fic: Doctor Who (Ten/Rose)
Sooo... I wrote a fic! And actually finished it! And had it properly beta'd! And am now posting it! YAY!
Title: This Is What Happens
Author: lovefase
Rating: M
Pairing: Ten/Rose, hints of Nine/Rose
Disclaimer: The Beeb owns Doctor Who. The Beeb also owns my soul. Coincidence?
Summary: After Rose's death, the Doctor learns a lesson in fate. Saying anything else would be quite spoilery and, well, I don't want to spoil my own fic, do I?
A/N: Lots of dark!Ten. I will call him dark!Ten and not emo!Ten, because he does not wear his glasses and update his LJ while listening to Coldplay in this fic. Incredible thanks to shadesofbrixton, my beta since always.
maybe you're the same as me
we see things they'll never see
you and i are gonna live forever...
He knows how humans mourn.
They all like to think that they take it differently, but really, they're all the same. The anger, the depression, the acceptance. He's been witness to human emotions for so long that sometimes, even if just for a lapse in time, he almost forgets that he's not the same.
He doesn't feel like them. Not for the most part, at least. Humans fight out an epic battle with emotions until they overcome the darkness.
Instead, he lets himself slip easily into the fog. In this state, he doesn't know or care how much time passes.
One morning, on a planet some 4,000 years into her future, he sits and watches as three suns set beneath the horizon. He tries to calculate how long he's been without her, tries to count time into some obtuse figure, but the sky falls to complete black before he can truly reach any estimate. He figures it's been months, but knows that, in truth, it has actually been much longer.
He retreats into the TARDIS alone and takes off once again.
He wonders how many times he's done this, how many times his machine has had to contain all of the pieces of him from spilling out across the universe.
*
He picks up a new companion while in Scotland. He finds her stranded on Ben Nevis and, as he tends to do, he saves her life while narrowly escaping a dangerous confrontation with a beast made of snow.
She giggles and makes conversation easily. He treats her respectfully and answers each of her detailed questions with all of the tired enthusiasm of a tenured and aged professor.
At first, he is quite pleased with himself. Her very presence kicks his habit of spending days in a row under the console, speaking to no one but himself. He tries to convince himself that it feels right, that she will help lift the darkness that has been weighing him down.
On their seventh day together, he is excitedly explaining something of little importance to her while fixing a video screen, his nimble hands moving expertly over the machinery. She presses herself against him, rubbing the palm of her hand over the top of his, and asks him if his hands are good at doing anything else with such finesse.
He untangles himself from her and says nothing. The moment ranks high among his most awkward encounters, only battling with that one time when he lost his trousers on Hawklaaooomund while being chased by gigantic flying feathers.
He takes her straight home without much of an explanation.
He wonders how long it will take him to forget her name, but he knows better. He never forgets anyone.
*
One day, he awakes on the floor, the grate having had its way with his cheek while he slept. As he is talking to himself, contemplating where he had left off in his repairs, a button on his coat springs loose and falls through the grates of the floor.
He examines the rest of his coat and comes to find it in extremely poor condition. He notices, with dismay, that this is not the first button to have escaped its prison of needlework, and he is frustrated that he did not see this earlier.
He takes his beloved coat to a tailor on Earth in 2266 (an exceptionally great year for the tailoring industry). He spends the day in clothes that don't fit well at all. He finds the respite from his usual wardrobe to be almost freeing, as if he's stripped off his uniform after a long day at work, and he walks the streets of London feeling more like he fits in and less like a traveling tourist.
When he passes a cemetery, he takes just a moment to calculate her birthday to the current year before stepping quickly across the street, the headstones beckoning silently at his back.
*
In the year 1804, he meets a shy young girl, aged sixteen. He spends days hanging around near her estate, trying to discover some root of evil or a hidden monster or an event that wasn't supposed to happen, anything to explain why he was brought to this exact moment in time.
On the sixth day, the girl's mother pulls him aside and explains that something is wrong with her daughter, that she doesn't know what to do.
He likes helping people. It's all that he lives for. He sets off to find out what's wrong with the girl, to make her better. She is only sixteen. He can't stop thinking about how she's got her whole life left to live.
He finds the monster on that day; it is a blackened spirit that haunts the grounds, keeping the girl prisoner on the estate. It is a simple matter that he resolves quickly, with a deft flick of his sonic screwdriver and a stern talking to her father, who had been keeping the girl separated from her fiancée. With her love hundreds of miles across Britain, she had been slowly falling apart.
When her father and the spirits are defeated, he takes the girl and tells her to pack her bags. He holds her gently at her shoulders and explains that he is a doctor, and that he's going to save her.
The girl is neither shocked nor worried about traveling in a blue box with a strange man. Even if the trip only lasts for a few minutes, he is still pleased to see someone besides himself in his home. He knows it's been a long time, and that his TARDIS gets just as lonely as he does.
It isn't his most important trip, but it obviously means something. He understands that he was brought there for a reason, that if these two people weren't brought together somehow, that the world would change. He thinks there is some sort of underlying message about love and togetherness that he should make a mental note of, and he almost falls for it. He smiles -- and really means it -- as he embraces the girl before she leaves.
He doesn't join her outside; he just stands at the doorway and watches as she tries lamely to run across a dewy field in her heavy dress. He can see the man she longs for just over the horizon, moving quicker than she is towards her.
His smile fades rapidly; he turns and shuts the blue doors behind him before waiting to watch the lovers reunite.
He eases his hands over the doors and can feel the TARDIS sighing at his touch. There can be a million things wrong with his machine that he knows with certainty he can fix, but when it comes to himself, he doesn't even know where to begin.
*
He no longer makes a habit out of traveling to London, but on occasion, the TARDIS takes him there anyways. The screen on the console informs him that it's 2056, the summer famous for abnormally hot weather in the British Isles and Prince Harry's freak space shuttle incident that left him hanging just left of Mars for three days before his rescue came (he always thought it preposterous that royalty ever tried to dabble in space travel).
On this particular day, the heat unreasonably breaking all records in history, he finds himself walking through the East End, the urge to strip his jacket and tie almost unbearable. The heat radiates on the horizon, casting crackling waves of hot over the streets, making it near impossible to breathe. Instead of the usual city bustle, the sound of white noise hovers over the streets, emanating from air conditioning units that cling to nearly every visible window. The only people on the streets are children, who sit stagnant in bathing suits under constant flows of spraying water.
Nothing important is happening, he thinks. Unless he's now supposed to serve as Savior of Weather on Planet Earth as well as Lord of Time.
He plops himself onto the edge of the pavement next to a news kiosk. His eyes strain to read the fine print of the article titled WHAT'S NEXT FOR HARRY?: PRINCE BUYS NEW SPACE SHUTTLE, UNDETERRED BY MARS MISHAP. He fidgets with his tie, nearly panting to breathe. A small shadow falls over him and he squints up into the harsh sunlight to find the source.
It is a small girl, just around ten or so. Her long light brown hair, once neatly combed and separated into two pigtails, is now soaked and matted against her scalp, dripping wet spots onto her shirt.
"Hello!" she says, hands held with apparent restraint at her sides. "Who are you?"
He grins widely at the girl. Children, he thinks, are lovely and incredibly wise and he welcomes a conversation that most definitely won't involve greed or pettiness or every other trait he has grown weary of recently.
"I'm the Doctor," he states, surprised to find the girl nearly bursting with excitement as he introduces himself. "And you are?"
She giggles and fights to calm herself. "I like your shoes," she says randomly, pointing to the matching (but many sizes smaller) pair of plimsolls on her own feet.
"Well look at that." For the first time in months (or is it years now?) he feels the smug side of himself rise to the surface, pleased that he's still somehow fashionable. He begins to continue speaking, but the girl starts to jabber on.
"Can you believe this heat? Been like this for months now. I usually don't care for winter much myself, but mum says if it's not better by December, we're all gonna move to Iceland and live like Eskimos until it's all better."
The sensation of laughter in his throat feels like he's rediscovered an old friend he had lost. "Your mum knows there's no Eskimos in Iceland?"
"That's what I said!" the girl jumps around excitedly before getting control of herself. "I said, if anything, we should move to Greenland. Most of Greenland's covered in ice. Well, used to be a lot more ice there but then, you know," she points up to the sky at the sun and shrugs to finish her thought.
He follows the line of her finger into the sky and feels, for the first time, as if he might be onto something wrong in this version of London. He stands, with effort, rising tall above the little girl.
"You best get inside now," he says, placing a hand on her shoulder. "If my calculations are correct -- and they usually are -- the sun's about to do something it shouldn't."
She nods and doesn't question him. She turns to leave but instead flings herself into his arms. He steps back strangely, but pats her gently on the head. She looks up at him, her neck craned and her eyes squinting to see him in the sunlight.
"Thank you," she says, before running away from him down the block until she vanishes around the corner.
As he runs off to try to pinpoint the exact problem, he knows he will not forget about the little nameless girl who made him smile so brightly.
Then, of course, he saves London (and planet Earth) from an exploding sun.
He thinks that is the only reason why the TARDIS has brought him to this time and place, but he is wrong.
*
Some time later (naturally), he awakes in one of the hallways of the TARDIS, the location of his new take-things-apart-to-see-what-they-do repairs that keeps his mind busy. He has slept on his stomach, his limbs spread about in the most unbecoming manner across the floor. As he shifts to stand, he hears a crack in the lining of his coat, and his hearts sink.
His glasses are shattered, one side cracked like it's been hit with a bullet, the other side hollowed out completely.
He frowns deeply, partly because he will have to spend time on a planet to get them repaired, but mostly because he now cannot tinker with anything until the aforementioned repair is completed. He remembers the popped buttons on his coat, and knows that he's completely lost all track of how long he has been in this body.
He thinks of regeneration and living and dying.
He lets himself wander the halls of the TARDIS, his broken glasses hanging loosely in his hands, until he reaches the room she once called home. He pushes the door open and finds the room almost clinically clean. The bed is neatly made. There are no personal items anywhere to be seen. These things are not what bothers him. He aches over the fact that her scent has vanished from the room entirely.
It is almost as if she never existed.
He travels to some planet and gets his glasses fixed and tries not to think about it again.
But he does, of course.
*
He decides he needs a little holiday of sorts, so he travels to a place and time he's never been to before.
The planet is full of creatures who look something like anteaters (if you squint very hard and the lighting is just right) called Cann-n-nex-x-xaplronz (which is pronounced something like someone vomitting while attempting to say the word cantalope). They own robots that resemble 29th century humans, which is a little jarring to him, considering he is most used to humans being humans and not robots.
He does not stay long, as he is approached seven times in the first hour of his visit by the anteater-like-creatures trying to jam a key into his neck, then muttering apologies when they realize he is a human-human and not a robot-human.
He wanders to the edge of a cliff and hides behind a rock where no creature will bother him. He stays there for hours, watching some sort of sports game below, where (from what he can discern) the Cann-n-nex-x-xaplronz battle each other for the ultimate prize of a pot of dandelions.
He laughs and speaks a commentary aloud to himself, being far beyond the point of caring who might hear him and what, if anything, one of these creatures might think of him.
There is a part of him that wants to find a town and explore it for more ridiculous customs and antics, but instead he stays on the cliff until a row of seven moons have aligned themselves over the horizon.
He knows she would love this, that she would lean her head on his shoulder and lace her fingers through his. He knows they would stay this way together, even long after his shoulder went numb and their fingers stuck together with perspiration. He knows what her smile would feel like pressed against his arm, how her hair would smell as it tickled his face in the wind, how she would bounce her legs anxiously until he calmed her by laying his hand on her knee.
Sometimes, he likes to reason that it still hurts because he hasn't attempted to move on. He doesn't just think about her; he thinks about them all, keeps them alive in his mind. He is confident that he could ease himself back into a routine if he found a new companion to distract him from the memories of her.
