fic: Letters
Title: Letters
Author: pockyxchan
Characters/Pairing: Tenth Doctor, Tenth Doctor/Rose
Rating: PG13
Disclaimer: I do not own any and all Doctor Who characters, places or plot lines featured in this work of fiction. All the aforementioned belong to the BBC.
Summary: Rose Tyler isn't dead, but she might as well be; and the Doctor most certainly has unsaid feelings that need to be shared, if only on paper.
Author's Notes: This is my first Doctor Who fanfiction, so I hope they're all as in character as I can possibly make them without ruining the effect. =)
It’s not too long after Rose Tyler, and her presence still burns his two hearts. But he can take it, because he’s strong. He’s survived the destruction of Gallifrey, has watched friends and family die, and has lived for nine hundred years or more ---- he’s lost count. He’s strong enough to go on, and on, and on, over and over again; strong enough to feel each loss stab both hearts on every heartbeat.
He’s been around a long time, long enough to know what human psychologists suggest when a person is grieving. And he is grieving. Sure, he’s a doctor and he could probably prescribe himself some hard Irish liquor, but he knows a temporary solution when he sees one, even if it’s got a mask on.
So he takes some Earth advice and begins the grieving process. He’s heard some therapists say writing letters to the deceased helps to let out all the unsaid feelings, the feelings that couldn’t be said, or were not able to be said, while the person was living. Rose Tyler isn’t dead, but she might as well be; and the Doctor most certainly has unsaid feelings that need to be shared, if only on paper.
He keeps spare lined paper in the desk in his bedroom on board the TARDIS, as well as the necessary writing utensils. Rose liked to doodle the aliens they met sometimes while they were traveling to and fro among the universes. He shuts the door on that memory with a swift shove of the desk drawer, the soft click of wood against wood the same sound as that of the metaphorical door in his head.
He starts off with Dear Rose in an expansive and fluid cursive that takes up a line too many and looks ridiculously like something he would do if she were still around. But she’s not and he’s not in the mood to bring up “what if”s.
So he starts anew, writing Dear Rose in standard printing, although a little messily. He pauses a moment, takes the time to look up at the ceiling of the TARDIS’s control room and forces the tears to form a swimming pool in his eyes and not a waterfall down his cheekbones. With an inhale and subsequent exhale, he touches his HB pencil to the stack of paper he has on his thigh. And suddenly writing is all he can do, spilling secrets onto paper and the answer to the sentence he was unable to finish that day at Bad Wolf Bay, Norway, in that parallel world that seems too far away. It doesn’t matter how far, he can never go back.
And then he’s done gorging his hearts out for now.
On his next trip to Earth he stops by a post office and picks up a few envelopes.
The letters pile up, day after day. Always starting off with Dear Rose and ending without a name. He feels impersonal writing Love, the Doctor, but he can’t bring himself to write his real name down. Telling her through a letter she’ll never get feels just as impersonal.
The content of the letters start to change a few in. He recounts to Rose the adventures he’s been on since the Battle at Canary Wharf. He writes about Donna Noble and Huon particles and missed weddings and more Christmas shenanigans.
He knows she won’t be happy knowing the second he left her a new adventure arose, but he figures it’s better than more teenage angst and depression. And, really, he’s much too old for that.
Martha Jones, Captain Jack Harkness again, and Donna Noble again. Adventures on the moon, in Manhattan, with more Daleks and the Master. He explains his brilliant plans to her with that goofy grin he has spread across his face. As soon as he realizes it’s there, he makes sure it’s gone. He goes about cataloguing his trips to different times and places in deafening silence.
Donna snoops through one day and asks quietly about the overflowing box of letters he has in his room. He tries to reign his voice in, but it gets away from him and he practically orders her to tell him whether or not she read any, like an authoritarian dictator. Because Donna is Donna, she snaps back at him, not willing to take any of his shit, and ready to beat him over the head with her fist. The Doctor deduces it as a sort of defense mechanism.
Later, Donna asks him if the letters are for Rose. It’s been a while since he’s heard her name said out loud and his anger bristles. He doesn’t want to get into a shouting match with Donna. Not now, not when he’s been all yelled out. Instead, he just heads straight for his room and slams the door, curling up on the bed and wishing the tears wouldn’t still come this far in her absence.
During a break, after the whole Jenny thing, back on the TARDIS, Donna approaches the subject of the letters again. She asks him brashly what’s with all the letters. Grieving process, he murmurs softly before shutting himself up in his room again. Donna’s voice still carries through the door, yelling about how he once told her Rose was alive and well somewhere, didn’t he?
