Once More
Title: Once More
Author: emily64cooper
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairing: Ten/Rose, Ten II/Rose
Summary: It wasn't easy to watch the woman you loved marry someone else - even if the man she was marrying was your half-human twin.
Author's Note: Written for a prompt on comment_fic.
He stayed in the back of the room, near enough to see, but far enough to not be seen.
"A toast, then, for the happy couple!" Sharreen shouted, raising her glass.
The Doctor swallowed hard. It wasn't easy to watch the woman you loved marry someone else - even if the man she was marrying was your half-human twin.
"Who wants to go first?" Sharreen called, once glasses had been filled and passed around.
The Doctor sipped his wine and looked around to make sure no one could see him. He had to do this.
He slipped around the crowd, squeezing in somewhere near the back. He cleared his throat and did his best to disguise his voice.
"To Rose and John. To a happy marriage. Live a good life."
Rose gave a quizzical, hopeful look in his direction, but stayed where she was.
The crowd, Rose and the Duplicate Doctor included, cheered and drank to that, and the Doctor took his chance to slip out of the room unnoticed. His pain intensified as he left the ballroom, a few tears leaking from his eyes.
He had to come here, had to see this before his regeneration. It killed him to watch Rose, his Rose, marry another man, another him. But he needed to see her once more. He needed to feel this sorrow, this longing for a life he could never have.
He didn't know if his next self would.
And that scared him more than anything.