Fic: Journey Into Night 2/11 + Epilogue
Title: Journey Into Night
Author: Kaethel (kae-nine)
Characters/Pairing: Ten/Rose, eventually Ten/Jack/Rose
Rated: M
Warnings: explicit OT3 content, character death in the second chapter (none of the main three characters)
Spoilers: Nothing beyond DW’s Journey’s End. Small mention of Torchwood’s Exit Wounds.
Summary: He’s got the biggest family in the universe - but he keeps pushing them away.
Disclaimer: Doctor Who characters and episodes belong to the BBC; I’m just borrowing them for some shameless bit of fun. ;)
A/N: This story wouldn’t ever have left the realms of my hard drive without wendymr’s and dark_aegis’ huge help throughout the writing process. They’ve been the best BRs, cheerleaders, supporters, and brainstormers that I could ever hope for. Many thanks also go to both yamx and botanee, who brainstormed several scenes with me and were always ever so encouraging and helpful. The story is now complete, so I will be posting a new chapter about twice a week.
Chapter 1: Mistakes and Memories
- Chapter 2 -
Longing and Loss
Rose heard the TARDIS doors snap shut behind the Doctor and Donna, but paid it no attention. Sudden convulsions were shaking the man in her arms. He was fighting to breathe, to keep his eyes open, to talk. He was dying.
She wrapped her fingers around his hand and lifted it, searching for signs of a golden glow under his skin. His hand shook in hers, but there was no hint of an approaching regeneration.
“It’s all right,” she said with a forced smile. “You’re going to be all right. Give it a few minutes and then you’ll be as good as new.”
“Rose…”
He coughed and gasped, and she cupped his cheek, wiping traces of moisture off the creases around his eyes.
“Shh. Don’t try to speak. It’s okay. It’s fine. I know it’s going to be painful, but you’ve been through this before. And hey, you’ll have a new face. New hair, too. Damn, I liked the hair.”
“Please, Rose…”
“Maybe you’ll be ginger this time. I know you’ve always wanted to be ginger.”
“Listen, I - ”
“And you’re going to have a new accent, too! Back to Northern, you think? You could try Welsh, too. Or… How about… Scottish?”
He shook his head and brought a trembling finger to her lips to shush her. “Hear me out,” he breathed. “We d-don’t have… much time,” he muttered through gritted teeth, obviously assailed by another wave of pain.
“Don’t be silly, we have all the time in the - ”
“Rose, I love you.”
“ - world… What?”
“And he loves you, too… He’ll never tell you, but he does.”
Heart hammering in her chest, she let the words sink in, words she’d longed to hear five years ago.
Oh, she’d known how her Doctor felt, of course she had, but hearing those words had felt superfluous then. Their life had been filled with the fast and the furious of danger, adrenaline and close calls; no room for earthly romance, ‘I love you’s and promises of forever.
She’d felt invincible and, over the last couple of weeks of their time together, the Doctor had frequently let the TARDIS drift across the Vortex, keeping them busy with another sort of adventure. They’d spent days discovering each other, giving in to their mutual attraction, to a temptation he’d confessed to have been fighting ever since he’d taken her hand in the basement of Henrik’s. The three words that a twenty-year-old Earth woman normally yearned to hear had seemed unimportant then.
Everything had changed when the walls had closed between her universe and his. For weeks, she’d held onto the memories of the two of them together, shed tears over a part of her life that was over, until that day on a Norwegian beach when she’d got her last chance. Words she’d sworn to never burden him with had been blurted out through the sobs that racked her body.
And here she was, holding close this other, dying version of him, listening to words of love she’d stopped believing she’d ever hear. And she couldn’t deal with it. Not now. Not when the other him was going to come back here any second and when this him was going to turn into a completely different man.
She just couldn’t deal with it.
At all.
“Yeah, Scottish would suit you.” Forcing her voice to sound steady, she ignored the puzzled frown on his face. “You could use that as an excuse to wear a kilt.”
“Rose…”
“Bet you’d look really good in a kilt.” Her laughter sounded hollow even to her own ears. It stopped short when the Doctor’s eyes closed and his lips tightened. “Doctor?”
He released a shaky breath at last, and reopened his eyes. “I’d… I’d have told you… t-then,” he stammered. “On the beach. If… if there’d been… more time… I’d have s-said… the words.”
She blinked. “How do you… oh.”
