Fic: Miserere (1/1)
Title: Miserere
Rating: R
Pairing: Ten/Rose, Master/Rose
Word Count: 5,618
Summary: When she sees him across the room, everything stops. But this isn’t her reality, and it doesn’t take her long to realize that this Harold Saxon isn’t her Doctor, either. Spoilers through Doctor Who 4.13 - Journey's End.
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot.
Author’s Notes: For the fabulous nschick’s lovely Doctor/Rose Meme and the rose_lives Getting-From-There-To-Here-Ficfest Prompt: Altuniverse Master meets Rose, defender of the earth. This probably could use a bit of explanation, so: Rose, in the Alternate Universe following “Doomsday,” is working on that Dimension Cannon for UNIT, and runs into alt!Master, who conveniently looks like prime!Doctor. Being a little less evil than prime!Master, alt!Master, aka Harold Saxon, with prime!Doctor’s face, is heading up this Dimension Cannon project given his impressive knowledge of the nature of time. Rose, working under him, can’t help but meld her prime!Doctor and this alt!Master in her mind, desperate as she is to see her own Doctor again. Hope that helps a bit - this concept is rather convoluted, I acknowledge. Still - enjoy :)
Miserere
When she sees him across the room, everything stops. The dancing, the talking, the air in her lungs and the heart in her chest, even; she nearly floats towards him, seeing the way he laughs with his whole body, knowing him from the gelled sort of flip in his cinnamon hair, the way it falls across his forehead, knowing him down to the soles of his shoes - black and white trainers that are so very him, and still so very fitting in the room full of evening-wear. She veritably shakes as she approaches him, ignoring the swarm of faceless people, inconsequential hangers-on that he’s entertaining and being entertained by alike, and her palm rises, her fingers mold to the globe of his shoulder and she taps him, touches him with just the ghost of her hand, the way her wrists trembles making prolonged contact impossible, though it’s unnecessary - just feeling him at all is enough.
And to think, she’d nearly skipped the party altogether.
“John Smith, is it?” And the joy, the cheek in her voice is nothing, absolutely nothing compared to the smile that stretches across her face, the way her teeth shine around plump pink lips and the way his eyes, those chocolate eyes that literally hold the universe at their centers trail over her mouth before rising to meet her eyes.
There is something different about those eyes, and if her heart hadn’t been fluttering with the sheer exhilaration of the reality of him, the wonder of seeing him, really and truly before her eyes and not just in her dreams; if she hadn’t been so blissfully happy at beholding him, safe and sound and whole, for the first time in far too long, she would have noticed. She would have known it was too good to be true.
Those eyes, they twitch a bit, and there’s curiosity, but no recognition as they focus in on her, as they dip for the barest of instants down to her neckline before fixing again on her face. “Not at all,” the voice - the voice she knows, knows as if it’s a part of her, as if it’s her own voice, really, resonating deep within her bones; the voice is smoother, nonchalant in a way that she’s never known it to be before - slick and languid where she’d always remembered it to be frantic and almost stalling, the charm of it gone and replaced by something dangerous, something sensual and tempting; different. Too different, she realizes, as the man who isn’t, who cannot be who she thinks he is extends his hand to reach for hers in greeting, his expression polite - endless, like her Doctor’s, but empty - cold where his had always been so warm, hard where he’d been soft. “Harold Saxon,” he introduces himself, and that name, that name - it’s so familiar; an omen of something she thinks she should know, suspects she will know, but simply doesn’t. “Master. Of...” He trails off with what Rose can only describe as a well-meaning sort of chuckle, though the smirk that accompanies it is lethal, edgy as he turns a bit, to glance at her out of the corner of his eye, catching her hand without waiting for her to offer it return and raising it to his lips, the gesture somehow chivalrous and terrifying at the very same time. “Well, Master of whatever it is you need.”
She doesn’t say anything, barely notices as he lets her hand slip from his grasp and watches her now with a sort of friendly concern as she stares past him, through him, unable to reconcile this body - this man who had dragged her across the cosmos, that hand which has pulled her long behind him, the mouth that moved a mile a minute sometimes, those eyes that adored her; adored her even when he could never say it - she could not equate her Doctor, her beloved Doctor, with this stranger in front of her, this Mr. Saxon and his face that belonged to someone so dear to her, so much a part of her heart.
“A pleasure,” he prompts as the silence between them grows uncomfortable, even if it’s inconsequential in the wake of the bustling, the music quivering around them. “Miss...”
His eye implore an answer from her, and they’re not the same eyes, not exactly - but they’re near enough to draw the words from her lips without so much as a thought. “Tyler. Rose Tyler.”
“Indeed.” His smile softens his features; there’s no threat behind it this time as he bows his head a bit and turns back to the guests he’d been conversing with before the interruption, all of whom happen to be Rose’s superiors and are eyeing her warily over his shoulder as he strikes the conversation anew. Wonderful.
____________________________________
“So, Miss Tyler,” the voice send shivers up her spine, memories of the TARDIS, of late nights spent with a cuppa and a soft, lazy smile shared between them, conversations about meaningless, perfect little things that defined exactly what they were without ever having to say it, ever having to find a word for it. The chestnut of his hair looks strangely more red in the lighting, stark against the white of his shirt, the midnight black of his waistcoat as he leans next to her at the balcony, interrupting the shadows of a moonbeam, haloed in it, glowing with something nameless, something beautiful but formidable all at once. “What brings a lovely young woman such as yourself to Earth of all places, and to UNIT, no less?”
“Earth’s ma home,” she replies, refusing to meet his eyes as her pinky traces the condensation on the bottom of her champagne flute. “Born an’ raised,” she toasts the empty air with a sardonic sort of flash in her eyes as she tips back what’s left in the glass and swallows hard, her hair cascading, tendril by tiny tendril, from her elaborate French twist.
“Is it, now?” he asks, turning himself so that his back is now against the railing, his eyes riveted to her, the curve of her ear, the line of her neck where the loose strands of her hair obscure his view of her, her view of him. “Strange. You have a decidedly... alien sense about you.” His breath, as he draws it in, is light and yet harsh, cutting through the tension, the blackness of the night - the stars are dimmer these days, fewer and further between. “And I’m not often wrong about these things.”
Rose swallows a sort of snort, her bustline heaving against the confines of her gown, and she notices that his eyes follow their sensual rise and fall in a way that her Doctor would never have dared, never. “You’re not a fan of th’ planet, then?” she asks with a proud sort of sneer, feeling defensive in the most unthinkable of ways, protective not of her home, or her world, but of the man whose doppelgänger is apparently leaning just beside her, owning that countenance as if it’s his own, as if it belongs to him, and Rose cannot bring herself to acknowledge the acidic burn in her stomach that tells her that it’s more than merely ‘likely’ that this is his face, his voice, his body, just as much as any other; just as much as it’s her Doctor’s.
