Echoes of Summer - Chapter Forty-One: The Wolf at the Door (Part III)
Disclaimer: Neither Doctor Who nor any characters, items or materials of any kind pertaining to Doctor Who or the Whoniverse belong to me. I’m just looking for a good time. Hee. Trying them out for a bit, see how they fit.
Plot Summary: He was left with his lips against her jaw, her figure pressed to him as if she belonged there. One of many moments between the Tenth Doctor and Rose Tyler after he breaks his own rules to retrieve her from Bad Wolf Bay. The walls between worlds begin to fall, two different realities merging. And on the horizon a threat rises that threatens to destroy everything the Doctor holds dear.
Pairing: Ten/Rose
Beta: bratflorida
Rating: Starts at PG. Runs the gamut straight through to NC-17.
Spoilers: Oh yes. Series One through Series 4 Specials.
Timeline: AU after the end of Series 2. Spoilers up to, including and going past Series 4 though. I’ve seen all of Series 1 through 4, including the series 4 specials but am not very familiar with the Classic Who much. As such, if I happen to include anything that really touches upon Classic Who, other than it being unintentional, I’ll be surprised out of my head. Really. You’ll probably see a lot of familiar things in the fic that play into the series of DW. Bear with me, it all ties in together.
Chapter Forty One - The Wolf at the Door (Part I)
Chapter Forty-One - The Wolf at the Door (Part II)
Chapter Forty-One: The Wolf at the Door (Part III):
He saw the truth in her words. He saw her fate there as well. She shimmered the way a golden goddess did, buzzing with what he could only call magic. But she was dying here, before his very eyes. That was the downside to having such power with a weak vessel harnessing it. “How long do you have?” he asked hollowly, feeling a cool numbness begin to rise from deep down. And no, he refused that iciness, refused to allow this to be one more thing he would brush off his shoulder. All humans and their meager life spans, all floating away in the blink of an eye. It was always the same thing but he refused to let this be one more thing he could turn away from easily.
At his question she smiled once more and she neared, her fingers reaching out to him. Tracing small designs against his unshaven jaw, she replied calmly, “A matter of moments now.”
He felt himself tear at her words, his very fiber of being stretching taut. Mouth moving to speak and yet unable to, he merely made a small sound of confusion, a hand lifting in puzzlement. Why did it always come to this? Why did he always have to lose? “How long have you been awake?” he asked her faintly.
She didn’t hesitate in response. “Thirty-nine minutes.”
The Doctor stared at her, his lips parting. Of course. With a human form cradling the heart of the TARDIS, he couldn’t have expected her to be much older than mere moments. But when one had a time machine in their possession, could travel through time by their own power, it was possible that she could have wreaked all her havoc within that given time frame. More than possible. Inevitable. “You’ve been…hopping around. Wiping people from the timeline. Trying to…fix it. When one obstacle was cleared, another made itself known based on those circumstances you had then created.” He tilted his head, studying her achingly. “Doesn’t your head hurt from it all?”
“My head…is killing me.”
He remembered when she had said those words to him, her frame shivering, burning up before his still-blue eyes. He hadn’t been about to allow it then. “Come here. You need a Doctor.”
He couldn’t say the same anymore. Not now. Not with everything so wrong.
The smile that came to her face was strained when she responded. “Every moment,” she replied softly and her voice caught halfway through, tears shimmering in her eyes. “It burns more and more…every…moment.”
His hearts clenched at her tone, at the pain that spasmed across her golden face. “Oh, Rose,” he uttered, lifting a hand as if to reach for her. When he did touch her, his fingers passing across her jaw, gold dust seemed to trail away from her form, following his fingers. He curled his hand away slightly and the dust dissipated, leaving her skin dimmer. As if he had brushed a piece of her away. Staring at that part of her, he felt all other words tangle in his throat, in his chest, his brow drawing in sorrowfully. “Why did you come here, Bad Wolf?” he finally asked her quietly, his face still cradled in her palm, his hearts as well.
