Fanfiction: Doctor Who: Pillar of Salt 4/6
Author: kadath_or_bust, aka Unknown Kadath
Words: 3,300
Rating: T
Series: The Other Egg of the Phoenix (but stands alone)
Summary: On a beach in Norway, Rose Tyler made a choice. Now she’s wondering if she made a mistake-and where she can go from here.
Thanks to my lovely betas: tardis-mole, my alarmingly thorough nit-picky beta, Mornea, my philosophical beta, and TempusDominus10, my wildly overenthusiastic beta/devil on my shoulder egging me on.
Disclaimer: I own nothing. I even stole the other egg of the phoenix from Neil Gaiman.
Part I: Fixed Abodes Part II: Sealed With a Kiss Part III: Changes
Part IV: Promises
I hear words, in my sleep
Promises you make and never keep
Dan Auerbach, “Whispered Words”
12. Then-A Heart Ripped in Half
She’d thought she was stronger, now. Hell, she thought she’d always been stronger, but maybe she’d gotten weaker instead. Or maybe she’d just got tired.
She’d thought she could face down anything, resist any temptation. But now she had to face the Doctor. Saying goodbye to her on a damned beach in Norway, this time of his own choice. She’d never thought she’d have to face that, never in a million years, even if there had always been a nagging little voice in the back of her head that told her he’d run one day …
And there was another man standing before her, same face, same eyes, same voice. Not him, she couldn’t quite believe that, but like him. Offering her his single heart, pounding under her fingertips. Offering her forever.
“I’ve only got one life, Rose Tyler,” and the way he said her name broke something in her, some barrier around her own heart. “I could spend it with you, if you want.”
He tried to make it sound almost casual, like he wasn’t as desperate to stay with her as she was with him, any him. He didn’t quite pull it off.
And she found herself believing it was him, not because it was true, but because she wanted. Just wanted it so badly, with every fiber of her being. She felt like she was the one with two hearts, now, one for each Doctor, one shouting for joy and the other bleeding to death, and not sure which was which.
And the Doctor gave them the TARDIS coral, and brushed aside Rose’s last, weak protests. Told her he’d be fine with Donna. And Rose had let it go, even though she knew Donna wouldn’t last and guessed he did, too. What was one more lie, after all? So many had been told already …
Like when he’d said he wasn’t gonna leave her, and yet here they were.
But she couldn’t let him go. Just couldn’t, not ever. She’d promised she’d never leave him, and she wouldn’t break that promise, even if he broke his.
So she asked one last, desperate question. She knew the answer was gonna hurt, however it went, knew it wouldn’t change anything. But some things, after all, needed to be spoken aloud.
“Does it need saying?” asked the Doctor. Her Doctor, the real Doctor, the one she’d trusted with her life and her heart, the one she’d crossed a thousand universes to find. His face was pained, like he was breaking his own heart instead of hers, pleading with her to understand.
And she had tried to tell herself that she didn’t need to hear those words. Tried since before Canary Warf, tried since that last day on this beach, tried until she could fool herself that she believed. Because she knew, oh, she knew, and it was only three little words …
And despite all her logic, it still broke her heart. She almost hated him, then.
She turned to the other, the dangerous man in the blue suit who smelled of smoke and battle. The copy, the clone, the one she wanted because he could grow old with her, be with her without thinking of the long centuries he would live after her death.
She didn’t want him to say it, so she’d have an excuse to push him away. But she needed to hear it from someone, anyone, because she felt like she was dying here, all that she believed in proving false.
“And you, … doctor?” she asked. He was looking at her very seriously, his eyes reflecting her pain. “What was the end of that sentence?”
But there was a calm certainty in those eyes as well, and a tender depth of affection.
He leaned in close, the gentle touch of his hand on her arm sending a jolt like electricity through her body, and the smell of sandalwood making her suddenly believe (with her body, if not her mind) that he was the same man, and all those years and tears since their last parting had never happened.
