Who Fic - So Close; Scattered; Her Name Was Rose
Title: So Close; Scattered; Her Name Was Rose
Fandom: Doctor Who
Genre: angst, romance
Rating/Warnings: PG
Character/s: Ten, Shireen, Donna
Spoilers: is Doomsday/The Runaway Bride still spoilery?
Summary: The universe moves on and time stands still for no man - not even a Time Lord. Three fics for the price of one!
Disclaimer: Doctor Who and all associated characters/situations etc do not belong to me, I’m just borrowing them. Some lyrics also stolen from “So Close” by Jon McLoughlin.
He can feel her.
On the other side of reality she’s pressed up against this wall just the same as he is and he can feel her heart, her single human heart thudding away at a good strong hundred beats per minute. It’s faster than usual - the adrenaline no doubt - but it’s still slower than the sound of his own double beat. She would never be able to keep up with him - not with just the one (heart, life).
He barely thinks before he’s trying to match the rhythm of her pulse with his own. To compensate, one of his hearts stops altogether. There is a faint blip as it stills in his chest and his right one takes over, speeding up until he matches her beat for beat.
This all happens in less than a breath and even from across the void he can feel her heart loosen in her chest in response, calming. Now it’s beating at ninety seven beats per minute as her tears fall coldly down her face, ninety three as she presses her body even closer to the wall.
Closer to him.
This body was created due to the great depth of feeling he has for this simple human girl - one of only two companions whose lives he has saved at the cost of his own. And lately they’ve grown a lot closer - so close that she’s started to feel almost like an extension of his own body.
And now he can’t stand it.
Her heartbeat is slowing still and he’s following suit without even thinking. This could potentially be dangerous for him, letting his one beating heart slow so much but she’s relaxing at the barest sense of his presence and the thought sustains him for a moment, despite the crush of grief weighing down on him.
As much as he wants to stay here he knows he can’t. If he doesn’t step away from this wall soon then he never will and that would be…well. He can’t just…
His second heart begins beating again sluggishly, his pulse stabilising as his hand slips away from the wall. In response her pulse quickens again slightly as he steps back. The connection fades to a dull ache. He turns. The ache sharpens. As he walks away he pushes his hands into his pockets to give them something to do (anything that doesn’t involve him punching a wall at least) and every step makes his chest that little bit tighter until he can hardly breathe at all.
The ensuing walk is little more than a daze and it isn’t until he’s back in the TARDIS that he realises that he’s practically gasping for air, both his hearts now thundering away like a pair of drums. He must be pushing at least a hundred and fifty beats per heart - a number that could potentially be unhealthy for a Time Lord. And what the hell happened to having a bloody respiratory bypass system?
He paces around the console until he’s dizzy, still trying to slow his heart, to breathe. Then his knees hit the grating hard and he’s slumped painfully against the base of the console.
He doesn’t cry. God - he can barely move, let alone cry. Even now, so far away he can feel a shadow, an echo really of her from the other world. The cracks are closing slowly, slowly enough that he imagines he can feel her heart breaking, even across time and space and the empty nothingness of the void...
“Rose...”
It’s little more than a broken sob, soft on his lips, but suddenly he feels a vibration, someone plucking at the strands of time and space like a lyre and to his shock he feels a distant echo of Rose’s consciousness, feels that she too is aware of him, that she can hear him.
“Rose.” he says again, the sound of his sigh mingling with a sharp gasp of air from her.
And then he shuts his eyes and folds in on himself.
It’s only been a week and a half since the battle of Canary Wharf but nearly a whole month (in linear Earth standards) for the Doctor when he finally returns to Earth.
Britain is in somewhat of a state of disarray - so many people have died or gone missing (or been trapped in parallel worlds for that matter) fathers, daughters, friends, family. There are missing posters on every lamp post, homeless vagrants weeping as they wander the streets and endless, endless grief.
For once the Doctor doesn’t just empathise with them. He’s grieving along with them too.
If he’s completely honest with himself (which he very often isn’t) he’s not really coping. No he’s not really coping at all. The fact that he’s just spent a solid month in the Time Vortex trying to figure out a way to get Rose back whether it involves tearing apart this universe and the next or not...well. Does anything more need to be said on the matter?