He can’t answer her because his brain has already gone into that depressive funk. It’s always more painful when you have two hearts to break. It takes twice as long to patch up with twice as many pieces.
One day, he feels super nostalgic. That impossible planet and the “devil” monster and the loss of the TARDIS permeate his mind, but all he can really remember of that time is when Rose said she wouldn’t mind sharing a mortgage with him. And her smile. And that hug after he found the TARDIS and got her back. Maybe they never got to have a real kiss, just the two of them, but each and every one of those hugs expressed his love for her.
Donna can see him staring out into nothing and she puts a comforting hand on his shoulder. Broken out of his reverie, he just shrugs it off and turns away. He tries to go back to today’s letter, half-written already. As Donna leans over to skim it, he flips it over on his lap and stalks back to his room to write it alone.
Two full boxes of sealed letters addressed to Rose Tyler aren’t enough. He starts a third box.
By now he’s written everything about his adventures and his constant, unchanging love for Rose and the grief is still pressing down and weighing his hearts down and it’s constant and unchanging as well.
He knows that Donna knows the gist of what he’s writing in his letters now. If she even thinks of making a best-seller or moving picture out of them, he’ll make sure she gets off at the next stop, no matter where it is.
As they pass by the Milky Way, he feels particularly dreamy. So he scribbles down in this letter dreams he has of him and Rose getting married; having a gorgeous honeymoon where he can finally take her to Barcelona ---- the planet, not the city ---- and show her the dogs with no noses; shagging; having half-human, half-Time Lord babies that have her complexion and eyes and smile and his nose and come out ginger; snogging; cooking up a storm for Christmas where they’ve invited Mickey, Jackie, parallel Peter, and the new baby; settling down and getting that mortgage; laughing from pure exhilaration or from tickle fights; sitting cozily by the fireplace with mugs of hot cocoa, with her head on his shoulder and his head on hers; ending every birthday in their birthday suits.
But he’s not stupid. Rose is in a parallel world that he can never go to without risk of destroying both Earth and parallel Earth, and that’ll be too much responsibility and guilt for him to handle if only to see her again. Plus, half-human, half-Time Lord babies would only end in disaster. His dreams will remain dreams.
He lets out a lonely breath.
Time stops for everyone, but him. And he doesn’t think he can watch time stop for her.
All he wants is to regenerate and become completely unrecognizable when she dies.
And then she’s there and he’s there and his new half-human self is there, and that’s all he can give her because he’s not really strong enough to outlive another loved one.
He supposes it’s comforting in a way that a part of him gets to keep her and age with her and love her, but it’s still upsetting to see it happen right in front of his face. His half-human duplicate gets to have the thorough Rose Tyler snog that he’ll never get to have and it hurts to watch.
So he goes back to the constant TARDIS and his growing boxes full of letters. He can’t ever give her the letters, wasn’t ever planning on it, but especially now that she has Doctor number two.
Donna is gone now and he’s back floating around in the Time Vortex. He sits, staring at the cardboard boxes of letters that seem to engulf half of his bedroom. He takes one out and runs a long finger along the edge of the envelope, along the sealed flap. He knows what is written in each and every letter, by heart, even though there are almost a thousand it seems.
As he stares at the white envelope with Rose Tyler written on the front of it, all he can think of is how he can be assured now. Rose has his half-human self. She can go on, she’ll be alright. And this thought revives him and now he knows he can go on.
He rushes back into the control room of the TARDIS and sets the controls on the console. As the TARDIS sets off on the new journey, he runs back to his room and drags box after box to the control room. Finally, the TARDIS slows and comes to a slow orbit. Walking to the doors, the Doctor throws them open with renewed energy and a sad smile on his face. The burning star is so beautiful; he knows Rose would just love being witness to it.
He lines the boxes up along the edge of the doors and behind each other. With a shove from his trainer, the boxes tumble one after another, opening and letting the letters free. He can see them float in the anti-gravity of outer space as he rests an arm against the door frame of the TARDIS and slowly burn from the heat of the exploding star. With every letter burned, a fragmented piece of his shattered hearts replaces itself. He watches until they are all gone and destroyed, physically, because the words remain imprinted on his soul. His hearts are whole again and he knows this is what the human race calls closure.
Maybe, when he’s brave enough, he’ll be able to send the rest of his guilt, grief, and loneliness off and burning with a supernova.
Fin.
Jocelyn.