“I love you,” he whispered, and his voice was the voice of the Doctor.
Something broke inside her at those words. Like a dam breaking, only all of her seemed to crumble, all her strength, all her reason, all her thought washed away. She didn’t care if it was right or wrong, or what it meant for her future. She didn’t care if there was a future. She only needed. Needed him and his love, now and always, needed him as she had denied so long …
She found herself looking into his eyes, and for a moment, she only had one heart again, whole and unbroken.
And then she was grabbing his jacket and pulling him to her, and his arms were around her and his lips met hers and she kissed him as she’d never kissed anyone, desperately, trying to make up for years apart in a single, frantic moment.
And yeah, maybe that made her a traitor to her Doctor, too, but in that moment she didn’t care.
There was a slam of a wooden door, like the sky falling, and a grinding wheeze like the Earth tearing itself apart. She pulled away from the doctor and looked around to see the TARDIS fading, ran towards it without looking back, even though she knew it was too late. Too late from the very beginning of that kiss, too late from the gun of a Dalek, too late from Canary Warf … too late from a night in Henrik’s when a man in a leather jacket had taken her hand and said, “Run.”
And now, suddenly, she had no heart. Just a gaping, empty wound in her chest, growing into a physical pain that choked her, stealing her breath.
A warm hand took hers, and she could breathe again. She turned and saw a familiar face with a stranger looking at her from his eyes, and maybe the stranger was him, and suddenly nothing in the world made any sense at all.
13. Now-I Can
“Could he have said it, then?” she demanded. “Could he have told me he loved me?”
The man before her swallowed hard. His eyes shifted away, and the muscle in his cheek jumped the way it always did when he lied. Always did when the Doctor lied.
“I don’t know,” he said.
She’d been thinking about it all afternoon. Wondering if the answer mattered. Wondering if the Doctor had not said it deliberately, to push her into the metacrisis' arms.
And maybe there wasn’t much difference between wouldn’t and couldn’t. Because if he could say it, then how could he not? How could he leave her like that?
“The first time he said goodbye to me,” she said. “He knew how much time he had left. Cos he’s a Time Lord, right? Knows everything down to the last second. Did he … did he do that deliberately? Wait too long so he wouldn’t have to tell me?”
“Not consciously,” said the metacrisis, after a pause for thought that seemed just a little too long. “Maybe … maybe I did it unconsciously.” And for a moment she felt like she was talking to a ghost again, the memory of her Doctor speaking to her from this doctor’s body. Someone she could see and hear, but never touch, not properly. “I tried to say it. I thought, if I could say the beginning, at least you would know what I meant.”
Now she had to fight off anger, had to remember that the man speaking to her wasn’t the man from whose memories he spoke. “Could he ever have said it? If there was more time, if we’d stayed together?”
Now he met her eyes, bracing himself. “Not yet,” he said, with almost brutal directness. “Maybe not in this life. That’s what regeneration is for. Why we don’t just come back as the same people. It lets us change into … who we’re ready to be.”
Next regeneration. Well. That answered that question. She never would have heard those words from him as he was. As she loved him. She would have had to wait for him to die (and die before his time, if he died within her lifetime) and learn to love another familiar stranger who could tell her what she needed to hear.
Assuming he still wanted to say it.
“And you were ready to change,” she said.
“No. I’m not a regeneration.” There was a darkly stubborn look in his eyes, an I-don’t-want-to-deal-with-this-so-I-won’t look, like a balky teenager. “I’m the same.”
“But you can say it.”
“Yes!” he snapped. “All right?” He turned away and began to pace up and down in front of the fireplace, firing off sentences at her. “It’s just … easier. Clearer in my head. Less complicated. Maybe it’s cos I’m half human. Gallifreyan doesn’t even have a word for love.”
“Didn’t have a …” She couldn’t quite take it in. “But-“
“We could feel it,” he said. “But we couldn’t say it, they took away the word to stop us sayin’ it, stop us from admitting we could feel. Cos we were gods, but love makes you weak. Gives you somethin’ you can lose, somethin’ that can break you. Somethin’ your machines can’t fix.”
