Fanfic Masterlist: Doctor Who (WIP)
Title: Clocks and Lovers (1/1)
Pairing: Ten/Rose, hints of Nine/Rose if you squint
Spoilery for: Nothing. AU.
Rating: R for some not-really-graphic sex and character death.
Summary: Rose Tyler walking into the TARDIS for the first time, knows instinctively that her life will be changed forever. She doesn’t know how much she’ll hurt before it’s all over.
~*~
“Lay your sleeping head, my love,
Human on my faithless arm;
Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave
Proves the child ephemeral:
But in my arms till break of day
Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.”
--from “Lullabye” by W. H. Auden
~*~
Rose Tyler, walking into the TARDIS for the first time, knows instinctively that her life will be changed forever. She doesn’t know how much she’ll hurt before it’s all over.
~*~
He never wants it to end, like one day it must. He’ll fight it. He knows how to fight, knows how to rage against life and death and time itself, but none of it matters in the end. In the end it is always already too late.
He fights on.
~*~
Rose Tyler reads somewhere in the Doctor's vast library that Metathesiophobia is the fear of change. He’s already changed once. He asks if she’ll stay with him if he changes again. Yes, she lies, and feels afraid.
~*~
The first time he makes love to her it’s like walking off a precipice.
It’s been awhile for him, and she’s the first he’s had in this new new body. But he knows sex. Legs gripping hips, backs that arch in ecstasy, lips on necks and teeth on skin and hands everywhere, then he’s falling and taking her with him.
Sex complicates things, though. It always has a price and sometimes the price is friendship. He has sex with her anyway. Because she won’t be around forever, and he refuses to have any regrets once she’s gone.
~*~
Rose Tyler makes love to the Doctor, knows that he doesn’t do domestic and wishes more than anything she could change that.
~*~
Was there ever a time when he wasn’t running? Running from danger, running from responsibility, from the law, from his future, from his past. Running simply for the sake of running.
Always running away. But there’s this feeling that he’s also running at something, towards something, something elusive that he can’t quite grasp; and every time he thinks he’s found it, it slips through his fingers.
Sometimes he feels guilty about his Companions. Innocents that he grabs hold of and takes with him on his mad race through time. Sometimes they can’t keep up, sometimes fall behind, sometimes he outdistances them without a second thought.
Rose never seems to be running from anything, even when she is. And when he’s with her, he doesn’t feel like he’s running either, even when he is.
Maybe, he thinks in his most unguarded moments, she’s what he was always running to.
~*~
Rose Tyler has stared down Daleks, has looked into the Heart of the TARDIS, has had the limitless entirety of Time running through her head. Rose Tyler convinces herself, occasionally, that she is immortal. Sometimes, it’s the only way she can fall asleep.
~*~
He’s not sure if he loves her, but he knows that he needs her. And he knows that this is dangerous, because he can sacrifice people he loves for the greater good, but he doesn’t know if he could sacrifice her, if it came to that.
He hopes so hard that he’ll never have to find out.
~*~
Time moves, and the fact that Rose Tyler is still alive against astronomical odds tempts fate. Live, little human. Live while you can, Time whispers.
~*~
Humans sleep too much.
Fully half their already-too-short lives are taken up by slumber and dreams.
The Doctor doesn’t dream, but he often wishes he could. He wonders what he’d dream of; Gallifrey and the Time Lords, of his past selves, of a life where his Companions never die. Or perhaps he’d dream of Daleks and blood and fire, of making a choice no living being should ever have to make.
Maybe it’s best that he doesn’t dream.
He looks into Rose’s mind, and finds she’s dreaming of his love and summer. He shares her dream, and he’s almost content.
~*~
Rose Tyler, on the cusp of life and death, wishes more than anything that she had a chance to say goodbye.
~*~
In the end, he never even saw it coming.
So fast. It all happened so fast, one stray bullet and Rose’s body was in his arms, his hands were slick with her blood, and her eyes were glassy with death.
This wasn’t supposed to happen. He was supposed to fight. She was supposed to live.