Her eyes fell a bit at his question, focusing on his collar thoughtfully. “I see…all outcomes, all futures. While you can only see events, moving from fixed point to fixed point, I can see everything. And here…now…this moment here changes the future. These moments here and the ones to follow tonight, these will seal off this fork in the road from its beginning. What I couldn’t do, you will. After tonight, everything will revert to the one moment on the beach. It’s where it all begins, after all. Where it all stems from. And from there everything will go as it was meant to.”
The Doctor gazed at her. “The people? The deaths?” he asked her slowly, hesitantly, “My daughter?”
Her smile widened a bit. “You will see them again. For the first time. You will love them all. You will mourn them when they’re gone. But when they go, it will be because it was meant to be. And after tonight you will not see me again.”
He hesitated. “The beach then. Bad Wolf Bay.”
At the name, her smile was brilliant. “You’ll know what to do after I leave tonight. You already had an idea after all, coming to the console tonight of all nights…after what has just transpired between us.”
Her smile and words did nothing to comfort him, though they woke images of Rose in his arms and in his bed. “I can’t leave her,” he breathed through gritting teeth, his shoulders stiff. He motioned toward the door of the console room leading to the other rooms and floors of the TARDIS. “She doesn’t deserve to be stranded in another world. It’s my fault. She doesn’t deserve it-“
“No,” the Bad Wolf agreed quietly, her fingers curling a bit to play against his cheek. “She doesn’t. But the timeline is what it is. You have to be stronger than I was. All those errors I made because I didn’t want to be apart from you…” She shook her head slightly, reprimanding herself by her expressions. “And you will see Rose Tyler again. She will find you again, Doctor.” As she said it she looked up to meet his eyes, her face firm. “I promise you. I find you again.”
He closed his eyes, pressing his cheek further into her palm. “You can’t promise me that, Rose.” Because suddenly she really was Rose once more behind the glow of the Bad Wolf. Those summer eyes and the love they held there, it was all Rose Marion Tyler.
Her face became the slightest bit sad. “I don’t have to promise you that, Doctor. In another future, in another timeline, I’ve already done it and it has become fact.” And her frame flickered suddenly, shimmering a brilliant gold for a moment. Then she faltered in his arms, her lips parting.
“Stay with me,” he whispered quickly, his arms lifting to catch around her waist as her hand slipped a bit from his jaw. He grimaced, legs shifting under him to maintain both their weight together, and one arm slid free to take hold of the railing at his back. “Just stay with me. Tonight. For a few moments.”
Her eyes unfocused fleetingly, darting around the console room in confusion. They slid shut for an instant, a breath catching in her throat even as he dragged her against him, supporting her fiercely.
“Rose. Rose-“ he growled at her through clenched teeth as he straightened to his feet, shaking her when she weakened further against him.
“It’s so much,” she whispered, grimacing faintly. She lifted her gaze all around, seeming to struggle to focus on anything. “So much. And this body…is deteriorating…”
“Don’t go,” he begged her and even as he did so he was sliding down to his knees, holding her frame to him, blinded by streaks of golden light that tore from her as she fell with him wearily. “Just…stay here with me. Stay for a bit. I won’t bite, I promise-“
She laughed for a small moment, blinking rapidly. Her head bowed against his, her hands catching on his shoulders and tightening, attempting a grip.
“Just…stay,” he pleaded hoarsely from a hairsbreadth away, gazing at her helplessly from such a close distance and yet feeling that somehow she was very far away. But even as he asked it of her, settling on his knees and clasping her frame to his, he felt it. He felt her power pulse, felt her look around once more, disoriented.
“It’s all wrong,” she murmured, her breath seeming stifled and she heaved for air against him. “This whole world. This whole…time. It’s wrong. It’s so wrong. But why is it wrong? Why is it wrong for me to be here? Why couldn’t I just stay?” she grimaced, whispering faintly under her breath, almost rambling. “Oh, the beach. The beach-”
“I’ll fix it,” he promised her rapidly. His lips tightened into a firm line as he shifted his body to rest on his rear, one leg tucking under him, the other leg stretched out across the console floor. She allowed him, her own frame wearily falling limp in his arms and across his lap as he pulled her up against him. “You don’t have to worry about any of that anymore, Rose. You just…just…” He inhaled shakily, gazing at her as she grimaced, her chest rising as she dragged in a rasping breath. “Just stay. Now. Stay now.”
