New Fic ('Unspoken' Series)
Our Ten is quite the emotional one, and he really goes through the gamut in this chapter. When you have hearts as big as he does, it's kind of inevitable, part of the pain of life. Will he finally get the happiness he deserves?
Title: Letting Go
Characters/pairing: Tenth Doctor and Donna, Rose
Genre: Romance, Friendship, Angst
Rating: G
Disclaimer: The Doctor and Donna belong to the BBC unfortunately, but I will happily let it keep Rose.
Summary: The end of an era for the Doctor as he finally gets closure on a big part of his past.
Author's note: Part of the Unspoken series; companion piece from the Doctor's POV to Chosen.
Letting go
The Doctor was conflicted.
Part of him was just humming with anticipation, knowing that in less than an hour he would finally, FINALLY have Donna all to himself, no impending apocalypses, no mortal enemies to deal with, no companion-o-rama.
Just him and his ginger goddess in the TARDIS with all the time in the world to explore the universes and the galaxies and each other.
This thought was conducive to a jaunty mood, and he flitted about the console room, brushing past Donna as often as he dared without rousing suspicion. Partly for his, but mainly for her benefit.
Because he could sense the emotional struggle she was going through right now, that somehow, despite everything that had happened, everything they had been through, all they had said and promised to each other, she still harboured doubts that it was real, that things were actually working out for them, that he had chosen her.
When actually I’m the lucky one, because she’s chosen me.
He stopped for a moment in front of one of the TARDIS’s screens. Rose immediately sidled suffocatingly close, as if trying to occupy the very same space as he. He wasn’t surprised that it no longer sat well with him, made him feel a little uncomfortable.
But he still hadn’t worked out what he was going to say to her.
I have absolutely no idea. No words.
He paused, contemplating.
Maybe I could try miming it instead.
The corners of his lips automatically curved upwards at the memory of playing life-or-death charades at Lady Edison’s house with Donna.
Might end up taking a whole lot less time than talking. And may actually be marginally less difficult
Another pause, but then a frown this time.
This was no time for frivolity.
Mind you, it might help get me through what I’m about to do.
Saying goodbye, this time for good, to someone I loved quite dearly.
Still love.
Different now, though.
He rolled his eyes as he overheard the new Doctor make a random comment that he thought rather droll, but obviously amused Rose, who looked up momentarily to flash the new Doctor a brilliant grin.
Seizing the opportunity, the Doctor looked over to where Donna was and gave her a small, almost imperceptible smile.
Don’t worry, I’m still yours, he silently soothed with strong, dark eyes.
He had barely turned back to the console when he suddenly felt Rose’s hand smooth slowly and languorously down his arm in a thinly-disguised come-on.
In the past, that touch would have made his hearts dance and his eyes spark in delight, but now it just unsettled him and he made to fiddle unnecessarily with one of the TARDIS’s levers just to be able to remove himself from Rose’s touch without crushing her feelings.
He closed his eyes for a moment, trying to imagine it was Donna’s hand doing that to him instead and immediately felt his insides warm and his mind calm.
As the TARDIS came to a stop at Bad Wolf Bay, the Doctor’s mind went back unbidden to the last time he had been there.
When he had gazed into Rose’s tear-stained eyes and almost told her he loved her.
More than once he had thought back to that day and what had happened between them.
Back in the TARDIS, weeping and alone, he had believed that the very cosmos had conspired to keep them apart and that his hearts would never heal.
He recalled that he had not even been granted the decency of a grieving period before his ship had drawn Donna to her, and to him. The last thing he thought he’d needed. He remembered their very first encounter, when he had seen her as nothing more than some ticked-off, loud-mouthed redhead annoyed at his mere presence and even less interested in spending time with him than he was with her.
He remembered how quickly that had all changed, and how, by the time they had defeated the Racnoss and saved the earth (the first time of many), he had become quite smitten with her.
How crushed he had felt when she’d turned him down.
And how elated, when he finally found her again. Holding each other - the feel of her, the smell of her skin and hair was like coming home - and then seconds later, dashing off on their next adventure, sliding as seamlessly into their partnership as if they had been doing it all their lives.
He remembered it all in a flash, in the time it took for Jackie and Rose and the new Doctor to open the door and step outside the TARDIS.
Leaving him free to snatch a few moments with Donna before having to face up to one of the hardest things he would ever have to do.
It was something he couldn’t do alone. He needed Donna, his partner, his companion, his best friend, to be there. He was counting on her support, her encouragement, the quiet strength of her presence.