He howls his rage to an alien sky and demands that the Universe return her to him.
The Universe is, as ever, silent.
~*~
Rose Tyler, dearly departed, leaves behind for her Doctor a letter full of messages and hope. He reads it and imagines it’s her voice whispering it to him. He hides the letter somewhere safe.
~*~
Time moves, and the Doctor begins to feel real again.
He keeps his new Companions at arm’s length; loves them, but refuses to need them
He’s started running again, and he’s resigned to it now. Because there’s nothing more to run to, just the things to run from.
He still wishes he could dream because he knows he’d dream of her.
~*~
Time moves.
And then there is nothing, and it’s as if Rose and the Doctor never were.
Time moves and Time remembers.
~*~
“It was late, late in the evening,
The lovers they were gone;
The clocks had ceased their chiming,
And the deep river ran on.”
-From “As I Walked out One Evening” by W. H. Auden
~fin~
Title: Leaving
Rating: PG.
Pairing: Alt!Eight/Rose, Ten/Rose
Summary: Sometimes we find the ones we love again. And then we have to leave others behind.
She’s gone.
He always knew she might leave; she never deceived him about that. He knew she always hoped that maybe one day her Doctor --her first Doctor-- would find a way back to her. He let her hope, though never believed it would happen. Except it did.
He feels sick as he tells her goodbye, and avoids the eyes of his dimensional twin. The other Doctor slips quietly into his TARDIS, allowing them a moment of farewell. Gracious of him, the Doctor thinks bitterly, then firmly suppresses these thoughts when Rose looks up at him and smiles. She bites down on the corner of her lip in that endearing way she has.
“I’ll miss you.” She says quietly.
Then stay with me, he wants to scream, but doesn’t; just smiles through his pain.
“How can you miss me? I’m the guy with two hearts.” They both laugh at the lame attempt at humor, and suddenly she reaches up, cups his face in her hands and kisses him, quickly, on the lips.
“Goodbye.” She whispers, then turns and all but runs to the other TARDIS. He touches his fingers to his lips and watches the other TARDIS fade away to nothing, and suddenly he can’t feel her in his mind anymore. It’s like a punch to the stomach; he hadn’t realized how comforting it was, having her constantly hovering at the edge of his thoughts. Now it’s as if she never existed.
“Goodbye,” He whispers, his voice hollow, and turns to go back to his own TARDIS, alone.
Title: Nobody Knows
Pairing: Eight/Rose
Rating: G
Summary: She knows, deep down, that this long-haired stranger is not the Doctor. Not her Doctor, at any rate. AU.
Rose Tyler knows things. She’s known time, and space, and love. She knows not to say never ever. She knows that people don’t have to say “I love you” for it to be true. She knows that happiness can have a bitter edge. She knows that forever may never happen, or if it does she likely won’t be there to see it. She knows that faces are ephemeral; a familiar one might not last past the next regeneration. She knows not to judge by them.
Rose Tyler has bled and lost and hurt and said goodbye, more times than she should have to. She’s died, and returned, and (inside) died again. She’s lived through Daleks and storms and Time Vortices.
She’s not the naïve girl she once was. She knows that Doctors lie.
She knows, deep down, that this long-haired stranger is not the Doctor. Not her Doctor, at any rate. She knows that she may never love him. And she knows that he may never love her.
She knows that traveling with him may not be worth it; the risk, the pain. She knows that he’ll leave her one day, or she’ll leave him, or she’ll die, or he’ll change and she won’t be able to deal, but one day they’ll part. And she’ll be alone again.
She doesn’t know why, but she goes with him anyway.
~fin~
Title: Where Love Meets Apathy
Author: SuperherogrlCat
Rating: R
Pairing: 10/Rose
Summary: PWP featuring Tardis!Wall!sex, Rose being the strong one, and 10 being a poster child for self-depricating angst.
He pushes her up against the wall of the TARDIS, kissing her furiously, hands ripping at her clothing. He pulls back to stare at her. His breath is coming fast and hard, his teeth are bared, and the look in his eyes is terrifying; full of pain and rage, darkness and guilt.