She was mumbling still, her eyes blinking quickly, her stare unfocused. “I had to fix it. I knew…I think I always knew. I just didn’t…didn’t want to believe. Because…because…” She closed her eyes tightly, her head shaking curtly for a moment as if shaking water from her hair. Shaking away an ugly memory. “Because I didn’t know…how to fix it. No one did. And no one ever saw it…but me. Because it was the way I had created it. All those visions…people in the real timeline. Donna under the Thames. Martha on the moon. Jack…in Cardiff. That was the truth. And all I could do was…think it unfair that I couldn’t be with you anymore.” She swallowed roughly, her words jumbled and tinged with regret. “They kept coming back to me…telling me about the threat that was coming for us. Never telling me I was the threat. Never telling me how to fix it but always reminding me that it was something I could fix. Because I…loved you so much. And I took the heart of the TARDIS at the end. The Bad Wolf. I didn’t have the strength…the power…to fix anything any other way. But as the Bad Wolf-”
He shushed her, one arm wrapped across her waist and around, the other cradling the back of her head as she pulsed with golden light.
“I erased them all…I loved them all but I had to erase them…because they had different memories…different lives than what had been meant for them. Even Jack. Even Jack. I took away his immortality. I took it away…” She gasped, her fingers curling into talons as golden light began to seep from her like a fine mist. “And Jenny…oh, Jenny…”
Swallowing thickly, his fingers tangling into the dark hair at the nape of her neck, he asked softly, “She’s mine. Jenny. My daughter. But I see now. She isn’t ours.”
Her eyes slid back toward his, her lips parted, her breath coming through roughly. “No. Jenny is not…not human. She has only Gallifreyan blood in her.” She brought her hand to his chest, her frame stiff. “The future is…is so…”
“Delicate,” he whispered in understanding.
“Fragile,” she said instead. “And it’s all falling apart now. Now that…now that I won’t exist.” She shivered faintly, the golden mist curling about and slowly surrounding her now, light sparking in her eyes as she gazed at him. “The beach, Doctor. It all begins…it all ends…at the beach.”
“The beach,” he echoed her firmly.
“And the question,” she said, staring at him.
“What question?” he asked her with a small frown. A moment later he shook her, watching her frantically as she heaved, the golden mist becoming thicker around her trembling frame. “Rose? What question-“
“The question…” she said once more slowly, as if speaking was too much of a strain. “She’s going to ask…I asked…to see you again. The question.”
He gazed at her in silence for a moment, searching his memory for the question. Yes, he remembered her question on the beach, at the beginning of the end.
“Am I ever going to see you again?”
He had said yes to her and once he had said yes, he had begun to think of a way to bring her back to him, had gone away almost into silent captivity searching for a way. Remembering it now, he felt the sudden weight of what it all meant fall on him. “I won’t ever see her again, will I?” he asked her then gently, numb with realization.
In his arms, the Bad Wolf settled a bit, her head turned to look up at him. As she spoke he began to realize that the mist was growing stronger, that her body was disappearing behind it. Vanishing away behind that fine golden dust.
“She will find her way back to you one day.” Her smile was suddenly soft and wistful. “Two o’clock in the morning, taking that taxi home. That life, that adventure. She’ll bring it to you.”
The Doctor stared at her, his lips parted in question at her words, not understanding.
She shook her head at his confusion. And then she resigned herself to merely gaze at him tenderly.
He understood wordlessly then. It would all work itself out soon. She was leaving it to him to finish. Once her human form passed away, the piece of heart would dissipate as well, leaving nothing but a paradox machine outside of time, recycling the remaining energy of a hypernova to maintain this mess of a timeline. Until it, too, ran out of power with no Time Lord to serve.