“I didn’t say that,” he glances her way gently. “I just know potential when I see it, I know what this world can yield, how much more it can advance,” he takes a long drink from his scotch. “And I know that there are bigger fish in the sea, you might say. Brighter stars in the sky.”
Her eyes follow his against her will as they both stare up at the sky, devoid now of any real brightness; even the moon looks dull, somehow. “You don’t say?”
“Mmm...” he hums into the lip of his glass. “At least, for now.” And he smiles as if he knows something, a secret something that amuses him privately, that he can never share. It makes Rose’s skin crawl just as it sets a fire beneath her heart, igniting the memory of that look every morning she was with him, every night she slept nearby.
“Why are you here, then?” she asks, the edge of accusation in her tone making her impatience dreadfully clear, though the source of it sounds wishy-washy, and she cringes at the decidedly bothered note in her voice.
And of course, where she cringes, he only grins with greater self-satisfaction. “Think of me as a consultant,” he mutters, eyes dancing as he drains his scotch and studies the crystalline pattern at the empty bottom of the glass.
“Can I get you a drink, Miss Tyler?” he offers, grabbing for her own empty glass. “I’m up for another, myself.”
She doesn’t protest. She wants to, but she doesn’t.
____________________________________
It’s three weeks after the gala that Rose finds herself slowly acclimating to the face that haunts her dreams not having the foggiest clue who she is, aside from being one of the underlings who reports to him on the dimensionality project they’ve been developing ever since the stars began to disappear. She hasn’t asked any questions of this Mr. Saxon, and she avoids the endless gossip about that pretty face heading up the alpha team on what she’s affectionally dubbed “the cannon” - she doesn’t want to know him, doesn’t want to see him, to associate with him more than she has to. This is a different universe, this is a different world, a different life, and this is just a cruel and unfortunate coincidence that’s burning in her chest, uncanny but unavoidable; no one’s fault, really, that her Doctor would be someone different here, someone completely separate, just another man, really - eccentric, but so much less than his former; no, his other self.
Hell - here, she was a dog. Anything was possible. Nothing was surprising. Not anymore.
“I will not tolerate failure.”
It’s the bite in his tone that stops her before she enters his office with the latest results of their test-runs, pages upon pages of data that seem much easier for this particular man to dissect, to translate and correct than it is for any of them - master of mathematics, apparently, was what he’d come here to be. But she can hear the scuff of his shoes against the wood floors, the tension in his gait as he paces and barks into the mobile clutched in his palm, and it’s that gravity, that weight that resonates from him, coupled with the flash in his eyes that she catches just before he can see her, just before she can duck away, that stills her steps and makes her hover just beyond his reach; that makes her stay to listen, even though she knows she shouldn’t.
“You know exactly what I’m talking about,” he seethes into his phone, and she can see the shadow of his slender frame as he hunches over the length of his desk in frustration. “I can’t have rouge fucking Time Lords wandering about the cosmos. I won’t tolerate it.”
There’s a pause, and if she’s still she can imagine that she hears the voice replying from the other line, even though she doesn’t really. “I presume you haven’t forgotten the last time your glaring inadequacies lost us this opportunity,” he hisses disdainfully, and Rose finds her pulse just a little bit quicker, bouncing around just a bit harder below the base of her throat, because for as much as she’s avoided him, she knows that he’s universally liked throughout the organization, polite and gentlemanly and brilliant, not to mention utterly gorgeous, and it’s hard for her to reconcile this seething, scathing anger with that general opinion; not to mention with the man she knows him to be in her heart, the man in her memories that she cannot for life of her separate from the one in the room just beyond. “I imagine that you recall the consequences.”
“Temporal interference?” he asks, and there’s that squeak in his voice that she remembers from all the times he’d been so flabbergasted, so befuddled, and it takes everything in her to swallow the giggle that accompanies the recollection of his expression, so bewildered, so absurd and yet so endearing. Her eyes flicker up to watch him through the gap between the hinges on the door, and she freezes from the inside as this man’s face fails to match that humor, that warmth - he is furious, and it’s frightening. Truly the Oncoming Storm. “Idiot girl, it’s probably your own trail. Those devices aren’t fool-proof, you know. Primitive at best.”
She watches his hand ruffle through his hair, mussing it further, as if it needed it. “Well, then, who do you think it is?” he asks suddenly, his voice short and demeaning, the note of superiority unavoidable as his pandering inquiry echoes through the room beyond, the silence that follows what Rose can only guess is a reply growing leaden, thick enough to suffocate them all.
“The Doctor.” And her heart jumps, leaps at the mere mention of the name, and she can’t breath, at first because of the recognition, the acknowledgement of him here, where no one spoke of him, no one knew of him; and then because of the hatred, the deadly, earth-shattering loathing that laced the words, as if he were the most vile thing in existence, just his name. “The Doctor.”
She flinches as she hears something - though what it is, she can’t be sure - make contact with the far wall as a feral growl escapes Mr. Saxon, and he seems to shake with suppressed rage, screaming into the receiver with barely-restrained antipathy veritably dripping from every inch of him. “How dare you speak of that filth to me? How dare you!”
His breathing is heavy, unsteady and inefficient as his knuckles grow white where he grips the desk in Rose’s line of sight. “You have your assignment,” he speaks finally, his tone calm despite his furious gasping for air just moments before, the words even but heavy, drenched with meaning and implication and the unspoken threat of what will happen if his will is ignored. “You will make certain he doesn’t foil our plans. I will not allow his meddling in this affair. Eliminate him.” Roses nearly chokes on her frightened gasp as her chest tightens, her eyes widen and her stomach drops to her shoes. “The quicker, the better.”
Rose is only just processing that what she’s heard sounds suspiciously like a hit order when he speaks again, his tone shrill, low, and more lethal than anything she’s ever heard - and she’s heard a lot, Rose Tyler, a whole hell of a lot. “Say one more word, Martha Jones,” he murmurs, almost, into the phone, his lips impossibly close to the device as he speaks to it like a lover, like a killer; “and I promise you, you’ll soon find yourself bound and gagged on Carvolentia XI, fucking you’re way through life in an intergalactic brothel! See if your precious ‘Doctor’ can help you then.” The curl of his lips is so poisonous that it makes Rose feel nauseous, her tongue tasting immediately of bile as she wavers. This makes no sense.
“Do not contact me until it’s done,” he states, clipped and with a sense of finality, and Rose realizes she needs to move, needs to leave before she’s caught; how long had she been crouched near the door, anyway? Her knees ached as if it had been hours, but she knew better. Minutes, at best.