It makes Rose want to run. It’s meant to. But she has to show him, show him that she is not afraid, that she accepts him, all of him; that she will never, ever leave him. That he can’t scare her off so easily.
So she wraps her legs around him and stifles a moan as he sinks into her, thrusting hard and fast and brutal. She meets his eyes, meets his thrusts, and whispers his name, her voice ragged with emotion.
Her hands clench on his shoulders. Oh, God.
And he doesn’t understand; she can see it in his eyes. He doesn’t understand why she’s letting him do this to her, letting him hurt her. He doesn’t understand that she loves him, all of him, even the darkness, even the pain, even the storm.
She takes his face in her hands, kissing him hard.
“I love you,” she whispers.
And he breaks.
A single long sob escapes him as he collapses against her body, passion spent. She holds him close to her, whispers nonsense to him, closing her eyes. She can feel him tremble, from fear or pain or something else, she doesn’t know. She kisses the side of his head and murmurs that she loves him, praying he doesn’t push her away.
“Rose,” He whispers, his voice raw. He pulls back slightly to stare at her. His eyes are glassy brown mirrors of pain so deep she knows it will never fully leave him.
“Why, Rose?” He demands. “I’m not….I’m a killer, Rose. I destroyed own people. My planet, gone, wiped out of existence. All because of me. And I nearly killed you to stop one Dalek….” He swallows, hard. “I’m not some savior, I’m not a hero. I’m a murderer, Rose.” He’s still trying to scare her off, trying to make her hate him. But she can’t. He’s the Doctor. He’s her Doctor. She’ll forgive him anything, even if he won’t forgive himself.
She stares directly into his gaze, lifting her chin defiantly, and says with conviction what she knows to be true.
“I don’t care.”
He closes his eyes and leans trembling against her, sighing softly like a surrender. He buries his face in her shoulder, wrapping his arms tightly around her. She can feel his hearts beating in his chest, can feel the low rumble of his voice as he murmurs her name like a prayer.
She strokes his hair, holds him close, and does what she can to comfort him, though she knows it will never, ever be enough. His pain is too deep and she can’t heal him She can only love him.
And she prays that love will be enough.
~fin~
Title: Waves
Pairing: Rose/Adric friendship, hints of Ten/Rose and Five/Adric
Rating: G
Characters: Rose Tyler, Adric, unnamed Doctor
Summary: Dreamtrippy drabble-type thing with Rose and Adric, and their thoughts on the Doctor.
It’s a perfect day at the beach. Absolutely perfect. Warm, but not too hot, bright and sunny and so picturesque it hurts.
The beach is completely deserted except for two figures sitting together near the water’s edge, facing the receding tide; a slender, dark-haired young man, who could have been a boyish eighteen, and a blond woman a few years older. The two of them are completely silent, the only sound is the crash of the waves and the distant cry of seagulls. The woman’s brown eyes are dark with grief and heartbreak, and she stares at the ocean without really seeing it. Her companion stares at her, his expression one of sympathy and understanding. His own eyes are shaded with the same sadness, the same grief. He understands.
“So what happened?” He asks at last. “With you and the Doctor? How did you…leave?”
The woman takes a deep breath and swallows hard before replying. “There was a rift, a hole in the fabric of the universe. It led to another parallel world, much like mine. We were trying to close the rift and I got trapped on the other side. The rift closed. He couldn’t open it again. He couldn’t come back to me. He found a way to say goodbye, but after that….I never saw him again. And he never told me--” She stops abruptly, as though she’s said too much. She looks bleak and haunted.
“Anyway.” She continues quietly, after a few seconds of silence. “I never forgot him. I never gave up, either. I always thought he might find a way back.” She smiles sadly. “He never did.”
The sun begins to set on the horizon. The sky is streaked with brilliant swatches of red, orange, and purple. The silence stretches as the young man digests the information. Left alone with nothing but her memories of the Doctor, knowing he was out there living his life while she was trapped living hers somewhere where she couldn’t see him, couldn’t be with him. It seemed crueler even than dying. “And you?” The woman asks abruptly, as though she can’t stand the silence for another second. “What about you?” How did you…leave?”