But he rises from the cliffside and goes home to his TARDIS.
He knows he won't search for anyone new. He doesn't think he can take it just yet.
*
Sometimes, when he thinks of her, he wants to punish himself. He does this by strictly forbidding himself to think of anything remotely involving her memory, and he usually ends up crammed into any tiny compartment in the ceiling of the TARDIS, metal bits prodding his body as he searches for anything to tinker with. These are his darkest moments, and it seems to take him ages to snap out of such a funk.
Some other times, he indulges in her memory to, what he is afraid, is the point of absurdity. He fights the urge to stop off for chips (he passes on the fish), to land in the Powell Estates just to see what's become of it, or to go to a place he wishes he had taken her to in their time together.
Like Paris. Of course, he had been there, and she spoke of visiting there once or twice as a child, but they were never there together. He inwardly hates that it's known as the City of Romance, because locations are never what is romantic, it's who you're with while you're there.
He knows this because his skin still flushes when he thinks of that time they visited the sheep planet. They could barely hold a conversation over the continuous loud noise of bahhhing and, as expected, the ground was entirely covered in manure. But he can't think of a single moment during that day when they weren't somehow connected, her hand in his, them sitting so close to each other that each part of their sides touched, even him going as far as wrapping his arms around her waist and pulling her tightly to him as they watched two sheep battle over a fine wool drapery.
"That'd be like... like making curtains out of my own hair," she said from in front of him, her head twisted to the side so he could hear her over the sheep fight. "Disgusting."
He pressed his nose to just above her ear and inhaled deeply. "I don't know. Wouldn't be so bad, long as you keep up with this shampoo. What is this? Strawberries and... a slight hint of... is that Nutella?"
She giggled, ribbing him carefully in the side with her elbow. "Yes, I smear Nutella in my hair when I shower. I find it keeps my ends from splitting."
"Mmm," she felt him say more than heard him. "Delicious."
"Can't keep you from sniffing anything, can I?"
"Definitely not," he responded.
When he tries to map out exactly at what point this day occured, he finds that it is difficult to measure out the time he spent with her. Was it years? Was it only months? Exactly how old was she when he watched her parish and die? He knows he'll never be quite sure.
He moves on anyways, only because he has no other choice.
On a sunny day in Cardiff around 1982, he chews on a pile of chips and wishes she was there to explain the vinegar. He licks a length of it off one chip and smells the tangy substance, inspecting it closely. He doesn't quite understand the appeal, but the experience helps him to smile without feeling miserable, and that's a first.
So there's that, in the very least.
*
Things change when the TARDIS lands in Ireland.
The year is 2088, the 20th anniversary of the Earth War, which came to a decisively vicious end on the western coast at the Cliffs of Moher. The TARDIS sets herself down near what little remains of O'Brien's Tower, and he spends a great portion of the afternoon basking in the celebration of the anniversary with the thousands of tourists that have gathered at the spot. He wonders if something will go wrong, if he has been brought here for a reason, and he looks with worry towards the long edge of the cliff, where humans lay like fools on their bellies too close to the edge, just to snap a good picture.
No one falls off the cliff, though. The day passes peacefully with cultures from all around Earth gathered to celebrate the survival of their planet. He had little involvement in the Earth War, so he spends most of the day listening to stories to piece together the events of the final battle.
As the sun begins to set over the Atlantic, a new monument is revealed to the onlookers, a flat engraved stone that features a wide sun dial, 'to represent the marriage of time and space on Planet Earth,' as the speaker so eloquently phrases it. He joins a queue of guests, which moves rather slowly, to get an up-close look at the stone.
Behind him, a Chilean woman and a Spanish man swap stories of how the war affected their respective sides of the ocean. He eavesdrops intently until he reaches the stone, finding barely enough time to read the entire inscription before the queue begs to push him forward.
EARTH WAR
2060-2068
BELOW RESTS THE REMAINS
OF THE 73 HEROES
WHO DEFENDED OUR PLANET
IN THE FINAL BATTLE FOR EARTH
AND SAVED MANKIND
AB OVO USQUE AD MALA
He skims the list of names etched in the stone around the sun dial. When his eyes catch the name Jack Harkness, he feels his legs shake, and he reaches out to brace himself on the corner of the stone.
When he reads the name Rose Tyler, his legs buckle completely and he falls to his knees in front of the sun dial.
He is the perfect picture of a servant to time and existence.
*
The TARDIS takes him nowhere for a while. She just vanishes into space and drifts about.
When he steps inside after Ireland, he walks with purpose down the hallways until he discovers his old library. Upon his desk are alarmingly high piles of exactly 92 copies of the most detailed books ever published on the Earth War.
He sits at his desk, his glasses slipped on his face, and does not move for days as he inhales the history he somehow missed.
His TARDIS -- his beautiful ship -- she knows him too well. She doesn't allow him time to digest the information, to let it overwhelm him. As he closes the cover on the final book, she jerks him into awareness. He runs from the library, falling into walls, tripping over his tired and unused legs, trying to reach the console. The TARDIS continues to fling him about, and the moment he reaches the control room, all of the shaking stops.
She has landed.
The console reads that outside it is London in the year 2044.
He can't help himself but to immediately calculate many figures in his head, a few of which have to do with age, all of which have to do with Rose.
He watched her die in 2006.
She would have been almost 60 in 2044.
Almost 80 at the end of the Earth War.
Would have been, he thinks.
He steps outside with measured steps and waits and wonders.
*
When they fought the Dalek fleet in his ninth incarnation and he watched her die across the room, he was sure that was the worst way to lose his companion, his best friend. There was nothing he could do, then. He couldn't reach out and touch her, couldn't be any sort of comfort as she was zapped into dust.
She didn't die then, though. He decided then and there that he wanted his final memory of her to be of a smiling young girl, waving goodbye safely from her home.
He didn't understand how he could still be so naive at times, especially in his old age.
The reality of what happened was much worse, much more impersonal.
It happened almost exactly as it usually did. They got separated, he saved someone from something, and then he went to find her. Except there were no grand reunions where she jumped into his arms and he was sure neither one of them could breathe from the utter tightness of their embrace. She didn't sigh in his ear with relief. He didn't remind her to be careful.
She was curled in a ball on the floor, lifeless and cold, her eyes still open in gentle confusion.
He didn't like to think about how he acted when he found her or what he did to the creatures that killed her.
Instead, he lets the memory of that day perch upon his shoulder and pick at his mind until, he feels, there's nothing left of him at all.
"I'd die for you, you know," she once said. He remembers how she bit onto her lower lip after she said it, as if she were afraid at what his reaction might be.
He asked her to take it back, but she didn't, and then she followed through on it.
He knows this is how it happened. His memory never lies.
*
For his nine-hundred-some years of travel, he has always (well, mostly) been in control. He doesn't like that his stomach is clenched tightly in his belly, that he doesn't know what to expect.
He closes the blue door and, after it snaps shut, lets his hand linger on the frame. He is half leaning on his time machine, half caressing her for support, as his eyes scan the streets of London for any type of signal as to what he's supposed to do.
His machine sends a little shock into his hand and he jumps away, changing his position. It is only when he looks up after babying his hand that he sees, that he understands.
Rose is there, standing in the middle of the street with purpose, as if she's waited a hundred years for this moment in time.
Everything about her is just as it haunts him. Casual attire, a beaming smile, eyes shining. The only difference is her hair, now a faded blonde, parted into long even lengths in front of her shoulders.
Without even being entirely aware of it, he finds himself moving towards her. As she gets closer, his senses overload with memories, with sudden intense emotions. He can barely comprehend her. She is smiling, white teeth glittering in the sunlight, looking like no time had passed at all. He thinks that it feels almost like any ordinary day, but when he sees the well of tears withheld in her eyes, he shakes with the power of the moment.
He stops before her, leaving her the distance one might leave an acquaintance. He can't find it within himself to move any closer. Not yet.
"Hi, there," she says, and he swears all of the hair on his body has just stood on end, screaming with confusion and elation.
"Hi," he croaks.
"I've been waiting for you." She reaches her hand out to him and, without hesitation, he takes it with his own.
He waits for his body to react, for him to do something but stare at her slack-jawed and strange. He tries to cling onto the first emotion that runs through his mind. He won't cry -- it's not the time or the place -- and he knows he won't frown or falter or walk away.
Instead, a grand smile erupts on his face, and for that single moment, they are nothing more than a pair of living beings, standing in the middle of a street in the East End, reaching out to one another, grinning like fools.
He tries to steady his breath, to get control of the blood racing through his veins, and he finds that his smile is almost physically painful to maintain, but is also unavoidable. He is all at once too happy and too miserable. His hand tingles, spreading a numb sensation up his arm and over the rest of his body. He fears that if doesn't say something, that if the moment lingers like this, that he'll either regenerate or combust right there on the spot.
He finally finds his voice and asks only the first question on a long list in his mind. "How long? How long has it been?"
She sucks in a deep breath and states very matter-of-factly, "Thirty-seven years. Nine months. Three days. And, you know, some hours and minutes and seconds."
They both laugh and it feels stifled and uncomfortable and glorious. He suddenly feels the urge to pull her to him, to absolutely crush her body into his and take her away. As if she is reading his mind, she puts her other hand on top of their embraced ones and steps closer to him. He feels his body shake -- or is that her? -- and his mind begins to go into overdrive.
His eyes wander over her flushed cheeks, and he marvels how close she looks to his memory of her. He can't help but feel like he dropped her off for a short visit to her mum's and now they're ready to cross the universe, together again.
"Come on, then," she says in a low whisper. "I'm not sure how much time we've got."
He nods absently, absorbing her being into his mind, and he follows her down the street, both of her hands wrapped warmly around his.
His body becomes hyper-aware, sucking in every emotion and sensation all around him, like Rose and the world around her are being dragged right into the core of him, some infinite abyss. His cheeks flush under the light easterly wind, his feet burn in his shoes above the pavement, and his skin almost hurts at the feeling of the clothes wrapped around him, the fabric playing all over his flesh like needles. Above all of this, above everything, he feels the rhythm of her heartbeat through her palms. He squeezes her hand tighter as she leads him away, counting the pulse of her body in time, beating and beating, so very alive.
*
Her flat is full of expected items, things that are very Rose in nature, and he worries for a moment that she will ask him to sit down while she goes off to make tea. He doesn't want that. He's not sure what is going on or what will become of this, but he knows more than anything that now is not the time for a chat over tea.
It is mid-morning; the sun tries its best to beat through the windows, but the thick sheer curtains she has up blocks its efforts, allowing a yellow-tinted ray of light to grace the room. The effect is that everything is just a bit darker than expected. She turns away from his strong gaze, looking off to a clock on the mantel to study the time.
"Rose..." he begins, not sure where he's going with it.
"Time," she says, her voice finally cracking, "I wish I knew how much of it we had."
He reaches up and runs the palm of his hand lightly from her cheek down her neck. He feels her shudder and hears it too in her rugged intake of breath. "I need to know how--"
"In time," she replies.
Part of him wants to bubble with his old familiar laughter, to remind her that so many introspections about time in such a short span borders on being ridiculous. He wants to jump manically about the room, holding her hands in his. He wants her to pack her things so they can run off to another world; he wants to tell her about the things he's seen while he thought she was...
"You were dead. I watched you die. I found you."
She cranks her head to the side in thought, and then sort of nods at him. "I wasn't entirely dead, no."
Out of everything, from finding her grave in Ireland to touching her in this very moment, this comment punches him the hardest. He finds it difficult to gather his thoughts in any rational way. He is shocked that he hasn't run off on one of his infamous tangents thus far, but then again, he knows he hasn't done such a thing in a long while. There's no point in talking like that when no one's around to hear him.