So far he’s been entirely unsuccessful which frustrates him more than he can say. If Rose were here she would no doubt have some simple and utterly brilliant way to fix things - but then if she were here then he wouldn’t need to think of a way to bring her back at all would he? After so many weeks spent going around in circles, avoiding her room like the plague, maintaining his own existence with all the good grace of a zombie, the Doctor finally decides that he needs to stop and clear his head before he goes utterly mad with grief.
Well. And the TARDIS has started to mutiny and keeps dropping things on his head at inopportune moments.
When he lands her almost perfectly on the outskirts of the Powell Estate he’s not sure why he’s come here of all places, nor what he’s expecting to find. The lock on the Tyler’s old flat gives way easily to his sonic screwdriver and after a moments pause he steps inside and it’s like stepping out of the TARDIS and onto a dead planet.
The furniture is all gone, the few paintings and pictures taken down from the walls. Blankly he walks down the truncated hallway, pausing only for a moment at Rose’s bedroom door before continuing on. Jackie repainted the lurid pink walls a dull beige back when he was still in his Ninth body. There’s nothing to suggest that Rose ever even lived here now. Moving on to the living room he discovers it full of boxes and in the centre of them sits a girl with a photo album on her lap and tears on her face.
The Doctor freezes when he sees her and then begins to back out of the room swiftly but the girl has obviously heard him and when she realises that she’s not alone she scrambles to her feet and holds the photo album before her threateningly.
“Who’re you?” she bellows, brandishing the photo album at him as though she’s seriously considering hitting him over the head with it. “How’d you get in here? Eh?”
“Door mustn’t have been locked properly.” the Doctor lies, his voice cracking alarmingly from misuse. Clearing his throat he tries again. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you.”
The girl glares at him with puffy eyes and then, obviously deciding that he’s not going to attack her, lowers the photo album carefully. “Who are you?”
“I’m...” he rasps as he speaks so he swallows and then tries again. “I was a...friend of Rose. And Jackie too I s’pose. People call me the Doctor.”
“The Doctor?” the girl repeats incredulously.
“That’s me.” he tries for a happy-go-lucky grin but judging by the look the girl gives him it’s probably more a grimace than anything.
“Rose told me a bit about you. You two travelled together yeah? I’m Shireen.” she puts the album on a box and dithers for a moment before holding her hand out awkwardly towards him. He shakes her hand cordially enough but Shireen still flinches at his touch. “Blimey you’re cold!”
“Sorry.” he shoves the offending limb back into his pocket and an awkward silence stretches across the living room.
“’M just packing up the rest of their stuff.” Shireen blurts and then casts her gaze over the piles of boxes. “Jackie’s mum asked me to help her do it - she couldn’t cope with going through it all.”
“Right.” The Doctor nods, looks around with mild interest. “So what’s happening to all of it?”
“Most of it’s going to Oxfam.” Shireen’s eyes linger on the photo album. “’Cept some stuff. Photos. Jewelry. Things like that.”
“You’re giving their things away?” the Doctor eyes the boxes again, this time in dismay. “Doesn’t anybody want any of it?”
“Well neither of ’em had a will.” Shireen explains uncomfortably. “So’s everything went to Jackie’s old mum only she didn’t want most of it so...” she shrugs and the Doctor lets his eyes continue to range over the cardboard towers lining the blank walls.
The room smells of dust and emptiness. No coffee or burnt toast smell in the kitchen, no pinch of lavender in the bedrooms, no tell-tale musk from Jackie’s favourite perfume lingering in the air. He feels weak suddenly; and horribly, horribly alone. He’s not sure what he expected to find here but it certainly wasn’t this...this nothingness.
“You...all right?”
He startles at the feel of Shireen’s small, soft hand on his shoulder. He hadn’t even realised that she had come over to him. Up close he can see that she too favours the thick mascara and eyeliner that Rose did - does - as well as dark hair awkwardly bleached to blonde.
“Not...really no.” he manages and Shireen nods up at him, suddenly blinking back tears. Unbidden, several of them take substance, trailing thick clumps of black mascara down her cheeks. The Doctor’s insides clench like a vice as he thinks of Rose’s cheeks being stained the same way, her hand against his, pulse beating through her palm, through the wall, across...
“I know how you feel.” Shireen chokes, wiping away tears. “Sor’ of anyway. Rose was my best mate from when we were kids y’know? And Jackie was like a second mum to me. You know they were put down on the list of the dead after two days? They just went missin’...”
But the Doctor has stopped listening to Shireen and is instead focusing on the bracelet that is jangling on her wrist.