He stares down at the sand. “I died.” He says quietly. “I was in a spaceship, headed on a collision course with Earth. The rest of the crew escaped, but I…I thought I could fix it. I thought maybe if I stopped the collision, maybe he’d…like me better. Respect me more. He was drifting from me, you see. He had other companions, and it was like he didn’t know what to do with me, or how to treat me after his regeneration. I wanted to impress him.”
He steals a glance at the woman next to him. She looks like she knows exactly how he feels, and he wonders who she had to compete with, if she was ever as jealous as he.
“I suppose it didn’t matter, in the end. The controls were destroyed before I could get to them. There was nothing I could do. I died.” Neither of them speak for a long time. The sun continues to disappear and dusk settles over the beach. The night air grows chill. Neither figure can feel it.
“You loved him, didn’t you?” The woman asks at last.
“Yes.” The man replies, simply. “More than anything.” Then, after a pause, “Did you?”
She nods, slowly. “Yes. I loved him. I would have died for him. I never got the chance.” She looks into the eyes of her companion. “He was worth it.” She says fiercely. “Everything. Even when he hurt you, when he left you, he was always worth it. Worth the pain, worth the nightmares, worth the loneliness. He was worth it.” S
ilence, broken by the evening sounds of insects and the steady crash of the waves.
“Yes.” He replies at last. “He was.” Night falls, and the two figures are obscured in darkness. The silence stretches.
“So what’s your name?” He asks at last, because he can’t think of anything else to say.
“Rose. Rose Tyler. What’s yours?”
He smiles. “I’m Adric.”
“Adric,” She repeats with a sigh. A pause. “Thank you, Adric.”
He smiles, softly. “You’re welcome.”
The waves crash and the night grows deeper. Silence falls around them and somewhere, somewhen, the Doctor awakens, shaking, from a dream he can’t remember. He frowns when he realizes there are tears in his eyes, wipes them away, and falls quickly back to sleep. ~fin~
Pairing: Ten/Rose, hints of Nine/Rose if you squint
Spoilery for: Nothing. AU.
Rating: R for some not-really-graphic sex and character death.
Summary: Rose Tyler walking into the TARDIS for the first time, knows instinctively that her life will be changed forever. She doesn’t know how much she’ll hurt before it’s all over.
~*~
“Lay your sleeping head, my love,
Human on my faithless arm;
Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave
Proves the child ephemeral:
But in my arms till break of day
Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.”
--from “Lullabye” by W. H. Auden
~*~
Rose Tyler, walking into the TARDIS for the first time, knows instinctively that her life will be changed forever. She doesn’t know how much she’ll hurt before it’s all over.
~*~
He never wants it to end, like one day it must. He’ll fight it. He knows how to fight, knows how to rage against life and death and time itself, but none of it matters in the end. In the end it is always already too late.
He fights on.
~*~
Rose Tyler reads somewhere in the Doctor's vast library that Metathesiophobia is the fear of change. He’s already changed once. He asks if she’ll stay with him if he changes again. Yes, she lies, and feels afraid.
~*~
The first time he makes love to her it’s like walking off a precipice.
It’s been awhile for him, and she’s the first he’s had in this new new body. But he knows sex. Legs gripping hips, backs that arch in ecstasy, lips on necks and teeth on skin and hands everywhere, then he’s falling and taking her with him.
Sex complicates things, though. It always has a price and sometimes the price is friendship. He has sex with her anyway. Because she won’t be around forever, and he refuses to have any regrets once she’s gone.
~*~
Rose Tyler makes love to the Doctor, knows that he doesn’t do domestic and wishes more than anything she could change that.
~*~
Was there ever a time when he wasn’t running? Running from danger, running from responsibility, from the law, from his future, from his past. Running simply for the sake of running.
Always running away. But there’s this feeling that he’s also running at something, towards something, something elusive that he can’t quite grasp; and every time he thinks he’s found it, it slips through his fingers.