“We’re… the same… Were.”
She looked down at his face, his features so familiar despite the pain that contorted them. He was so pale. His eyes lacked their usual focus and his lips were dry. She brushed her knuckles along his cheekbone, trying to show him all the tenderness and love she felt for him. She couldn’t ease the pain, but it couldn’t be much longer now.
“Tell me when it’s starting,” she said. “Not sure it’s safe for me to touch you when you burst into flames, right?”
He opened his mouth as if to protest, then nodded, the motion of his head almost imperceptible. His breath coming in short gasps, he strained to lift his chest off her lap and brought his lips close to her ear.
“Help him.”
The whisper tickled her skin, then his weight collapsed back onto her thighs.
Silence filled the room.
No more ragged breathing. No more grunts.
She waited, dumbstruck, her fingers clenching around his arm.
Nothing.
Fear froze her blood, and, frantic, she shifted, laying the Doctor’s limp body onto the floor and kneeling by his side. She reached for his throat, fingers feeling for his pulses, finding none.
“Doctor? Doctor, hey…”
She tapped his cheeks lightly, didn’t wait for an answer, pulled his t-shirt out of his trousers and lifted it up, then pressed her ear against his chest. Left side. Right side. Nothing, damn him, nothing!
“Come on, don’t do this to me!”
Her hand hovered over his nose and mouth. No breath.
It’d been years since the first aid class she’d taken, and back then, her seventeen-year-old self had been more interested in the instructor’s body than in the course he taught, but she had to try anyway.
Stumbling over to the console, she grabbed what looked most like a pair of scissors and half-cut, half-tore his T-shirt, revealing a deathly pale expanse of skin. She flattened her joined hands on his chest, then drew away, frowning.
How was she supposed to resuscitate someone who had two hearts? CPR had never been designed for Time Lords. Would it work the same as with humans? She decided to stick to what she knew, and pressed her hands to his chest.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five.
She pinched his nose and slanted her lips across his. Blew. One, two, three, four, five. Lifted her head. Went back to his chest. One, two, three, four, five. Back to his mouth. One, two, three, four, five.
“Breathe.” One, two, three, four, five. “Come on, Doctor, breathe.” … four, five. “Don’t die on me!” One, two, three -
The doors creaked, and she looked up. The original Doctor was standing at the bottom of the ramp, hair dripping, shirt clinging to his skin, jacket dangling from his hand.
She shifted her attention back to the man beside her and started her heart massage again. If she could get one of his hearts started again, then maybe the rest of his system would kick back to life. Maybe.
“I’ve no idea how his body works. Shouldn’t we… I don’t know, take him to one of the labs?”
No answer.
Puzzled, she turned to the Doctor.
He was looking away, avoiding her gaze. He hadn’t moved an inch.
***
He was dead.
It felt so surreal, having his own body lying on the grating of the TARDIS console room, knowing that that single heart had stopped beating, that for a short while he’d shared his thoughts, memories, emotions and experiences with another self, and that this was now gone for ever.
Almost gone, he amended. He’d felt the frantic pull of his duplicate’s consciousness. In his last moments, the second Doctor had poured bits of himself into his other self’s brain, and the Time Lord could feel them in a corner of his mind, tucked away but willing to be explored if he wanted to know. He wasn’t sure he did.
Rose kept busying herself around his duplicate. Mouth to mouth, heart massage, she was trying anything and everything to bring him back to life. She didn’t seem to realise that he was a lost cause and that her obstinacy was useless.
“Don’t just stand there!” she growled without even looking at him. “Give me a hand!”
He slung his drenched jacket over one of the pillars and, after a quick check on the monitors, turned off the outside camera where an image of Donna’s grandfather saluted to him, and sent the TARDIS into the safety of the Vortex. Then he crouched down beside her.
“Rose…”
“Here, take his hand. See if you can find a pulse.”
He complied half-heartedly and seized the man’s wrist. Unsurprisingly, he didn’t feel any heartbeat under his fingertips. He shook his head.
“He didn’t regenerate. How come he didn’t regenerate? Or does it take longer sometimes? How long does it usually take?”
“He won’t regenerate,” he said quietly.
“What? Don’t be ridiculous, he’s the Doctor just like you, he - ”
“He’s human.”
Rose stopped fussing over the second Doctor and turned to him. “What do you mean, he’s human?”
