Fic: On This Night Of A Thousand Stars (1/1) Ten/Rose PG-13
Title: On This Night Of A Thousand Stars
Character(s): Ten. Rose.
Pairing: Ten/Rose (same old, same old!)
Rating: PG-13
Setting: Set simultaneously during the episode Fear Her and Season Four (that spoiler is referenced, plus spoilers from 4X01 and 4X03.)
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Author’s Notes: Sparked from Stuck In A Moment You Can’t Get Out Of, and angsty because I’m feeling very dark of late. The title is from the song of the same name by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice in their musical, Evita.
Summary: He was trying very hard to care about the likelihood of Reapers and failing miserably.
He had thought that this was going to be just like every other time he had been here since she’d gone: land the TARDIS, find where Rose was, watch her for a little while - without messing up the timeline - get back into the TARDIS and disappear until the need to see her again couldn’t be assuaged in any other way.
It didn’t turn out that way. But then again, when was the last time anything that he’d been involved in had ever gone to plan?
He achieved the first two steps easily enough and was skulking around trying to keep to where she would not see him but, at the same time, so desperate to fill his senses with her that he could not let her out of his sight. The whole experience of dealing with the Ood again had spooked him, had brought memories of her to overcome him as they broke free from the part of his mind he’d locked down because he couldn’t bear to remember. Memories of the Sanctuary Base, of the crew members he’d been able to save (and of those he hadn’t). Of the Beast.
“And the lost girl, so far away from home. The valiant child who will die in battle so very soon.”
He remembered how he’d told her that the Beast had lied, that she wouldn’t die. That he wouldn’t let her. And he had kept that promise, even though it had cost him a part of his soul; she’d survived Canary Wharf. The cost, the fact that he’d never see her again, was very nearly worth it.
He let himself get so caught up in his memories that he forgot to keep an eye out for potential trouble, and it wasn't until he heard his name being called that he finally woke to the potential danger.
“Doctor?”
Oh, shit.
He’d been seen. And while part of his consciousness was screaming at him about paradoxes and Reapers and the end of all things, the rest of it - not to mention what felt to him like every single nerve ending in his entire body - was singing in unadulterated joy at being this close to her. It had been so long since he’d talked to her (longer still since he’d been able to hold her). So very, very long. He was tired beyond measure of resisting the temptation.
So, summoning up as much nonchalance as possible - so she wouldn’t realise that he wasn’t her Doctor (or, to be precise, not her Doctor from this time period) - he smiled at her with a thoroughly genuine smile, the first to reach his eyes in quite some time, before drawing her into a hug. He thanked his lucky stars that by this stage they hugged each other for little if any reason, and instead of planning how he was going to avoid Reapers he was fighting a battle with himself about whether or not to disappear with Rose and leave the universe to its own devices. He was trying very hard to care about the likelihood of Reapers and failing miserably. And all the time he was revelling in the feeling of Rose’s body flush against his for the first time in he couldn’t remember how long.
It was Rose who broke the hug, Rose who pulled away from him and started babbling about the Isolus and little Chloë Webber and the Olympics. Rose who encouraged him to find the way to solve the problem, saying she knew that he could, that she believed in him. Obviously, he thought, Rose thought that he was the Doctor who was travelling with her. Thank Chaos I wore the brown suit this time out, he thought, knowing that there would have been no way of explaining things if he had been wearing the blue one without revealing that he wasn’t who she thought he was.
She turned to walk away from him, and he struggled to remember where his other self was at that moment; the last thing he needed right now would be to run into him. As he watched her moving away, he noticed that her hair looked different to how he’d remembered it - loose (he could have sworn she was wearing it in one of those pigtail things), and a more golden colour.
What the hell?
His mind working overtime told him that this was, to say the least of it, highly unlikely. Something was up.
“Rose? Rose!”
He called after her, but she didn’t seem to hear him; always quick on his feet he started running after her, only to see her disappear right in front of his eyes.
That’s not right, that didn’t happen, he thought. What in the name of Chaos was going on? He was beginning to think that the impossible had actually happened, and had a nasty feeling that although he’d been trying to preserve the timeline, so had she. He’d thought it was impossible, had told her so that last time he’d seen her. It should have been impossible.
He’d said to her that night that it was a night “for lost things being found”. But it was impossible. He hadn’t found her again, only to lose her without even knowing it.
Had he?