If You Love Someone
Title: If You Love Someone
Author: aibhinn
Character(s): Ten
Spoilers: Journey's End
Rating: Teen
Summary: Post-Journey's End, the Doctor goes to a familiar spot to think.
Disclaimer: Not mine. Not making any money. Please not to sue me.
Author's Note: Written in the restaurant in question (actually, the seat in question) on Cardiff Bay this afternoon. I've not tried my hand at post-Journey's End fic yet, so here, somewhat late, is my offering. A bit angsty, not surprisingly.
The Doctor sits at an outdoor table, staring into the middle distance, hardly seeing what's around him. This restaurant-the Bosphorus, down a short pier from Mermaid Quay-should hold nothing but pleasant memories for him. Here he, Rose, Jack, and Mickey spent an enjoyable afternoon over falafel and strong coffee, talking and laughing. It was their last bit of pure relaxation before the discovery of Blon Slitheen's survival and the Blaidd Drwg project. Before the game station and the Daleks. Before the Bad Wolf.
Across the water, the Norwegian Church gleams peacefully in the sunlight, while sculling teams practise on the water below. The "Giant Wheel", a Ferris wheel clearly built to mimic the London Eye, rotates slowly as it lets off some passengers and takes others on. Towards his left, the red-brick Pierhead Building towers over the waterfront. The Millennium Centre is there too, hidden from his sight by Mermaid Quay and its bustle of shoppers and diners.
Jack's over there, he knows. And Mickey, and Martha, and Gwen, and Ianto. Any or all of them would happily be with him now, if he wished it. He could phone them, if he wanted. Bit of a reunion. They'd like that.
He turns his head and looks through the floor-to-ceiling windows into the restaurant proper. He can pick out the very table where they'd sat years ago. In his mind's eye, he can still see Rose, laughing at an outrageous Jack story, head tilted back and eyes sparkling. He closes his eyes and focuses on that image, remembering every detail in crystalline-clear detail.
But the picture is suddenly replaced with another image: Rose, kissing another man who looked just like himself. The pain of the memory is so fierce that he sucks in an involuntary breath and opens his eyes.
He'd told Rose the other Doctor was a version of him that could not exist in this universe without grave consequences, and that was true, so far as it went. And he is glad she's happy, he really is. It's the fantastic life he always wanted for her. But seeing her kiss the other him the way he'd always wanted her to kiss him had been more than he could bear. He'd left abruptly, without saying goodbye, because he didn't want her to know how very much he coveted that half-Time-Lord life for himself. To live a human lifespan with the woman you love, and then to die once and for all, content in the memory of being loved and having loved. Never had he wanted it so badly as he does with her.
He hopes his other self sees it that way.
A dark-brown speckled bird hops onto the back of the chair opposite him, cocking its head inquiringly. Emboldened by his stillness, it flutters onto the table, searching vainly for bits of food before flying off. He watches it go.
If you love something, set it free, he thinks. If it comes back to you, it's yours. If it doesn't, it never was.
She came back to me. Whatever happened later, she came back to me.
That'll have to be enough.
Taking a deep breath, he drops some money onto the table and leaves, hands in his trouser pockets, to say hello to Torchwood Three.
Author: aibhinn
Character(s): Ten
Spoilers: Journey's End
Rating: Teen
Summary: Post-Journey's End, the Doctor goes to a familiar spot to think.
Disclaimer: Not mine. Not making any money. Please not to sue me.
Author's Note: Written in the restaurant in question (actually, the seat in question) on Cardiff Bay this afternoon. I've not tried my hand at post-Journey's End fic yet, so here, somewhat late, is my offering. A bit angsty, not surprisingly.
The Doctor sits at an outdoor table, staring into the middle distance, hardly seeing what's around him. This restaurant-the Bosphorus, down a short pier from Mermaid Quay-should hold nothing but pleasant memories for him. Here he, Rose, Jack, and Mickey spent an enjoyable afternoon over falafel and strong coffee, talking and laughing. It was their last bit of pure relaxation before the discovery of Blon Slitheen's survival and the Blaidd Drwg project. Before the game station and the Daleks. Before the Bad Wolf.
Across the water, the Norwegian Church gleams peacefully in the sunlight, while sculling teams practise on the water below. The "Giant Wheel", a Ferris wheel clearly built to mimic the London Eye, rotates slowly as it lets off some passengers and takes others on. Towards his left, the red-brick Pierhead Building towers over the waterfront. The Millennium Centre is there too, hidden from his sight by Mermaid Quay and its bustle of shoppers and diners.
Jack's over there, he knows. And Mickey, and Martha, and Gwen, and Ianto. Any or all of them would happily be with him now, if he wished it. He could phone them, if he wanted. Bit of a reunion. They'd like that.
He turns his head and looks through the floor-to-ceiling windows into the restaurant proper. He can pick out the very table where they'd sat years ago. In his mind's eye, he can still see Rose, laughing at an outrageous Jack story, head tilted back and eyes sparkling. He closes his eyes and focuses on that image, remembering every detail in crystalline-clear detail.
But the picture is suddenly replaced with another image: Rose, kissing another man who looked just like himself. The pain of the memory is so fierce that he sucks in an involuntary breath and opens his eyes.
He'd told Rose the other Doctor was a version of him that could not exist in this universe without grave consequences, and that was true, so far as it went. And he is glad she's happy, he really is. It's the fantastic life he always wanted for her. But seeing her kiss the other him the way he'd always wanted her to kiss him had been more than he could bear. He'd left abruptly, without saying goodbye, because he didn't want her to know how very much he coveted that half-Time-Lord life for himself. To live a human lifespan with the woman you love, and then to die once and for all, content in the memory of being loved and having loved. Never had he wanted it so badly as he does with her.
He hopes his other self sees it that way.
A dark-brown speckled bird hops onto the back of the chair opposite him, cocking its head inquiringly. Emboldened by his stillness, it flutters onto the table, searching vainly for bits of food before flying off. He watches it go.
If you love something, set it free, he thinks. If it comes back to you, it's yours. If it doesn't, it never was.
She came back to me. Whatever happened later, she came back to me.
That'll have to be enough.
Taking a deep breath, he drops some money onto the table and leaves, hands in his trouser pockets, to say hello to Torchwood Three.