“Where did you get this?” he demands suddenly, catching her arm and holding the cheap piece of jewellery up to his eyes.
“I-I bought it the other week.” Shireen says, wiping at her cheeks. “Why?”
The Doctor merely stares, open-mouthed at the cheap concoction of alphabet beads and plastic monstrosities that have been strung onto a leather cord.
“Bad Wolf.” he breathes, his finger brushing the small clasp wonderingly.
“Yeah.” Shireen takes her wrist back carefully and turns the bracelet around so she can read the phrase too. “I dunno what bad wolf is - must be the brand or something. I liked the other beads though so...”
As she speaks the Doctor’s eyes fall on the photo album again. “Oh.” he says, his eyes lighting up with a sudden hope. “Wait. Oh yes, yes yes!” and he sweeps Shireen into a sudden hug that surprises both of them.
“I’m sorry.” he mumbles into her split ends. “I’m so sorry...”
And then he bolts from the flat, down the stairs and all but throws himself back inside the TARDIS.
From the balcony, Shireen watches as the Police Box evaporates into thin air and then stares down at her bracelet, somewhat agog.
“Blimey!” she murmurs.
Shireen doesn’t see the Doctor again but when she opens up her photo album almost a month later, she discovers that a photo of Rose has vanished.
She never sees that again either.
Saying goodbye to Donna Noble on an unremarkable street in Chiswick the Doctor realises something strange about himself. He’s mourning but he’s not technically in mourning. Rose isn’t dead after all, and since Canary Wharf he’s constantly had something or someone to focus on and he hasn’t had time yet to adjust to the shocking loneliness he knows will hit him when he finally stops.
He’s almost grateful for Donna’s abrupt appearance on the TARDIS. It’s given him almost another full day of grace before he has to face up to a future without Rose. On the other hand it’s also put him into somewhat of a predicament in that he both desperately wants and does not want Donna to come with him.
She isn’t Rose. At the core of the issue it really is that simple. Donna simply cannot possibly begin to fill the void that has been left behind by the loss of her but he still finds himself wishing (selfishly) that she would at least try. He’s not entirely sure that he can carry on travelling by himself. He’s not entirely sure he can go on with company either.
She’s already called him back once to ask him more questions so he’s not entirely surprised when she calls him back a second time in that fantastic brassy voice of hers. “Oh what is it now?” he complains good naturedly. In truth he’s almost relieved that she’s called him back again - anything to delay the inevitable - but his smile falls quickly when she speaks.
“That friend of yours...” Donna begins and for a split second he seriously considers slamming the door in her face and just leaving. He should have expected her to be curious about Rose - he hasn’t shut up about her all day - but right now he doesn’t know if he can stand to talk about her. Not with the emptiness of the console room crowding at his back and the empty corridors and rooms beyond waiting for an occupant that will never return.
But he doesn’t. Close the door that is. He knows that Rose wouldn’t approve of him slamming the door against Donna - and not just in a physical sense either. It’s this thought more than any other that gives him courage enough to leave it open and merely brace himself for the rest of Donna’s question. But of all of her brilliant, probing questions today, the punch of this one is so unexpected that it sends a stab of pain straight through him and a lump to his throat. “...What was her name?”
“Her name was Rose.”
He barely manages to pilot the TARDIS into the Vortex before the awful loneliness fills his chest cavity like ice water. It’s shocking just how fast it sets in - and even worse is just how much it hurts. He’s spent so much of this regeneration basking in the warmth of company, revelling in it, that he’s never had cause to wonder how he might feel without anyone by his side.
Now that he’s experiencing it he has to admit that it feels exceptionally awful. He’s back where he was before Donna appeared in the TARDIS and he feels at an extraordinary loss with his hands now jammed into his pockets instead of reaching out to take Rose’s hand...
He doesn’t know where to go. He always knows where to go - or at least can come up with some sort of idea. How can he have the whole of time and space at his disposal and still come up blank?
Abruptly he reaches out and gently depresses one of the many buttons on the console. The steady vibration of the TARDIS resonates against the sensitive tips of his long fingers as they linger on the button and then he takes a sudden step and flips a switch. Reaches for a dial and twists it haphazardly. Rounds the console to pump a lever several times and then stops abruptly and grips the edge of the console, his head bowed and his eyes unfocused, his knuckles whitening.