He came to a halt in front of her, glaring. “But I can say it. I can tell you I-I love you. Cos I’m never gonna have to watch you wither and die while I go on. I don’t have to face all those centuries alone. Don’t you want me to say it? Why are you asking me these things?”
“I just want to know!” she snapped back. Part of her realized she was going too far, that she should let it drop, at least for tonight, but she’d been through too much today, today and the last six months and the last four years. “It’s all right if you’ve changed, I just need to know how much!”
“What makes you think I’ve changed at all?”
His voice was almost a snarl, but there was something lost in it, too. Asking her to play along and pretend with him.
That was how she knew he’d changed. Because he knew.
14. Then-The Wrong Flavor
It was stupid. It was meaningless. It was laughable.
But there it was.
They’d made it into town and were headed for the bus stop to catch a ride to the airport in Bergen. Rose didn’t feel like talking, and the … Doctor seemed a bit worn out from the walk. But Jackie filled up the silence for them, rattling on about Tony (interspersed, of course, with bitching at … this Doctor for setting them down in Norway, and him protesting that the other Doctor had been the one steering). Then he’d spotted an ice cream parlor on the corner and decided he was hungry.
“Rose, come on!” He tugged her hand, bouncing up and down in his impatience. “Ice cream!”
That wasn’t the problem. The Doctor didn’t eat regularly, but he’d get weird cravings-bananas, edible ball bearings, you name it. It was practically normal for him, if you could use the words “Doctor” and “normal” in the same sentence.
“They serve meals on the zeppelins,” said Rose, trying to slow him down.
He pulled a face. “Airline food?” he protested. “The first thing I ever eat in this body, and you want it to be airline food?”
Put that way, she found it hard to argue. Not that she expected the airline food to be bad, but this was a special occasion, and they were all tired and hungry from walking on the sand.
The ice cream parlor was still open, though half the shops on the street were boarded up. It was run by a tired-looking man whose face had the numb, shuttered expression of a refugee. He didn’t return their smiles, and there were no other customers.
Jackie had cookies and cream. Rose had black cherry. The … Doctor went for triple chocolate fudge.
“They’ve got pistachio,” Rose pointed out.
“Meh,” he said, indifferent. “I want chocolate. I love chocolate, it’s my favorite flavor.”
“Thought that was pistachio,” said Rose.
She certainly wasn’t looking for differences, then. She spoke without thinking, but it was followed by a moment of echoing silence.
She looked up and met the metacrisis’ eyes. He was staring at her, frozen, with a stricken expression on his face. Like he suddenly realized he’d made a terrible mistake.
Then his gob snapped back into action. “Wellll … used to be. But chocolate’s good, too. I just got this craving for chocolate, an’ triple chocolate fudge, well, how can ya pass that up? Anyway, got different taste buds. Half-human taste buds.”
Rose just stared back at him for a moment. But she’d always been the sort of person who could size up a situation and react in an instant, and the last few years had honed that ability. “Oh,” she said, like that explained everything.
“And just cos you ain’t changed your favorite flavor in years don’t mean I can’t,” the doctor went on. “I mean, that’s dead boring, right there.”
“S’pose so,” she shrugged. “Oi, you callin’ me boring?”
She forced a smile at his sputters. She’d learned how to act these last few years, too.
They sat down at one of the outdoor tables. The doctor was concentrating on his ice cream, and Rose pretended to concentrate on hers, leaving Jackie to carry the conversation.
It wasn’t that it was the wrong flavor ice cream. That didn’t matter. Cos he was right, people changed their minds about stuff like that all the time. Wasn’t half-human taste buds, either.
It was the fact that when he’d told her it didn’t matter, he’d been lying.
