Fic: Journey Into Night 10/11 + 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: Loss and Longing | Chapter 3: Woe and Weakness | Chapter 4: Culpability and Consequences | Chapter 5: Debt and Delays | Chapter 6: Talk and Tinkering | Chapter 7: Regret and Ritual | Chapter 8: Comfort and Consolation | Chapter 9: Sensuality and Satisfaction
- Chapter 10 -
Neglect and Negotiation
Back to Cardiff? But that was the plan, wasn’t it? One very last trip through space and time before he dropped Jack Harkness and Rose Tyler back on Earth and ran off as far as the Vortex would let him.
Their short trip to Flakdonia had little to do with the original deal. But if he postponed the inevitable parting for the sake of a newborn galaxy, million of light-years away from Earth, wouldn’t the extra time they spent together cause more pain to Rose and himself when he said goodbye?
He stilled in the middle of the slow, lazy caress he’d been brushing down the length of her spine. In answer to his bleak state of mind, his hands tightened around her waist, and he felt her arms squeeze him more securely as well.
Sod the plan, he was perfectly fine where he was right now, enjoying the heat of his lovers’ human bodies pressed close to his, listening to the beating of their single hearts, to their slow, regular breathing as they dozed between consciousness and sleep, to the whisper of lips against skin.
The past few minutes had helped him ignore the precariousness of the situation, but the Captain’s words were a sharp reminder that very soon he’d find himself alone again. Despite the warmth surrounding him, his body, so accustomed to the TARDIS moderate heating, was suddenly cold.
Releasing his hold on his lover and ignoring her mumbled protest, he sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed as he fished around for the clothes he’d so willingly abandoned just a short hour earlier.
Losing her again - losing both of them - and going back to being alone: how could that possibly be what he wanted?
Yet it was what he wanted, wasn’t it? It was why he’d taken Rose to Cardiff in the first place. Because she was better off without him. She’d be happier with Jack, who could make sure she led a normal life, found someone to love, had a family, just like any human woman deserved. There would be less of a risk for her to die before her time, too, or worse, to become, under his influence, someone she wasn’t.
He could run a quick check on the timelines in his mind, make sure everything ran smoothly with her life after he left. Fear of what he would find out held him back. Taking a sneak peek into his own future was better avoided; checking on loved ones was even riskier. Fiddling with set events in Rose’s timeline, while a very bad idea, could be tempting enough to make his usually uncompromising willpower wobble.
Shaking his head, he picked his discarded shirt from the floor. He fisted the fabric into his hand but made no move to put it back on.
“Doctor…”
“I can’t,” he murmured back to Jack, so low that it was a wonder they heard him.
The Captain’s warm hand landed on his shoulder. “Of course you can. You’ve done it before. You’ve travelled with Rose. Hell, you’ve travelled with both of us. Never seemed to bother you then.”
His hands gripped the edge of the bed. “Everything’s different now.”
“What, because she’s sharing your bed? You guys were already shagging by the time you lost her.”
He turned just in time to see Rose look away and hide a blush behind a curtain of hair. So she’d told Jack about their relationship. Not that he could blame her. The way he’d behaved towards her since she’d been back on the TARDIS, it was no wonder she’d needed to confide in Jack.
Humans needed to talk things out when they were upset. They weren’t happy pushing things to the back of their mind and moving on. He wasn’t human, though. He didn’t need anyone to talk to. He didn’t need anyone.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
His voice remained soft but, he hoped, filled with enough warning that Jack would be sensible and drop the subject. His friend’s hand was heavy and warm on his naked shoulder, a painful reminder that the lad was offering comfort despite what they both knew was coming. The Doctor shrugged away from the gentle touch and slid into his shirt, focusing his entire attention on buttoning it up.
“You really think I don’t, do you?” The question was no more than a whisper, one the Doctor was sorely tempted to ignore.
“Yes, Jack, I really think you don’t,” he said instead, abandoning the buttons and turning back towards the two of them. “You think this is all easy for me, that leaving you and Rose is a whim and that I’ll regret it as soon as I’m back in the Vortex.”
“And you won’t?”
“You’re missing the point. You think like a human being, but you keep forgetting one thing. I’m not human. I can’t make decisions according to… to… emotions.” He didn’t even try to hide his discomfort with the word. “Or moods.”
“Then I stand by what I said earlier. You’re stupid.”
