not?” she asked slightly miffed at the idea that he’d left her somewhere in the future. She wasn’t sure if she liked this new Doctor.
“It’s a long story,” he said in a tone that meant that the subject was closed. But being the kind of girl she was, she wasn’t satisfied with that answer.
“No, you tell me right now what happened to me! Did I die?” She seemed scared and frantic all at the same time and he wanted nothing more than to take her hand and tell her it was okay.
“Before I tell you this, I have to do something,” he started and raised his sonic screwdriver up to her head. She jumped back but he gave her a kind smile and asked, “do you trust me?” She seemed undecided for a second but then she took a step forward and nodded her head. He twisted the handle a bit and the familiar blue light beamed out of it. For the briefest moment she felt a bit of pressure on her right temple but then it was gone and he placed the device back into his pocket.
“What was that?” she asked as she rubbed her forehead.
He ignored her question and took a seat on a nearby bench. “Perhaps we should sit down over here,” he offered and she took a seat next to him.
When she didn’t say anything he decided to begin his long story. He told her about the return of the Daleks and the time vortex and how he regenerated into his current form and how they’d had hundreds of amazing adventures until the war broke out with the Cybermen and Daleks.
“Everything went a bit mad at the end. We would have saved the world, you and I,” he was saying with a far off look in his eyes. “But something was off. One of the switches was hit by a Dalek as it flew into the void - Rose’s switch, and she just had to let go and turn it back on. It all happened so fast. She lost her grip and in the last second, Pete came back through the void, grabbed her and went back to his universe.”
When he finished there were tears in Rose’s eyes and she looked just as distressed the day she’d seen her at the beach along Bad Wolf Bay. “So you just left me there, in that other universe? Didn’t you try to get back to me?”
He looked down at her and reached up to brush the newly fallen tears off her cheek. “I did try. But it’s impossible to go back without ripping another hole in the void. Both universes would collapse.”
“And that’s the last time I see you? I’m screaming for my life and that’s just it?” She seemed bitter and her voice was filled with the pain of knowing how it ends.
“Not exactly. I found a tiny crack that was just about to close up. Somehow you got my message and drove there with your family. We got to have a proper goodbye, I suppose. Though sometimes I wonder if I should have done it. You were just so sad and upset. It only lasted a few minutes and it closed up.”
Rose was full out crying now and she couldn’t stop. This strange Doctor that sat before her was telling her about the future and that she couldn’t change it. How could she go on living if she knew that it would end one day, not in a burst of light with laughter and hope, but instead with a broken sob and lingering tears?
He seemed to have read her thoughts and looked at her sympathetically. “I suppose the good news in all this is that tomorrow when you wake up, you won’t remember a thing I’ve just told you. That’s what I did with the sonic screwdriver just then.”
“But I want to remember!” she yelled at him. “I want to do things differently now. I want to do more, and see more. It can’t end like this!”
He shook his head and took her hand in his. It was just like he remembered - soft and warm and always giving him strength no matter what. “If you changed anything, even the slightest bit, you’d changed the events in the future.” He looked into her eyes, pleading her to understand. “Maybe even muck it up more than it already is,” he added under his breath.
She was quiet for a while and they sat there, still hand-in-hand in the cold staring out into the black water crashing against the barrier. When she finally spoke again her tears were gone and she sounded more held-together.
“So why did you come back then? If you knew you couldn’t change the future.”
“I dunno, actually. I guess I missed you. Thought that if I just popped into see you every now and that it would make the hurt go away.”
“And has it?”
“No,” he breathed. “It’s only made it worse.”
“Are you going to get a new companion, then?” She was worried what the answer would be, but she knew that eventually everyone moves on.
“Oh, probably. Not for a while, though, anyway. I never really go out looking for them, they just sort of fall into my lap, so to speak. The universe will send me one when it feels like it.”
“It really is you, isn’t it?” she asked and leaned into him studying his eyes and different features.
“‘Fraid so. You actually asked me to change back when I regenerated. It was quite a blow to my ego, I’ll have you know!”
She laughed at this and he smiled at her, unconsciously stroking her wrist with his thumb. It was a beautiful thing, really. His Rose laughing again. He never thought he’d see her laugh again. The sound was music to his ears. After all her tears, he was thankful for her laughter. And in that moment he knew this was his final goodbye.
He stood and pulled her up with him, she stumbled slightly and steadied herself by placing her free hand on his chest. She let go his hand and placed it on his chest too, feeling his two heartbeats thumping below her fingertips. She looked at him curiously, but said nothing.
“You best be going, then. If I remember correctly, my former self can get a wee bit impatient and he might be out looking for you.”
She nodded and even she knew this was it. She slowly wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him down for a hug. “Goodbye, Doctor.”
His arms encircled her waist and he remembered the dozens of other times he’d done this with her before. And this was the last. “Goodbye, Rose Tyler.”