Sometimes he feels guilty about his Companions. Innocents that he grabs hold of and takes with him on his mad race through time. Sometimes they can’t keep up, sometimes fall behind, sometimes he outdistances them without a second thought.
Rose never seems to be running from anything, even when she is. And when he’s with her, he doesn’t feel like he’s running either, even when he is.
Maybe, he thinks in his most unguarded moments, she’s what he was always running to.
~*~
Rose Tyler has stared down Daleks, has looked into the Heart of the TARDIS, has had the limitless entirety of Time running through her head. Rose Tyler convinces herself, occasionally, that she is immortal. Sometimes, it’s the only way she can fall asleep.
~*~
He’s not sure if he loves her, but he knows that he needs her. And he knows that this is dangerous, because he can sacrifice people he loves for the greater good, but he doesn’t know if he could sacrifice her, if it came to that.
He hopes so hard that he’ll never have to find out.
~*~
Time moves, and the fact that Rose Tyler is still alive against astronomical odds tempts fate. Live, little human. Live while you can, Time whispers.
~*~
Humans sleep too much.
Fully half their already-too-short lives are taken up by slumber and dreams.
The Doctor doesn’t dream, but he often wishes he could. He wonders what he’d dream of; Gallifrey and the Time Lords, of his past selves, of a life where his Companions never die. Or perhaps he’d dream of Daleks and blood and fire, of making a choice no living being should ever have to make.
Maybe it’s best that he doesn’t dream.
He looks into Rose’s mind, and finds she’s dreaming of his love and summer. He shares her dream, and he’s almost content.
~*~
Rose Tyler, on the cusp of life and death, wishes more than anything that she had a chance to say goodbye.
~*~
In the end, he never even saw it coming.
So fast. It all happened so fast, one stray bullet and Rose’s body was in his arms, his hands were slick with her blood, and her eyes were glassy with death.
This wasn’t supposed to happen. He was supposed to fight. She was supposed to live.
He howls his rage to an alien sky and demands that the Universe return her to him.
The Universe is, as ever, silent.
~*~
Rose Tyler, dearly departed, leaves behind for her Doctor a letter full of messages and hope. He reads it and imagines it’s her voice whispering it to him. He hides the letter somewhere safe.
~*~
Time moves, and the Doctor begins to feel real again.
He keeps his new Companions at arm’s length; loves them, but refuses to need them
He’s started running again, and he’s resigned to it now. Because there’s nothing more to run to, just the things to run from.
He still wishes he could dream because he knows he’d dream of her.
~*~
Time moves.
And then there is nothing, and it’s as if Rose and the Doctor never were.
Time moves and Time remembers.
~*~
“It was late, late in the evening,
The lovers they were gone;
The clocks had ceased their chiming,
And the deep river ran on.”
-From “As I Walked out One Evening” by W. H. Auden
~fin~
Title: Leaving
Rating: PG.
Pairing: Alt!Eight/Rose, Ten/Rose
Summary: Sometimes we find the ones we love again. And then we have to leave others behind.
She’s gone.
He always knew she might leave; she never deceived him about that. He knew she always hoped that maybe one day her Doctor --her first Doctor-- would find a way back to her. He let her hope, though never believed it would happen. Except it did.
He feels sick as he tells her goodbye, and avoids the eyes of his dimensional twin. The other Doctor slips quietly into his TARDIS, allowing them a moment of farewell. Gracious of him, the Doctor thinks bitterly, then firmly suppresses these thoughts when Rose looks up at him and smiles. She bites down on the corner of her lip in that endearing way she has.
“I’ll miss you.” She says quietly.
Then stay with me, he wants to scream, but doesn’t; just smiles through his pain.
“How can you miss me? I’m the guy with two hearts.” They both laugh at the lame attempt at humor, and suddenly she reaches up, cups his face in her hands and kisses him, quickly, on the lips.