"So I left you behind." He finds that he can no longer look at her, and he lets his gaze linger on a table that is filled with used cups and saucers. It's an utter mess. A little tang of humor tries to fight its way through the stream of guilt in his mind; she's still the same Rose, impossibly messy.
She grabs his chin a little forcefully and pulls his face to hers. She smells of nothing he can accurately describe, regardless of how many objects he has sensed throughout his entire existence. He decides that it would be a waste to try to describe her in any other way than to simply say that Rose smelled like Rose, and the very thought of that made his chest thunder out of control.
"I wasn't dead then and I'm not dead now." Then she repeats again, a little slower, a little more tinged with melancholy, "I don't know how much time we have, Doctor."
Perhaps it is the way she says his name, or maybe it's because it has been so long since he has heard someone he cares for say it. No matter what force there is, he finds his hands have moved to brace her strongly at her shoulders, and he leans forward to press his forehead against hers.
"I missed you," she whispers.
He swallows, and then licks his lips. "I longed for you."
They kiss chastely once, then again, then a third time as his hands move her closer and their tongues meet as if they had been together this way an infinite number of times before. Even with the power of everything behind the moment, he can barely keep his mind on the task, cursing it for thinking that this is the first and last time, that so many things in his life have been bittersweet, and it makes him hate himself.
When she wraps her arms tightly around his back and the kiss deepens even further, the negative thoughts start to slip from his mind, but not entirely. They spend no time delighting in each sensation; the kiss is rugged, possibly messy, and entirely uncontrolled. He finds that if he runs his tongue along the contours of her own, back and forth, that she growls into his mouth. He does this again and again, each time their bodies pulling closer to one another until they finally have to part for gasps of air, lips smacking loudly in the silence of her flat.
They stand barely moving, embracing each other completely, the vibrations of their bodies humming in alliance. In the strange light of the room, their darkest features are illuminated, and he can't help but try to memorize the shape of her face, afraid that he might not have any other moments to do so. The combination of their prolonger eye contract and the rapid rising and falling of their chests pressed so tightly together makes their hearts race, if at all possible, even faster than they just had been.
She wishes she could think of a clever one-liner to take him to the other room, but she decides to say nothing as she pulls away from him, then grasps his hand tightly in her own and leads him away.
He follows where she leads and asks no questions.
*
It is just about impossible to breathe.
He had forgotten that this was the time of the disgustingly high temperatures on Earth, the decades where the winters became less cold and the summers kept people indoors with their fans and air units. Even with all of the artificial air circulating through the room and the thick curtains, the battle against the heat is still lost, and his lungs rasp with the sharply cold but ripely humid air.
They stand quietly, fighting for breath, each of them pressing a hand to the other's chest, somewhat for support, mostly just to remain connected. He runs the side of one finger down her arm and watches as goose bumps rise all over her skin. She shudders deeply, blinks her eyes slowly, and licks her lips.
Then they begin.
He can't quite get control of himself. The loud side of him, the rude part that asks too many questions and destroys perfectly good moments, is screaming in his brain to stop, to figure things out, to be calculated and methodical and scientific. His body, of course, betrays his mind. As he watches her slowly undress him, her fingers working off his tie and slipping each button back through its hole, he thinks of all of his companions, of everyone he felt so much for and never told what they meant to him. And now, here she is, his Rose, at the height of everything. He feels himself losing it. She opens his shirt, the mix of air soothing over his skin, and presses one kiss above his breast, then she turns to press her ear against the center of his chest. He reaches for her hand automatically.
"How does it sound?" he asks, unsure of what to say or do with himself.
She moves away from him, looking up into his eyes. "Alive."
His final barrier breaks and in that second, he feels everything he's ever lost or left behind, everyone he's ever loved or hurt. It's too many emotions, enough to drive a human insane, and he tries to contain it but finds it impossible. He pulls her to him suddenly, almost violently, their lips battling again. He pulls rapidly at her clothes and she follows suit with the same intensity, removing his freed jacket and shirt, before they tumble heavily onto her bed.
He tries to go slowly. After all, it has been an impossibly long time for him, and he wants to savor this, to remember each moment. But when her thigh comes up and rubs him spot on in his hardness, he groans hotly in her ear and figures to hell with pace; of course he'll remember everything. He likes to make a habit out of cherishing the finer details of life, after all.
He attacks her breasts with his hands and fingers and tongue and teeth and he's not even sure exactly what his plan is, but the sight of her squirming beneath him tells him to go at it longer and harder and with more of everything, and he is rewarded by her running her fingernails up and down his back, scratching patterns into him. She grabs at his hair and directs his head up. He reclaims her mouth shortly before moving to work on her neck, pinning her easily into the mattress. She struggles to lean up and pay the same attention to him, but he doesn't let her. He battles within himself whether to be gentle or to let the moment take over, and just as he begins to worry that he's maybe hurting her, that he's touching her too roughly, her thigh moves between his legs again and rubs him much harder than before, causing his whole body to jerk suddenly. He watches as her face contorts into a smile as she giggles lightly between deep gulps of breath. He stops his movements and raises himself slightly off of her, his weight held up on his elbows, and he lets his face hang just above hers, so close she can see the sweat glimmering at his brow and he can feel her panting right into him.
She moves her thigh again, teasing him, playing him to move on. He moans in a voice so low that it doesn't even sound like him, and her grin spreads even wider, her teeth biting down on her lower lip. She thinks she has the advantage, even as she is just barely pinned beneath him, but she is very wrong. Her head snaps back on the pillow suddenly as his hand delves under what remains of her clothes. His fingers waste no time pushing aside her knickers and deftly flicking right over the spot she has wanted him to electrify ever since she laid eyes on him again... no, much longer than that... all of these years, since they traveled together, since...
His eyes flash merrily and his face contorts into one of those strange looks that she wishes she could catalogue (he's got so bloody many of them) as he slips one finger inside of her and she forgets completely and utterly whatever the hell it was she was thinking about. He moves his finger around ever so slowly, his thumb barely glazing over her clit, and she bucks naturally into his hand.
"More," she grunts out, her voice foreign even to her, and she doesn't know what she's asking for but she knows that she wants more of whatever that is and that she needs it now, not later, but right now.
He leans up and presses his mouth right to her ear. "Yes?"
"Mmm," she tries to start a sentence, but can't, and she suddenly feels a shift in the room -- maybe a shift in the world, she's not sure -- and she moves her head to stare directly into his eyes. He finds her pupils darker than before, and this time he senses that it's not just the strange lighting in her flat. Her features seem to drain before him, and instead of just the passion of the moment, he feels the weight of her feelings crashing into him.
It's more than just this very second. He feels slapped across the face with the darkness of her life, of her long wait for him, of her intense loneliness, of the nightmares that haunted her without him. She bucks against him again involuntarily and he slides another finger insider her without even thinking, his body reacting to what he thinks she wants, and he moves more sharply along her. She moans unexpectedly but does not break the eye contact with him. He gets the sensation that she is reading him just as he is her, that maybe for the first time in their lives, they are on the exact same page in every respect.
Her human life has suffered because of him, because she met him and loved him and had to live on without him and his adventures. He feels her crushed spirit, a part she tried to hide from him at their reunion, but that he can feel now with utter clarity. It echoes his own pain so closely that his body shudders violently and he pulls his hand out and away from her. She gasps at the sudden loss of his touch and immediately reaches up to his face with her own hands.
"I don't..." she shakes her head, trying to find the words, but both of their minds are unbalanced and overwhelmed, and they are breathing too hard to be in any sort of control anymore. "Don't stop," she finally gets out, and it is the only thing he needs to hear.
He leans back on his knees and she sits up with him to remove their finals bits of clothing. The process is not exactly smooth and they interrupt themselves frequently with long kisses. She struggles with his belt as he runs his tongue down her throat and he discovers that it's nearly impossible to remove his laced-up shoes with her biting at his earlobe. With nothing left to take off, he battles with her as she tries to flip him over. His mind floods at the thought of watching her above him and he knows he wants that, the ability to study her as she controls him. But he knows more importantly that this might be all there ever is for them and he wants the power, wants to show her what she means to him. She always did communicate her feelings for him so easily, but he constantly kept her just at a distance. This is his only chance, he thinks, and he reaches under her to draw her legs behind his back. She follows without question, wrapping her entire body tightly around his as he pushes himself into her easily.
There are no smiles now, no games left. He emits a groan that she quickly becomes fond of and, in turn, she makes a moan that he is sure might be one of the best noises he has ever heard in his life. He tries with difficulty to set the pace, pulling out of her completely before inching slowly back in, just to hear her make that noise again and again. He is sure he can keep his mind just at bay, but she surprises him suddenly as she shifts her back, arching more towards him, deepening the point he can hit inside her. His entire body shudders from head to toe; he is positive he can't hold back much longer, and when she leans even closer and whispers "Doctor..." in his ear, another part of him comes undone and he thrusts into her with a deeper and harder intensity, his pace spiraling out of his control.
He moves his head to linger above hers again, and their eyes lock fiercely. Her lids are heavy, her gaze hazy, and he loves this look, this side of her he has never seen before. Her swollen lips reach up to find his and they kiss sloppily as he takes her quicker. She clenches around him and he only finds the smallest amount of restraint left within himself to hold off so he can watch her as she comes. Her head digs into the pillow, her whole body arching up into him, but her eyes never lose contact with his. As she moans along with her final waves, she thrusts up with him more powerfully than she had been, and he releases into her. His mouth finds hers and they kiss with a deep longing as the rocking of their bodies moves to stillness. She drags her hands up into his hair, freeing it from where it had been matted down with perspiration. He lazily drops his head down to her chest and kisses her randomly all over for a moment, before moving back up and kissing her once soundly on her lips.
"Rose," he says, his voice hoarse, "my Rose."
She is still tuned finely to the moment -- she can feel something moving outside, something wrong -- and she doesn't let herself waste anymore time. He is kissing her all over again, very slowly moving about her body. She stares up at the ceiling and takes a deep breath.
"Doctor..." she begins, but he does not look up, he just keeps touching her, running his lips along the tender flesh at the side of her ribcage. "I love you," she says.
He doesn't reply immediately, but his body never tenses and he doesn't break from moving all over her. This comforts her, and she doesn't care that he waits so long to reply, because she already knows his answer anyways and even if she didn't, he is giving it to her with every kiss he places on her skin.
"Yes," he finally says, his lips hanging above her bellybutton, his voice so low she could barely hear it. Yes, because he loves her too, because he loved all of them, and all of his life he never let himself respond, never lived just in the moment. For some nine centuries, he robbed himself of the thing he admired most about humans, and although he is still unsure of why he is here and why this is happening now, he knows it's a second chance he very well may never have again. He pulls out of her and they shift around to embrace each other.
He kisses her again, just because he can, and he repeats, this time more solidly, "Yes."
*
"Tell me what happened."
"This'll be a first... me teaching you history." She breathes out a long sigh, not feeling much in the mood to tell the story, but sensing she only has so much time left to do so.
They lay on their sides facing each other; she runs her leg smoothly over his while he mimics her pattern with his hand on her arm. They are touching, but they both feel it's not enough. He wants to kiss her, to take her again already, but for the first time since he stepped out of the TARDIS, the logical side of his brain is screaming for answers.
He laughs calmly at her remark, but returns quickly to silence, awaiting her response.
"I didn't die that day. Torchwood took me. They brought me back," she speaks slowly, with the candor only a human who experienced existence through his eyes could. "I still have the Time Vortex in me. I belong to it now. I gather it has the rest of my life planned out exactly for me."
He nods sadly. "I thought I saved you from that... from the Vortex. You were always going to be a part of me and the TARDIS, but that... I didn't want that to change you. I thought I stopped it."