So he went to her then, grabbed her hand and whispered seductively in her ear that in mere moments it would be just the two of them and a lifetime together, biting gently on the soft pink of her earlobe, tasting the sweet smooth skin that nestled behind and wondering if she, like him, suddenly felt her nether regions infuse with liquid fire.
Her knees buckling in a near-swoon told him she did. And as his hands caught her, cradling her beautifully ample posterior in their sure and eager grasp, he couldn’t resist a squeeze and was gratified by her moan of pleasure into his shoulder. Grabbing her arms and pulling her to him, time seemed to stand still then as he captured her lips with his again and again, gaining sustenance and energy with each subsequent kiss.
Reluctantly breaking their embrace, he sought her eyes once more and was bolstered by the calm resolve he saw there. He could do this.
With Donna by his side, he could do anything.
====================================================================
Although he spotted Rose from quite a way off, it was not her face that his mind saw. Instead, he pictured Donna as she walked behind him, all determined blue eyes, firmly set lips, slightly fierce expression.
So it wasn’t until he was standing right in front of Rose, less than a few metres away, that he first noticed the confusion in her eyes, that being here, in this place, back in the parallel world, was not at all where she had been expecting to find herself. And that she found that a very distressing thought.
“You’re back home” he said simply.
Her disappointment was palpable.
Then he heard Donna speak.
“And the walls of the world are closing again, now that the Reality Bomb never happened. It’s dimensional retro-closure. See, I really get that stuff now.”
He smiled to himself for a microsecond. She really DOES get it. He was so proud of her.
But the girl in front of him was looking increasingly bereft as it slowly dawned on her what was going to happen, what must happen. He was going to leave her here without him.
“No, but…I spent all that time trying to find you.” The panic in her voice was rising. “I’m not going back now!”
He steeled himself to speak the words that would shatter her world.
“But you’ve got to. ‘Cause we saved the universe, but at a cost.”
His gaze flickered to the new Doctor.
“And the cost is him. He destroyed the Daleks. He committed genocide. He’s too dangerous to be left on his own”.
And I’m too selfish and in love to bring him with me.
The new Doctor protested.
“But you made me!”
Yes, Donna and I made you, and now I have to leave you.
The Doctor suddenly felt at a loss, not knowing how to explain adequately why he was doing things this way.
Because he hadn’t even talked about this with Donna or the new Doctor, never mind Rose.
Yet here he was, making decisions that would affect all of them profoundly for the rest of time.
Was he really some sort of god that could decide fate like that for the people he loved so much?
After all, this was not just about him and Rose. It would mean separation for him and Donna from the new Doctor. Someone made from them. Someone who was a part of them. He remembered how close, how in synch they had been from the very first moment, a triumvarite, a unified force, each understanding and complementing the others perfectly.
Who was he to tear that asunder?
Terrible doubt hovered at the edge of his resolve.
Can I really do it?
What right do I have to choose for them?
How can I hurt Donna, the woman I claim to love, like this?
For he didn’t even know how the three of them being apart would affect him, let alone her.
But I feel like I have no other choice.
Because I can’t leave Rose with nothing, not after everything that has happened.
He realized he needed to push on, finish what he had started, no matter how difficult. Someone had to keep things moving forward.
“Exactly. You were born in battle, full of blood and anger and revenge.” he told the new Doctor, before turning to Rose and saying, a little sadly: “Remind you of someone you know?”
Rose said nothing, her expression forlorn and empty. He continued.
“That’s me, when we first met. And you made me better. Now you can do the same for him”.
“But he’s not you” she said, despairingly.
“He needs you. That’s very me”
And I know now who I need, who I’ve always needed but didn’t realize until you came back into my life.
He smiled sadly at the irony.
I can’t give myself to you anymore, because I already belong to someone else.
And with perfect timing and understanding that someone else spoke up to help him, just like she always did.
“But it’s better than that, though. Don’t you see what he’s trying to give you?” Donna looked at the new Doctor. “Tell her, go on”
So the new Doctor told Rose.
And just as the Doctor had suspected, and feared, it still wasn’t enough.
For even as he and Donna turned to go back to the TARDIS, Rose ran after him, one last desperate throw of the dice to try to get him to stay with her.
She asked the question the Doctor had been dreading, but knew was inevitable.
“All right. Both of you, answer me this. When I last stood on this beach, on the worst day of my life, what was the last thing you said to me? Go on, say it.”
She was challenging him to deny what she obviously believed without question to still be true.