“If?” his voice breaks a bit, too high for his range. “If? Martha, my good woman,” he laughs incredulously, and it makes her mouth dry, the way it sounds - that voice she loves so contorted, so changed. “If you can’t complete the assignment, don’t bother coming back at all.”
She springs to her feet and bolts to the end of the hall as she catches the gentle click as his snaps his phone shut, and she’s around the corner just before he exits the office and makes his way in the opposite direction.
Rose runs a covert search on the name ‘Martha Jones’ the next day, finding three relevant matches, all within UNIT - a lab technician from Surrey, a medic from London, and a researcher from Casablanca, oddly enough, all of whom are accounted for on official business, one even contracted to Torchwood, as it were. When nothing out of the ordinary happens for the next month, and Mr. Saxon is nothing short of superb in his manners and demeanor both to her personally and in all accounts from her gossiping coworkers, Rose thinks it best to pretend that nothing ever happened. She has other things to worry about.
____________________________________
Despite her uncanny knowledge of extraterrestrials, Rose Tyler is still just a lackey, and she cannot avoid reporting to the higher ups forever. And her higher up just happens to be Harold Saxon.
“Miss Tyler!” he exclaims with a genuinely pleased sort of grin - the type that hides absolutely nothing, open to the point of rousing suspicion in itself, too good to be true. “A pleasant surprise, to be certain. To what do I owe the honor?”
She strides across the office, standing straight-backed with her hands crossed behind her back after placing a heavily-bound collection of papers on the center of his desk. “Status report,” she answers stoically, her palms sweating against one another as she stares just above where his head reaches from his seat.
“Mmm...” he glances at the stack of printouts, reaching into the pocket in his shirt and unfolding his glasses - the same awkward frames she remembers from another man, another time, and it’s all she can do not to say anything, to keep her face impassive, devoid of the joy as well as the pain. “All work and no play, love,” he shakes a finger at her as he slides on his specs, looking over the first page with calculated, and yet still somehow casual attentiveness. “You don’t have to wait for paperwork as an excuse to come and visit,” he looks pointedly at her over the tops of his rectangular frames. “In fact, I wish you wouldn’t wait at all.”
Rose doesn’t dignify the subtle come-on with a response, but there’s a warmth in her chest that ignites at the attention, at the fleeting caress of familiar eyes across her figure. It’s gone as soon as she lets herself enjoy it - figures, really - and he’s leaning forward, the glasses gone as his elbows dig into the bulk of the reports, his eyes narrowed onto her. “You do know that this ‘dimension cannon,’” his fingers form quotes around the word as his lips curve against the letters somewhat condescendingly - she bristles, but remains still; “isn’t going to work.”
Rose frowns, her eyes still refusing to meet his as she stares at the wall behind him, posture rigid with forced discipline as she tries to keep her cool, to remain professional - she’s not valuable enough to be completely irreplaceable, even with people like Mickey and Pete on her side; particularly if the person she rubs the wrong way is everyone's favorite golden boy. “‘Course it is,” she tosses back, sure of herself. Completely sure. “All of the scans an’ preliminaries show it operatin’ at near full capacity. The test runs are all coming back positive, it’s almos’ fool-proof.”
He chuckles, and it’s not mean, really, not rude, but she takes it that way nonetheless - something of her old Doctor resonating within her at the look in his eyes, their early days coming back to her at the touch of pity in that gaze - pity that she’s so limited, pity that she’s still deluded by that blind sort of human hope. “With all due respect to you and yours; your science is flawed. You don’t know enough about the intricacies of the matter. The nuances, the very threads in the fabric of time itself.” He lifts himself from his chair and strides around to the front of his desk, propping himself at the front and crossing his arms over his chest as he considers her carefully. “This is where I can help you.”
He watches as her eyes finally meet his own, and he seems look straight into her, reading everything about her, knowing her as intimately as anyone ever could before he blinks, and everything reverts to normal; his are just eyes looking hard into hers. “You don’t seem surprised,” he comments, but he’s intrigued, she can tell.
“S’because I’m not.”
He takes in the way she stands, the deliberate air of being completely unimpressed seeping from the shift of her weight, the pout of her lips, and it’s almost as if he cannot help but smile at her. “I see.”
He’s in front of her within a moment, the space between breaths, and his face is tilted at an angle to her own; when she inhales, she can catch his scent. “Rose,” he speaks softly - not quite a murmur, and just a tad above a whisper, too. “I get the impression that you know me, but I am certain that we’ve never met before.”
Rose sucks in a terrible breath, and it’s as if in that tiny slip, that little abandonment of complete control, he finds his entrance, knows his territory. He takes a step, just a step, impossibly closer to her, and she can feel the heat of him soaking through her clothes, her heart leaping at the proximity of that face; just a hair nearer and she could lean in, touch her lips to his...
“I’m not the person you knew.” She stills as he says it, because she knows it to be true and yet it can’t be, it just can’t, because she needs him and they’ve tried so hard, and she cannot, she will not accept that it’s all been for nothing as he says. “I’m not, whoever that shadow is in your mind.”
She turns her face away as he presses his chest against her, just the lightest touch when they both breathe in. “Do I have his face?” he asks softly, the ghost of his breath lingering on her cheek. “His name?” She shudders when his fingers reach to tangle in her hair, combing through it delicately, almost affectionately. “Let me help you.”
“No,” she whispers, but even she doesn’t believe herself as her body aches to touch him, knowing that he’ll feel the same, taste the same - be the same. Knowing that for all intents and purposes, this can be her Doctor. If only for the moment, if only for the night.
“We can get him back,” his voice is like a sigh against the shell of her ear, and when she shivers, his hand steadies her at the small of her back, his eyes shifting to keep her gaze locked to his at the peripheral.
“Why?” she asks softly, and it sounds weak, like a plea. She hates that she’s become this, hates that he can do this to her. Hates him... hates this man and the Doctor he looks like for the first time she can remember. Hates him.
But loves him. By god, she loves him.
He sighs again, and it simmers in the pit of her stomach as she breathes him in in turn. “Because I find myself... inexplicably drawn to you,” he replies with a sense of resignation that’s too human to ever have belong to her beloved Time Lord; and that should have ended the association once and for all, but it doesn’t; it could never. “I’m not one to question that.”
Rose whimpers as his lips touch accidentally just below her ear when he withdraws just a centimeter, and her voice keens just a tad as she arches unconsciously into the weight of him, the heat of him. “People will get hurt,” she murmurs breathlessly. “I can’t do that. I can’t let you do that.”
