The Family Man, Chapter 11
The Doctor was distracted by a sudden explosion in the distance, and saw where the energy storm had started to work through the planet of Jupiter. With alarm, he realized that Saturn had already been devoured.
“You’ve got to stop this!” he screamed out into empty space. “You’re going to destroy the solar system!”
A fierce wind whipped up over him, nearly blowing him back into the TARDIS, but the Doctor held on.
“Do not fear,” the distant voice said soothingly. “You cannot be harmed within the lens.”
The Doctor growled in frustration and screamed back toward the sky.
“Who are you?” he cried. “What is the lens?”
The Doctor squinted as a pinprick of green light began to flare, and drew nearer to him. It expanded outwardly into the form of a humanoid, and then stood before him expectantly.
“You are within the lens,” the voice continued in an embodied form. “And I am the lens. The lens helps you to see.”
“Right,” the Doctor replied bitterly. “Helps me to see the destruction of the entire universe! Tell me what are you getting out of this? Are you feeding off the planets you decimate?”
“Feeding?” the lens replied curiously. “I don’t understand the concept. I restructure and reorder the known world as an architect of time and space.”
“On whose authority?” the Doctor demanded. “What right do you have to rend the universe apart, putting it back together as you see fit?"
“But I am requisitioned,” the lens countered. “Nothing falls under the lens that does not desire a new design. I cannot operate without consent and invitation.”
“You’re not making sense!” the Doctor shouted. “No one wants you to rip apart the galaxy! Least of all the people of Earth, who will cower in fear when you descend upon them! Listen to me, you must stop this now!”
“Fear,” the lens considered. “Anger. You do not see.”
The lens seemed to pace around on the groundless floor for a moment.
“You lack a unifying concept,” it hypothesized. “Allow me to provide one.”
The Doctor watched as the lens appeared to draw a circle in the air and then pull it apart like pair of curtains. Behind the veil, the Doctor saw himself and Rose on their couch at home, fast asleep. Wil and Sammy were nodding off on either side, while their three dogs cuddled up at their feet.
“This is a preliminary sketch,” the lens explained. “The one drawn from your own imagination.”
“My imagination?” the Doctor questioned. “You mean this is something I made up?”
“Well, it's very real in the phenomenal sense,” the lens answered. “But as far as your input was concerned, very much so. It was your initiative and innermost desire to see it to fruition. What you dreamed, I brought to life.”
“I still don’t understand,” the Doctor hedged. “What is your role in this fantasy? How did you come to choose me for such an experiment?”
“Ah,” the lens replied. “Your perception of events is truly narrow, Time Lord.”
“You know what I am?” the Doctor asked suspiciously, taking a protective step back.
“I know all that is,” the lens replied. “Your people were the closest thing to my own. The Time Lords perceived time as it was and could be. My race can activate those possibilities instantaneously, and travel between the lines of time and space.”
“The Time Lords also had a profound respect for set events,” the Doctor argued. “The lens lacks an appreciation for the way things are supposed to be!”
“Supposed to be?” the lens laughed lightly. “Nothing is supposed to be, Doctor. That assumption stagnates the growth of the universe. Everything is only as it can be. The bureaucracy of the Time Lords has limited your perception, and clouded your ability to think beyond set parameters. I bring freedom to what is bound. Can you not see yourself as such?”
The lens swirled its finger in the image of Rose and the Doctor until it morphed into a picture of them back at First Venus.
“This moment,” the lens said dreamily, “is when the universe beckoned to you, offering you a choice that would take you to complete happiness. Did you not feel it at the time, Doctor? But you let fear be your guiding compass. You denied the gift so rarely offered, and traded it for stability and the known path. A mistake, I think.”
“I did what I thought was right,” the Doctor offered lamely.
“An interesting choice of words,” the lens countered. “Married to binary concept of right and wrong, order and chaos. It’s not so determined as you would believe, Doctor. And that’s precisely why I’m here before you, right now. I believe in second chances. And only I have the power to grant them, without doubling back upon your own time line. If you desire it, I can take you back to this moment, where the woman you love is waiting for you to make…as you put it…the right choice.”
“But why?” the Doctor asked in utter confusion. “Why would you do that? And what happens afterward, to everything you’ve meddled in? Am I expected to believe the universe suffers no irreparable damage?”