“Goodbye.” She whispers, then turns and all but runs to the other TARDIS. He touches his fingers to his lips and watches the other TARDIS fade away to nothing, and suddenly he can’t feel her in his mind anymore. It’s like a punch to the stomach; he hadn’t realized how comforting it was, having her constantly hovering at the edge of his thoughts. Now it’s as if she never existed.
“Goodbye,” He whispers, his voice hollow, and turns to go back to his own TARDIS, alone.
Title: Nobody Knows
Pairing: Eight/Rose
Rating: G
Summary: She knows, deep down, that this long-haired stranger is not the Doctor. Not her Doctor, at any rate. AU.
Rose Tyler knows things. She’s known time, and space, and love. She knows not to say never ever. She knows that people don’t have to say “I love you” for it to be true. She knows that happiness can have a bitter edge. She knows that forever may never happen, or if it does she likely won’t be there to see it. She knows that faces are ephemeral; a familiar one might not last past the next regeneration. She knows not to judge by them.
Rose Tyler has bled and lost and hurt and said goodbye, more times than she should have to. She’s died, and returned, and (inside) died again. She’s lived through Daleks and storms and Time Vortices.
She’s not the naïve girl she once was. She knows that Doctors lie.
She knows, deep down, that this long-haired stranger is not the Doctor. Not her Doctor, at any rate. She knows that she may never love him. And she knows that he may never love her.
She knows that traveling with him may not be worth it; the risk, the pain. She knows that he’ll leave her one day, or she’ll leave him, or she’ll die, or he’ll change and she won’t be able to deal, but one day they’ll part. And she’ll be alone again.
She doesn’t know why, but she goes with him anyway.
~fin~
Title: Where Love Meets Apathy
Author: SuperherogrlCat
Rating: R
Pairing: 10/Rose
Summary: PWP featuring Tardis!Wall!sex, Rose being the strong one, and 10 being a poster child for self-depricating angst.
He pushes her up against the wall of the TARDIS, kissing her furiously, hands ripping at her clothing. He pulls back to stare at her. His breath is coming fast and hard, his teeth are bared, and the look in his eyes is terrifying; full of pain and rage, darkness and guilt.
It makes Rose want to run. It’s meant to. But she has to show him, show him that she is not afraid, that she accepts him, all of him; that she will never, ever leave him. That he can’t scare her off so easily.
So she wraps her legs around him and stifles a moan as he sinks into her, thrusting hard and fast and brutal. She meets his eyes, meets his thrusts, and whispers his name, her voice ragged with emotion.
Her hands clench on his shoulders. Oh, God.
And he doesn’t understand; she can see it in his eyes. He doesn’t understand why she’s letting him do this to her, letting him hurt her. He doesn’t understand that she loves him, all of him, even the darkness, even the pain, even the storm.
She takes his face in her hands, kissing him hard.
“I love you,” she whispers.
And he breaks.
A single long sob escapes him as he collapses against her body, passion spent. She holds him close to her, whispers nonsense to him, closing her eyes. She can feel him tremble, from fear or pain or something else, she doesn’t know. She kisses the side of his head and murmurs that she loves him, praying he doesn’t push her away.
“Rose,” He whispers, his voice raw. He pulls back slightly to stare at her. His eyes are glassy brown mirrors of pain so deep she knows it will never fully leave him.
“Why, Rose?” He demands. “I’m not….I’m a killer, Rose. I destroyed own people. My planet, gone, wiped out of existence. All because of me. And I nearly killed you to stop one Dalek….” He swallows, hard. “I’m not some savior, I’m not a hero. I’m a murderer, Rose.” He’s still trying to scare her off, trying to make her hate him. But she can’t. He’s the Doctor. He’s her Doctor. She’ll forgive him anything, even if he won’t forgive himself.
She stares directly into his gaze, lifting her chin defiantly, and says with conviction what she knows to be true.
“I don’t care.”
He closes his eyes and leans trembling against her, sighing softly like a surrender. He buries his face in her shoulder, wrapping his arms tightly around her. She can feel his hearts beating in his chest, can feel the low rumble of his voice as he murmurs her name like a prayer.