“Part-human. He’s the other half of the metacrisis. He’s not completely Time Lord. He’s got only one heart.”
He wasn’t sure she’d heard him. She’d moved her attention back to the other Doctor, two fingers on his throat to feel for a pulse.
“One heart,” he insisted. “As far as regenerating is concerned, his physiology is every bit as human as yours.”
“If he’s as human as I am, a heart massage can save him.”
She started pushing her hands against his chest once more, and he could hear her counting to five under her breath.
“Do you have any idea how many human beings get saved by CPR?”
She pinched his nose and blew into his mouth. He found himself counting to five.
“I knew this first aid class would come in handy someday.”
He caught one of her wrists and gently pried her hands away from the Doctor’s chest.
“Rose…”
“At least let me try!” She tried to free her hands from his grip, but he held on.
“If it was me lying there, wouldn’t you try anything to save me?”
His hold on her hands tightened. His knuckles turned white.
That was exactly what he’d been trying not to think about: Rose, lying dead on the TARDIS floor.
“Let me try,” she pleaded.
“He’s gone.”
“No.”
“It’s over.”
She looked up at him, her eyes shining with tears. Turned back towards the dead body at her feet. Then back to him.
“No!”
Snatching her hands away from his grip, she pressed them back to the dead Doctor’s chest.
“He's part human, Rose. That's the problem. He could hold only one Time Lord consciousness at a time. When he tried to save Donna by pulling in her Time Lord consciousness, it was too much for his mind to handle. He couldn't pull in enough of it to save Donna, but he got too much of it to save himself.”
“But he can’t die!”
“He can,” the Doctor said. “He's got one heart, Rose. Just one. It's the second heart, and a good dose of the Rassilon imprimatur that causes regeneration. Even if you managed to get his heart pumping blood again, it's too late for his mind. It's already suffered at least one aneurysm. There will be more, the longer his heart pumps, until he loses control of his involuntary functions. He's gone, Rose. Let him go.”
“No!” She was shaking her head.
He tugged her to him. She fought him weakly, then went limp against him. He wrapped his arms around her. Her warmth seeped through the wetness of his shirt. She didn’t move, didn’t try to return his hug. Silent tears rolled down her cheeks.
His lips grazed her forehead. “I’m sorry.”
He waited for her tears to be spent, rocking her against him, holding her close. After a minute, she withdrew from him, wiping her eyes and looking down.
“Sorry, I…” She scrambled to her knees and put some distance between them. “I’m sorry,” she repeated as they both got to their feet.
He nodded.
“What do we do with… him?” she asked.
Her face was a mask, as if her tears had all been a part of his imagination, as if she’d remained the strong woman who’d crossed the void again to find him.
He shrugged. He didn’t have the strength to dispose of the body now, but he couldn’t let him lie here in the centre of the console room. So he focused on action instead of thought, or at least he tried. He lifted the second Doctor’s body into his arms.
“I’ll sort it,” he said before turning away.
Leaving Rose alone in the console room, he walked into the depths of the TARDIS and didn’t pause until he reached a white sliding door that the ship usually kept concealed.
The stasis chamber.
A room rarely ever used, white-washed walls and bluish neon lights, and a temperature that never reached above two degrees. The Doctor didn’t feel the cold the same way humans did, but a shiver ran down his spine every time he had to stand in here.
He opened one of the body drawers and laid his burden onto it.
The moment he entered the room, he felt eager to leave again, but the sight of himself lying there froze him to the spot.
His duplicate’s T-shirt was torn, and reddish bruises from Rose’s heart massage were appearing on his chest, marring his skin. He’d sacrificed himself. There was no other word to describe what the second Doctor had done. He’d given his life to save Donna because he hadn’t wanted him to risk regeneration so soon after being shot. And he, the original Doctor, had been too slow stopping him.
If he’d been faster, this Doctor might’ve lived. But he’d been selfish, and he’d believed, for a short moment, that maybe his duplicate was right, that maybe what he was doing would save Donna, allow her to stay by his side. Then his conscience had kicked in and he’d stopped the process, condemning Donna… but too late for the other Doctor. And a growing part of him now wondered if he hadn’t sacrificed them both in his hesitation.
Between Donna and his duplicate, he’d stopped feeling alone. They didn’t share his physiology, but they understood what it was like to be him.
He was the last of his kind. Again.