Which meant that it did matter, and he had changed. And it must be something pretty important, for him to react that way. In fact, he had to have changed, period, to react that way. The Doctor hadn’t been like this when he’d regenerated. She’d thought he was a Slitheen, even, and he’d stood there and calmly explained that he was the same man.
“Come on, Rose, don’t dawdle,” said Jackie, looking over to see her daughter pushing a pink slurry around her bowl.
“S’too cold for ice cream,” she said. Which it was, really. The Darkness had played hell with the climate.
The doctor offered to finish it for her, and polished it off in short order. He’d managed, typically (for the Doctor, anyway), to get a smudge of chocolate on his face, and Jackie (also typically) attacked him with a napkin while he squawked and flailed his arms. “Gerroff me, woman!”
“Oh, hold still. Honestly, you’re worse than Tony …”
It made it a little easier for Rose to fake a smile. But she knew, now. She knew that he might look like the Doctor, he might have some of the Doctor’s memories, he might even be part of the Doctor-but he wasn’t the Doctor.
She’d lost him.
15. Now-I Can’t
She couldn’t call him on it, of course. Because it was such a stupid little thing, and he would only scoff and lie. But there had been a lot of other little things, and she knew she was right.
“Just tell me,” she said. “Tell me the truth. Tell me how things are.”
“How things are.” He looked down at his trainers, lips compressed in a hard, thin line. When he looked up, his gaze was steady and uncompromising.
“I’ll never stop traveling,” he said. His voice had slipped back again, almost like the Doctor’s. “I can’t. That’s why I gave myself the TARDIS clipping. Not because he trusted me, but because he knew it would kill me to be stranded on one world forever, and he doesn’t want to be a killer. He trusts you to look after me. But in five years, I’m leaving. You can come with me, I’d like you to come with me, and we can come back to visit … but never to stay. It’s not in me.”
“Okay,” she said immediately. He obviously expected an answer, and she didn’t have to think about it. She’d know this about the Doctor from the beginning, and she’d made her choice. She’d chosen the road. “Never expected less.”
“All right, then,” he acknowledged. Something tightened in his face, and he hesitated a moment before going on. “I’m part human now, but I’m still at least half Time Lord. I was created by chance, one in a million. And in a metacrisis. But the genetics aren’t really compatible. We may be able to have children together, if we’re very lucky, but in all probability … I can’t.”
She hesitated a moment, too, before she said, “Okay.” It wasn’t that it was okay, precisely. It was a lot to take in. But it was a fact of biology. Couldn’t be changed. And if she couldn’t have children with him, she didn’t want them.
He studied her for a long moment, gauging her sincerity. When he continued, his voice was harder than before, defiant.
“I can’t take back what I did today,” he said. “Even if I could, I wouldn’t. The Daleks were too dangerous to be allowed to live. He wouldn’t admit it, but if I hadn’t killed them, someone else would have had to.”
She couldn’t quite say okay to that. But she gave him a short nod, accepting.
A flash of pain crossed his face. And anger. The Doctor had said he was full of anger, and now, finally, she saw it.
“That’s what this is about, isn’t it?” he demanded. “That’s why you keep insisting I’ve changed.”
“No,” said Rose, though that was painfully unlike the Doctor. She’d once seen him come close to killing, when they’d stumbled across a Dalek in their early travels. He’d pulled back from the edge, but this doctor had gone right over. Not just one Dalek, but all of them, an entire race. No-an entire species.
Genocide.
She didn’t know if he could come back from crossing that line. If anyone could.
But … “No, that’s not why.”
“It is, isn’t it?” he insisted, agitated now. “He left me. I wasn’t good enough for him. Ain’t I good enough for you, neither, Rose, is that it?”
“No.”
“But you blame me, don’t you? If I hadn’t done what I did, he wouldn’t've left me, an’ he wouldn’t've left you. Is that it? Do you blame me for killin’ them?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head violently. “I can’t blame you for any of it. Not what he did, not what you did.”
“Why not?” His voice had risen to a near-shout, like he wanted her to accuse him.