So here goes, then. It all comes down to this.
He spoke, clearly and deliberately.
“I said ‘Rose Tyler’.”
“Yeah, and how was that sentence gonna end?”
Her angry confidence was almost arrogant. She so thought she knew what he was going to say. He closed his eyes for the briefest of moments.
This is it. This is when I really break Rose’s heart.
Again.
Because I have to.
So that I don’t break hers.
“Does it need saying?”
He imagined Rose screaming at him in her mind: Yes! It bloody well does!
No matter, though, even if she had said it out loud.
His answer would’ve been the same.
Because he couldn’t give her what she wanted. He couldn’t be who she wanted him to be anymore.
In the time they had been apart, he had been changed irrevocably. By the loss of her, but even more by being with Donna. The person he needed to stop him. To challenge him. To be his conscience and his guide and his heart when he sometimes got too lost in his own darkness.
The person that Rose had never been, had never wanted to be.
He suddenly realized that Rose’s truth, what she had wanted to hear from him, was no longer his truth.
And at that moment, he questioned whether it ever had been.
Rose, fighting to the last, ploughed on, turning to the new Doctor: “And you Doctor? What was the end of that sentence?”
As the Doctor watched, he already knew what his newer yet different self would say. That he would be able to tell Rose what she wanted to hear, give her what she needed.
And when Rose, with eyes that seemed to believe, wanted to believe, moved to kiss the younger man, the Doctor dared to let his guilt be assuaged a little, a light of hope that Rose would be able to find happiness without him flickering into being.
And yet, it couldn’t lift the heaviness in his heart at the price they had all paid so that things could go on.
Rose, living a normal life, but perhaps forever haunted by the fact that her Doctor was not him, that in the end he had not chosen her.
The other Doctor, so new to life, yet already filled with such power and anger and suffering, ripped apart from those who were part of his very being.
And Donna, forced to give up the one she had birthed so that he, the Doctor, could be with her. He would carry that regret with him always.
But at least he would have Donna by his side to help him bear the burden, to share his sorrow as well as his joy, to be one with him throughout time and space, the Doctor-Donna, a formidable force for good.
So he turned away from Rose and the new Doctor and walked with renewed purpose towards the TARDIS, knowing that the most perfect companion that the galaxies could ever have come up with for him was close behind and had his back, just as she always had and always would.
He wondered if she noticed the extra spring in his Converse-clad step.
Title: Letting Go
Characters/pairing: Tenth Doctor and Donna, Rose
Genre: Romance, Friendship, Angst
Rating: G
Disclaimer: The Doctor and Donna belong to the BBC unfortunately, but I will happily let it keep Rose.
Summary: The end of an era for the Doctor as he finally gets closure on a big part of his past.
Author's note: Part of the Unspoken series; companion piece from the Doctor's POV to Chosen.
Letting go
The Doctor was conflicted.
Part of him was just humming with anticipation, knowing that in less than an hour he would finally, FINALLY have Donna all to himself, no impending apocalypses, no mortal enemies to deal with, no companion-o-rama.
Just him and his ginger goddess in the TARDIS with all the time in the world to explore the universes and the galaxies and each other.
This thought was conducive to a jaunty mood, and he flitted about the console room, brushing past Donna as often as he dared without rousing suspicion. Partly for his, but mainly for her benefit.
Because he could sense the emotional struggle she was going through right now, that somehow, despite everything that had happened, everything they had been through, all they had said and promised to each other, she still harboured doubts that it was real, that things were actually working out for them, that he had chosen her.
When actually I’m the lucky one, because she’s chosen me.
He stopped for a moment in front of one of the TARDIS’s screens. Rose immediately sidled suffocatingly close, as if trying to occupy the very same space as he. He wasn’t surprised that it no longer sat well with him, made him feel a little uncomfortable.
But he still hadn’t worked out what he was going to say to her.
I have absolutely no idea. No words.
He paused, contemplating.
Maybe I could try miming it instead.
The corners of his lips automatically curved upwards at the memory of playing life-or-death charades at Lady Edison’s house with Donna.
Might end up taking a whole lot less time than talking. And may actually be marginally less difficult
Another pause, but then a frown this time.
This was no time for frivolity.
Mind you, it might help get me through what I’m about to do.
Saying goodbye, this time for good, to someone I loved quite dearly.
Still love.
Different now, though.
He rolled his eyes as he overheard the new Doctor make a random comment that he thought rather droll, but obviously amused Rose, who looked up momentarily to flash the new Doctor a brilliant grin.