He knows exactly what he’s doing - oh yes, he’s certainly done this before - but he can’t help but go through the motions anyway. Put quite simply, he’s running away again. Afraid to stop and think about the words he never said, the potential unfulfilled, the sheer brilliance of her and him and them together. But worst of all is sensing the bright threads of all the possible future’s they might’ve had together darkening and curling into nothingness.
He wants to be alone. He wants someone - anyone with him. He wants Rose back. He wants to run away and forget. He wants to remember, to hurt. He wants to cry. He wants a second chance, a third, a fourth. He wants...he wants...
He wants. Desperately, he wants.
But then there’s a bleep from the monitor and he nearly trips over his own feet in his haste to reach the screen. A cursory glance reveals that the TARDIS has unwittingly picked up a distress signal from the other side of the galaxy. A planet, if he’s not mistaken, where the colour of royalty is brown and the common people are forbidden to wear it on penalty of death.
He almost considers putting that particular piece of legislation to the test before he remembers discovering another suit - TARDIS blue pinstripes - in the wardrobe a little while ago now. Rose hadn’t much liked it so he’s never actually worn it. Seems a waste though really - perfectly good suit sitting in the wardrobe...
Once the suit is donned and paired with red trainers and tie, the Doctor pilots the TARDIS to the other end of the galazy where she lands with a particularly depressed wheeze.
His steps to the door are sedate and unhurried. So sedate in fact that he falters. Twice actually - halfway down the ramp and then once again at the door.
I am the Oncoming Storm, the Destroyer of Worlds - the Last of the Time Lords.
Pausing to rest his hand against the wood grain, he bows his head, only allowing himself five seconds before he opens the door. He wagers that it’s just long enough for him to school his emotions so that he won’t emerge from the TARDIS with his eyes brimming over like some overly-emotional fool.
I am the Oncoming Storm (it is becoming a mantra) I am the Destroyer of Worlds. I am the Last of the Time Lords.
He opens the door and the first thing he sees is a flash of blonde from down the street as one of the local inhabitants shakes some of her luxuriously long fur out of the collar of the simple crimson tunic she is sporting.
Just ‘the Doctor’?
His hearts do a rather painful double hop skip.
My Doctor.
He grits his teeth, fists his hands and steps over the threshold of his ship - the door shutting with at least some sense of finality behind him.
The universe moves on and time stands still for no man - not even a Time Lord.
Fandom: Doctor Who
Genre: angst, romance
Rating/Warnings: PG
Character/s: Ten, Shireen, Donna
Spoilers: is Doomsday/The Runaway Bride still spoilery?
Summary: The universe moves on and time stands still for no man - not even a Time Lord. Three fics for the price of one!
Disclaimer: Doctor Who and all associated characters/situations etc do not belong to me, I’m just borrowing them. Some lyrics also stolen from “So Close” by Jon McLoughlin.
He can feel her.
On the other side of reality she’s pressed up against this wall just the same as he is and he can feel her heart, her single human heart thudding away at a good strong hundred beats per minute. It’s faster than usual - the adrenaline no doubt - but it’s still slower than the sound of his own double beat. She would never be able to keep up with him - not with just the one (heart, life).
He barely thinks before he’s trying to match the rhythm of her pulse with his own. To compensate, one of his hearts stops altogether. There is a faint blip as it stills in his chest and his right one takes over, speeding up until he matches her beat for beat.
This all happens in less than a breath and even from across the void he can feel her heart loosen in her chest in response, calming. Now it’s beating at ninety seven beats per minute as her tears fall coldly down her face, ninety three as she presses her body even closer to the wall.
Closer to him.
This body was created due to the great depth of feeling he has for this simple human girl - one of only two companions whose lives he has saved at the cost of his own. And lately they’ve grown a lot closer - so close that she’s started to feel almost like an extension of his own body.
And now he can’t stand it.
Her heartbeat is slowing still and he’s following suit without even thinking. This could potentially be dangerous for him, letting his one beating heart slow so much but she’s relaxing at the barest sense of his presence and the thought sustains him for a moment, despite the crush of grief weighing down on him.
As much as he wants to stay here he knows he can’t. If he doesn’t step away from this wall soon then he never will and that would be…well. He can’t just…
His second heart begins beating again sluggishly, his pulse stabilising as his hand slips away from the wall. In response her pulse quickens again slightly as he steps back. The connection fades to a dull ache. He turns. The ache sharpens. As he walks away he pushes his hands into his pockets to give them something to do (anything that doesn’t involve him punching a wall at least) and every step makes his chest that little bit tighter until he can hardly breathe at all.