He was about to add on something witty to make her laugh again, but he was silenced when she pressed her lips to his and buried a hand in his thick hair. It was a slow kiss, as if she were trying to memorize everything about him for the first and last time. Her lips were soft and her tongue pushed forward into his mouth, dueling with his and finally letting him take over when he cupped her head in his hands and ran his teeth along her bottom lip. His cheeks felt wet and at first he thought it was her crying again but when they finally pulled apart, he realized they both were. His vision was blurred for a second as he tried to stop the tears and took out a hanky to dry his eyes. He offered it to her but she shook her head and let the tears fall freely.
“I know you’ll only remember this for a few more hours, but I want you to know…” He paused and opened his mouth to finish. She looked up at him expectantly and he finally had the courage to say it. “I love you, Rose,” he whispered and it seemed harder to say than before and even then he hadn’t been able to finish before the gap closed.
She nodded and whispered it back to him. “I love you too.” For her, it was the first time she was saying it, and he could tell it was hard for her too.
“I have to go,” she said and took a step back. This was really it, wasn’t it? “We’re off to Raxicoricofallapatorious.”
He laughed at how proud she looked when she said the long word. “Off you go then, Rose. Have those adventures.”
She smiled through her tears and set off back to the TARDIS. She was almost at the door when she turned back to see if he was still here, smiling at her. He wasn’t. In the distance she could hear his TARDIS engine and it faded away on the wind by the time she opened the door to this TARDIS.
The Doctor, the old one, her Doctor looked up at her as she entered. He could probably see her tear-streaked face but she didn’t care. He probably wouldn’t ask her about it anyway.
“We’re all powered up, we can leave now that the rift filled us up with energy. We can go,” the Doctor was saying and he added in a softer tone, “if that’s alright.”
“Yeah. Fine.” Her voice sounded so distant to her ears.
“How’s Micky?”
“He’s okay, he’s gone,” she heard herself explain and wondered who she was talking about - Mickey or the future Doctor.
The Doctor seemed to understand and tossed Jack a sideways glance. “You wanna go and find him? We’ll wait.”
She shook her head, thinking of everything and nothing. “No need. He deserves betta’”
There was a pause before he spoke again. “Off we go then. Always moving on.”
“Next stop: Raxicoricofallapatorious,” Jack said lightly. “Now you don’t often get to say that.”
The TARDIS was humming again and she could feel it move beneath her feet. She felt tired and empty, and the thought that tomorrow she wouldn’t remember a thing from her encounter with the future Doctor made her feel relieved and saddened all at the same time.
“We’ll just stop by and pop her in the hatchery. Margaret the Slitheen can live her life again. A second chance.” The Doctor always knew what to say.
And she was wishing she could have a second chance too. “That’d be nice.”
The TARDIS was speeding though time now and soon a new adventure would begin. In a way she was glad for it, there was always something new to discover and for a little while longer, her Doctor would be by her side.
“Rose?” That was Jack. He put a hand on her shoulder and brushed the bangs from her eyes. “You should get some sleep, you look worn out.”
No. No sleep yet. “I’m alright, really.”
“Micky will be alright. I’m sure when we get back he’ll forget all about this.”
“Yeah. I guess…”
He smiled at her and gave her shoulder a supportive squeeze before returning to the console to help the Doctor. She watched them laugh and tell each other jokes, all the while pushing buttons and turning knobs.
Rose wandered around the TARDIS, feeling lost and hopeless. She somehow found her way to her room and lay in her bed staring up at the dark ceiling. She thought about what the future Doctor told her. She could see his eyes now, willing her to understand. She thought about her future self, in some other alternate universe dealing with a new life without the Doctor and her heart broke for her.
It was odd knowing the future and for the first time she finally understood why the Doctor was the way he was. She could finally understand why he always had that mixture of thrill and sorrow in his eyes. He knew the consequences to every action and he had to live with them.
She licked her lips and she could almost taste him again. She could almost feel his lips on hers with those soft hands cupping her face. Almost. She was startled out of her daydream when she heard a knock on her door.
The Doctor came in and sat at the edge of her bed. “Are you alright, Rose?” His voice was soft and concerned.
“Yeah, I will be,” she replied and gave him a weak smile.
“What did Mickey say to you to get you this upset?”
“He told me the truth and gave me a glimpse into the future.” She watched as he gave her a confused look but said nothing. She was talking about the future Doctor again, and she tried to think back to Mickey instead. “Mickey knows I’ll always be running back to you, and never back to him. I didn’t want to break his heart, but I did. I’ve changed and he hasn’t and I can’t blame him for waiting for me.”
The Doctor shifted uncomfortably. He never liked to get into the domestics of anything. She continued anyway.
“See, the things that’s been buggin’ me is that one day I’ll be like Mickey. You’ll have left me somewhere and I’ll just be stuck there, waiting. You’ll be running towards another adventure and you’ll never be back, will ya?”
He shook his head and his expression had turned very serious. “You knew the moment you stepped foot in the TARDIS what you were signing up for. I don’t look back, I’m always looking forward. I thought you understood this.”
“I did. And I do,” she said, sitting up to be eyelevel with him. “I just don’t want you to forget about me.”
“I won’t.”
