Listen (1/1)
More Ten II/Rose in The Journey After series, set following following Needful Things. Thanks to platypus for beta. Spoilers for Journey's End, of course, but no other warnings.
…
In the wee hours of the night, the Doctor became fuzzily aware that Rose had untangled herself from him. Still more asleep than not, he shifted to settle into the warm spot her body had made, and he would have drifted back into dreams if it hadn’t been for the sound. He sat bolt upright, blinking to clear his vision and see her where she perched on the edge of the bed.
The sound came again, and it tore at him. He put a hand on her bare back and felt the trembling there. "Rose," he said softly.
"I’m all right."
"You’re crying."
"It’s nothing - I just -" Her next sob was louder, half hiccup, like she couldn’t quite hold it in.
"Here," he said, turning both of them so he could wrap his arms around her. He kissed her hair and waited for the dam to break, and when it did, he held her and whispered to her. She burrowed into his shoulder and cried without words while he rocked her back and forth.
In time - a seemingly very, very long time but only moments in reality, which he wondered at - her sobs stopped. Every few breaths, she sniffed and caught her breath. When she spoke, her voice was lower and full of feeling.
"I didn't think about him tonight," Rose confessed into his shoulder. "Not once. I always did, before. Before I went to sleep, I thought about what you were doing, if you were all right. Tonight when we - I didn't even think about him at all."
The Doctor's new life was filled with comparisons and contrasts, but his thoughts had been focused on the changes and not the welfare of his doppelganger.
"I'm afraid I'll forget him," she continued. "You're right here, and it's so easy to forget because I - I love you so much, but he's still out there - you're still out there and I'll never know. Will you know when he … you know, when he regenerates?" She sat back and looked at him. Her tear-streaked face was full of both fear and hope, and he couldn't lie to her, not even to assuage her grief and guilt.
"No."
"Would you even tell me if you could?" she bit back.
That stung, even if she had good cause to doubt his truthfulness when it came to protecting her feelings or her welfare. "I would." He thought he meant it.
They were both quiet for a moment, looking away from one another. "I'm sorry," Rose said in a soft voice.
"You don't have to be sorry, not ever." He met her eyes and gave her a smile that he knew was weak. "I won't know. It could be years and years anyway." That wasn't a lie. It could happen that way, although he rather thought not. He wished he could offer consolation that someone would be looking out for his double, but the insinuations that they both had made on the beach about Donna's continued presence were disingenuous enough.
"It could have happened yesterday," she said. "And what if - what if you're both wrong again? What if he shows up tomorrow?"
The Doctor ran his hand through his hair, hating the aching pain writ across her face. "I won't make any sweeping statements this time, but I do know one thing for certain." He swallowed. "He doesn't intend to come back."
She cried harder at that, and he felt he had no right to hold her, but he did. Her body shook and she didn't try to hold in her anguish this time, which he thought at once was very positive and oh, so terrible. It was impossible to hold himself at an emotional distance from her when he had given in to intimacy between them, and a small voice inside him noted that he had been very right to keep those walls in place before. He cringed at what he might have done for her now, faced with her grief. He'd have gone as mad as Dalek Caan and broken the universe in just as profound a way.
It was easier now that he didn't actually have that choice to make.
"I know something else, Rose. I'm here," he said, as much for his benefit as for hers. "I'll stay. Forever."
When she stopped crying this second time, he kissed her and skimmed her face with his fingers, tracing the shadows under her eyes and the moist tracks of her tears.
"I need to tell you something," she whispered into the space between them. "I did - I did something awful, and I think I had to, but it was still awful."
"You don't have to -"
"I need to," she interrupted, putting her finger across his lips. "I need you to know. I kept jumping, and no matter where I landed, I almost always found some reference to Donna. I met her for the first time when the ship with all the fat blobs took off."
"Adipose," he corrected automatically from behind her finger.