He felt Rose’s hand slide into his. She’d followed him. Naturally, the gesture born from a habit that had never left them despite the years they’d spent apart, their fingers intertwined.
“Are you all right?”
He nodded. He lied. This was him, lying there on this bed, dead for ever.
“And… Donna?”
Another nod. “She’s fine.”
“What happened to her?”
“The Time Lord’s consciousness was burning her up. I had to wipe her memories completely. Any memory of me, or the TARDIS, or anything we did together, had to go.”
“Everything?”
He could feel Rose’s gaze on him, her eyes wide and a crease on her brow. He focused on the body lying in front of them.
“For ever.”
“What happens if… if she ever remembers?”
“She’ll die. But she won’t ever remember. I’ve made sure nothing can ever remind her, and her family knows how important it is that she never knows about me.”
Rose squeezed his hand. He didn’t squeeze back.
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine.”
Davros was right. His companions trusted him, cared for him, loved him, and died in his name.
“I’m fine,” he repeated, his voice steadier.
“He said he loved me.”
He froze and turned to look at Rose. Her eyes hadn’t moved from his duplicate’s body, and her free hand was stroking dead, cold fingers. The sight sent a pang of jealousy down his gut, and the feelings he’d carefully kept in check since her return mingled with the emotions his duplicate had felt when he’d spoken the words.
The Doctor swallowed, and his grip on her hand tightened.
“He was dying,” he said, as if it lessened the meaning of the other Doctor’s words.
“He said it.”
“He was scared.”
“He meant it.”
He grasped at her wrist, tearing her away from the second Doctor’s body. She yelped, but before she could form a protest, he’d pressed his lips to hers.
“Is this what he meant?” he asked, releasing her just as suddenly as he’d grabbed her.
She looked puzzled and a little dazed.
He tugged her back to him, claiming her as his once more, as if his actions could make her forget the words of a dying man who had his face, his memories, his feelings, and who’d spoken words of love he couldn’t ever speak.
She started kissing him back, but he pushed at her shoulders, breaking the kiss.
“Is it, Rose?”
She was shivering, and her breath was coming out in little white puffs. She was cold. His anger subsided. Squeezing her frozen fingers in his, he tugged her out of the room, pressing a button outside to shut the sliding door behind them.
***
Chapter 3: Woe and Weakness
Author: Kaethel (kae-nine)
Characters/Pairing: Ten/Rose, eventually Ten/Jack/Rose
Rated: M
Warnings: explicit OT3 content, character death in the second chapter (none of the main three characters)
Spoilers: Nothing beyond DW’s Journey’s End. Small mention of Torchwood’s Exit Wounds.
Summary: He’s got the biggest family in the universe - but he keeps pushing them away.
Disclaimer: Doctor Who characters and episodes belong to the BBC; I’m just borrowing them for some shameless bit of fun. ;)
A/N: This story wouldn’t ever have left the realms of my hard drive without wendymr’s and dark_aegis’ huge help throughout the writing process. They’ve been the best BRs, cheerleaders, supporters, and brainstormers that I could ever hope for. Many thanks also go to both yamx and botanee, who brainstormed several scenes with me and were always ever so encouraging and helpful. The story is now complete, so I will be posting a new chapter about twice a week.
Chapter 1: Mistakes and Memories
- Chapter 2 -
Longing and Loss
Rose heard the TARDIS doors snap shut behind the Doctor and Donna, but paid it no attention. Sudden convulsions were shaking the man in her arms. He was fighting to breathe, to keep his eyes open, to talk. He was dying.
She wrapped her fingers around his hand and lifted it, searching for signs of a golden glow under his skin. His hand shook in hers, but there was no hint of an approaching regeneration.
“It’s all right,” she said with a forced smile. “You’re going to be all right. Give it a few minutes and then you’ll be as good as new.”
“Rose…”
He coughed and gasped, and she cupped his cheek, wiping traces of moisture off the creases around his eyes.
“Shh. Don’t try to speak. It’s okay. It’s fine. I know it’s going to be painful, but you’ve been through this before. And hey, you’ll have a new face. New hair, too. Damn, I liked the hair.”
“Please, Rose…”
“Maybe you’ll be ginger this time. I know you’ve always wanted to be ginger.”
“Listen, I - ”
“And you’re going to have a new accent, too! Back to Northern, you think? You could try Welsh, too. Or… How about… Scottish?”