Jack was insulting his intelligence once more, his offensive statement denying the obvious: he was a Time Lord, whereas Jack, for all his experience, was only a human. A rather brilliant human, but a human nonetheless.
Stung, he was on the edge of losing his cool and launching into a tirade setting Jack straight, but he held back at the last moment. What was the point? Neither Jack nor Rose would listen to what he had to say. They’d made up their mind hours ago, and humans were among the most stubborn beings in the universe. Besides, they’d be gone soon enough, and the argument would become a moot point.
Jack, taking advantage of his hesitation, spoke again. “Rose came back for you. You love her, and don’t even try to deny it,” he warned when the Doctor started to protest. “And you’re dumping her?”
“It’s not that simple.”
“You’re right,” he said quietly, though his next words betrayed the anger underlying his calmness. “It’s not that simple. So let’s make it more complicated by making everyone unhappy, right?”
“She’ll be happy with you.”
“And she’d like to have a say sometimes.” The sound of Rose’s voice drowned out their hushed argument.
Rising to her feet, she grabbed a small blanket from the armchair beside the bed and wrapped it around herself. The Doctor was acutely aware that just like his, Jack’s eyes were rooted to the shape of her naked body and the very recent memories evoked by the sight.
“We’ve both seen you naked, you know?” Jack said with a raised eyebrow. “No need to be modest now.”
Throwing him a glare over her shoulder, she fisted her hand in the blanket, keeping it in place as she bent to grab a few clothes from her rucksack.
“You look good, though,” he added in what suspiciously looked like an attempt at making up for his first comment.
Rose shook her head, granted Jack a smile and a wink, then grew serious again as she turned her attention back to the Doctor. “You keep making decisions for me,” she said as she finished adjusting her trousers.
His gaze travelled from the blanket that lay forgotten at her feet to the top that she stretched to slide over her head, quickly concealing her breasts from view.
“You send me away when you think I’m in danger. You don’t even pause to ask what I want.”
“Because I…” He trailed off. Rose was right. He’d never taken her opinion into account when it came to pushing her away, and it suddenly appeared to him that he’d been doing that a lot since he’d first met her.
I made my choice a long time ago, and I’m never gonna leave you.
When had it ever been her choice, though? When had he ever let it be her choice? She’d come back to him. And, instead of being grateful to the universe for that, he was sending her away again. And before that, he’d held himself so aloof from her that she might as well not have been here at all.
“Because you what? Because you know better than I do what’s good for me?”
“Yes. As a matter of fact, yes, I do.”
Her eyes widened and, for a second, he thought she’d argue. Instead, she sighed and sat on the bed next to him.
“You think that making yourself miserable is what’s right.”
“I’m not…”
But he was. Donna would’ve told him he was being a plonker, that he wasn’t appreciating what he had and refusing to let himself be happy. A pessimist, always seeing the glass half-empty or the juggernaut coming around the next blind corner.
“Then tell me something, Doctor. Once you leave us in Cardiff, what happens then?”
“I’ve got the TARDIS.”
“Same old life,” Rose completed for him, lifting her hands to surround those words with quotation marks. “I’ve heard that one before. But once you actually find someone, you - ”
“I won’t.” He grabbed her hands and squeezed them tight. The warmth of her skin was another painful reminder of his upcoming loss. Abruptly, he shied away from her touch and buried his fists between his knees. “I don’t want to find someone.”
“I’m not asking you to stay alone.”
“I know. But I don’t want anyone else on the TARDIS.”
Never again. He never wanted to use another companion and sacrifice their life in the process. He never wanted to have to remove someone else’s memories, or to see them leave, broken and aged, because of what they’d been through. He never wanted to keep anyone else from their loved ones. He never wanted to watch another body burn.
“You’ll go mad on your own,” Jack commented.
“It’ll be better than destroying someone else.”
He was tired. Tired of fighting, tired of explaining, tired of being scared, but he had to be firm about this. It was surprising, though, that Jack didn’t seem to understand his motivation. The time he’d spent as the Master’s slave should’ve clued him in that Time Lords weren’t safe.
“You should know. You had a whole year to think of what being with me meant.”
The hungry kiss that Jack pressed to his lips in reply to his pointed reminder took him by surprise, but the moment he started to respond, his lover was tearing his lips away from his. “It wasn’t your fault,” he said, holding the Doctor’s gaze and keeping one hand wrapped around his neck.