“Doctor,” the lens sighed while placing a ghostly hand on his shoulder, “have you ever sensed my presence before this experience? Had you any reason to suspect a being like me existed? You have not, because my presence a necessary force in the process of creation and destruction, invariably perceived as one vital law amongst many in the universe. You will not detect any repercussions from my work in the sense you are describing.”
“So if I accept your offer, I will wake up back on Third Venus as if nothing ever happened?” the Doctor questioned in disbelief.
The lens grew brighter and threw its arms up to indicate the incredible storm raging in the background.
“It is within my power,” it avowed. “But you Doctor, so unlike and like myself…for you I offer something greater, a gift I’ve never bestowed on any other creature. I offer you the ability to remember all that has transpired. Knowledge of my existence could be detrimental to carrying out the necessary tasks of my kind, but I am going to share a trust with you as the last of your people.”
“Why?” the Doctor asked earnestly. “Why take such a risk?”
The lens leaned in and seemed to capture the Doctor in a translucent embrace.
“Because you, amongst all that exists, are so infinitely loved,” the alien being explained. “So give it back, Doctor. Give it back!”
The solar wind picked up again, blowing the apparition of the lens apart in an explosion of green dust. The Doctor felt himself being pushed back into the TARDIS against his will, and struggled to stay upright as he addressed the storm.
“But what about Rose?” he cried. “What about my children? I want to see Sammy and Wil again! What if they disappear? Are you listening to me? Can you hear me?”
He screamed into the void as he was constantly pressed backward, finally tripping over the front door of his ship and blacking out completely. In the distance, the storm’s wind howled on.
“Can you hear me?” a soft female voice echoed in his head.
The Doctor jerked and turned, finding himself nose to nose with Rose Tyler. Her shocked face brought him back to reality, to realize that they were sitting upon Third Venus as if nothing had ever happened. The memories of all they had experienced raced through his mind, as did the apparition of the lens, and all it had told him.
“Are you alright?” Rose asked loudly. “I said the rings are about to descend…according to this tricorder thingy you gave me.”
“That is not a tricorder,” the Doctor said crossly as he glanced down at the device Rose held in her hands. “But the rings…the ring!”
He jumped up and dug inside his pocket, hoping against hope that the wedding band was still inside. As strange as it was with this Rose right in front of him, he felt it was an important part of the Rose he left behind. After dumping an absurd amount of items on the ground, he felt his fingers rest upon the solid circular object with intense relief.
“What’s wrong with you?” Rose asked. “You’re acting completely mental….well, more mental than ususal. I thought this was a safe planet? Don’t tell me we’ve accidently landed on the day of its destruction?”
Rose stared crossly at her Doctor, who giggled manically and set back down beside her.
“No. Nonononono, of course not. Silly Rose. And that’s a transactorseismascope you’re holding there. It should calculate the exact alignment of the planetary rings, so in just about…twenty-six point eight seconds!”
Rose rolled her eyes and laughed to herself before setting the transactor-whatever down beside her. She took the opportunity to squeeze in closer to the Doctor too, and rested her chin on his shoulder.
“Twenty-Six, twenty-five, twenty-four,” she counted cheekily.
“Rose,” the Doctor said seriously, gaining her attention away from the lowering bands of light.
She looked at him expectantly as he scanned her face, remembering the soft feel of her skin against his hands the night before. He remembered the pain in her eyes as he told her he had to leave, and he remembered most of all, a promise that he had made to her to never, ever tell her goodbye. If he could just say the right things, maybe he'd never have to.
“Sometimes..." he began quietly. "Sometimes I like to close my eyes and imagine a life for us together."
“Really?” Rose asked breathlessly. She’d never expected to hear the Doctor say anything like that to her, and it took a moment to get her heart to start beating again.
“I imagine that we live in a house that’s really, properly ours. We have a mortgage and bills, and two cars to get around when the TARDIS needs a rest. I imagine that we see your family often, and eventually even build one of our own,” he continued.
Rose stared at him incredulously, beginning to live for his next beautiful sentence.
“Two children,” he said dreamily. “A boy and a girl. Brilliant and precocious, but a handful nonetheless. Wil wants to grow up too quickly for you, and Sammy…”
The Doctor broke off laughing and had to pause to take a breath. “Sammy is the definition of joy. They make friends easily, and make it easier for us to navigate between an earthbound home and the stars. That’s where we belong really…in between…a space that seems like it was made just for us. Sometimes I look at you and wonder how you do it, but then I see you smile and I love you to distraction and forget what I was thinking. Five years pass, then ten. And we’re still so deeply in love, Rose. We’re so happy. You and me and our extraordinary family. That’s what I imagine.”