He shook his head and brought a trembling finger to her lips to shush her. “Hear me out,” he breathed. “We d-don’t have… much time,” he muttered through gritted teeth, obviously assailed by another wave of pain.
“Don’t be silly, we have all the time in the - ”
“Rose, I love you.”
“ - world… What?”
“And he loves you, too… He’ll never tell you, but he does.”
Heart hammering in her chest, she let the words sink in, words she’d longed to hear five years ago.
Oh, she’d known how her Doctor felt, of course she had, but hearing those words had felt superfluous then. Their life had been filled with the fast and the furious of danger, adrenaline and close calls; no room for earthly romance, ‘I love you’s and promises of forever.
She’d felt invincible and, over the last couple of weeks of their time together, the Doctor had frequently let the TARDIS drift across the Vortex, keeping them busy with another sort of adventure. They’d spent days discovering each other, giving in to their mutual attraction, to a temptation he’d confessed to have been fighting ever since he’d taken her hand in the basement of Henrik’s. The three words that a twenty-year-old Earth woman normally yearned to hear had seemed unimportant then.
Everything had changed when the walls had closed between her universe and his. For weeks, she’d held onto the memories of the two of them together, shed tears over a part of her life that was over, until that day on a Norwegian beach when she’d got her last chance. Words she’d sworn to never burden him with had been blurted out through the sobs that racked her body.
And here she was, holding close this other, dying version of him, listening to words of love she’d stopped believing she’d ever hear. And she couldn’t deal with it. Not now. Not when the other him was going to come back here any second and when this him was going to turn into a completely different man.
She just couldn’t deal with it.
At all.
“Yeah, Scottish would suit you.” Forcing her voice to sound steady, she ignored the puzzled frown on his face. “You could use that as an excuse to wear a kilt.”
“Rose…”
“Bet you’d look really good in a kilt.” Her laughter sounded hollow even to her own ears. It stopped short when the Doctor’s eyes closed and his lips tightened. “Doctor?”
He released a shaky breath at last, and reopened his eyes. “I’d… I’d have told you… t-then,” he stammered. “On the beach. If… if there’d been… more time… I’d have s-said… the words.”
She blinked. “How do you… oh.”
“We’re… the same… Were.”
She looked down at his face, his features so familiar despite the pain that contorted them. He was so pale. His eyes lacked their usual focus and his lips were dry. She brushed her knuckles along his cheekbone, trying to show him all the tenderness and love she felt for him. She couldn’t ease the pain, but it couldn’t be much longer now.
“Tell me when it’s starting,” she said. “Not sure it’s safe for me to touch you when you burst into flames, right?”
He opened his mouth as if to protest, then nodded, the motion of his head almost imperceptible. His breath coming in short gasps, he strained to lift his chest off her lap and brought his lips close to her ear.
“Help him.”
The whisper tickled her skin, then his weight collapsed back onto her thighs.
Silence filled the room.
No more ragged breathing. No more grunts.
She waited, dumbstruck, her fingers clenching around his arm.
Nothing.
Fear froze her blood, and, frantic, she shifted, laying the Doctor’s limp body onto the floor and kneeling by his side. She reached for his throat, fingers feeling for his pulses, finding none.
“Doctor? Doctor, hey…”
She tapped his cheeks lightly, didn’t wait for an answer, pulled his t-shirt out of his trousers and lifted it up, then pressed her ear against his chest. Left side. Right side. Nothing, damn him, nothing!
“Come on, don’t do this to me!”
Her hand hovered over his nose and mouth. No breath.
It’d been years since the first aid class she’d taken, and back then, her seventeen-year-old self had been more interested in the instructor’s body than in the course he taught, but she had to try anyway.
Stumbling over to the console, she grabbed what looked most like a pair of scissors and half-cut, half-tore his T-shirt, revealing a deathly pale expanse of skin. She flattened her joined hands on his chest, then drew away, frowning.
How was she supposed to resuscitate someone who had two hearts? CPR had never been designed for Time Lords. Would it work the same as with humans? She decided to stick to what she knew, and pressed her hands to his chest.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five.
She pinched his nose and slanted her lips across his. Blew. One, two, three, four, five. Lifted her head. Went back to his chest. One, two, three, four, five. Back to his mouth. One, two, three, four, five.
“Breathe.” One, two, three, four, five. “Come on, Doctor, breathe.” … four, five. “Don’t die on me!” One, two, three -
The doors creaked, and she looked up. The original Doctor was standing at the bottom of the ramp, hair dripping, shirt clinging to his skin, jacket dangling from his hand.