"Not so bad, is it?" She is lying, he can both sense it in her words and see it on her face. "Torchwood hired me on. It was a bit difficult hiding my lack of aging from my own employer. Kept saying it was my fantastic genes, but mum always fussing over her gray hair and wrinkles didn't help my story much..." she stops suddenly and looks away from him. He spots tears flooding into the corner of her eyes, and when he reaches up to her face, she buries her head down into the pillow.
"What is it?" he begs, his hand resting heavily in her hair.
She thinks she should just hide it all from him; there's not much time left, and what's the point in showing him her pain if she can just hide it a little bit longer. But a sob chokes in her throat -- she wasn't aware she was already crying -- and she smothers her face further away from him.
Her words come out muffled against the pillow. "I hated living without you. I was so angry for so long, but... but the Vortex, what remained of it within me, it changed me. It showed me fate. It showed me why things happen, the reason for everything, even why this is happening now."
"Why, then?"
"Because," she turns her head and looks at him, her hand stroking his neck absently, "this is what happens in my life. Because I lost you, but was given something else instead. I don't know quite what it is yet, but I know I'm meant for something greater. For something even bigger than running about the universe with you... even though it's what I want the most, what I've always wanted the most."
They stare at each other in silence. He plays with the ends of her hair and she moves her hand to rest along the dip in his shoulder. She blinks and lets the tears that were forming in her eyes fall down her cheek.
"Jack came back," she says, her voice small, wondering how this will affect him.
His stomach drops because it all has lined up in his head; because he has seen the gravestone she shares with him, and he understands that this is what she was meant to do, what she was born for and why he met her. His mind clouds with darkness, and he tries lamely to cover it with a thin smile.
"And how is he? Upgraded to a sonic machinegun yet?"
She laughs, and he's quite certain that this sound feels more like home to him than anything in his past two lives has. "He misses you... misses us. Those were good times, the three of us together, don't you think?"
He nods very slowly, his eyes tracing her face, her neck, her shoulders. He runs his hand just along her breast and all the way down her side, forcing down the duvet cover until it is bunched up at their hips. "Yes, but... you and I were..."
"The best of times," she finishes, and he meets the beaming look in her eye with a sad grin. "The happiest I ever was."
He strokes her face and leans in to kiss her lightly, their lips lazily touching and teasing.
When they pull apart, she is looking at him intensely.
"Ask me to come with you," she says.
His body stiffens with worry and she only pulls him out of his thoughts by physically moving his face to look back towards hers.
"You know how I die, don't you?"
He nods, brushing her hair back off her shoulder, because he can't think of anything else to do. "I've been in this time line before. I can't alter it."
"I know," she says. "I know. I just want to hear you say the words."
He pauses for a moment, contemplating the sentence in his head. "Come away with me, Rose Tyler."
They move closer to each other and linger in silence.
After a few moments, he breathes deeply, his mind obviously tangled up in thought. He looks about ready to pour into a long diatribe, but instead he exhales slowly and says finally, "There's always a reason for everything in this universe. Something specific lured me here. There is a reason that I'm here, Rose... and whether or not it's this or..."
"My mum died last week," her voice is low, soaked in sadness. "She didn't die alone; she had me. And I was there with her, thinking about how I might die by myself. But the Vortex... it brought you to me... and I don't think, anymore... I don't think we'll be alone forever."
He looks away from her now and bites back the feelings stirring in his head, the pain and loneliness he has been engulfed in as he's traveled without her, without anyone. "You won't be alone," he says simply.
She grabs his chin and looks at him with more confidence than he's ever seen her have. "Neither will you."
An explosion outside immediately shifts both of their attention. He shoots out of bed and runs to the window in enough time to catch a string of fires bursting all around the city. By the time he turns around, she is already adequately dressed and moving to spread his clothes out on the bed.
"Here," she offers her hand to him and he moves without hesitation to her side. She hands him his clothing piece by piece, holding out his jacket for him, helping him slip it over his shoulders. She grabs him by his lapels and pulls him to her, kissing him solidly. His hands move to cup her cheeks and they embrace with more intensity and sadness than passion. When he steps back from her, she is still crying softly, and his body doesn't want to leave her, but his mind forces him to speak.
"Rose, I--"
She shakes her head, cutting him off. "Go on, now. Save the world. There are bigger things than you and I."
His mind goes dark and he finds he has nothing in his mind but one sentence, screaming within him again and again.
"Rose..."
Another explosion rocks the city, shaking the items all over her flat. She leans up to kiss him quickly, and then releases her grip on him entirely.
"I know," she replies to him.
And then he looks exactly like he used to back in their days together, the same determination and sacrifice on his face. "I'll be back if I can."
She nods, even though they both know this won't happen, and there is nothing left to say.
She stays at her window to watch him run down the street, making sure none of the explosions are near him. He makes it back to his TARDIS with the intention of stepping inside to better gage the situation. He stands at the blue doors and looks up to find her; she waves to him, a smiling girl framed by the window. He waves back, then steps inside.
When the door closes, the TARDIS moves again without his permission, fading back into space. He runs to the console to stop it, but it is too late. He knows the TARDIS has a habit of moving herself when she is in imminent danger of being destroyed, but this knowledge doesn't make him any less frustrated as she sings and dances away into space.
The second the blue call box disappears, Rose watches as a bomb explodes at the end of the street exactly where it had been.
She jumps back away from the window and runs off to call into Torchwood. With a mobile pressed to her ear, she hides to stay safe from the attack, awaiting her orders.
She crouches in the darkness and waits for her life to unfold.
*
He sits on the floor of the TARDIS, his wrinkled clothes and sky-rocketing body temperature both clear reminders of what just happened. He pulls his legs up and presses his face into his knees so hard that his eyes throb in their sockets, dancing sparkles of black under his eyelids.
He wants to hate himself. He sits and tries to overwhelm his mind into an abyss of self-pity, but the image of her next to him, her face inches away from him, pulses in his head. He can almost still feel her breath on him. She was alive. She was living, and she still loved him.
He sits in silence, trying to comprehend how it's possible for him to feel such complete loss from the girl he shared only 1/900th of his life with.
It's his curse, he knows.
"Where are we going next?" She used to demand from beside him, their bodies aligned on the chair next to the console.
In that incarnation, he liked to keep his arms crossed tightly until his leather jacket was stretched almost uncomfortably around his body. She ignored his body language and pressed herself against him, pushing her hand against his will under his arm until she could hook it with her own. It used to drive him crazy that he couldn't look right at her when they sat like this, that he could rarely see her reactions to his stories. But one day he found that he couldn't possibly live without her tucked up beside him, and he learned that having her head settled easily on his shoulder was definitely the best and only proper way to sit with her.
"How about Paris, year 6794321?"
She stuck her tongue out at him, rolling her eyes. "Boring. How about someplace you've never been before?"
"Now why's that? Don't trust my memories of my favorite places?"
"No," she repositioned her head on his shoulder and grinned widely, a girl child toying for more candy. "I like to watch your face light up when you see new places."
Soon after this, he traded one of his lives for hers.
He would do it again and again for her. But he knows it still wouldn't make any difference.
No one lives forever.
*
When the TARDIS settles down again, he jerks his head up suddenly. He might have fallen asleep -- he's not sure -- but when he tries to stand again, the numbness in his legs and back tell him that he's been on the floor far longer than he should have been.
London, again. He pinches the bridge of his nose and breathes out heavily, not sure he can take much more. His hearts are beating so rapidly he swears he can feel them bashing against his back, trying to escape his body.
The monitor reads 2060, the year the Earth Wars begins.
He knows he can't do it, and he's angry that he's even thinking it, but he can't help but wonder if he's here to save Rose, to stop her from saving the world, to take her away with him. Before he's even aware of it, he's running across the control room and bursting out the blue doors into London.
The smothering heat is gone; it must be winter. There is no snow -- the high temperatures made it stop snowing in the UK around 2039 -- but the clouds are lingering heavily in the sky, about ready to drop a ridiculous amount of rain onto the city.
He looks over and sees a similar kiosk, newspapers pasted to its sides, and he knows distinctly that he has not only been to this London before, but he has been right here on this very street corner.
He peers down the street and finds a lone figure seated on the curb, a book resting in her lap, an umbrella protecting her from the oncoming storm. As he stares at her, she looks up from her book and meets his gaze from down the street. She smiles widely and waves at him. He raises his hand and waves back, his fingers bouncing up and down with slight confusion. She beckons him over so he moves towards her, unsure of what else to do.
"I've been waiting for you," she says simply. She folds her book closed and places it in a giant bag beside her.
"Have you now?" He doesn't like towering over her, so he sits beside her on the pavement.
She closes her umbrella and places it in her bag beside the book, struggling to zip it shut. "There," she says to the bag. "All ready."
"Ready for what?" He can't help the absurd curiosity in his voice.
"To see the universe." When he doesn't seem to follow her, she giggles a little, placing her hand under her chin, resting her elbow on her knee to look at him. "Sorry," she says, stopping her laughter, "I always dreamed this would go a bit differently."
He smiles a confused but curious smile at her. "What do you mean?"
"Seeing you again."
She looks at him dead on for the first time since they've been this close, and he recognizes her clearly as an older version of the girl he met on this street on his last visit. She appears to be in her mid-teens now, her brown hair still long, tied into a neat ponytail at the back of her head.
"Ah," he says. "I remember you now. It was summer, last I saw you. You enjoyed my shoes."
She nods enthusiastically. "There, that's better." She stands, standing tall above him. The sun peaks out from the overcast sky for just a moment and the appearance of her features, the blush in her cheeks, the bounce of her ponytail, the curve of her nose are all too familiar.
"I'm ready to go now," she finishes.
"Go where?"
She points down the road to where he came from. "The TARDIS."
"I don't understand," he says, but there is still a hint of a smile on his face, and he knows he understands completely, but his mind is not catching up just yet.
She shares a wide, toothy grin with him before flipping her bag onto her back. "Mum was worried you wouldn't come. That the war would get here first. Which it did. Started three months ago. She figured you might be late. Said you once meant to take her to Ohihplexon but ended up in Ohio instead."
"Ohihplexon..." the word rolls off his tongue for the first time since it happened, and he finds himself laughing ridiculously at the thought of the place. His mind spills open with memories, as if it is really Rose standing beside him, as if things really hadn't happened this way after all. "I wanted to show her the cities with the houses made entirely of glass, some lesson about my being rude and throwing bricks and such, but we ended up behind a McDonald's and the TARDIS... it smelled like hamburgers and oh, not chips, those french fries for weeks. She hid them all around. She wanted to prove that they would never rot which is, of course, unnatural in every respect." His laughter dissolves and he looks up at the girl, her features becoming more and more obvious to him, the lopsided smile on her face matching his.
"Mum told me that one. She used to say she hoped you were still finding them. She said she hid some in a place you'd never be able to find."
"Ah, she must've meant the bundle in the ceiling. They looked exactly the same by the time I found it."
"No," she says, shaking her head, still grinning. "I know where she hid them all."
He rises carefully beside her. They both peer down the street towards the TARDIS. "So your mum wants you to come with me."
She shrugs. "She said it's what's supposed to happen. I got sixteen years with her. It's time I got to know you." The girl tucks her head down slightly, hiding her face from him, and he knows with utter certainty what this means to her. They have both lost Rose now.
He extends his hand to her and she takes it without question.
"You sure you're ready?"
She looks up to him, her features now such an obvious combination that he can't believe he missed it before. "I've been waiting my whole life for you. Mum said that as long as we've got each other, we'll never be alone."
The storm above them bursts suddenly, crashing billions of raindrops onto the Earth. He looks up quickly, scrunching his eyes from the wetness, and peers over to the girl.
"Run," he says, and they take off down the street.