乔斯林.
Author: pockyxchan
Characters/Pairing: Tenth Doctor, Tenth Doctor/Rose
Rating: PG13
Disclaimer: I do not own any and all Doctor Who characters, places or plot lines featured in this work of fiction. All the aforementioned belong to the BBC.
Summary: Rose Tyler isn't dead, but she might as well be; and the Doctor most certainly has unsaid feelings that need to be shared, if only on paper.
Author's Notes: This is my first Doctor Who fanfiction, so I hope they're all as in character as I can possibly make them without ruining the effect. =)
It’s not too long after Rose Tyler, and her presence still burns his two hearts. But he can take it, because he’s strong. He’s survived the destruction of Gallifrey, has watched friends and family die, and has lived for nine hundred years or more ---- he’s lost count. He’s strong enough to go on, and on, and on, over and over again; strong enough to feel each loss stab both hearts on every heartbeat.
He’s been around a long time, long enough to know what human psychologists suggest when a person is grieving. And he is grieving. Sure, he’s a doctor and he could probably prescribe himself some hard Irish liquor, but he knows a temporary solution when he sees one, even if it’s got a mask on.
So he takes some Earth advice and begins the grieving process. He’s heard some therapists say writing letters to the deceased helps to let out all the unsaid feelings, the feelings that couldn’t be said, or were not able to be said, while the person was living. Rose Tyler isn’t dead, but she might as well be; and the Doctor most certainly has unsaid feelings that need to be shared, if only on paper.
He keeps spare lined paper in the desk in his bedroom on board the TARDIS, as well as the necessary writing utensils. Rose liked to doodle the aliens they met sometimes while they were traveling to and fro among the universes. He shuts the door on that memory with a swift shove of the desk drawer, the soft click of wood against wood the same sound as that of the metaphorical door in his head.
He starts off with Dear Rose in an expansive and fluid cursive that takes up a line too many and looks ridiculously like something he would do if she were still around. But she’s not and he’s not in the mood to bring up “what if”s.
So he starts anew, writing Dear Rose in standard printing, although a little messily. He pauses a moment, takes the time to look up at the ceiling of the TARDIS’s control room and forces the tears to form a swimming pool in his eyes and not a waterfall down his cheekbones. With an inhale and subsequent exhale, he touches his HB pencil to the stack of paper he has on his thigh. And suddenly writing is all he can do, spilling secrets onto paper and the answer to the sentence he was unable to finish that day at Bad Wolf Bay, Norway, in that parallel world that seems too far away. It doesn’t matter how far, he can never go back.
And then he’s done gorging his hearts out for now.
On his next trip to Earth he stops by a post office and picks up a few envelopes.
The letters pile up, day after day. Always starting off with Dear Rose and ending without a name. He feels impersonal writing Love, the Doctor, but he can’t bring himself to write his real name down. Telling her through a letter she’ll never get feels just as impersonal.
The content of the letters start to change a few in. He recounts to Rose the adventures he’s been on since the Battle at Canary Wharf. He writes about Donna Noble and Huon particles and missed weddings and more Christmas shenanigans.
He knows she won’t be happy knowing the second he left her a new adventure arose, but he figures it’s better than more teenage angst and depression. And, really, he’s much too old for that.
Martha Jones, Captain Jack Harkness again, and Donna Noble again. Adventures on the moon, in Manhattan, with more Daleks and the Master. He explains his brilliant plans to her with that goofy grin he has spread across his face. As soon as he realizes it’s there, he makes sure it’s gone. He goes about cataloguing his trips to different times and places in deafening silence.
Donna snoops through one day and asks quietly about the overflowing box of letters he has in his room. He tries to reign his voice in, but it gets away from him and he practically orders her to tell him whether or not she read any, like an authoritarian dictator. Because Donna is Donna, she snaps back at him, not willing to take any of his shit, and ready to beat him over the head with her fist. The Doctor deduces it as a sort of defense mechanism.
Later, Donna asks him if the letters are for Rose. It’s been a while since he’s heard her name said out loud and his anger bristles. He doesn’t want to get into a shouting match with Donna. Not now, not when he’s been all yelled out. Instead, he just heads straight for his room and slams the door, curling up on the bed and wishing the tears wouldn’t still come this far in her absence.
During a break, after the whole Jenny thing, back on the TARDIS, Donna approaches the subject of the letters again. She asks him brashly what’s with all the letters. Grieving process, he murmurs softly before shutting himself up in his room again. Donna’s voice still carries through the door, yelling about how he once told her Rose was alive and well somewhere, didn’t he?
