Fic: The Things I've Lost
Fic: The Things I've Lost
Series: These Words Between Us
Characters: Jackie Tyler, Rose Tyler, The Duplicate Tenth Doctor (Ten II/Rose)
Spoilers: Journey's End
Rating: G
A/N: This follows on from Indent in the Sand and The Lessons She Learnt From Me. No Beta'd so all mistakes are my own.
Summary: The Doctor struggles with his new life.
The Doctor leant in close to Jackie, glancing over at Rose who had fallen asleep on the sofa. ‘I need to know what has happened to her, since she’s been here,’ he told Jackie.
Jackie frowned back at the Doctor, looking at him as if he was stupid. ‘Do you really need to ask?’ she enquired, ‘she went through what most people go though when they lose the person they love.’
‘Hope, denial, pain and acceptance,’ muttered the Doctor. He had experienced those things before, many times over, and he had done terrible things in those times.
‘Never acceptance,’ Jackie corrected him, ‘if she had ever accepted that she would never find you again then she wouldn’t have built that Dimension Canon.’ Jackie cast a glance over at Rose before continuing to speak. ‘As soon as it started working, we hardly saw her. But something happened, she went on a trip and she came home in tears. I couldn’t get it out of her what had happened, but she kept saying that there had to be a way to put it right.’ Jackie sighed and looked up at the Doctor. ‘I didn’t see her again until we were on that Dalek ship.’
The Doctor frowned at Jackie. ‘How did you know where she had gone?’ he asked her as he took a sip of tea.
‘An email,’ she told him. ‘Telling us that she was sorry and she couldn’t stay here anymore.’ Jackie drew herself up and looked the Doctor in the eye. ‘Well, I wasn’t having that,’ she told him defiantly, ‘and given what was going on, well, me and Mickey decided you would need all the help you can get.’ Then she deflated as she looked at a picture of Pete and Tony. ‘I went without a second thought, all for my little girl,’ Jackie now looked fondly at her sleeping daughter. ‘Rose means everything to me, I am so proud of her.’
The Doctor’s eyes travelled over to the sleeping form of Rose. She looked so peaceful in sleep, the worries she had carried with her over the years of their separation fell from her face, and the Doctor dearly hoped that one day she would look just as peaceful in her waking hours as she did in her sleep.
‘And what about you,’ asked Jackie, eyeing him over her own cup of tea, ‘what happened to you since she’s been here?’
He sighed at her; Jackie Tyler wasn’t really the person he wanted to speak to about what had happened since he had lost Rose. ‘Oh the usual, living my life, travelling...’ he breaks off into silence and looks unseeingly at the wall at the other side of the room. Then he looked around in surprise when he felt a warm hand on his.
Jackie was smiling warmly at him. ‘This must be hard on you, stuck here.’ She sighed again, glancing over at her daughter, just to make sure that she was still asleep. ‘What he did to you, leaving you here, it was wrong.’
‘There isn’t enough room in that universe for two Doctor’s,’ he told Jackie quietly, ‘especially when one of them is willing to commit genocide.’
The older woman snorted. ‘Like I believe that for one second,’ she told the Doctor, ‘willing to commit genocide? You saved our bloody lives, Doctor!’ she said passionately, ‘we’d have all died on that ship if it hadn’t been for you, not to mention the rest of the universe would have been torn apart.’
The Doctor chuckled darkly as he looked at Jackie. ‘Rose said much the same thing,’ he replied, ‘on the beach, said she’d do it herself if needs be.’
Jackie nodded her head solemnly. ‘And I’d help her,’ she told the Doctor, ‘and I know you would. She’s told me, you know, about the Time War, the Daleks and the Time Lords. She said you had to commit a terrible act to stop the Time War and that’s why you were the only one left.’
The Doctor hung his head, gobsmacked that Jackie had told him this. ‘It was the only way to save the universe,’ he told her quietly.