“I want you to promise me that whenever we get separated-” she began and he tried to stop her from finishing the sentence. She held a hand up to his mouth to silence him and she took a deep breath. “Whenever that day comes, I want you to promise not to forget me.”
She was crying now, and he reached out to wipe her cheeks with his thumb. His fingers were rougher than the future Doctor’s but somehow still the same.
“I want you to promise me. Because I won’t ever forget you…Please promise,” she pleaded with him and he leaned forward, wrapping her in his arms. She cried into his shoulder and his voice reverberated in his chest as he spoke.
“I won’t forget you, Rose Tyler. I promise,” he whispered softly, and in that moment he vowed never to break that promise, even though he knew deep down that he could never forget her, even if he tried.
---
The Doctor and Jack stood in the doorway of the TARDIS and watched the three suns rise over the Raxicoricofallapatorious mountain range. They had just finished putting Margaret into the hatchery and they hoped that she’d live her second life in a less violent way.
“What’s goin’ on?” Rose mumbled sleepily behind them.
“Morning, sleepy-head!” Jack greeted her with a smile and draped an arm over her shoulder. “You sure slept in. We’ve been up since 4am sneaking into the hatchery. We almost got caught by the incubating nurse on our way out.”
“So I’ve missed all the fun, then?” She asked slightly miffed that they didn’t have the decency to wake her.
The Doctor turned towards her, his arms crossed over his chest and raised an eyebrow. “You were snoring, I didn’t wanna wake you.”
“I do not snore!”
“Yes you do,” he quipped with a grin. “And besides, you had a rough night last night. I thought it best if you sleep it off. Feelin’ better?”
She rubbed her temple absentmindedly and nodded, “Yeah, I guess.”
Last night seemed like a blur to her. She remembered having a fight with Mickey and then running off when the rift opened. She vaguely remembered going back for him, but not finding him and then going back to the TARDIS and crashing. She had a nagging feeling in the back of her mind like she was missing something. Did something else happen? Why did she feel like something else happened last night?
“Earth to Rose,” Jack called out to her and she looked up at him in a daze.
“Sorry, what?”
“I saying we should have breakfast in New York, 1996. Whadda you say?”
“Sure, whatever.”
Jack continued, mouth practically salivating as he spoke. “I know a place close to Central Park where they have the best eggs and sausages for only $2.50! You are going to love it!”
She smiled at them as Jack told the Doctor a story of how he discovered the diner after an all-night rave party. The Doctor nodded at him but obviously had no interest in the story, whatsoever. Rose held in a giggle as she watched him feign interest while Jack spoke animatedly. He looked over at her at one point and smiled at her. His blue eyes sparkled in the morning suns and she had a fleeting memory of a pair of brown eyes looking down at her. She blinked and it was gone.
---
Galaxies away in the Karelpien System, the future Doctor took his coat off and tossed it over the console. He stuffed his hands into his pockets and paced around the TARDIS. It was done. Over. Finito.
His heart felt lighter but he knew it would be a long time before he recovered from losing Rose. He opened the door to the room that used to be her room and looked at her bed. It still had the duvet cover she insisted on bringing along because apparently the sheets he’d offered her were scratchy. He looked around at all her things and was sorry he had no way of returning them to her.
There were little trinkets spread about the room that she’d picked up in her travels like the vintage glow gun she bought in Toppee-Shank. Perhaps it was best that she didn’t have that gun, it could alter the progress of science in her world. And that would be very, very bad.
A few pictures were lined up on her dresser that she always took ages in front of to get ready. A sweet picture of Jackie, Mickey and Rose was off to one side and he smiled sadly, thinking how he’d never get smacked by Jackie again.
One picture stood out among them all and he laughed as he picked it up to get a better look. It was a photo taken when he’d taken her to Coney Island. They’d posed behind those cardboard bodies with the heads cut out for your head. Her body was a busty woman in a little red bikini while he was a muscular man in black trunks. They both smiled like dorks for the picture with their grins as big as Cheshire cats. He popped open the frame, pulled out the photo and slipped it into his breast pocket.
Suddenly a wave of memories flooded over him - memories that were happening to him in a previous time. It was Rose from the past changing something. He sat down on the bed and closed his eyes. He could see her face as if she were sitting right in front of him now. She was crying and begging him not to forget her. He could feel his former self pull her towards him. It wasn’t the first time he’d experienced memories in the future that he hadn’t experienced the first time around but this time it felt different. It was like he was actually there with her, not just remembering it. He could hear her tears echoing in his ears and could smell the scent of her hair as she pressed her face into his chest.
“Oh, Rose,” he whispered into the empty room. “I won’t ever forget you,” he promised again. He rose from the bed, smoothed out the duvet and went back to the door.
“Goodbye, Rose,” he breathed and closed her door for the last time. He pulled out the sonic screwdriver and locked it so no one would ever trouble her things. He walked slowly to the console room and pressed in a course for the 45th century. There was bound to be some trouble brewing in the future and he couldn’t wait to see it.
---
(1/1, Complete)