The ensuing walk is little more than a daze and it isn’t until he’s back in the TARDIS that he realises that he’s practically gasping for air, both his hearts now thundering away like a pair of drums. He must be pushing at least a hundred and fifty beats per heart - a number that could potentially be unhealthy for a Time Lord. And what the hell happened to having a bloody respiratory bypass system?
He paces around the console until he’s dizzy, still trying to slow his heart, to breathe. Then his knees hit the grating hard and he’s slumped painfully against the base of the console.
He doesn’t cry. God - he can barely move, let alone cry. Even now, so far away he can feel a shadow, an echo really of her from the other world. The cracks are closing slowly, slowly enough that he imagines he can feel her heart breaking, even across time and space and the empty nothingness of the void...
“Rose...”
It’s little more than a broken sob, soft on his lips, but suddenly he feels a vibration, someone plucking at the strands of time and space like a lyre and to his shock he feels a distant echo of Rose’s consciousness, feels that she too is aware of him, that she can hear him.
“Rose.” he says again, the sound of his sigh mingling with a sharp gasp of air from her.
And then he shuts his eyes and folds in on himself.
It’s only been a week and a half since the battle of Canary Wharf but nearly a whole month (in linear Earth standards) for the Doctor when he finally returns to Earth.
Britain is in somewhat of a state of disarray - so many people have died or gone missing (or been trapped in parallel worlds for that matter) fathers, daughters, friends, family. There are missing posters on every lamp post, homeless vagrants weeping as they wander the streets and endless, endless grief.
For once the Doctor doesn’t just empathise with them. He’s grieving along with them too.
If he’s completely honest with himself (which he very often isn’t) he’s not really coping. No he’s not really coping at all. The fact that he’s just spent a solid month in the Time Vortex trying to figure out a way to get Rose back whether it involves tearing apart this universe and the next or not...well. Does anything more need to be said on the matter?
So far he’s been entirely unsuccessful which frustrates him more than he can say. If Rose were here she would no doubt have some simple and utterly brilliant way to fix things - but then if she were here then he wouldn’t need to think of a way to bring her back at all would he? After so many weeks spent going around in circles, avoiding her room like the plague, maintaining his own existence with all the good grace of a zombie, the Doctor finally decides that he needs to stop and clear his head before he goes utterly mad with grief.
Well. And the TARDIS has started to mutiny and keeps dropping things on his head at inopportune moments.
When he lands her almost perfectly on the outskirts of the Powell Estate he’s not sure why he’s come here of all places, nor what he’s expecting to find. The lock on the Tyler’s old flat gives way easily to his sonic screwdriver and after a moments pause he steps inside and it’s like stepping out of the TARDIS and onto a dead planet.
The furniture is all gone, the few paintings and pictures taken down from the walls. Blankly he walks down the truncated hallway, pausing only for a moment at Rose’s bedroom door before continuing on. Jackie repainted the lurid pink walls a dull beige back when he was still in his Ninth body. There’s nothing to suggest that Rose ever even lived here now. Moving on to the living room he discovers it full of boxes and in the centre of them sits a girl with a photo album on her lap and tears on her face.
The Doctor freezes when he sees her and then begins to back out of the room swiftly but the girl has obviously heard him and when she realises that she’s not alone she scrambles to her feet and holds the photo album before her threateningly.
“Who’re you?” she bellows, brandishing the photo album at him as though she’s seriously considering hitting him over the head with it. “How’d you get in here? Eh?”
“Door mustn’t have been locked properly.” the Doctor lies, his voice cracking alarmingly from misuse. Clearing his throat he tries again. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you.”
The girl glares at him with puffy eyes and then, obviously deciding that he’s not going to attack her, lowers the photo album carefully. “Who are you?”
“I’m...” he rasps as he speaks so he swallows and then tries again. “I was a...friend of Rose. And Jackie too I s’pose. People call me the Doctor.”
“The Doctor?” the girl repeats incredulously.
“That’s me.” he tries for a happy-go-lucky grin but judging by the look the girl gives him it’s probably more a grimace than anything.
“Rose told me a bit about you. You two travelled together yeah? I’m Shireen.” she puts the album on a box and dithers for a moment before holding her hand out awkwardly towards him. He shakes her hand cordially enough but Shireen still flinches at his touch. “Blimey you’re cold!”