“It was. I could’ve given him what he wanted. I could’ve surrendered right away. Or turned a blind eye.”
“And let the Toclafane slaughter the human race?”
“I could’ve killed him.”
It wouldn’t have made a difference, would it? He’d always been a murderer anyway. Oh, he’d fought his instincts, but they always came back, didn’t they? Every time more overwhelming, every time harder to ignore. Daleks, Master, rogue soldiers, Davros… the impulse to kill had been there every time. His duplicate had shown the true nature of what he really was. Ready to die for those he loved, but also prepared to commit genocide for his own greater good.
“You and Martha saved us all.”
“Yes, and how many times did you have to die for that? How many people died?”
From the corner of his eye, he could see Rose frown at both of them. Jack, though, shrugged and pre-empted any question she might’ve wanted to ask. “It’s in the past now. In fact, we reversed it. It never happened.”
“It did, though. And it’s not just in the past. It’s in the future. It’s in the life we lead on the TARDIS. It’s not just the danger I put you in, either. It’s me. It’s who I am. I’ve got the potential to become exactly like the Master. One day, I might be like him. You heard what Davros said.”
Rose grabbed one of his hands and laced her fingers with his. He didn’t find the strength to deny himself the soft contact of her skin. “He was manipulating you, Doctor.”
“Looks like it worked, too,” Jack said.
“He was right, though. You’ve all become the weapons I claim to never carry around.”
“And if we weren’t with you?” Rose asked. “What would happen then?”
He looked away. He knew fully well what would happen if he was on his own. The first time she’d been taken away from him, he’d lost it completely, and if Donna hadn’t been there…
Donna. He lowered his head. Another victim. Another companion whose life he’d destroyed. She didn’t know, would never know, but her grandfather and mother carried alone the weight of her missing memories.
“You’re scared to destroy us, but have you thought of what could happen if you were on your own?” Jack insisted, taking over Rose’s argument. “You’re gonna run into trouble sooner or later. You always do. If you’re that dangerous, who’ll stop you if we’re not with you? Who’ll tell you that you’re making the wrong decision? Who’s gonna keep you grounded?”
No-one. Granted, he’d travelled on his own before, but never for long. Loneliness ate him up inside, and he always ended up looking for company. If he stuck to his decision to stay alone this time, there would be no Rose Tyler to stop him from slaughtering a dying Dalek, no Donna Noble to beg him to save an innocent family from a raging volcano, no-one to rein in his worst instincts.
“Let Rose stay. Don’t abandon her. Don’t do that to yourself.”
“It’s all right, Doctor,” Rose said when he failed to reply. Her lips grazed a soft kiss against the back of his hand. “I know you don’t want me, and it’s fine.”
She was unable to keep a hint of regret from her voice, and the pain in her eyes was unmistakable. Guilt gnawed at him. He was hurting her again, this woman who meant so very much to him. Jack was right; he loved her. He loved both of them.
“Just remember your promise,” she said softly. “Don’t stay on your own.”
His hearts sank. She was giving him up. She was abandoning him. But wasn’t that exactly what he’d asked her to do? Wasn’t that exactly what he was about to do to her as well? Ever since she’d come back, he’d gone out of his way to make her feel unwelcome on the TARDIS. He’d dumped her in Cardiff without even the beginning of an explanation. He’d known that his rejection was hurting her, but he’d been too preoccupied with Donna and his duplicate to care for the feelings of the woman he loved. What kind of man was he?
Yet Rose loved him, kept loving him despite what he was putting her through.
Turning to face her, he tugged her to him, sighing in relief when she didn’t offer any resistance. He wrapped his arms around her and held her tightly against his chest. “How can you think that?” he murmured against the mass of her hair. Pulling away, he laid his hand against her cheek, and she leaned into his touch. “How can you think that I don’t want you?”
“You haven’t done much to show her that you do,” Jack pointed out dryly.
“Come on, Jack. Tell me you’ve never left anyone for their own good.”
“Oh, I have. And then realised what a fool I’d been when, fifty years later, she died alone, not knowing I’d been with her all along.”
There was that frown on Rose’s face again. “Fifty years?”
“Doctor, just because you’re on your own doesn’t mean no harm will come to Rose,” Jack went on, ignoring her.
“He’s right, Doctor. One day, I’ll die. We all do.”
“Most of us do,” Jack muttered under his breath.
“Most of us?”