“But...” he starts, without denying it, without reassuring her. It’s better that way, really. Somehow, inexplicably, they’re beyond that. She’s known him forever - the disparate wholes now a single entity, her Doctor incarnate; and he knows her well enough to be satisfied, sees things in her that should frighten her, should make her run the other way, but they don’t; her heart, and the way it beats with renewed vigor, with new life at just being near him gives her courage enough to endure, to thrive beneath his touch. “To have him. To hold him in your arms again...”
“I just...” she whispers, her face dropping as her chin dips, avoiding that depthless chestnut gaze and immediately suffering at its loss.
“But that’s why you’re doing this, isn’t it?” he asks suddenly, his hand at her shoulder, keeping her there with him. He needn’t have bothered, really - she’s too far gone to back out now, the shape of his hand just the same as it had always been.
“I’m doing this to protect people,” she protests without any fight, without the conviction she feels in her soull it’s dimmed - diluted by the passion, the need. “To protect everyone. If this universe crumbles, the rest of reality won’t stand a chance for long.”
He twirls her hair again, and her eyes drift closed at the simple, and yet impossibly sensual touch. “So very noble of you.” His thumb traces innocently, and still so very deliberately along the curve of her jaw. “But it wouldn’t be an unwelcome bonus if you happened to find him,” he suggests, his knee surreptitiously edging between her thighs, testing, trying as his hand slides to her hip. “If you happened to jump to just the right time, just the right place, run right into him,” he breathes, his hand tracing up her neck, cupping her cheek as he speaks just shy of her mouth, his lips only just missing her own; “Feel his lips on yours...”
“Don’t,” she stills, and he doesn’t push her, freezes along with her, but the touch doesn’t disappear, the pine scent of him, the earthen aroma mingling with mint and cocoa and fresh-brewed tea. It’s all still there.
“I can help you, Rose,” he exhales into her the side of her neck, his hand kneading into her skin.
“I can’t let you,” she shakes her head, and unwittingly brings the reality of him impossibly closer to her, her heart threatening to beat through her rib cage and escape her chest, because this is what she’s dreamed of. This is all she’s wanted. To have him, one more time; for the first time, and the last time, all at once.
“You can have him back,” he reads her thoughts, somehow. “You can. But you need me.”
“It’s not worth it,” she whispers brokenly, turning to the side, away from him, trying to block him out, but he is everywhere, he is everything; inescapable as he ever was.
“Isn’t it?” he challenges her, his eyes hard somehow, even in their sympathy. “Could you say that to his face?” he asks wickedly, guessing and guessing right as she crumbles, her eyes wide and wet, shimmering as she stares into him, pleading. “Tell him he’s not worth it,” he enunciates carefully, and she can hear so many words, so many phrases said in just the same way that it breaks her heart, breaks her mind and her soul and her resolve and he can feel the protest die inside her as he draws her just a little closer, and whispers in her ear:
“Sometimes you just have to be selfish, Rose. It’s the quintessential survival instinct, isn’t it?” he strokes comforting little lines across her jawline, his nose brushing the bridge of her own as he studies the pillow of her cheeks, the cures of her eyelids. “Serving that which best serves ourselves?”
“Let me take care of the particulars,” he implores, knowing that she’ll give in now, knowing that the soft caress of his fingers dangerously low at her side will persuade her this time, that’s he’s won her, finally; and yet his eyes are no longer foreign to her - these are the eyes she’s always known, always held so dear in the deeper chambers of her heart; eyes that care, eyes that adore, eyes that cherish. “Let me help you.”
Eyes she can imagine, if she is so inclined, that love.
“Just trust me, Rose.”
That voice, that face, the concern in the lines around his mouth and the slant of his eyes; she cannot fight it. She doesn’t want to. This may be her only chance - this may be all she ever gets of him, and she cannot let it pass. She’s a strong woman, stronger than most, but she’s not strong enough for that.
____________________________________
He’s slow, he’s fast, he’s hard and rough and impossibly gentle and kind; the touch of him is familiar and yet she’s never felt anything like it before - it is everything she imagined and like nothing she’d dreamed. It’s him, but it isn’t, and yet in the fog of pain and pleasure and unfathomable need, she cannot bring herself to care. She nearly sobs as he slides in and out of her with a rhythm that matches something far away, something distant that she knows but cannot place.
“Are you seeing him?” he asks her on the downstroke, filling her entirely as tears stream down her cheeks, tears of elation and devastation at the very same time. “Are you fucking him?”
She doesn’t answer, but surges up to capture his lips before he rocks into her again. “Do we taste the same?’ he asks breathlessly as they break apart, and her answer is to kiss him once more, deeper and more desperate this time as his milky skin slides over her own, slick with sweat.
She comes, harder than she’s ever done, and she barely notices when he peaks at the very same time. It’s heat and perfection and wonder, and his hands are on her, needy and sure as he carries her down. They’re tangled, inseparable, and she clings to him even as his palms roam over her, discovering her, memorizing her, until they both still against each other, until they both return to themselves.
“The beat of your heart,” he murmurs into her cleavage, his ear tipped just above her breasts. “The human heart.” He presses a gentle trail of kisses over her nipple before returning to listen, his expression oddly relieved, strangely blissful. “It’s so fleeting, so fragile. The drums,” his fingers beat with her blood against her ribs. “They echo in your pulse. Like it’s fated to be this way,” he breathes out, strangely cool against her. “It’s meant to be.”
“Who was he?” he whispers suddenly, rolling off of her to stroke over the back of her head, smoothing her hair with that same familiar, but unidentifiable rhythm. “What was his name?”
“‘S the Do...” she yawns, utterly spent as she collapses against his bare chest, unable - unwilling to figure it out, not yet ready to acknowledge what she’s done, or what it means. “Docta...”
He’s still beneath her, and it might just be her imagination, but she thinks that it’s the sound of two, very distinctly separate hearts thudding painfully beneath her ear that sing her to sleep.
____________________________________
She wakes alone, and she knows immediately that he’s gone. Her hand reaches to the opposite side of the bed, and she meets the piece of paper without much disbelief. She blinks the sleep from her eyes before she lifts the note to read:
“Sometimes, Rose Tyler,” the scrawled letters read, “You just have to be selfish.”
She dresses and reports to work in the morning, and almost expects it when they tell her that all of their equipment, all of their research - everything is gone. It will take only six full hours for them to realize that Mr. Harold Saxon has gone with it.
The night sky is almost black by then, and it’s all the way back to the drawing board.
She never enters his office - he was not her Doctor, after all - but it seems like no one else does, either, or else, they don’t look about very hard, and so they never find the reports, the notations he left on them; they never realize that while he took everything to serve himself, he left them the key to doing the same.