“Sorry.” he shoves the offending limb back into his pocket and an awkward silence stretches across the living room.
“’M just packing up the rest of their stuff.” Shireen blurts and then casts her gaze over the piles of boxes. “Jackie’s mum asked me to help her do it - she couldn’t cope with going through it all.”
“Right.” The Doctor nods, looks around with mild interest. “So what’s happening to all of it?”
“Most of it’s going to Oxfam.” Shireen’s eyes linger on the photo album. “’Cept some stuff. Photos. Jewelry. Things like that.”
“You’re giving their things away?” the Doctor eyes the boxes again, this time in dismay. “Doesn’t anybody want any of it?”
“Well neither of ’em had a will.” Shireen explains uncomfortably. “So’s everything went to Jackie’s old mum only she didn’t want most of it so...” she shrugs and the Doctor lets his eyes continue to range over the cardboard towers lining the blank walls.
The room smells of dust and emptiness. No coffee or burnt toast smell in the kitchen, no pinch of lavender in the bedrooms, no tell-tale musk from Jackie’s favourite perfume lingering in the air. He feels weak suddenly; and horribly, horribly alone. He’s not sure what he expected to find here but it certainly wasn’t this...this nothingness.
“You...all right?”
He startles at the feel of Shireen’s small, soft hand on his shoulder. He hadn’t even realised that she had come over to him. Up close he can see that she too favours the thick mascara and eyeliner that Rose did - does - as well as dark hair awkwardly bleached to blonde.
“Not...really no.” he manages and Shireen nods up at him, suddenly blinking back tears. Unbidden, several of them take substance, trailing thick clumps of black mascara down her cheeks. The Doctor’s insides clench like a vice as he thinks of Rose’s cheeks being stained the same way, her hand against his, pulse beating through her palm, through the wall, across...
“I know how you feel.” Shireen chokes, wiping away tears. “Sor’ of anyway. Rose was my best mate from when we were kids y’know? And Jackie was like a second mum to me. You know they were put down on the list of the dead after two days? They just went missin’...”
But the Doctor has stopped listening to Shireen and is instead focusing on the bracelet that is jangling on her wrist.
“Where did you get this?” he demands suddenly, catching her arm and holding the cheap piece of jewellery up to his eyes.
“I-I bought it the other week.” Shireen says, wiping at her cheeks. “Why?”
The Doctor merely stares, open-mouthed at the cheap concoction of alphabet beads and plastic monstrosities that have been strung onto a leather cord.
“Bad Wolf.” he breathes, his finger brushing the small clasp wonderingly.
“Yeah.” Shireen takes her wrist back carefully and turns the bracelet around so she can read the phrase too. “I dunno what bad wolf is - must be the brand or something. I liked the other beads though so...”
As she speaks the Doctor’s eyes fall on the photo album again. “Oh.” he says, his eyes lighting up with a sudden hope. “Wait. Oh yes, yes yes!” and he sweeps Shireen into a sudden hug that surprises both of them.
“I’m sorry.” he mumbles into her split ends. “I’m so sorry...”
And then he bolts from the flat, down the stairs and all but throws himself back inside the TARDIS.
From the balcony, Shireen watches as the Police Box evaporates into thin air and then stares down at her bracelet, somewhat agog.
“Blimey!” she murmurs.
Shireen doesn’t see the Doctor again but when she opens up her photo album almost a month later, she discovers that a photo of Rose has vanished.
She never sees that again either.
Saying goodbye to Donna Noble on an unremarkable street in Chiswick the Doctor realises something strange about himself. He’s mourning but he’s not technically in mourning. Rose isn’t dead after all, and since Canary Wharf he’s constantly had something or someone to focus on and he hasn’t had time yet to adjust to the shocking loneliness he knows will hit him when he finally stops.
He’s almost grateful for Donna’s abrupt appearance on the TARDIS. It’s given him almost another full day of grace before he has to face up to a future without Rose. On the other hand it’s also put him into somewhat of a predicament in that he both desperately wants and does not want Donna to come with him.
She isn’t Rose. At the core of the issue it really is that simple. Donna simply cannot possibly begin to fill the void that has been left behind by the loss of her but he still finds himself wishing (selfishly) that she would at least try. He’s not entirely sure that he can carry on travelling by himself. He’s not entirely sure he can go on with company either.