“Because of what I’ve done!” she yelled back.
Part V: Getting the Words Wrong
Words: 3,300
Rating: T
Series: The Other Egg of the Phoenix (but stands alone)
Summary: On a beach in Norway, Rose Tyler made a choice. Now she’s wondering if she made a mistake-and where she can go from here.
Thanks to my lovely betas: tardis-mole, my alarmingly thorough nit-picky beta, Mornea, my philosophical beta, and TempusDominus10, my wildly overenthusiastic beta/devil on my shoulder egging me on.
Disclaimer: I own nothing. I even stole the other egg of the phoenix from Neil Gaiman.
Part I: Fixed Abodes Part II: Sealed With a Kiss Part III: Changes
Part IV: Promises
I hear words, in my sleep
Promises you make and never keep
Dan Auerbach, “Whispered Words”
12. Then-A Heart Ripped in Half
She’d thought she was stronger, now. Hell, she thought she’d always been stronger, but maybe she’d gotten weaker instead. Or maybe she’d just got tired.
She’d thought she could face down anything, resist any temptation. But now she had to face the Doctor. Saying goodbye to her on a damned beach in Norway, this time of his own choice. She’d never thought she’d have to face that, never in a million years, even if there had always been a nagging little voice in the back of her head that told her he’d run one day …
And there was another man standing before her, same face, same eyes, same voice. Not him, she couldn’t quite believe that, but like him. Offering her his single heart, pounding under her fingertips. Offering her forever.
“I’ve only got one life, Rose Tyler,” and the way he said her name broke something in her, some barrier around her own heart. “I could spend it with you, if you want.”
He tried to make it sound almost casual, like he wasn’t as desperate to stay with her as she was with him, any him. He didn’t quite pull it off.
And she found herself believing it was him, not because it was true, but because she wanted. Just wanted it so badly, with every fiber of her being. She felt like she was the one with two hearts, now, one for each Doctor, one shouting for joy and the other bleeding to death, and not sure which was which.
And the Doctor gave them the TARDIS coral, and brushed aside Rose’s last, weak protests. Told her he’d be fine with Donna. And Rose had let it go, even though she knew Donna wouldn’t last and guessed he did, too. What was one more lie, after all? So many had been told already …
Like when he’d said he wasn’t gonna leave her, and yet here they were.
But she couldn’t let him go. Just couldn’t, not ever. She’d promised she’d never leave him, and she wouldn’t break that promise, even if he broke his.
So she asked one last, desperate question. She knew the answer was gonna hurt, however it went, knew it wouldn’t change anything. But some things, after all, needed to be spoken aloud.
“Does it need saying?” asked the Doctor. Her Doctor, the real Doctor, the one she’d trusted with her life and her heart, the one she’d crossed a thousand universes to find. His face was pained, like he was breaking his own heart instead of hers, pleading with her to understand.
And she had tried to tell herself that she didn’t need to hear those words. Tried since before Canary Warf, tried since that last day on this beach, tried until she could fool herself that she believed. Because she knew, oh, she knew, and it was only three little words …
And despite all her logic, it still broke her heart. She almost hated him, then.
She turned to the other, the dangerous man in the blue suit who smelled of smoke and battle. The copy, the clone, the one she wanted because he could grow old with her, be with her without thinking of the long centuries he would live after her death.
She didn’t want him to say it, so she’d have an excuse to push him away. But she needed to hear it from someone, anyone, because she felt like she was dying here, all that she believed in proving false.
“And you, … doctor?” she asked. He was looking at her very seriously, his eyes reflecting her pain. “What was the end of that sentence?”
But there was a calm certainty in those eyes as well, and a tender depth of affection.
He leaned in close, the gentle touch of his hand on her arm sending a jolt like electricity through her body, and the smell of sandalwood making her suddenly believe (with her body, if not her mind) that he was the same man, and all those years and tears since their last parting had never happened.
“I love you,” he whispered, and his voice was the voice of the Doctor.