Rating: R
Pairing: Ten/Rose, Master/Rose
Word Count: 5,618
Summary: When she sees him across the room, everything stops. But this isn’t her reality, and it doesn’t take her long to realize that this Harold Saxon isn’t her Doctor, either. Spoilers through Doctor Who 4.13 - Journey's End.
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot.
Author’s Notes: For the fabulous nschick’s lovely Doctor/Rose Meme and the rose_lives Getting-From-There-To-Here-Ficfest Prompt: Altuniverse Master meets Rose, defender of the earth. This probably could use a bit of explanation, so: Rose, in the Alternate Universe following “Doomsday,” is working on that Dimension Cannon for UNIT, and runs into alt!Master, who conveniently looks like prime!Doctor. Being a little less evil than prime!Master, alt!Master, aka Harold Saxon, with prime!Doctor’s face, is heading up this Dimension Cannon project given his impressive knowledge of the nature of time. Rose, working under him, can’t help but meld her prime!Doctor and this alt!Master in her mind, desperate as she is to see her own Doctor again. Hope that helps a bit - this concept is rather convoluted, I acknowledge. Still - enjoy :)
Miserere
When she sees him across the room, everything stops. The dancing, the talking, the air in her lungs and the heart in her chest, even; she nearly floats towards him, seeing the way he laughs with his whole body, knowing him from the gelled sort of flip in his cinnamon hair, the way it falls across his forehead, knowing him down to the soles of his shoes - black and white trainers that are so very him, and still so very fitting in the room full of evening-wear. She veritably shakes as she approaches him, ignoring the swarm of faceless people, inconsequential hangers-on that he’s entertaining and being entertained by alike, and her palm rises, her fingers mold to the globe of his shoulder and she taps him, touches him with just the ghost of her hand, the way her wrists trembles making prolonged contact impossible, though it’s unnecessary - just feeling him at all is enough.
And to think, she’d nearly skipped the party altogether.
“John Smith, is it?” And the joy, the cheek in her voice is nothing, absolutely nothing compared to the smile that stretches across her face, the way her teeth shine around plump pink lips and the way his eyes, those chocolate eyes that literally hold the universe at their centers trail over her mouth before rising to meet her eyes.
There is something different about those eyes, and if her heart hadn’t been fluttering with the sheer exhilaration of the reality of him, the wonder of seeing him, really and truly before her eyes and not just in her dreams; if she hadn’t been so blissfully happy at beholding him, safe and sound and whole, for the first time in far too long, she would have noticed. She would have known it was too good to be true.
Those eyes, they twitch a bit, and there’s curiosity, but no recognition as they focus in on her, as they dip for the barest of instants down to her neckline before fixing again on her face. “Not at all,” the voice - the voice she knows, knows as if it’s a part of her, as if it’s her own voice, really, resonating deep within her bones; the voice is smoother, nonchalant in a way that she’s never known it to be before - slick and languid where she’d always remembered it to be frantic and almost stalling, the charm of it gone and replaced by something dangerous, something sensual and tempting; different. Too different, she realizes, as the man who isn’t, who cannot be who she thinks he is extends his hand to reach for hers in greeting, his expression polite - endless, like her Doctor’s, but empty - cold where his had always been so warm, hard where he’d been soft. “Harold Saxon,” he introduces himself, and that name, that name - it’s so familiar; an omen of something she thinks she should know, suspects she will know, but simply doesn’t. “Master. Of...” He trails off with what Rose can only describe as a well-meaning sort of chuckle, though the smirk that accompanies it is lethal, edgy as he turns a bit, to glance at her out of the corner of his eye, catching her hand without waiting for her to offer it return and raising it to his lips, the gesture somehow chivalrous and terrifying at the very same time. “Well, Master of whatever it is you need.”
She doesn’t say anything, barely notices as he lets her hand slip from his grasp and watches her now with a sort of friendly concern as she stares past him, through him, unable to reconcile this body - this man who had dragged her across the cosmos, that hand which has pulled her long behind him, the mouth that moved a mile a minute sometimes, those eyes that adored her; adored her even when he could never say it - she could not equate her Doctor, her beloved Doctor, with this stranger in front of her, this Mr. Saxon and his face that belonged to someone so dear to her, so much a part of her heart.
“A pleasure,” he prompts as the silence between them grows uncomfortable, even if it’s inconsequential in the wake of the bustling, the music quivering around them. “Miss...”
His eye implore an answer from her, and they’re not the same eyes, not exactly - but they’re near enough to draw the words from her lips without so much as a thought. “Tyler. Rose Tyler.”
“Indeed.” His smile softens his features; there’s no threat behind it this time as he bows his head a bit and turns back to the guests he’d been conversing with before the interruption, all of whom happen to be Rose’s superiors and are eyeing her warily over his shoulder as he strikes the conversation anew. Wonderful.
____________________________________
“So, Miss Tyler,” the voice send shivers up her spine, memories of the TARDIS, of late nights spent with a cuppa and a soft, lazy smile shared between them, conversations about meaningless, perfect little things that defined exactly what they were without ever having to say it, ever having to find a word for it. The chestnut of his hair looks strangely more red in the lighting, stark against the white of his shirt, the midnight black of his waistcoat as he leans next to her at the balcony, interrupting the shadows of a moonbeam, haloed in it, glowing with something nameless, something beautiful but formidable all at once. “What brings a lovely young woman such as yourself to Earth of all places, and to UNIT, no less?”
“Earth’s ma home,” she replies, refusing to meet his eyes as her pinky traces the condensation on the bottom of her champagne flute. “Born an’ raised,” she toasts the empty air with a sardonic sort of flash in her eyes as she tips back what’s left in the glass and swallows hard, her hair cascading, tendril by tiny tendril, from her elaborate French twist.
“Is it, now?” he asks, turning himself so that his back is now against the railing, his eyes riveted to her, the curve of her ear, the line of her neck where the loose strands of her hair obscure his view of her, her view of him. “Strange. You have a decidedly... alien sense about you.” His breath, as he draws it in, is light and yet harsh, cutting through the tension, the blackness of the night - the stars are dimmer these days, fewer and further between. “And I’m not often wrong about these things.”
Rose swallows a sort of snort, her bustline heaving against the confines of her gown, and she notices that his eyes follow their sensual rise and fall in a way that her Doctor would never have dared, never. “You’re not a fan of th’ planet, then?” she asks with a proud sort of sneer, feeling defensive in the most unthinkable of ways, protective not of her home, or her world, but of the man whose doppelgänger is apparently leaning just beside her, owning that countenance as if it’s his own, as if it belongs to him, and Rose cannot bring herself to acknowledge the acidic burn in her stomach that tells her that it’s more than merely ‘likely’ that this is his face, his voice, his body, just as much as any other; just as much as it’s her Doctor’s.