He looks behind him to see her keeping up with him, their hands still linked together, and for the first time in a long time, he can sense something unexpected in his future.
There is hope.
Title: This Is What Happens
Author: lovefase
Rating: M
Pairing: Ten/Rose, hints of Nine/Rose
Disclaimer: The Beeb owns Doctor Who. The Beeb also owns my soul. Coincidence?
Summary: After Rose's death, the Doctor learns a lesson in fate. Saying anything else would be quite spoilery and, well, I don't want to spoil my own fic, do I?
A/N: Lots of dark!Ten. I will call him dark!Ten and not emo!Ten, because he does not wear his glasses and update his LJ while listening to Coldplay in this fic. Incredible thanks to shadesofbrixton, my beta since always.
maybe you're the same as me
we see things they'll never see
you and i are gonna live forever...
He knows how humans mourn.
They all like to think that they take it differently, but really, they're all the same. The anger, the depression, the acceptance. He's been witness to human emotions for so long that sometimes, even if just for a lapse in time, he almost forgets that he's not the same.
He doesn't feel like them. Not for the most part, at least. Humans fight out an epic battle with emotions until they overcome the darkness.
Instead, he lets himself slip easily into the fog. In this state, he doesn't know or care how much time passes.
One morning, on a planet some 4,000 years into her future, he sits and watches as three suns set beneath the horizon. He tries to calculate how long he's been without her, tries to count time into some obtuse figure, but the sky falls to complete black before he can truly reach any estimate. He figures it's been months, but knows that, in truth, it has actually been much longer.
He retreats into the TARDIS alone and takes off once again.
He wonders how many times he's done this, how many times his machine has had to contain all of the pieces of him from spilling out across the universe.
*
He picks up a new companion while in Scotland. He finds her stranded on Ben Nevis and, as he tends to do, he saves her life while narrowly escaping a dangerous confrontation with a beast made of snow.
She giggles and makes conversation easily. He treats her respectfully and answers each of her detailed questions with all of the tired enthusiasm of a tenured and aged professor.
At first, he is quite pleased with himself. Her very presence kicks his habit of spending days in a row under the console, speaking to no one but himself. He tries to convince himself that it feels right, that she will help lift the darkness that has been weighing him down.
On their seventh day together, he is excitedly explaining something of little importance to her while fixing a video screen, his nimble hands moving expertly over the machinery. She presses herself against him, rubbing the palm of her hand over the top of his, and asks him if his hands are good at doing anything else with such finesse.
He untangles himself from her and says nothing. The moment ranks high among his most awkward encounters, only battling with that one time when he lost his trousers on Hawklaaooomund while being chased by gigantic flying feathers.
He takes her straight home without much of an explanation.
He wonders how long it will take him to forget her name, but he knows better. He never forgets anyone.
*
One day, he awakes on the floor, the grate having had its way with his cheek while he slept. As he is talking to himself, contemplating where he had left off in his repairs, a button on his coat springs loose and falls through the grates of the floor.
He examines the rest of his coat and comes to find it in extremely poor condition. He notices, with dismay, that this is not the first button to have escaped its prison of needlework, and he is frustrated that he did not see this earlier.
He takes his beloved coat to a tailor on Earth in 2266 (an exceptionally great year for the tailoring industry). He spends the day in clothes that don't fit well at all. He finds the respite from his usual wardrobe to be almost freeing, as if he's stripped off his uniform after a long day at work, and he walks the streets of London feeling more like he fits in and less like a traveling tourist.
When he passes a cemetery, he takes just a moment to calculate her birthday to the current year before stepping quickly across the street, the headstones beckoning silently at his back.
*
In the year 1804, he meets a shy young girl, aged sixteen. He spends days hanging around near her estate, trying to discover some root of evil or a hidden monster or an event that wasn't supposed to happen, anything to explain why he was brought to this exact moment in time.
On the sixth day, the girl's mother pulls him aside and explains that something is wrong with her daughter, that she doesn't know what to do.
He likes helping people. It's all that he lives for. He sets off to find out what's wrong with the girl, to make her better. She is only sixteen. He can't stop thinking about how she's got her whole life left to live.
He finds the monster on that day; it is a blackened spirit that haunts the grounds, keeping the girl prisoner on the estate. It is a simple matter that he resolves quickly, with a deft flick of his sonic screwdriver and a stern talking to her father, who had been keeping the girl separated from her fiancée. With her love hundreds of miles across Britain, she had been slowly falling apart.
When her father and the spirits are defeated, he takes the girl and tells her to pack her bags. He holds her gently at her shoulders and explains that he is a doctor, and that he's going to save her.
The girl is neither shocked nor worried about traveling in a blue box with a strange man. Even if the trip only lasts for a few minutes, he is still pleased to see someone besides himself in his home. He knows it's been a long time, and that his TARDIS gets just as lonely as he does.
It isn't his most important trip, but it obviously means something. He understands that he was brought there for a reason, that if these two people weren't brought together somehow, that the world would change. He thinks there is some sort of underlying message about love and togetherness that he should make a mental note of, and he almost falls for it. He smiles -- and really means it -- as he embraces the girl before she leaves.
He doesn't join her outside; he just stands at the doorway and watches as she tries lamely to run across a dewy field in her heavy dress. He can see the man she longs for just over the horizon, moving quicker than she is towards her.
His smile fades rapidly; he turns and shuts the blue doors behind him before waiting to watch the lovers reunite.
He eases his hands over the doors and can feel the TARDIS sighing at his touch. There can be a million things wrong with his machine that he knows with certainty he can fix, but when it comes to himself, he doesn't even know where to begin.
*
He no longer makes a habit out of traveling to London, but on occasion, the TARDIS takes him there anyways. The screen on the console informs him that it's 2056, the summer famous for abnormally hot weather in the British Isles and Prince Harry's freak space shuttle incident that left him hanging just left of Mars for three days before his rescue came (he always thought it preposterous that royalty ever tried to dabble in space travel).
On this particular day, the heat unreasonably breaking all records in history, he finds himself walking through the East End, the urge to strip his jacket and tie almost unbearable. The heat radiates on the horizon, casting crackling waves of hot over the streets, making it near impossible to breathe. Instead of the usual city bustle, the sound of white noise hovers over the streets, emanating from air conditioning units that cling to nearly every visible window. The only people on the streets are children, who sit stagnant in bathing suits under constant flows of spraying water.
Nothing important is happening, he thinks. Unless he's now supposed to serve as Savior of Weather on Planet Earth as well as Lord of Time.
He plops himself onto the edge of the pavement next to a news kiosk. His eyes strain to read the fine print of the article titled WHAT'S NEXT FOR HARRY?: PRINCE BUYS NEW SPACE SHUTTLE, UNDETERRED BY MARS MISHAP. He fidgets with his tie, nearly panting to breathe. A small shadow falls over him and he squints up into the harsh sunlight to find the source.
It is a small girl, just around ten or so. Her long light brown hair, once neatly combed and separated into two pigtails, is now soaked and matted against her scalp, dripping wet spots onto her shirt.
"Hello!" she says, hands held with apparent restraint at her sides. "Who are you?"
He grins widely at the girl. Children, he thinks, are lovely and incredibly wise and he welcomes a conversation that most definitely won't involve greed or pettiness or every other trait he has grown weary of recently.
"I'm the Doctor," he states, surprised to find the girl nearly bursting with excitement as he introduces himself. "And you are?"
She giggles and fights to calm herself. "I like your shoes," she says randomly, pointing to the matching (but many sizes smaller) pair of plimsolls on her own feet.
"Well look at that." For the first time in months (or is it years now?) he feels the smug side of himself rise to the surface, pleased that he's still somehow fashionable. He begins to continue speaking, but the girl starts to jabber on.
"Can you believe this heat? Been like this for months now. I usually don't care for winter much myself, but mum says if it's not better by December, we're all gonna move to Iceland and live like Eskimos until it's all better."
The sensation of laughter in his throat feels like he's rediscovered an old friend he had lost. "Your mum knows there's no Eskimos in Iceland?"
"That's what I said!" the girl jumps around excitedly before getting control of herself. "I said, if anything, we should move to Greenland. Most of Greenland's covered in ice. Well, used to be a lot more ice there but then, you know," she points up to the sky at the sun and shrugs to finish her thought.
He follows the line of her finger into the sky and feels, for the first time, as if he might be onto something wrong in this version of London. He stands, with effort, rising tall above the little girl.
"You best get inside now," he says, placing a hand on her shoulder. "If my calculations are correct -- and they usually are -- the sun's about to do something it shouldn't."
She nods and doesn't question him. She turns to leave but instead flings herself into his arms. He steps back strangely, but pats her gently on the head. She looks up at him, her neck craned and her eyes squinting to see him in the sunlight.
"Thank you," she says, before running away from him down the block until she vanishes around the corner.
As he runs off to try to pinpoint the exact problem, he knows he will not forget about the little nameless girl who made him smile so brightly.
Then, of course, he saves London (and planet Earth) from an exploding sun.
He thinks that is the only reason why the TARDIS has brought him to this time and place, but he is wrong.
*
Some time later (naturally), he awakes in one of the hallways of the TARDIS, the location of his new take-things-apart-to-see-what-they-do repairs that keeps his mind busy. He has slept on his stomach, his limbs spread about in the most unbecoming manner across the floor. As he shifts to stand, he hears a crack in the lining of his coat, and his hearts sink.
His glasses are shattered, one side cracked like it's been hit with a bullet, the other side hollowed out completely.
He frowns deeply, partly because he will have to spend time on a planet to get them repaired, but mostly because he now cannot tinker with anything until the aforementioned repair is completed. He remembers the popped buttons on his coat, and knows that he's completely lost all track of how long he has been in this body.
He thinks of regeneration and living and dying.
He lets himself wander the halls of the TARDIS, his broken glasses hanging loosely in his hands, until he reaches the room she once called home. He pushes the door open and finds the room almost clinically clean. The bed is neatly made. There are no personal items anywhere to be seen. These things are not what bothers him. He aches over the fact that her scent has vanished from the room entirely.
It is almost as if she never existed.
He travels to some planet and gets his glasses fixed and tries not to think about it again.
But he does, of course.
*
He decides he needs a little holiday of sorts, so he travels to a place and time he's never been to before.
The planet is full of creatures who look something like anteaters (if you squint very hard and the lighting is just right) called Cann-n-nex-x-xaplronz (which is pronounced something like someone vomitting while attempting to say the word cantalope). They own robots that resemble 29th century humans, which is a little jarring to him, considering he is most used to humans being humans and not robots.
He does not stay long, as he is approached seven times in the first hour of his visit by the anteater-like-creatures trying to jam a key into his neck, then muttering apologies when they realize he is a human-human and not a robot-human.
He wanders to the edge of a cliff and hides behind a rock where no creature will bother him. He stays there for hours, watching some sort of sports game below, where (from what he can discern) the Cann-n-nex-x-xaplronz battle each other for the ultimate prize of a pot of dandelions.
He laughs and speaks a commentary aloud to himself, being far beyond the point of caring who might hear him and what, if anything, one of these creatures might think of him.
There is a part of him that wants to find a town and explore it for more ridiculous customs and antics, but instead he stays on the cliff until a row of seven moons have aligned themselves over the horizon.
He knows she would love this, that she would lean her head on his shoulder and lace her fingers through his. He knows they would stay this way together, even long after his shoulder went numb and their fingers stuck together with perspiration. He knows what her smile would feel like pressed against his arm, how her hair would smell as it tickled his face in the wind, how she would bounce her legs anxiously until he calmed her by laying his hand on her knee.
Sometimes, he likes to reason that it still hurts because he hasn't attempted to move on. He doesn't just think about her; he thinks about them all, keeps them alive in his mind. He is confident that he could ease himself back into a routine if he found a new companion to distract him from the memories of her.