Something broke inside her at those words. Like a dam breaking, only all of her seemed to crumble, all her strength, all her reason, all her thought washed away. She didn’t care if it was right or wrong, or what it meant for her future. She didn’t care if there was a future. She only needed. Needed him and his love, now and always, needed him as she had denied so long …
She found herself looking into his eyes, and for a moment, she only had one heart again, whole and unbroken.
And then she was grabbing his jacket and pulling him to her, and his arms were around her and his lips met hers and she kissed him as she’d never kissed anyone, desperately, trying to make up for years apart in a single, frantic moment.
And yeah, maybe that made her a traitor to her Doctor, too, but in that moment she didn’t care.
There was a slam of a wooden door, like the sky falling, and a grinding wheeze like the Earth tearing itself apart. She pulled away from the doctor and looked around to see the TARDIS fading, ran towards it without looking back, even though she knew it was too late. Too late from the very beginning of that kiss, too late from the gun of a Dalek, too late from Canary Warf … too late from a night in Henrik’s when a man in a leather jacket had taken her hand and said, “Run.”
And now, suddenly, she had no heart. Just a gaping, empty wound in her chest, growing into a physical pain that choked her, stealing her breath.
A warm hand took hers, and she could breathe again. She turned and saw a familiar face with a stranger looking at her from his eyes, and maybe the stranger was him, and suddenly nothing in the world made any sense at all.
13. Now-I Can
“Could he have said it, then?” she demanded. “Could he have told me he loved me?”
The man before her swallowed hard. His eyes shifted away, and the muscle in his cheek jumped the way it always did when he lied. Always did when the Doctor lied.
“I don’t know,” he said.
She’d been thinking about it all afternoon. Wondering if the answer mattered. Wondering if the Doctor had not said it deliberately, to push her into the metacrisis' arms.
And maybe there wasn’t much difference between wouldn’t and couldn’t. Because if he could say it, then how could he not? How could he leave her like that?
“The first time he said goodbye to me,” she said. “He knew how much time he had left. Cos he’s a Time Lord, right? Knows everything down to the last second. Did he … did he do that deliberately? Wait too long so he wouldn’t have to tell me?”
“Not consciously,” said the metacrisis, after a pause for thought that seemed just a little too long. “Maybe … maybe I did it unconsciously.” And for a moment she felt like she was talking to a ghost again, the memory of her Doctor speaking to her from this doctor’s body. Someone she could see and hear, but never touch, not properly. “I tried to say it. I thought, if I could say the beginning, at least you would know what I meant.”
Now she had to fight off anger, had to remember that the man speaking to her wasn’t the man from whose memories he spoke. “Could he ever have said it? If there was more time, if we’d stayed together?”
Now he met her eyes, bracing himself. “Not yet,” he said, with almost brutal directness. “Maybe not in this life. That’s what regeneration is for. Why we don’t just come back as the same people. It lets us change into … who we’re ready to be.”
Next regeneration. Well. That answered that question. She never would have heard those words from him as he was. As she loved him. She would have had to wait for him to die (and die before his time, if he died within her lifetime) and learn to love another familiar stranger who could tell her what she needed to hear.
Assuming he still wanted to say it.
“And you were ready to change,” she said.
“No. I’m not a regeneration.” There was a darkly stubborn look in his eyes, an I-don’t-want-to-deal-with-this-so-I-won’t look, like a balky teenager. “I’m the same.”
“But you can say it.”
“Yes!” he snapped. “All right?” He turned away and began to pace up and down in front of the fireplace, firing off sentences at her. “It’s just … easier. Clearer in my head. Less complicated. Maybe it’s cos I’m half human. Gallifreyan doesn’t even have a word for love.”
“Didn’t have a …” She couldn’t quite take it in. “But-“
“We could feel it,” he said. “But we couldn’t say it, they took away the word to stop us sayin’ it, stop us from admitting we could feel. Cos we were gods, but love makes you weak. Gives you somethin’ you can lose, somethin’ that can break you. Somethin’ your machines can’t fix.”