Pressing his lips together in a wistful smile, he lifted his hand away from her waist and brought a finger to her face, dragging an errant blond lock from her cheek. She tilted her head along his hand, across his arm as he shifted to cradle her closer. The gold dust fell from her silently, floating away as he ran his finger across her jaw. And he understood that there was nothing left of Rose Tyler’s mortal form. Now that there was no vessel left to contain the heart of the future TARDIS, it was dissipating as well, vanishing into nothing in his own TARDIS. He bowed his head slightly as he realized he could see his other hand clear through her shoulder, through the golden glow.
“I think…” she whispered softly, gazing at him, “I was always meant to be left on a beach. In bloody Norway.” She laughed faintly, easily.
“Oh,” he replied to that quietly, almost absentmindedly. “I’ll only do it to you once.” He felt his voice catch at his words, at their implication. But he pushed it aside, all of it, composing his voice lightly for her. “I promise.”
She continued to gaze at him, a secret now peeking out from behind her smile. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Doctor. That’s not like you.” Her breath was soft, her words strangely ominous. But even as he went to question her, he felt a flash of warmth and a glimpse of light through his thoughts. A vision of Rose on that beach, dressed differently now. Blue jacket, dark pants and a purple shirt. Her hand was caught in his grip as he gazed down at her in a blue suit, standing next to her. He had seen that image before, as John Smith. And he still didn’t understand it but he realized that he didn’t need to. Not anymore. He stared down at the Bad Wolf entity in his arms and her eyes fluttered, her lips parting.
His grip tightened helplessly, wishing to hold on to her, to feel her warmth. But even as he gripped her firmly, his fingers curled into fists, slipping clear through her. Barely any of her was tangible and he quickly lowered what he could of her to the TARDIS floor, holding himself over her as she settled wearily, weakly.
“Rose-“
“It’s warm,” she murmured, her eyes flickering to remain open, her figure pulsing. “’s so warm. Like a blanket. Like…one of your hugs…”
He bowed his head at her words, breathing hoarsely against her jaw, his fists clenching in silent pain. And he realized he almost wanted to sob with the way his breath was leaving him; abruptly, his lungs and throat constricting painfully.
“Doctor.”
At her last word he lifted his head, his eyes coming open. She gifted him with one final smile before she vanished suddenly and completely into a golden dust, dissolving away into the air and scattering into nothingness like a scent on a warm summer day.
He stared at the grated TARDIS floor, his lips parted, his eyes straining almost to the point of blurred vision. And he couldn’t convince himself that the rising tears were from that effort. He couldn’t convince himself that this loss wouldn’t be bad, not as bad as losing all his people, his entire planet, because this loss could never match that. Yet even that thought fell hollowly upon him. He lifted a clenched fist and brought it down angrily beside his face as he pressed it against the cold floor of the TARDIS, shivers running through his shoulders down to his very core. The scream that tore from him could not be held back, couldn’t be suppressed. He let it out against the floor, allowing the icy surface to muffle it against his cheek. He dragged his fists to his temples to staunch the flow of pain that threatened to pour from him like blood from a gash. So many visions and so many softly uttered words, they all ran through him as he fought to block them away. When he couldn’t, he realized that this was different, so different from all his other losses. This was more than losing her to death. This was losing her to wrong decisions. Wrong decisions and their consequences.
And he realized against the cold TARDIS floor that the Bad Wolf had been born and had died in the span of forty-two minutes.
With a heaving breath he faltered and collapsed to the grated floor wearily, slipping onto his side. His clenched fists slowly uncurled weakly before his blank eyes, limply. He remained for a long time in the silence in which he’d been left, indistinct thoughts and smiles brushing haunting fingers against his mind, cheeky laughter echoing like a ghost all around him. He remained curled in on his side, catching visions of golden sparkles in the air behind his closed eyes and reaching for them even as they vanished away silently.
Next Chapter - Chapter Forty-Two: Crossing Timelines
Upon stepping foot from his TARDIS he encountered the doors of another TARDIS, another blue phone box standing a mere twenty feet away at the foot of a path. Her path, the small alley in front of the Powell Estate. He stared at the doors and he understood. He understood where he was, when he was. What he had been doing there in the late hours of night.