***
Chapter 11: Revelations and Reconciliations
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: Loss and Longing | Chapter 3: Woe and Weakness | Chapter 4: Culpability and Consequences | Chapter 5: Debt and Delays | Chapter 6: Talk and Tinkering | Chapter 7: Regret and Ritual | Chapter 8: Comfort and Consolation | Chapter 9: Sensuality and Satisfaction
- Chapter 10 -
Neglect and Negotiation
Back to Cardiff? But that was the plan, wasn’t it? One very last trip through space and time before he dropped Jack Harkness and Rose Tyler back on Earth and ran off as far as the Vortex would let him.
Their short trip to Flakdonia had little to do with the original deal. But if he postponed the inevitable parting for the sake of a newborn galaxy, million of light-years away from Earth, wouldn’t the extra time they spent together cause more pain to Rose and himself when he said goodbye?
He stilled in the middle of the slow, lazy caress he’d been brushing down the length of her spine. In answer to his bleak state of mind, his hands tightened around her waist, and he felt her arms squeeze him more securely as well.
Sod the plan, he was perfectly fine where he was right now, enjoying the heat of his lovers’ human bodies pressed close to his, listening to the beating of their single hearts, to their slow, regular breathing as they dozed between consciousness and sleep, to the whisper of lips against skin.
The past few minutes had helped him ignore the precariousness of the situation, but the Captain’s words were a sharp reminder that very soon he’d find himself alone again. Despite the warmth surrounding him, his body, so accustomed to the TARDIS moderate heating, was suddenly cold.
Releasing his hold on his lover and ignoring her mumbled protest, he sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed as he fished around for the clothes he’d so willingly abandoned just a short hour earlier.
Losing her again - losing both of them - and going back to being alone: how could that possibly be what he wanted?
Yet it was what he wanted, wasn’t it? It was why he’d taken Rose to Cardiff in the first place. Because she was better off without him. She’d be happier with Jack, who could make sure she led a normal life, found someone to love, had a family, just like any human woman deserved. There would be less of a risk for her to die before her time, too, or worse, to become, under his influence, someone she wasn’t.
He could run a quick check on the timelines in his mind, make sure everything ran smoothly with her life after he left. Fear of what he would find out held him back. Taking a sneak peek into his own future was better avoided; checking on loved ones was even riskier. Fiddling with set events in Rose’s timeline, while a very bad idea, could be tempting enough to make his usually uncompromising willpower wobble.
Shaking his head, he picked his discarded shirt from the floor. He fisted the fabric into his hand but made no move to put it back on.
“Doctor…”
“I can’t,” he murmured back to Jack, so low that it was a wonder they heard him.
The Captain’s warm hand landed on his shoulder. “Of course you can. You’ve done it before. You’ve travelled with Rose. Hell, you’ve travelled with both of us. Never seemed to bother you then.”
His hands gripped the edge of the bed. “Everything’s different now.”
“What, because she’s sharing your bed? You guys were already shagging by the time you lost her.”
He turned just in time to see Rose look away and hide a blush behind a curtain of hair. So she’d told Jack about their relationship. Not that he could blame her. The way he’d behaved towards her since she’d been back on the TARDIS, it was no wonder she’d needed to confide in Jack.
Humans needed to talk things out when they were upset. They weren’t happy pushing things to the back of their mind and moving on. He wasn’t human, though. He didn’t need anyone to talk to. He didn’t need anyone.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
His voice remained soft but, he hoped, filled with enough warning that Jack would be sensible and drop the subject. His friend’s hand was heavy and warm on his naked shoulder, a painful reminder that the lad was offering comfort despite what they both knew was coming. The Doctor shrugged away from the gentle touch and slid into his shirt, focusing his entire attention on buttoning it up.
“You really think I don’t, do you?” The question was no more than a whisper, one the Doctor was sorely tempted to ignore.
“Yes, Jack, I really think you don’t,” he said instead, abandoning the buttons and turning back towards the two of them. “You think this is all easy for me, that leaving you and Rose is a whim and that I’ll regret it as soon as I’m back in the Vortex.”
“And you won’t?”
“You’re missing the point. You think like a human being, but you keep forgetting one thing. I’m not human. I can’t make decisions according to… to… emotions.” He didn’t even try to hide his discomfort with the word. “Or moods.”
“Then I stand by what I said earlier. You’re stupid.”