He came to a halt in front of her, glaring. “But I can say it. I can tell you I-I love you. Cos I’m never gonna have to watch you wither and die while I go on. I don’t have to face all those centuries alone. Don’t you want me to say it? Why are you asking me these things?”
“I just want to know!” she snapped back. Part of her realized she was going too far, that she should let it drop, at least for tonight, but she’d been through too much today, today and the last six months and the last four years. “It’s all right if you’ve changed, I just need to know how much!”
“What makes you think I’ve changed at all?”
His voice was almost a snarl, but there was something lost in it, too. Asking her to play along and pretend with him.
That was how she knew he’d changed. Because he knew.
14. Then-The Wrong Flavor
It was stupid. It was meaningless. It was laughable.
But there it was.
They’d made it into town and were headed for the bus stop to catch a ride to the airport in Bergen. Rose didn’t feel like talking, and the … Doctor seemed a bit worn out from the walk. But Jackie filled up the silence for them, rattling on about Tony (interspersed, of course, with bitching at … this Doctor for setting them down in Norway, and him protesting that the other Doctor had been the one steering). Then he’d spotted an ice cream parlor on the corner and decided he was hungry.
“Rose, come on!” He tugged her hand, bouncing up and down in his impatience. “Ice cream!”
That wasn’t the problem. The Doctor didn’t eat regularly, but he’d get weird cravings-bananas, edible ball bearings, you name it. It was practically normal for him, if you could use the words “Doctor” and “normal” in the same sentence.
“They serve meals on the zeppelins,” said Rose, trying to slow him down.
He pulled a face. “Airline food?” he protested. “The first thing I ever eat in this body, and you want it to be airline food?”
Put that way, she found it hard to argue. Not that she expected the airline food to be bad, but this was a special occasion, and they were all tired and hungry from walking on the sand.
The ice cream parlor was still open, though half the shops on the street were boarded up. It was run by a tired-looking man whose face had the numb, shuttered expression of a refugee. He didn’t return their smiles, and there were no other customers.
Jackie had cookies and cream. Rose had black cherry. The … Doctor went for triple chocolate fudge.
“They’ve got pistachio,” Rose pointed out.
“Meh,” he said, indifferent. “I want chocolate. I love chocolate, it’s my favorite flavor.”
“Thought that was pistachio,” said Rose.
She certainly wasn’t looking for differences, then. She spoke without thinking, but it was followed by a moment of echoing silence.
She looked up and met the metacrisis’ eyes. He was staring at her, frozen, with a stricken expression on his face. Like he suddenly realized he’d made a terrible mistake.
Then his gob snapped back into action. “Wellll … used to be. But chocolate’s good, too. I just got this craving for chocolate, an’ triple chocolate fudge, well, how can ya pass that up? Anyway, got different taste buds. Half-human taste buds.”
Rose just stared back at him for a moment. But she’d always been the sort of person who could size up a situation and react in an instant, and the last few years had honed that ability. “Oh,” she said, like that explained everything.
“And just cos you ain’t changed your favorite flavor in years don’t mean I can’t,” the doctor went on. “I mean, that’s dead boring, right there.”
“S’pose so,” she shrugged. “Oi, you callin’ me boring?”
She forced a smile at his sputters. She’d learned how to act these last few years, too.
They sat down at one of the outdoor tables. The doctor was concentrating on his ice cream, and Rose pretended to concentrate on hers, leaving Jackie to carry the conversation.
It wasn’t that it was the wrong flavor ice cream. That didn’t matter. Cos he was right, people changed their minds about stuff like that all the time. Wasn’t half-human taste buds, either.
It was the fact that when he’d told her it didn’t matter, he’d been lying.
Which meant that it did matter, and he had changed. And it must be something pretty important, for him to react that way. In fact, he had to have changed, period, to react that way. The Doctor hadn’t been like this when he’d regenerated. She’d thought he was a Slitheen, even, and he’d stood there and calmly explained that he was the same man.