“I didn’t say that,” he glances her way gently. “I just know potential when I see it, I know what this world can yield, how much more it can advance,” he takes a long drink from his scotch. “And I know that there are bigger fish in the sea, you might say. Brighter stars in the sky.”
Her eyes follow his against her will as they both stare up at the sky, devoid now of any real brightness; even the moon looks dull, somehow. “You don’t say?”
“Mmm...” he hums into the lip of his glass. “At least, for now.” And he smiles as if he knows something, a secret something that amuses him privately, that he can never share. It makes Rose’s skin crawl just as it sets a fire beneath her heart, igniting the memory of that look every morning she was with him, every night she slept nearby.
“Why are you here, then?” she asks, the edge of accusation in her tone making her impatience dreadfully clear, though the source of it sounds wishy-washy, and she cringes at the decidedly bothered note in her voice.
And of course, where she cringes, he only grins with greater self-satisfaction. “Think of me as a consultant,” he mutters, eyes dancing as he drains his scotch and studies the crystalline pattern at the empty bottom of the glass.
“Can I get you a drink, Miss Tyler?” he offers, grabbing for her own empty glass. “I’m up for another, myself.”
She doesn’t protest. She wants to, but she doesn’t.
____________________________________
It’s three weeks after the gala that Rose finds herself slowly acclimating to the face that haunts her dreams not having the foggiest clue who she is, aside from being one of the underlings who reports to him on the dimensionality project they’ve been developing ever since the stars began to disappear. She hasn’t asked any questions of this Mr. Saxon, and she avoids the endless gossip about that pretty face heading up the alpha team on what she’s affectionally dubbed “the cannon” - she doesn’t want to know him, doesn’t want to see him, to associate with him more than she has to. This is a different universe, this is a different world, a different life, and this is just a cruel and unfortunate coincidence that’s burning in her chest, uncanny but unavoidable; no one’s fault, really, that her Doctor would be someone different here, someone completely separate, just another man, really - eccentric, but so much less than his former; no, his other self.
Hell - here, she was a dog. Anything was possible. Nothing was surprising. Not anymore.
“I will not tolerate failure.”
It’s the bite in his tone that stops her before she enters his office with the latest results of their test-runs, pages upon pages of data that seem much easier for this particular man to dissect, to translate and correct than it is for any of them - master of mathematics, apparently, was what he’d come here to be. But she can hear the scuff of his shoes against the wood floors, the tension in his gait as he paces and barks into the mobile clutched in his palm, and it’s that gravity, that weight that resonates from him, coupled with the flash in his eyes that she catches just before he can see her, just before she can duck away, that stills her steps and makes her hover just beyond his reach; that makes her stay to listen, even though she knows she shouldn’t.
“You know exactly what I’m talking about,” he seethes into his phone, and she can see the shadow of his slender frame as he hunches over the length of his desk in frustration. “I can’t have rouge fucking Time Lords wandering about the cosmos. I won’t tolerate it.”
There’s a pause, and if she’s still she can imagine that she hears the voice replying from the other line, even though she doesn’t really. “I presume you haven’t forgotten the last time your glaring inadequacies lost us this opportunity,” he hisses disdainfully, and Rose finds her pulse just a little bit quicker, bouncing around just a bit harder below the base of her throat, because for as much as she’s avoided him, she knows that he’s universally liked throughout the organization, polite and gentlemanly and brilliant, not to mention utterly gorgeous, and it’s hard for her to reconcile this seething, scathing anger with that general opinion; not to mention with the man she knows him to be in her heart, the man in her memories that she cannot for life of her separate from the one in the room just beyond. “I imagine that you recall the consequences.”
“Temporal interference?” he asks, and there’s that squeak in his voice that she remembers from all the times he’d been so flabbergasted, so befuddled, and it takes everything in her to swallow the giggle that accompanies the recollection of his expression, so bewildered, so absurd and yet so endearing. Her eyes flicker up to watch him through the gap between the hinges on the door, and she freezes from the inside as this man’s face fails to match that humor, that warmth - he is furious, and it’s frightening. Truly the Oncoming Storm. “Idiot girl, it’s probably your own trail. Those devices aren’t fool-proof, you know. Primitive at best.”
She watches his hand ruffle through his hair, mussing it further, as if it needed it. “Well, then, who do you think it is?” he asks suddenly, his voice short and demeaning, the note of superiority unavoidable as his pandering inquiry echoes through the room beyond, the silence that follows what Rose can only guess is a reply growing leaden, thick enough to suffocate them all.
“The Doctor.” And her heart jumps, leaps at the mere mention of the name, and she can’t breath, at first because of the recognition, the acknowledgement of him here, where no one spoke of him, no one knew of him; and then because of the hatred, the deadly, earth-shattering loathing that laced the words, as if he were the most vile thing in existence, just his name. “The Doctor.”
She flinches as she hears something - though what it is, she can’t be sure - make contact with the far wall as a feral growl escapes Mr. Saxon, and he seems to shake with suppressed rage, screaming into the receiver with barely-restrained antipathy veritably dripping from every inch of him. “How dare you speak of that filth to me? How dare you!”
His breathing is heavy, unsteady and inefficient as his knuckles grow white where he grips the desk in Rose’s line of sight. “You have your assignment,” he speaks finally, his tone calm despite his furious gasping for air just moments before, the words even but heavy, drenched with meaning and implication and the unspoken threat of what will happen if his will is ignored. “You will make certain he doesn’t foil our plans. I will not allow his meddling in this affair. Eliminate him.” Roses nearly chokes on her frightened gasp as her chest tightens, her eyes widen and her stomach drops to her shoes. “The quicker, the better.”
Rose is only just processing that what she’s heard sounds suspiciously like a hit order when he speaks again, his tone shrill, low, and more lethal than anything she’s ever heard - and she’s heard a lot, Rose Tyler, a whole hell of a lot. “Say one more word, Martha Jones,” he murmurs, almost, into the phone, his lips impossibly close to the device as he speaks to it like a lover, like a killer; “and I promise you, you’ll soon find yourself bound and gagged on Carvolentia XI, fucking you’re way through life in an intergalactic brothel! See if your precious ‘Doctor’ can help you then.” The curl of his lips is so poisonous that it makes Rose feel nauseous, her tongue tasting immediately of bile as she wavers. This makes no sense.
“Do not contact me until it’s done,” he states, clipped and with a sense of finality, and Rose realizes she needs to move, needs to leave before she’s caught; how long had she been crouched near the door, anyway? Her knees ached as if it had been hours, but she knew better. Minutes, at best.