He can’t answer her because his brain has already gone into that depressive funk. It’s always more painful when you have two hearts to break. It takes twice as long to patch up with twice as many pieces.
One day, he feels super nostalgic. That impossible planet and the “devil” monster and the loss of the TARDIS permeate his mind, but all he can really remember of that time is when Rose said she wouldn’t mind sharing a mortgage with him. And her smile. And that hug after he found the TARDIS and got her back. Maybe they never got to have a real kiss, just the two of them, but each and every one of those hugs expressed his love for her.
Donna can see him staring out into nothing and she puts a comforting hand on his shoulder. Broken out of his reverie, he just shrugs it off and turns away. He tries to go back to today’s letter, half-written already. As Donna leans over to skim it, he flips it over on his lap and stalks back to his room to write it alone.
Two full boxes of sealed letters addressed to Rose Tyler aren’t enough. He starts a third box.
By now he’s written everything about his adventures and his constant, unchanging love for Rose and the grief is still pressing down and weighing his hearts down and it’s constant and unchanging as well.
He knows that Donna knows the gist of what he’s writing in his letters now. If she even thinks of making a best-seller or moving picture out of them, he’ll make sure she gets off at the next stop, no matter where it is.
As they pass by the Milky Way, he feels particularly dreamy. So he scribbles down in this letter dreams he has of him and Rose getting married; having a gorgeous honeymoon where he can finally take her to Barcelona ---- the planet, not the city ---- and show her the dogs with no noses; shagging; having half-human, half-Time Lord babies that have her complexion and eyes and smile and his nose and come out ginger; snogging; cooking up a storm for Christmas where they’ve invited Mickey, Jackie, parallel Peter, and the new baby; settling down and getting that mortgage; laughing from pure exhilaration or from tickle fights; sitting cozily by the fireplace with mugs of hot cocoa, with her head on his shoulder and his head on hers; ending every birthday in their birthday suits.
But he’s not stupid. Rose is in a parallel world that he can never go to without risk of destroying both Earth and parallel Earth, and that’ll be too much responsibility and guilt for him to handle if only to see her again. Plus, half-human, half-Time Lord babies would only end in disaster. His dreams will remain dreams.
He lets out a lonely breath.
Time stops for everyone, but him. And he doesn’t think he can watch time stop for her.
All he wants is to regenerate and become completely unrecognizable when she dies.
And then she’s there and he’s there and his new half-human self is there, and that’s all he can give her because he’s not really strong enough to outlive another loved one.
He supposes it’s comforting in a way that a part of him gets to keep her and age with her and love her, but it’s still upsetting to see it happen right in front of his face. His half-human duplicate gets to have the thorough Rose Tyler snog that he’ll never get to have and it hurts to watch.
So he goes back to the constant TARDIS and his growing boxes full of letters. He can’t ever give her the letters, wasn’t ever planning on it, but especially now that she has Doctor number two.
Donna is gone now and he’s back floating around in the Time Vortex. He sits, staring at the cardboard boxes of letters that seem to engulf half of his bedroom. He takes one out and runs a long finger along the edge of the envelope, along the sealed flap. He knows what is written in each and every letter, by heart, even though there are almost a thousand it seems.
As he stares at the white envelope with Rose Tyler written on the front of it, all he can think of is how he can be assured now. Rose has his half-human self. She can go on, she’ll be alright. And this thought revives him and now he knows he can go on.
He rushes back into the control room of the TARDIS and sets the controls on the console. As the TARDIS sets off on the new journey, he runs back to his room and drags box after box to the control room. Finally, the TARDIS slows and comes to a slow orbit. Walking to the doors, the Doctor throws them open with renewed energy and a sad smile on his face. The burning star is so beautiful; he knows Rose would just love being witness to it.
He lines the boxes up along the edge of the doors and behind each other. With a shove from his trainer, the boxes tumble one after another, opening and letting the letters free. He can see them float in the anti-gravity of outer space as he rests an arm against the door frame of the TARDIS and slowly burn from the heat of the exploding star. With every letter burned, a fragmented piece of his shattered hearts replaces itself. He watches until they are all gone and destroyed, physically, because the words remain imprinted on his soul. His hearts are whole again and he knows this is what the human race calls closure.
Maybe, when he’s brave enough, he’ll be able to send the rest of his guilt, grief, and loneliness off and burning with a supernova.
Fin.
Jocelyn.
乔斯林.