She strokes his hair, holds him close, and does what she can to comfort him, though she knows it will never, ever be enough. His pain is too deep and she can’t heal him She can only love him.
And she prays that love will be enough.
~fin~
Title: Waves
Pairing: Rose/Adric friendship, hints of Ten/Rose and Five/Adric
Rating: G
Characters: Rose Tyler, Adric, unnamed Doctor
Summary: Dreamtrippy drabble-type thing with Rose and Adric, and their thoughts on the Doctor.
It’s a perfect day at the beach. Absolutely perfect. Warm, but not too hot, bright and sunny and so picturesque it hurts.
The beach is completely deserted except for two figures sitting together near the water’s edge, facing the receding tide; a slender, dark-haired young man, who could have been a boyish eighteen, and a blond woman a few years older. The two of them are completely silent, the only sound is the crash of the waves and the distant cry of seagulls. The woman’s brown eyes are dark with grief and heartbreak, and she stares at the ocean without really seeing it. Her companion stares at her, his expression one of sympathy and understanding. His own eyes are shaded with the same sadness, the same grief. He understands.
“So what happened?” He asks at last. “With you and the Doctor? How did you…leave?”
The woman takes a deep breath and swallows hard before replying. “There was a rift, a hole in the fabric of the universe. It led to another parallel world, much like mine. We were trying to close the rift and I got trapped on the other side. The rift closed. He couldn’t open it again. He couldn’t come back to me. He found a way to say goodbye, but after that….I never saw him again. And he never told me--” She stops abruptly, as though she’s said too much. She looks bleak and haunted.
“Anyway.” She continues quietly, after a few seconds of silence. “I never forgot him. I never gave up, either. I always thought he might find a way back.” She smiles sadly. “He never did.”
The sun begins to set on the horizon. The sky is streaked with brilliant swatches of red, orange, and purple. The silence stretches as the young man digests the information. Left alone with nothing but her memories of the Doctor, knowing he was out there living his life while she was trapped living hers somewhere where she couldn’t see him, couldn’t be with him. It seemed crueler even than dying. “And you?” The woman asks abruptly, as though she can’t stand the silence for another second. “What about you?” How did you…leave?”
He stares down at the sand. “I died.” He says quietly. “I was in a spaceship, headed on a collision course with Earth. The rest of the crew escaped, but I…I thought I could fix it. I thought maybe if I stopped the collision, maybe he’d…like me better. Respect me more. He was drifting from me, you see. He had other companions, and it was like he didn’t know what to do with me, or how to treat me after his regeneration. I wanted to impress him.”
He steals a glance at the woman next to him. She looks like she knows exactly how he feels, and he wonders who she had to compete with, if she was ever as jealous as he.
“I suppose it didn’t matter, in the end. The controls were destroyed before I could get to them. There was nothing I could do. I died.” Neither of them speak for a long time. The sun continues to disappear and dusk settles over the beach. The night air grows chill. Neither figure can feel it.
“You loved him, didn’t you?” The woman asks at last.
“Yes.” The man replies, simply. “More than anything.” Then, after a pause, “Did you?”
She nods, slowly. “Yes. I loved him. I would have died for him. I never got the chance.” She looks into the eyes of her companion. “He was worth it.” She says fiercely. “Everything. Even when he hurt you, when he left you, he was always worth it. Worth the pain, worth the nightmares, worth the loneliness. He was worth it.” S
ilence, broken by the evening sounds of insects and the steady crash of the waves.
“Yes.” He replies at last. “He was.” Night falls, and the two figures are obscured in darkness. The silence stretches.
“So what’s your name?” He asks at last, because he can’t think of anything else to say.
“Rose. Rose Tyler. What’s yours?”
He smiles. “I’m Adric.”
“Adric,” She repeats with a sigh. A pause. “Thank you, Adric.”
He smiles, softly. “You’re welcome.”
The waves crash and the night grows deeper. Silence falls around them and somewhere, somewhen, the Doctor awakens, shaking, from a dream he can’t remember. He frowns when he realizes there are tears in his eyes, wipes them away, and falls quickly back to sleep. ~fin~