Seizing the opportunity, the Doctor looked over to where Donna was and gave her a small, almost imperceptible smile.
Don’t worry, I’m still yours, he silently soothed with strong, dark eyes.
He had barely turned back to the console when he suddenly felt Rose’s hand smooth slowly and languorously down his arm in a thinly-disguised come-on.
In the past, that touch would have made his hearts dance and his eyes spark in delight, but now it just unsettled him and he made to fiddle unnecessarily with one of the TARDIS’s levers just to be able to remove himself from Rose’s touch without crushing her feelings.
He closed his eyes for a moment, trying to imagine it was Donna’s hand doing that to him instead and immediately felt his insides warm and his mind calm.
As the TARDIS came to a stop at Bad Wolf Bay, the Doctor’s mind went back unbidden to the last time he had been there.
When he had gazed into Rose’s tear-stained eyes and almost told her he loved her.
More than once he had thought back to that day and what had happened between them.
Back in the TARDIS, weeping and alone, he had believed that the very cosmos had conspired to keep them apart and that his hearts would never heal.
He recalled that he had not even been granted the decency of a grieving period before his ship had drawn Donna to her, and to him. The last thing he thought he’d needed. He remembered their very first encounter, when he had seen her as nothing more than some ticked-off, loud-mouthed redhead annoyed at his mere presence and even less interested in spending time with him than he was with her.
He remembered how quickly that had all changed, and how, by the time they had defeated the Racnoss and saved the earth (the first time of many), he had become quite smitten with her.
How crushed he had felt when she’d turned him down.
And how elated, when he finally found her again. Holding each other - the feel of her, the smell of her skin and hair was like coming home - and then seconds later, dashing off on their next adventure, sliding as seamlessly into their partnership as if they had been doing it all their lives.
He remembered it all in a flash, in the time it took for Jackie and Rose and the new Doctor to open the door and step outside the TARDIS.
Leaving him free to snatch a few moments with Donna before having to face up to one of the hardest things he would ever have to do.
It was something he couldn’t do alone. He needed Donna, his partner, his companion, his best friend, to be there. He was counting on her support, her encouragement, the quiet strength of her presence.
So he went to her then, grabbed her hand and whispered seductively in her ear that in mere moments it would be just the two of them and a lifetime together, biting gently on the soft pink of her earlobe, tasting the sweet smooth skin that nestled behind and wondering if she, like him, suddenly felt her nether regions infuse with liquid fire.
Her knees buckling in a near-swoon told him she did. And as his hands caught her, cradling her beautifully ample posterior in their sure and eager grasp, he couldn’t resist a squeeze and was gratified by her moan of pleasure into his shoulder. Grabbing her arms and pulling her to him, time seemed to stand still then as he captured her lips with his again and again, gaining sustenance and energy with each subsequent kiss.
Reluctantly breaking their embrace, he sought her eyes once more and was bolstered by the calm resolve he saw there. He could do this.
With Donna by his side, he could do anything.
====================================================================
Although he spotted Rose from quite a way off, it was not her face that his mind saw. Instead, he pictured Donna as she walked behind him, all determined blue eyes, firmly set lips, slightly fierce expression.
So it wasn’t until he was standing right in front of Rose, less than a few metres away, that he first noticed the confusion in her eyes, that being here, in this place, back in the parallel world, was not at all where she had been expecting to find herself. And that she found that a very distressing thought.
“You’re back home” he said simply.
Her disappointment was palpable.
Then he heard Donna speak.
“And the walls of the world are closing again, now that the Reality Bomb never happened. It’s dimensional retro-closure. See, I really get that stuff now.”
He smiled to himself for a microsecond. She really DOES get it. He was so proud of her.
But the girl in front of him was looking increasingly bereft as it slowly dawned on her what was going to happen, what must happen. He was going to leave her here without him.
“No, but…I spent all that time trying to find you.” The panic in her voice was rising. “I’m not going back now!”
He steeled himself to speak the words that would shatter her world.
“But you’ve got to. ‘Cause we saved the universe, but at a cost.”
His gaze flickered to the new Doctor.
“And the cost is him. He destroyed the Daleks. He committed genocide. He’s too dangerous to be left on his own”.
And I’m too selfish and in love to bring him with me.
The new Doctor protested.
“But you made me!”
Yes, Donna and I made you, and now I have to leave you.
The Doctor suddenly felt at a loss, not knowing how to explain adequately why he was doing things this way.
Because he hadn’t even talked about this with Donna or the new Doctor, never mind Rose.