“Come on, Rose, don’t dawdle,” said Jackie, looking over to see her daughter pushing a pink slurry around her bowl.
“S’too cold for ice cream,” she said. Which it was, really. The Darkness had played hell with the climate.
The doctor offered to finish it for her, and polished it off in short order. He’d managed, typically (for the Doctor, anyway), to get a smudge of chocolate on his face, and Jackie (also typically) attacked him with a napkin while he squawked and flailed his arms. “Gerroff me, woman!”
“Oh, hold still. Honestly, you’re worse than Tony …”
It made it a little easier for Rose to fake a smile. But she knew, now. She knew that he might look like the Doctor, he might have some of the Doctor’s memories, he might even be part of the Doctor-but he wasn’t the Doctor.
She’d lost him.
15. Now-I Can’t
She couldn’t call him on it, of course. Because it was such a stupid little thing, and he would only scoff and lie. But there had been a lot of other little things, and she knew she was right.
“Just tell me,” she said. “Tell me the truth. Tell me how things are.”
“How things are.” He looked down at his trainers, lips compressed in a hard, thin line. When he looked up, his gaze was steady and uncompromising.
“I’ll never stop traveling,” he said. His voice had slipped back again, almost like the Doctor’s. “I can’t. That’s why I gave myself the TARDIS clipping. Not because he trusted me, but because he knew it would kill me to be stranded on one world forever, and he doesn’t want to be a killer. He trusts you to look after me. But in five years, I’m leaving. You can come with me, I’d like you to come with me, and we can come back to visit … but never to stay. It’s not in me.”
“Okay,” she said immediately. He obviously expected an answer, and she didn’t have to think about it. She’d know this about the Doctor from the beginning, and she’d made her choice. She’d chosen the road. “Never expected less.”
“All right, then,” he acknowledged. Something tightened in his face, and he hesitated a moment before going on. “I’m part human now, but I’m still at least half Time Lord. I was created by chance, one in a million. And in a metacrisis. But the genetics aren’t really compatible. We may be able to have children together, if we’re very lucky, but in all probability … I can’t.”
She hesitated a moment, too, before she said, “Okay.” It wasn’t that it was okay, precisely. It was a lot to take in. But it was a fact of biology. Couldn’t be changed. And if she couldn’t have children with him, she didn’t want them.
He studied her for a long moment, gauging her sincerity. When he continued, his voice was harder than before, defiant.
“I can’t take back what I did today,” he said. “Even if I could, I wouldn’t. The Daleks were too dangerous to be allowed to live. He wouldn’t admit it, but if I hadn’t killed them, someone else would have had to.”
She couldn’t quite say okay to that. But she gave him a short nod, accepting.
A flash of pain crossed his face. And anger. The Doctor had said he was full of anger, and now, finally, she saw it.
“That’s what this is about, isn’t it?” he demanded. “That’s why you keep insisting I’ve changed.”
“No,” said Rose, though that was painfully unlike the Doctor. She’d once seen him come close to killing, when they’d stumbled across a Dalek in their early travels. He’d pulled back from the edge, but this doctor had gone right over. Not just one Dalek, but all of them, an entire race. No-an entire species.
Genocide.
She didn’t know if he could come back from crossing that line. If anyone could.
But … “No, that’s not why.”
“It is, isn’t it?” he insisted, agitated now. “He left me. I wasn’t good enough for him. Ain’t I good enough for you, neither, Rose, is that it?”
“No.”
“But you blame me, don’t you? If I hadn’t done what I did, he wouldn’t've left me, an’ he wouldn’t've left you. Is that it? Do you blame me for killin’ them?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head violently. “I can’t blame you for any of it. Not what he did, not what you did.”
“Why not?” His voice had risen to a near-shout, like he wanted her to accuse him.
“Because of what I’ve done!” she yelled back.
Part V: Getting the Words Wrong