She shifted her attention back to the man beside her and started her heart massage again. If she could get one of his hearts started again, then maybe the rest of his system would kick back to life. Maybe.
“I’ve no idea how his body works. Shouldn’t we… I don’t know, take him to one of the labs?”
No answer.
Puzzled, she turned to the Doctor.
He was looking away, avoiding her gaze. He hadn’t moved an inch.
***
He was dead.
It felt so surreal, having his own body lying on the grating of the TARDIS console room, knowing that that single heart had stopped beating, that for a short while he’d shared his thoughts, memories, emotions and experiences with another self, and that this was now gone for ever.
Almost gone, he amended. He’d felt the frantic pull of his duplicate’s consciousness. In his last moments, the second Doctor had poured bits of himself into his other self’s brain, and the Time Lord could feel them in a corner of his mind, tucked away but willing to be explored if he wanted to know. He wasn’t sure he did.
Rose kept busying herself around his duplicate. Mouth to mouth, heart massage, she was trying anything and everything to bring him back to life. She didn’t seem to realise that he was a lost cause and that her obstinacy was useless.
“Don’t just stand there!” she growled without even looking at him. “Give me a hand!”
He slung his drenched jacket over one of the pillars and, after a quick check on the monitors, turned off the outside camera where an image of Donna’s grandfather saluted to him, and sent the TARDIS into the safety of the Vortex. Then he crouched down beside her.
“Rose…”
“Here, take his hand. See if you can find a pulse.”
He complied half-heartedly and seized the man’s wrist. Unsurprisingly, he didn’t feel any heartbeat under his fingertips. He shook his head.
“He didn’t regenerate. How come he didn’t regenerate? Or does it take longer sometimes? How long does it usually take?”
“He won’t regenerate,” he said quietly.
“What? Don’t be ridiculous, he’s the Doctor just like you, he - ”
“He’s human.”
Rose stopped fussing over the second Doctor and turned to him. “What do you mean, he’s human?”
“Part-human. He’s the other half of the metacrisis. He’s not completely Time Lord. He’s got only one heart.”
He wasn’t sure she’d heard him. She’d moved her attention back to the other Doctor, two fingers on his throat to feel for a pulse.
“One heart,” he insisted. “As far as regenerating is concerned, his physiology is every bit as human as yours.”
“If he’s as human as I am, a heart massage can save him.”
She started pushing her hands against his chest once more, and he could hear her counting to five under her breath.
“Do you have any idea how many human beings get saved by CPR?”
She pinched his nose and blew into his mouth. He found himself counting to five.
“I knew this first aid class would come in handy someday.”
He caught one of her wrists and gently pried her hands away from the Doctor’s chest.
“Rose…”
“At least let me try!” She tried to free her hands from his grip, but he held on.
“If it was me lying there, wouldn’t you try anything to save me?”
His hold on her hands tightened. His knuckles turned white.
That was exactly what he’d been trying not to think about: Rose, lying dead on the TARDIS floor.
“Let me try,” she pleaded.
“He’s gone.”
“No.”
“It’s over.”
She looked up at him, her eyes shining with tears. Turned back towards the dead body at her feet. Then back to him.
“No!”
Snatching her hands away from his grip, she pressed them back to the dead Doctor’s chest.
“He's part human, Rose. That's the problem. He could hold only one Time Lord consciousness at a time. When he tried to save Donna by pulling in her Time Lord consciousness, it was too much for his mind to handle. He couldn't pull in enough of it to save Donna, but he got too much of it to save himself.”
“But he can’t die!”
“He can,” the Doctor said. “He's got one heart, Rose. Just one. It's the second heart, and a good dose of the Rassilon imprimatur that causes regeneration. Even if you managed to get his heart pumping blood again, it's too late for his mind. It's already suffered at least one aneurysm. There will be more, the longer his heart pumps, until he loses control of his involuntary functions. He's gone, Rose. Let him go.”
“No!” She was shaking her head.
He tugged her to him. She fought him weakly, then went limp against him. He wrapped his arms around her. Her warmth seeped through the wetness of his shirt. She didn’t move, didn’t try to return his hug. Silent tears rolled down her cheeks.
His lips grazed her forehead. “I’m sorry.”