"I thought I'd found you then. I thought for sure you'd be there and you were, I'd just missed you by a few minutes. It made me - God. I didn't recognise her until later, after we started seeing her all over the place." She shivered, and her hand slid down to rest limply on his shoulder. "When I found her again, it was all wrong. You were -" She swallowed and continued, her expression darkening with resolve. "You had drowned under the Thames. It wasn't supposed to happen that way, and then it got worse for everyone, so much worse. There was this horrible future and the only thing that had changed was Donna. She didn't meet you."
He didn't want to talk about Donna, not when he was trying so hard not to tell Rose the truth about what had happened. Instead of running, or changing the subject, or anything that he might have done to avoid the conversation, he waited and listened.
"I killed her," Rose said.
Stunned, the Doctor blinked, frowned, and squinted at her face. She was utterly serious. "What?"
"In that other universe, I mean. We had the TARDIS, because you were gone, and I told her she had to die so the other her would meet you. I made her trust me, and then I sent her back to die. I killed her."
"Rose," he said, with all the compassion and empathy and love he could put into the single word. He closed his eyes and drew her close to him again, feeling her heartbeat hammering in her chest and her breath coming quick and shallow. Did she think he would reject her, or hate her, or condemn what she had done? He, who had sent countless people and even species to their deaths in the name of Time?
"Sometimes -" The platitudes were dancing on the tip of his tongue. He knew them so very well, because he aimed them at his own conscience often enough. Preserve the timeline. Prevent the paradox. Protect the greater good. They were bitter enough consolation when he tried to use them on himself, and he couldn't spout any off for Rose, not today, not anymore. He offered what he knew to be truth. "I understand."
Rose let out a long, juddering breath and collapsed against him. "Thank you. Thank you. I had to tell you."
"I know," he said softly. "There's something I need to tell you, too." He felt dazed, unsteady. He knew it would hurt her to hear this, but he couldn't keep it from her, not forever, and he felt that he could burst with the not-telling. "Donna's not with him anymore. Her mind can't handle the metacrisis. There are two choices, either to let her die or to take it all away, and I know what I would have done."
"What do you mean, take it away?"
"Erase her memories and hide all that knowledge away. It would be like she'd never met me."
Rose's mouth made a perfect O. "But that - that's like erasing her! She'd never let him do that!"
"No. She wouldn't."
He could read the horror on her face and waited for the ensuing outrage. Rose continued to stare at him open-mouthed. Twitching with discomfort, he resisted the urge to flee, to find something to do in the loo or the kitchen or maybe the small office down the hallway. He deserved every bit of outrage she could level at him and the least he could do was to face it like a man.
"Would you have done that?" she asked.
"To save her life? Yes." He felt rising pressure inside him and fire in his eyes, and this time, the breaking dam was inside him. He leaned into Rose and felt her arms come around him as he stifled a sob.
"It's all right," she whispered. "I've got you."
He clutched at her as if she might be snatched away from him otherwise and gasped with the agony of his grief and guilt. Rose held on, and as he had done earlier, she soothed him with words of love and comfort. He sobbed over most of them, but he heard the intent.
When he quieted, she had one hand pressed against his back and one stroking his hair. He felt shaky, almost newborn, and he turned his head just enough to kiss her shoulder. "Look at the pair of us," he said, trying for casual and succeeding only in sounding gruff to his own ears.
"I think it's normal," Rose said.
"Oi, who wants normal? I think we both confessed to killing the same woman."
"Don't joke."
"It's a defense mechanism," he protested. "I need to have at least one of them left." He released himself from her embrace and lay back on the bed.
"You don't have to defend yourself from me," she said, settling down beside him.
"It's not you I'm worried about."
They were quiet for a few minutes. "Are we going to be okay?" she asked finally.
"Oh, yeah," he said with relish. "We're going to be more than okay. Well, as long as the therapy bills don't drive us to ruin." She sniffed. "I heard that. It was a bit of a laugh, wasn't it?"
"Tell me about her," she said instead of answering.
He smiled. It still hurt, would always hurt, but he had to try to reconcile what he had loved and lost with what he still had. "She hunted me down," he began. "She said that she didn't want to travel with me but then she changed her mind and went looking." Both of them had found him, hadn't they? His best mate and his love. "You should have seen all the luggage she brought. And a hatbox! Oh, you'd love this - we solved a murder with Agatha Christie!"