‘And what you did on that Dalek ship was the only way to save the universe again,’ replied Jackie quietly. ‘He, the other you, couldn’t have done what you did, I heard him asking Davros to come with us.’
The Doctor felt his mouth open wide and he looked at Jackie in shock. ‘He did what?’ he said, close to unable to get the words out, ‘If Davros had been saved then it would have started again, and again, and again.’
Jackie nodded her head. ‘I know, Doctor, I know.’
Rose woke up on her mother’s sofa wrapped in a soft blue blanket. She glanced over at the clock and saw that it was nearly two in the morning. She frowned, sitting herself up and stretching her cramped up limbs. The house was silent, and Rose stood up folding her blanket up before bedding out to the kitchen for a drink. As she entered the wide room, she saw a figure sat on a garden bench, head thrown back looking at the stars.
She drowned her drink before heading back to the living room where she grabbed the blanket she had been sleeping under before going outside to sit beside the Doctor. Without a word, their fingers twined together and Rose leant her head against his shoulder looking up to the sky. ‘It was terrifying when they started going out, half a constellation would go missing in seconds. There was mass panic everywhere.’
The Doctor tore his eyes away from the skies. ‘All over now,’ he said quietly and looked back up into the sky. ‘You told your mother what you knew about the Time War.’
It wasn’t a question and she knew it. Rose glanced up to see him staring faraway into the world of adventures he could never had. ‘It was a long time ago,’ she told him, not taking her eyes of him. ‘She wanted to know why you were alone, the last of your kind and I told her.’ She smiled and looked back up to the stars. ‘She cares about you, you know, wants to help us get on our feet.’
He laughed; Jackie was the last person in the universe he ever expected to care about him, but the evidence was there, that she did care. Helping to look after him when he had regenerated, fussing over him as much as did Rose when they returned from the parallel universe and telling Elton Pope that she would protect him and Rose with her life.
Rose watched him intently as he resumed looking up at the sky. ‘Is there anything I can do?’ she asked, ‘to make it better.’ As much as she had been watching for personality differences, Rose has also been watching him to see how he was dealing with the loss of his home.
‘Stay with me?’
Rose laughed. ‘Of course,’ she told him. ‘You’re never going to get rid of me.’
They sit in silence for a while, watching the stars move slowly across the night sky. It was sometime later before the Doctor spoke again. ‘Why did you come back?’
‘Because I love you,’ she said simply, ‘I missed you; I wanted to have whatever time we could have together. My forever.’ Some tears dropped from her eyes, leaving rivers down her cheeks.
‘And our life travelling across the stars?’ he asked. He had been worried, ever since they had been on the beach that Rose was taking this too well. It was easier to make himself believe, despite her words saying the contrary, that she wanted to be back with him for the adventure.
She shrugged, knowing full well what he was trying to get at. ‘I just wanted to be with you, I didn’t care where we ended up, just as long as it was you and me,’ she asked truthfully, before standing up and looking at him. ‘Why? Didn’t you want me back?’
The Doctor looked at her sadly. As a Time Lord, before the metacrisis, there had been a part of him that didn’t want her back, because he couldn’t bear to watch her wither away and die. However, that feeling had always been overridden by his need to love her. ‘I always wanted you back,’ he said quietly looking up at her, seeing hurt in her eyes. ‘If I didn’t want you, I wouldn’t be here, Rose.’
Rose looked up to the sky. ‘Where do you think he is?’
He looked up as well. ‘Not up there,’ he said, ‘wrong sky.’
Rose noticed that the Doctor looked sad and she went to sit beside him again, pulling her blanket close to herself. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘He’ll be alone,’ he stated sadly, not looking at Rose.
She frowned hating the idea of the Doctor, the Time Lord, alone in his little blue box. ‘Why? What about Martha, or Jack, even Mickey?’