But he rises from the cliffside and goes home to his TARDIS.
He knows he won't search for anyone new. He doesn't think he can take it just yet.
*
Sometimes, when he thinks of her, he wants to punish himself. He does this by strictly forbidding himself to think of anything remotely involving her memory, and he usually ends up crammed into any tiny compartment in the ceiling of the TARDIS, metal bits prodding his body as he searches for anything to tinker with. These are his darkest moments, and it seems to take him ages to snap out of such a funk.
Some other times, he indulges in her memory to, what he is afraid, is the point of absurdity. He fights the urge to stop off for chips (he passes on the fish), to land in the Powell Estates just to see what's become of it, or to go to a place he wishes he had taken her to in their time together.
Like Paris. Of course, he had been there, and she spoke of visiting there once or twice as a child, but they were never there together. He inwardly hates that it's known as the City of Romance, because locations are never what is romantic, it's who you're with while you're there.
He knows this because his skin still flushes when he thinks of that time they visited the sheep planet. They could barely hold a conversation over the continuous loud noise of bahhhing and, as expected, the ground was entirely covered in manure. But he can't think of a single moment during that day when they weren't somehow connected, her hand in his, them sitting so close to each other that each part of their sides touched, even him going as far as wrapping his arms around her waist and pulling her tightly to him as they watched two sheep battle over a fine wool drapery.
"That'd be like... like making curtains out of my own hair," she said from in front of him, her head twisted to the side so he could hear her over the sheep fight. "Disgusting."
He pressed his nose to just above her ear and inhaled deeply. "I don't know. Wouldn't be so bad, long as you keep up with this shampoo. What is this? Strawberries and... a slight hint of... is that Nutella?"
She giggled, ribbing him carefully in the side with her elbow. "Yes, I smear Nutella in my hair when I shower. I find it keeps my ends from splitting."
"Mmm," she felt him say more than heard him. "Delicious."
"Can't keep you from sniffing anything, can I?"
"Definitely not," he responded.
When he tries to map out exactly at what point this day occured, he finds that it is difficult to measure out the time he spent with her. Was it years? Was it only months? Exactly how old was she when he watched her parish and die? He knows he'll never be quite sure.
He moves on anyways, only because he has no other choice.
On a sunny day in Cardiff around 1982, he chews on a pile of chips and wishes she was there to explain the vinegar. He licks a length of it off one chip and smells the tangy substance, inspecting it closely. He doesn't quite understand the appeal, but the experience helps him to smile without feeling miserable, and that's a first.
So there's that, in the very least.
*
Things change when the TARDIS lands in Ireland.
The year is 2088, the 20th anniversary of the Earth War, which came to a decisively vicious end on the western coast at the Cliffs of Moher. The TARDIS sets herself down near what little remains of O'Brien's Tower, and he spends a great portion of the afternoon basking in the celebration of the anniversary with the thousands of tourists that have gathered at the spot. He wonders if something will go wrong, if he has been brought here for a reason, and he looks with worry towards the long edge of the cliff, where humans lay like fools on their bellies too close to the edge, just to snap a good picture.
No one falls off the cliff, though. The day passes peacefully with cultures from all around Earth gathered to celebrate the survival of their planet. He had little involvement in the Earth War, so he spends most of the day listening to stories to piece together the events of the final battle.
As the sun begins to set over the Atlantic, a new monument is revealed to the onlookers, a flat engraved stone that features a wide sun dial, 'to represent the marriage of time and space on Planet Earth,' as the speaker so eloquently phrases it. He joins a queue of guests, which moves rather slowly, to get an up-close look at the stone.
Behind him, a Chilean woman and a Spanish man swap stories of how the war affected their respective sides of the ocean. He eavesdrops intently until he reaches the stone, finding barely enough time to read the entire inscription before the queue begs to push him forward.
EARTH WAR
2060-2068
BELOW RESTS THE REMAINS
OF THE 73 HEROES
WHO DEFENDED OUR PLANET
IN THE FINAL BATTLE FOR EARTH
AND SAVED MANKIND
AB OVO USQUE AD MALA
He skims the list of names etched in the stone around the sun dial. When his eyes catch the name Jack Harkness, he feels his legs shake, and he reaches out to brace himself on the corner of the stone.
When he reads the name Rose Tyler, his legs buckle completely and he falls to his knees in front of the sun dial.
He is the perfect picture of a servant to time and existence.
*
The TARDIS takes him nowhere for a while. She just vanishes into space and drifts about.
When he steps inside after Ireland, he walks with purpose down the hallways until he discovers his old library. Upon his desk are alarmingly high piles of exactly 92 copies of the most detailed books ever published on the Earth War.
He sits at his desk, his glasses slipped on his face, and does not move for days as he inhales the history he somehow missed.
His TARDIS -- his beautiful ship -- she knows him too well. She doesn't allow him time to digest the information, to let it overwhelm him. As he closes the cover on the final book, she jerks him into awareness. He runs from the library, falling into walls, tripping over his tired and unused legs, trying to reach the console. The TARDIS continues to fling him about, and the moment he reaches the control room, all of the shaking stops.
She has landed.
The console reads that outside it is London in the year 2044.
He can't help himself but to immediately calculate many figures in his head, a few of which have to do with age, all of which have to do with Rose.
He watched her die in 2006.
She would have been almost 60 in 2044.
Almost 80 at the end of the Earth War.
Would have been, he thinks.
He steps outside with measured steps and waits and wonders.
*
When they fought the Dalek fleet in his ninth incarnation and he watched her die across the room, he was sure that was the worst way to lose his companion, his best friend. There was nothing he could do, then. He couldn't reach out and touch her, couldn't be any sort of comfort as she was zapped into dust.
She didn't die then, though. He decided then and there that he wanted his final memory of her to be of a smiling young girl, waving goodbye safely from her home.
He didn't understand how he could still be so naive at times, especially in his old age.
The reality of what happened was much worse, much more impersonal.
It happened almost exactly as it usually did. They got separated, he saved someone from something, and then he went to find her. Except there were no grand reunions where she jumped into his arms and he was sure neither one of them could breathe from the utter tightness of their embrace. She didn't sigh in his ear with relief. He didn't remind her to be careful.
She was curled in a ball on the floor, lifeless and cold, her eyes still open in gentle confusion.
He didn't like to think about how he acted when he found her or what he did to the creatures that killed her.
Instead, he lets the memory of that day perch upon his shoulder and pick at his mind until, he feels, there's nothing left of him at all.
"I'd die for you, you know," she once said. He remembers how she bit onto her lower lip after she said it, as if she were afraid at what his reaction might be.
He asked her to take it back, but she didn't, and then she followed through on it.
He knows this is how it happened. His memory never lies.
*
For his nine-hundred-some years of travel, he has always (well, mostly) been in control. He doesn't like that his stomach is clenched tightly in his belly, that he doesn't know what to expect.
He closes the blue door and, after it snaps shut, lets his hand linger on the frame. He is half leaning on his time machine, half caressing her for support, as his eyes scan the streets of London for any type of signal as to what he's supposed to do.
His machine sends a little shock into his hand and he jumps away, changing his position. It is only when he looks up after babying his hand that he sees, that he understands.
Rose is there, standing in the middle of the street with purpose, as if she's waited a hundred years for this moment in time.
Everything about her is just as it haunts him. Casual attire, a beaming smile, eyes shining. The only difference is her hair, now a faded blonde, parted into long even lengths in front of her shoulders.
Without even being entirely aware of it, he finds himself moving towards her. As she gets closer, his senses overload with memories, with sudden intense emotions. He can barely comprehend her. She is smiling, white teeth glittering in the sunlight, looking like no time had passed at all. He thinks that it feels almost like any ordinary day, but when he sees the well of tears withheld in her eyes, he shakes with the power of the moment.
He stops before her, leaving her the distance one might leave an acquaintance. He can't find it within himself to move any closer. Not yet.
"Hi, there," she says, and he swears all of the hair on his body has just stood on end, screaming with confusion and elation.
"Hi," he croaks.
"I've been waiting for you." She reaches her hand out to him and, without hesitation, he takes it with his own.
He waits for his body to react, for him to do something but stare at her slack-jawed and strange. He tries to cling onto the first emotion that runs through his mind. He won't cry -- it's not the time or the place -- and he knows he won't frown or falter or walk away.
Instead, a grand smile erupts on his face, and for that single moment, they are nothing more than a pair of living beings, standing in the middle of a street in the East End, reaching out to one another, grinning like fools.
He tries to steady his breath, to get control of the blood racing through his veins, and he finds that his smile is almost physically painful to maintain, but is also unavoidable. He is all at once too happy and too miserable. His hand tingles, spreading a numb sensation up his arm and over the rest of his body. He fears that if doesn't say something, that if the moment lingers like this, that he'll either regenerate or combust right there on the spot.
He finally finds his voice and asks only the first question on a long list in his mind. "How long? How long has it been?"
She sucks in a deep breath and states very matter-of-factly, "Thirty-seven years. Nine months. Three days. And, you know, some hours and minutes and seconds."
They both laugh and it feels stifled and uncomfortable and glorious. He suddenly feels the urge to pull her to him, to absolutely crush her body into his and take her away. As if she is reading his mind, she puts her other hand on top of their embraced ones and steps closer to him. He feels his body shake -- or is that her? -- and his mind begins to go into overdrive.
His eyes wander over her flushed cheeks, and he marvels how close she looks to his memory of her. He can't help but feel like he dropped her off for a short visit to her mum's and now they're ready to cross the universe, together again.
"Come on, then," she says in a low whisper. "I'm not sure how much time we've got."
He nods absently, absorbing her being into his mind, and he follows her down the street, both of her hands wrapped warmly around his.
His body becomes hyper-aware, sucking in every emotion and sensation all around him, like Rose and the world around her are being dragged right into the core of him, some infinite abyss. His cheeks flush under the light easterly wind, his feet burn in his shoes above the pavement, and his skin almost hurts at the feeling of the clothes wrapped around him, the fabric playing all over his flesh like needles. Above all of this, above everything, he feels the rhythm of her heartbeat through her palms. He squeezes her hand tighter as she leads him away, counting the pulse of her body in time, beating and beating, so very alive.
*
Her flat is full of expected items, things that are very Rose in nature, and he worries for a moment that she will ask him to sit down while she goes off to make tea. He doesn't want that. He's not sure what is going on or what will become of this, but he knows more than anything that now is not the time for a chat over tea.
It is mid-morning; the sun tries its best to beat through the windows, but the thick sheer curtains she has up blocks its efforts, allowing a yellow-tinted ray of light to grace the room. The effect is that everything is just a bit darker than expected. She turns away from his strong gaze, looking off to a clock on the mantel to study the time.
"Rose..." he begins, not sure where he's going with it.
"Time," she says, her voice finally cracking, "I wish I knew how much of it we had."
He reaches up and runs the palm of his hand lightly from her cheek down her neck. He feels her shudder and hears it too in her rugged intake of breath. "I need to know how--"
"In time," she replies.
Part of him wants to bubble with his old familiar laughter, to remind her that so many introspections about time in such a short span borders on being ridiculous. He wants to jump manically about the room, holding her hands in his. He wants her to pack her things so they can run off to another world; he wants to tell her about the things he's seen while he thought she was...
"You were dead. I watched you die. I found you."
She cranks her head to the side in thought, and then sort of nods at him. "I wasn't entirely dead, no."
Out of everything, from finding her grave in Ireland to touching her in this very moment, this comment punches him the hardest. He finds it difficult to gather his thoughts in any rational way. He is shocked that he hasn't run off on one of his infamous tangents thus far, but then again, he knows he hasn't done such a thing in a long while. There's no point in talking like that when no one's around to hear him.