Rose, smiling, listened.
Next: Life on the Moon
…
In the wee hours of the night, the Doctor became fuzzily aware that Rose had untangled herself from him. Still more asleep than not, he shifted to settle into the warm spot her body had made, and he would have drifted back into dreams if it hadn’t been for the sound. He sat bolt upright, blinking to clear his vision and see her where she perched on the edge of the bed.
The sound came again, and it tore at him. He put a hand on her bare back and felt the trembling there. "Rose," he said softly.
"I’m all right."
"You’re crying."
"It’s nothing - I just -" Her next sob was louder, half hiccup, like she couldn’t quite hold it in.
"Here," he said, turning both of them so he could wrap his arms around her. He kissed her hair and waited for the dam to break, and when it did, he held her and whispered to her. She burrowed into his shoulder and cried without words while he rocked her back and forth.
In time - a seemingly very, very long time but only moments in reality, which he wondered at - her sobs stopped. Every few breaths, she sniffed and caught her breath. When she spoke, her voice was lower and full of feeling.
"I didn't think about him tonight," Rose confessed into his shoulder. "Not once. I always did, before. Before I went to sleep, I thought about what you were doing, if you were all right. Tonight when we - I didn't even think about him at all."
The Doctor's new life was filled with comparisons and contrasts, but his thoughts had been focused on the changes and not the welfare of his doppelganger.
"I'm afraid I'll forget him," she continued. "You're right here, and it's so easy to forget because I - I love you so much, but he's still out there - you're still out there and I'll never know. Will you know when he … you know, when he regenerates?" She sat back and looked at him. Her tear-streaked face was full of both fear and hope, and he couldn't lie to her, not even to assuage her grief and guilt.
"No."
"Would you even tell me if you could?" she bit back.
That stung, even if she had good cause to doubt his truthfulness when it came to protecting her feelings or her welfare. "I would." He thought he meant it.
They were both quiet for a moment, looking away from one another. "I'm sorry," Rose said in a soft voice.
"You don't have to be sorry, not ever." He met her eyes and gave her a smile that he knew was weak. "I won't know. It could be years and years anyway." That wasn't a lie. It could happen that way, although he rather thought not. He wished he could offer consolation that someone would be looking out for his double, but the insinuations that they both had made on the beach about Donna's continued presence were disingenuous enough.
"It could have happened yesterday," she said. "And what if - what if you're both wrong again? What if he shows up tomorrow?"
The Doctor ran his hand through his hair, hating the aching pain writ across her face. "I won't make any sweeping statements this time, but I do know one thing for certain." He swallowed. "He doesn't intend to come back."
She cried harder at that, and he felt he had no right to hold her, but he did. Her body shook and she didn't try to hold in her anguish this time, which he thought at once was very positive and oh, so terrible. It was impossible to hold himself at an emotional distance from her when he had given in to intimacy between them, and a small voice inside him noted that he had been very right to keep those walls in place before. He cringed at what he might have done for her now, faced with her grief. He'd have gone as mad as Dalek Caan and broken the universe in just as profound a way.
It was easier now that he didn't actually have that choice to make.
"I know something else, Rose. I'm here," he said, as much for his benefit as for hers. "I'll stay. Forever."
When she stopped crying this second time, he kissed her and skimmed her face with his fingers, tracing the shadows under her eyes and the moist tracks of her tears.
"I need to tell you something," she whispered into the space between them. "I did - I did something awful, and I think I had to, but it was still awful."
"You don't have to -"
"I need to," she interrupted, putting her finger across his lips. "I need you to know. I kept jumping, and no matter where I landed, I almost always found some reference to Donna. I met her for the first time when the ship with all the fat blobs took off."
"Adipose," he corrected automatically from behind her finger.
"I thought I'd found you then. I thought for sure you'd be there and you were, I'd just missed you by a few minutes. It made me - God. I didn't recognise her until later, after we started seeing her all over the place." She shivered, and her hand slid down to rest limply on his shoulder. "When I found her again, it was all wrong. You were -" She swallowed and continued, her expression darkening with resolve. "You had drowned under the Thames. It wasn't supposed to happen that way, and then it got worse for everyone, so much worse. There was this horrible future and the only thing that had changed was Donna. She didn't meet you."