‘Mickey,’ the Doctor laughed, looking at Rose with a raised eyebrow, ‘oh, you can’t be serious? Mickey? I only put up with him because he was with you, couldn’t shake him off!’
Rose whacked him on the shoulder. ‘You liked him really, I could tell. I mean, you let him come with us, and I know for a fact that before you regenerated you asked him to come.’
The Doctor shrugged. ‘He was a source of amusement.’
Rose laughed but when she was done, she looked over at the Doctor. ‘But seriously, why is he alone? He said that you can’t be leave alone, well, neither can he.’
‘You saying I shouldn’t be left alone as well?’ the Doctor asked her, his voice seriously.
She shook her head. ‘No, but I can’t leave you alone,’ she looked back up at the sky, ‘you didn’t answer my question.’
‘True,’ he acknowledged, and Rose genuinely wondered if on this occasion he wasn’t going to answer. He had told her so much in the week that they had already been here. ‘But it gets harder, every time someone leaves, or they die, or taken,’ he looked over at Rose who was looking back at him with sad eyes. ‘For him, the only two people he really wants with him are far beyond his reach; you and Donna.’
Rose sighed. ‘Well, it was his choice to leave us here.’
The Doctor laughed coldly, the words from his earlier conversation with Jackie came to the forefront of his mind. ‘There’s no room in that universe for me,’ he told Rose, ‘who needs a genocidal half Time Lord loose with a time machine.’
Rose looked at him aghast. ‘Don’t say that,’ she said quietly, looking down at her feet. Then she looked around at the Doctor. ‘I don’t believe you’re genocidal or do you have a strong urge to kill the Human Race that you haven’t told me about?’
The Doctor’s eyes narrowed into a glare at Rose. ‘How can you accept what I did so willingly?’
‘You want me to be sorry that you destroyed the most destructive race in the universe?’ asked Rose, getting up again and glaring back at the Doctor. ‘Because I’m not sorry, Doctor.’ She turned on her heel and started walking away from him, but a few steps later she turned to look at him. ‘If you hadn’t done what you did then it would never end, everybody would have to live in fear of those creatures.’ She took a few more steps back towards the Doctor. ‘And why is this any different to anything else you’ve done?’
They were glaring at each other with such intensity that Rose feared she would burn under his anger. ‘Because my actions have cost me my home and my life.’
The words hung in the air between them creating an invisible wall. ‘Not your life,’ Rose said quietly. ‘You can have a life here with me,’ her voiced dropped to a whisper as she felt even more tears well in her eyes. ‘You said to me, on that beach all those years ago that this is the one adventure you’ve never been able to have - now you can have it.’
The Doctor stood up, looking at her in surprise. ‘You remembered that?’ he asked as he closed the gap between them a little.
‘I remember everything you’ve ever said to me,’ she replied, looking at him warily. ‘Including building something new for ourselves.’
‘That was only two days ago,’ he told her, and smiled when he saw the edges of her mouth hitch up. Then he held his hand out to her, wriggling his fingers at her and she closed the space between them, grabbing his hand before he pulled her into his arms. ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered into her hair, pressing his lips to her locks. ‘I know your right about the Daleks,’ he told her as he held onto her. ‘And so is your mother, I would do it again, and I would help you do it.’
They broke apart and looked at each other. The Doctor reached over to her cheek and wiped the tears away, looking at her tenderly. ‘And you’re right, of course, having a life here with you, all the things we can do. Silly holidays aboard, living in your flat and maybe one day a house, being together,’ as he speaks his hands glide over her arms across her hands and to her hips. ‘I love you, Rose Tyler,’ he whispered in her ear and wrapping his arms across her back as he captures her mouth with his.
Her arms snaked up around his neck and her fingers tangled into his hair. ‘I love you too,’ she managed between the kisses as he pulled her even closer.
A/NII: Okay, so I know I said yesterday that I might not have time to write more in this Verse for a few days, but this bugger bit me and wouldn't leave me alone, despite trying to shake it off!