Jack was insulting his intelligence once more, his offensive statement denying the obvious: he was a Time Lord, whereas Jack, for all his experience, was only a human. A rather brilliant human, but a human nonetheless.
Stung, he was on the edge of losing his cool and launching into a tirade setting Jack straight, but he held back at the last moment. What was the point? Neither Jack nor Rose would listen to what he had to say. They’d made up their mind hours ago, and humans were among the most stubborn beings in the universe. Besides, they’d be gone soon enough, and the argument would become a moot point.
Jack, taking advantage of his hesitation, spoke again. “Rose came back for you. You love her, and don’t even try to deny it,” he warned when the Doctor started to protest. “And you’re dumping her?”
“It’s not that simple.”
“You’re right,” he said quietly, though his next words betrayed the anger underlying his calmness. “It’s not that simple. So let’s make it more complicated by making everyone unhappy, right?”
“She’ll be happy with you.”
“And she’d like to have a say sometimes.” The sound of Rose’s voice drowned out their hushed argument.
Rising to her feet, she grabbed a small blanket from the armchair beside the bed and wrapped it around herself. The Doctor was acutely aware that just like his, Jack’s eyes were rooted to the shape of her naked body and the very recent memories evoked by the sight.
“We’ve both seen you naked, you know?” Jack said with a raised eyebrow. “No need to be modest now.”
Throwing him a glare over her shoulder, she fisted her hand in the blanket, keeping it in place as she bent to grab a few clothes from her rucksack.
“You look good, though,” he added in what suspiciously looked like an attempt at making up for his first comment.
Rose shook her head, granted Jack a smile and a wink, then grew serious again as she turned her attention back to the Doctor. “You keep making decisions for me,” she said as she finished adjusting her trousers.
His gaze travelled from the blanket that lay forgotten at her feet to the top that she stretched to slide over her head, quickly concealing her breasts from view.
“You send me away when you think I’m in danger. You don’t even pause to ask what I want.”
“Because I…” He trailed off. Rose was right. He’d never taken her opinion into account when it came to pushing her away, and it suddenly appeared to him that he’d been doing that a lot since he’d first met her.
I made my choice a long time ago, and I’m never gonna leave you.
When had it ever been her choice, though? When had he ever let it be her choice? She’d come back to him. And, instead of being grateful to the universe for that, he was sending her away again. And before that, he’d held himself so aloof from her that she might as well not have been here at all.
“Because you what? Because you know better than I do what’s good for me?”
“Yes. As a matter of fact, yes, I do.”
Her eyes widened and, for a second, he thought she’d argue. Instead, she sighed and sat on the bed next to him.
“You think that making yourself miserable is what’s right.”
“I’m not…”
But he was. Donna would’ve told him he was being a plonker, that he wasn’t appreciating what he had and refusing to let himself be happy. A pessimist, always seeing the glass half-empty or the juggernaut coming around the next blind corner.
“Then tell me something, Doctor. Once you leave us in Cardiff, what happens then?”
“I’ve got the TARDIS.”
“Same old life,” Rose completed for him, lifting her hands to surround those words with quotation marks. “I’ve heard that one before. But once you actually find someone, you - ”
“I won’t.” He grabbed her hands and squeezed them tight. The warmth of her skin was another painful reminder of his upcoming loss. Abruptly, he shied away from her touch and buried his fists between his knees. “I don’t want to find someone.”
“I’m not asking you to stay alone.”
“I know. But I don’t want anyone else on the TARDIS.”
Never again. He never wanted to use another companion and sacrifice their life in the process. He never wanted to have to remove someone else’s memories, or to see them leave, broken and aged, because of what they’d been through. He never wanted to keep anyone else from their loved ones. He never wanted to watch another body burn.
“You’ll go mad on your own,” Jack commented.
“It’ll be better than destroying someone else.”
He was tired. Tired of fighting, tired of explaining, tired of being scared, but he had to be firm about this. It was surprising, though, that Jack didn’t seem to understand his motivation. The time he’d spent as the Master’s slave should’ve clued him in that Time Lords weren’t safe.
“You should know. You had a whole year to think of what being with me meant.”
The hungry kiss that Jack pressed to his lips in reply to his pointed reminder took him by surprise, but the moment he started to respond, his lover was tearing his lips away from his. “It wasn’t your fault,” he said, holding the Doctor’s gaze and keeping one hand wrapped around his neck.