He didn't want to talk about Donna, not when he was trying so hard not to tell Rose the truth about what had happened. Instead of running, or changing the subject, or anything that he might have done to avoid the conversation, he waited and listened.
"I killed her," Rose said.
Stunned, the Doctor blinked, frowned, and squinted at her face. She was utterly serious. "What?"
"In that other universe, I mean. We had the TARDIS, because you were gone, and I told her she had to die so the other her would meet you. I made her trust me, and then I sent her back to die. I killed her."
"Rose," he said, with all the compassion and empathy and love he could put into the single word. He closed his eyes and drew her close to him again, feeling her heartbeat hammering in her chest and her breath coming quick and shallow. Did she think he would reject her, or hate her, or condemn what she had done? He, who had sent countless people and even species to their deaths in the name of Time?
"Sometimes -" The platitudes were dancing on the tip of his tongue. He knew them so very well, because he aimed them at his own conscience often enough. Preserve the timeline. Prevent the paradox. Protect the greater good. They were bitter enough consolation when he tried to use them on himself, and he couldn't spout any off for Rose, not today, not anymore. He offered what he knew to be truth. "I understand."
Rose let out a long, juddering breath and collapsed against him. "Thank you. Thank you. I had to tell you."
"I know," he said softly. "There's something I need to tell you, too." He felt dazed, unsteady. He knew it would hurt her to hear this, but he couldn't keep it from her, not forever, and he felt that he could burst with the not-telling. "Donna's not with him anymore. Her mind can't handle the metacrisis. There are two choices, either to let her die or to take it all away, and I know what I would have done."
"What do you mean, take it away?"
"Erase her memories and hide all that knowledge away. It would be like she'd never met me."
Rose's mouth made a perfect O. "But that - that's like erasing her! She'd never let him do that!"
"No. She wouldn't."
He could read the horror on her face and waited for the ensuing outrage. Rose continued to stare at him open-mouthed. Twitching with discomfort, he resisted the urge to flee, to find something to do in the loo or the kitchen or maybe the small office down the hallway. He deserved every bit of outrage she could level at him and the least he could do was to face it like a man.
"Would you have done that?" she asked.
"To save her life? Yes." He felt rising pressure inside him and fire in his eyes, and this time, the breaking dam was inside him. He leaned into Rose and felt her arms come around him as he stifled a sob.
"It's all right," she whispered. "I've got you."
He clutched at her as if she might be snatched away from him otherwise and gasped with the agony of his grief and guilt. Rose held on, and as he had done earlier, she soothed him with words of love and comfort. He sobbed over most of them, but he heard the intent.
When he quieted, she had one hand pressed against his back and one stroking his hair. He felt shaky, almost newborn, and he turned his head just enough to kiss her shoulder. "Look at the pair of us," he said, trying for casual and succeeding only in sounding gruff to his own ears.
"I think it's normal," Rose said.
"Oi, who wants normal? I think we both confessed to killing the same woman."
"Don't joke."
"It's a defense mechanism," he protested. "I need to have at least one of them left." He released himself from her embrace and lay back on the bed.
"You don't have to defend yourself from me," she said, settling down beside him.
"It's not you I'm worried about."
They were quiet for a few minutes. "Are we going to be okay?" she asked finally.
"Oh, yeah," he said with relish. "We're going to be more than okay. Well, as long as the therapy bills don't drive us to ruin." She sniffed. "I heard that. It was a bit of a laugh, wasn't it?"
"Tell me about her," she said instead of answering.
He smiled. It still hurt, would always hurt, but he had to try to reconcile what he had loved and lost with what he still had. "She hunted me down," he began. "She said that she didn't want to travel with me but then she changed her mind and went looking." Both of them had found him, hadn't they? His best mate and his love. "You should have seen all the luggage she brought. And a hatbox! Oh, you'd love this - we solved a murder with Agatha Christie!"
Rose, smiling, listened.
Next: Life on the Moon