"So I left you behind." He finds that he can no longer look at her, and he lets his gaze linger on a table that is filled with used cups and saucers. It's an utter mess. A little tang of humor tries to fight its way through the stream of guilt in his mind; she's still the same Rose, impossibly messy.
She grabs his chin a little forcefully and pulls his face to hers. She smells of nothing he can accurately describe, regardless of how many objects he has sensed throughout his entire existence. He decides that it would be a waste to try to describe her in any other way than to simply say that Rose smelled like Rose, and the very thought of that made his chest thunder out of control.
"I wasn't dead then and I'm not dead now." Then she repeats again, a little slower, a little more tinged with melancholy, "I don't know how much time we have, Doctor."
Perhaps it is the way she says his name, or maybe it's because it has been so long since he has heard someone he cares for say it. No matter what force there is, he finds his hands have moved to brace her strongly at her shoulders, and he leans forward to press his forehead against hers.
"I missed you," she whispers.
He swallows, and then licks his lips. "I longed for you."
They kiss chastely once, then again, then a third time as his hands move her closer and their tongues meet as if they had been together this way an infinite number of times before. Even with the power of everything behind the moment, he can barely keep his mind on the task, cursing it for thinking that this is the first and last time, that so many things in his life have been bittersweet, and it makes him hate himself.
When she wraps her arms tightly around his back and the kiss deepens even further, the negative thoughts start to slip from his mind, but not entirely. They spend no time delighting in each sensation; the kiss is rugged, possibly messy, and entirely uncontrolled. He finds that if he runs his tongue along the contours of her own, back and forth, that she growls into his mouth. He does this again and again, each time their bodies pulling closer to one another until they finally have to part for gasps of air, lips smacking loudly in the silence of her flat.
They stand barely moving, embracing each other completely, the vibrations of their bodies humming in alliance. In the strange light of the room, their darkest features are illuminated, and he can't help but try to memorize the shape of her face, afraid that he might not have any other moments to do so. The combination of their prolonger eye contract and the rapid rising and falling of their chests pressed so tightly together makes their hearts race, if at all possible, even faster than they just had been.
She wishes she could think of a clever one-liner to take him to the other room, but she decides to say nothing as she pulls away from him, then grasps his hand tightly in her own and leads him away.
He follows where she leads and asks no questions.
*
It is just about impossible to breathe.
He had forgotten that this was the time of the disgustingly high temperatures on Earth, the decades where the winters became less cold and the summers kept people indoors with their fans and air units. Even with all of the artificial air circulating through the room and the thick curtains, the battle against the heat is still lost, and his lungs rasp with the sharply cold but ripely humid air.
They stand quietly, fighting for breath, each of them pressing a hand to the other's chest, somewhat for support, mostly just to remain connected. He runs the side of one finger down her arm and watches as goose bumps rise all over her skin. She shudders deeply, blinks her eyes slowly, and licks her lips.
Then they begin.
He can't quite get control of himself. The loud side of him, the rude part that asks too many questions and destroys perfectly good moments, is screaming in his brain to stop, to figure things out, to be calculated and methodical and scientific. His body, of course, betrays his mind. As he watches her slowly undress him, her fingers working off his tie and slipping each button back through its hole, he thinks of all of his companions, of everyone he felt so much for and never told what they meant to him. And now, here she is, his Rose, at the height of everything. He feels himself losing it. She opens his shirt, the mix of air soothing over his skin, and presses one kiss above his breast, then she turns to press her ear against the center of his chest. He reaches for her hand automatically.
"How does it sound?" he asks, unsure of what to say or do with himself.
She moves away from him, looking up into his eyes. "Alive."
His final barrier breaks and in that second, he feels everything he's ever lost or left behind, everyone he's ever loved or hurt. It's too many emotions, enough to drive a human insane, and he tries to contain it but finds it impossible. He pulls her to him suddenly, almost violently, their lips battling again. He pulls rapidly at her clothes and she follows suit with the same intensity, removing his freed jacket and shirt, before they tumble heavily onto her bed.
He tries to go slowly. After all, it has been an impossibly long time for him, and he wants to savor this, to remember each moment. But when her thigh comes up and rubs him spot on in his hardness, he groans hotly in her ear and figures to hell with pace; of course he'll remember everything. He likes to make a habit out of cherishing the finer details of life, after all.
He attacks her breasts with his hands and fingers and tongue and teeth and he's not even sure exactly what his plan is, but the sight of her squirming beneath him tells him to go at it longer and harder and with more of everything, and he is rewarded by her running her fingernails up and down his back, scratching patterns into him. She grabs at his hair and directs his head up. He reclaims her mouth shortly before moving to work on her neck, pinning her easily into the mattress. She struggles to lean up and pay the same attention to him, but he doesn't let her. He battles within himself whether to be gentle or to let the moment take over, and just as he begins to worry that he's maybe hurting her, that he's touching her too roughly, her thigh moves between his legs again and rubs him much harder than before, causing his whole body to jerk suddenly. He watches as her face contorts into a smile as she giggles lightly between deep gulps of breath. He stops his movements and raises himself slightly off of her, his weight held up on his elbows, and he lets his face hang just above hers, so close she can see the sweat glimmering at his brow and he can feel her panting right into him.
She moves her thigh again, teasing him, playing him to move on. He moans in a voice so low that it doesn't even sound like him, and her grin spreads even wider, her teeth biting down on her lower lip. She thinks she has the advantage, even as she is just barely pinned beneath him, but she is very wrong. Her head snaps back on the pillow suddenly as his hand delves under what remains of her clothes. His fingers waste no time pushing aside her knickers and deftly flicking right over the spot she has wanted him to electrify ever since she laid eyes on him again... no, much longer than that... all of these years, since they traveled together, since...
His eyes flash merrily and his face contorts into one of those strange looks that she wishes she could catalogue (he's got so bloody many of them) as he slips one finger inside of her and she forgets completely and utterly whatever the hell it was she was thinking about. He moves his finger around ever so slowly, his thumb barely glazing over her clit, and she bucks naturally into his hand.
"More," she grunts out, her voice foreign even to her, and she doesn't know what she's asking for but she knows that she wants more of whatever that is and that she needs it now, not later, but right now.
He leans up and presses his mouth right to her ear. "Yes?"
"Mmm," she tries to start a sentence, but can't, and she suddenly feels a shift in the room -- maybe a shift in the world, she's not sure -- and she moves her head to stare directly into his eyes. He finds her pupils darker than before, and this time he senses that it's not just the strange lighting in her flat. Her features seem to drain before him, and instead of just the passion of the moment, he feels the weight of her feelings crashing into him.
It's more than just this very second. He feels slapped across the face with the darkness of her life, of her long wait for him, of her intense loneliness, of the nightmares that haunted her without him. She bucks against him again involuntarily and he slides another finger insider her without even thinking, his body reacting to what he thinks she wants, and he moves more sharply along her. She moans unexpectedly but does not break the eye contact with him. He gets the sensation that she is reading him just as he is her, that maybe for the first time in their lives, they are on the exact same page in every respect.
Her human life has suffered because of him, because she met him and loved him and had to live on without him and his adventures. He feels her crushed spirit, a part she tried to hide from him at their reunion, but that he can feel now with utter clarity. It echoes his own pain so closely that his body shudders violently and he pulls his hand out and away from her. She gasps at the sudden loss of his touch and immediately reaches up to his face with her own hands.
"I don't..." she shakes her head, trying to find the words, but both of their minds are unbalanced and overwhelmed, and they are breathing too hard to be in any sort of control anymore. "Don't stop," she finally gets out, and it is the only thing he needs to hear.
He leans back on his knees and she sits up with him to remove their finals bits of clothing. The process is not exactly smooth and they interrupt themselves frequently with long kisses. She struggles with his belt as he runs his tongue down her throat and he discovers that it's nearly impossible to remove his laced-up shoes with her biting at his earlobe. With nothing left to take off, he battles with her as she tries to flip him over. His mind floods at the thought of watching her above him and he knows he wants that, the ability to study her as she controls him. But he knows more importantly that this might be all there ever is for them and he wants the power, wants to show her what she means to him. She always did communicate her feelings for him so easily, but he constantly kept her just at a distance. This is his only chance, he thinks, and he reaches under her to draw her legs behind his back. She follows without question, wrapping her entire body tightly around his as he pushes himself into her easily.
There are no smiles now, no games left. He emits a groan that she quickly becomes fond of and, in turn, she makes a moan that he is sure might be one of the best noises he has ever heard in his life. He tries with difficulty to set the pace, pulling out of her completely before inching slowly back in, just to hear her make that noise again and again. He is sure he can keep his mind just at bay, but she surprises him suddenly as she shifts her back, arching more towards him, deepening the point he can hit inside her. His entire body shudders from head to toe; he is positive he can't hold back much longer, and when she leans even closer and whispers "Doctor..." in his ear, another part of him comes undone and he thrusts into her with a deeper and harder intensity, his pace spiraling out of his control.
He moves his head to linger above hers again, and their eyes lock fiercely. Her lids are heavy, her gaze hazy, and he loves this look, this side of her he has never seen before. Her swollen lips reach up to find his and they kiss sloppily as he takes her quicker. She clenches around him and he only finds the smallest amount of restraint left within himself to hold off so he can watch her as she comes. Her head digs into the pillow, her whole body arching up into him, but her eyes never lose contact with his. As she moans along with her final waves, she thrusts up with him more powerfully than she had been, and he releases into her. His mouth finds hers and they kiss with a deep longing as the rocking of their bodies moves to stillness. She drags her hands up into his hair, freeing it from where it had been matted down with perspiration. He lazily drops his head down to her chest and kisses her randomly all over for a moment, before moving back up and kissing her once soundly on her lips.
"Rose," he says, his voice hoarse, "my Rose."
She is still tuned finely to the moment -- she can feel something moving outside, something wrong -- and she doesn't let herself waste anymore time. He is kissing her all over again, very slowly moving about her body. She stares up at the ceiling and takes a deep breath.
"Doctor..." she begins, but he does not look up, he just keeps touching her, running his lips along the tender flesh at the side of her ribcage. "I love you," she says.
He doesn't reply immediately, but his body never tenses and he doesn't break from moving all over her. This comforts her, and she doesn't care that he waits so long to reply, because she already knows his answer anyways and even if she didn't, he is giving it to her with every kiss he places on her skin.
"Yes," he finally says, his lips hanging above her bellybutton, his voice so low she could barely hear it. Yes, because he loves her too, because he loved all of them, and all of his life he never let himself respond, never lived just in the moment. For some nine centuries, he robbed himself of the thing he admired most about humans, and although he is still unsure of why he is here and why this is happening now, he knows it's a second chance he very well may never have again. He pulls out of her and they shift around to embrace each other.
He kisses her again, just because he can, and he repeats, this time more solidly, "Yes."
*
"Tell me what happened."
"This'll be a first... me teaching you history." She breathes out a long sigh, not feeling much in the mood to tell the story, but sensing she only has so much time left to do so.
They lay on their sides facing each other; she runs her leg smoothly over his while he mimics her pattern with his hand on her arm. They are touching, but they both feel it's not enough. He wants to kiss her, to take her again already, but for the first time since he stepped out of the TARDIS, the logical side of his brain is screaming for answers.
He laughs calmly at her remark, but returns quickly to silence, awaiting her response.
"I didn't die that day. Torchwood took me. They brought me back," she speaks slowly, with the candor only a human who experienced existence through his eyes could. "I still have the Time Vortex in me. I belong to it now. I gather it has the rest of my life planned out exactly for me."
He nods sadly. "I thought I saved you from that... from the Vortex. You were always going to be a part of me and the TARDIS, but that... I didn't want that to change you. I thought I stopped it."