She’s already called him back once to ask him more questions so he’s not entirely surprised when she calls him back a second time in that fantastic brassy voice of hers. “Oh what is it now?” he complains good naturedly. In truth he’s almost relieved that she’s called him back again - anything to delay the inevitable - but his smile falls quickly when she speaks.
“That friend of yours...” Donna begins and for a split second he seriously considers slamming the door in her face and just leaving. He should have expected her to be curious about Rose - he hasn’t shut up about her all day - but right now he doesn’t know if he can stand to talk about her. Not with the emptiness of the console room crowding at his back and the empty corridors and rooms beyond waiting for an occupant that will never return.
But he doesn’t. Close the door that is. He knows that Rose wouldn’t approve of him slamming the door against Donna - and not just in a physical sense either. It’s this thought more than any other that gives him courage enough to leave it open and merely brace himself for the rest of Donna’s question. But of all of her brilliant, probing questions today, the punch of this one is so unexpected that it sends a stab of pain straight through him and a lump to his throat. “...What was her name?”
“Her name was Rose.”
He barely manages to pilot the TARDIS into the Vortex before the awful loneliness fills his chest cavity like ice water. It’s shocking just how fast it sets in - and even worse is just how much it hurts. He’s spent so much of this regeneration basking in the warmth of company, revelling in it, that he’s never had cause to wonder how he might feel without anyone by his side.
Now that he’s experiencing it he has to admit that it feels exceptionally awful. He’s back where he was before Donna appeared in the TARDIS and he feels at an extraordinary loss with his hands now jammed into his pockets instead of reaching out to take Rose’s hand...
He doesn’t know where to go. He always knows where to go - or at least can come up with some sort of idea. How can he have the whole of time and space at his disposal and still come up blank?
Abruptly he reaches out and gently depresses one of the many buttons on the console. The steady vibration of the TARDIS resonates against the sensitive tips of his long fingers as they linger on the button and then he takes a sudden step and flips a switch. Reaches for a dial and twists it haphazardly. Rounds the console to pump a lever several times and then stops abruptly and grips the edge of the console, his head bowed and his eyes unfocused, his knuckles whitening.
He knows exactly what he’s doing - oh yes, he’s certainly done this before - but he can’t help but go through the motions anyway. Put quite simply, he’s running away again. Afraid to stop and think about the words he never said, the potential unfulfilled, the sheer brilliance of her and him and them together. But worst of all is sensing the bright threads of all the possible future’s they might’ve had together darkening and curling into nothingness.
He wants to be alone. He wants someone - anyone with him. He wants Rose back. He wants to run away and forget. He wants to remember, to hurt. He wants to cry. He wants a second chance, a third, a fourth. He wants...he wants...
He wants. Desperately, he wants.
But then there’s a bleep from the monitor and he nearly trips over his own feet in his haste to reach the screen. A cursory glance reveals that the TARDIS has unwittingly picked up a distress signal from the other side of the galaxy. A planet, if he’s not mistaken, where the colour of royalty is brown and the common people are forbidden to wear it on penalty of death.
He almost considers putting that particular piece of legislation to the test before he remembers discovering another suit - TARDIS blue pinstripes - in the wardrobe a little while ago now. Rose hadn’t much liked it so he’s never actually worn it. Seems a waste though really - perfectly good suit sitting in the wardrobe...
Once the suit is donned and paired with red trainers and tie, the Doctor pilots the TARDIS to the other end of the galazy where she lands with a particularly depressed wheeze.
His steps to the door are sedate and unhurried. So sedate in fact that he falters. Twice actually - halfway down the ramp and then once again at the door.
I am the Oncoming Storm, the Destroyer of Worlds - the Last of the Time Lords.
Pausing to rest his hand against the wood grain, he bows his head, only allowing himself five seconds before he opens the door. He wagers that it’s just long enough for him to school his emotions so that he won’t emerge from the TARDIS with his eyes brimming over like some overly-emotional fool.
I am the Oncoming Storm (it is becoming a mantra) I am the Destroyer of Worlds. I am the Last of the Time Lords.
He opens the door and the first thing he sees is a flash of blonde from down the street as one of the local inhabitants shakes some of her luxuriously long fur out of the collar of the simple crimson tunic she is sporting.
Just ‘the Doctor’?
His hearts do a rather painful double hop skip.
My Doctor.
He grits his teeth, fists his hands and steps over the threshold of his ship - the door shutting with at least some sense of finality behind him.
The universe moves on and time stands still for no man - not even a Time Lord.