He waited for her tears to be spent, rocking her against him, holding her close. After a minute, she withdrew from him, wiping her eyes and looking down.
“Sorry, I…” She scrambled to her knees and put some distance between them. “I’m sorry,” she repeated as they both got to their feet.
He nodded.
“What do we do with… him?” she asked.
Her face was a mask, as if her tears had all been a part of his imagination, as if she’d remained the strong woman who’d crossed the void again to find him.
He shrugged. He didn’t have the strength to dispose of the body now, but he couldn’t let him lie here in the centre of the console room. So he focused on action instead of thought, or at least he tried. He lifted the second Doctor’s body into his arms.
“I’ll sort it,” he said before turning away.
Leaving Rose alone in the console room, he walked into the depths of the TARDIS and didn’t pause until he reached a white sliding door that the ship usually kept concealed.
The stasis chamber.
A room rarely ever used, white-washed walls and bluish neon lights, and a temperature that never reached above two degrees. The Doctor didn’t feel the cold the same way humans did, but a shiver ran down his spine every time he had to stand in here.
He opened one of the body drawers and laid his burden onto it.
The moment he entered the room, he felt eager to leave again, but the sight of himself lying there froze him to the spot.
His duplicate’s T-shirt was torn, and reddish bruises from Rose’s heart massage were appearing on his chest, marring his skin. He’d sacrificed himself. There was no other word to describe what the second Doctor had done. He’d given his life to save Donna because he hadn’t wanted him to risk regeneration so soon after being shot. And he, the original Doctor, had been too slow stopping him.
If he’d been faster, this Doctor might’ve lived. But he’d been selfish, and he’d believed, for a short moment, that maybe his duplicate was right, that maybe what he was doing would save Donna, allow her to stay by his side. Then his conscience had kicked in and he’d stopped the process, condemning Donna… but too late for the other Doctor. And a growing part of him now wondered if he hadn’t sacrificed them both in his hesitation.
Between Donna and his duplicate, he’d stopped feeling alone. They didn’t share his physiology, but they understood what it was like to be him.
He was the last of his kind. Again.
He felt Rose’s hand slide into his. She’d followed him. Naturally, the gesture born from a habit that had never left them despite the years they’d spent apart, their fingers intertwined.
“Are you all right?”
He nodded. He lied. This was him, lying there on this bed, dead for ever.
“And… Donna?”
Another nod. “She’s fine.”
“What happened to her?”
“The Time Lord’s consciousness was burning her up. I had to wipe her memories completely. Any memory of me, or the TARDIS, or anything we did together, had to go.”
“Everything?”
He could feel Rose’s gaze on him, her eyes wide and a crease on her brow. He focused on the body lying in front of them.
“For ever.”
“What happens if… if she ever remembers?”
“She’ll die. But she won’t ever remember. I’ve made sure nothing can ever remind her, and her family knows how important it is that she never knows about me.”
Rose squeezed his hand. He didn’t squeeze back.
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine.”
Davros was right. His companions trusted him, cared for him, loved him, and died in his name.
“I’m fine,” he repeated, his voice steadier.
“He said he loved me.”
He froze and turned to look at Rose. Her eyes hadn’t moved from his duplicate’s body, and her free hand was stroking dead, cold fingers. The sight sent a pang of jealousy down his gut, and the feelings he’d carefully kept in check since her return mingled with the emotions his duplicate had felt when he’d spoken the words.
The Doctor swallowed, and his grip on her hand tightened.
“He was dying,” he said, as if it lessened the meaning of the other Doctor’s words.
“He said it.”
“He was scared.”
“He meant it.”
He grasped at her wrist, tearing her away from the second Doctor’s body. She yelped, but before she could form a protest, he’d pressed his lips to hers.
“Is this what he meant?” he asked, releasing her just as suddenly as he’d grabbed her.
She looked puzzled and a little dazed.
He tugged her back to him, claiming her as his once more, as if his actions could make her forget the words of a dying man who had his face, his memories, his feelings, and who’d spoken words of love he couldn’t ever speak.
She started kissing him back, but he pushed at her shoulders, breaking the kiss.
“Is it, Rose?”
She was shivering, and her breath was coming out in little white puffs. She was cold. His anger subsided. Squeezing her frozen fingers in his, he tugged her out of the room, pressing a button outside to shut the sliding door behind them.
***
Chapter 3: Woe and Weakness