“If?” his voice breaks a bit, too high for his range. “If? Martha, my good woman,” he laughs incredulously, and it makes her mouth dry, the way it sounds - that voice she loves so contorted, so changed. “If you can’t complete the assignment, don’t bother coming back at all.”
She springs to her feet and bolts to the end of the hall as she catches the gentle click as his snaps his phone shut, and she’s around the corner just before he exits the office and makes his way in the opposite direction.
Rose runs a covert search on the name ‘Martha Jones’ the next day, finding three relevant matches, all within UNIT - a lab technician from Surrey, a medic from London, and a researcher from Casablanca, oddly enough, all of whom are accounted for on official business, one even contracted to Torchwood, as it were. When nothing out of the ordinary happens for the next month, and Mr. Saxon is nothing short of superb in his manners and demeanor both to her personally and in all accounts from her gossiping coworkers, Rose thinks it best to pretend that nothing ever happened. She has other things to worry about.
____________________________________
Despite her uncanny knowledge of extraterrestrials, Rose Tyler is still just a lackey, and she cannot avoid reporting to the higher ups forever. And her higher up just happens to be Harold Saxon.
“Miss Tyler!” he exclaims with a genuinely pleased sort of grin - the type that hides absolutely nothing, open to the point of rousing suspicion in itself, too good to be true. “A pleasant surprise, to be certain. To what do I owe the honor?”
She strides across the office, standing straight-backed with her hands crossed behind her back after placing a heavily-bound collection of papers on the center of his desk. “Status report,” she answers stoically, her palms sweating against one another as she stares just above where his head reaches from his seat.
“Mmm...” he glances at the stack of printouts, reaching into the pocket in his shirt and unfolding his glasses - the same awkward frames she remembers from another man, another time, and it’s all she can do not to say anything, to keep her face impassive, devoid of the joy as well as the pain. “All work and no play, love,” he shakes a finger at her as he slides on his specs, looking over the first page with calculated, and yet still somehow casual attentiveness. “You don’t have to wait for paperwork as an excuse to come and visit,” he looks pointedly at her over the tops of his rectangular frames. “In fact, I wish you wouldn’t wait at all.”
Rose doesn’t dignify the subtle come-on with a response, but there’s a warmth in her chest that ignites at the attention, at the fleeting caress of familiar eyes across her figure. It’s gone as soon as she lets herself enjoy it - figures, really - and he’s leaning forward, the glasses gone as his elbows dig into the bulk of the reports, his eyes narrowed onto her. “You do know that this ‘dimension cannon,’” his fingers form quotes around the word as his lips curve against the letters somewhat condescendingly - she bristles, but remains still; “isn’t going to work.”
Rose frowns, her eyes still refusing to meet his as she stares at the wall behind him, posture rigid with forced discipline as she tries to keep her cool, to remain professional - she’s not valuable enough to be completely irreplaceable, even with people like Mickey and Pete on her side; particularly if the person she rubs the wrong way is everyone's favorite golden boy. “‘Course it is,” she tosses back, sure of herself. Completely sure. “All of the scans an’ preliminaries show it operatin’ at near full capacity. The test runs are all coming back positive, it’s almos’ fool-proof.”
He chuckles, and it’s not mean, really, not rude, but she takes it that way nonetheless - something of her old Doctor resonating within her at the look in his eyes, their early days coming back to her at the touch of pity in that gaze - pity that she’s so limited, pity that she’s still deluded by that blind sort of human hope. “With all due respect to you and yours; your science is flawed. You don’t know enough about the intricacies of the matter. The nuances, the very threads in the fabric of time itself.” He lifts himself from his chair and strides around to the front of his desk, propping himself at the front and crossing his arms over his chest as he considers her carefully. “This is where I can help you.”
He watches as her eyes finally meet his own, and he seems look straight into her, reading everything about her, knowing her as intimately as anyone ever could before he blinks, and everything reverts to normal; his are just eyes looking hard into hers. “You don’t seem surprised,” he comments, but he’s intrigued, she can tell.
“S’because I’m not.”
He takes in the way she stands, the deliberate air of being completely unimpressed seeping from the shift of her weight, the pout of her lips, and it’s almost as if he cannot help but smile at her. “I see.”
He’s in front of her within a moment, the space between breaths, and his face is tilted at an angle to her own; when she inhales, she can catch his scent. “Rose,” he speaks softly - not quite a murmur, and just a tad above a whisper, too. “I get the impression that you know me, but I am certain that we’ve never met before.”
Rose sucks in a terrible breath, and it’s as if in that tiny slip, that little abandonment of complete control, he finds his entrance, knows his territory. He takes a step, just a step, impossibly closer to her, and she can feel the heat of him soaking through her clothes, her heart leaping at the proximity of that face; just a hair nearer and she could lean in, touch her lips to his...
“I’m not the person you knew.” She stills as he says it, because she knows it to be true and yet it can’t be, it just can’t, because she needs him and they’ve tried so hard, and she cannot, she will not accept that it’s all been for nothing as he says. “I’m not, whoever that shadow is in your mind.”
She turns her face away as he presses his chest against her, just the lightest touch when they both breathe in. “Do I have his face?” he asks softly, the ghost of his breath lingering on her cheek. “His name?” She shudders when his fingers reach to tangle in her hair, combing through it delicately, almost affectionately. “Let me help you.”
“No,” she whispers, but even she doesn’t believe herself as her body aches to touch him, knowing that he’ll feel the same, taste the same - be the same. Knowing that for all intents and purposes, this can be her Doctor. If only for the moment, if only for the night.
“We can get him back,” his voice is like a sigh against the shell of her ear, and when she shivers, his hand steadies her at the small of her back, his eyes shifting to keep her gaze locked to his at the peripheral.
“Why?” she asks softly, and it sounds weak, like a plea. She hates that she’s become this, hates that he can do this to her. Hates him... hates this man and the Doctor he looks like for the first time she can remember. Hates him.
But loves him. By god, she loves him.
He sighs again, and it simmers in the pit of her stomach as she breathes him in in turn. “Because I find myself... inexplicably drawn to you,” he replies with a sense of resignation that’s too human to ever have belong to her beloved Time Lord; and that should have ended the association once and for all, but it doesn’t; it could never. “I’m not one to question that.”
Rose whimpers as his lips touch accidentally just below her ear when he withdraws just a centimeter, and her voice keens just a tad as she arches unconsciously into the weight of him, the heat of him. “People will get hurt,” she murmurs breathlessly. “I can’t do that. I can’t let you do that.”