"Not so bad, is it?" She is lying, he can both sense it in her words and see it on her face. "Torchwood hired me on. It was a bit difficult hiding my lack of aging from my own employer. Kept saying it was my fantastic genes, but mum always fussing over her gray hair and wrinkles didn't help my story much..." she stops suddenly and looks away from him. He spots tears flooding into the corner of her eyes, and when he reaches up to her face, she buries her head down into the pillow.
"What is it?" he begs, his hand resting heavily in her hair.
She thinks she should just hide it all from him; there's not much time left, and what's the point in showing him her pain if she can just hide it a little bit longer. But a sob chokes in her throat -- she wasn't aware she was already crying -- and she smothers her face further away from him.
Her words come out muffled against the pillow. "I hated living without you. I was so angry for so long, but... but the Vortex, what remained of it within me, it changed me. It showed me fate. It showed me why things happen, the reason for everything, even why this is happening now."
"Why, then?"
"Because," she turns her head and looks at him, her hand stroking his neck absently, "this is what happens in my life. Because I lost you, but was given something else instead. I don't know quite what it is yet, but I know I'm meant for something greater. For something even bigger than running about the universe with you... even though it's what I want the most, what I've always wanted the most."
They stare at each other in silence. He plays with the ends of her hair and she moves her hand to rest along the dip in his shoulder. She blinks and lets the tears that were forming in her eyes fall down her cheek.
"Jack came back," she says, her voice small, wondering how this will affect him.
His stomach drops because it all has lined up in his head; because he has seen the gravestone she shares with him, and he understands that this is what she was meant to do, what she was born for and why he met her. His mind clouds with darkness, and he tries lamely to cover it with a thin smile.
"And how is he? Upgraded to a sonic machinegun yet?"
She laughs, and he's quite certain that this sound feels more like home to him than anything in his past two lives has. "He misses you... misses us. Those were good times, the three of us together, don't you think?"
He nods very slowly, his eyes tracing her face, her neck, her shoulders. He runs his hand just along her breast and all the way down her side, forcing down the duvet cover until it is bunched up at their hips. "Yes, but... you and I were..."
"The best of times," she finishes, and he meets the beaming look in her eye with a sad grin. "The happiest I ever was."
He strokes her face and leans in to kiss her lightly, their lips lazily touching and teasing.
When they pull apart, she is looking at him intensely.
"Ask me to come with you," she says.
His body stiffens with worry and she only pulls him out of his thoughts by physically moving his face to look back towards hers.
"You know how I die, don't you?"
He nods, brushing her hair back off her shoulder, because he can't think of anything else to do. "I've been in this time line before. I can't alter it."
"I know," she says. "I know. I just want to hear you say the words."
He pauses for a moment, contemplating the sentence in his head. "Come away with me, Rose Tyler."
They move closer to each other and linger in silence.
After a few moments, he breathes deeply, his mind obviously tangled up in thought. He looks about ready to pour into a long diatribe, but instead he exhales slowly and says finally, "There's always a reason for everything in this universe. Something specific lured me here. There is a reason that I'm here, Rose... and whether or not it's this or..."
"My mum died last week," her voice is low, soaked in sadness. "She didn't die alone; she had me. And I was there with her, thinking about how I might die by myself. But the Vortex... it brought you to me... and I don't think, anymore... I don't think we'll be alone forever."
He looks away from her now and bites back the feelings stirring in his head, the pain and loneliness he has been engulfed in as he's traveled without her, without anyone. "You won't be alone," he says simply.
She grabs his chin and looks at him with more confidence than he's ever seen her have. "Neither will you."
An explosion outside immediately shifts both of their attention. He shoots out of bed and runs to the window in enough time to catch a string of fires bursting all around the city. By the time he turns around, she is already adequately dressed and moving to spread his clothes out on the bed.
"Here," she offers her hand to him and he moves without hesitation to her side. She hands him his clothing piece by piece, holding out his jacket for him, helping him slip it over his shoulders. She grabs him by his lapels and pulls him to her, kissing him solidly. His hands move to cup her cheeks and they embrace with more intensity and sadness than passion. When he steps back from her, she is still crying softly, and his body doesn't want to leave her, but his mind forces him to speak.
"Rose, I--"
She shakes her head, cutting him off. "Go on, now. Save the world. There are bigger things than you and I."
His mind goes dark and he finds he has nothing in his mind but one sentence, screaming within him again and again.
"Rose..."
Another explosion rocks the city, shaking the items all over her flat. She leans up to kiss him quickly, and then releases her grip on him entirely.
"I know," she replies to him.
And then he looks exactly like he used to back in their days together, the same determination and sacrifice on his face. "I'll be back if I can."
She nods, even though they both know this won't happen, and there is nothing left to say.
She stays at her window to watch him run down the street, making sure none of the explosions are near him. He makes it back to his TARDIS with the intention of stepping inside to better gage the situation. He stands at the blue doors and looks up to find her; she waves to him, a smiling girl framed by the window. He waves back, then steps inside.
When the door closes, the TARDIS moves again without his permission, fading back into space. He runs to the console to stop it, but it is too late. He knows the TARDIS has a habit of moving herself when she is in imminent danger of being destroyed, but this knowledge doesn't make him any less frustrated as she sings and dances away into space.
The second the blue call box disappears, Rose watches as a bomb explodes at the end of the street exactly where it had been.
She jumps back away from the window and runs off to call into Torchwood. With a mobile pressed to her ear, she hides to stay safe from the attack, awaiting her orders.
She crouches in the darkness and waits for her life to unfold.
*
He sits on the floor of the TARDIS, his wrinkled clothes and sky-rocketing body temperature both clear reminders of what just happened. He pulls his legs up and presses his face into his knees so hard that his eyes throb in their sockets, dancing sparkles of black under his eyelids.
He wants to hate himself. He sits and tries to overwhelm his mind into an abyss of self-pity, but the image of her next to him, her face inches away from him, pulses in his head. He can almost still feel her breath on him. She was alive. She was living, and she still loved him.
He sits in silence, trying to comprehend how it's possible for him to feel such complete loss from the girl he shared only 1/900th of his life with.
It's his curse, he knows.
"Where are we going next?" She used to demand from beside him, their bodies aligned on the chair next to the console.
In that incarnation, he liked to keep his arms crossed tightly until his leather jacket was stretched almost uncomfortably around his body. She ignored his body language and pressed herself against him, pushing her hand against his will under his arm until she could hook it with her own. It used to drive him crazy that he couldn't look right at her when they sat like this, that he could rarely see her reactions to his stories. But one day he found that he couldn't possibly live without her tucked up beside him, and he learned that having her head settled easily on his shoulder was definitely the best and only proper way to sit with her.
"How about Paris, year 6794321?"
She stuck her tongue out at him, rolling her eyes. "Boring. How about someplace you've never been before?"
"Now why's that? Don't trust my memories of my favorite places?"
"No," she repositioned her head on his shoulder and grinned widely, a girl child toying for more candy. "I like to watch your face light up when you see new places."
Soon after this, he traded one of his lives for hers.
He would do it again and again for her. But he knows it still wouldn't make any difference.
No one lives forever.
*
When the TARDIS settles down again, he jerks his head up suddenly. He might have fallen asleep -- he's not sure -- but when he tries to stand again, the numbness in his legs and back tell him that he's been on the floor far longer than he should have been.
London, again. He pinches the bridge of his nose and breathes out heavily, not sure he can take much more. His hearts are beating so rapidly he swears he can feel them bashing against his back, trying to escape his body.
The monitor reads 2060, the year the Earth Wars begins.
He knows he can't do it, and he's angry that he's even thinking it, but he can't help but wonder if he's here to save Rose, to stop her from saving the world, to take her away with him. Before he's even aware of it, he's running across the control room and bursting out the blue doors into London.
The smothering heat is gone; it must be winter. There is no snow -- the high temperatures made it stop snowing in the UK around 2039 -- but the clouds are lingering heavily in the sky, about ready to drop a ridiculous amount of rain onto the city.
He looks over and sees a similar kiosk, newspapers pasted to its sides, and he knows distinctly that he has not only been to this London before, but he has been right here on this very street corner.
He peers down the street and finds a lone figure seated on the curb, a book resting in her lap, an umbrella protecting her from the oncoming storm. As he stares at her, she looks up from her book and meets his gaze from down the street. She smiles widely and waves at him. He raises his hand and waves back, his fingers bouncing up and down with slight confusion. She beckons him over so he moves towards her, unsure of what else to do.
"I've been waiting for you," she says simply. She folds her book closed and places it in a giant bag beside her.
"Have you now?" He doesn't like towering over her, so he sits beside her on the pavement.
She closes her umbrella and places it in her bag beside the book, struggling to zip it shut. "There," she says to the bag. "All ready."
"Ready for what?" He can't help the absurd curiosity in his voice.
"To see the universe." When he doesn't seem to follow her, she giggles a little, placing her hand under her chin, resting her elbow on her knee to look at him. "Sorry," she says, stopping her laughter, "I always dreamed this would go a bit differently."
He smiles a confused but curious smile at her. "What do you mean?"
"Seeing you again."
She looks at him dead on for the first time since they've been this close, and he recognizes her clearly as an older version of the girl he met on this street on his last visit. She appears to be in her mid-teens now, her brown hair still long, tied into a neat ponytail at the back of her head.
"Ah," he says. "I remember you now. It was summer, last I saw you. You enjoyed my shoes."
She nods enthusiastically. "There, that's better." She stands, standing tall above him. The sun peaks out from the overcast sky for just a moment and the appearance of her features, the blush in her cheeks, the bounce of her ponytail, the curve of her nose are all too familiar.
"I'm ready to go now," she finishes.
"Go where?"
She points down the road to where he came from. "The TARDIS."
"I don't understand," he says, but there is still a hint of a smile on his face, and he knows he understands completely, but his mind is not catching up just yet.
She shares a wide, toothy grin with him before flipping her bag onto her back. "Mum was worried you wouldn't come. That the war would get here first. Which it did. Started three months ago. She figured you might be late. Said you once meant to take her to Ohihplexon but ended up in Ohio instead."
"Ohihplexon..." the word rolls off his tongue for the first time since it happened, and he finds himself laughing ridiculously at the thought of the place. His mind spills open with memories, as if it is really Rose standing beside him, as if things really hadn't happened this way after all. "I wanted to show her the cities with the houses made entirely of glass, some lesson about my being rude and throwing bricks and such, but we ended up behind a McDonald's and the TARDIS... it smelled like hamburgers and oh, not chips, those french fries for weeks. She hid them all around. She wanted to prove that they would never rot which is, of course, unnatural in every respect." His laughter dissolves and he looks up at the girl, her features becoming more and more obvious to him, the lopsided smile on her face matching his.
"Mum told me that one. She used to say she hoped you were still finding them. She said she hid some in a place you'd never be able to find."
"Ah, she must've meant the bundle in the ceiling. They looked exactly the same by the time I found it."
"No," she says, shaking her head, still grinning. "I know where she hid them all."
He rises carefully beside her. They both peer down the street towards the TARDIS. "So your mum wants you to come with me."
She shrugs. "She said it's what's supposed to happen. I got sixteen years with her. It's time I got to know you." The girl tucks her head down slightly, hiding her face from him, and he knows with utter certainty what this means to her. They have both lost Rose now.
He extends his hand to her and she takes it without question.
"You sure you're ready?"
She looks up to him, her features now such an obvious combination that he can't believe he missed it before. "I've been waiting my whole life for you. Mum said that as long as we've got each other, we'll never be alone."
The storm above them bursts suddenly, crashing billions of raindrops onto the Earth. He looks up quickly, scrunching his eyes from the wetness, and peers over to the girl.
"Run," he says, and they take off down the street.
He looks behind him to see her keeping up with him, their hands still linked together, and for the first time in a long time, he can sense something unexpected in his future.
There is hope.