Yet here he was, making decisions that would affect all of them profoundly for the rest of time.
Was he really some sort of god that could decide fate like that for the people he loved so much?
After all, this was not just about him and Rose. It would mean separation for him and Donna from the new Doctor. Someone made from them. Someone who was a part of them. He remembered how close, how in synch they had been from the very first moment, a triumvarite, a unified force, each understanding and complementing the others perfectly.
Who was he to tear that asunder?
Terrible doubt hovered at the edge of his resolve.
Can I really do it?
What right do I have to choose for them?
How can I hurt Donna, the woman I claim to love, like this?
For he didn’t even know how the three of them being apart would affect him, let alone her.
But I feel like I have no other choice.
Because I can’t leave Rose with nothing, not after everything that has happened.
He realized he needed to push on, finish what he had started, no matter how difficult. Someone had to keep things moving forward.
“Exactly. You were born in battle, full of blood and anger and revenge.” he told the new Doctor, before turning to Rose and saying, a little sadly: “Remind you of someone you know?”
Rose said nothing, her expression forlorn and empty. He continued.
“That’s me, when we first met. And you made me better. Now you can do the same for him”.
“But he’s not you” she said, despairingly.
“He needs you. That’s very me”
And I know now who I need, who I’ve always needed but didn’t realize until you came back into my life.
He smiled sadly at the irony.
I can’t give myself to you anymore, because I already belong to someone else.
And with perfect timing and understanding that someone else spoke up to help him, just like she always did.
“But it’s better than that, though. Don’t you see what he’s trying to give you?” Donna looked at the new Doctor. “Tell her, go on”
So the new Doctor told Rose.
And just as the Doctor had suspected, and feared, it still wasn’t enough.
For even as he and Donna turned to go back to the TARDIS, Rose ran after him, one last desperate throw of the dice to try to get him to stay with her.
She asked the question the Doctor had been dreading, but knew was inevitable.
“All right. Both of you, answer me this. When I last stood on this beach, on the worst day of my life, what was the last thing you said to me? Go on, say it.”
She was challenging him to deny what she obviously believed without question to still be true.
So here goes, then. It all comes down to this.
He spoke, clearly and deliberately.
“I said ‘Rose Tyler’.”
“Yeah, and how was that sentence gonna end?”
Her angry confidence was almost arrogant. She so thought she knew what he was going to say. He closed his eyes for the briefest of moments.
This is it. This is when I really break Rose’s heart.
Again.
Because I have to.
So that I don’t break hers.
“Does it need saying?”
He imagined Rose screaming at him in her mind: Yes! It bloody well does!
No matter, though, even if she had said it out loud.
His answer would’ve been the same.
Because he couldn’t give her what she wanted. He couldn’t be who she wanted him to be anymore.
In the time they had been apart, he had been changed irrevocably. By the loss of her, but even more by being with Donna. The person he needed to stop him. To challenge him. To be his conscience and his guide and his heart when he sometimes got too lost in his own darkness.
The person that Rose had never been, had never wanted to be.
He suddenly realized that Rose’s truth, what she had wanted to hear from him, was no longer his truth.
And at that moment, he questioned whether it ever had been.
Rose, fighting to the last, ploughed on, turning to the new Doctor: “And you Doctor? What was the end of that sentence?”
As the Doctor watched, he already knew what his newer yet different self would say. That he would be able to tell Rose what she wanted to hear, give her what she needed.
And when Rose, with eyes that seemed to believe, wanted to believe, moved to kiss the younger man, the Doctor dared to let his guilt be assuaged a little, a light of hope that Rose would be able to find happiness without him flickering into being.
And yet, it couldn’t lift the heaviness in his heart at the price they had all paid so that things could go on.
Rose, living a normal life, but perhaps forever haunted by the fact that her Doctor was not him, that in the end he had not chosen her.
The other Doctor, so new to life, yet already filled with such power and anger and suffering, ripped apart from those who were part of his very being.
And Donna, forced to give up the one she had birthed so that he, the Doctor, could be with her. He would carry that regret with him always.
But at least he would have Donna by his side to help him bear the burden, to share his sorrow as well as his joy, to be one with him throughout time and space, the Doctor-Donna, a formidable force for good.
So he turned away from Rose and the new Doctor and walked with renewed purpose towards the TARDIS, knowing that the most perfect companion that the galaxies could ever have come up with for him was close behind and had his back, just as she always had and always would.
He wondered if she noticed the extra spring in his Converse-clad step.