“But...” he starts, without denying it, without reassuring her. It’s better that way, really. Somehow, inexplicably, they’re beyond that. She’s known him forever - the disparate wholes now a single entity, her Doctor incarnate; and he knows her well enough to be satisfied, sees things in her that should frighten her, should make her run the other way, but they don’t; her heart, and the way it beats with renewed vigor, with new life at just being near him gives her courage enough to endure, to thrive beneath his touch. “To have him. To hold him in your arms again...”
“I just...” she whispers, her face dropping as her chin dips, avoiding that depthless chestnut gaze and immediately suffering at its loss.
“But that’s why you’re doing this, isn’t it?” he asks suddenly, his hand at her shoulder, keeping her there with him. He needn’t have bothered, really - she’s too far gone to back out now, the shape of his hand just the same as it had always been.
“I’m doing this to protect people,” she protests without any fight, without the conviction she feels in her soull it’s dimmed - diluted by the passion, the need. “To protect everyone. If this universe crumbles, the rest of reality won’t stand a chance for long.”
He twirls her hair again, and her eyes drift closed at the simple, and yet impossibly sensual touch. “So very noble of you.” His thumb traces innocently, and still so very deliberately along the curve of her jaw. “But it wouldn’t be an unwelcome bonus if you happened to find him,” he suggests, his knee surreptitiously edging between her thighs, testing, trying as his hand slides to her hip. “If you happened to jump to just the right time, just the right place, run right into him,” he breathes, his hand tracing up her neck, cupping her cheek as he speaks just shy of her mouth, his lips only just missing her own; “Feel his lips on yours...”
“Don’t,” she stills, and he doesn’t push her, freezes along with her, but the touch doesn’t disappear, the pine scent of him, the earthen aroma mingling with mint and cocoa and fresh-brewed tea. It’s all still there.
“I can help you, Rose,” he exhales into her the side of her neck, his hand kneading into her skin.
“I can’t let you,” she shakes her head, and unwittingly brings the reality of him impossibly closer to her, her heart threatening to beat through her rib cage and escape her chest, because this is what she’s dreamed of. This is all she’s wanted. To have him, one more time; for the first time, and the last time, all at once.
“You can have him back,” he reads her thoughts, somehow. “You can. But you need me.”
“It’s not worth it,” she whispers brokenly, turning to the side, away from him, trying to block him out, but he is everywhere, he is everything; inescapable as he ever was.
“Isn’t it?” he challenges her, his eyes hard somehow, even in their sympathy. “Could you say that to his face?” he asks wickedly, guessing and guessing right as she crumbles, her eyes wide and wet, shimmering as she stares into him, pleading. “Tell him he’s not worth it,” he enunciates carefully, and she can hear so many words, so many phrases said in just the same way that it breaks her heart, breaks her mind and her soul and her resolve and he can feel the protest die inside her as he draws her just a little closer, and whispers in her ear:
“Sometimes you just have to be selfish, Rose. It’s the quintessential survival instinct, isn’t it?” he strokes comforting little lines across her jawline, his nose brushing the bridge of her own as he studies the pillow of her cheeks, the cures of her eyelids. “Serving that which best serves ourselves?”
“Let me take care of the particulars,” he implores, knowing that she’ll give in now, knowing that the soft caress of his fingers dangerously low at her side will persuade her this time, that’s he’s won her, finally; and yet his eyes are no longer foreign to her - these are the eyes she’s always known, always held so dear in the deeper chambers of her heart; eyes that care, eyes that adore, eyes that cherish. “Let me help you.”
Eyes she can imagine, if she is so inclined, that love.
“Just trust me, Rose.”
That voice, that face, the concern in the lines around his mouth and the slant of his eyes; she cannot fight it. She doesn’t want to. This may be her only chance - this may be all she ever gets of him, and she cannot let it pass. She’s a strong woman, stronger than most, but she’s not strong enough for that.
____________________________________
He’s slow, he’s fast, he’s hard and rough and impossibly gentle and kind; the touch of him is familiar and yet she’s never felt anything like it before - it is everything she imagined and like nothing she’d dreamed. It’s him, but it isn’t, and yet in the fog of pain and pleasure and unfathomable need, she cannot bring herself to care. She nearly sobs as he slides in and out of her with a rhythm that matches something far away, something distant that she knows but cannot place.
“Are you seeing him?” he asks her on the downstroke, filling her entirely as tears stream down her cheeks, tears of elation and devastation at the very same time. “Are you fucking him?”
She doesn’t answer, but surges up to capture his lips before he rocks into her again. “Do we taste the same?’ he asks breathlessly as they break apart, and her answer is to kiss him once more, deeper and more desperate this time as his milky skin slides over her own, slick with sweat.
She comes, harder than she’s ever done, and she barely notices when he peaks at the very same time. It’s heat and perfection and wonder, and his hands are on her, needy and sure as he carries her down. They’re tangled, inseparable, and she clings to him even as his palms roam over her, discovering her, memorizing her, until they both still against each other, until they both return to themselves.
“The beat of your heart,” he murmurs into her cleavage, his ear tipped just above her breasts. “The human heart.” He presses a gentle trail of kisses over her nipple before returning to listen, his expression oddly relieved, strangely blissful. “It’s so fleeting, so fragile. The drums,” his fingers beat with her blood against her ribs. “They echo in your pulse. Like it’s fated to be this way,” he breathes out, strangely cool against her. “It’s meant to be.”
“Who was he?” he whispers suddenly, rolling off of her to stroke over the back of her head, smoothing her hair with that same familiar, but unidentifiable rhythm. “What was his name?”
“‘S the Do...” she yawns, utterly spent as she collapses against his bare chest, unable - unwilling to figure it out, not yet ready to acknowledge what she’s done, or what it means. “Docta...”
He’s still beneath her, and it might just be her imagination, but she thinks that it’s the sound of two, very distinctly separate hearts thudding painfully beneath her ear that sing her to sleep.
____________________________________
She wakes alone, and she knows immediately that he’s gone. Her hand reaches to the opposite side of the bed, and she meets the piece of paper without much disbelief. She blinks the sleep from her eyes before she lifts the note to read:
“Sometimes, Rose Tyler,” the scrawled letters read, “You just have to be selfish.”
She dresses and reports to work in the morning, and almost expects it when they tell her that all of their equipment, all of their research - everything is gone. It will take only six full hours for them to realize that Mr. Harold Saxon has gone with it.
The night sky is almost black by then, and it’s all the way back to the drawing board.
She never enters his office - he was not her Doctor, after all - but it seems like no one else does, either, or else, they don’t look about very hard, and so they never find the reports, the notations he left on them; they never realize that while he took everything to serve himself, he left them the key to doing the same.