“It was. I could’ve given him what he wanted. I could’ve surrendered right away. Or turned a blind eye.”
“And let the Toclafane slaughter the human race?”
“I could’ve killed him.”
It wouldn’t have made a difference, would it? He’d always been a murderer anyway. Oh, he’d fought his instincts, but they always came back, didn’t they? Every time more overwhelming, every time harder to ignore. Daleks, Master, rogue soldiers, Davros… the impulse to kill had been there every time. His duplicate had shown the true nature of what he really was. Ready to die for those he loved, but also prepared to commit genocide for his own greater good.
“You and Martha saved us all.”
“Yes, and how many times did you have to die for that? How many people died?”
From the corner of his eye, he could see Rose frown at both of them. Jack, though, shrugged and pre-empted any question she might’ve wanted to ask. “It’s in the past now. In fact, we reversed it. It never happened.”
“It did, though. And it’s not just in the past. It’s in the future. It’s in the life we lead on the TARDIS. It’s not just the danger I put you in, either. It’s me. It’s who I am. I’ve got the potential to become exactly like the Master. One day, I might be like him. You heard what Davros said.”
Rose grabbed one of his hands and laced her fingers with his. He didn’t find the strength to deny himself the soft contact of her skin. “He was manipulating you, Doctor.”
“Looks like it worked, too,” Jack said.
“He was right, though. You’ve all become the weapons I claim to never carry around.”
“And if we weren’t with you?” Rose asked. “What would happen then?”
He looked away. He knew fully well what would happen if he was on his own. The first time she’d been taken away from him, he’d lost it completely, and if Donna hadn’t been there…
Donna. He lowered his head. Another victim. Another companion whose life he’d destroyed. She didn’t know, would never know, but her grandfather and mother carried alone the weight of her missing memories.
“You’re scared to destroy us, but have you thought of what could happen if you were on your own?” Jack insisted, taking over Rose’s argument. “You’re gonna run into trouble sooner or later. You always do. If you’re that dangerous, who’ll stop you if we’re not with you? Who’ll tell you that you’re making the wrong decision? Who’s gonna keep you grounded?”
No-one. Granted, he’d travelled on his own before, but never for long. Loneliness ate him up inside, and he always ended up looking for company. If he stuck to his decision to stay alone this time, there would be no Rose Tyler to stop him from slaughtering a dying Dalek, no Donna Noble to beg him to save an innocent family from a raging volcano, no-one to rein in his worst instincts.
“Let Rose stay. Don’t abandon her. Don’t do that to yourself.”
“It’s all right, Doctor,” Rose said when he failed to reply. Her lips grazed a soft kiss against the back of his hand. “I know you don’t want me, and it’s fine.”
She was unable to keep a hint of regret from her voice, and the pain in her eyes was unmistakable. Guilt gnawed at him. He was hurting her again, this woman who meant so very much to him. Jack was right; he loved her. He loved both of them.
“Just remember your promise,” she said softly. “Don’t stay on your own.”
His hearts sank. She was giving him up. She was abandoning him. But wasn’t that exactly what he’d asked her to do? Wasn’t that exactly what he was about to do to her as well? Ever since she’d come back, he’d gone out of his way to make her feel unwelcome on the TARDIS. He’d dumped her in Cardiff without even the beginning of an explanation. He’d known that his rejection was hurting her, but he’d been too preoccupied with Donna and his duplicate to care for the feelings of the woman he loved. What kind of man was he?
Yet Rose loved him, kept loving him despite what he was putting her through.
Turning to face her, he tugged her to him, sighing in relief when she didn’t offer any resistance. He wrapped his arms around her and held her tightly against his chest. “How can you think that?” he murmured against the mass of her hair. Pulling away, he laid his hand against her cheek, and she leaned into his touch. “How can you think that I don’t want you?”
“You haven’t done much to show her that you do,” Jack pointed out dryly.
“Come on, Jack. Tell me you’ve never left anyone for their own good.”
“Oh, I have. And then realised what a fool I’d been when, fifty years later, she died alone, not knowing I’d been with her all along.”
There was that frown on Rose’s face again. “Fifty years?”
“Doctor, just because you’re on your own doesn’t mean no harm will come to Rose,” Jack went on, ignoring her.
“He’s right, Doctor. One day, I’ll die. We all do.”
“Most of us do,” Jack muttered under his breath.
“Most of us?”
***
Chapter 11: Revelations and Reconciliations