He chanced a glance back in her direction and found her crying, a hand cradling her face as she stared back at him.
“Don’t cry, Rose,” he pleaded, moving to take her hand as the rings moved into alignment.
“How can I not when you say something like that?” Rose asked as she blotted her tears on her sleeve. “That was lovely.”
The Doctor smiled and wrapped one arm around his companion, pulling her close to his side as he pointed toward the sky.
“We’re missing it,” he whispered.
Rose followed his finger to the silver rings, sparkling in the light of a nearby moon as they appeared to morph into one central band.
“I love traveling with you,” Rose sighed as he squeezed her tight.
“Rose,” he countered. “I love you. Always."
Rose jerked away from him with astonishment, hardly believing what she'd just heard.
“I know it’s a gamble and I know it’s a risk, but I’ve seen what we can be together Rose,” he pleaded. “Do you think you could ever imagine-“
The Doctor wasn’t able to finish because Rose had launched herself at his lips, planting a soft and yearning kiss where his mouth was still trying to form words.
“Yes,” she murmured between kisses. “Yes, yes, yes!”
The Doctor laughed as they tumbled backwards, and clinging to one another became as indistinguishable as the many rings in the sky, united by a common pull and polarity.
Rose pulled back for breath a moment later and stared at him with her most brilliant smile.
“I want all of that,” she said happily. “I want a house and a family, anything and everything as long as it’s ours. You know I’ve always loved you. I just…didn’t know you’d ever want those things too…that you’d want me.”
The Doctor felt his hearts clench as he looked at her, and realized in that moment the enormity of what he’d almost thrown away. A second chance with Rose was his only chance to be truly happy, and the lens had given him that. As much as it had hurt to leave her and his family in the future, he now had the ability to start from the beginning, and live through every beautiful, perfect moment…starting with this one.
“I’m so incredibly lucky,” he whispered as he kissed her hair tenderly. “And more than that Rose, I am so incredibly loved. I have to give it back. In fact, I can’t wait to give it back, because no one deserves it more than you."
They held each other so tightly then, that even the lens couldn't have torn them apart.
FIN!
EPILOGUE:
"No I'm not kidding!" Rose cried giddily as she hugged the phone close to her ear. "I mean it mum, I know I'm gonna marry him someday. He's the one. He's always been the one."
Jackie Tyler's scream could be heard all the way into the heart of the TARDIS, where the Doctor sat up in alarm and bumped his head on the console.
EPILOGUE/EPILOGUE:
The Doctor sat next to Rose's hospital bed, listening to the sound of whirring machines as she breathed in and out. He rubbed the plastic bracelet on her wrist before tracing down and finding the band of her wedding ring instead.
"I can't believe this day has come," he whispered. "There were times when I didn't think we'd make it here. I was so scared Rose. As always, you were the one I believed in."
Rose murmured in her sleep and shifted toward him as if following the sound of his voice.
"You were so fantastic," he continued, holding back his tears with immense effort. "I wish I could stop saying thank you but I can't. Thank you, Rose Tyler. Thank you for this life together. Thank you for being you. I love you so dearly, I can't...I can't..."
"Shut that enormous gob for five minutes so my daughter can get some rest?" Jackie's shrill voice broke in.
The Doctor stood in surprise as Jackie rounded the corner, holding her newborn granddaughter in her arms.
"There she is!" the Doctor squealed with glee. "Samantha Sarah Jane Tyler! Isn't she gorgeous!"
Jackie couldn't hold back a pleased smile as the Doctor scooped his daughter into his arms.
"And where's Wil then?" he added curiously.
"Off with Pete trying to rig the soda machine with that wonky Sonic of yours. I swear Doctor, that device is the last thing he needs!"
"Which one?" Rose asked sleepily as the Doctor came to sit by her side.
The Doctor giggled adorably as he snuggled in next to his wife and kissed her forehead.
"Hello there," Rose whispered to the sleeping Sammy. "Alright, then?"
"Not just alright," the Doctor beamed as he rested their daughter against his chest. "Beautiful. Beautiful. Beautiful."